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ethanol posted:Please immediate ban anybody who disagreed with my posts whether or not they are my secret friends As your secret friend, I am afraid I will not. I need to read all the goty lists from everyone.
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Dec 14, 2022 12:58
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VideoGames posted:Yeah that makes sense. I am sorry. Been seeing a lot of miserable posting around Games lately and it bums me out. This thread is the one 'positive only' kind of thread we have and I did not want it to devolve as well. light jokes about games being bad is to me a much more positive and uplifting experience than enforced positivity all the time, which sounds actually miserable. i get not wanting it to be in this thread specifically but i would not describe calling god of war bad as 'devolving'
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Dec 14, 2022 14:32
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Endorph posted:light jokes about games being bad is to me a much more positive and uplifting experience than enforced positivity all the time, which sounds actually miserable. i get not wanting it to be in this thread specifically but i would not describe calling god of war bad as 'devolving' The problem is that cheap boring jokes like "god of bore" are sort of rampant around the subforum atm. Its only funny the first few times and ultimately adds nothing to the conversation. There is absolutely nothing wrong with thoughtful criticism of any game, but "slog of snore" or whatever is not that
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Dec 14, 2022 14:40
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sure but 'god of war is good' also barely adds anything to a conversation and isnt interesting but people dont get probed for it. why is lazy praise protected but lazy criticism isnt. and i think people should be allowed to mention they think something is bad casually without having prepared a five point essay about it. also people randomly dumped on random JRPGs or neptunia or fire emblem or w/e for years and nobody cared but for some reason the mods are handing out probes and cracking the hammer down when people make the same exact post theyve made for decades but about god of war Endorph fucked around with this message at 14:47 on Dec 14, 2022 |
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Dec 14, 2022 14:44
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Endorph posted:why is lazy praise protected but lazy criticism isnt. I would argue that the answer is right there in the sentence.
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Dec 14, 2022 14:47
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Endorph posted:light jokes about games being bad is to me a much more positive and uplifting experience than enforced positivity all the time, which sounds actually miserable. i get not wanting it to be in this thread specifically but i would not describe calling god of war bad as 'devolving' Again, there is not enforced positivity in games anywhere except I want this thread to be one. People are miserable all over this sub forum in every thread. If there was enforced positivity all over it would be a different situation and yes equally as miserable. Just having one thread where we are positive (this one) is a pretty small deal compared with everywhere else. This is not a lazy thread either, it is for people to post big lists of things they like. You do not get to dunk on games in this thread so if someone was moaning about jRPGs I would have made the same request to the thread. This is not about god of war, this is about posting.
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Dec 14, 2022 14:51
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God of win
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Dec 14, 2022 14:52
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this thread isnt really the place for this convo so ill make another post about this in the feedback thread
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Dec 14, 2022 14:52
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Just probe anyone not posting lists
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Dec 14, 2022 14:53
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ALOY: This doesn't seem like the right thread to have this discussion in. I wonder.... Maybe I could use my list of the ten best games of the year here...
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Dec 14, 2022 14:54
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Endorph posted:light jokes about games being bad is to me a much more positive and uplifting experience than enforced positivity all the time, which sounds actually miserable. i get not wanting it to be in this thread specifically but i would not describe calling god of war bad as 'devolving' Actually it's gotten super bad lately, and literally nobody has been enforcing positivity anywhere except this nice thread here that is happy and gay. Elsewhere the endless crap tier bargain bin jokes have turned a lot of threads into shallow, cynical, tit for tat shitshows that alienate potential new posters and incentivize thread main character behavior. It is lame and should be dropped off a cliff faster than a Tekken character.
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Dec 14, 2022 14:56
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Feels Villeneuve posted:ALOY: This doesn't seem like the right thread to have this discussion in. I wonder.... Maybe I could use my list of the ten best games of the year here... 'good try, dad! but you only have ten votes. if you have more games you like, try making one an honorable mention. now let's try again!'
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Dec 14, 2022 14:57
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Endorph posted:this thread isnt really the place for this convo so ill make another post about this in the feedback thread Do you really care that much about this to take it to another thread? Just be nice. It’s so easy.
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Dec 14, 2022 15:34
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fridge corn posted:The problem is that cheap boring jokes like "god of bore" are sort of rampant around the subforum atm. Its only funny the first few times and ultimately adds nothing to the conversation. There is absolutely nothing wrong with thoughtful criticism of any game, but "slog of snore" or whatever is not that bog of chore
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Dec 14, 2022 16:24
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Oh goty thread time! Finally I can post one. Here’s my top 20-11, not giving a big writeup because these won’t be counted for points. 20. Deathloop 19. A Plague Tale Requiem 18. Gran Turismo 7 17. Neo: The World Ends with You 16. Chorus 15. Supraland 14. The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe 13. The Forgotten City 12. Lost Planet 2 11. Paradise Killer Now on to top ten: 10. Vampire Survivors Okay, this actually came in pretty late due to the late release on Xbox, but I can tell this is already brilliant and engaging. Honestly, I’m just waiting for a proper Playstation port 9. Horizon Forbidden West This is definitely a big and grand game I played this year, but ultimately, I felt mostly it was more of the same. Not sure if I loved it as much as the first, but it was still good enough for a top ten. 8. Inscryption Finally it comes to consoles! Now I can see what the hype is, and I gotta say it does live up to most of it. The only reason it’s not higher on the list is because I felt the game got weaker outside of act 1. Thankfully Kaycee’s mod solves this but I need to get back into it 7. Resident Evil 2 So what had happened this year is I wanted to go back and do the (modern) Resident Evil games and try for the platinum trophies. I found out I loved doing the challenge runs and the short nature of the game works in this favor. 6. Resident Evil 7 Yet another revisit of going for the platinum trophy. It’s just such an amazing experience really. 5. Resident Evil Village So I finally went back to play this game because of the DLC, and I actually ended up getting all the trophies in it. This is the one that launched me to actually try doing all these other challenges that the Resident Evil games like doing no healing or no item boxes. 4. God of War Ragnarok This is one where it doesn’t need much to explain, it’s just a masterpiece of many things. The worst criticism I can say is that it is more of the same God of War (2018) formula, but it works. 3. Hardspace Shipbreaker This game just got me just right. I loved going through the story and taking apart ships. It’s exactly like how I imagined it would be like working as a shipbreaker. I loved this game so much, I made it my 400th platinum. 2. Outer Wilds So I finally knuckled down and tackled the PS5 version of this game. I did everything for the platinum and all the DLC too. Easily a winner just for how much exploration and mystery you uncover. 1. Elden Ring Do I need to say anything more about this game? The biggest and best From Software game ever done. I still have a soft spot for Dark Souls 1 as my favorite, but Elden Ring makes a good argument to try and overtake it.
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Dec 14, 2022 16:53
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Here's my list for this year. It was a year of meaningful games for me as I started out the year determined to play more games since I'd been having trouble focusing on them through 2021. Thanks to the PS Goon discord and encouragement from them, I was able to regain my love of video games this year and remember why I play them. 1. Bloodborne – This game is special to me because while it’s an absolutely phenomenal game that deserves all the praise it gets, it also revitalized my love of gaming. I’d gotten rather burnt out and stressed out so I had a hard time focusing on games for almost all of COVID and 2021 in general. I initially got Bloodborne when I first got a PS4 and played it for something like 10 minutes and then shut it off declaring it was “too hard” and that I’d never beat it or be good enough to beat it. I proved my past self wrong with this by beating it back in January. I never got around to the DLC but I was able to not only beat it but to actually impress myself with how good I was at it. It clicked this time and I was able to do way better than I expected. It wasn’t an easy time but it was a fun time. 2. 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim – To me, this game proves that games are an artistic medium. Not only is the game absolutely gorgeous but the story is amazing. It’s full of twists and turns and I never predicted what would happen next. It blew my mind how everything tied together. The only downside is that the RTS combat is pretty generic so I just played on Easy mode and blew through it as fast as possible. 3. Vampire Survivors – This game just hit a certain part of my brain that no other game has managed to hit. I’ve been playing on PC since early beta (I think 0.1 or something) and have been getting every new achievement with every update. It’s flashy, stupid and a ton of fun. I’ve sunk about 100 hours into this game and I can’t explain why other than it’s addictive and fun. 4. Elden Ring – This is going to be pretty much everyone’s GOTY and with good reason, it’s a masterpiece of a game! Why did I put it at #4 though? Because unfortunately I had a bad time playing it. It’s not the game’s fault, rather it’s entirely my own. I made a terrible build that turned out to not be how I wanted to play and despite being able to redo the build halfway through I burnt myself out on this and ended up dropping it halfway through. I plan on replaying it once the inevitable rumored DLC comes out and preplanning a build that works for me. It’ll probably be #1 whenever that happens. 5. Stray – This game clicked for me and the story moved me in a way that most games haven’t. Yes, it’s a story about a cat looking for it’s lost family but it’s also so much more than that. It’s a game about breaking down borders, learning to trust, yearning for freedom and sacrificing for the ones you love. There’s so much beneath the surface of this game’s story and it’s a genuinely heart warming experience all the way through. The gameplay is fantastic as well, lots of quick movements and fun platforming. One trophy kept me from getting the platinum. 6. Inscryption – I’ve had this on PC for a very long time and never really got into it because I convinced myself that I screwed up Act 1 irreversibly. I deleted my save and started again and discovered that I hadn’t screwed it up and that the game is way better designed than what I thought. The story is wild and the card game is fantastic. Its second and third acts start to drag on so it’s not perfect but the story is slowly given to you and there’s a ton left to unpack. 7. Euro Truck Simulator 2 – It’s a trucking simulator. Why the hell would I put a trucking simulator on my top 10 list? Honestly, I’m not big into sims outside of a few titles and this is one of them. It’s the best trucking sim out there if you are into that sort of thing but what drew me in is that it is incredibly relaxing. I picked it back up at a time when work and life seriously started stressing me out. I was unable to focus on anything other than driving a truck while listening to chill music. It was the perfect way to calm down and zone out. It was there for me when I needed it the most, providing “interactive meditation” as I’ll call it. It’s my go-to for when I need to just shut my brain off and relax. 8. Saints Row the Third Remastered – I played through this in co-op with Ineffiable and it’s still a hilariously good time. The story is completely bonkers and it’s so much more fun in co-op. It still holds up despite its age. There’s not much more to say than “I had fun” and platinumed it with Ineffiable’s encouragement. 9. Earth Defense Force 5 – I haven’t beaten this one yet, Ineffiable and I are working through it gradually, but it’s great fun. It’s basically a cheap monster movie as a video game. Earth is invaded by giant bugs and frogmen that “look just like people” because they “have two arms and two legs!” (Rough quote but that’s legitimately how the game describes them). You shoot bugs and destroy buildings and just try to survive. EDF holds a special place in my heart just because it’s pure dumb fun and knows how to be ridiculous. 10. Saints Row 2022 – Why is this buggy, poorly received game on my top 10? I’m not sure. Its launch was plagued with bugs and it was received extremely poorly on release. It’s still a buggy mess but they’re working on it. Despite all of this, it was my most played game of 2022. The story is charming, not well written, but charming enough that it kept me engaged all the way through. The side missions are samey but fun as well. Everything is some level of “fun” but everything has a caveat. The stuff they added is fantastic, though, because boy is the wingsuit fun and the car combat feels good. It doesn’t attain the levels of insanity that previous titles managed to get to but it does sort of click with me for reasons I can’t explain. Funnily, I can’t get the platinum because a trophy bugged out and the fix for it didn’t fix it for me. Cowman fucked around with this message at 20:19 on Dec 16, 2022 |
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Dec 14, 2022 17:42
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Stux posted:Cry havoc, and let slip the bogs of chore I personally like having a lazy praise thread. Come on, it's Christmas for God's sake. Even if zingers are fun, lighten the gently caress up and allow for a cosy dumb thread about fings wot i like
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Dec 14, 2022 17:53
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Threads are better when there's discussion. If long arguments or dogpiles happen, probe those, but I think a bit of banter about how trite and shallow Stray is or the increasingly obvious idiosyncrasies in the BIG SONY GAME design that Forbidden West and Ragnarok showcase is probably healthy.Escobarbarian posted:Do you really care that much about this to take it to another thread? Just be nice. It’s so easy. Also enforced niceness leads to this kind of backhanded poo poo anyway which is much more unpleasant.
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Dec 14, 2022 17:57
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This thread is about creating a space to celebrate the gaming experiences we've had this year. There is an entire forum full of other threads where people can be negative and critical about any game they like, this is not the place for that. No one should like they are going to be mocked or insulted for liking the games that they have liked. These are the rules of thread and they won't be changing because it's my thread and that's the thread I want to run. Together with VG I will be putting about 100 hours of work into running this competition, it will be the predominant use of my time over the holidays. Now I'm happy to do that because I love creating something that people enjoy and I love seeing your reactions but I'm not interested in running a thread where people are snippy, argumentative or rude to each other. That's not fun for me. So if anyone is not interested in creating that kind of environment then they are very welcome to not post here. I'll reopen the thread in the morning, I look forward to seeing people's lists 
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Dec 14, 2022 19:30
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drat, what an absolutely lit year for gaming. Possibly even more lit than 2017, the year that would previously pop into my head when the phrase 'lit' came to mind re: gaming. I've got a list of like two dozen games here that came out this year (and a couple that are a year or two old that I got around to this year) that ranged from better than average to stellar. Unfortunately, only ten can make the cut so the rest can get hosed for not being released in a leaner, less exciting year. How long I played each game is of course a huge factor in determining its position; the ability to burglarize my time comes highly valued as someone with enough ADHD for three calmer, more collected people. Of course, i'm also looking at the game's overall aesthetics, game design, replayability, etc and weighing it against the competition as to be completely FAIR in this totally serious endeavor of list-making. First, games that did not make the list. These come in two tiers, the honorable mentions, which probably belong on the list, maybe even in a really highly ranked spot. I just didn't get around to playing them more than I did with so much bullshit to play. The 2nd tier is just cool poo poo that everyone should still play. Honorable Mentions Horizon Forbidden West God of War Ragnarok Rogue Legacy 2 Tactics Ogre Reborn The rest Bayonetta 3 Grounded Overwatch 2 (yeah, it's a terrible game but it also burgles the time, it just also induces rage) Infernax Cult of the Lamb Kharon's Crypt: Even Death May Die Neon White TMNT Shredder's Revenge Triangle Strategy Monster Sanctuary 10. Pokémon Scarlet (Switch) [30+ hours played] Janky, buggy, refreshing. I've been playing the Pokémon formula since a few months after Pokémon Red and Green were released but years before it became a world-wide beloved franchise. I have the experience, but I am by no means a fanatical Pokémon fan. While the latest iterations could be described as lazy (the Game Freak/Pokemon Co. standard at this point), buggy, unpolished, and possibly even embarrassing, the open world model was a definite step in the right direction towards trying to mold the cookie cutter Pokémon gameplay experience into something a little more varied. Elements of the story also felt better executed and more significant than the usual generic Pokémon status quo. I don't know if the poke devs will ever not put out something that reeks of an irresponsible disappointment of wasted effort, but I expect that if they do somehow manage to put out their absolute best work in the future, we will have a truly amazing Pokémon game. 9. Tsukihime: A Piece of Blue Glass Moon (Switch) [50+ hours played because I am slow at reading Japanese sometimes] The first Type Moon VN I bothered to read, not especially because I found it interested or wanted to, but more so just as reading practice in a language that is not my native tongue. I was intrigued enough by the story to stick with it through the end, so that's a pretty big win. Maybe someday someone will port this to PC and translate it. Actually, I think that might have already happened. 8. Wildermyth (PC) [60+ hours played] A strategy game with charming hand-drawn art, that focuses on randomly chosen events and randomly generated battles within larger pre-constructed story scenarios. This one is fairly simple on the surface level, but playing through campaigns in order to create an army of legacy characters that will live on in future campaigns, with all their mutations and potential abilities passed along can get addictive. Gameplay is challenging, but a bit RNG heavy. If you don't understand the game inside and out, you'd probably need to save scum a fair bit to get through most campaigns on higher difficulty levels, as perma-death and injury is a thing. It could use a ton more random events; although there is a healthy amount, you do tend to see all of them except the occasional rare one after just few couple of campaigns. Would also like to see characters from other players' legacies being recruitable in your own. 7. V Rising (PC) [30+ hours played] Another high potential Diablo-like sandbox game with a building element, and small community servers that allow for games with dozens of your closest friends. There is also PVP content, which could make for very unique gameplay in this genre. There is enough single player content to last many dozens of hours if you don't go the route of co-op or competitive PVP gameplay, and the game is fairly challenging. It is still in early access, and the devs seem to be rather slow at adding new content compared to what you see in many early access giants these days. I'm sure by the time ver 1.0 ships, there will be even more bullshit content to suck away time like lifeblood. 6. Vampire Survivors (PC) [20+ hours played] Man, the devs of this sure are idiots, am I rite? If they would have charged 14.95 for it they would be like billionaires. Instead they decided to charge such a small amount that it has actually been written into legal doctrine that all Steam users are required to purchase it as a tax commissioned by the World Council of Common Decency and Affable Taste. If you haven't done this yet, be warned, there is probably a warrant out for your arrest. One session basically amounts to this: you sit around and occasionally move while your character automatically injects a stream of dopamine directly between your eyeballs for 30 minutes. It doesn't get much more bang for your buck than this, without being completely free. 5. Crystal Project (PC) [~40 hours played] A western made attempt at a jRPG in a large-scale isometric world with tons of platforming and exploration. I mostly just tried to dick around and sequence break in this game, going places way under leveled looking for treasures. Try as hard as I did, I was never really able to break the game as all the encounters, normal and boss are tuned to be challenging no matter what. I also spent a fair amount of time trying to find ways around fighting bosses and tougher enemies, as there are very few encounters that are actually forced. In the end, I went back and beat everything I skipped, but it felt fun and rewarding just trying to cheese stuff. There are tons of travel abilities you gain as the game goes a long that makes the platforming and exploration aspect of this game way more unique and fun than one would expect. It's relatively low budget looking, so don't expect the most amazing aesthetics or music. Neither are terrible, though, and both somehow manage to stand out from time to time. 4. Monster Hunter Rise Sunbreak (PC) [~120 hours played] I started from scratch on the PC version just before the expansion release, and blazed through pretty much all the content up until the 2nd DLC addition. This game tried somewhat successfully to fix the problem of the original game, which despite having excellent gameplay was a little light on the content due to COVID development hitches. The base game was actually released incomplete, and relied upon DLC patches to add the end of the game in a month or so later. This expansion feels a bit more on the complete side, although I really would prefer if they just added a lot of the poo poo that did come as DLC in the following months upon release. They are playing catch-up a little bit still, so it gets a pass for that. Not to mention, the DLC has added some nice surprises. It's just unfortunate that I have already mostly fallen out of desire to further play the game with additional DLC monsters dropping that I couldn't really be bothered to play since I've already waned away from MH season until the next base game comes around. Ultimately, it has some of the best gameplay in the series, and has settled at a good medium between old MH and modern MH World, capturing the feel of both to some extent. 3. Dragon Quest X: Heroes of the Heavenly Stars (PC, Switch) [~550 hours played] My 'MMO' experience for 2022. It really played out more like a single player RPG, though. Or more accurately, six single player RPGs (of which I finished the first four, and decided to take a bit of a hiatus shortly into the fifth because a ton of new poo poo was coming that demanded playtime). You can play through 95%+ of the content in the game without really interacting with other players by hiring characters other players have left at the tavern for use in your party by the AI. This is some of the most Dragon Quest content you'll ever get, but I feel like it would mostly be enjoyed by DQ fans and not the average gamer looking for an MMO experience, who would be better of with Final Fantasy XIV or WoW. It's also Japanese only but with some utilities that translate some of the game and decent-sized English speaking community. The stories are nice, but playing a turn-based jRPG in MMO form feels a bit strange a lot of the time. 2. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (Switch) [~190 hours played] Takes the award for longest first playthrough of a single player game I've ever committed to. Also is probably the most coherent Xenoblade Chronicles entry gameplay wise, though it would be absolutely monumental if were a lot more player action and interaction with positioning and movement. The characters were likable, and the story was interesting for about 3/4ths of the game before becoming a bit nonsensical towards the end, but I never felt disengaged. This also looks absolutely INSANE for a game running on Switch hardware. I imagine that somewhere in a basement at Monolith's office in Japan is a mountain of animal corpses that were sacrificed to the ancient deity of peak performance in exchange for hardware-busting results. There are tons of side quests and challenge bosses to fight, but the accessory system kinda blows. Do better with equipment, Monolith! 1. Elden Ring (PC) [60+ hours played] - It's Elden Ring, duh. You'd have to be at least some level of contrarian to not recognize it as the most sublime release in gaming in 2022.
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Dec 15, 2022 14:26
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I played almost 20 games this year! That's pretty drat good, compared to how I usually do. So I had to cut a lot off from the actual list, but I wrote words about all of them, so I'm gonna share them anyway. Here's the order I settled on, but only games from 10 upwards will actually be numbered. Also please excuse bad-quality screenshots in some cases, some of these I stole from my own streams~ THE LAST CAMPFIRE  It’s pretty as heck, at least! This is a small indie puzzle game about a lost “Ember” who needs to find out why they got stranded and how to fulfill its purpose. You go to various campfires, find sullen and sad embers, enter into their psyches and solve a mindscape puzzle usually based around block pushing, timing, and eventually the ability to control metal objects from a distance. There’s also puzzles outside of the mindscape, collectables to find, and other odd non-ember characters - the chef turtle was my favorite. In the end, though, this game was… a bit boring? The story didn’t grip me that much and the puzzles were mostly not that hard to solve, leaving me walking away with a lack of real engagement. It’s very short though, so if you find you vibe more with comfy games like these I wouldn’t say it’s a waste. PHOENOTOPIA: AWAKENING  Can you pick out the main character? A more classical indie experience. A strange fusion between search action games and the world map/side scrolling ball-busting combat of Zelda II. This game is loaded with puzzles that make you break out the notepad, which while is appealing for many folks, not so much for me. It also is quite difficult. I played with a few difficulty options turned down, and I still managed to struggle. Also there’s lots of hidden secrets everywhere in plain sight! Another problem I had with the game was that there were too many NPCs and they all had at least 2 lines of dialogue, and a good chunk had more! Worldbuilding is all well and good, but I feel like it got a bit too in its own head after a while. I ended this game with only a little over half of the collectables obtained, so I have a real reason to go back to it in the future, but it’s gonna be with a guide in hand for sure. WEBBED  Beehold! Spider game. I love bugs, and I love spiders quite a bit. Arachnophobia is no concern of mine, but the filter is great for accessibility. This game was a delightful physics-based platformer and puzzler, one where I struggled at first to figure out the best way to do anything but ended up really enjoying by the end when I had naturally mastered the art of webslinging. You really feel like Spider-Ma… wait, that’s another game. Oh, another thing I wanted to note - this game has the perfect fusion of whimsy and reality. Bugs can talk, have personalities, and little societies that mirror what they would be in real life, but with a touch of magic, like ants building a giant robot ant, or birds living in gravity-defying floating continents. It’s quite short but quite good. The maker’s moving onto a 3D game about an isopod that rolls around, and I’m hella looking forward to that. SPLATOON 3  The Crab Tank is the real protagonist of Splatoon 3. Oh, Splatoon. Our love-hate relationship continues in earnest with the latest installment. Why is it that you are so fun, and yet so frustrating? It’s the bane of competitive games everywhere - someone will always be better than me. And losing to that someone is frustrating, especially when it’s a complete lockout of a match where we had no hope of fighting back. At least the PvE Salmon Run mode is just as fun as ever, and the single player story and gameplay was nothing short of incredible front-to-back. Splatoon’s a series I’ll never say I truly hate, but I just don’t have the time to dedicate myself to becoming a true expert in it. Not for me, no sir. I’ll stick to single-player stuff for that. DARK SOULS III  The usual set. But I have many spears in reserve. And one thicc bow. This is my first From Software game. I bought it for like $15 several years ago, and only just now got around to it. I decided from the beginning that I wanted to use spears and focus on Dexterity, and that I also wanted to use bows and arrows. This ended up being quite the useful toolkit for me. Not so much because arrows could defeat things before they get near me, but they were useful luring tools that could be used at a much greater distance than the usual throwing knives. A lucky drop of a Lothric Knight Long Spear at the beginning informed my main weapon for most of the game, until I started specializing in other elemental options, and eventually settled on Drang Twinspears and their neat little two-handed moveset as my base weapon. I really enjoyed my time in this world, exploring the nooks and crannies of the various areas which, while they were linear, did have so much density in them with finding treasures and items everywhere. I’ve been waiting for the DLC to go on sale ever since, and it hasn’t yet, but you know I’ll be back when it does. Sorry, Elden Ring, maybe when you go on a big sale I'll try you too. MEGA MAN STAR FORCE 3: RED JOKER  This was mostly down to luck, but I'm still really proud of managing this meaningless feat! Last year… no, it was actually two years ago by now! I played Mega Man Star Force 2, after watching a Let’s Play of 1, and though I don’t like deck builders, I gained an appreciation for the campy story and the characters. Unfortunately, they were all a bit too flanderized in 2… this game really improves the story in that way. People feel a bit more dense - especially Luna, who has grown to be a lot less jealous and more appreciative of Sonia’s presence in Geo’s life. The gameplay had a marked improvement too, making a good amount of changes to keep things interesting with selecting background cards as free supports, deckbuilding quantity changes, and ways to get completely random cards that aren’t supposed to be in the game by being good at the battles. All in all, it’s a lot better feeling than its predecessor, it’s just unfortunate that the series ended here before it could continue to evolve. INSCRYPTION  One of the things I didn’t manage to do in this game was interact properly with this fella. Give it a try if you pick it up. For Halloween this year I decided to try out Inscryption, a game I had only seen the first 30 minutes of through a Let’s Play channel. I said it before, I’m not a big fan of card games and deckbuilders, but this game is a lot more than that. There was intrigue, mystery, and puzzles simple enough for a dumbass person like me to solve. The aesthetic is aces and the places the game goes were devilishly appropriate for the season even beyond the quite-spooky opening. I dare not say more due to spoilers, but if it weren’t for its base gameplay system being something I didn’t like, this really could have made the list proper. DEATH’S DOOR  My favorite “basic” boss was the Frog King, smack-dab in the middle of the plot. A tightly designed game with challenging, but not TOO challenging combat with that actiony, soulsy flair. You play a reaper in the form of a crow that gets thrown off from a typical soul collecting mission by another bird that wants the power of large souls from nigh-immortal beings to open the titular door. And for some reason, you’re cool with helping him, and go and kill all the bosses and stuff. Some high points are the funny writing, the art design of areas, and the music - all top-notch. I genuinely enjoyed the game running through it, and I thought I’d go back and do completion-based stuff in it, but I soon found that the process was a lot more painful than it seemed it might’ve been initially. I decided to let my memories of the game remain positive and gave up on 100%ing it, which from what I read afterwards, was the right call. I can see why this game won awards and such, at least! It might not be highest on my list, but it’s great. MONSTER HUNTER RISE: SUNBREAK  It’s hard to capture action in this game in a still image. Enjoy this, instead. I’m discounting this game from my top 10 due to a general malaise I had this year that prevented me from giving this game the attention it truly deserved. Rise was great last year, and Sunbreak is even greater, but the endgame loop is a lot grindier than even World and Iceborne were, which is a bit of a shame. Since I double dipped to also get this game on PC, I felt no shame in cheating in items on the PC version. My time is precious, after all! Updates are still coming for this game, and it’s coming to even more platforms in 2023, so I do hope everyone curious about it who didn’t get it on Switch OR PC for some reason gives it a try, even if it’s not going to have Sunbreak initially. I’m getting slowly back into Title Update 3 now, and maybe I’ll be talking about this game again next year, who knows? From here on out, the list is OFFICIAL! 10) GARDEN STORY  There are many NPCs I could highlight, but my mind always comes back to this potted cactus elder thing. Delightful. This chill-rear end game starring sentient fruit, veggies, and fungi was a big surprise to me. Rather than being some sort of farm sim knockoff, it leans more into Zelda-style top-down exploration. You gather resources and use it to help the towns you stay in by means of randomly generated tasks that are delivered to you at the start of each day. There’s no limit to how long you can stay up to finish your tasks and gather, but the monsters become more dangerous as night falls, so there’s a more active risk and reward essence. The story is a simple affair, optimistic but realistic in its depiction of a civilization struggling to survive. There’s really cute customization, and plenty of things to keep you busy after the game ends if you so choose. What really shocked me was how high your power could get and how efficient you could make your day-to-day after experiencing the world for so long. As far as I'm aware I've 100%ed this game, and enjoyed every minute of it. If you enjoy idle tasks and a healthy balance of being told what to do along with making your own goals, this game will certainly be up your alley! 9) KIRBY AND THE FORGOTTEN LAND  One thing this game does well is… whatever feeling this elicits. I don’t think there’s just one word for it. Many people are saying, finally, a 3D Kirby game! This automatically makes it the best game in the series! I’m not necessarily trying to be a dissenting voice, but I think that the transition does have some growing pains. One issue is a low variety of power options supplemented by the upgrading system, which is neat at least, but tends to make the player a little too powerful by the end. The new boss fighting methods turn the usual dodging on its head in favor of Bayonetta-style witch time perfect rolls, which, again, feel a little too powerful and overcentralizing. Also Tilt n’ Roll sucks. But, I really enjoyed the design of the world and levels, I liked that we had more than one unique boss in the game that didn’t come from or was inspired by another’s, and I especially liked how little this game relied on nostalgia with its themes, music, and supporting cast. The new world feels different because of this. Some of the songs feel like they could be old songs, but then they go in different directions - I’m not sure if this is intentional or me just seeing something I want to see. Overall, I’d call Forgotten Land a great game, but not a perfect game. What I’m really looking forward to is their next game in this style. After all, Return to Dream Land was a good start, but its successors really refined and nailed down its formula… 8) TETRACOSM  The triangle hat on our main character kinda takes away from this, but look at that background! This game is a relatively unknown piece of work that regularly goes on sale on Steam for like, one dollar. For that price it’s highly worth checking out, and even at full price I wouldn’t be too disappointed. Basically, it’s a -vania starring a yellow raptor dinosaur guy. The crux of the game is that there are parallel worlds all coming into contact and order needs to be restored to them before things go awry. The movement and traversal in this game is very nice, momentum is super important and learning how to use it for your benefit is satisfying. You gain lots of variety for abilities and combat options, along with one of the more creative ways I’ve seen a double jump be implemented into any game of this ilk. Some flaws are that the bosses are way too easy compared to the levels leading up to them, and that some sidequest items and their purposes could’ve been telegraphed better. An actual map or item finder in the late game would have been great. But overall, pretty enjoyable! Check it out! 7) XENOBLADE CHRONICLES 3  Booty… Xenoblade 1 was one of the most influential games I played in my younger years. It was probably one of the first really big, story-driven, hundred-hour RPGs I really sunk my teeth into without feeling drained or annoyed by it. The series has had its hooks in me ever since, and this latest installment is no exception. One of the best main casts in video games is the major highlight of this game’s story. Since you get all of the main party members essentially immediately, they have tons of time to grow close to one another, and they really do feel like inseparable partners by the end. The mystery of the world was quite engaging, though it might be a bit of a let down for people expecting more of a connection to the previous two games? The dangling carrot of that kept me going though. My larger gripe with it, though, is the battle system. Even now, I don’t think I’m actually GOOD at the game. Most of your skill in battle is through setup, and then you watch your characters kill tough enemies with barely any input on your part if things end up going wrong. And then Chapter 6’s broken nonsense just perpetuated that feeling, though it was still fun to abuse it. Really, though, it’s the story that I care more about in these games, along with the exploration of areas, the giant amount of hilarious, fun, and heartwarming side content, not to mention really feeling for this cast of characters… Highly recommend this game. 6) POKEMON LEGENDS ARCEUS  I'm just like Porygon-Z. I don't belong here, but I'm excelling. Last year I complained about how the by-the-numbers, bug-marred, confusing half-step remakes of Diamond and Pearl fell flat. To say I went into this game with fairly non-existent expectations would be an understatement. But that’s one reason why it ended up amazing me so much. It’s probably been said so many times before, but this is what little kids dreamed Pokemon could be like one day. Wandering around zones, seamlessly entering battles, catching mons by just throwing balls at them, adapting a team with tons of mechanical conveniences and changes for the better, it’s all incredible. (I still think Frostbite should leak into the real games. Too bad it didn't...) Where this game sometimes fell short was the way its story was told. It has, by and large, an interesting and intriguing plot, but it’s still presented in a way that a little kid understands, meaning there’s lots of reiterating of points, characters engaging in their One Gimmick in every conversation, and such. Still, I ended up enjoying it, and I’m glad that Game Freak was able to put out a game that had some jank, took some risks, and more likely than not informed their direction for their flagship title at the end of the year. 5) POKEMON VIOLET  Finally, ugly criers have their video game representation. Speaking of which! Where do I even begin? This game was, and still is, such an interesting story. The way it released with tons of weird glitches (that I personally never ran into) and how there’s been so much he-said-she-said about who’s taking responsibility, whether it’ll be improved, the reasons that it turned out this way… it’s true what most people say though. If you’re able to stomach the problems, an amazing world, delightful Pokemon, and a surprisingly deep story await you. Like, I can't understate how cool the final sequence is, and how REAL the characters feel, especially compared to Arceus. It truly is a shame that it didn’t release without problems, because it probably would have changed the conversation about Pokemon forever! But now it’s just another in a long laundry list of reasons why the series is dying and so on. And, well, I’m a sucker for the games, I’ll buy them no matter what, so it gets a bit tiring being in this new age of pessimism. I already talked about how cool Arceus was, and while I probably do like that game a little more mechanically, there’s no beating that new generation smell. Some of my favorite new mons were Arboliva, Tatsugiri, Lokix, and Gimmighoul. Judge me! 4) EVERHOOD  This is fairly spoiler-free as far as screenshots go. I like bugs, did you know already? Here we go, now it's time for some weird-rear end surprises. Though this game didn’t come out that long ago, it already feels timeless. You play a red-cloaked doll that has their arm stolen by the greedy Gold Pig. On your journey to get it back, you run into various opposition that you must “defeat” in what can only be summed up as someone playing Guitar Hero AT you. You dodge and jump over notes until the fantastic music ends, with plenty of gimmicks thrown in, including some ways to fight back in certain circumstances. With a colorful cast of characters, trippy weird graphics, fun setpieces, and an overall dark, unsettling atmosphere, this game had its hooks in me even before it asked me to do the unthinkable. And I’ll just have to leave it at that. Go into this game with as little foreknowledge as possible, it will be worth it. (And don’t worry, there’s plenty of easier difficulty modes if you find the gameplay too challenging!) 3) WANDERSONG  The Bard is a perfect human specimen. The first of many indies I played this year ended up being my favorite of them all! I cannot understate how much I loved this game. I had absolutely no expectation or knowledge on how this game worked, what its story was, or how it would turn out. What you end up with is one of the most unique pieces of media ever created, with a gameplay style that I don’t think any other game has ever really done before. And the story! Holy moly, the story! I love the Bard (who I was able to name Lati, but apparently is canonically Kiwi), I love Miriam, I loved most of the rest of the characters. Audrey is stupid but that just means she was written well to elicit that response! This is one of those games that I really shouldn’t talk that much about, but I truly highly recommend it. It’s not that expensive, it’s not that long, and it will make you feel all fuzzy inside. 2) NIER: AUTOMATA  I can’t think about this character too much or I start breaking down in tears. Enjoy this out-of-context funny, instead. I don’t play “character action” games, I don’t play Platinum games, I’ve never touched a DMC or what have you. It was only back when this game came out that I heard a lot about it, and I had had it in my eyes to try for several years now. A kindly friend gifted it to me for Christmas, so it felt like the perfect time to finally play it this year. Despite my distaste for this genre as a whole, I have to say… this is one of the best games I’ve EVER played. I love the lead characters. The banter between 2B and 9S, and between them and their Pods and Operators, oh it’s just incredible. The sidequests and their stories were all so interesting and amusing that I made myself do most of them even if they were a bit of a pain to complete! The way the stakes are amped up in the ending parts, and how it all just kinda goes to poo poo in that, I hear, classic Yoko Taro way, one of the most engaging things I ever darn saw. The final ending was fantastic, too. I choose to believe that the “secret church” stuff came about because of me playing this game, so you’re all welcome. I’m highly considering buying this game again on Switch and playing it all over again, and that’s not something I do often at all, most recently with Stardew Valley. My one major complaint is that certain things getting locked out by story progress is annoying, even with the addition of chapter select after completing the game’s overall plot. I can be ready to complete something, and the moment I get close to it, some other trigger happens and it’s now gone forever. Oh well, if that's the worst problem it has, and it's this high up, you should understand how I feel. Play this game if you haven't yet, please. 1) LIVE-A-LIVE (2022)  I played the fan translation for this game years ago, and when I had finished with it, I said to myself, this is the best story in an RPG ever. Even after re-analyzing it and poring it over in my head, I still thought that. Now that I’ve played the remake, and experienced a lot more in my life, it might not have the absolutely best-told story of all time, especially compared to some games I played for the first time literally this year... but, I still have to say that there is really no game quite like Live-A-Live. Voice acting added quite a bit to the experience, along with other conveniences like, for instance, actually tutorializing you on the battle system, or being able to skip cutscenes at the drop of a hat, which made certain tedious things a cakewalk this time around. This game is such a unique experience, and to many it may feel like the missing link between “good” games like Final Fantasy IV, and “amazing” games like Chrono Trigger. And that’s because... it kind of is. Any fan of RPGs overall should play this game, not just because it’s good but because its historical significance is an understated quality of its importance to games as a whole. Cube is the best, also. That about wraps up my 2022 list. Games was good this year to me. I really wish Advance Wars hadn't been delayed forever, that's my only regret. For next year I'm already greatly looking forward to Fire Emblem Engage and Theatrhythm Final Bar Line, along with the supposed inevitable release of Hollow Knight Silksong. And there's sure to be more surprises that are yet to be revealed. I hope y'all enjoyed my pictures and my opinions! See ya for the countdown.
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Dec 15, 2022 15:37
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Alxprit posted:4) EVERHOOD Absolutely agree that people should go into Everhood with no forewarning. The first gnome fight 15 minutes into the game throws so many new psychedelic ideas beyond the game's expected scope at you in quick succession, it's exhilarating. I legitimately did not know what was going to happen but I was excited to find out.
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Dec 15, 2022 16:59
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Everhood is on my 2021 list. It owns
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Dec 15, 2022 17:18
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this thread is really making me want to play Xenoblade 3
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Dec 15, 2022 17:22
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10. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II I rarely ever play CoD games and yet have somehow put 70 hours into this one. The singleplayer was an entertaining war crime simulator, and the multiplayer is a lot of fun. It's dragged down by the tedious gun unlock paths and the horrific monetization. 9. Cyberpunk 2077 Now that it's in a playable state I found the game to be very fun and engrossing - it's a Skyrim-level time-eraser with a much better story. Would be higher if not for the awful loot system and a fairly shallow open world. 8. Elden Ring I very much enjoyed Elden Ring, enough for it to be my first FromSoft platinum. It's not some revelatory masterpiece of gaming - it's not even the best FromSoft game - but I put 140 hours into it and am still eagerly looking forward to the DLC. Had it not been for the last several zones and bosses being massively overtuned, and the incredibly unsatisfying endings, it would be much higher on the list. 7. Yakuza Kiwami It may have felt like a glorified expansion pack to Yakuza 0, but Yakuza 0 was loving amazing so I don't view that as a bad thing. Loved the stances, loved Majima Everywhere, loved the story; did not love the reuse of assets from 0, the grinding required to max out your skill trees, or the very basic substories. 6. Yakuza Kiwami 2 Kiwami 2, as opposed to Kiwami 1, felt like a true sequel. It's absurd and hilarious and goddamn tragic. The only reason it's not higher is that some of the systems are tedious, and I miss the stances from Kiwami 1 and Y0. 5. Horizon Forbidden West It suffers from some pretty bad sequel bloat, with too many options and too many systems in play. And by its very nature as a sequel, there's no moment here that matches up to the reveals from Zero Dawn. But battling robot dinosaurs is still incredible, and the story is both engrossing and performed wonderfully. 4. The Witcher 3 Complete Edition It's the goddamn Witcher 3 with haptic feedback and 60fps, there's no way it's not going in my top 5. 3. Hades The biggest surprise all year for me. Hades was absolutely wonderful, a beautiful and engaging and addictive game, full of levels I wanted to keep revisiting and characters I wanted to keep spending time with. And thanks to the nature of the game, I could! The only reason this isn't higher is that trying to unlock certain character paths was very, very tedious, requiring lots of retries. 2. God of War Ragnarok I said in the God of War thread this was my GOTY, and if we're just talking games released in 2022, it is. Ragnarok is legitimately moving as a story and incredibly fun as a game. But it falls just short of my number 1 spot due to some overtuned post-game encounters and some frustrating navigation (the compass is loving useless). 1. Yakuza 0 It immediately sold me on the prospect of playing the entire Yakuza series. A gripping story that's equal parts absurd and awesome, the variety of stances ensures that fighting never gets old, the goddamn real estate and cabaret club minigames that are like full-fledged games unto themselves...a masterpiece.
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Dec 15, 2022 17:38
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(apologies in advance if this is a bit too E/N personal, but hey, it’s my list) Dishonorable Mentions: Norco Cyberpunk 2077 Honorable Mentions: Chicory Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy Resident Evil 8 Star Wars: Jedi: Fallen Order Demon’s Souls (PS5 remake) Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin Dark Souls 3 (and double-honorable mention to the Ringed City DLC) 10. Life is Strange: True Colors My wife does not like to play video games. Holding a controller and asking her to be challenged in any capacity stresses her out, and she doesn’t think it’s fun or relaxing. She does like to watch me play, however, and the closest I can get to her actually playing something is with choice-based adventure games. I steer the character, she calls the shots. She loved all the early-2010s Telltale games, as rote as they eventually became, and we really bonded over that first Life is Strange game. True Colors trades away the thrills of the first game’s multiverse-hopping and the sequel’s disaster road trip for a very grounded location study. The visuals were very pleasing and the mocap/animation was really well done, which is fortunate because the characters are possibly the least charming bunch in the series yet. However, the story is pretty compelling and the final climactic sequence is the best, most well-directed moment since any of the highs in the first game. 9. Resident Evil 7 The opening hours of Resident Evil 7 in the Baker house are a masterpiece of visual and sound design. The first time I booted up the game, I only made it down a few hallways before my nerves got the best of me and, terrified, I turned the game off. There were no jump scares (yet), no schlocky horror cliches, no scary monsters. My imagination filled in the blanks, painting ghouls in every shadowy corner and making me instinctively close doors so I could listen for the creak of them opening, which never came. The darkness and the tight FOV were suffocating. It would be over a year before I got the courage up to try again and push through. I think the game is absolutely at its best in those first two or three hours, and the boss fights are pretty uniformly terrible, but this game spooked me out in a way I haven’t felt since PT and cemented its inclusion on this list. 8. Stray Stray is a beautiful little thing that’s not 100% certain that it knows what genre space it wants to belong to. Is it a sci-fi dystopia game? Is it Untitled Cat Game? Is it a LucasArts-esque adventure game? Is it a Limbo/Inside-esque horror puzzle game? It’s a bit of all of these, and it does them all adequately, and it tries its hardest to tie them together with some good visual design, though the pieces never really coalesce into a satisfying result. But who cares about all that? My four year old didn’t. She wanted me to play the cat game, and she loved it, and I loved it because she loved it. She assigned names to all the cats in the intro (FYI the main character tabby is Lia), and tried her very best to figure out what the heck was going on in this weird robot dystopia, and cheered when we escaped the bad guys, and cried at the end when the robot buddy died. And she was a bit distraught at the ending when you didn’t explicitly reunite with your “cat family” from the beginning of the game, even if it’s strongly implied. But it held her attention throughout its short runtime, and it earned the distinction of being the first game we beat together. 7. Dark Souls The year is 2012. I’m playing Dark Souls on my xbox 360 and I’m thoroughly unimpressed. I make it to the sewers where I get cursed by some weird frog thing. I notice that I’m seemingly permanently at half my maximum health. I turn off the game and don’t turn it back on. This was my experience, in a nutshell, with every FromSoft release. I give it a shot, I hit some seemingly impassable wall, and I turn the game off, muttering that I don’t see what’s so great about this series. I suspect that I’m far from alone in this pattern. Elden Ring, fittingly, broke that cycle for me, and in doing so I was inspired to go back and beat every Soulsborne game in release order. (I figured, well, if I have the skills to beat Elden Ring, then surely I have what it takes to conquer its predecessors.) After ripping through Demon’s Souls (PS5) in short order, I booted up my old nemesis, Dark Souls. I don’t think I need to waste a lot of time relaying to you that Dark Souls is, in fact, an extremely good video game, and its level design is the best in the entire series to this day. 6. Kirby and the Forgotten Land Normally I wouldn’t include any game in this list that I haven’t beaten, but playing this with my kid means that we’re working through it at a snail’s pace. It’s a Kirby game, it’s great, it’s not going to surprise you and it’s a blast. This is to date the only game that my kid actually plays together with me. She laughs hysterically when Kirby enters Mouthful Mode, or falls out of bed, or gets into a playful argument about which direction to go with Kirby’s Friend (AKA Bandana Dee). It’s one of those increasingly-rare titles that makes you remember that sometimes video games don’t have to be works of art, or narrative spaces, or challenges to overcome. Sometimes you can just play a thing with simple rules and have a really good time. 5. Disco Elysium I had played Disco Elysium when the Final Cut released and fell in love with it, as did countless others. This year, I had decided that, given my wife’s predilections for similar kinds of choice-based adventure games, perhaps we could give Disco a try. I don’t think she likes it as much as I did, even if we laughed a lot and enjoyed ourselves. She played Harry like he was Columbo, and thoroughly rejected all the politics, as well as any comment that was “too weird” or “what person would say that.” As a roleplaying game, it was an abject failure for her, but that didn’t stop her from having a good time. In my eyes, it is still a near-perfect work of art, a thing so impossible and strange and beautiful (like a cryptid!). 4. Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker If I had done a GotY list for 2019, 2020, or 2021, rest assured that this would have taken the top spot. This year, it is merely #4, as we are in a quiet space between expansions and the content (while still extremely good) has yet to hit any of the crescendos of previous years. By hours of playtime, it dwarfs everything on this list, even if you combined them all. It’s spectacular beyond words, it’s the best Final Fantasy game, it’s the most Final Fantasy game. I was quite surprised when my wife, after seeing the profound love I have for this game-that-often-feels-more-like-a-TV-series, agreed to play with me. I tried to talk her out of it, expecting it to take a year or more to get up-to-date on the MSQ, but she was undaunted. She rolled up her own Warrior of Light. She watches as I play the battle content, while she navigates the multitudinous cutscenes, frequently handing the controller back and forth. It’s a shared experience that is still uniquely hers. It’s taken us some three months to get through ARR at a pace conducive to both our schedules, but what a fun journey we have to look forward to. 3. Elden Ring It’s March 2022. Elden Ring fever has swept the nation. My best friend is playing it as his first FromSoft game and is adamant that I should play it too. He and I sometimes have dissimilar tastes, so I figured this might be another game that I could skip and not really miss out on much. Instead, I gave it a shot, and I sank 100 hours into the Lands Between, with its majestic vistas and gloomy horns and strings. I learned to love the combat that had been so off-putting before. I found the challenges to be significant, but surmountable. I took the easy road where I could - I used the mimic tear summon, I turtled behind a shield and used the biggest hammers I could find, I summoned player help for Malenia. To me, doing so didn’t really feel like I had deprived myself in any way. Victory didn’t mean seeing the end credits, it meant learning the vocabulary and skillset that the game was trying to teach me. By the end, I was fanatical, I couldn’t get enough. It inspired my love for the entire genre, and set me on a journey that took up most of my year in gaming - going back and conquering the back catalog. It’s not my absolute favorite of said catalog - in fact, I’d be perfectly happy finishing the eventual DLC and then never playing it again, and I feel that way about all of the Souls games. However, the fact that it opened the floodgates for me is the real significant thing, and I do earnestly think that anybody who wants to try out this series should absolutely start with Elden Ring. 2. Bloodborne Unlike the other Souls games, I could play Bloodborne over and over again. It’s comfort food. Fantastic aesthetics that are personally right up my alley, fast and visceral gameplay, a bonkers cosmic horror narrative. The only real detractors are some rough edges (technical and framerate issues, chalice dungeons), but while these are unfortunate, they’re immaterial compared to what a masterpiece this is. To quote an anecdote I posted about elsewhere: “Then it came time for the one I most desperately wanted to get back to: Bloodborne. I went for my trusty strength weapon progression and dove into it. I discovered a funny thing - the rally system allowed me to play more sloppily but more enthusiastically. Gone were the days of hiding behind a wall of steel, of clumsily rolling with often uncertain-feeling i-frames. Get in there and hunt, hunter. If they hit you, hit them back. The crowning moment for me was the Martyr Logarius fight (except for his long run-back). After beating Paarl, I felt unstoppable. But after banging my head against Logarius for a few attempts with little success, those old feelings began to creep in. Maybe I'm not good at this. If I can't beat this dude, maybe I can't hack it in the DLC, which will undoubtedly be harder. And then, on attempt number whatever, it clicked. I figured out parry timing for his sword swings, I intuited the timing on rolling through his shotgun skulls, I didn't panic dodge and instead hung in there and rallied. It felt more like a boxing match than an action RPG - dodge, counter, weave, strike. Keep him on the ropes. And I won. I became the Fromsoft enemy I hated most, the one who was fast, strong, and relentless.” 1. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice Real heads know. This is the best one. Suddenly, every fight feels like how I felt after that Logarius fight. Just as Bloodborne makes you feel that shields are for cowards, suddenly Sekiro makes you feel that dodging is for cowards. Combat becomes a rhythm game of clashing swords, space and healing often become impossible luxuries, and (of course) hesitation means defeat. This is going to sound preposterous but I wholeheartedly believe it: For me, excelling at Sekiro meant I needed to enter a flow state. It was no longer sufficient to be watching the enemy movements and reacting; my reflexes would eventually betray me. It was no longer sufficient to win via attrition; the enemy was not going to give me any easy openings and an errant mistake often meant cascading failures. To win, you just have to die against the boss again and again and again until suddenly, you see their technique in your head and you feel when to counter in your hands and in your skin. I was sleeping poorly around the time I was playing Sekiro, and I often found that I played my best while in the depths of sleep deprivation, as if even cognition was an unnecessary barrier between me and victory, between me and Shinobi Zen. I beat Owl (Father) at midnight after a long work day and I basically entered a fugue state during that fight, yet it remains my proudest gaming accomplishment of the year. That, paired with finishing the game the next day, made me feel that I had done something that I had previously considered laughably impossible. The six month long journey was complete. Certainly there are higher bars to clear, as there are always higher bars to clear, always one more rung to climb on the ladder. But ever since the pandemic started, I had felt a little bit directionless, as if my personal growth had been stunted by the fact that the world had been put on pause. Survival became the most important thing, more critical than anything else. In doing so, I had really stopped setting any goals for myself, outside of putting one foot in front of the other through another day. So it became a pleasant surprise when I found myself really enjoying something that was just for me, so much so that I would make a hobby of it, a finite series of seemingly unachievable goals that I would need great perseverance to conquer. And that’s why Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is the best game of 2022. Lisztless fucked around with this message at 20:07 on Dec 15, 2022 |
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Dec 15, 2022 18:31
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Alxprit posted:That about wraps up my 2022 list. Some cool recs in this post I hadn't heard of. Thanks!
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Dec 15, 2022 18:47
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Lisztless posted:The crowning moment for me was the Martyr Logarius fight Please stop plagiarizing my in-progress list (but congratulations on your enlightened opinion); tyvm.
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Dec 15, 2022 19:22
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Lisztless posted:And that’s why Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is the best game of 2022. Well, ain’t nobody topping this. What a list!!
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Dec 15, 2022 19:39
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some tasty tasty lists posted itt, OPs
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Dec 15, 2022 19:41
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How am I meant to write my list when I'm so busy reading all the others? 
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Dec 15, 2022 19:41
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Had my list all ready to go in anticipation of this thread, but I think the game I'm playing now might sneak into the top 10 if it sticks the landing
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Dec 15, 2022 19:43
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ColdPie posted:Some cool recs in this post I hadn't heard of. Thanks! This means a lot to me! You're welcome.
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Dec 15, 2022 20:04
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Lisztless posted:
You have such a good rear end list. I can't believe you've done all these From Software games in a year. You may never top that again. I've played every single one as they've come out (except the original demon's Souls) and the closest I got was when Bloodborne and the Dark Souls 2 ps4 edition released like within a month of each other.
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Dec 15, 2022 20:07
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Chairchucker posted:Hello here is my list I keep meaning to try out monster train!! Thank you for reminding me. Also I really want to play Midnight Suns, I think. I was a huge comic kid in the 90s and it seems like...that's a whole vibe.
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Dec 15, 2022 20:27
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Kull the Conqueror posted:Please stop plagiarizing my in-progress list (but congratulations on your enlightened opinion); tyvm. Escobarbarian posted:Well, ain’t nobody topping this. What a list!! Thanks! Ineffiable posted:You have such a good rear end list. I can't believe you've done all these From Software games in a year. You may never top that again. I've played every single one as they've come out (except the original demon's Souls) and the closest I got was when Bloodborne and the Dark Souls 2 ps4 edition released like within a month of each other. I feel like I need a copy of your gang tag, lol I agree, I might never set off on a little journey like this again. I feel like there aren't a lot of series out there where one could 1) easily and conveniently explore an extensive back catalog, 2) feel like your developed skills in one game translate to skills in the others, and 3) all the titles feel distinct and memorable in how they play differently. The challenge component aside (and make no mistake, that was absolutely an important part of it too), it seems like a very singular experience. Obviously I could explore the Armored Core back catalog, but frankly, I'm perfectly content to just start with the new one. We'll see if I feel differently afterward!
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Dec 15, 2022 20:41
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The list: 10. Jabroni Brawl Episode 3 9. Bean and Nothingness 8. Boneraiser Minions 7. Elden Ring 6. Streets of Rogue 5. Tactical Nexus 4. Last Call BBS 3. Great Ace Attorney Chronicles 2. Last Command 1. Crystal Project The words and pictures: 10. Jabroni Brawl Episode 3  Jabroni Brawl Episode 3 is something I've been missing lately: a PvP shooter with absolutely no emphasis on (or seemingly any interest in) balance. Most game modes spawn players in with totally random weapons, letting some people run rampant with instant kill rocket launchers and black hole trip mines while other people are stuck with the gun that makes you fart (which can also instantly kill players, because this is that sort of game). I can't overstate how nice it is to have a pvp game to play with no ranking leaderboard to climb and no marginally improved weapons or cosmetics to grind. The goal is to have fun, and Jabroni Brawl Episode 3 is fun of the absolute most chaotic variety. 9. Bean and Nothingness  Bean and Nothingness is a 2019 puzzle game. You have a wand that can be used to zap beans on the ground, and if the beans match one of the recipes in the book you carry with you, a monster is created. Different monsters have vastly different properties: some charge and attack, some explode, some carry, some freeze, some grab, and so on. When one monster recipe is present in a puzzle, the rules are fairly straightforward. When two, or three, or more are present, the number of mechanical interactions that must be kept in mind quickly grow dizzyingly complex. What happens when a grabber monster grabs a bomb monster? what happens when the bomb monster grabbed by a grabber monster is frozen by a freezy monster before the grabber can finish pulling it in? It's up to you to experiment and find out. This emphasis on experimentation is what I think sets Bean and Nothingness apart from other puzzle games. The game states explicitly early on that it won't hold your hand through every relevant interaction every monster has. And while games like Stephen's Sausage Roll or Patrick's Parabox depend on discovery of puzzle mechanics that intuitively derive from the world and physics they exist in, Bean and Nothingness is deliberately unintuitive by virtue of all its points of interaction being fanciful imaginary monsters. This makes every new monster discovered in the game a fresh slate from which to build a brand new foundation of knowledge. 8. Boneraiser Minions  Boneraiser Minions is an entry in the very rapidly expanding "Vampire Survivors-like", or "Bullet Heaven" genre, and it's my favorite of the bunch. Instead of wielding weapons yourself, you play as a necromancer who raises various skeletal or demonic peons to do your screen clearing for you, with the usual rapid scaling up to ridiculous hordes of undead smashing everything in a mile radius that the genre is known for. I'll admit I'm not a huge fan of the bullet heaven genre, but I'm including this entry here anyway because I'm pleased to no end to see Caiysware, the developer of Boneraiser Minions, finally starting to get his due. I've been following their work since 2018's Skelly Selest, and I was immediately charmed by the gothic horror pixel art, inventive design, and deliberately incorrect ye-olde english. Boneraiser is by far their most popular game to date, and I'm hoping that success will carry through to future titles. 7. Elden Ring  My only sop to AAA gaming in this year's list comes from the only place it could have. It's fun, it's beautiful, it's challenging in just the right way. I do wish it had more plot. I enjoyed the plotlines that had character interactions (volcano manor, Radahn festival), but they were few and far between, and I don't particularly like Fromsoft's archeological approach to worldbuilding. My jaw did genuinely drop as I took the mistwood elevator into the depths and saw just how much more there would be to do, though, so on the list it goes. 6. Streets of Rogue  My favorite roguelike experiences all have to do with moments of cascading failure. Things like running face first into a hydra, so you try to teleport away, but you land on three gelatinous cubes, so you cast a spell of mass confusion, but the confusion affects a nearby wyvern and the wyvern shoots a blast of fire which causes the gelatinous cubes to explode and blows away all your cover and what started as routine dungeon exploration has turned into quaffing every unidentified potion in your inventory on the distant off-chance that one of them is secretly a Potion of Get Me The gently caress Out Of Here Please. That sort of thing. Streets of Rogue is the first game I've played to bundle that experience into co-op multiplayer. Each player picks a class with unique skillsets and bonus missions on each floor of the game's campaign, and then you're all cut loose to wreak havoc. The end result is extremely chaotic and extremely fun. I didn't even play that much of Streets of Rogue this year, but what I did stood out among the rest of the multiplayer games I've played with friends this year. PS: Insanely good soundtrack. 5. Tactical Nexus  After two years of completely rewiring my mental state, Tactical Nexus has finally loosened its grip on me enough to let me focus on other games when I want to. It's still my first pick for game to play while listening to podcasts, but I'm only playing one or two hours of it a day instead of four or five. This year saw a flurry of major updates, including the release of the much anticipated Legacy and Magic systems. These systems provide oblique benefits that allow the completion of the simultaneously released Mystic Gate, which soups up existing towers to much higher level difficulties (and much higher potential score rewards). The game's already nigh infinite replayability has now been brought to an exponentially more complex level, with block tunneling, teleportation gates, and temporary stat boosts changing the calculus for completing levels that were once thought completely solved. I may only have about half the sunstones (score-based permanent resource) of the best players of Tactical Nexus, but I'm still enjoying trying to solve its mysteries each time a new stage is released. 4. Last Call BBS  An anthology collection of games created for a fictional computer operating system by the legendary puzzle game designer Zachtronics. It's no wonder to me that his intended retirement from videogame development didn't stick, because he was clearly having too much fun with it. 20th Century Food Court was my personal favorite as a more traditional programming optimization game, but i also particularly enjoyed Dungeons and Diagrams, a sudoku-like with lots of tricky rules for solving puzzles, and The Forbidden Path, which was even less scrutable than most of Zachtronics' work. My favorite thing about Last Call BBS is the layers of verisimilitude present in 20th Century Food Court. You play the game through the interface of a fictional old computer operating system similar to a macintosh (layer 1). 20th Century Food Court is a factory programming game about a utopian far flung future society (layer 2) that's attempting to build authentic recreations of 20th century mall food based on their fuzzy memories (layer 3). The layers all slot together perfectly somehow, and the end result is really funny anachronisms, like the burger and fries combo meal that ends up being a fairly accurate burger along with a single giant fry in a cup, or the customers all being annoyed by the coffee and cigarettes chain because the cigarettes aren't pleasant to eat. 3. The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles  I could cite a lot of reasons for putting Great Ace Attorney here, like the writing, or the characters, or the chemistry between the characters, or the lateral thinking needed to solve some of the cases, or the themes, or the humor, which are all excellent. The actual reason it's going to live on in my memory is simple: Barok van Zieks is easily one of the hottest characters in video game history. 2. Last Command  Last Command is a shmup with aesthetic and thematic inspirations from Undertale and Nier Automata, about a society of robots that have long outlasted humanity but still labor under their "last commands", the objectives programmed into them with their creation. The story is pretty good, but what puts this game on the list is its shmup design, which is fantastic. Last Command is self described as a "Bullet Hell x Snake" game. The bullet hell part is self explanatory: bosses send waves of bullets over the screen that need to be dodged. The snake elements are much more intriguing, in two ways: 1) your character moves on Snake rules with a segmented tail, which means constant orthogonal movement and a variable hitbox. 2) defeating bosses requires picking up ammunition pellets in the form of data files, which further increases the size of your hitbox and requires you to be constantly moving around the screen to actually progress fights. These two details add a huge amount of nuance to the usual bullet hell dynamic, making patterns that would be fairly simple to dodge under typical bullet hell rules much more interesting. The boss fights are incredibly well designed, too. Each boss includes a large number of phases (always at least five but usually ten or more) that steadily expand on one or a few specific design themes. The difficulty ramps up satisfyingly, not just inside bosses as new elements are introduced to the fights, but between fights as the game is progressed. The overall experience is really, really fun and intense. 1. Crystal Project  Crystal Project is a job-based team rpg similar to Final Fantasy 3, set in a minecrafty world with extremely open-ended exploration and evolving movement upgrades similar to a metroidvania. I love everything about this game. Exploring it is just so satisfying, with every nook or cranny you could possibly think to check having something interesting to find. There's piles of secret items, bosses, and quests to find, and even some sequence breaks that can change the order of your progression through the game if you're clever enough. Environments are highly vertical to take full advantage of the isometric camera, and they look great despite being so blocky. There's a genuine sense of accomplishment to making it to the top of mountain cliffs or across icy ravines that's amplified as you unlock new mounts to explore with. In the end stages of the game, you get to fly directly over You have a team of four characters for combat, with access to a list of combat jobs that expands as the game progresses, which can be swapped at any time. Only two jobs can be equipped at a time, which allows for inventive synergies without completely breaking the games balance, and each boss has different powers which necessitate different job combos to address properly. I even found the story and writing charming, even though it definitely wasn't the primary focus. the primary theme of the game is the question of how exactly an adventure is supposed to be appreciated, and the various answers provided by characters throughout are interesting. There's a scene between two supporting characters in the rafters high above a partially constructed city that I found particularly touching. It's difficult to believe that this is a solo development project, but the vast effort Andrew put into Crystal Project shows. I think everyone should play this game.
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Dec 15, 2022 20:52
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honorable mentions: Deadly Rooms of Death: Treacle Stew. First new DROD content in 7 years. Hell yeah Dome Keeper: Chill game, good for podcasts. I kept thinking I would put it down for good and then playing it again the next day for like a month Dwarf Fortress: it would be on the list if it had come out a little bit sooner and had more time to take over my brain. strike the freaking earth Sunshine Heavy Industries: an open ended zachtronics-like ship building game. Very relaxing.
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Dec 15, 2022 21:33
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Lisztless posted:Thanks! Actually funny story. The way you described it is basically my adventure into the modern Resident Evil games. I had already done RE3 platinum before but when I did the DLC for RE8, it inspired me to go for the platinum and then I could go do re2 and re7 in that way as well and that experience did carry over because they all have similar challenges (speed runs, limits on heal or item box, etc). It is fun when you get to do multiple entries in a franchise in a row or close to a row. Yakuza, Resident Evil, Armored Core, Souls games and I'm sure there's more.
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Dec 15, 2022 22:13
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I lied about not doing a list but it is a shameful top 10 because it feels like I played barely anything this year #10 - Undernauts: Labyrinth of Yomi  Wizardry style dungeon crawler thing, this isn't really a genre I have any experience with so I was surprised I got so into it (closest thing I've played is maybe SMT Strange Journey). It has a lot of little quality of life things (like being able to respec your skills/stats anytime you like with no penalty) that probably make it a good entry point and the difficulty isn't too hardcore (except for the final boss which was a roadblock for me and I've heard the postgame stuff is rough but I was ok with just beating the main game) #9 - Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker  It is still good but I'm keeping it low on my list on purpose since we're between expansions I thought it might be fun to fantasia from an elf to a dragon person just for the patch stuff but felt a deep sense of regret and switched back #8 - Returnal  I'm glad Housemarque didn't go out of business when they said they were giving up on arcade games/making a battle royale (???) because Returnal turned out pretty good. The roguelike structure doesn't really do anything for me since the runs always feel pretty similar no matter what upgrades/parasites you pick up and it's maybe a little too long to have that "hey I'll do a quick run" feeling you get with Spelunky/Isaac or w/e It's a v solid shooter though and I should probably go back and play the DLC at some point #7 - Crimesight    This is a weird social deduction game Konami made where an AI version of Moriarty is brainwashing people into committing crimes and the only thing that can stop the crimes before they happen is the AI version of Sherlock (in 4 player matches you can also play as Watson/Irene who are support roles for the Sherlock/Moriarity players). I really liked it but the online was already completely dead on day 1 so I played it as much as I could for a couple weeks and then gave up because there were never more than 3 players online - I think they've tried free weekends/collabs with similar games but I can't imagine it worked RIP #6 - Drainus  This spot is more for shmups in general because I played this/Ikaruga/The Void Rains Upon Her Heart recently and would like to play more but this was my favourite of the three. Looks super cool/has a lot of neat set pieces/bosses while being pretty forgiving which idk is maybe not all that common in this genre so it feels like a good entry point (with Ikaruga I got to stage 4 legit after a ton of game overs and then caved in and used infinite continues) #5 - Yu-Gi-Oh: Master Duel  I don't really like that this is on the list but it might be the game I played the most this year. Legacy of the Duelist got me caught up on some of the newer mechanics like XYZ/Pendulum/Link summoning and then I switched over to this. It's free to play but they're generous enough with the gems that you can make pretty much whatever deck you want right from the beginning (I have like 8 decks and I've never spent any money) I used to have a lot of fun with Yu-Gi-Oh Online + the DS games when I was a kid building lesser used decks like Cloudians/Ojamas and it's been fun doing the same with the newer archetypes like Solfachords/Aromage I think the meta probably rubs a lot of people the wrong way if you're used to older Yu-Gi-Oh (a lot of the staple cards now are ones you can activate from your hand to negate whatever card your opponent just played, and it's also super easy now to get a bunch of your strongest monsters on the board in a single turn) but idk it's fun and I've probably spent most of my time in single player anyways #4 - The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Randomiser  I was really into this for a month or so and had started watching the weekly races etc. It was cool to have a new experience in a game I was already super familar with and it gives you a new appreciation for certain items (you can get by just fine without the kokiri sword? the hover boots rule?? deku nuts are actually good???) It's worth trying a seed on the beginner settings with a map tracker, it's pretty doable even if you don't have the game memorised and then it's fun branching out to the trickier settings/trying to learn some skips/boss quick kills (one setting I liked was the dungeon entrance randomiser which means you can end up with cool stuff like Adult Link in Jabu Jabu or Young Link in the temples) #3 - Splatoon 3  Weirdly it's the single player I was hyped for because the campaigns are always great but the online is good as always. I've kind of gotten sick of online shooters over the years but I always come back to Splatoon  #2 - The House in Fata Morgana  Maybe difficult to recommend since it's non stop misery but it gets real good (I was into it from the beginning but I know some people dislike door one). I wish I had written down my thoughts at the time so I had more to say but idk any game where I'm up at 4am crying at the ending is good #1 - Sifu  Extremely cool beat 'em up, maybe the best one I've ever played. I think half the reason I liked it so much was just that the learning curve reminded me a lot of Sekiro. please see Lisztless's #1 for a better written version of what I was going to say except replace the swords with punches + kicks Honourable Mentions Capcom Fighting Collection - I put a bunch of time into the PSP Darkstalkers years ago and it was fun to see the other versions here, plus some other oddball games like Red Earth. Put Tessa in the next vs fighter!! The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story - Fun detective FMV game - anything gameplay related is a little clunky but the mysteries were ok and I really liked the ending (make sure to watch the epilogue after the credits) Nintendo Switch Sports - Football/tennis/volleyball are real good/badminton is ok/I never like video game bowling Touhou: Luna Nights - I know nothing about Touhou but I had a fun few hours playing through this (the OST is v good too) Case of the Golden Idol - Extremely cool Obra Dinn-like (actually I think I like the structure of this game better than Obra Dinn) Mega Man Zero Collection - I'm currently playing this - for whatever reason I've bounced off the X games every time I've tried them and only like a couple of the classic Mega Man games but this is really clicking with me Klonoa 1/2 - It was nice to finally play these - was not expecting Klonoa 2 to have the most beautiful vocal theme in gaming Kaze and the Wild Masks - Really solid DKC inspired platformer Last Call BBS - I liked the picross/solitaire/gundam model building games but I'm too dumb for everything else Sonic Frontiers - It's worth playing for sure but I like Generations/Colours better Ynglet/Lunistice - Fun indie platformers if you wanna kill a couple hours
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Dec 15, 2022 23:06
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