jimmy gems

GoukiJones' top 9 favorite games from 2017. Old and new.

#9 Halo Wars 2: was the first major release for me this year that I was really into.  The original came out in 2009 or something and I was still playing it up to the release of this new version.  I played the new version for a little while, but as I sit here and try to recollect my experiences… There isn’t much.  I don’t have much desire to play this game, it just seems to have way too much going on.  I’d try to play the original Halo Wars again before I booted part 2 up.

#8 Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age: This is my favorite Final Fantasy game of all time.  I was so thrilled to hear Square was planning to re-release this game in 2017.  I got it and beat it again.  Easily the FF game I’ve beaten the most.  I plan to go back in, one more time, to max out every character.  One of these days...
Check out my REVIEW

Who will win the coveted Jimmy seal of approval? Here are the nominees...

Worst Game:

The Witcher 2

GoukiJones - I hated this game, by the time I made it to the second area, I just couldn't take it anymore. I know there was a big PC following for the first 1, but the combat didn't work too well on the XBOX. The story was bleh & the level designs weren't that great, because it's not long into playing that you realize the areas are no bigger that a large Halo map with only so many enemies.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown

GoukiJones - I hate this game. Even tho I played it for 56 hours, I just wanted to see how far I could push myself. I wanted to see just how terrible it can get. A spaceship strong enough to crash to the earth, but isn't strong enough to take a round from a human pistol is not good game design. Huge disappointment.

Dragon's Dogma

GoukiJones - I might catch some slack for this 1. I only played this game for 8 hours or so & hated every second of it. While going online & trying to figure out what I was doing wrong, I came across so many reviews about why this game sucks & why you shouldn't play. Well I didn't, thanks Raychul & Angry Joe

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

GoukiJones - First of all the colors, I hated them. Jimmy don’t like World of Warcraft colors. The combat was dull & the questing was a lot of fetching & backtracking. Not something I was interested in after just playing Fallout New Vegas & other RPG’s around that time. I remember loving the KoA at E3 when I saw, but when I actually sat down to play I realized it was all lies.

Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon city

GoukiJones - 1 of the worst games of all time easy. Whenever I see video of us playing this game I really wonder WTF was it about & I can’t believe we wasted anytime playing. Capcom just don’t give a fuck about the RE franchise anymore. Fuck this game.

BatRastered - just throwing bullets at enemies who don’t seem to take any damage and have no health bars, then running out of ammo, finally just rushing down the objectives in a suicide run that turns out was the way you were supposed to do it (what?). This game was a confusing mess.

Best Arcade:

Mark of the Ninja

GoukiJones - 1 of the most clever games I played this & probably 1 of the best Ninja games of all time. Fun to play, there’s multiple way to take down each enemy or you can try to sneak by everyone. There are some great line of sight gameplay elements that make MotN a big time winner with me.

Double Dragon Neon

GoukiJones - As a remake of an old arcade DDN adds new levels & better action. There’s also an RPG element where you can switch out special abilities as you collect them thru the game. This is great for 2 players.

Best Game Not Released in 2012:

Final Fantasy XII

GoukiJones - Another 80 hours on this game, no problem. Great combat, great characters & voice acting, this might be my favorite Final Fantasy of all time.

Halo Wars

GoukiJones - 810 hours. 1 of the best strategy games on XBOX. Please make a Halo Wars 2. Thank you.

Super Street Fighter IV AE

GoukiJones - I’m opposite of BatRastered on this. Even tho I’m not playing SSF4 that much, I’m still playing it now & focusing on it more than ever.

BatRastered - I’m not playing this as much as in the past, but the 2012 patch really evened things out. At the grand finals for the 25th anniversary tournament, there were 6 different characters represented in the top 8. Balance!

Final Fantasy Tactics
BatRastered - I played this on PSN this year for $10. I played the hell out of this and enjoyed every second of it. The job system is still my favorite FF mechanic ever.

Glitchiest Game: (aka the Q&ehhh award)

XCOM: Enemy Unknown

GoukiJones - This game was so broken, I was just playing to see WTF would go wrong next. Aliens could shoot thru walls, that was the worst & totally unfair.
BatRastered - Seriously, just watching GoukiJones play this for 5 minutes produced no fewer than 3 actual laugh-out-loud moments.

Borderlands 2
BatRastered - The sequel to the game with the most invisible walls doesn’t disappoint. There were some serious problems this time though, people had their bad ass ranks reset and certain characters would freeze when nearing a save point. Much of this has been patched, but the latest patch broke all the damage bonuses for shotguns. There’s even a glitch to allow you to store unlimited items in the bank.

Milk Carton Award:

Agent

GoukiJones - Yeah WTF happened here? Is this still a real game?
BatRastered - I don’t even remember what this was about.

XCOM (the other one)

GoukiJones - Please tell me this version is still coming out. I was looking forward to this Mass Effect style alien hunter shooter.
BatRastered - I was never impressed by what I saw of this at E3, but the silence about this game after Enemy Unknown was announced is deafening.

The Last Guardian

GoukiJones - LOL this game. Canceled, not canceled. Secretly in development in some underground bunker by a now NEW set of Jimmys. The third set.
BatRastered - The creator of the game left the company, but is still “consulting” on this project. LOL.

FF vs XIII

GoukiJones - Here’s a game we saw game play from 2 years ago. Square Enix hasn’t said shit since, but claims it’s still in development.

DiveKick

GoukiJones - You could have made a ton of money on this game month ago if you had just released 2 characters, 2 buttons like you originally stated that was about. Now WTF is it & what are you doing to it?
BatRastered - This was hilarious when the trailer dropped and the demo at UFGT. It was still pretty funny at EVO, but then they started to add characters and moves and now it’s gonna be a real fighting game with balance and moves and … WTF? I don’t care anymore. Could’ve made thousands of dollars as an iPhone/android/indie Xbox game.

Twitch.tv Xbox app

GoukiJones - I need this. Why is this so hard.
BatRastered - The IE on Xbox doesn’t do flash, so no way to watch Twitch. I still have to connect my laptop to the TV. What year is this?

What Physics?

Sleeping Dogs

GoukiJones - When you get banned at E3 because in the demo you show me the guy steering the car isn’t turning the wheel or even touching the wheel to be clear, I’m not going to play.
BatRastered - When you shoot out a tire on a care it launches like a rocket. We LOL’ed. Then it landed and continued on it’s way like nothing happened. We almost got thrown out of the room.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown

GoukiJones - Read any of my other comments about this game on this page. Read my review & watch my gameplay videos. Seriously, this game is a mess.

Rubber Bullet Award:

Halo 4

BatRastered: Sure, if you had a DMR or sniper, you could kill the Prometheans in 4 or 5 shots, but if you got stuck with a suppressor (basically an SMG) or AR, you will be unloading full clips into their face before they teleport away and make you do it again to kill them. And that was on normal difficulty.

RE: ORC

GoukiJones - On the hardest difficulty level there isn’t more enemies or even smarter enemies. They just take more bullets to shoot. We were playing with 4 people & still shooting the same nuab with entire clips. Terrible.
BatRastered - From my review: “On the highest difficulty setting, the unarmored heads of the military foes can take a half a dozen shots from an assault rifle before finally blowing up in a shower of blood. Many of the boss battles feature big baddies (such as the Nemesis and Tyrants) but you can't really tell if you're doing any damage to them (there's no life meters and they don't really react to the bullet hits) which makes the encounters feel tedious. Worse, there are encounters where you are not able to injure your opponent, you are simply supposed to advance on them until a cut scene triggers, but you don't know that so you sit there and fire at them for half an hour before someone in your party gets tired of it and goes all LEROY JENKINS and charges them. Ugh.”

Best Character:

Ultimate Badass God-liath Goon (Bordlerands 2)

GoukiJones - Nothing excited me more about Borderlands 2 than hunting this monster. 1 he is hilarious when he gets pissed off & starts chasing. Special bonus it’s the same voice actor from Dragon Ball Z, Mr Satan. So it’s pretty funny to hear Hercule behind you screaming he’s gonna gouge your eyeballs out.

BatRastered - this goes for any raging Goliath variant (once you pop the helmet off of a goliath, they go crazy). Some of the best dialog in the game just being screamed at you as he chases you down, pummelling all other enemies who dare get in his way. Awesome!

Death (Darksiders II)

GoukiJones - Death is funnier than he looks although I’m not sure he’s trying to be. This character has great 1 liners & he looks dope. Perfect brother for War.

Handsome Jack (Borderlands 2)

BatRastered - Jack is a villain that both fits in with the Borderlands style humor and is evil enough to make you want to kill him. That’s a tough trick to pull off, but Jack does it with style.

Best Game:

Halo 4

GoukiJones - By far the best Halo shooting experience in years. Something else about this Halo is that it has brought back a lot of old players from the serious & my friends list always has somebody who want to play. I've logged over 180 on Halo 4 so far. Unfortunately the story was garbage, the last level was probably the worst level in Halo history & there is no final boss fight. WTF?

Borderlands 2

GoukiJones - Great cam to play with friends & compete on who has the best gear. It's also nice to share & trade gear Jimmy. I already have over 200 hours into Borderlands 2 & when the level cap is increased I'm sure I'll go up closer to 300.

Mass Effect 3

GoukiJones - Any game I play thru 2-3 times back to back is going to get a nod from me. Mass Effect is great fun. The multiplayer isn't bad either, especially since you can play on 2 XBOXs with 1 copy of ME3. Stolen!

BatRastered - Had a surprisingly good time in the multiplayer (yeah, partially because the 2 disk format allowed us to play together with only one copy of the game). The story was great, the ending was a little weird and abrupt, but EA/Bioware put out a patch that made more sense. All the multiplayer map packs were free. Awesome game, awesome support.

Gouki.com gives you its favorite games of 2011, plus your votes.

Best PS3 Exclusive

inFAMOUS 2

BatRastered says: I played the first inFAMOUS because I got it for free on the PSN when they came back from the hacking debacle. It was probably the most fun I've had on the PS3 since I've owned one. Naturally when inFAMOUS 2 was released I had to play it. While it didn't leave the same impression on me that the original did, I still loved it. It's too bad the user generated content didn't live up to the hype.

GoukiJones says: I didn't play it. Well I actually I did, I beat the shit out of it at CES 2010. Exclusive! After that I wasn't really interested. I watched Batty play it a little and I still wasn't interested.

User's Choice: DC Universe Online

Most Disappointing

Brink

GoukiJones says: Wow! I couldn't have been more disappointed in myself after playing this game. I said it 2 years ago at E3 when I first played this game. "It felt stiff." Oh and it certainly was. 

BatRastered says: A game that goes from one of GoukiJones' most hyped games to us returning un-opened copies to Amazon in the space of a few hours has to be nominated. The movement was supposed to differentiate this game, I knew it was in trouble when the Crysis 2 came out and did the same thing (vaulting, etc).

User's Choice: Brink

Honestly I probably spent more hours this year playing older games than new releases. Here's our nominees of Best Game Still Playing Not Released in 2011.

Halo Wars

GoukiJones says: This year BatRastered got hooked on the Halo Wars. I have put over 500 hours in the game myself. Where the FUCK is Halo Wars 2?!

BatRastered says: Halo Wars has tons of staying power... mostly because there isn't a sequel and there's nothing else like it on the Xbox. The studio that made it has closed and several of the old employees created several new companies (none of which own the Halo IP of course) so we're probably screwed.

Mass Effect

GoukiJones says: I played through Mass Effect 1 & 2 again this year. Both on HARD difficulty. Mass Effect 1 is clearly a better game. Don't get me started on the bullets being added to ME2.

BatRastered says: I played through ME1 again this year too, and yes ME1 is a better game IMO. I hope they have more of the RPG style inventory and upgrades in ME3, but I'm not holding my breath.

Uncharted 2

GoukiJones says: I also played through both Uncharted games again this year. And even though I think the shooting was better in the first game. Uncharted 2 was just so well put together from beginning to end. Although this second playthrough for me, I played on hard, ran though in less than 3 days and the final boss Jimmy didn't touch me once.

BatRastered says: I didn't replay this in 2011, but I did play UC3, and if you read my review you'd know that I didn't find it "better" than UC2.

There were a few games this year that introduced new ideas to the video game world. Here are our favorites.

Anomaly Warzone Earth

GoukiJones says: I'm a big strategy gamer dude and when I heard the premise of Anomaly Warzone Earth, I knew I had to have a go. I played the shit out of this game for 3 days straight. Anomaly is a reverse tower defense game, so you control and upgrade the vehicles trying to get through the maze.

BatRastered says: Reverse tower defense... something new I guess. It looked cool from what I saw on GoukiJones' screen. Not my type of game, but original, yes.

Bastion

GoukiJones says: The humor and commentary all through out the game, make Bastion fun and entertaining. The constant commentary is definitely something original and you'll get a few good laughs for sure.

BatRastered says: Yeah, the design and commentary were original, but it seemed like a fairly normal game underneath that. Still, props for doing something different.

Sanctum

GoukiJones says: Here we go again with another Steam strategy game. Another game -when I got my hands on it- I didn't stop playing for 3 days straight. Sanctum is a building, strategy, FPS. My absolute 3 favorite things in gaming. You have to check out Sanctum.

BatRastered says: Moving into the tower defense in first person looked cool. I'd like to see some more advanced shooting though, what I saw looked very basic.