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Help Im Alive posted:I don't have enough data yet but it's possible people who order their lists 1-10 are psychopaths After all these years of data, yes I can confirm
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Dec 30, 2022 16:52
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I’m traveling rn but I’m definitely going to make an effort to start Citizen Sleeper in the new year, it looks cool 
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Dec 30, 2022 17:05
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Citizen Sleeper is dope. Absolutely did not call it being the game I wrote about most for my list, especially because it was #7.
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Dec 30, 2022 17:06
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10. The LEGO® NINJAGO® Movie Video Game I think everybody knows what Lego games are all about. I play about one per year for a relaxing good time. There was nothing particularly special about this one, i'm just playing them in release order and this one happened to be next, and it delivered what was expected. 9. Magic Potion Destroyer The 2nd entry in the completely unknown Magic Potion series. They have the mechanics of idle RPGs except they move at an active pace, so your lady is constantly entering into fights and you have to click buttons to manage their stats and resources. This second game takes the original's mechanics and expands it into a significantly longer experience of 30 dungeons of 100 floors each, but each floor is literally like 2 seconds long. It has a great atmospheric and foreboding soundtrack and a neat story told through your upgrade descriptions. You spend a lot of time trying to make snappy mathematical decisions, like "In each encounter enemies are hitting me x times for y damage, and I'm only healing z, would it be better to spend XP on a relatively cheap regen upgrade now, or wait a couple extra encounters so I can get a damage upgrade which will mean the enemies die before they get off their third attack?" I can't imagine most people would enjoy it but for me it's perfect when I want a secondary activity while watching something on YouTube or whatever. 8. R-Type Final 2 I avoid all pre-release materials for games so I don't know if it was announced as such beforehand, but I was very surprised when I played R-Type Final 2 for the first time and discovered that it was basically R-Type Final Remake, with the same stages as the original and everything. In 2022 they've continued pushing DLC for it and it's become a sort of platform for continuous R-Type content which is pretty neat! 7. Creeper World 3: Arc Eternal One of the only series that tried to innovate tower defense gameplay in a meaningful way. Most notably, the problem you're solving here is that you need to take out a fluid that is slowly flooding the map, so you have to build your resource network and offensive capabilities in a way that takes into account terrain height and fluid dynamics. The developer really went all out and tried to push as many ideas into the game as they possibly could. A lot of maps have a turning point you reach where you realize that your setup has become sustainable in stemming the tide, and after that it's really satisfying to build your base out and encroach upon your targets. 6. Ys Seven Strangely the thing I remember most about this game is the roll mechanic. It's so fast and you go so far! You can sonic around every area at lightspeed. I had been wanting to play this for several years already and had it installed on Steam for ages, but I also happened to have the Chinese collectors edition which came with a story booklet, and felt that I should read that before playing. Unfortunately for me I read Chinese very slowly and painfully so it took a while... and it wasn't worth it. Nothing happened in that story. Oh well! The Ys games can be split mechanically into eras and this is the first of the modern party system era. It was hard to make the other party members feel like they were having much of an impact in most battles but it was still cool seeing them doing stuff and I'm looking forward to seeing how the system gets iterated on in the future games. 5. Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition I was vaguely aware that a lot of the fanbase considers Vesperia as the high point of the franchise, and while I'm not sure I'd go that far I still had good fun with it. It's let down by some rather serious flaws that slow it down considerably. Tales games are the only RPGs where I actively try to get into the battles often because the battle system is fun on its own merits, but in this game there are so many parts of the battle system that are locked away behind weapon skills. For half of the game I didn't have backstep, a crucial part of the Tales movement system, because it was a weapon skill that happened to be on a weapon only sold at a shop at the beginning of the game. You can't unlock the full movement or combo potential of any character until very late in the game and it's quite frustrating. The sidequests are incredibly obtuse. There are tons of situations where you need to go visit some previous town, completely unprompted, to get some minor scene to advance a particular quest, and if you miss the narrow window to get the scene then you're locked out until NG+. I was going for 100% in one run so I had my face buried in a sidequest guide the whole time. That sounds nightmarish but I still had a lot of fun playing it! The characters were a highlight as they often are in these games and the world was colorful and beautiful. 4. The Looker There's a short meme review people have for this and it's pretty apt. "If you liked The Witness you'll like The Looker. If you hated The Witness you'll love The Looker." It's great for being more fun line puzzles, it's great for the comedy and inventive/troll-like puzzle design that stays within The Witness' framework, and it's great that some people were so affected by The Witness / JBlow that they put in the effort to make and release this commentary on it. It's free and 2 hours long so if you missed it go try it on Steam. 3. Higurashi When They Cry Hou - Ch. 7 Minagoroshi As this is chapter 7 of 8 of a mystery VN there's not a lot I can say about it without getting into spoilers. I adored how previous chapters would keep up a constant level of suspense and a sort of background level of uneasiness while the plot was unfolding, and I was a little surprised that this chapter didn't really try to impart those feelings again, but the greater emphasis on resolving the mystery was still gripping. 2. Dance Cube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzGUeeHO59I Might possibly have been my GOTY but the government kept shutting down the arcades here for months at a time so I didn't get to play it / improve at it as much as I'd hoped. It's a China-only rhythm game with hundreds of licensed (stolen) songs, so it's great fun to get off work, go eat dinner, then go whack some buttons to k-pop for a couple of hours. In recent years they've been making a greater effort to turn it into a serious rhythm game so now there are also hundreds of songs from other rhythm games included, as well as original songs coming from Chinese artists. They have talented community members doing a lot of the charting so the chart quality is really high with a lot of thoughtful patterns that push you to improve your hand positioning, timing, physical stamina, etc. There is literally no information about this game on the Western internet at all, other than a couple of snippy posts dismissing it as a maimai bootleg. I got my first All-Perfect score on a level 14 song earlier this year so in 2023 I want to spend a lot more time recording perfect score videos of the harder non-licensed songs and put them online, so there's more of a record of the game's existence. 1. Xanadu Next Loved this game to bits when I played it in the summer. A game is a joint performance between the player and the parameters of the game design, so I strongly believe that the enjoyment you get from a game is heavily dependent on your personal situation when you play it. If you're feeling a little down and stressed at work then an action packed, thematically optimistic game might bounce right off you because it just doesn't match your mood at that time, however if you had played that game at a different point in your life it might have had a completely different resonance and it might have become your favourite game of all time. When I started playing Xanadu Next I had just finished some intensely long (100+ hour) games and wasn't looking to get deep into anything else, so unexpectedly jumping into this ~15 hour mouse + keyboard ARPG was a revitalizing breath of fresh air. It's not a complex game at all but the moment to moment gameplay is methodical enough to always hold your attention in a way that feels meaningful. It's in the perfect spot between letting you relax while still feeling skill based. The entire game design has a PS2-era feel about it, where it's not trying to be flashy and overtly story driven but its about getting you out into the game world, using cool skills and exploring. I really wish that the industry had continued developing in this direction but regardless, finding this black sheep and getting to enjoy it was my gaming highlight for 2022.
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Dec 30, 2022 17:11
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Help Im Alive posted:I don't have enough data yet but it's possible people who order their lists 1-10 are psychopaths Absolute madness, I still read their lists from #10
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Dec 30, 2022 17:11
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exquisite tea posted:I’m traveling rn but I’m definitely going to make an effort to start Citizen Sleeper in the new year, it looks cool Arist posted:Citizen Sleeper is dope. Absolutely did not call it being the game I wrote about most for my list, especially because it was #7.  It's very special
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Dec 30, 2022 17:21
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Citizen Sleeper is still on Game Pass for those on the fence. I thought it was a fun game but maybe you, yes you the person reading this, will have a different experience like others in this thread! Its worth finding out I think! Edit: More positive, this is the game of the year thread! Barudak fucked around with this message at 17:39 on Dec 30, 2022 |
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Dec 30, 2022 17:28
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quote:I don't have enough data yet but it's possible people who order their lists 1-10 are psychopaths They're just doing a flash forward cold open a la max Payne
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Dec 30, 2022 17:46
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#1 goes first so you take the psychic damage of whatever ridiculous thing I voted as #1 first this year to soften you up to be more amenable to the rest of my lists decisions, rather than building to dread as you see me put more normal games at #8 and #7 and you realize I've used up all the sensible choices.
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Dec 30, 2022 17:54
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Every time I see people talk about citizen sleeper I think they're talking about star citizen
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Dec 30, 2022 19:18
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brainstorm line to remember games I played this year: Supraland Six Inches Under, Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous, Yakuza Zero, Yakuza 2, Yakuza 3, Judgement, Death Stranding Director's Cut, Elden Ring, Dwarf Fortress, Banjo Kazooie, Legends Arceus, Stanley Parable DC, Grounded, Bug Snax, Slime Rancher 2, Tainted Grail, Pentiment, TMNT, Spider Man, Ghost Song, My Time at Sandrock, Inscryption, Peglin, Roundguard, Control, No Man's Sky, Final Fantasy 7, final Fantasy 7-r, Final Fantasy 12, GemCraft, honorable mentions: pentiment (just haven't gotten far enough to justify it or say anything besides having loved what I've played so far and being delighted with the artwork and presentation of the whole package). spiderman (fun game, thwip thwip, best superhero game I ever played and they should all be so heavy on costumes to swap between included in price. just a good fun game). slime rancher 2 (not finished at all yet and just like the original I can't tell if I love this game or think it's a stupid waste of time, but somehow I'll get sucked in for hours until I've nothing left to do and realize i should go to bed) 10. My Time at Sandrock Game isn't even out, but it's such a basic improvement in every way over My Time at Portia that I can't play the latter anymore. Portia was a decent recommend for people coming off of Stardew and wanting some similar, but not a copy of the basic HM formula, but it was a little janky and awkward. Now the formula and gameplay loops already feels smoother and better designed, I imagine this will make my list again next year if it releases. I look forward to building telesis with this virtual community and I already can't stop myself from playing after each new update. 9. Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous Good news! They keep making new Neverwinter Nightses, bad news, they are all insanely long and deep games. Two Pathfinders in a row that I fell in love, quickly played 150 intense hours getting 80% of the way done with the game, and then never opening it again? This would be higher if the game was like 50 hours shorter, or if I didn't seem to have a 150 hour limit on games before I start to overdose and have to switch genres for a bit. Wrath is a really fun high-powered DnD adventure where you get to be an actual dishonest to god unliving Lich! I have always wanted to play as a Lich and this game let's me have that fantasy. The combat is crazy-go-nuts power level and it's wild what kind of characters you can build. My Lich has like a dozen attacks per round in melee from bites, tails, bites, horns, claws, etc and each one actively drains level and drains lifeforce and some can't be blocked, plus she's a hosed up gish who can cast high level and lich spells for anything that won't get lich-scratched to death. Sometimes I feel like the witch monster from Left 4 Dead, just running in and taking down anyone I feel like waaaaay too viciously. People explode into gibs! I definitely want to finish this someday, and also the one before it, but reckon I'll be adding the third Pathfinder game to a list in a few years, having also played 150 great hours before hitting my yearly limit. 8. Final Fantasy 7.0 You Can (Not) Remaster Whoops! I've got a problem, playing games only 80% of the way there! FF7 and it's sequel FF7 I've beaten about same percentage of lol, and loved every minute of it. FF7 has a lot of problems I dislike about random combat and menu-based combat, mostly that it's annoying as gently caress to be interrupted without warning, and that picking items from a menu is super boring especially if 90% of the time it's gonna be the same basic choice. FF7 was better than many other games like it at the time, but FF7r manages to handily address both problems for me in a way where I was literally actively looking for fights to get into. I wanted to fight on purpose. Being able to control your party directly, able to move freely, then issue commands, and switch out on the fly when a long animation starts playing out -- amazing. FF7 you could waste literally minutes per battle with summon and spell animations, in FF7R you can actually just keep playing the game, _the whole time._ The art in the game was gorgeous of course, and with mods you could really appreciate how great of a job they did rigging their models to perfectly support cloud's massive hog to look natural while walking, speaking, and even climbing ladders. I like what they are doing with the story, actually remaking would be boring and unnecessary, and with how expansive ff7 has become as its own tentpole ff franchise, this new route makes a ton of sense and is a really cool way to preserve these characters, while telling a new story, and leaving room for new surprises and twists. 7. Legends Arceus Legends Arceus is the closest thing to a first step towards the pokemon game I think we expected as children when they first announced a 3D pokemon game on the n64 or later gamecube. You get to run around with your pals, issue commands while still being around and not abstracted away, and entering and exiting combat is very smooth and seamless and goes such a long way in making you feel like you're there on a real pokemon adventure. There are so so so many things I want to see fleshed out in this game and in 10 years I bet they will be a step closer to some of those things and I'll be there for it. Even as-is, I played the game at 200+% speed most of the time, so maybe playing it on switch without speed mod options would've soured me more on the experience, but as I played it was just fast enough. 6. Judgement I was pretty skeptical about this... in the sense that I looked up nothing about it and bought it immediately on release and played it with full confidence I would enjoy whatever it was. It was a nice change of pace in character and adventure, while still being the same familiar Yakuza and Kamurocho I love. Nice to see another side of the city and a new fighting style to mix things up. The detective stuff was a fun angle and I love the tragic backstory for our hero didn't involve decades of jail. 5. Yakuza 2 Yakuza 0 would go here but I played most of that last year, mostly clean-up duty this year for it, and already played Kiwami first. Anyway, Yakuza 2 is just another goodass Yakuza game, the stuff I like about one mostly carries to other ones and these are all still brand-new to me so I get the joy of new Yakuza games pretty much whenever I want. 4. Supraland Six Inches Under Supraland games always seem to make my list when they come out. Trust this team to make well-designed 3d-metroidvaniaish-puzzle-adventure games, at this point does it's thing well enough to not need a frankenstein's monster of genre mashups to describe. You are a tiny toy person in a big sandbox full of fun puzzling, platforming, fighting, problem solving, exploring, experimenting, and tinkering. I think they just get more polished and tightly designed each time, while finding new mechanics and tricks and puzzles to jazz things up while re-using some of the same tools. Whole series is worth checking out, just fun lighthearted fun with good game design. 3. Grounded Played this a ton this year with my buddy I played Valheim with, we probably died more in this than we ever did in Valheim and we had a blast. Absolutely gorgeous game with a perspective you don't get often in games. Building bases, killing poo poo for resources, crafting, all that isn't anything new, but this one was designed in a way we kept engaged and progressing, while hitting appropriate struggle points to further drive our advancement and skill with the combat. Bases look really nice with the tiny-big materials you get to use, and it's a blast to build your own spiderweb of zipleline networks and stowers across the map. We always play witha trainer to make it so base-building requires only 1x of the item needed to build it because we don't wanna spend hours chopping grassblades n poo poo, but creative modes are tensionless so this was our balance and felt good. We built some amazing bases and structures and goofs to mess with each other. The game's story is also pretty interesting, we looked forward to uncovering more info and recordings at new bases and stuff, and it's got some great gags here and there. Boss fights are fun and challenging and the labs often made good use of your crafting/progression tools, so it felt like there was a point to upgrading stuff besides that it's just better. I wouldn't reccomend playing this game solo, but if you got a buddy to play these kinds of games with, check it out, really good iteration of this formula. 2. Dwarf Fortress Steam Edition Loved this game ten years ago, didn't expect a UI update for another 10 years minimum, so what a treat! Fell in love all over again, remaking old mistakes, making new ones, remembering old lessons, exploring new fort ideas. Sunk 75 hours in already and I didn't even realize I played that many hours of games at all this last month! 1. Elden Ring It's Elden Ring, I don't need to go on about it everyone knows. 100% it at launch and just spent like 3 weeks living in that world. I'm not a game replayer generally, but get the feeling I might revisit this one next year just to chase that dragon a little bit, I swear, just a taste and I'll be off the ring for good Khanstant fucked around with this message at 19:24 on Dec 30, 2022 |
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Dec 30, 2022 19:19
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listing from 10 down is a symptom of spoiler avoidance brain, one of the worst kind of brains. godspeed
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Dec 30, 2022 19:28
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bad brains get to brainthink too
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Dec 30, 2022 19:40
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10-1 is just basic showmanship
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Dec 30, 2022 19:44
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Relax Or DIE posted:10-1 is just basic showmanship 
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Dec 30, 2022 19:47
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Relax Or DIE posted:10-1 is just basic showmanship Exactly. Have a little pride in your work.
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Dec 30, 2022 19:59
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Games I wanted to play but did not get enough time with before the end of the year: Yakuza Kiwami 2 Dwarf Fortress Pentiment Honorable Mentions: The Binding of Isaac: Repentance Hitman 3 Dota 2 Victoria 3 10. Richard Burns Rally (2004, Warthog Games & rallysimfans.hu) Richard Burns Rally was a game originally published in 2004 to middling success – the game part was largely unremarkable and, if it were not for the incredible physics simulation built into the game would have been a long forgotten early-aughts racing sim. However, the physics simulation in Richard Burns Rally is top-tier and some Hungarian modders with a passion for modding have made Richard Burns Rally something really remarkable. They’ve added probably hundreds of real-world rally stages and nearly a hundred cars picked from the best of rally history. Now, I admit that I am actively terrible at driving rally, but strapping into VR and sitting at a race wheel and letting it rip through some European countryside or snowy Japanese mountains is a heart-pounding experience unlike many others in video games. There is something to be said for the incredibly functional but outdated UI/UX of this game, but to me it strips out all of the bullshit and lets you get to what you want to do: drive cars fast. 9. Magic: the Gathering Arena (2019, Wizards of the Coast) I got back into Magic: the Gathering in a big way in 2022 and Arena was a big part of that. I’m going to largely skip talking about Magic as a card game for this entry (this will make sense, I promise) and talk about what I like uniquely about Arena: free poo poo. The developers of Arena have made it very easy to long on, play a few games of wizard poker and have the bar fill up and then it makes the coin sound as you earn handfuls of free currency. This is incredibly satisfying to my brain and I like doing it. I like being able to pull out my phone while I’m pooping at work and play a quick game of Magic, while getting paid to do so. I like that they give you “wildcards” to unlock cards you may not have opened in packs so you don’t have to pay $200 for a set of Sheoldreds the Apocalypse as you would in real life. I like that there’s always people around to play cards with and that you can do a limited draft without having to wait around hoping someone shows up because the game is so popular. I also like spending money on this game like a fool. 8. Trombone Champ (2022, Holy Wow Studios) I was a band nerd growing up. This has had a profound and deep impact on my adult life. I adore everything about Trombone Champ. Trombone Champ is a fun little, I guess rhythm, game full of fun facts about wildlife and music and trombones that you get to read while you play lovely trombone versions of your favorite songs like Hava Nagila and God Save the King while images of beans on toast flash past. Trombone Champ came out of nowhere and was one of the games in 2022 that made me laugh when I played it. 7. Assetto Corsa (2014, Kunos Simulazioni) Another racing game kept alive by the passions of a great modding community. 2022 was the year I got really into sim racing (partially due to finally getting into PC VR in a meaningful way). The real attraction here is the sheer volume of modded content that’s available – everything from the most recent year’s F1 cars and GT3 cars with the badges filed off, to driving around racetracks in a high-powered Amazon box. Love retro cars, JDM or American muscle cars? They’re all here. I think, however, the pinnacle of modding for Assetto Corsa is the Shutoko Revival Project, in which modders have been creating a map that now has nearly 150km of Tokyo’s highway system built into an essentially open-world highway. I’ve lost countless hours just driving around Tokyo. Hell, you can even add AI traffic if you want to live the life of that psycho you hate to see driving on the highway. There’s a public server where you can just wheel around with people with classic street racing cars. It is incredibly impressive. 6. Pillars of Eternity 2 (2018, Obsidian Entertainment) Pirates and the sea are cool, I like them. I also really like Pillars of Eternity 2. I liked Pillars of Eternity a lot, as well. Pillars 2 has some of the most beautiful crafted background environments ever put into an isometric RPG. Every single one of them, a beautiful painting. Setting across the Deadfire in hot pursuit of the awakened god Eothas with your pals and comrades, singing sea shanties you get to meet all sorts of interesting people and factions. Of course, this being an RPG, they all come asking you to do things that may cause some issues with other factions, each of which having their own motivations and goals and visions for what they want the Deadfire to be. I really like the sections written to feel like you’re sitting at a table and a Game Master is narrating RPG gameplay to you and the narrative bits inserted around using your skills to overcome obstacles. Fantastic soundtrack, as well. 5. Apex Legends (2019, Respawn Entertainment) I really wish Apex didn’t break one of my friend’s PCs while we were playing it because I think I would have played a lot more of it. Everything about Apex feels polished – the shooting and movement are best-in-class and even just moving around the map, picking up loot and shooting the poo poo with the boys is pleasurable. Getting near to the end of any particular round of Apex is still, to me, exhilarating while you hunt the other teams and try to secure the win – and winning in Apex feels so good. So good. 4. Neon White (2022, Angel Matrix) Speedrunning is cool as hell and I lack the brain type that can play a singular game over and over until I’m really good at it. I hate replaying games. Neon White let me dip into that competitive time-against-time urge and really got its teeth into me. I love finishing each wonderfully designed level (hoping to have found the not-so-obvious route that shaved important seconds off my time) and immediately being greeted by a list of my friends' times and dedicating myself to trying to take the top time. I thought all of the various “weapon” designs were unique additions to your arsenal on your way through a level and often served as a good guidepost of what you should be doing on any level. The story is stupid and cheesy and I loved this group of idiots. 3. Magic: the Gathering Online (2002, Leaping Lizard Software, Wizards of the Coast, Daybreak Games) Remember when I said earlier that I was going to skip talking about Magic as a card game when I was talking about Arena? Well, it’s because I want to talk about Magic as a card game as a part of my entry about the best way to play Magic the Gathering online. I think Magic is a brilliantly designed card game, as evidenced by its 30 year history. It is also owned by one of the stupidest companies imaginable, Hasbro, as evidenced by its 30th anniversary celebration (which included $1,000 boxes of cards that were not tournament legal). That all being said – why is Magic Online the best way to play Magic online in 2022? Simple - it has all the cards and all the formats as paper Magic. Arena is great, but does not have 1-to1 parity with paper Magic. Hell, you can’t even play Magic’s most popular format, Commander, on Magic Arena. Magic Online’s actual software is janky garbage, but it lets me, for a fraction of the cost of paper Magic, play almost whatever I want. I’ve spent countless nights in great commander pods, or playtesting decks I’ve thought about spending significantly more on in real life for Modern or Pioneer. I haven’t even mentioned the best part to me – the access to cube drafting. For those that don’t know, cube drafting is essentially when a Magic player decides to build their own set (usually based on a theme) of cards, similar to how Wizards of the Coast releases new sets of cards, designed to be opened by 8 players in a pool with everyone picking a card or two out of three separate packs. Every once in a while there will be a limited time cube draft on Magic Online – for the holidays they bust out the “Vintage Cube” which is comprised of the most powerful cards ever printed in Magic. You get to play all the greats – the moxen, Ancestral Recall, or even the mighty Black Lotus if you get lucky enough. 2. iRacing (2008, iRacing.com Motorsport Simulations) iRacing is to me, the pinnacle of simulated motorsports. What really kicked iRacing into high gear (  ) for me was getting a VR headset. Ripping around iconic race tracks in immaculate laser-scanned detail in lovingly accurately detailed cars of all sorts. iRacing has something I never thought I’d like until I tried it – oval racing. It’s an incredible racing discipline that is constant excitement as you are wheel-to-wheel with other cars nearly the entire race. I think what iRacing gets right is what I am going to call the “dual progression” system. You have two ratings in iRacing, your “safety” rating and your “iRating.” The safety rating is exactly what is says on the label, it’s an index of your ability to stay on-track, in control and not crash into other drivers. iRacing takes a “no-fault” approach to car contact, so it is generally in everyone’s best interest to not crash at all, but sometimes people do get into crashes. Your iRating is a measure of where you finish in comparison to others – some sort of Elo rating or otherwise matchmaking rating. I think what sets iRacing apart here is that they have some level of active moderation of their users. People who are constantly driving unsafe or dangerously and not respecting the rules of racing will be spoken to or eventually removed from the service. Another really smart thing iRacing does to prevent your standard online racing lobby style play is that progression is gated behind increasing your safety rating, rather than your iRating. This incentivizes everyone to drive safe to get to the coolest cars. I’ve had countless close, respectful, side-by-side races through my time on iRacing and I really do think their approach to creating good racing is something that should be lauded. This all being said, iRacing is expensive as gently caress ($12 for each car, $12 or $15 for a track, subscription fee), not to mention the other costs involved with sim racing. There is a ton of content that comes with the subscription, but god drat if I haven’t spent far too much money on iRacing content this year compared to the price of some other games. 1. Elden Ring (2022, FromSoftware) The largest heap I can praise on Elden Ring is that it is a game that I didn’t think could exist until I was playing it with my own two hands. I still, after putting countless hours into it, still can’t really believe it is real. Elden Ring, simply put, is one of the best video games ever made. Every detail of the world is spectacular. This is a game filled with awe-inspiring moments and views and some of the best boss fights FromSoft has ever made. I think about Elden Ring all the time, it will just become a thought in my brain and it’s always making me smile when I think about it. I'm just going to post some screenshots now.           Simple List 10. Richard Burns Rally 9. Magic the Gathering: Arena 8. Trombone Champ 7. Assetto Corsa 6. Pillars of Eternity 2 5. Apex Legends 4. Neon White 3. Magic the Gathering: Online 2. iRacing 1. Elden Ring Amp fucked around with this message at 20:25 on Dec 30, 2022 |
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Dec 30, 2022 20:22
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Pressed ye old reply button instead of the preview button and had to scramble to make the post look nice, whoops!
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Dec 30, 2022 20:25
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When I read your #1 I'm done reading your post so make sure it's at the end
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Dec 30, 2022 20:47
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haveblue posted:When I read your #1 I'm done reading your post so make sure it's at the end
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Dec 30, 2022 20:52
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I was big into RPGs in the 90s and early 2000s (Baldur’s Gate 1/2, Fallout 1/2, Final Fantasies 7-12, etc.) but then switched from Windows to Mac and skipped the PS3 and PS4 eras, only keeping up with handhelds (Ace Attorneys, Fire Emblems) as I tried to “be productive” with my life. I jumped back into gaming more with a Switch in 2020 like everyone else, and then finally completed a PhD in June of this year and rewarded myself with a PS5 and now I have way more free time and I’m back baby! I try to avoid competitive multiplayer games because I get obsessed and get way too into them, especially strategy games (Dominion, Magic: The Gathering), so I’m mostly focusing on single-player games these days. Since I skipped most of the last 15 years of gaming and I have that broken brain where I don’t like jumping into a series without having played the earlier games, most of the games on my list are not from 2022 (spoiler: I haven't played Elden Ring). I think the only high-profile 2022 game I played was Fire Emblem Warriors Three Hopes, and although I loved Three Houses and spent something like 300+ hours doing full runs of 3 out of the 4 paths I felt like Three Hopes, like the original FE Warriors and Age of Calamity, got very repetitive in gameplay very fast. Everything else around Three Hopes (mostly just hanging with my buddies) was pretty fun though. On to my list of games that I played in 2022 that mostly came out years ago. I can’t remember whether I played Return of the Obra Dinn (Switch) last year or this year, but it would rank somewhere around #6 on this list. Honorable mentions to Bayonetta 1 (Switch), Persona 4 Arena Ultimax (PS4), FE Three Hopes (Switch), and Another Eden (iOS, a mobile gacha game that doesn’t require or even really incentivize spending any money and feels kind of like a mobile version of FF4/6, Chrono Trigger/Cross, etc.; good phone game that I played for a few months). 10. Loop Hero (Switch) Cool aesthetic with a font that reminds me of the old AD&D Gold Box Dragonlance games that I loved as a kid. It’s a mix of roguelite and autobattler and although the gameplay and strategy might not be that deep it was fun to slowly work through the meta-progression and the atmosphere of the game really sells the whole “slowly reconstruct your world” thing. 9. It Takes Two (PS5) I got back into console gaming with the Switch in 2020, a few months after moving in with my now-wife, who was not a gamer at all. We've now been working through co-op games together every few months or so, with some of the highlights from previous years being Broforce and Haven. We worked our way through It Takes Two soon after I picked up the PS5, and although some of the bosses were a bit demanding for her we managed to make it through all the way with some controller switching. The puzzles are the right level of challenging (except for one time when we got high and spent 2 hours trying to figure out how to get past one part; turns out we were trying to go where we had just came from  ) and the gameplay is varied and interesting. The story and characters are all incredibly dumb and annoying though, and the humans are definitely uncanny valley.8. Deathloop (PS5) I almost gave up on this after getting invaded and killed in the first part, before you unlock the ability to save stuff across loops. I then proceeded to die on the same stage multiple times in a row, in increasingly frustrating ways. The multiplayer was a bust for me, maybe because I jumped in over a year later and the only people left playing were 100% invisible and I would just die without any warning every time, but I eventually turned it off completely and enjoyed the rest of the game. Despite these problems, the core gameplay was a lot of fun and the concept was interesting, again giving some kind of justification for the whole meta-progression thing. The puzzles almost got annoying, especially when I was trying to kill the wolf guy without alerting anyone else, but I was able to make it through by mostly just following the markers and turning my brain off, which is a plus for this kind of game. 7. Astro’s Playroom (PS5) It’s something like only a 5-hour platinum and it’s capitalizing on nostalgia for two console generations that I skipped entirely, but Astro’s Playroom is just a lot of fun and it’s free with the console. The little gimmicks with all of the controller’s features are fun (mostly), reload times on dying are a couple of seconds, and everything is a nice cheerful celebration of gaming. 6. Monster Train (Switch) I jumped into Slay the Spire in 2020 or 2021 and blasted through a good 50 hours in a number of weeks, and then did the same thing with Monster Train this year (albeit only 35 hours or so, but in like two weeks). Not sure which one is better but if you liked Slay the Spire and you haven’t tried Monster Train yet, you should definitely give it a go. Strongly appeals to that part of my mind that likes coming up with combos and testing them out to see which ones work out in reality, and how to mold the deck to best take advantage of a mechanic. I’m a big fan of deckbuilders in general for both board games and video games, and Monster Train had a hold on me for a couple of weeks. I think I got up to around level 8-10 heat or whatever it’s called before losing interest and I’m not sure how much depth there is beyond a few obvious powerful decks that can steamroll, but the first few playthroughs with each new combo are really fun to figure out. 5. Portal Collection (Switch) I never played Portal 1 or 2 back in the day so jumped right on the collection for Switch. I can see how the idea was groundbreaking back in the day and even now the core gameplay holds up extremely well. Great example of teaching by doing rather by telling, and the developer commentary shows how much they were trying to follow those basic principles. I’m a former teacher and I wish more subjects were taught by building up competencies and knowledge piece by piece until you can see the whole matrix at once. If I have to choose only one game for the rankings I’ll go with Portal 1. Not sure if it’s my TV or the Switch port but it was really hard to make out the dialogue in Portal 2 and I think the point is that the characters are really witty and self-aware and so on but it missed for me because I couldn’t hear it. 4. NEO The World Ends With You (Switch) I played the original on my phone maybe about 5 years ago so I don’t know what the DS control scheme was like that everyone seemed to love. NEO has some obvious weaknesses, especially with how repetitive certain parts got, but the charm and style shines through and it’s brought together by some of the best voice acting performances I’ve heard in the past few years (rivaled only by my #1 and maybe FE Three Houses/Hopes). The gameplay is ok, the story is ok, but the characters play off each other really well and it still feels like a fresh take on a JRPG despite coming out 13 years after the original. 3. Inscryption (PS5) It seems like a lot of people were disappointed by the second half of this game but I loved it all the way through. Someone mentioned in the Inscryption thread that the game is set up really well to make you feel like you alone are a genius who discovered some overpowered combo to trivialize the game, and I think that’s very true. That kind of thing really appeals to me (see Monster Train) and I really enjoyed my run through the base game. I only just dipped my toes into the roguelike Kaycee’s Mod part, but I get the feeling that there may not be enough depth in the deckbuilding part to sustain a lot of interesting gameplay. Either way, the base game has an awesome atmosphere and the gameplay is more than interesting enough to sustain an amazing first playthrough. 2. Hades (PS5) This is another game that I came very close to giving up on through frustration (see Deathloop). I had gotten to the point where I was able to consistently make it to the final boss, but would then get wiped out without getting close to winning. This happened something like 6 times in a row where I would spend 30 minutes without too much challenge, just to get one practice run at learning the final boss patterns. I’m really glad I stuck with it long enough to learn the boss’s patterns and get that first win (aided by stumbling my way into a strong setup), because the game really opened up after that. I’m a couple of years late on this but Hades really is a masterpiece and the amount of unique dialogue lines (awesome voice acting, although the ask is a lot different than other games due to the setting so it’s hard to compare) and different playstyles kept it fresh for 50+ hours with the main limitation being my right thumb getting tired from leaning on Poseidon dash builds. To me the difference between Dead Cells (good) and Hades (great) was all the other stuff before and after each run that made me feel like dying on a run was not a failure but rather a chance to see who's hanging around the house and wants to chat and share a nectar/ambrosia. 1. Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade (PS5) Story time: FF7 PC port was one of the first JRPGs I was really aware of as a kid. I didn’t have a console other than original Game Boy until PS2, and my friends all had N64s instead of PS1s. I remember poring through the manual and box and thinking how badass Cloud was, and although the PC port was janky and I never finished the game until playing through it later on PS2, Midgar, the Buster Sword, and Cloud’s motorbike definitely cast a spell on me that sparked my interest in JRPGs and was probably a factor in me eventually moving to Japan for a few years after undergrad. All that to say that FF7 was pretty special to me, like it probably was for a lot of people on this forum around the same age. I skipped all of the “Extended Universe” stuff except Advent Children (Tifa’s fight was cool I guess?) and the random appearances of FF7 characters in Kingdom Hearts and other games, but I was getting the feeling that the characters were going in a different direction than I had remembered from the original game. Cloud being moody edgelord with a big cloak and folded arms, Aerith being the generic quiet healer, etc. I remember being extremely hyped at the Remake announcement, but also apprehensive that the charm and goofiness of the original game would be filed off and replaced with a more generic “gritty and mature” approach. I then tried my hardest to avoid all news about FF7R up to and after its release, to avoid biasing my own reactions when I eventually got to play it. When I first booted up FF7R on my new PS5, a few weeks after having finished my PhD and with the constant self-imposed stress, self-questioning, and self-criticism of the last 10 years finally dying down, I felt chills at the title screen and the theme music bringing me back to my teenage years. The chills lasted through walking around the Midgar slums vibing with the music and looking at the other sectors in the distance (skybox and not actually a super long draw distance, I know, but the effect worked), through hopping rooftops with Cloud and Aerith (one of the best scenes of the game), through searching every resident of every slum for the “This guy are sick” man (unfortunately couldn’t find him), and through the weird ending that I definitely didn’t remember from the original game (I guess it’s a “reimagining” and not a strict remake). I could list a few quibbles here and there, mostly related to the slum sidequests that seemed to be just there to pad the length out, but FF7R was pretty much as awesome as I could have ever imagined and I’m so relieved that the charm made it through. It felt like the entire game was a love letter to FF7, lovingly crafted by people who had similar experiences to me with the original game. I don’t remember all of the specifics from a game I played 20 years ago, but whatever changes were made, FF7R captured the same feelings that I felt back then and made them better. Barret is no longer a Mr. T caricature and he feels like a character that I can get behind in a way I didn’t as a kid, Cloud starts off as an overly serious “too cool for school” guy but he opens up when bantering with the Avalanche crew and especially with Aerith, and Aerith is the best part of basically every scene she’s in. Again, all of this is underpinned by fantastic voice acting (especially Aerith) that brings the characters to life. I don’t care that the “sanctity” of the original plot and script may not be followed moving forward; I care way more that FF7R evokes memories and feelings from a formative time in my life and rolls them all up in a package that’s a lot of fun to play through and experience. All of this is without even mentioning Intergrade, which added another 10 hours of hanging with an awesome character in Yuffie who didn’t have a ton to do in the original game, or the changes to the battle system to keep the classic ATB feeling but avoid waiting around for 10 seconds at a time with nothing to do. I’m not sure how well FF7R hits for people who don’t have the same connection to the original, but for me it was the easy #1 game of 2022 and an overall gaming experience that will be hard to top in the future. List: 10. Loop Hero 9. It Takes Two 8. Deathloop 7. Astro’s Playroom 6. Monster Train 5. Portal Collection (Portal 1) 4. NEO The World Ends With You 3. Inscryption 2. Hades 1. Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade
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Dec 30, 2022 21:11
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haveblue posted:When I read your #1 I'm done reading your post so make sure it's at the end I prefer lists that are written like recipes you find on internet food blogs. I need to hear about your 3 months in the Italian countryside to truly understand the list of your games.
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Dec 30, 2022 21:41
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Missed out on last year's thread to my great shame, so I'm definitely not missing this year's. 10. Resonance of Fate  I originally played this on the 360 when it first came out, but I never ended up finishing up, so I picked up the PC port and decided to just replay the entire thing. Really fun battle system that gets really tough, and it also has a pretty clever way to unlock the world map, where you have to lay down puzzle pieces to reveal unexplored locations. The story gets pretty inscrutable, but the interactions and banter between the main trio make up for it. The silliest part of the game is definitely the weapon customization, as seen in the above screenshot. Sadly, the guns don't look like that in-game, but it's still pretty addictive to come up with some monster design that is super optimized. 9. Homeworld Remastered  I've been meaning to play the Homeworld games for years, and while I did play Deserts of Kharak a couple years ago, I never got around to playing the first two games until now. The visuals in this game are stunning, and make every battle look like it's straight out of Star Wars or Battlestar Galactica. Speaking of which, I now can totally see how the 2004 BSG reboot was inspired by these games, from the space battles to even the UI. I'm definitely looking forward to Homeworld 3 now. 8. Overwatch 2  Can't believe I'm back on my bullshit in this game, but here we are. I like the format changes overall, and it's still a ton of fun to play as D.Va and bully the enemy team by charging into them with her mech. I've also been enjoying playing Kiriko a lot, and Pharah is still the closest I can get to playing Tribes again. (gently caress Blizzard's management, obviously.) 7. Final Fantasy VI Pixel Remaster  Never played VI until now, and I see why it's so highly regarded among the Final Fantasy games. The game still hold up really well, especially with the Pixel Remaster enhancements. It was really cool to see how VI was pretty ambitious for its time, and helped lay the foundation for future games in the series. 6. Girls' Frontline: Neural Cloud  Auto-chess games aren't usually my thing, but I'm a big fan of GFL, so I decided to give this a shot. I don't know how Neural Cloud's gameplay holds up against other games in the genre, but I'm pretty hooked. It's a lot of fun, and it's really helpful that this game is much easier to navigate than GFL. The story and characters have also been really good so far. It hits the right spot balancing cool miltech fiction, anime action, and occasional emotional despair that GFL is known for. Sol is the best girl. 5. Soul Hackers 2  I wasn't sure about this game initially because of all of the jank in it, but I ended up loving it. The mechanics aren't as deep as the mainline SMT games or Persona, but I still liked it enough. I loved the neon-cyberpunk style and designs, and the music has some really good bangers. The story isn't incredibly deep, but I was still invested in it. The cast was definitely the highlight for me, especially Ringo. Ringowns. I still need to do NG+ plus the DLC post-game stuff, so I'll probably revisit this next year. 4. Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children  If I did a 2021 GOTY post, this would have definitely been on it as well. While it may seem like an anime XCOM clone, Troubleshooter is quite different. Unlike a XCOM, you control a party of characters, not randomly generated soldiers, and each of them have their own unique skills and abilities. The customization is incredibly deep and I've spent hours building my team. While XCOM focuses more on small, tight engagements, battles in Troubleshooter can get massive, with dozens of units from multiple factions fighting it out on one map. And even with a very rough localization, the story and characters are some of the biggest highlights of the entire game. I'm invested in everyone stories, from the main characters to the random mooks you fight. Almost everyone has some kind of backstory and character motivation, and I love seeing how they all twist and clash with each other. Troubleshooter is a game that's clearly made with a lot of heart. The devs are constantly updating it with free content, and it got to the point where fans were begging them to release paid DLC so they could help continue supporting the game. I gladly dropped the money for the most recent DLC character and costumes, and I'm looking forward to seeing what comes next. 3. Neon White  Neon White is my favorite release of 2022 that I've played. It hit my Mirror's Edge buttons for not only parkour gameplay and time attacks, but it also has a super clean aesthetic that reminds me a bit of those games. The gameplay is very addictive, and once you think you have things figured out, a new enemy/weapon is introduced to mix things up and keep you on your toes. It feels incredibly satisfying to improve your time bit by bit, figuring out strategies and tech that will help shave milliseconds off your last run. I haven't felt this smart figuring out a game since Portal 2. The music is also fantastic, and helps me get into the zone of constantly doing runs over and over. And while it may be a hot take, I personally really liked the characters and writing. The cast is full of lovable morons and the game knows it, and there were points in the game where I would just go "Wow, they're really just going for that, huh?" The game is open about what it wants to be, and I respect that. This game would have ranked even if I just played it when it first came out, but I recently bought it for a friend during the holiday sale, and we're now competing to see who can get the best times on each level. As soon as one of us posts a new time, the other fires back with a better one, and it's been a constant back and forth. It's been a ton of fun, and that helped boost the game up in the rankings. 2. Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker  Unsurprisingly, FFXIV continues to be one of my favorite games of the year. The Endwalker campaign was a beautiful ending to the story arc that has been going on since the ARR relaunch, and I'm not afraid to admit that I got pretty emotional throughout it. I wasn't in the greatest spot when I was playing, and experiencing the story was something I needed in many different ways. The music continues to to be amazing as always, and I have a ton of fun discussing the game with online and offline friends. After the main story campaign, I've kept up with the latest content as it was released throughout the year, but I've done it at my own pace, which is something I always love about XIV. There have been times where I needed to take a break and step away, and that's perfectly fine. To that point, I'm currently on a break for the most part until the next content patch, but I still feel like the times I have played has been more than enough to put XIV near the top of my GOTY list. 1. NEO: The World Ends With You  I bought this on PS4 when it first came out last year, but I never got around to sit down and play it until now. NEO: TWEWY is a fantastic game with what I can only describe as really good vibes. The art is great, the music absolutely slaps, and everyone looks stylish as hell. The combat gets surprisingly deep for a system where each character gets assigned one attack, and some of the later fights are no joke. It's fun coming up with Pin decks and seeing what combos I could come up with. I also had a lot of fun buying new outfits for everyone to power them up, and even though you just see them in the menu, it's really cool to see each article of clothing have their own unique look that fits the brand they come from. The same goes for the different food you can eat. Even though the game doesn't have photorealistic looking food, they still look really tasty. I also love the way the game handles difficulty by implementing a risk/reward system where you can make fights harder for better and more loot. If I wanted to just experience the story I could lower the fight difficulty, but when I got in the mood to grind, I was able to crank up the difficulty and purposefully lower my health to get rarer drops. And on top of that, I can chain fights together to increase the experience pins get to make the them stronger. It's a very cool system, and I'm surprised more games haven't tried to do something similar. I was worried I wouldn't be interested in the story since I haven't played the original TWEWY in years, but I was plenty invested. The characters are great, and there are some really emotional moments throughout the game. NEO: TWEWY was overall a wonderful experience, and I highly recommend checking it out if you're a JRPG fan. Simplified list: 10. Resonance of Fate 9. Homeworld Remastered 8. Overwatch 2 7. Final Fantasy VI Pixel Remaster 6. Girls' Frontline: Neural Cloud 5. Soul Hackers 2 4. Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children 3. Neon White 2. Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker 1. NEO: The World Ends With You PunkBoy fucked around with this message at 22:01 on Dec 30, 2022 |
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Dec 30, 2022 21:48
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Hell yeah Astro's Playroom. I just got a PS5, and it's the first PlayStation I have ever owned. It was so interesting to play through a nostalgic celebration of a corporate history that I have zero sentimental attachment to.
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Dec 30, 2022 21:50
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What a year! Uh not for the world but for games. But it's tiring to say that every year. Uh not aout games but the world. Let's just talk escapism. Last year my list had 14 games scoring 80 or higher. This year? 18. And while no game was as all-around incredible as my GOTY of 2021, certainly there are all-timers on this list. How good was 2022 from a standpoint of supreme software selection? I think you could easily make a couple of completely different top 10s out of this list of games that I -didn't- get to this year: Card Shark, AI: The Nirvana Initiative, Atelier Sophie 2, Bayonetta 3, Freedom Planet 2, Not for Broadcast, OlliOlli World, Sifu, Powerslave: Exhumed, Monark, Far: Changing Tides, Ghostwire: Tokyo, Citizen Sleeper, Stranger of Paradise, Rune Factory 5, Weird West, Moss: Book 2, Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe, Haiku the Robot, Gedonia, Soundfall, The Centennial Case, Drainus, Hardspace: Shipbreaker, Rollerdrome, Fobia: St Dinfna Hotel, Jackbox 9, Yurukill, Time on Frog Island, Mothmen 1966, Soulstice, Metal Hellsinger, Lego Bricktales, Critters for Sale, As Dusk Falls, Hell Pie, Wayward Strand, Bear & Breakfast, Frogun, Thymesia, Spark the Electric Jester 3, Islets, I Was a Teenage Exocolonist, Shin-Chan: Me & the Professor on Summer Vacation, Trombone Champ, Shovel Knight Dig, Grounded, Moonscars, Asterigos, A Plague Tale: Requiem, Mario & Rabbids 2, Somerville, Monochrome Mobius, Evil West, Front Mission 1st, Gungrave GORE, Beneath Oresa, The Entropy Centre, Harmony's Odyssey, Lucy Dreaming, The Excavation of Hob's Barrow, Serial Cleaners, Curse Crackers, Lost in Play, Symphony of War, Freshly Frosted, FixFox, Sokobos, Blast Brigade, Patrick's Parabox, Nightmare Reaper, and Kharon's Crypt. Obviously, I missed out on a lot of great titles. But not for lack of trying, as I played, in total, 65 2022 releases this year. Before anyone says "what about"! Here's what I had no interest in playing this year: Dying Light 2, Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, Horizon: Forbidden West, Triangle Strategy, Babylon's Fall, GT7, Rogue Legacy 2, Evil Dead the Game, The Quarry, MH Sunbreak, Saints Row, Immortality, Ooblets, The Diofield Chronicle, Gotham Knights, New Tales from the Borderlands, Star Ocean 6, Sonic Frontiers, God of War Ragnarok, Pokemon Scarlet/Violet, The Callisto Protocol, Midnight Suns, Hello Neighbor 2 (or any Markpilier-bait for that matter), and High on Life. Still, I'm sure I missed something incredible that isn't in either of those two paragraph piles of games. That's how unfortunate indie visibility is these days. But hopefully my list and many others can shine a light on games people haven't heard of or would like to know more about.    Atlus truly made something special for the fifth mainline game in the SMT series. While IV felt like an odd sidestep that lacked a clear identity, V is absurdly confident. It's so confident that it's willing to trick the player into thinking it's going in a Persona-like direction, only to cruelly (but not unexpectedly) whip that rug right out from under your feet. Veteran SMT players knew to jump, then looked down upon landing to see the newbies and reviewers lying flat on their faces. In one of the more interesting settings I've seen for a JRPG, slaying god is not really the point. In fact, according to the deities of this game, the biblical god is already no more. What is left behind is essentially a power battle of the gods, with humans merely the ants scurrying underneath. What happens to the humans, the gods don't particularly care. When the player character fuses with a demifiend to become a Nahobino, the gods' only interest with them is because of their god-like power. That leaves the fate of the human race somewhat strange, as what is really being decided is the ultimate fate of the nature of the world. Will it become survival of the fittest? Will it take shelter under a protective authority? Will things remain as is? Or is there another way? These choices are largely made right at the end of the game, although that last option takes a little extra bit of doing. Which means for the most part, you don't have to worry about micromanaaging all your character's dialog choices, like, say, Strange Journey. Just answer however you feel. SMT mainline games aren't necessarily known for having the kinds of creative and imaginative dungeon themes as its spinoff series, so it was a very pleasant surprise for me to find that SMTV went the Skyward Sword route: the ENTIRE GAME is a dungeon. You travel through a ruined Tokyo, with each distrct its own cleverly designed dungeon of wasteland debris and collapsed buildings to scale. It's a really cool idea; the aesthetic works perfectly for the notorious low-ceiling Switch hardware, and the architecture is used to great effect to create verticality and tons of little nooks and corners to hide There is still demon fusion and negotiation of course, and everyone's favorite Press Turn system is back. These things are such a given that I almost don't feel they need commenting on compared to everything else that SMTV does that is so cool. But I will say two things: 1) the Essence system is an absolutely incredible innovation for the series and makes building your party an extremely flexible and frictionless affair. You'll always be able to set yourself up for success against bosses, as long as you've done some fusions and gathered some essences. 2) Every checkpoint you find has instant access to fusion, shopping, saving, party healing, and fast travel. This makes for a better pick-up-and-play experience than IV attempted to be on the 3DS (and bear in mind I did -like- IV!). Going from one checkpoint until you reach the next, you'll get a lot of battles in, pick up some sidequests, level you and your party up a bit, find some essences and Mimans, and be in a position where that next checkpoint is gonna be a nice time to do some new shopping and fusing. It's a very, very successful and addictive gameplay loop. Will SMTV ever get a PC release? It'd be nice, because I'd like more people to get their hands on this game. It runs sub-adequately on the Switch with lots of framerate drops. But even if it remains bound to the Switch, it is still absolutely worth getting your hands on it. It's one of the best JRPGs in years and definitely the best thing Atlus has put out on a long time.    Hi. Did you have a fondness for Another World? Play The Eternal Castle immediately. Just go do that thanks. Everyone else: holy poo poo this game is loving cool. Coolest thing I played this year. A jaw-droppingly beautiful blend of rotoscoping and CGA 4-color palette work, Eternal Castle is nothing but awesome setpieces and... well, the combat was bad in Another World and the combat in Eternal Castle is at least servicable and OK, so... I mean I didn't hate the combat, and that's the only thing that would have dropped Eternal Castle in my scoring. I guess visuals really can carry a game a long way. No but seriously, the gameplay is fine, which allows the incredible style to take front and center. Setpieces abound in this game, from fighting through a bar, to running for your life through the inky darkness as monsters chase you, strange and hyperkinetic boss encounters, just a wild loving trip. Every new level of this short-but-very-sweet game is a surprise and a delight. If you don't like 'cinematic platformers' though? Idk, just watch a Let's Play of it I guess?    Until the rapid run of awesome RPGs that crammed into this second half of the year, my top RPG this year was a 3DS remaster (I guess that makes sense, since a PSP remaster is in my top list, after all). The Alliance Alive comes from the somewhat beleaguered FuRyu, known as much for their flops (Monark, The Legend of Legacy) as their successes (Caligula Effect 2, Lost Dimension). When FuRyu does put the effort in, though, it pays off, and it pays off for The Alliance Alive. Some time after a cataclysmic event, the world's been separated by walls and chasms, as demons rule over the remaining humankind on Earth. One of their higher-ups decides to see what life is like in the human's world (with her butler in tow), and joins up with a couple of humans from a rebel squad, as the four of them learn about the true nature of the world (as will happen in a JRPG) and begin to build the titular alliance and fight back against their uncaring overlords. (I may have some details foggy since I played this back in the summer.) What excited me first about TAA was its SaGa style combat, and yep, it's SaGa. Sparks with new skills, skills that improve, nebulous and seemingly random stat gains after battle. There aren't Life Points in this game, but if a character goes down, enemies can continue to wail on them and this lowers their max HP until you the next time you rest-- the tradeoff being that you can revive them with any healing you have (like even a very basic heal spell will do the trick). The interface in particular reminded me quite a bit of Minstrels Song which immediately biased me towards liking the game. There's also a limit break of sorts that does massive damage but breaks the weapon you're carrying (characters can carry two into battle), so it's a major risk/reward scenario... either holding on to two weapons you're proficient in to have a range of skills available, or having a throwaway weapon just for the purposes of that big hit. Another interesting thing is the formation feature. Most JRPGs have formations, but you will learn formations over the course of the game that confer bonus stats based on positioning, and it's not always a tradeoff! Some you get are just rad. You gain additional formations (like you advance in a lot of ways) through establishing relations with the Guilds. There's a Guild for various categories, such as the Scout's Guild, Blacksmith's Guild, etc. And each one levels up as you add more NPCs to your ranks. No, this isn't Suikoden, but you can recruit a large number of NPCs in the world to joining your resistance, and then assigning them to a guild. As the guilds level up, you will unlock more items from shops, perks for the party, etc. Characters also have Talents which are passive perks you can unlock with Talent points gained from battles. Alliance Alive isn't the most expansive RPG (it was designed for a handheld system and its limitations, after all), but it's a fun adventure with an interesting cast, cool combat and old-school storytelling.    Certainly the most addictive game in my entire list (outside of maybe two specific titles in my top ten) was Dysmantle. 10tons' zombie survival game is not really so much about the zombies as it is completely obliterating people's houses and using the debris to craft as you level up and gain more recipes for stronger weapons to break harder materials and slowly make your way around the open world. The open world is not super exciting and has a bit of what I call "Generation Zero" syndrome where every house looks copy-pasted and the biomes are only vaguely different from each other outside of a hot zone and a cold zone. But getting stronger and breaking down larger and heavier things was a really satisfying loop. Like Katamari Demacy but instead of you getting bigger, the stuff you're able to destroy gets bigger. They've since added new DLC this year, but, I got 25 solid hours out of this and I don't want to get hooked on it again. Also shoutouts to Epidemic Sound for providing them the tune they use when you are on the train, 'Safe Trips', a song I've downloaded off of Epidemic Sound myself when I was thinking of using it in video content along with a dozen other 'sounds-like' pop tunes.    One of the more pleasant non-2022 games I played, a point and click adventure played with the gamepad that shows heavy Lucasarts influence while still being its own thing. Cleo wants to be an adventurer and gets her wish but it's a little more than she bargained for-- what is this am I writing the back of Goosebumps books now? gently caress I'm a hack. Anyway, it's nice looking, the puzzles are solid, the story is a fun adventure that even travels to the afterlife, and you can tell that the devs are fans of Monkey Island.    One of the more suprising games I discovered and really enjoyed that I've heard almost no one talk about, Sydney Hunter is sort of an arcadier La Mulana, nowhere near as brutal on the traps or as thinky on the puzzles, more just an explorey game in tombs that has some very light Metroidvania upgrades that you can use to go back to earlier levels and find more stuff, as well as explore more of the overworld map to get into new levels (which require a certain number of collectable skulls, so you also get some N64 collectathoning in there). As a treat the bosses are inspired by Mega Man boss design. And if you can handle the brutally shrill saw lead, the chiptune music is pretty good.    Though this is a game in my honorable mentions list, I do have quite a bit to say about it. Etrian Odyssey is a series I really love, SORT OF. See, the games have this illusion of all being at a consistently high quality, but because of the nature of the class builds from game to game, the music compositions always changing, the world design hopping back and forth between forever descending down vs open world, it's got a lot more peaks and valleys than you'd expect, or at least, you'll get some people who really love one over another. For example, I love EO3 the most, and EO4 I was cold on, despite most people loving EO4 -- although, just to be clear, EO4's first half battle tune is one of the greatest battle tunes of all time, easily easily easily. What makes EOV an upgrade over 4 is not just its return to the stratum-based dungeon diving (because honestly, the open world, despite adding more friction to the in and out nature of the game, was just a means to an end anyway), is its unique party builds. There are some wild classes in this one, and though not all of them work out, they are very interesting to experiment with and see what synergizes with your group. The closest to traditional classes are the punching Pugilist, the spellcasting Warlock, and the tanky Dragoon. But others include the Rover, who summons wolves and falcons onto the field to attack and heal/support, or the Harbinger, which fills the battlefield with miasmas and then attacks through the miasma to deal ailments along with damage, or the Necromancer, who summons the dead and then sacrifices them to spread buffs and debuffs or deal massive damage. Atlus has taken past classes, pulled them apart, rearranged everything, and remixed them into these new classes, and it really changes up the kinds of configurations you can put together, and what works best. I don't love V as much as III, but I do quite like it. I think the more experimental nature of the classes pays off as you'll likely have one or two new favorites to go with the traditional archetypes, and you can definitely break the game over your knee if you try. That said, some bosses were clearly designed for very specific party configurations, which means having to respec or create new characters and waiting for them to level up to everyone else's level (while EOV is generous with XP scaling as the other games have been, it's still a lengthy process), so it can be a little frustrating to have to go back to the drawing board. With only Nexus to go for me, I'm going to miss the Etrian series (seeing as we've gone the entire Switch lifetime without it, I'd say it's probably buried), and I do hope another developer can find similar magic outside of just Experience (while Undernauts is great, Operation Abyss.... hmm.) and the Wizardry train can keep on rolling.    In a theoretical year that didn't have TMNT: Shredder's Revenge, or a generation that didn't have Streets of Rage 4, Final Vendetta might have had a better reason to charge $25 for a one hour game. It prices itself alongside those games, but it doesn't match their quality. It is still quite vibrant and fluidly animated for a beat-em-up, and the ability to use a charge meter to do a super attack without taking damage, or taking damage to do the super attack without a charge, is an OK split down the middle. But the game is really nothing special. The characters are generic SoR/Final Fight archetypes and the movesets are not super deep. The final boss is, of course, horseshit, giving the game a Neo Geo beat-em-up feel (and, honestly, that may be what they were going for with the aesthetic in the first place). The really weird thing is that the characters wield weapons way clumsier than just attacking regularly. Usually weapons are a fun way to take enemies down faster, but here they make you slower, less accurate, and don't even do a ton of damage for the extra effort required. This is one you get in one of those Fanatical build-a-bundles like Fight'n'Rage and then you might enjoy it at that price.    Potion Permit is not a bad game but it is a flat game. You will probably have some fun playing it and then realize, oh, this game is really long, hmm. You arrive in town as an apothecary and find out that the town distrusts people from the capital because of an ecological accident that happened in the past. So you have to help the people in town and regain their trust over time. This is done by diagnosing the people in your clinic and brewing potions for their ailments. The brewing is no Atelier but it's decent fun, as ingredients are represented as tetrimino pieces to place on the board. Yep, it's a secret Inventory Tetris game (you thought Save Room was the only one?? there's also Backpack Hero!) to go along with the usual life sim antics such as fishing, friendships/relationships and gifting, light combat and harvesting/gathering. The biggest problem for me personally is that the story ends before the game does. You get to the bottom of the details behind the ecological accident, and then... the game just goes on like normal, and honestly I thought that maybe that was it, until I learned that there IS an ending, but you have to get almost all of the townspeople to MAX friendship level. And like most life sims, friendship meters only go up a little each day with a single gift and single talk to each NPC a day. Oofa doofa. If the dev makes another game they need to decide if they want to make a story focused life sim or a sandbox life sim, because this sits too inconveniently inbetween. And also HEAVILY RECONSIDER which characters are romanceable and which aren't, because. Yikes.    On the boundary of 'decent' and 'good' lies this peculiar spinoff of a game that has not been released yet. A prelude of sorts that sets up just a few characters that will be in Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, Rising opts for some simple side-scrolling ARPG fun over the Suikoden-style gameplay of the main game. This makes ECR feel a little like an early-era XBox Live Arcade game in terms of its limited ambition, but that doesn't mean it's without merits. Honestly, with better combat and exploration this could've been a pretty darn good game, but the general gameplay loop still manages to be pretty addictive, with you going on a run, then coming back to town and getting stamps on your stamp card and building up the town. Also it's a little gay, as a treat.    Most people who played the Resident Evil trilogy on the PlayStation grew to tolerate the game's weird form of inventory tetris, which limited what you could carry to what you could fit within a limited grid. Other sick freaks like myself, really loved the puzzly aspect of fitting everything together. Enter Save Room, a puzzle game specifically designed as tribute to the Resident Evil inventory menus, in which you are given a series of different inventory grids and weapon/item loadouts, and have to figure out how to fit everything in. This means more than just moving and manipulating the pieces, but also doing the same actions you would do in Resident Evil to scale down, such as reloading weapons with ammo, and combining herbs together to make healing potions. It's a very short game but it's also very cheap at just $3, which is certainly worth the asking price for an hour or two of jamming weapons and plants into your.... pocket??? Backpack????    If Save Room didn't quench your thirst for Resident Evil tributes, Nightmare of Decay is an easy five bucks for a 3-4 hour first person RE1 experience that is authentic to the game design of the classics. It's got the same maze-style of mansion, the same kinds of puzzles and locked doors with theming, and of course, requires careful conservation of ammo, although with the first person perspective, it's certainly a lot easier to aim. It's no replacement for the originals, but it's a fun way to spend a night. Lastly, some non-2022 games that I don't have much to say about, but I did enjoy them: Cyber Shadow, No Straight Roads, Ghost of a Tale, The Signifier, Battle Circuit (yes the 1996 arcade game), Some Distant Memory, Song of Farca, MindSeize, Toree 3D, The World Next Door, SuperEpic (not related to UnEpic, thank goodness), Panzer Paladin, Mummy Sandbox, Serial Cleaner, Radical Rabbit Stew, Room to Grow, Prodigal, Wytchwood, Bad End Theater, Night Reverie, Lucifer Within Us, Blacksad: Under the Skin, Infinite Adventures, Guacamelee 2, Gamedec, Okinawa Rush, Castle on the Coast, House Flipper, Trails in the Sky 3rd, New Pokemon Snap, Popo's Tower, Maiden & Spell, Pocket Watch Alright, now onto the ranked entries! I had to break this apart into three posts so you're (Hydraulic Press guy's voice) going to have to deal with it.   This year's been interesting for spinoff games. Legends: Arceus tried to take a completely different approach to the Pokemon game structure, and Treasures throws out Dragon Quest's turn-based combat and globe-spanning adventuring for support-based archery and treasure excavation. And it works, for the most part! Setting out to whatever island you want, playing hot-or-cold to find treasure chests, checking off a few quests, and then heading back home to see what you've unearthed, it's a solid gameplay loop. It's fun to see bejeweled statues of classic Dragon Quest heroes and sidekicks from prior games, as well as esoteric items like a DQ eraser set, or a series of collectible card game cards. There's a lot of issues I have with the game, such as its limited roster of recruitable monsters, its combat being ultimately pretty mediocre, fast travel limited to a rare item, and worlds that don't have enough content to them. These are things that I hope can be addressed in the sequel that is teased after the credits. There's potential here for yet another DQ spinoff series to flourish, as Builders and Heroes have.    One of a few Sokpop titles to crack my top 50 this year, Guardener is their take on base defense, and it involves planting and harvesting your own defenses. As you buy and plant seeds, they will sprout into helpful little workers that assist you on your farm, or help defend it against waves of enemies that come several times a day. It's a simple formula that is enjoyable and like all Sokpop games, it has a cute aesthetic, a cheap price point and will only take you an afternoon to finish.    A first-person puzzler that may have somewhat lo-fi and simplistic visuals, but not to worry; the puzzles are the star here. There's all sorts of inventive puzzle types in the game, from mazes that involve rotating rooms and eventually flipping the whole thing upsidedown, to sliding blocks that form a bridge for you later, to a bizarre shape-based language that you'll need to take notes on that serve as coordinates and passwords. It's not the most exciting game on my list, but it's no less a solid puzzle experience in a year that was relatively light on them. And 100%ing it will require all of your brain cells to work in harmony.   There is no more iconic "podcast game" than a music-less game about spraying down mud-covered vehicles and buildings for hours... and also unraveling and stopping a plot to destroy the world? Yes, you might be surprised to here there's more plot than you would expect for a game that is just blasting a hose at a ferris wheel, but there's a lot of lore dumping going on in the intro to every level as well as the little snippets of dialog you get from the clients you work for. It really does get that high of stakes. And if, somehow, you haven't had enough after saving the Earth, the developer has included several extra levels for the community such as an entire miniature golf course. I would put the game higher if the game was just a little more forgiving on hitting that 100% sometimes. There are times where even with the 'spot finder' button, no remaining dirt will actually be highlighted because you've gotten rid of so much of it. So you just spray at what looks like a completely clean part, until it just suddenly turns to 100%. To be clear, this is more of an issue with smaller objects than large walls. But it's still frustrating! Just round up a little more, please.    A cozy game about a woman who intentionally crashes her ship to avoid her responsibilities, who then helps out a bunch of other people on the planet with their anxieties, while harvesting a bunch of material in order to find the ship parts needed to fix her ship and get back home. Sort of a Shorthike..like? But for harvesting? Where you have a raygun that blasts rocks and trees into a couple of different types of crafting items (it's kept very simple) that can upgrade your movement speed, blaster strength and stamina, and allow you to get to new areas -- not in a Metroidvania way, just a pure power way. You also get upgrades from the local shop, and can convert ingredients into currency if you have a surplus. It's got a relaxing vibe to it, and it's also only a few hours long so it's not a major grindfest. Yeah, the back half of my list has got a lot of "pleasant afternoon killers" in it. Nothing wrong with that, right?    A smart and fascinating narrative game that is unfortunately kneecaped in one important area. Eternal Threads is a time traveling bit of voyeurism where you have to fix a screwup in history by altering decisions that people make in order to ensure their survival. What starts as an apartment in flames with everyone dead, can change to... well, still an apartment in flames, but maybe everyone got out of there instead! What makes ET interesting is just how flexible it is with its timeline. This is a game where a lot of choices DO matter, as they impact what characters will be doing later on, who they might run into, what later decisions they might make. While the characters aren't all endearing, they're all fully realized and it is generally worth seeing their whole story, and yes, you can save all of them AND give them an ideal ending. What holds the game back is, sadly, the dialog, which is a major component of the game. See, similar to Tacoma or The Invisible Hours, you watch a lot of scenes play out in real-time that you can walk around in, like immersive theater. And so the performances of the actors is pretty critical. And, unfortunately, a lot of the writing just fails to feel organic. It has the stiff, mechanical feeling of a first draft, with characters attempting to crack humor that isn't actually funny, with the respondant offering a small bit of sarcasm in response. The acting sometimes attempts to overlay but otherwise sounds like people speaking their lines individually in separate recording sessions. I think it's worth playing, but "games that are good that could've been great" is a bit of a theme with a good portion of my top 50, and this is certainly one of them.    It is finally time for the escape room genre to have its time in the sun, although Academy still has a bit of learning to do before its next semester. EA puts you in an absurdly dangerous school where every teacher seems to be hell bent on killing their students with various hazardous escape rooms, of which you (and/or friends) will have the customary time limit to go through the room and solve its many puzzles before poison gas or lethal levels of heat or rising floodwaters consume you. As a AA experience, Escape Academy gets a nice little budget to have some very polished looking rooms and a similarly pleasant visual novel aesthetic for the story cutscenes, each of which lasts about 5 seconds. And really, I found that kind of disappointing. Because the air of everpresent lethality could make for a very entertaining Danganronpa-esque romp with a lot of quirky characters and skits... but every cutscene in the game ends almost as soon as it starts, and the main character (you) has no dialog. Though for those who just want a pure escape room experience, you do mostly get that here. Compared to last year's Escape Simulator, Escape Academy's rooms are a bit on the easier side, and definitely made to be a bit more accessible, with only necessary objejcts interactable. But, again, that can definitely be to the benefit of some people. If you prefer not to juggle through a bunch of useless objects, then this game will satisfy you. And the themes of the rooms are definitely fun. Although Escape Simulator's very flexible creation toolkit is a major feature Academy lacks, given Simulator's huge community repository of user-made rooms with all sorts of bells & whistles. It's the kind of game that could definitely rise to the next level with a sequel, and I'll look forward to seeing if that happens. It gives you the essential escape room experience with good polish and fun themes. As a Gamepass title, it's definitely worth playing before it eventually leaves the service.    Although not nearly on the level of other retro shooters this year, Forgive Me Father still has a lot to offer. It's got a cool EC Comics style to it, with enemies whose wardrobes will change from level to level, even the grunts. Your adventure takes you all over the map, from city rooftops to industrial factories to cosmic labyrinths. The game suffers a little from a couple of things that may have been the result of going through the Early Access process. There are a bit too many levels in the game, and a couple of them have sections that are way too tough for the lack of a proper quicksave system. Oh, the game claims it has quicksave, but, it don't. It has checkpoints that you can save at, and that's that. (Maybe a future update will rectify this?) If I had to take Prodeus' revive system or Forgive Me Father's sparser checkpoints, I'd take Prodeus every time. But the guns, while mixed, have some decent punch to them and really fun upgrades that allow you to either make them traditionally stronger weapons or stranger fleshy creepy weapons that can make them explosive or energy based. And when you're in the groove, it's quite fun. It's just the most inconsistent shooter on my list.    Another afternoon-killer that is surprisingly decent, System Purge is a 2D avoid-em-up platformer where you play a witch girl whose mentor has gotten kidnapped after the two have fallen into an abandoned facility full of deadly traps. This may look like a 'rage' game by the fact that traps are seemingly everywhere in every room you enter, but I found that System Purge was actually very fair in its design. For example, the floor traps that swipe up and snap to crush you give you more than ample time from the initial visual tell to jump out of the way. Any laser that blasts in your direction is only lethal for a couple of frames. Ceiling crushers light up the floor before they're about to slam down. There's even an underwater portion where the traps take longer to activate, to account for your slower movement. At no point will a death be the game's fault. There are seven sectors to hurry through, most with their own new gimmick added on to the existing traps. One stage is all about darkness and light-up floors; another is about lasers that home in on you before firing, while another brings in enemies who chase you as you still have to dodge other extant hazards. While I was disappointed that the additions ended at the sixth sector, there's more than enough variety on display to last a 2 hour game. With a regular price of $5, System Purge is a pretty easy sell. At sales time it's a no brainer, if you like navigating perilous levels, but don't want Kaizo difficulty.    Zeboyd is one of the most consistent indie JRPG developers. Their games aren't at the peak of the genre (although I think Cosmic Star Heroine is quite good), but you're generally going to have a fun time playing them and they're not super long and often quite silly. And This Way Madness Lies definitely lines up with that. Oh I buried the lede I guess. It's a Shakespeare magical girl RPG. That's probably important to mention. You play a group of high schoolers putting on Shakespearean plays that use their magical powers to travel into the worlds of the plays to stop an unknown threat from corrupting them, making up the primary chapters of the game. These threats occasionally even enter the real world during slice-of-life skits. Which gives the game the feeling of compressing an entire 26 episode season of a magical girl anime into a single JRPG. Carrying the combat over from Cosmic Star Heroine, your fighters don't have mana/MP, but instead skills that are consumed and then must be recharged via spending a turn to rest. There are also Chrono Trigger-style Unite skills that either do significant damage or provide a buff. Some of the girls specialize in offense, from physical attackers to AOE magic casters, to buff and ailment support users. It's a little dorky but earnest and enjoyable in what it sets out to do. One highlight is a character that seems to only ever want to speak in sports metaphors and terminology. One thing that did bother me is that the game forces party configurations on you, a lot, and these configurations don't always synergize well, leading to some battles taking quite a lot longer than they should. I also found the music to be, honestly, kind of annoying and earwormy in a bad way. Just didn't fit the vibe of a magical girl game like everything else, to me.   I honestly never thought I'd put any Shadow Warrior game on a top list, with how much I disliked the original Build game and then disliked the revival of the series even more. The repetitive level design, killbox arenas, and overall lack of iteration or enemy variety, along with my disappointment in Hard Reset made me think that Flying Wild Hog's output was never going to resonate with me. So why did a clearly low budget third entry with the same characteristic bad humor and jank place this high? Well, SW3 decided that rather than keeping on its usual path, they'd try to take after Doom Eternal. Which means that the campaign design is no longer flat corridors to flat box arenas, but ascending/descending platformer paths that lead to fun shooting arenas patterned more like traditional multiplayer deathmatch maps. Though, due to its low budget, such paths to arenas are just linear paths by another name, although they definitely utilize more setpieces and silly stunts than the first two games have. Look, is it as good as Doom Eternal? Absolutely not. Is it the first Shadow Warrior that I found to be actually fun? Yes. The game utilizes fun synergy in how dispatching enemies in one way feeds into your ability to dispatch a different enemy another way, and with you jumping and zipping around slicing and shooting, while activating traps that absolutely clobber goons, combat has a really nice flow to it. I played it via Playstation Plus Premium, but I know a lot of people don't roll with that... so, I don't know about buying it sight unseen, but if it ever shows up on Gamepass, it's definitely worth a play for a B-game experience. Well... a C-game experience that is still pretty fun.    While I found that this year had an incredible amount of solid titles, the one genre that felt the weakest was unfortunately my favorite genre, the Metroidvania. Now, I'm not going to yet again regale you with my irritating gatekeeping over what counts as a Metroidvania or not, but it is irritating that I never know whether a game with the Metroidvania tag on Steam actually is one, or just happens to be open world, or just happens to have some exploration. Itorah sort of falls into a rare third category, which is "game that technically qualifies as a Metroidvania without having an open world OR exploration". That doesn't mean it's a bad game, and actually, there's things about it that work quite well. It has a gorgeous Vanillaware-inspired aesthetic, with Mesoamerican theming and a solid mix of cut-out and traditional animation. You carry around a talking axe and so your attacks are slower (though a lot faster than you'd expect a greataxe to be swung around) but still decently crunchy. But it is not going to satisfy people who enjoy Metroidvanias for their non-linear nature, or sequence breaking, or finding cool upgrades in hidden areas. It is an extremely linear game that gives you ability/movement upgrades right before you absolutely need them, and sends you in very specific directions at all times. You can upgrade your HP, attack power and healing efficacy in town, but you won't be finding super missiles or health extensions in the wild. Just chests with different types of currency. Ultimately it's a game to buy on sale, and if you do, you'll have a decent time with it. There are better Metroidvanias on this list however that feel truer to the spirit of the genre. This is more just a cleverly disguised linear platformer. But the art and setting make it worth a playthrough, I think.    Being a part of the royal family on Earth is pretty boring, I imagine, compared to being one in a universe where FTL travel exists and warlords rule over space and your own house members may be supplying them and causing all sorts of space genocides. I mean, yeah that sounds kind of like America but we're not talking about that, we're talking royal family!! The people from the olde sideways brit world who usually you just associate with being irrelevant and racist (and recently, dying). Princess Love wants out, now that her mother has mysteriously abdicated her throne to her. But too bad! She's gotta deal with assassination attempts and intrigue when a routine stop at a lighthouse station becomes the site of a nerve gas attack. Blood Nova controls similarly to Norco, with a first-person point and click interface and a map in the lower right corner. It is not, however, a game with the size or scope of Norco, as its presentation is a lot lower budget. Certainly not ugly, however, as it has a cool "90s VGA" aesthetic and it is designed to be as frictionless as possible. Everything is handled with the single mouse click, including advancing cutscene text. Unlike Norco (which is far more focused on story and prose), inventory puzzling is the primary focus in Blood Nova, and you'll be combining things, using things on things, finding passcodes and using them, etc. The worldbuilding just throws you into the deep end and it's not always clear, not helped by characters that speak in overflowingly surreal metaphors, and sequences that feel dreamlike and unstuck in time and space. With a larger budget and a bit more attention to detail on the narration, I think this could've been a bigger hit, since I do think the constant quick cuts and lack of animation hurt the game as much as they help speed things along. Still, an intriguing sci-fi adventure and fun to play through. --------------- And that's where pt 1 of my list stops. I will give a bit of breathing room so as not to make this page take a year to scroll through, and come back with part 2 on the next page! The 7th Guest fucked around with this message at 22:18 on Dec 30, 2022 |
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Stupid Opinion Zone Ahead - I have bad taste and I know it. Also I haven't played too many games this year I guess... lots of these are from previous years. Honorable Mentions Tiny Tina's Wonderlands What a silly, joyful game this was! I played it with my daughters in multiplayer and the three of us absolutely loved the thing to bits. It's not on my list of favorites because it's a pretty boring slog as a single-player game, though... and the majority of the humor came from my 12-year-old naming her wyvern pal "Farty Fart" and ordering him around. Heh. Gedonia Almost put this one on the list instead of STALKER, since I technically played it for longer in 2022. Missed my top 10 because it's buggy and unbalanced for now. Gedonia is an open-ish world singleplayer game made by one guy. The sell is that you can be anything you want - it's got a point-buy skill system and lets you slot abilities you buy. So you can create a super-powerful character... or end up gimping yourself horribly. You have a lot of points to play with, but the game has a fairly defined beginning / middle / end / postgame in terms of difficulty and a build that rocked earlygame can end up in a bad place later on. It would be higher up but I had to cheat to finish it - I didn't know where to put my points and didn't fancy a second restart. Several of the bosses punish melee fighters way too much and many skills are actively useless. Given that it's a single developer, it's an amazing feat, though! It's on sale, and I highly recommend it at the sub-15-dollar price point it's currently at. Exploration is rewarding, combat doesn't suck, quests are fine, respawn exists (so you can always go grind), and there are even flying mounts. gently caress You World Of Warcraft I hate this game. I love this game. I hate this game. I have a long and complex relationship with this game. I've been playing off and on for a very long time, since the friends and family alpha. I'm the reason some QoL features are in the game. When it hit retail, I took a week off of work. I've made lifelong friends from this game. Also, I hate this game. It's creaking under the weight of bad code from 20 years ago. The graphics are terrible compared to similar games. The story is... I dunno, is there a story? I've skipped cutscenes since before Hunter was a class in the game. Don't at me, videogame writing is Bad. The combat is boring, the quests suck, and exploration isn't rewarded. Add to that the most toxic player base in any MMO, and the fact that the only thing to do at max level is get screamed at for not pushing "mythic keys" faster fasTER FASTER" and uh I love this game because I sit down, make a new monk or whatever, slap on my heirlooms and go tank or heal a low level dungeon. I can spend an evening quite happily healing new players and learning some nuance of holy paladin. The fact that most of these players are "bad" is a selling point; I've been healing and tanking in this game for decades now so I enjoy the challenge (I'm also the idiot who loves LFR for this reason). No game captures the drop-in coop of WoW. I have been offtank in a progression raiding guild. I have been top heals in the top guild on the server. I'm done with being sweaty and competitive and precise now; I am old, I have kids, and I just want to relax. WoW doesn't have much to offer on that front, though. FF14 has thousands of things to do as a solo relaxer-type player - Golden Saucer games, Chocobo races, fashion chasing, dungeon roulette, treasure maps, mount farming, island building, crafting, and just hanging out. Too bad I just can't get into it. It's just so... on rails. But the moral of the story is gently caress WoW. Games I Didn't Play But Totally Would Have Put On My List Xenosaga - I don't own a Switch. But holy poo poo this game looks like it would have been my GOTY. Pentiment - Just bought it. Total Warhams II or III - Never played this series but there's a great goonthread on how to play. Cannot wait. Triangle Strategy - Bought it based on this thread. Thanks Goons (thoons). Tekken 7 - Just picked this one up on sale. Panda time! Nioh 1 / 2 - Oh man, I can already tell I'm going to love these. It's like Souls, with more mechanics to employ. Games I Did Play That Really Sucked Persona 4 - I think I'm done with basic JRPGs. Nothing about these teenagers interested me. Trails From Zero - Same as above. I'm really glad other people like these games, though! And I mean that. I dislike the genre but I enjoy watching Let's Plays or speedruns of these sorts of Final Fantasy type games since I'll never play them myself. Blacksad - God, I love Blacksad. If you, also, love Blacksad, please do not buy this game. Holy poo poo. Gordian Quest - A roguelike (with associated permadeath)... on a 30+ hour campaign. The gently caress you say? Yeah, I died at hour 35. Tiny Thursday's Wonderlands (Top Ten) 10. STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl (Steam, 2007) I'm (very) late to the party on this one. I have had this thing installed forever, but never got into it. The beginning of the game is both incredibly punishing and incredibly frustrating. Its graphics were dated when it was launched. The gunplay feels weak and your character feels awkward. I modded it up with the advice from the goonthread this time, though, and created a kind of... sliding difficulty scale for myself where NPCs in the first zone did 50% damage, second 60%, etc. This enabled a smoother difficulty curve and let me learn mechanics and get items. The game is on this list because it is atmospheric as hell. It looks like a PS1 game but I'll be damned if I didn't jump / scream when I was scouring a creepy dungeon in the dark and some mutant thing slobbered out of the dark and ate my head. Most people have already played this one, or bounced off of it. I'm probably the only person on Earth starting this for the first time in 2022. But I recommend it (with mods!) if you have some spare time. Mod yourself into invulnerability for a few hours until you learn the game and the rules - otherwise it's just a bunch of savescumming. If you don't know where the powerful items are stashed, you're in for a bad time on the first map. STALKER is not a good game, but, it is a game with a lot of love behind it. It's the kind of game that - I suspect - was old and janky when it first came out. I don't know what engine it's using, but the feedback is floaty and weird. You can slowly crouch-walk up to a doorway, peer in and get your head blown off instantly because ???. Mobs are either psychic or idiots. Guns don't feel good to fire, not in the way that any other gun game is. Graphics look a bit like Quake - better than the original Doom, but only one generation. Yet there's something about this game. The blankness of the world lets you kind of step into it, in a way a lot of modern games do not. It would be real nice if there were a single female character in their world, but, hey, it is what it is. Even with that, though, it sucks you in in an inexplicable way - much like the Zone itself. 9.Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 I am the WORST at shootgames. I have not played any Call of Duty games before. But for some stupid reason I bought this game. The DMZ mode is some of the most fun I've had in a game in a long time. It's a PvPvE style mode where you can have multiple games in a row where you don't see another player, and then suddenly get destroyed by a sweaty six-stack camping the exfil. This mode is fun to play solo - because you have to be smart and stealthy and lucky. It's also fun to play with randoms - because they run around like morons and you can try to herd them or ignore them. Or, sometimes they herd you and you end up learning something new as some 14-year-old kid one-shots a boss you didn't know was there and he gives you the loot because he already has it. And it's super fun to play in a stack because you can roll over any other groups. DMZ has been some of the best emergent gameplay I've ever seen. I do not recommend this game unless you already know you like CoD (in which case you already own this I'm sure). I can't pretend it's good. The bugs are legendary; this is my first CoD as mentioned and if it was even a fraction as buggy before, it's unacceptable. At launch it did not work with NVidia graphics cards. NVidia had to throw a hotfix out for them; before that you had to manually downgrade your driver (thank goodness I do not use the lovely "nvidia experience" spyware poo poo). Even with that "fix" the game crashes, hangs, and even - twice - BLUESCREENED. I have not seen an Access Violation in almost two decades. I still have frequent game-breaking bugs, and have not been able to finish the campaign mode (playing on easiest difficulty! I'm old! and bad! my wife makes fun of me!) because the helicopter mission crashes. To make matters worse, the DMZ counts every disconnect as a total loss, and there's no reconnect. Considering you lose those items permanently (kind of), that's a rough chuckle. But my god, exfil on a helicopter with a random dude while the poison gas closes in literally around our feet as we lift off, both of us screaming and laughing on voice chat and whooping and hollering... yeah it's reeeeaaaal good when it works. 8. Among Us I adore low-stakes social games like Mafia / Werewolf, and Among Us is the videogame equivalent of those games. The game itself is not any great shakes, but it's obviously a labor of love. I appreciate the silly art style, the lack of monetization, the fact that it's free on mobile, and the responsiveness of the developer. In a world where many of us still work from home, this was a great way to connect with people. It's on my list not because it's some great groundbreaking game, but because I have wonderful memories of flinging friends out an airlock when we all ended up geographically dispersed in the pandemic. 7. Shandalar (M:tG) Shandalar is an ancient, wheezing Microprose creation from nineteen-ninety-seven. The game includes cards from a handful of original Magic: the Gathering sets, which is back when I played. You create your wizard and pick your base deck color (it's green) and are dropped into an overland map of copy-and-paste towns and dungeons. Mobs roam the map and attack you via a M:tG duel. You can accept "quests" from the village elders - some as simple as "go to this other town". There is exactly zero depth to this game and there are no decisions and there is no dialog. Yet I keep coming back to this thing. Shandalar messes with the basic rules of M:tG a bit. You can get bonuses to your health, and end the game with a ridiculous 99 life points. With this, you have space to build silly decks that would never see play in a real M:tG game. It's wonderful because of this. A deck based on Lord of the Pit? Sure! Scrub Sprites and Llanowar Elves hit with Giant Growth as your only creatures? Why not? I play this game in TYOOL 2022 because it's a way to reconnect with my childhood and play cards other than Mox Emerald / Channel / Fireball or whatever. Since you can farm lifepoints, you can literally outlevel the enemies and therefore play a fuckery-style deck. 6. Wildermyth This is a simple turn-based game with three classes and limited options for growth. The mechanics are somewhat unbalanced and the combats can get repetitive since there aren't many different combinations to use. However... the story and characters and events are all incredible. Although they're randomized, the game has some serious writing chops and later scenes reference earlier decisions you've made. I can't explain it, but the story ends up more compelling than pre-written stories. It helps with the gravitas that your characters interact with each other, have personalities, and grow old / die. You get to know these folks in a series of short vignettes that interplay beautifully. The gameplay isn't great and I can't explain how a series of randomized story vignettes about randomized characters makes you care... but it does. When it clicks together it's gorgeous and impactful. 5. Skyrim (still) PB is still hovering around 300 hours, I still love this loving game so much. 4. Tainted Grail A card battler / roguelike-- wait, stop! This one's good! Tainted Grail is based on a world from a board game I've never played. There are nine classes in this game, representing three archetypes. The cool thing is that each archetype uses basically the same deck of available cards - with one mechanical difference. For example, one archer type gains power with each arrow fired. A second gains power with each arrow discarded. This small change dramatically alters your playstyle. Since each archetype uses the same deck, though, you can switch classes more freely without having to learn all-new cards. It's genius. It's unbalanced and definitely not as precise as StS. But it's more fun IMO. You can build hilariously OP decks and have 10k+ damage turns. A fun game to play if you want a card battler that doesn't require as much precision as StS. 3. Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen Just like Skyrim, I love this game and keep coming back to it. Dogma is great. We're supposed to get a sequel (finally) in 2023, but I'll believe it when I see it. Fun (stupid) fact: I've bought this game seven times on various platforms for friends because I love it that much. 2. Marvel Midnight Suns I'm the weird who loved this one to bits. Midnight Suns is an insane mashup of Barbie Dress-Up and precision card battler with superheroes. It appealed to no one. Fans of superheroes don't want a game where people talk about feelings. Fans of dress-up don't want a game where you have to calculate the precise angle to web-grab a robot monster to fling it into an exploding barrel. Except, I do! The card battling system is unique and fun. You don't have movement points; instead you can move anywhere you like and use hero points to use the environment to deal extra damage with your limited card plays. You build your own decks for each hero, and each plays differently. I get why this game won't be on many lists, but it's honestly the perfect game for me. When I get tired of FIGHT MANS, I can hang out with Spider-Man. When I get bored with talking about superheroes, I can explore a weird mysterious Abbey. When I get bored of being alone, it's back to FIGHT MANS. And the FIGHT MANS part of this game is so loving good. It's so good. It's the best turn-based system I've yet seen. 1. Elden Ring Everyone loved this one. I did, too. I haven't beaten it yet but it's pretty much perfect except for the cheats / exploits. I can't word good so I won't bother to try to explain how much of an impact this game had on my life this year. I haven't played a video game like this since WoW came out. And I'm barely 1/4 of the way through. And and, I'm terrible. I mean... terrible. Thursday Next fucked around with this message at 21:51 on Jan 5, 2023 |
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Dec 30, 2022 22:08
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oh god more than 50
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Dec 30, 2022 22:09
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7th Guest has posted. It is officially the GOTY thread 
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Dec 30, 2022 22:14
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I didn't do as good a job this year keeping track of what I played as I have in previous years, so I don't have a full top ten, but my number one was such a transcendent experience for me personally that I still felt like I had to submit a list. 5. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 My only real gripe with this game is that I don't feel like they quite laid the track properly for where the ending ended up going. Other than that, it's a great expression of the Xenoblade formula as it's developed to this point, with a bunch of really solid party members (Eunie is the best) and some genuinely interesting and engaging twists and turns in the main story. 4. Citizen Sleeper I got this on sale while I was playing Cyberpunk and tried it out a little to see what was what, expecting to go right back to Cyberpunk after 15-20 minutes of poking around. I ended up sticking with it and playing through until I hit an ending. A delightful, flavorful, well-written game that I hope is able to stand out and afford the devs some success. 3. Stellaris Somehow marijuana was what I needed to finally understand 4x games, and I spent, per Steam, 300+ hours in this game this year, all of which was between September and November. I had a great time making new empires, starting games on the easiest difficulty and repeatedly getting owned until I actually learned how the various systems interacted, at which point I generated a medium galaxy and actually finished a game, which is something I rarely, if ever, do in this genre. 2. Cyberpunk 2077 I skipped this at launch like many other people, and picked it up this year when it went on sale during Edgerunner's premiere like many other people. And, like many other people, I discovered that this game actually rips. Night City is well-realized, the story is knotty and moving (I still think about poor, doomed Evelyn), and after I finished it I did what I usually don't do and dove right back in, then bought it again on PS5 when my PC died just because I wanted to play it some more. It's not flawless; the weapon and armor system is nearly ruinous and if my first character hadn't been using quickhacks (and thus bypassing most of the cruft of having to sort through endless screens of identical lovely guns and knives) I might have been more put off. As it is the good highly outweighs the bad for me, personally, and I'm looking forward to the expansion. 1. Elden Ring My history with Souls games is this: I bought Bloodborne many years ago, one of the first games I got when I got around to getting a PS4, and bounced off of it hard. I revisited it maybe a year later and it clicked but unfortunately I also made the mistake of googling what kinds of enemies were in the game because in the intervening time I had heard that the Souls games had big ol' spiders, which I have a huge problem with in video games. Then, at some point this year or maybe last (what is time) I tried out Sekiro and once again bounced off of it. This gave me a bit of familiarity with the style (bolstered by playing games that cribbed from it, such as Hollow Knight, or were straight up ripping it off, such as a few hours of The Surge), and so I figured I might as well try out Elden Ring when it went on sale. It turns out it's the game I've been waiting for all my life. I grew up playing PS1 RPGs with pre-rendered backgrounds, where if you saw something on the screen there wasn't much chance you could interact with it or, in the case of buildings or backdrops, actually go there. Now, you generally can; open-world games are all the range, the promise being if you see something off on the horizon, you can probably go there and see what's up. Your Fallouts, your Skyrims, Piranha Bytes' games, Horizon: Zero Dawn and Forbidden West...you get the gist. The problem is, in a lot of these games, the difficulty is so flattened out, and the creativity on display is so surface, that making the journey is rarely interesting, or worth the effort. Not so Elden Ring. Not only is the journey worth the effort, for the lore you learn, the situations you come across, the staggering vistas, the monstrous creatures, the sheer number of moments of "what the gently caress is that?", not only is the effort is worth the effort, but the effort is actually effort. I can vividly remember standing on the edge of a cliff, looking down over a landscape, triangulating where I would have to be to find the location in the painting I'd stumbled across and realizing, based on where I was and where the landmarks were, that while I'd come a long way to stand on that cliff, I still had no idea how much longer it would take me to find the location I was looking for. It was thrilling, to feel so small in a world so large and so fully realized. My holy grail of gaming is to be dropped in a fantasy world full of wonder and mystery and just be left to myself to explore, go through massive dungeons and beautiful landscapes and dangerous locales. I always pictured this dream game as a low-combat affair, with few, if any, combat encounters. I never would have imagined that Elden Ring would be the game to make this dream come true, but the punishing combat adds to the experience for me, rather than detracting. It makes the world feel more real, more plausible, more dangerous, less centered on me or my character; it makes the moments of success that much sweeter, it makes me feel like my character is growing more powerful not only as his stats increase or he finds new gear, but as I learn the game and how the world works. I have looked up two related things so far, because I thought I had hosed something up by attacking a character (in Stormveil Castle I saw Gostoc but thought he was just an enemy I missed, so I attacked him, knocked him into a pit, and then panicked, so I looked up how to bring back characters, found a Celestial Dew for atonement, got told I had nothing to atone for, and then looked up Gostoc to find out what was up). I wish I hadn't. I won't be doing it again. So far, everything else I've needed in order to understand the game is in the game. Everything I need in a game might be in the game. I haven't beaten Elden Ring as of this writing; I doubt I'll beat it before 2023 hits. If every second of the experience from here on out is torturous, or, worse, average, it would still be one of the best gaming experiences I have ever had. Once I'm finished with it, if I don't immediately dive in with a different character, I'll probably go back to Sekiro and see if it makes sense to me now. I might even go back to Bloodborne and try to get over my fears about eight legged freaks. I can't wait to put this on my list again in 2023. 5. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 4. Citizen Sleeper 3. Stellaris 2. Cyberpunk 2077 1. Elden Ring CaptainRat fucked around with this message at 22:37 on Dec 30, 2022 |
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Dec 30, 2022 22:20
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glad to see Neo TWEWY getting the respect it deserves
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Dec 30, 2022 22:22
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bewilderment posted:5: SCARLET HOLLOW She really does and I find it equally rewarding to break through with her or make her absolutely despise you. Considering how big the episode 3 choice can be with her I can't wait to see all the possible variations in the future!
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Dec 30, 2022 22:29
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Whew, I made it in time. Demoneeho's 2022 Game of the Year List Honorable mentions: Bayonetta 3 It has a good and fun combat system. But it didn’t make the top 10 because there were too many flaws with the gameplay and writing that I could not ignore. Maybe in the future, I’ll give it another go and see how I feel then. Kemono Mahjong It’s a $4 app that lets me Mahjong against AI players and I can pause it at any time. Now I can mahjong on the train, I can mahjong while watching TV, I can mahjong while sitting on the toilet. Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes Goddamn was this one tedious and repetitive to play. But the writing has that same goofy, introspective, meta weirdness from Suda that I love. Now onwards to NMH3 for next year’s list. Stacklands A cheaper and much easier to grasp version of Cultist Simulator. The Top Ten  10. Escape Simulator Yellow Dwarf I try to not repeat entries from my previous lists. But I played a poo poo ton of this over the last year, so it deserves a place in the top 10. Since Flash is dead and a lot of the devs of Flash escape rooms have mostly moved on to the mobile market, this has been my source of weekly escape room games. There’s been a lot of really cool and creative rooms up on the Steam Workshop. There is also a lot of crap. Escape Simulator is a land of contrasts.  9. Death’s Door Avarice One day you’re just an average crow working to reap souls for the afterlife, and then your quarry gets stolen. Now you gotta hunt down three very old and powerful souls to get your target back. Such is the life of a working bird. Death’s Door is cute, fun, challenging, occasionally thought-provoking. Like all of those other 2D ZeldaSoulslikes, you explore a decaying world populated with a variety of quirky characters who will make you ask questions like, “What’s wrong with living forever?” or “Why is his head full of soup?” Combat is fun as the game throws waves of enemies at you, although some encounters can be difficult at times. Map design is cool and the aesthetics are clear and bright. The game lasts just the right amount, although I wouldn’t have minded a slightly longer game to explore.  7. Dicey Dungeons Swing Me Another 6 A roguelite that sets out to simplify the complicated math of other deckbuilders, so I don’t have to figure out what 25% of 36 damage is. But in all seriousness, Dicey Dungeons is a fun and charming game with a surprising amount of depth between each character. Groovy soundtrack, cheap, and each run doesn’t outstay its welcome. Good game.  7. Ultrakill Altars of Apostasy Ultraviolent Ultrahard Ultrafast Ultrafun ULTRAKILL It might still be in early access, but it is already a loving good game. It’s the lovechild between retro arena shooters and Devil May Cry and it's awesome. You play as a killer robot traversing the varied and colorful circles of hell as you shoot enemies and bathe in their blood while racking up a big combo, all set to an ultrakiller soundtrack. The movement is responsive and smooth allowing you to zip, slide, boost at frenetic speeds to dodge bullets. Every weapon feels satisfying to slaughter your enemies. Shoot coins in midair to ricochet them, or punch shotgun shells to give them extra oomph. There is a lot of depth with combat that you can experiment with as you die. And believe me, you will die a lot. And you will get back up and try again and again and again, because Ultrakill is fun.  6. Deep Rock Galactic RUN! Addictive, plain and simple. DRG is one of those games you can play for hours and days at a time, put it away for weeks, and then hop right back in and it always feels fresh. No two missions will ever feel alike. Sometimes you can have a quick and easy excavation. Other days you’ll struggle against huge swarms of angry, angry bugs to the last man. Exciting stuff. The developers are still adding in new and free content as a reason to keep coming back. Still one of the best co-op games on the market, it’s always a blast to play with friends. Rock and stone!  5. Tunic The Weight of Rain I remember in the 90’s when kids would gather at school and brag about all the little secrets and tricks they found in games (or at least, claim they found when they actually read the cheat section of Gamepro or a Prima guide). “There’s a fairy fountain behind the waterfall.” “Jump into the wall of the basement to find the desert level.” “You can find the Hadoken capsule in Armored Armadilo’s stage.” Tunic hearkens back to those days of discovering all of those hidden secrets. Tunic has a few similarities with Death’s Door. Both games feature short animals navigating an isometric world as they take down enemies bigger and tougher they are. They both occupy that niche of being Zeldalike, Darksoulslike, and Hyperlightdrifterlike. But where Death’s Door was focused on combat, Tunic is all about the exploration. I pored over every inch of the in-game maps to find secret passageways, or I stumbled around every corner to find hidden chests. I felt really clever when I put oblique clues together and solved a puzzle. I haven’t had this much joy exploring a game since Breath of the Wild. The combat is serviceable, nothing really worth writing home about. A couple of bosses and late game areas did test my patience. Some puzzles were a little too inscrutable without help, but thankfully, most of those were optional. All in all, Tunic is a well-crafted game.   4. AI: The Somnium Files - Nirvana Initiative Neurotic Inception I don’t know how AI: The Somnium Files was able to get a sequel, considering how poorly it sold. But I am not complaining, because AI 1 was one of my favorite VN/Adventure games. I was excited to once again experience Kotaro Uchikoshi’s Wild Ride. In many ways, Nirvana Initiative had a lot of “one step forward, one step back” going on. For one, the Somnium sequences are a lot more straightforward to solve, so you don’t waste as much time trying to figure out the proper solution. But in turn, it means you don’t get to see all of the weird dreamlogic options as much if you don’t go out of your way to be wrong. However this is counterbalanced by how varied each Somnium is this time around. You got your standard trauma Somnium, a cooking show Somnium, an LSD nightmare Somnium, etc. Each sequence feels fresh. The main mystery is definitely a point of contention. Uchikoshi is out to tell a story with a particular twist, and he will force every block of information to fit into that square hole, no matter how much it strains credibility. As long as you can accept that things will get a little contrived and that it never quite hits the highs of the first game, the main story can still be enjoyed. I won’t defend the QTE sections this time around; they repeat sooooo many of the same actions throughout the game, it is really jarring. But hands down, I will praise the character writing. Nirvana Initiative introduces a slew of new goofball characters and surprisingly nearly all of them were well-written (maybe not a villain or two). From the strange block-headed comedian, to the dorky delinquent, to the mermaid waitress, and so on. All of them were either fun or had compelling stories. Nirvana Initiative didn’t have a perfect story, but I was leaning on the edge of my seat the entire time. It’s fun, silly, frustrating, suspenseful, exhausting, exhilarating, heartfelt.  3. Signalis Safe Room This one flew under the radar for me. Like, I think I am the fifth person in this thread who never heard of Signalis until reading other people’s GOTY lists. As soon as I read, “a throwback to ps1 horror games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill,” I immediately closed the thread, downloaded the game on gamepass, and was hooked from the start. Signalis is a game that wears its influences on its sleeves proudly, warts and all. From the frustratingly small inventory, to awkward combat that makes it feel like you’ve just wasted too many bullets, to the constant backtracking over bodies that spring back to life. It quite literally lifts a level concept straight from Silent Hill 1. And it works as a loving homage instead of being a cheap ripoff. It takes many core formulas from older games and remixes them into a game that feels familiar while never feeling unoriginal. The artstyle is striking and the ambience is creepy and moody. The story is compelling and haunting. Simply a fantastic horror game.   2. Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker Footfalls I started playing FFXIV last summer. And even though I finished Endwalker back in February, I still login every day to play. Often to do my dailies or complete crafting quests or hit up the gay dance clubs of Eorzea. I enjoy playing it that much, so there was no way FFXIV wasn’t going to make the top 10 again this year. Square Enix keeps taking my money. As 2021 was wrapping up, I was still working through the post-patch of Shadowbringers. I was eager to reach the highly acclaimed expansion that is Endwalker, which I didn’t get to until January 2022. I did my best to avoid spoilers and try to experience it fresh like everyone else did a month before. I was rewarded for my diligence. Wow, what a story. What an expansion. What an MMO. It is a thrilling conclusion to the story that started about a decade ago. But Endwalker wasn’t just the capstone to the journey, it was also a celebration of everything that came before it. It is weird to be nostalgic for characters and a plotline in a game that I had only experienced in less than a year. I consider it a testament to the strength of the writing team to have made a consistently evocative experience. The story wasn’t always perfect, some parts did miss the mark here and there. But Endwalker stuck the landing. The new dungeons, trials and raids are a blast to roll through (unless you are a Sage struggling to keep a Dark Knight alive in the lvl 81 dungeon. That one hurt to do). Soken and his music team once again have put out a lot of banger soundtracks. I love that every expansion has given Black Mage, my starting class, new tools to constantly nuke enemies with. I mean, every job has new abilities, but black magic feels so satisfying to use. Eventually Square Enix will finish up this expansion and move into 7.0. Maybe we will leave Eorzea behind (or not, since every new job has to involve a starting city) and meet a new cast of characters. Or maybe we’ll go back to the Crystal Tower a third time, who knows. Either way, I am excited for the future of FFXIV.   1. Elden Ring Starscourge Radahn It’s loving Elden Ring. Okay, wait, I’ll try to do a write up. Sometimes I ask if Elden Ring is too big. It does mean they had to cut corners somewhere, such as repeated bosses, or the sameness of every catacomb. And load times were pretty bad for me before I upgraded my pc. But bigger is better. Bigger world means more to explore, a longer game to experience. FromSoftware really outdid themselves with creating the Lands Between. The scale and scope of the game is impressive. So many nooks and crannies to explore. So many weapons and magics and skills to discover. The variety of builds you can create and paths you can take make Elden Ring very replayable. Combat is raw, heavy and drat good. Still, I do have to complain about bosses. Too many boss fights are balanced around multiplayer, so if you aren’t doing co-op or summoning spirits, you’re in for a rough time. But beyond that, I have only the highest praises for Elden Ring. SoulsborneRing at its best. Well, that wraps up my 2022 list. Onwards to 2023! Condensed list: 10. Escape Simulator 9. Death's Door 8. Dicey Dungeons 7. Ultrakill 6. Deep Rock Galactic 5. Tunic 4. AI: The Somnium Files - Nirvana Initiative 3. Signalis 2. FFXIV - Endwalker 1. Elden Ring
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Dec 30, 2022 22:35
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Aw poo poo, 7th Guest has arrived. This is that good poo poo. It was the moment that made my first GotY Thread experience last year feel magical. 
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Dec 30, 2022 22:57
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Thursday Next posted:7. Shandalar (M:tG) 
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Dec 30, 2022 23:12
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how can you play more than 50 whole games in a year?!?!? 
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Dec 30, 2022 23:15
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I wasn't able to play a lot of games this year due to kids and my wife working some weekends. I've finished most of these! Bad game award: I played cult of the lamb on switch and will probably finish it since I'm close to the end and the combat is fun enough, but the base building sucks and this should not have been released on switch at all. Too many slowdowns, the hardware is not powerful enough (I played docked, with the latest patch). Bad effort! 10: A Plague Tale: Innocence: This is a fantastic, beautiful, atmospheric game. It's not too hard and the combat is fun. I'm about 4/5ths of the way through and might finish it this year but probably not. I love it. 9: Bayonetta 1: I bought b3 and decided to play through 1 and 2 first and haven't finished 2 again. 1 is such an amazing game! The combat feels so great and the plot is really dumb and fun. I wasn't sure if it'd hold up but it did. I might have rated it higher if I'd played it on my old xbox where I'd unlocked all of the poo poo, but I gave that away so my run had nothing unlocked. 8: Mario Odyssey: I got my son into playing games (he's 4) and he got REALLY into this one. At first I had to do everything for him but about a month or two later he was able to do about 3/4 of the stuff I'm able to do, and beat bosses on his own etc. It's a great game! I played it myself a few years ago and thought 'eh' but it's grown on me since, and I didn't do any of the extra stuff last time, but this time I've seen most of the content. Great game, not best game. 7: FF7R: Yuffie DLC: My notes for this just say: "fun, short", both of which are plus points for me these days, especially 'short'. More FF7R, which was a great game. 6: Horizon: Forbidden West: This game was fun, beautiful, and had lots of great moments in it (the tomb of Ted Faro! Las Vegas!) and I spent ages playing it, and enjoying all of it. 5: Hitman 2: These are great games that are interesting to play, look great, really atmospheric and give you interesting rewards which make future playthroughs different. I spent a lot of time playing this, and commented (To some people's shock) in the hitman thread 'these games feel like going on holiday'. They do! It's been great to explore exotic locales from the comfort of my own home. 4: Mario 3d World + Bowser's Fury: I started on Bowser's Fury because that's the one my son wanted to see. He calls it 'Boss Fight'. This is the first game I ever played with him so there's that, but also it's just so great! Lots of little islands that are all fun and short and mostly not too hard platforming challenges! loving awesome! I finished this one and loved it, then we recently started on 3d world itself which is great too, but I've played a lot less of it. This is worth it and deserves this ranking just for Bowser's fury alone. 3: Hitman 1: My intro to the hitman games (after bouncing off the original, over 20 years ago) and gently caress it's good. All of what I said for #2, but it started with #1 so I count it as better. 2: Returnal: Hard, great, atmospheric, pretty, fun! I played this game solidly for about a month when I got the ps5 and it was well worth it. In the end I unlocked the secret ending etc and it probably took me about 50+ deaths before I finished the game the first time. I'm not particularly good at games so it was frustrating sometimes but ultimately doable. I loved the plot, the music, and the gameplay. I thought it was going to be my game of the year when I played it in Feb or March, but then out of the blue came: 1: Xenoblade 3: IDK what my exact top 3 JRPGs are (ff7, ff7r, ff8, Persona 4/5), but this is in my top 3 JRPGs of all time. What a great game. The characters, plot (I played most of xc1 and none of xc2), combat, exploration, scenery, music, villains, were all fantastic. I did most of the side quests even, and didn't want this game to end. I played this game solidly for over a month, it's a longass game but I enjoyed every minute of it. If you're on the fence: play it. I suppose the thing that stands out the most is the characters, their development and what happens to them throughout the course of the game. YOU MUPPET! LISTEN TO THE CHAIN ATTACK MUSIC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDd6PFIhHeo
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Dec 30, 2022 23:25
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Almost forgot to do this, but better late than never. 10. Yakuza 6: The Song of Life  I still have a few more of these games to go, but if this were the last Yakuza game ever I would have been pretty well satisfied. The new engine is very welcome to the series, no longer having to go through load screens for most of the restaurants and shops, it creates a much more seamless world to explore. It does feel a lot more limited in scope than its predecessor though it was at least somewhat welcome after how monstrously huge Yakuza 5 is. 9. Bayonetta 3  Wasn't as blown away with it as much as I was with Bayonetta 1 + 2 but the weakest Bayonetta game is still a more fun and engaging time than most video games. Viola's gameplay was incredibly fun to learn and I'm interested in seeing what they do with her in the future. 8. Klonoa: Door to Phantomile  Played this on my PS3 hooked up to a crt on a whim and I was happy to find a very charming PS1-era platformer. I don't have too much to say since a lot of this was carried by the aesthetics for me. 7. Dark Souls 3  The last of the From Soft Souls games I had to beat, and by this point I had so thoroughly gotten used to what the games expect that a lot of it was much less painless than previous games had been. While some might think that is boring, I found it just satisfying to get through one of these games and go "Huh, I didn't die 150 times." Here's my second attempt at Pontiff https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWUgPAQsQl8&t=143s 6. God of War Ragnarok  (I get tempted to sell my PS5 everytime I see one of these Sony made reaction gifs) I wish there was a way to disable most of the NPC helpful hints that get shouted, but I still found Ragnarok largely engaging. I am sure there will be more God of War games, and I am kinda curious where it would go, but I would also be perfectly happy with this being the end of the series. 5. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night  Getting a Steam Deck this year has been great. I have been playing more games in general than I normally do, and from the comfort of my bed at that. Not only that, but games I have been putting off for a while are finally getting played. Bloodstained was one of them, a very good Metroidvania game and the third game I beat on my Steam Deck. I was worried that this wouldn't stack up after Hollow Knight, but I still found myself playing it near constantly until the end of the game. 4. Elden Ring  Personal favorite of this year's releases, and I don't see that changing despite not having played some of the other big releases of the year. Probably the best looking game I've ever played, and the sheer amount of stuff and optional areas really added a lot. Making Souls open world was a surprisingly good idea, and I liked that a lot of the major boss encounters brought back the uniqueness of the Arch-Demons in Demons Souls. I just rebought this so I can play on my Steam Deck where I hope to one day have everything done in the game. 3. Yakuza 5  Possibly my favorite of the Yakuza games so far. Either this or 0 at least. One thing for sure is that this is the most video game I've ever seen in a video game. There are five playable characters, each with their own sub stories, sub games, and five cities to explore. Not all of it is the greatest, but any game that has me spend hours on Taxi missions deserves praises. 2. Hollow Knight  Can't think of a more massive Metroidvania game I've played, but the stunning part is that I never really felt a dip in how fun each area of the game is. One of those games I'm kicking myself for not playing myself sooner (and I'm sure there will be a lot more in years to come), but at least I don't have to wait as long for Silksong to come out. I loved the game so much I bought plushies for the Knight and Hornet. 1. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice  When I first played this in 2019 I gave up pretty early on. Since then I was pretty certain that this one was just not something I could do. I started it up again the day before Elden Ring came out just to have something to play while I waited. Elden Ring may have put it on hold for a bit but I found myself having a much better time with Sekiro than I was in 2019. After beating Elden Ring I immediately went back to Sekiro and I think this is my second favorite game by From in this style. I may have spent hours on a boss shouting curse words at the TV, but nothing quite beat the feeling of when I did beat it with perfect memory of their moves and how to counter them. Also I beat Guardian Ape on my first try and I'm proud of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKnd0K8t_5I
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Dec 30, 2022 23:30
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redreader posted:1: Xenoblade 3: IDK what my exact top 3 JRPGs are (ff7, ff7r, ff8, Persona 4/5), but this is in my top 3 JRPGs of all time. What a great game. The characters, plot (I played most of xc1 and none of xc2), combat, exploration, scenery, music, villains, were all fantastic. I did most of the side quests even, and didn't want this game to end. I played this game solidly for over a month, it's a longass game but I enjoyed every minute of it. If you're on the fence: play it. I suppose the thing that stands out the most is the characters, their development and what happens to them throughout the course of the game. YOU MUPPET! YIPPEE!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTgv-Ka6EQU Barreft fucked around with this message at 00:07 on Dec 31, 2022 |
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Dec 31, 2022 00:01
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guest that rating system is so cute
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Dec 31, 2022 00:08
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SlothBear posted:She really does and I find it equally rewarding to break through with her or make her absolutely despise you. Considering how big the episode 3 choice can be with her I can't wait to see all the possible variations in the future! Yeah! Being able to say in a dialogue "maybe cousins can just be friends!" to defend inviting her somewhere and having her join in on saying "YEAH maybe we're actually friends!" is great and the writing does a good job in combination with the expressions to show that yeah, this isn't for show - if you've done the right things, she's believing it herself too! I bought Triangle Strategy because of this thread after being strongly on the fence. It's better than its demo was although most of these VAs feel like they were given poor direction. Except for the guy playing Dragan who nails it, and then nails it again when he has to be drunk.
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Dec 31, 2022 00:15
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