I'm not going to be too hard on Maple Story, its roots date from 2006 or something that old and the game truly evolved through the years. Everything about it got better over time, from how classes started out - at first you had to roll randomly your stats and then fight for 10 levels with a really weak and boring character, while now you just need your core stats and you can skip the tutorial - to the distribution of quests by levels, to the 'balance' of skills to the amount of bugs and random stuff broken here and there. It's not really a good game even tho the concept of MMO platformer is pretty unique but I've spent way much time that I would've with this game during many years.
Path of exile is not a bad action rpg, mechanics-wise and systems-wise, but some flaws in the design philosophy and the overall look and feel of the game won't make me want to play it anymore when it goes into open beta soon. Here are the things it does right and the ones it does wrong and how I would fix them up
I had no prior opinions about the Far Cry franchise as I don't like First Person Shooters, the hook of the open world aspects and crafting elements of Far Cry 3 drew me in and I'm surprised to find it a very enjoyable game experience with some flaws here and there but mostly amazing gameplay systems. Tons of content to explore and a lot of organic open-world goodness here and there, crazy vehicles and some customisation, FC3 is a good shooter.
Saying that Darksiders 2 is a balance act wouldn't be false, it tries to be so much at the same time, improving in some ways over tried and true staples of the genre but lacking in other parts of it's systems. I haven't played Darksiders 1 but I assume that the sequel is higly iterrative with some ideas from the original. A side effect of me not having played the first one lies within the fact that I was surprised how Zelda-esque it was (A realisation that most people who played DS1 knew all about by then) and how it added so little over the classic formula.
Does Hotline Miami really need to be that gory and messed up in a graphical and auditive sense? Not really, I'm quite sure it would've worked as any other kind of game with different aesthetics and another theme but the weirdness of it mixed with great gameplay systems, customization and an interesting story that reminds me of the Killer 7 and the No More Heroes of this world; A story weird enough you want to know more, enough to play through any bad gameplay there could be. Luckily for HM, there's not much bad in here.
Dungeons of Dredmor is a roguelike with a good sense of humor and tons of customization options to give you incentives to try again over and over. While I feel the items are overwhelming and the maps are too full with stuff, I think it's one of the best dungeon crawlers I've played.
I've waited years for diablo 3. Since they announced it in 2008 I've been following its development with growing interest. I've watched community websites, participated in the beta, even made a few small web tools that were re-used by a few random Russian websites. I bought the Diablo 3 strategy guide three days before the game came out and read it all. I also played a metric ton of Diablo 2. And some Diablo 1 back in the day. I also enjoy Torchlight, Titan Quest, even Darkspore. I'm looking forward to Grim Dawn and Path of Exile. I really love Action RPGS. Make items drop, add numbers when I hit things and give me multiple levels of progressions to look forward to and I'll be hooked. With that in mind...
Dungeon Defenders is a great take on the tower defense genre, I really enjoy playing it. I bought it on iPod (And it was a terrible experience all over) and waited maybe one year then I bought it on Xbox360 (Split-Screen Coop is not great and the griefing options were many) then on PC with all of my friends. Dungeon Defenders mixes action-rpg with loot mechanics and tower defense systems to create a nifty little game with some flaws that I'm going to look at in the following article.
Part tower defense, part action RPG, orcs must die 2 is a compelling package at first, there are tons of traps, weapons and trinkets to collect and upgrade and there are also tons of level to try and perfect. After playing with it to completion, twice, my desire to play it again is greatly diminished for various reasons regarding map and item systems design.
I've been playing a ton of Cook Serve Delicious over the past two weeks and boy is it fun. In its most simplistic form, Cook Serve Delicious (Henceforth referred to as CSD) is a stressful microgame collection glued to a restaurant management sim game. It's also very indie, not sold on steam yet and programmed in Game Maker, I suppose that taking a look at smaller games should be made with a more forgiving mind, but the ideas and designs can still be judged on the same level.
Guild Wars 2 is not quite an MMO, there is no monthly fee and you don't exactly go around questing for people with exclamation marks over their heads, but it is still a fully-featured, deep and complex online experience where you can explore an insteresting world and feel like there's always something else to do while progressing with crafting, building your character and finding loot.
Writing one of these looks at Borderlands 2 is quite difficult because while I had good things to say about torchlight 2, the best part of that look is to think about ideas to improve the game and its systems. Borderlands 2 is big, complex, well-crafted and polished, but not without minor flaws. Taking terrible games and suggesting ways to make them less so is easy, taking great games and having to scratch your head on how to refine some systems here and there can be tough, but doable. No game is perfect for everyone but I don't want to be seen as nit picky; I'm offering the view of what I think is flawed in these games I take a good look at. Don't get me wrong, for me to play that much, the game has to have something!
The original Torchlight took most of its ideas from Blizzard’s Diablo 2 and Torchlight 2 follows the same pattern. It would have been interesting to see where Runic’s title splits apart from the craft of similar games, but barring really neat ideas, some mechanics and systems just don’t cut it to make a deep action RPG. Seeing the promises of mod tools makes me think that it would be possible to tweak Torchlight 2 and see if my ideas hold up.