Layers of Fear (PS4) - I think you could probably rename this game Gone Home With Jump Scares. You spend your time in the game walking around an ever room-shifting mansion in search of six (grisly) items you need to complete your Dorian Grey style "masterpiece". It was a sufficiently creepy experience, but nearly all the scary bits were related to something in the environment - a creepy picture, a visually warped room or hallway, odd noises. Because my character couldn't "die" (as best as I could tell) and I wasn't being chased by anyone, there wasn't any real feeling of danger and, hence, little real fear. Overall, the ending was very Vault of Horror-ish which I enjoyed but I wished I had gotten to it sooner.
SOMA (PS4) - If you were to make an exact copy of yourself - your memories, your experiences, your personality - and put it in a "host" shell, would there be two of you, or you and just a copy? How much of you could be duplicated and what would you want done with the previous you? Could you survive knowing that there was a second (or third or fourth) version of yourself? Or would you want to end your own life so that you (or your copy) were unique in the universe? These questions, along with a considerable amount of Dead Space style horror in a post-apocalyptic, undersea world is what makes up SOMA. I'll admit that this wasn't an easy game to get into. Frictional Games, makers of Amnesia and Penumbra, like you to interact with the game world in as tactile a manner as possible - you can pick up almost everything, swing out cabinets doors, and pull open drawers. It gets a little tedious until you begin to realize that you don't have to touch/open/inspect everything. Also, like a number of the current generation survival horror games, this one has you running or dodging danger rather than fighting it off.I decided to take a break from streaming at this point. I might pick it up again sometime, but for now I don't feel like it's worth my limited gaming time to hassle with trying to do an interesting stream.
Halo (Xbox One) - Okay, I know this isn't a "horror" game, but I guess I needed a break from the scary walking simulators and just wanted to shoot things! You can only run away from monsters so long before you want to stop and take a stand. Good Lord, I've been trying to finish this game for YEARS! I started with a pretty decent attempt on the original Xbox up until (I think) just before the Library level. Then when I got the Xbox One, it came with the Master Chief Collection and I started it again there, only to stop not long after rescuing the captain (not as far as before even). And so it waited and I always felt like it was a game I should play all the way through at least once. I mean, there are people who have played it multiple times (not that I can figure out why). While this game did provide a good story, I have to wonder if it ever got criticized for shamelessly reusing levels. Well, it was early days and the game did set a standard for console FPS's.
Actual Sunlight (Vita) - It's hard to really call this a "game" since there wasn't anything to do except go through an hour and a half of a lonely loser's decent into inevitable suicide, all done in Yoda Stories style graphics. While I appreciate what this game was trying to do (give people an insight into what can drive someone to kill themselves and they ways in which they think and feel), as a "game" it felt like I should be able to do SOMETHING to alter the outcome.
Dishonored (PS4) - In my typical tradition of "playing the original because the sequel was just released", I decided to dive into Dishonored 1. This game allows you to complete missions in a number of different ways depending on your character build and how you approach the objective. I started by trying to be as stealthy as possible and only attacked guards (the most frequent opponent you run into) when necessary. However, this ended up taking WAY TOO LONG! If you are trying to be careful and not start fights, where you are attacked as soon as someone sees you, it's a nearly continuous sequence of sneak/alarm/reload. After that, I figured I'd just go totally John Wick on everyone's asses! I killed anyone and everyone I could - regardless of whether or not I needed to! I racked up body counts to the point that I had to shoot my trusty boatman, the one that had earlier saved my life(!), because he hated me so much that he was going to alert the guards to my presence during the last mission. Yes, I got the High Chaos ending, but frankly I didn't care. Dunwall should be renamed Dung-wall - that place isn't fit for the rats and weepers that crawl it's corpse strewn streets. Good game though.
Titanfall 2 (Xbox One) - As of this writing, I've only played about an hour or so of this, since I needed it as a trade-in to get a cheap copy of CoD:IW. But, I'm sort of glad that I did trade it in - while this game has a much needed campaign that Titanfall 1 lacked, I'm not sure it's enough, for me, to stay with. I got burned pretty badly by the first game since I don't play multi-player games (because I suck at them) but I got it since it was "the game" to get at the time. Ah, Hype-Train. I basically played the tutorial (I think) of this one, if you can call the first mission a "training" mission. You certainly have to wait until you are done with it to get into your Titan. The shooting is well done, but I it doesn't give you a very good idea of the relative power of the weapons you find and I never did figure out how to switch between weapons I was carrying. Anyway, I think this will probably end up being a Gamestop rental in the future so I can finish the short campaign. I doubt I'd have any reason to go back to it after that.
Firewatch (PC) - This was the first game of three that I played recently (and finished) that lacked one specific game mechanic - my character couldn't die. That's something you have to learn as you play a new game and it leaves you hanging until you figure it out one way or the other. I guess you'd call this game a hiking simulator/semi-interactive story experience. You play a new park ranger and have extended conversations with another ranger while trying to unravel something that may or may not be a mystery. It was an interesting thing to play (and the voice acting was great) but I think the best part was that the designers didn't push the length too long. One of the advantages of indie games is that developers aren't bound to produce something that fits the standard 10-20 hours of gameplay that most gamers feel they are owed by spending money.
Abzu (PS4) - First a Limbo sequel, then a Journey sequel...well, sort of. (One of the Journey developers left That Game Company and made Abzu.) As much as this would like to be as moving as Journey, I'm afraid it missed the mark. Most of this game is a swimming-with-fish simulator which while "nice" - tagging along with an giant sea turtle is pretty cool - just isn't the same as the other-worldly feel Journey had. It also didn't help that the game only gave you a vague idea of what you were supposed to do. (Journey was magnificent in it's simplistic and immediate method of conveying to the player what they were there for - the first thing you see is the star on top of that mountain. Go.) As the game progressed, there was an element of purpose that seemed to imply that I was saving whatever environment I was swimming in, but overall it felt a little hollow.
Submerged (PS4) - I don't know when this one came out as I never heard or read much about it. I got it on a sale and was intrigued by the idea of moving around a half-sunken city. You play a girl who is trying to save her brother (although at first, you aren't sure - it could be her son?) She has to motorboat around to buildings and retrieve supply drop boxes by moving around the crumbling exteriors - climbing drainpipes, shuffling and jumping along ledges, or dangling from broken ledges. The designers could have made the game much harder if there was a limited amount of time you could hang from a ledge or if you could actually fall, but they decided to focus more on the story than the challenge. I'm glad they did since it gives you more time to appreciate the scale of the city which is very impressive, especially landmarks the giant construction crane in the middle of the map. The story unfolds in little primitive drawings that, I have to admit, I didn't at first understand. When I did "get it", I was really sucked into the world and this girl's struggle. I can't say that the ending was as satisfying as the journey there, but this is a game that I'm glad I finished and even wanted to explore the map more after I had completed it.
Bound (PS4) - Sometimes visually impressive just isn't enough. Yes, this game looks stunning with all of it's fluid, voxel environments and motion captured dance moves, but I just didn't get hooked enough to do more than a half an hour's worth.
Sunset Overdrive (Xbox One) - I'd heard lots of good things about this one and for the most part I can see why. It's a frantic, over the top, colorful, wild, funny, shooter unlike another game. You can customize your character in any number of ways, and even the respawn animations are unique and entertaining. Buuuuuut....as much as I was enjoying playing it, and as much as I wanted to dig deeper into it even though it was really testing my degraded "old man" reflexes, I couldn't handle the broken missions. Twice in the short time I was playing, the mission objectives wouldn't trigger - once it was the game not recognizing that I cleared an area, and the other was the game not recognizing that I'd caught up with the NPC I was chasing. It was a shame, but I don't need that kind of headache when trying to play a game.
Well, chalk up another "Completed" for me for 2016. True, it wasn't a big game, but going back to play more of, let alone finish, Alan Wake's American Nightmare was something I never thought I'd do.