Borderlands 2
Start Date: Sometime in 2014, I'm not very certain as to when. Time Played: 789 hours Written 10/6/17
With the amount of time I've sunk into the game, I was almost disillusioned into thinking this game was indefinite, but in reality I understand that a single playthrough of this game was never meant to last an eternity. Upon completing this game for the first time, I found myself making another character just to play it all over again. The game doesn't care much about plot, so neither will I. What the game does care about is making one helluva shoot-and-loot game. The characters you play as all have unique styles of play that never get too boring, and all the personalities presented by them give you a great sense that you are a badass. The weapons are absolutely unique and fun to use, I don't know where to begin; there's a shotgun with pellets that shoot more bullets themselves, there's a sniper rifle that shoots an initial bullet which splits into 5 upon hitting a surface, etc. These ideas are crazy, and yet they are executed greatly enough which just makes fighting the enemies with those guns fun. I will admit though, the game isn't perfect even by just a small margin. Often times in the story you're scrambling to get good on-level guns, a repetitive grind only to make your character compete against the NPCs in the game. There isn't a major difference in the way enemy factions behave, so the gameplay is likely to become stale unless you're grinding bosses. And as I said earlier, it has a pretty underwhelming storyline that invoked few emotions or thought by me. Most of the NPCs you talked to felt emotionless and you wouldn't care about the majority of them unless you've played Borderlands 1.
So as for the score, I'm gonna give it an 8/10.
Still waiting on Borderlands 3.
Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove
Play Times: Winter of 2014 to Spring of 2016 Time Played: Not sure, I'd estimate 20 hours across all platforms Written: 10/9/17
The original, and best, Kickstarter title.
Perhaps one of the greatest platformers that I've played, Shovel Knight takes ideas from the platformers of yesteryears and implements them in an almost identical fashion to those games all into one. The stages, the bosses, the mechanics, the characters, the soundtrack, it's all perfected to an outstanding level, and like any great game you learn to overcome the challenges in the game by repeatedly playing the game. Not only this, but the game does it three times with different characters to play as each time, each just as fun and intriguing as the last, and there's STILL more content that is on its way for the game! I can say with utmost certainty that this is one of the best games I've ever played.
The score is a resounding 10/10
I gotta get those amiibos sometime, too.
OwlBoy
Start Date: March 2017 Time Played: 10 or less hours Written: 10/9/17
I bought this game on the assumption by Dunkey (look him up) that this was going to be an amazing game. I won't deny that it was brilliant, but I will complain about how the game felt fairly short. Aside from length, this game is just as I'd seen. The game has great mechanics that I haven't seen very often in any other game, an enjoyable soundtrack, tangible characters, and good storywriting. As for the gameplay, the character you play as has very little means of attacking enemies, so you have to use your allies and your environment to progress, which I can fairly say is unique in a game. Never once had I had a game where the main character was this powerless, but the development they go through in the story is incredible because of their own weakness. I've heard that the creators for this game had immense inspiration to make a great game, and I can say I got a sense of their inspiration by playing the game. But to me, it seems that inspiration only got them so far with the length of the game, which is fine since something this good could have very well been worse if it had a longer portion that was uninspired..