January brought a bunch of new LEGO sets (as usual), many of which I’m pretty excited about. I was particularly excited about the Detective’s Office and the new LEGO Ideas set, Birds. I ordered both, and I’m impatiently awaiting delivery today (Out for Delivery!). They also released a bunch of cool new smaller sets, so to ease my wait, I picked up the new Rainforest Animals Creator set at Target. The Rainforest Animals set is so cute, and I mostly wanted it for the bright colors, but even in this small set, LEGO incorporated a surprise: the bird poops, similar to those pooping reindeer toys:
It’s a small thing, I know, but one of my favorite things about LEGO is how they guide you through building something that is often a mystery until it’s finished. These new sets obviously won’t be the last ones LEGO releases this year, but it’s enough for now. And, while I look forward to what they come up with next (and what new LEGO Ideas sets get approved), I started looking forward to 2015’s new video games.
Last year, I didn’t get excited by too many AAA games. There were a couple: LEGO Batman 3 (loved) and The Evil Within (I guess I didn’t love because I never went back to it.) I spent most of the year somewhat dissatisfied with AAA offerings. Not to say there weren’t some really popular ones that other people enjoyed, like Destiny, just that there weren’t many that I was interested in. At a glance, 2015 doesn’t look much more promising, but I am really excited for Rise of the Tomb Raider and Until Dawn. I’m not buying a PS4, though, so hopefully I can con a friend into letting me play Until Dawn. Rise of the Tomb Raider is probably the game I’m personally most anticipating this year. Lara will never make everyone happy, but I’m hoping she continues with the more realistic character trend.
A couple of other games also stand out to me from the list. Life is Strange, an episodic adventure, looks interesting. I tend to like episodic games, but I tend to like them more once they are completely released. (Still waiting on the second half of Broken Age.) I was a bit surprised to see a few Vita games on the list that seem interesting: htol#NiQ: The Firefly Diary, a Vita exclusive action puzzle game, and Criminal Girls: Invite Only. From reading the description of htol#NiQ: The Firefly Diary, it seems it was made for the Vita and uses both the front and rear touch screens, so that’s intriguing, given many of the Vita games are 3DS ports and therefore don’t use the Vita’s full functionality. (Tearaway is one exception that comes to mind, but I didn’t love that game.)
Those are just the games I’m looking forward to as a gamer who is more into narrative than shooting. For those of you who like FPS’s, it looks like 2015 will have (as usual) plenty to choose from. 2014 also brought many indie gems, and I look forward to those in 2015 as well. I’m sure many more games will pop up in the months to come (but, not too many I hope; I have to write a dissertation now.) I’m looking forward to a good year in LEGO and in video games.
