It's Christmas.

Merry Christmas everyone. We had a good one this year. It was a good Christmas, but not the best Christmas. That was in the 90's and I opened a SEGA Genesis with a Sonic 2 pack in! I hope there were more memories like that made today. Maybe a kid got an XBOX One, or a 29 year old got a 12 pack and Call of Duty. Whatever they were. Don't forget em. Merry Christmas.

Goatee: A Game Good Enough to Savor

Every year around the holiday season people chime in to declare what the best game of the year is. Journalists clawing and scratching at each other to try and get a box quote. Many high profile releases from the year come back into relevance and may get a bump in sales from the extra publicity. I’m going to do my part and tell you Rogue Legacy from Cellar Door Games is the best of the year!

The masses of you that have been following my generic video game blog have probably heard of my love for pixels and may not be surprised that Rogue Legacy is my favorite. Was it the game that I spent the most time on? No. Was it the most emotional story told? No. Was it a marvel of current technology’s capabilities? No. Was it the most fun I’ve had this year? YES!  A Metroid based side scroller with the flavorings of Castlevania and Rogue? Sign me the hell up, I haven’t had this much fun since Symphony of the Night.

First off, the presentation of the game is ridiculously charming. The graphical resolution is exaggerated to show you all of the pixels and scale in Super Nintendo style. There are only a handful of areas to the ever changing castle that easily identify with enemy sets that differ between them. It all looks and controls like it should. It’s Rogue Legacy and you should be okay with that.

The story is incredibly thin, but it’s the gameplay that shines through here. You begin with a pretty simple tutorial that makes sure you understand basic platforming and then dumps you in the middle with hardly any direction. When you enter the castle there’s a large door with an emblem for each area boss and a rough map on the wall. You have a sword to hit enemies and candle sticks. Last as long as you can and amass a big a fortune as you can. You’re terrible weak in the beginning and will die. That’s the point of a game that changes every time you restart. The money you earn will be used to make your children more likely to succeed where you have failed by upgrading the family manor that provides permanent hereditary stat boosts. Make sure you use all of your money before you jump back because you have to forfeit your fortune.

The dying mechanic is pretty novel. Whenever you fail to finish the game, your descendants pick up right where you left off. They keep your stat boosts, equipment, and rune powers that affect mobility and life leech. This is great idea, but gets even better when each generation has its own quirks along with random semi-standard job classes. You may have a character that suffers from vertigo (the entire game is upside down), Alzheimer’s (large map is unavailable), and Dextrocardia (HP and MP values are switched); or positives like Peripheral Artery Disease (no foot pulse, spikes not triggered), Eidetic Memory (everything you’ve seen is marked on the map), or even ADHD (move faster). They even through in a few traits that don’t affect gameplay like baldness, sexuality, and Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

Rogue Legacy isn’t a good pick for a novice gamer or anyone who rarely steps outside of the Call of Duty/Madden Camp. It’s just like anything else; you suck at first but might get better if you stick with it. Don’t worry though, if you get too good the game gets exponentially harder on multiple playthroughs. The difficulty is part of the appeal and really gives you a sense of accomplishment. Besides the difficulty spike, I can’t criticize Rogue Legacy. It’s new every time, there’s a sense of progression, and you laugh while you play.

This is the most fun I’ve had with a video game this year. That’s the ultimate measure while gaming. There’s still room for games that try to make statements like Gone Home, The Last of Us, and Spec Ops: The Line, but the games I come back to are the ones I felt joy playing. It goes to show that my runner up is Saint’s Row IV (yes, more fun than Grand Theft Auto V), that game was funny and has completely transformed from the open world rip off it started as. While you’re looking at what’s on the Steam sale this Christmas give my GOTY Rogue Legacy a try, it’s worth more than the $15 they regularly charge.