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Rarity posted:Perhaps it's the people who like FF9's fault
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Dec 17, 2021 09:25
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In 2019 I voted for Shadowbringers despite only being halfway through Stormblood at that point 
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Dec 17, 2021 09:26
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Brb redoing the 2019 thread due to VOTER FRAUD
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Dec 17, 2021 09:27
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if we're admitting to goty thread fraud I've been using my alt accounts (wuggles, Rarity, Metis) to submit multiple lists for several years
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Dec 17, 2021 09:32
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I redid my list and added some games and made it a Top 10 instead of a Top 5. Such is the hazard of posting on a whim only to spend several more hours rethinking things.
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Dec 17, 2021 09:37
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my list is in shambles due to last minute play sessions of more games
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Dec 17, 2021 09:40
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I am excited for multiple goons lists this year. I want to see where my pals place their games 
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Dec 17, 2021 09:42
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Will I finish metro exodus in time? Will it feature on my list? Stay tuned and find out in the big reveal on christmas eve!
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Dec 17, 2021 09:55
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Top 10's actually a bit rough this year. I spent some time thinking about what I've played this year and I found I had more than 10 games. But I'll the runner ups to an honorable mention section later. I'll mention both the good and bad about the games on my list. If I spent enough time with a game to really start thinking about the flaws other than going "it's bad", I consider myself invested. Despite my criticism, I did have fun with these all. 10. New Pokemon Snap  I've been wanting a sequel to Pokemon Snap for like, 10-15 years now. I loved the original game even if it was too small. New Pokemon Snap was everything I wanted out of it even if it had some weird issues. The game is super pretty to me and the levels feel lively, full of Pokemon, even ones I don't remember (probably gen 5/6/7 pokemon, I've kinda dropped off the main series). The photography still feels good to me and uh... I'm struggling to put what I enjoyed about this game into words really. But it was a breath of fresh air that I didn't know I wanted. Progression in this game is a bit weird and I got stalled for a bit but even with that, I feel I had a real good time even it was kind of short. I'm not usually a fan of photography or puzzle games so I'm not sure what about this game hit for me. Nostalgia maybe. 9. Elona (Plus 2.05 Custom GX) There's so many god drat versions of this game. Each iteration and weird balance spin off patch improves from the grindy, less rewarding feeling game of old. This one's probably a little less known so I'll explain it. It's an open world RPG that plays a bit like a roguelike but it's definitely not a roguelike. It's very open ended and while there is a main story that I only discovered this year, I spent most of my time goofing off, finding rare monsters to eat so I could develop more elemental resistances and become jacked. I played it, didn't finish it but I had my fill and I really enjoyed it. The graphics are poo poo, the music is... good but MIDI jank. The gameplay's been improving and I don't know if I can recommend this because it's a weird game, I had a lot more fun with this than I thought I'd have. No screenshot here because the game kind of looks like poo poo. 8. Atelier Ryza 2  I have a very mixed opinion on Atelier Ryza. Ryza 2 fixes most of my issues with the first game, greatly improving it and bringing in many new good things. It's 9/10 game for me but despite that, I still dislike some elements of this game. Most of the gameplay's been improved, the game looks visually better to me, the main story feels properly integrated and I prefer the cast being newcomers to a big city rather than country kids in the middle of nowhere. Your required 1 f/f pairing per game from Gust is very good this time around, Ryza/Klaudia would rank highly were I making a list about the ones in the Atelier games. I don't even mind the weird mascot thing, it sat on Boz's head and that was funny. My main beef with this game is still the alchemy system. I feel it slows down the game a lot and I'm with Cheetah on the direction of the Atelier series. Ryza is trending much more generic JRPG but I preferred the game having more sim elements in having to manage your time. Despite that, I still had a good time with the game and while I doubt Ryza 3 will change the parts I dislike, I'm confident they'll still make a good game. 7. Monster Rancher 1+2 DX  This game has been out for like 5 days. I haven't played much of it but it's been a nostalgia trip in the best way. The port even improves on some of the issues of old but it's still Monster Rancher, it's still not for everyone. But it is for me. Not sure if I need to introduce this but this is a fairly dead series. Monster Rancher was a series about raising monsters and then having them fight in tournaments. Unlike other monster raising games, you raise only one monster and this leans in much harder to sim mechanics. You've gotta feed your monster, you need to manage their schedule, they've almost got something like simplified genetics going on and monsters can die of old age. If you don't fuse them with other monsters to make a new, young, powerful monster. It's kinda trite and it's kind of cheesy but the gameplay is still there. Despite all the complexity to this series, I was able to just dive in. I generated a random monster, got a weird hosed up eyeball. I went "oh sure, I'll raise it, it's an intelligence based monster, right?" Then it turned out to be kind of eh at that but that's okay, my disgusting abomination can still spit and telepathy monsters to death. Here's hoping for a new one. Playing this really reminded me that this series used to be good and that the last game in the series I played, Monster Rancher DS, was the problem and not the series. 6. NEO: The World Ends With You  Lot of people have spoken about this one already, I liked this one a lot even if I thought it was worse than the first game. Don't have too much more to say other than that, the music's rad and it went up on Spotify pretty quick. Unpainted, Kill the Itch, Shibuya Survivor and Breaking Free were my picks. 5. Path of Wuxia  If you've heard about this, congratulations! You've probably heard about it from one of the 5 people on this whole forum who've played it. It's not surprising it's not a well known game, it's a Chinese SRPG/life sim that's still in early access on Steam only and requires a fan translation. It's not finished, it got a major content release this year and I'm looking forward to the next big release. Not as much as I was looking forward to No 4/1 on this list but I was paying a lot of attention. As I said earlier, this game's a life sim/SRPG hybrid. You get enrolled at martial arts school after nearly getting killed and learning you have special powers so you go learn. Then you learn that the country you lived in is hosed up and has a lot of hosed up people. You, as a student, need to make friends, grow strong and be ready to fight while figuring out which leader in your martial art sect is right about what needs to be done. I like a lot of things about this game. The graphics are fine to good (i like the 2d stuff but the 3d stuff is a bit hit or miss), I enjoy both sections of gameplay and year 2 turns up the difficulty in battle with more strategic objectives and bigger fights that thankfully don't feel too slow. The story is decent enough even if it's not too unorthodox for wuxia/xianxia fare and the fan TL is bad. What I can share easily is the music which is unique as hell and I'm real fond of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhsZ-5CGyIs Yeah, it's some weird anime JRPG music fixed with traditional Chinese instruments. Not everyone likes it but I love how different it feels. I'm really excited to see this game continue dev, we're meant to be getting a third year of content in early 2022. I'll be trying to drag more people into it once Year 3 drops and we get a vaguely functional fan TL for it. 4. Shin Megami Tensei 5 It's another one we've heard about this year but I enjoyed this too. The music's goes harder, the game is super atmospheric and there's some good gameplay changes. There's also some strange QoL regressions from SMT4/4A and I'm not huge on it being more Nocturne-esque rather than more like SMT4. If it was more like the 3DS games, this game would be like No. 2 on my list. No screenshot, couldn't figure out what to use. 3. Guilty Gear Strive  I'm a little surprised to not see too many fighting games appear this year. We've seen some Strive, we've seen some Blazblue but I was expecting more Strive and maybe the new Melty Blood. Ah well. To me, this game is a great mix of that approachability that Arc Sys has been pushing for and well, the game still having real depth and tension. Games are fast and dangerous but I can still understand what's going on as an intermediate player. The soundtrack's awesome, the characters are great and the netcode is fantastic, super smooth. I've jumped between Ky, Chipp, Nago and Anji and am currently playing Nago because god drat, he's my kind of bullshit. The story mode is kind of eh and I don't understand why the game takes like 3 minutes to get past the title screen. But it's great fun when I can wrangle my mates into a night of it. 2. The Great Ace Attorney  This game is loving good, man. This is the peak of the Ace Attorney series, now up to date. It looks good, the writing's on par with the peak of the series and the music's good even if it's all orchestral. I want to replay it but I'm not sure where to dig in again. I don't even think I have any major complaints here. I'm not really an adventure game sort but AA has always been an exception for me. 1. FFXIV: Endwalker  haha Thanks to some timezone quirks, I actually got into the game and managed to finish the main story. I think FFXIV is currently my favorite game ever. I don't know, hard to decide something like that. But it's amazing. I can't wait for more people to finish, I've gotta see their reactions to this god drat game. Writing is 10/10, new area's are 10/10, music is 10/10, combat is pretty good and I liked even the parts of this other people have been complaining about. On other threads, can't really talk about that without spoilers and spoiling people on FF14 is a terrible thing. I took over 500 photo's as I was playing MSQ but I don't know which ones are good to show off without spoilers. So I just posted an older pic of my character from Shadowbringers. Oh well. Honorable Mentions: Yakuza Kiwami 2 - It was good. Not as good as 0, the main story fell a bit flat even if I loved Ryuji and I'm not huge on the Dragon Engine combat. My Time At Sandrock - It only released a demo this year, the full release is next year. But the demo was very good, it's a massive improvement on My Time at Portia which I thought to be meandering, clunky and without passion or direction. Sandrock's characters were better, the gameplay was better and the game felt less generic. Trails of Cold Steel 4 - I was having fun with this at the start but it began to meander in the middle act and I got distracted by Shadowbringers. I'll go back at some point but yeah, I don't think it was in my top 10.
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Dec 17, 2021 10:05
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I'm glad to see more people put Strive on their lists tbh It can be daunting getting into fighting games. Hell, I'm not actually "into" fighting games either but Strive is incredibly fun for my casual scrub rear end.
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Dec 17, 2021 10:13
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cheetah7071 posted:I'd rather blame rarity
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Dec 17, 2021 14:58
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some drat fine lists so far, drat fine
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Dec 17, 2021 20:20
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Classics Revisited: I'm not sure why everyone seems to have replayed FTL this year, beyond the fact that despite representing the clumsy early days of run-based games it still has an addictive core gameplay loop. Invisible Inc. is similar in that there still hasn't been another game in its niche. Dragon Warrior Monsters 2 was a big game in my childhood, and this year I returned to it via the Ultimate romhack. I found it looking for a mod to reduce the grind of the original end/postgame, and it does that. Experience is drastically increased, as is the variety and quality of capturable wild monsters. It's also one of those unbalanced "take a kids' game and ramp up the difficulty" romhacks, but this ultimately ends up fair. In addition to the easier leveling and breeding, anything the game throws at the player the player can throw right back at it, to the point that most bosses immediately join the player after being beaten or have been made recruitable. It's all the fun of big monsters and big numbers being thrown at each other with none of the grind required to get there. I also played The Pokemon Trading Card Game and its improved-in-every-aspect Japan-only sequel, Pokemon Card GB2: Here Comes Team Great Rocket!. And it's very obvious why they haven't made another, as it's all the satisfaction of opening booster packs and building stronger decks except with a defined end and no monetization mechanism. Honorable Mentions:  Gunpoint, Dicey Dungeons, Mindustry, A Hat in Time, Fire Emblem: The Three Houses Ittle Dew 2 gets special mention for being a game that was unfairly overlooked at release for increasing the focus on exploration over the original, taking more inspiration from the original Zelda (and to some extent Link's Awakening). If it had released a year later we'd be talking about how it brought the Breath of the Wild experience to 2D. Instead, we can only talk about how it was doing Breath of the Wild's thing a year before Breath of the Wild. Most Complicated Relationship Award: I was going to put an image of my factory here but an update broke everything and I'm not going to spend hours getting the game back into a playable state just for a screenshot Satisfactory is a game I spent a lot of time with this year, especially compared to my first playthrough where I quit at oil processing. And that is entirely because of the hard work of modders softening the game's disrespect for the player's time. So shoutouts to Smart! PowerSuit Daisy Chain Power Cables Grid Ruler Beltfed Biomass Burner Custom Damage And now on to the part that actually counts: 10. Griftlands It's not Slay the Spire, or even Monster Train. It's less a deckbuilder with a story and more three mini-episodes on the spaghetti western story of a stranger coming to town, where the deckbuilding element allows for significant growth leading up to the climax. There's nothing wrong with an enjoyable 20-30 hour experience. 9. Amazing Cultivation Simulator The older I get the less games are able to surprise me. Halfway through my playthrough a sentient plank of wood shows up at my base. So I have to go online and start reading. Why is there a sentient inanimate object? Where do they come from? How does this affect cultivation? I want more games that are able to surprise me like this, and I'm willing to tolerate a lot of jank to get it. 8. Deltarune Chapter 2 I thought Deltarune Chapter 1 was a step down from Undertale. It felt more like the beginning and ending, more focused on its themes in the abstract than its themes in the concrete, with characterization and humor suffering accordingly. Deltarune seems to be following a similar arc, finally hitting its stride in Chapter 2. 7. Unsighted  I know some people will be discouraged by the time limit. But while I think the time limit is worth keeping on as it enhances the feel of the game, it can be turned off and the game functions as a normal metroidvania. With one key exception: the existence of the time limit is a promise to not waste the player's time. And it's surprisingly accessible for a game that draws so much from speedrunning. I don't consider myself to have great reflexes or precision but I was still able to pull off parries and movement techniques. It's much more about rewarding growth (and even in the end there was plenty of room for me to improve) than punishing inadequacy. My only complaint is that it suffers from the common indie metriodvania flaw of movement abilities being equippable and thus requiring menuing, but I can't complain too much about something every 2D Zelda is also guilty of. 6. Monster Sanctuary Another metroidvania, this time mashed up with monster battling. The exploration isn't mindblowing (and suffers from the same problem of movement abilities requiring menuing), but the monster battling is surprisingly deep and well-balanced. It might be a little too deep at times, but I appreciate that despite the game's respectable difficulty and considerable monster variety I haven't found any bad monsters, just ones I don't know how to properly use. 5. Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye It's not as good as the base game. But the base game was not just a serious contender for GOTY, but a serious contender for GOTY against Disco Elysium and Sekiro in 2019. The fact that they can make an experience of nearly the same calibur without repeating anything is amazing. (For those on the fence, there are no jump scares in the game. There are 2-3 generic "spooky" stealth sections that are widely considered a brief low point in an otherwise fantastic game. The "reduced frights" option makes these easier.) 4. Umurangi Generation  Raw. Close-to-home. Uncomfortable. A little bit of art game jank. It's unsubtle and wears its references on its sleeve and is as much a vision of our lovely present as a lovely future. 3. Dyson Sphere Program  Now we get into the "games targeted specifically at me" category. If you've played Factorio, you know what DSP is going for. Except the scale is a galaxy of planet-sized factories caging suns for power. The ability to boost into low orbit to slam into the other side of the planet at supersonic velocity is unlocked around 20 minutes into the game and it just keeps scaling up from there. I usually don't list early access games, but apart from a few placeholder features (oil and water will likely require pipes at some point instead of belts) the game is more complete than most factory games are at launch. 2. Rift Wizard  Rift Wizard is in one sense an extremely stripped-down and focused roguelike. There's no fog of war, no stats, no equipment, no shops, just 25 floors full of enemies and a final boss. It also has the deepest spell system ever put into a roguelike, with over 175 spells and over 600 enemies to use them on. And that's before getting into the combos that can be created with skills and spell upgrades. 1. Factory Town  I counted and at the time of writing this I have over one-thousand, one-hundred, twenty-seven hours between every factory game I've played. So it means something when I say that Factory Town is my personal favorite and in my opinion the best one currently available. The game gives a large number of viable logistics options, you can build as small or as big and as clean or as complicated as you want, and it has some of the most powerful building tools of any game I've played and easily the most powerful of any game operating in a true 3D space.
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Dec 17, 2021 23:12
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Relax Or DIE posted:if we're admitting to goty thread fraud I've been using my alt accounts (wuggles, Rarity, Metis) to submit multiple lists for several years 
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Dec 17, 2021 23:31
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Never voted before, but this year had some good stuff even if I didn't play a ton of different things. So, here we go. 5. Cyberpunk 2077 Might be an odd pick given all the launch issues, but I genuinely enjoyed it. I played the PC version and didn't have as many issues as others, which probably helped. Overall, gorgeous city to mess around in and I've basically used it as a photography simulator for like 90% of my playtime, which isn't necessarily a bad thing at all. 4. Forza Horizon 5 I don't like cars. I know nothing about cars. I don't even own one. But somehow, I have an entire game garage full of ridiculous expensive hypercars I will never be able to afford in real life wrapped with anime and goon vinyls. I haven't played a racer in years, but FH5 was just drat fun. My only real complaints were the bad networking issues at launch that kept people from really being able to complete certain things like the Arcades and a lack of customizable VS modes. 3. No Man's Sky I only really started playing it seriously this year, but if you want a chill game to just go out and be a space trucker, this is the game for you. The patches are still phenemonal with each major updates, and it's really built itself to be well beyond its release. And they're rerunning events, so you can catch up on a few of the big-ticket items you might have missed. I went from zero hours to probably a couple hundred in just a couple of months once I got into it. 2. Kena: Bridge of Spirits Just a gorgeous, wonderfully done little sleeper that looks like something straight out of a Dreamworks film. The gameplay isn't super difficult, but it's enjoyable. Everything about Kena oozes charm and while it's short, it might be one of the best games to get on sale out there. Seeing this win Best Independent at the Game Awards made me incredibly happy. It deserved it, 100%. 1. FFXIV: Endwalker I don't play many games because I am usually just playing this one game a lot. EW was the perfect wrap-up to the current story and absolutely vaulted the game higher on my list of favorite Final Fantasy's. I cried, a lot, usually on stream, and now I get to watch other people go through the story and do it all again. And Soken truly is just next-level.
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Dec 18, 2021 00:13
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Turns out I want to rep too many games to afford to toss a joke vote for two different ff14 expacs so the system works
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Dec 18, 2021 01:12
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10: Majesty 2 (PC) This is a really neat game! It's part RTS, part city manager, all fun! You are a king and on each level you have the power to tell your peasants where to build. What heroes to hire. What upgrades to research. And that's it. Want to tell your heroes to go do poo poo? Too bad fuckface they don't take orders from you. Your only hope is to pique their interest with bounties. Set a bounty to destroy a monster den. Set a bounty to protect the merchant cart. Set a bounty to explore the unknown. You can also cast spells using the greatest magic of all: Money. Basically, if you can't afford it, it ain't happening. I really like just ever expanding my cities as my heroes grind in levels and then setting a massive bounty on the mission objective. Until the dumbass wizards you hired won't stop charging into battle because they can't afford health potions and there aren't any clerics around to act as healer so you have to spend the entire treasury resurrecting some a-hole named Simon the Great. 9: Super Mario 3D World (Wii U)  I was pleasantly surprised! I wasn't sure how the 3d environment would work for the traditional 2d Mario style game play, but my fears were assuaged immediately. It's fun! It's cute! It's Mario! What more can I say? Mario games have been excellent for last last 40ish years. What's the worst 2d Mario game? New Super Mario Bros. on the DS? That game still competes with any other platformer. There isn't anything I could add to the Mario discourse. I can still sing this game's praises. The random character feature helps give the game just a little more variety. It's tempting to just play as Toad, the best character, but when you have to go through a single level three or four times to find that god drat stamp, multiple characters helps. Cat suit's cute too. 8: Black Mesa (PC)  The Crowbar Collective remake of Half-Life 1. Did you know Valve used to make games? Now it's just their fans. Even in 2021 all it takes is a fresh coat of paint to make that first game stand out. I never played the original, it didn't come in the Orange Box. But yeah. I get it. The game is good. Go read GamePro's twenty year old review if you want to read some rear end in a top hat's take on the game that invented the modern FPS. 7: Baba is You (Android)  This is the perfect puzzle game. My proudest moment was I was sitting on the toilet thinking about a puzzle and then I solved it in my head and it worked! I wasn't playing the game at the time either I was just thinkin' about it I like it so much. The temptation to look up a clue or hint about a particularly difficult puzzle is hard to resist, but boy is it rewarding when you finally break through on your own. Anyone can play Baba is You as long as they have some basic understanding for English syntax. This is a game for grandmas and babies and hardcore gamer dudes. This could be the Wii Sports of our time if it were more popular. 6: Trials of Mana (PC)  I cannot remember the first video game I played, they've always just been there. I think my oldest memory is watched my much older brother beat Final Fantasy 7. The black void and the frantic attacks of Omnislash are burned into my mind. That same brother would also introduce me to three games soon after (thanks zsnes): Final Fantasy 6, Chrono Trigger, and Seiken Densetsu 3. The first two need no introduction, but SD3 was unlike anything I've ever played before. The vivid colors, the poppy sound track, the Mode 7! Being able to choose your party at the start and the story changes based on who you have blew my mind. I played Dragon Warrior and Zelda and this game was both of them combined but better. To be honest, I never got very far. I don't think I ever changed classes. But man oh man did I enjoy playing that first bit over and over again. If there ever was a game that defined my taste it was SD3. My favorite was always Duran. He was a cool tough guy with a sword. Cloud Strife who? But it wasn't until I played a romhack of this game that I grew to appreciate it beyond the colors and sounds. Sin of Mana is quite honestly one of the best 're-balance' hacks I've ever seen. SD3 has it's share of bugs and useless stats that this fixes, of course, but what it does to it's equipment is amazing. Each weapon, armor, and accessory are all intended to be more or less equal with each other. This weapon deals more damage, that one builds up combo points faster, this one is elemental, this one boosts magic, etc. etc. The downside of this is you have to play with a guide open since there isn't exactly enough space in the UI to convey this info. It's also hard as balls. But as hard as it is, it's overwhelmingly fair. MP goes back to full after every combat and if any one of your party has a healing spell, so does HP. This makes magic something that you need for every encounter. It took me a few tries to figure out a party that worked for me, but each character is overhauled so no one character or class is better or worse. If you've got a nice spread, you should be fine. I flipped my god drat lid when a 3D remake was announced. Fully voiced with a remastered soundtrack! With an all new combat system! This was the game I played as a kid. This is the wild haired Duran I thought was so bad rear end. Cloud Strife Remake who? gently caress yeah! I couldn't stop smiling. Trials of Mana is so much fun! It was a trip exploring familiar locations in 3D. It took me back to those days sitting at my computer using a keyboard to play because it would be another 4 years until my brother would introduce me to the concept of a usb controller. 5: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (Switch)  Ultimate Indeed. You have over 80 fighters from 40 different series of games. You have over 100 stages to choose from. And if that weren't enough you've got god knows how many Mii costumes for other characters and you can build your own stages. Motherfucking Sans Undertale can shoot Sora Kingdom Hearts to death while Bayonetta from Bayonetta watches. This game is a better Playstation All Stars than Playstation All Stars. This isn't a fighting game this is a god drat love letter to video games. I was just as disappointed as everyone else when Steve Minecraft was announced. But guess what? He plays like Minecraft. You can play Minecraft in Smash Bros. and if that doesn't tickle your taint you have 80 other bastards to choose from. You might here some complain about the loss of series mainstays like 'Break the Targets' and whatever. There wasn't enough room. I checked. Smash was too full of stuff and there wasn't room. Sure you don't have trophies, but now you have Spirits, which let's be honest are the same thing. Spirits are just missing a paragraph saying "Hey it's Pauline from Mario Odyssey or whatever!" and it's whatever. I've been smashing with pals since the 64 days but nothing captures what it means to smash like Ultimate does. 4: Hades (PC)  OH. MY. GOD. (Haha get it?) This game gently caress /hard/. Supergiant's latest outing is nothing short of a god drat clinic on how to make an action rogue-like. I glossed over the praised I saw for this game; I was gonna get around to playing it eventually and I figured I was gonna like it. I love this game. As Zagreus you make your way through four absolutely gorgeous levels of the Greek Underworld to escape hell and your father, Hades, who is acting like a total dick and you just need your space maaaan. Your power-ups come in the form of Boons from your relatives on Mount Olympus - and therein lies the true game beyond the hacking and slashing. Talking to people. Seriously. Supergiant, in an absolute galaxy brained move, made dying and ending a run something to look forward to. Because with every death you wake up in the blood pools deep in Tartarus awaiting judgment from Hades... That you kinda ignore 'cause you are an immortal god so you hang out with your friends instead. There is so much dialogue with so many people. By the time I stopped playing, there was still unique dialogue for me to hear. Hades is oozing with charm from the vibrant colors of the palettes it uses to all the childish lines the gods have. Each character and enemy pop. The phrase 'every frame a painting' comes to mind because even when you are getting your rear end kick to hell and back (2 for 2 baybee) you will be dazzled by the artwork. You could spend hours just looking at each room in detail. To say nothing of the music. Can't say I know much, but I do know it slaps like a motherfucker. Super Giant took the isometric hack-and-slash game play they have been honing since Bastion and combined that with stellar art, music, and a masterpiece script to create an instant classic. Hades is a game that will be remembered. 3: NEO: The World Ends With You (Switch)  I'm not done thinking about this game. The first game on the DS was incredible. I think it's one of the most innovative games on the DS and one of the few that justifies the second screen. I was also a lonely teen at the time so that resonated with me hard. I played the switch remake before this. What a nostalgia trip. Still holds up. I really want to try that crazy one person two controller strat. What really drew me into the game was how much hidden story bullshit there was. you were only getting a glimpse of a much larger picture. So playing NEO was pretty vindicating. A whole bunch of theorizing lore bullshit I did as a kid came true. I knew there were other cities playing The Reaper's Game. I knew there were other types of games rather than the one presented in the previous game and that only certain people can play the game because it's a metaphor for the creative process and and and... Anyway. I had always wanted to see the sequel set in something like LA or Paris. Major cultural hubs like Shibuya. A direct sequel is fine as well. The new crew was a delight to learn about. Just a wacky bunch of loons with the worlds best fashion sense. Fun Anecdote. The design for Sho Minamimoto in the first game was pulled from character designer and story dude Tetsuya Nomura's closet, as in he owns that exact outfit and put it in the game. The returning faces were a delight to see as well. It's been three years since the last game (in universe, we aren't so lucky here in the RG) and boy has Shibuya changed. Stores have come and gone. Some brands are gone forever. Some brands are new. People call 104, 104! (ten-four, oneohfo) But it's still the same old Shibuya except they could afford to put in real world locations. So long Towa Records! Hello Tower Records! Exploring the city is exciting! What new places are there to go? How do old neighborhoods look in 3D? Do you think that store has new clothes? Is there a place to eat? Your party feels like a group of friends hanging out. From in battle dialogue to complaining they're hungry when you pass by a burger joint. And best of all you got broody and moody teenagers. You see the reason why Rindo is so great is that in all his sprites he's holding his phone and he's the only one in the party that wears a medical mask. While familiar in our covid hellscape the practice was common in japan before the end times. From these two design elements plus how often Rindo thinks to himself while the party is talking we can very easily see how distant he is and how over the course of the game we get subtle indications of Rindo's feelings and how those feelings change over time. No one ever says "Hey rindo buddy you are being a bit distant" it's always a lot more subtle than that. These kids talk like real loving teenagers to the point where I just want to strangle them and shout at their dumb faces "it's just a girl you literally just met in a death game she wasn't in to you get loving over itdbiFGAIUBFGOAUIAYBFCOefg8ofgegjflkjchipughvahfiu" Uhh... yeah play this game it's a banger. If only for the music buy and play this game so we can get the third game they are setting up. 2: Rocksmith 2014 Remastered (PC)  We all want to be big rockstars and nothing better is getting you there than Rocksmith. I would not describe myself as 'Musical' or 'Rhythmic' or 'Understands Music', hell I'm sure I was only as good at Guitar Hero as I was because I have good twitch reflexes. But those bastards at Ubisoft San Francisco took an absolute beginner into a guitar god! ...Is what I wanted to happen when I first got this game. My grandfather had gifted me an electric guitar almost two decades ago and I couldn't play for poo poo. My ADHD rear end couldn't focus and learning chords was loving impenetrable. Well years later and hella medication and I still can't play the guitar. To be honest I don't think I ever wanted to learn how to play the guitar. Oh sure I had fantasies rocking out in a stadium full of people, who hasn't? Learning the guitar as an instrument? Eh, not for me and my first outing into Rocksmith just further proved that. So why is it ranked so high? Because motherfuckers two in one it also teaches you bass. Now the bass guitar, THAT'S an instrument I want to learn. Guitar dudes were wild and the center of attention absolutely shredding their guitar to death. Bass players? Stone cold cool motherfuckers. That always appealed to me more. So this year I got a Bass Guitar and started up Rocksmith again. And I loved it. If there is one complaint I have about the guitar it's that it has two strings too many. My fingers are fat li'l sausages so they had a hard time maneuvering between strings and up and down the frets but the Bass only has four strings (five if ya nasty). The perfect amount. Because of Rocksmith I started to pick up way more about music than I used to. Before it was hard to pick out a single instrument or even how the notes were being played. It's so much easier now, especially if I'm listening for the Bass. I have some rhythm! It's a god drat miracle. There is a treasure trove of custom tracks people have made ranging from Metallica's entire discography to anime songs you've never heard, pop stars to indie bands. You can feel the love from the community as your scrolling through and you see some band only five people have heard of and one person took the time to chart out a whole grip of their music. Even if I never play in a band or jam with other people, even if this is going to end up being complicated Guitar Hero for me, I am so grateful to have played and still playing this game. As a person I want to be well rounded. Rocksmith helps me understand music and for that it's my Game of the... Oh yeah a new Metroid dropped. 1: Metroid Dread (Switch)  As I write this I'm getting goosebumps remembering Metroid Dread. The series might be my favorite Nintendo franchise. There have been two (real) Metroid games released since Prime 3 on the Wii. Other M and Samus Returns. Samus Returns is a remake for the 3DS of the Game Boy original Metroid 2 and to say it was controversial among fans is putting it lightly. It was released as a highly anticipated fan remake of Metroid 2, AM2R, was reaching its conclusion. Nintendo did their thing and sent a C&D, so that made people upset, naturally. Several aspects of the game were changed as well to some disdain of some (though I didn't hear any bitching when AM2R added the speed booster but whatever). Overall it's a fine game and introduces us to Mercury Steam, the developers of Dread. Other M though? Other M killed the franchise. Samus is about as silent as you can get in a protagonist. Some SiPros (Silent Protagonist, gonna save time to type that out instead of Silent Protagonist each time) show personality through animations or through NPC dialogue, but they mostly exist as a blank slate for the player to project themselves through. Not Samus. Samus is absolutely robotic, with each frame of each animation showing purpose and precision. She is the god drat terminator. But then Metroid Fusion on the GBA comes along. Before Dread it was my favorite and a big part of that was ADAM. A big reason WHY Samus is so silent is because she has no one to talk to. ADAM and Fusion were the first chance for us to see how Samus acts as a person and not a walking planet killing bomb. It went okay! Fusion was extremely linear to the point where you had glowing arrows showing you where to go. This was because of the AI computer, Samus names ADAM after her former CO in the Galactic Federation, is telling you where to go and why. She also uses the many elevator rides to provide us with a nice soliloquy about her thoughts on the situation. Love it or hate it, Fusion is a good game, I think. But Other M... Other M was produced by Nintendo with help from Team Ninja, best known for their work on the Dead or Alive franchise. Many were hesitant when they heard the news, the Dead or Alive franchise is probably most famous for it's Xtreme Beach Volleyball spin off and fans didn't want that kind of mess in their Nintendo game. Thankfully series director and Nintendo powerhouse Yoshio Sakamoto was overseeing the project so there was no way for Team Ninja to ruin Other M. The monkey paw curls. There was no way for Team Ninja to ruin Other M. In fact you can trace nearly every bad decision made directly back to Sakamoto. The story was a mess, even accounting for the bad translation. But it was the story Sakamoto wrote and wanted to tell, even tho by his own admission he hadn't thought much of Samus as a Character. Samus was truly voiced for the first time and it was awful. Voice acting superstar Jennifer Hale was specifically not brought back to reprise her role as Samus from the Prime series (those grunts tho...) and instead went with newcomer Jessica Martin. Martin's performance was criticized as being dead, emotionless, and just not very good. Is Martin a bad actor? Probably not. Sakamoto worked very closely with her to get the performance just right. The control scheme is perhaps one of the Wii's worst. Sakamoto wanted the game play to be simple enough it could be played on an NES controller. So that's what they did. You hold the Wiimote sideways and then point it at the screen for missiles. Honestly it's a tragedy Team Nina gets the blame for Other M's failings. I remember being so excited at the first E3 trailer for the game and losing my mind when the words "Any objections, Lady?" are spoken. It's hard not to cringe now when thinking about Samus's relationship with Adam. So even tho Samus Returns was meant to be a triumphant rebirth it kinda landed like a wet fart. Fans wanted something new and exciting, of course, but wanted to feel like they were playing the Metroid game that's been in their heads since Super. Fans wanted the continuation of the plot laid out in Fusion, but didn't want to hear Samus talk about how sad she was 'cuz Adam isn't paying any attention to her  . It was a tall order for Mercury Steam. Doubts circled whether Metroid Dread would even be good, let alone deliver after what many consider to be a 14 year wait after ignoring other M and the 'lesser' remake.Folks, it's good. It's real good. It's not just GotY it's one of my GoaTs. I started to speedrun because of this game. I first booted up the game expecting to play for a few hours. It took me 10 until I got 100% and escaped the planet and then I put the game down. I 100% it three times because I started playing on emulator thanks to that Kotaku article with the reasoning that regardless of the ethics of game preservation efforts when a game is literally brand new, gently caress Nintendo and the horse they rode in on. Anyway did it once, lost my save, did it again, bought the game because i wouldn't be able to submit times to any leader boards doing it on emu, and 100% it for a third time. This is in the span of a week, not to mention all the runs I did practicing. The gamefeel is sooooo good y'all. Samus moves through the map like water. It's so easy to have continuous forward motion. The rooms are big and Samus is agile enough to dash her way around enemies making traversing not only easy, but fun. The ADAM stations that litter the planet offer a nice break and never outstay their welcome. The ADAM scenes tended to drag on in fusion, especially since you can only read a text box two tiny lines at a time. Other M is the most story heavy game in the series. Dread blows it out of the water. I'm not joking when I say the dialogue in Dread is all exposition. The ADAM conversations are entirely one sided like fusion, but we have no inner monologue for Samus. Hell she has one line of dialogue in the game and in that one small line has more impact and personality than all of Other M. A big part of this look into Samus are the incredible animations. Like I said earlier some SiPros (did you think I wasn't going to use it again? Gotta save time when I type) use animations to show Character and with Dread we finally get that sense of style and personality. In Dread, Samus is always alert and always ready for combat. Except when she isn't. Buddy I tell ya, my favorite moment happens with the first boss. When you kill him you a get a little scene of Samus delivering the killing blow. The beast's breath is ragged, it can barely stand and over the monster's shoulder you see Samus, arms at her side. In a beautiful shot you see Samus calmly walk to the left disappearing from your view and when she returns she is already charging her Power Beam. The beast charges Samus - but the Charge Shot, it blinds it, Samus front flips over the bastard as it rams in into a pillar and dying when the rubble falls. gently caress Yeah! And it just keeps getting better. The melee counters introduced in Returns really shine in Dread. Using it to either one shot basic enemies and refill your supplies or countering a boss attack and going into a glorified QTE where the only button you have to press is spam missiles into whatever piece of poo poo just stepped to you. God I loving love this game. What finally put the last nail in the coffin for me was a new power up, the Spin Boost. Metroid's got a double jump y'all! Series regulars might be familiar with the Space Jump, infinite jumps, so just a double jump seems like a stop gap until the Space Jump, right? Right but why? It was then I realized: Oh this is a game meant to be sequence broken and speedran. Not because Metroid is kind of famous for encouraging that kind of stuff, but because they were building this game with so much care from the very beginning and suddenly how I saw the environment changed. It was like seeing the Matrix. I've heard criticism about dread that it's 'too designed like a video game.' In understand the sentiment. Games these days try to offer a sense of reality, as if the place you are in could really exist. While the environments are gorgeous, it's built one square at a time, block by block. Only in boss cutscenes do you really get any interesting camera angles or shown movement on the z axis. Honestly, it reminds me of Super Metroid in that way. The game is, I think, meant to be played to enjoy. That sounds weird, but its like this: often times in games you get jaw dropping vistas meant to impress not only the player but any observer. The only way to enjoy that vista is to look at it. You can't play with it. You can't interact with it. You can't fight it. It is meant to be enjoyed visually. There's nothing wrong with that in of itself, but Dread wants each piece, each block, each model, each enemy, each location to be played in. You run across the temple, jump over the gap, shoot the door, avoid the fire, blast the enemies, and find the powerups. While I will always encourage people to stop and smell the roses as it were, to really appreciate the beauty that went into this game, Dread is happy for you to ignore all that pomp and circumstance and allow you to focus on murdering the everloving poo poo of the local fauna. There is one thing about the game that failed for me. The Dread. The dread of Dread really comes from the E.M.M.I.s. Part boss part level challenge, each E.M.M.I. is designed to track Samus down and deliver a OHKO. They roam spefic, large areas in each region, usually in the middle so there is a lot of travel through the E.M.M.I. zone. And every time ADAM would say there is no way to defeat them and your only option is to run, my hands would tighten around the controller. Each chirp and beep would make my heart race. And when I was found? I smiled. The tension for me was not the horror of these cute Boston Dynamics rear end robots but the excitement of the chase. When an E.M.M.I. spots you an alarm sounds and all doors leading out of the E.M.M.I. zone are closed, meaning you are trapped with an unstoppable force on your rear end. And for me? I loved the excitement of having to make split second decisions. Will this door lead me to a place I can hide? Or will it lead me to a dead end? Is my movement good enough to navigate this room before I get caught? Should I try to loop around and lose the E.M.M.I. in a maze? Or should I book it for an exit and hope I can go fast enough to outrun it? When it comes down to it there is a good reason why they are called Metroidvanias and not Castlevaniatroids. Metroid Dread delivers that sweet sweet adventure-platforming action we all crave. Wow that's a lot of words about Not Metroid Dread there. Anyway tl;dr 10: Majesty 2 9: Super Mario 3D World 8: Black Mesa 7: Baba is You 6: Trials of Mana 5: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate 4: Hades 3: NEO: TWEWY 2: Rocksmith 1. Metriod Dread
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Dec 18, 2021 08:17
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10. Astalon: Tears of the Earth astalon was a game i snapped up on steam on a whim. i'm a huge sucker for metroidvanias in general and i love the art in this. the gimmick of being able to swap between multiple characters at any time with each of them having their own strengths and traversal options is genuinely cool and useful throughout. the map is gigantic and extremely well-thought out, given that when you die, you're transported back to the very start every time. as a result, finding ways to open shortcuts and unlock elevators becomes absolutely paramount. even compared to other metroidvanias, you need to learn the ins and outs of the map to an incredible degree, and when you do you feel like a traversal god. cool game, sleeper, definitely deserves more attention. 9. Loop Hero  another game that sort of came out of nowhere for me. the pixel art is loving gorgeous and despite how absurdly repetitive the base gameplay is, it kept me hooked throughout as i unlocked new cards, new stuff, new possibilities. do loops, plop down terrain, fight monsters, get equipment. the fourth act is a bit of bullshit but it did make me feel very cool to have completed it. great game, would love an expanded sequel, or dlc, or something. it's just kind of very Over when you beat it, which isn't a bad thing necessarily, but it definitely left me hungry for more. 8. Humankind  civilization, as a series, has kind of left me cold ever since Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, as none of them had even a tenth of the wit and charm in the writing that alphacen had. civ 6 was especially bland and not great to play. humankind is the breath of fresh air i needed in this space, as it tackles many of the same gameplay ideas that civ does, but does so in a lot of new ways with a lot of new spins on the formula. picking different identities every age is honestly really interesting, even if the balance leaves a little something to be desired. definitely filled the civ-shaped hole in my heart. kind of wish someone would just make alpha centauri 2 already though. 7. Metroid Dread  i think there's a reason dread hasn't had as much representation so far in terms of nominations. the huge majority of people who played it, loved it, and for good reason: it's a great experience. it's an excellent metroid game, crammed top to bottom with little touches and great bosses and good moments. dread's samus absolutely took some nods from doom 2016's doomguy: there is a tremendous amount of personality on display in a character with effectively zero speaking lines. it plays out, however, at an absolutely breakneck pace; there's little time to stop and explore before you're being pushed to the next thing, the next item, the next upgrade. when you're playing it, it's a big rush of excitement with each new thing. in the months since, however, the cracks kind of start to show: it was a rush. very hurried, very quick, no room to breathe. i don't want to say it was more spectacle than substance, because that's not quite true, but it's in the realm adjacent to truth. i'd look forward to another in this vein by mercurysteam especially with the lessons they learned from making dread. cool game though and it absolutely deserves its space on my list. 6. Cruelty Squad  this game has absolutely no right being as good as it is. pretty sure i have brain cancer now. 5. SaGa Frontier Remastered  prior to this year, if you asked me what my number one gaming wish was, it would be to have saga frontier finished. it was a notoriously unfinished game with tons and tons of cut content, largely because they simply ran out of budget and time when making it. characters, plotlines, locations, everything was simply trimmed because there wasn't enough time to finish it properly. ever since i played it back in 1997, i have hoped for the game to be rereleased and finished, but given it was such a niche title, i figured it was impossible. and then they loving did it. they released it with fuse intact, with the plotlines restored, and it's much much closer to a full, finished game. it's still one of the strangest jrpgs i've ever played, still a game that laughs in your face when you ask it to tell you how to play it. it's got tons of systems layered on each other and none of them are ever detailed. it is, however, the poster child for a game being more than the sum of its parts. sparking new skills is thrilling every single time. combos are incredibly cool whenever you discover them. eight protagonists, eight storylines, eight completely different experiences. characters are bizarre but charming, the art style is absolutely late 90s, and it's got content and secrets in spades. you are doing yourself a disservice if you never try this game. i thought for sure it would be my game of the year by a mile, but ... 4. Deltarune: Chapter 2  i figured we'd have to be waiting much longer for more of this, but the internet was pleasantly surprised when this dropped out of nowhere. i adored undertale, but i thought deltarune chapter 1 was kind of a step down in some ways. the combat system was better, the music was as good as ever, but it felt, by definition, unfinished. not only that, it felt a little bit like it didn't know exactly what it wanted to be, living by necessity in undertale's shadow. chapter 2 is a bold stride in its own direction, seizing its own identity and saying yeah, this is deltarune, not undertale. i am extremely excited to see where the rest of this goes, and i just hope it won't be 2040 by the time it's all finished. 3. Omori  was a bit worried this game would get overlooked in terms of awards season, given its unfortunate release timing of very, very late last year. the top three games on my list are there because of their emotional impact on me -- each one made me cry at least once -- and omori extremely earns its place. it is a series of emotional gut punches with a delightfully charming jrpg wrapped around them. detailing ... really anything about the real plot of this game is a huge spoiler. it's easy to write it off as "oh look a jrpg with cute visuals and a dark story, how original" because that is, to some degree, true, but that does a massive disservice to the care and quality dripping from every single line of text, every choice you make, every single screen. it is a rough ride but it is not one you will regret taking. 2. The House in Fata Morgana  another game that made me cry. a lot. this has been in my backlog for ages but it was only this year that i finally opened it up and was subsequently glued to the screen for the next fifteen hours straight. it is a visual novel, and probably the best written one i've ever played, and i've played a lot. the basic premise is that you awaken in a cursed mansion with no memory of it, or you, or the maid who wants so badly to help you. the stories that unfold from there, telling the history of the mansion and why you're there are spellbinding. the visuals and music are both incredible, the characters masterfully crafted, and the climax had me ugly sobbing. could not possibly recommend it more. 1. Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker  i don't want to post any of The Momentous Screenshots, so here's one of my wol eating bread yeah, yeah. endwalker really is that good. the end to a decade long story is here and it's everything i hoped it would be and more. it's a big ask to suggest someone play hundreds of hours of an mmo to experience the totality of the best jrpg story ever made, but hell, it's worth it.
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Dec 18, 2021 09:08
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FFXIV Porn posted:1. Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker Feel like this vote may be biased 
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Dec 18, 2021 09:15
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thank you for reminding me I've been meaning to read house in fata morgana for a while
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Dec 18, 2021 09:18
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This year was all about living in the past for me, apparently. 6 of my Top 10 were remasters of older games, some I had played before and others I never had a chance to. Even two of the other four were essentially based in the "past" in some way or another. While I didn't play a huge amount of games this year, those I did I sure as hell played a lof of, so only one of the games I played didn't make the list, purely for space reasons. Given that I couldn't play Hitman 3 yet due to being exclusive to a different platform to the one I had the first two games on, the closest I got to Agent 47's meticulous murder puzzles was the wonderful Untitled Goose Game. It's very good, just not quite good enough to make this list! https://gfycat.com/dimpledwarlikeiberiannase.mp4 10. Yakuza 4 This is it. The worst Yakuza game ever made (that I've played). It's a mess, the plot is too fractured, the pacing is glacial in parts, there are gameplay elements seemingly designed purely to frustrate the player, there is some decidedly gross stuff in and around one of the main playable characters and there are some utterly baffling (even for Yakuza!) plot decisions made that stretch even the suspension of disbelief these games are usually so good at encouraging. It's also a great game! Even the "worst" Yakuza is still drat good, and this was no exception. The teething problems are apparent in the first-time push to run with a different main character than Kazuma Kiryu, but the goal is laudable and they almost get it right (and learned their lessons for the next game). Suitably for the 4th game in the series, you are given 4 main characters to play with this time, each given their own significant chunk of the gametime before all 4 come together for the finale and you are able to freely switch between them. Of the new characters, one - Akiyama - is absolutely fantastic, and could probably have carried an entire game by himself. Saejima has a lot of potential, both in his history and as a playable character, but suffers a little from annoying gameplay elements (his movement through the city is constantly stymied by stationed police officers) and a far too long prison section that grinds the game's momentum to a halt. Tanimura isn't bad to play as, but his position as a kind of seedy cop who basically gives a green light to sexual exploitation but is presented as a morally good guy is really skeevy. Then there is Kiryu, of course, God's perfect idiot who gives 150% to everything he does and simply can't help getting involved in ridiculous Yakuza schemes. Boy are they ridiculous too! Yakuza 4's main plot is really something else, completely nonsensical and relying incredibly heavily on the most convoluted circumstances, chance encounters/developments and at times utterly mystifying motivations. The attempt to wrap all four guys and their various rivals/foes/personal plots together causes a bit of a mess, and the ultimate climax/wrap-up of the game kind of feels like everybody involved ran out of ideas and decided,"gently caress it, everybody shows up in the same place and has a big fight!" It really is a great game though! In spite of all that I just wrote! All the usual subplots are there, the wacky zaniness, the oddly wholesome horny middle-aged dudes and precocious children and mini-game after mini-game after mini-game. Collectibles, underground coliseum fighting rings, restaurants and bars and the obligatory hostess clubs and, of course, mahjong! Each of the characters have fun supporting casts, especially Akiyama and his incredible assistant Hana who is just fantastic. Plus there is the absolutely incredible moment where Akiyama and Tanimura decide to fight Kiryu because of (of course) mistaken identity. This leads to a predictable but fantastically badass sequence in which they - like every other random mook on the street - are left trying to figure out the license plate of the truck that just ran them over after picking a fight with Kiryu, and these are guys raised to the utter peak of fighting skill through scores of hours of gameplay! My least favorite Yakuza game so far, it's also one I sunk 100+ hours into easily, because as far as I can tell there is no such thing as a bad Yakuza game. At least not yet. https://gfycat.com/costlybraveantelopegroundsquirrel.mp4 9. Yakuza 3 When the remasters of 3, 4 & 5 were announced for the Yakuza series, I was made aware that 3 was probably considered the weakest in the series. As you can see from its place in my list... I disagree! It certainly has its issues, of the three remasters it definitely feels the clunkiest and the upgraded graphics & textures can only mask so much. Another regular complaint I heard was that the early section of the game drags a fair bit, as Kiryu largely just screws about in Okinawa running his orphanage and being dad to a bunch of kids inbetween wondering into town and getting caught up in the usual crazy encounters that Yakuza games are so well known for. The thing is though... I would have happily played a game of just that! The orphanage and the relatively low stakes of Kiryu trying to help the kids out while resisting efforts from local Yakuza and bigger business to buy out their plot of land for competing developments was actually the best part of the game for me. When Kiryu inevitably returns to Tokyo, all the usual Yakuza goodness is there, but it was very much more of the same I'd experienced in Kiwami and Kiwami 2 (and of course 0). You can tell why they realized it was time to shake things up in 4, but I am kind of fascinated in the notion of an alternate timeline where instead they made another Yakuza game that really was just Kiryu raising the kids in Okinawa. The plot is standard stuff really, backing down somewhat from the kind of weird, uneasy "secret Koreans are everywhere!" plot of Kiwami 2. There's money to be made via corruption, and some Yakuza want in on the action, and everybody is scheming and making plots around rank, position and a shot at chairmanship of the Tojo Clan. Kiryu, of course, just wants to secure his orphanage and ends up sorting everything out in the way he knows best: punching it! Yes there's odd stuff like the CIA secret assassins, hidden plots within the larger plot to expose a shadowy political power, and the twin of a dead character (of course!) but it's not all that difficult to grasp what is going on even when they throw in the by now requisite double-crosses and shifts in the power structures of the perceived antagonists. Overall, it's just a solid addition to the Yakuza game series. It doesn't really reinvent the wheel, and it is showing its age even in a remaster, but it's just good drat fun like all Yakuza games. https://gfycat.com/anxiousperkychinesecrocodilelizard.mp4 8. Mass Effect Another remaster! 2007 wasn't that long ago in the greater scheme of things but it feels like a million years, and it looks it if you ever try to replay the original unmodded. What the Legendary Edition remaster of the game did, thankfully, was make it look, sound and most importantly FEEL like I remembered it. Widescreen, high resolution graphics, almost non-existent loading times, a more robust character creator and a (minor) overhaul of the "legendary" inventory system of the first game which was, frankly, an utter misery. There are even minor quality-of-life improvements like giving you ways around miserable old standards like the Tower of Hanoi puzzle. Getting to replay Mass Effect on a modern PC, rebuilding my old Commander Shepard and getting to take back through the entire trilogy was an utter blast. Having the benefit of the (shockingly still detailed) memory of everything the game was going to throw at me meant that I could just really settle in and enjoy it, relishing each refreshed memory, anticipating eagerly what was to come next. Yes the game's almost quaint "visit three locations, return to the hub, look at the new locations then finish the game" structure is pretty obvious, including where its interactivity and responsiveness are limited, but its also like visiting an old friend. Plus, as mentioned above, you now know what doing or NOT doing certain things will accomplish: how do you handle Wrex (you keep him alive at all costs!)? What choice do you make between Ashley and Kaidan (well, obviously you choose for Ashley to die, but in which location!?!)? Do you grab Liara first and become BFFs or leave her stuck in her bubble as long as possible for the amusement of being incredibly more informed than the galaxy's foremost expert on both Protheans and her now dead mother? Can you get through to Saren so he at least can go out on his own terms by killing himself rather than willingly doing Sovereign's dirty work? Plus you get to experience again Mass Effect when it was new. Even knowing how things turn out, Sovereign remains a fascinating and terrifying presence, and the suggestion of what the Reapers were was always going to be more scary than anything ever shown. That's something Mass Effect did so well, it figured out when to leave things to the imagination. Playing it again, almost 15-years since it first came out, it made me remember just why I loved this game so much in the first place. https://gfycat.com/dampdelicioushorsemouse.mp4 7. Cyberpunk 2077 I am fully aware of how deeply disappointed people were in Cyberpunk 2077, and how legitimate many of the complaints about it are. I don't dispute that the game is clearly a mile wide but only an inch deep, that it is utterly baffling in how it lacks some standard elements to be expected from almost any RPG let alone a massively expensive production like this one. In spite of all that however, I also really, really enjoyed playing the game! Sure it wasn't anything close to the astonishing experience of Witcher 3, also made by CPDR, but for all its flaws the game that WAS there was one I liked as I played, and which I felt satisfied by when I was finally finished with it. Also, while there is a lot missing from the game, there is also a lot of truly impressive things in it. The City may feel oddly empty or lifeless at times, but the incredible level of detail in nearly every space and around every corner was extraordinary. Similarly, while a lot of the side-characters you interact with were mostly over the phone and everybody else was just kind of.... there... as an NPC, each character you see, meet or interact with in the world is remarkably detailed/animated in terms of clothing, hair, body language, idle animations, movement etc. It makes for a game where I could and would often just hang out WATCHING the game exist, go to a local market or into my apartment building or check out a party in the suburbs, see what people were doing. Guys and girls sitting at diners or in nightclubs, hanging out, chatting, smoking, drinking, just being there as part of the wider world on display. As for the game plot itself, well it's hardly groundbreaking, but I did enjoy the conundrum V faced of his/her physical brain essentially rejecting them in favor of Johnny, particularly in how V's own mannerisms and habits would change based on decisions you made , becoming more like Johnny as V became less and less "themseves". Perhaps my favorite part of the game though was that you are very much given the option (the best ending of the game in my opinion) to reject being part of the lovely eco-system of Night City, join the Nomads and gently caress off to be happy with Panam (or somebody else, or nobody, I guess, depending on choices you've made) for whatever time you have left. Ending the game with V and Panam having slipped over the border and sharing a moment staring out into the open night sky was a phenomenal way to end the game. A flawed game without doubt, one with plenty of obvious and often inexcusable problems... but still a game I really, really enjoyed, warts and all. https://gfycat.com/incrediblegloomygrayling.mp4 6. Mass Effect 3 For 85-90% of Mass Effect 3, it's the best game in the series, hands down. Almost everything is improved, streamlined and adapted from the lessons learned over the course of the trilogy to make for the most enjoyable experience possible. Yes, even at the time some people complained the gameplay had been dumbed down somewhat in a bid to attract a wider audience (to an already enormously successful series), but I felt like this game had the best, easiest to access and understand gameplay (particularly combat) of any in the series. I won't go into the ending, it's been talked about forever and a day, including by myself, over in the Mass Effect thread. I'll just say that I didn't like it, and it's to my mind the reason why the game still to this day has a bit of a reputation as a disaster/failure in spite of its obvious success. Obviously they didn't "fix" this problem with the Legendary Edition, but what they did do was include all the DLC that came out to go along with the original game. And that DOES fix it, whether you choose to consider it the real ending of the game (like I do) or just an example of how the game makers COULD still capture the spirit of fun, excitement and overall positivity that the games had before they got to that stupid, stupid original ending. Because the Citadel DLC is a masterpiece, even only taking into account the main storyline of Shepard and their evil Clone who wants to take over his/her life!. The party, while it is obviously fanservice in terms of just letting the entire crew hang out and be funny/stupid, gives exactly the send-off that I wanted for the series. Having Shepard end the game (you can come back and play it after the ending, though the game treats it like you haven't finished the story yet) by musing with their love interest over how they've spent the best years of their life on the Normandy was just a pitch-perfect way of ending things. Anyway, that's the DLC. But the main game also has tremendous moments, set-pieces, character interactions, closure on subplots and character beats. There are too many to go into here, but playing this game even in 2021 knowing what was coming, I still thrilled to moments like the Thresher Maw taking down the Reaper Destroyer, the Quarian Fleet targeting and bringing down another, Shepard ending the Quarian/Geth war, getting Kaidan back on the crew, ending the Genophage and Wrex's reaction afterwards, finding Javik, saying goodbye to Thane etc. Yes, as the ending to the trilogy it failed to stick the landing and became something of a joke after so many years of being considered one of the best series going. But Mass Effect 3 was still a hugely enjoyable game for the bulk of it, and stands up even close to a decade after it first came out. Had it managed a satisfying (non-DLC) ending, it would probably be near the top of my list. https://gfycat.com/neighboringaccomplishedantlion.mp4 5. Noita For the most part I'm not really one for Roguelites, the ones I do enjoy tend to be the exception rather than the rule. Last year I included two in my Top 10, Hades and this game, Noita. This year, while I believe that Hades was clearly the "better" game overall it wasn't the one I kept coming back to. No, that was Noita, a game that I simply can't seem to keep away from for more than a few days (and often not even a full day) before I jump in for another attempt at cracking it. I now have over 100 hours in the game, I've beaten it twice, lost HUNDREDS of times, developed an awareness of the basic make-up of most of the (largely procedurally generated) levels, seen nearly every power, enemy or power/skill that can be earned, found, equipped, fought etc. I have NO IDEA what I am doing. That's the wonderful thing about Noita. I keep playing it, I keep learning a bit more, I keep getting a little better... but I have no idea what is going on. I see gifs or mp4s or some people and am left in utter awe (and terror) because they are doing things I cannot even fathom with the game, a game I have played a lot of! Their wizards are eldritch abominations, all flailing tentacles and tearing holes in reality as they claw or blast their way into parallel worlds, uncover secrets I don't have the fainted idea even existed, and bend or break the laws of physics over their knees as they transmute matter, eviscerate enemies and use wands so powerful that they momentarily freeze the computer trying to calculate what is supposed to happen when they go off. Most of what you see in the banner image I made for this entry I simply grabbed from the Noita thread here on the forums, where various goons will frequently show off the insane poo poo they've done. I don't feel bad that I have no idea how they've done the things they do, nor does it feel daunting trying to build my wizard up to that level. Because Noita is a game about trying, failing, then trying again. Each time a little better, each time learning a little more, figuring things out, seeing what works and more often what doesn't. And whether the player is a complete rookie or some kind of astral being that can see in 12-dimensions, one constant remains true: hubris is the ultimate killer. https://gfycat.com/boilinggrimybirdofparadise.mp4 4. Yakuza 5 Here it is, the culmination of everything Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio had been building to since the original Yakuza game. Even in this remastered form, it has since been surpassed by 0, plus of course of those I haven't played, 6 and Kiwami 2 having the new Dragon Engine to play in, and Like A Dragon switching things up entirely with a new main character and a switch to Turn-Based Mode. But before those, there was Yakuza 5, and it's just fantastic. Utterly fantastic. It's huge. It's too big in fact! There are too many characters. The plotline is byzantine nonsense. So much is crammed into the game that it is overloaded to the point of ridiculousness. Each of the four main characters' storylines could easily carry a game all on their own. The game takes so long to complete and there are so many ancillary characters that it is easy to forget the significance some of them have. I love it. I don't care that it's too big or too much or that the actual plot, when finally revealed, is kinda dumb. This is mainline Yakuza, hook it to my veins and let me revel in it! You can see how everything they learned from the previous games has been refined and processed to get the ultimate bang for your buck. Most of all, this game essentially takes what the developer was going for in 4 and gets it all right here, to the point of even reusing probably my least favorite part of 4 and making it actually great: Saejima being in prison! It's a game full of characters who are either self-serving liars or selfless liars or self-serving liars who THINK they're selfless liars! Park in particular is kind of repulsively fascinating because when you first see her your immediate instinct is to dislike her for what she does to Kiryu, but then as the game progresses you learn that she's still repulsively fascinating regardless of efforts to romanticize her horrible emotional blackmail of a teenage girl! That she is just one of a score of characters who compete for main time as protagonist, antagonist, or key supporting character just serves to remind that this game is loving huge. Akiyama returns, as does Saejima, and Tanimura has completely disappeared (there's even a line later in the game where the others make like one half-hearted effort to call him then just move on with their lives  ), replaced by Shinada who is an absolutely wonderful character. He's a penniless loser and he rules, his utter earnestness about his chosen passion for baseball makes him fit right in with the likes of Kiryu and he's a wonderful addition to the cast.Big game is big, and it doesn't matter. Yakuza 5 is just purestrain Yakuza, it throws everything and the kitchen sink into being a Yakuza game, then builds a new kitchen sink just to throw that in too. Maybe Kiryu himself designed the game, because if so then like everything else, he put 150% into doing so. https://gfycat.com/plainnaughtygossamerwingedbutterfly.mp4 3. Mass Effect 2 When it came out in 2010 it was the best game of the series. When Mass Effect 3 came out only two years later, 2 was still the best game in the series. Now with the benefit of hindsight and a decade plus to consider all three games... it's still the best game in the series! This is the high watermark of Mass Effect, everything was firing on all cylinders here and the game is just incredible. From the opening sequence all the way though to the utterly astonishing, pitch-perfect ending as Shepard escapes the Collector base, all the way through to the stunning final shot of the Reapers making their slow, inexorable progress from the dark space between Galaxies. It improves on almost every aspect of the first game, demonstrating a confidence earned by the hard work that went into producing this (and of course the other RPGs they've made!). It's probably the most cinematic feeling of the three games even if 3 improved on a lot of other technical aspects, helped by building on the location/hub system AND the personal interactions of the first game to tell a more personal story. Shepard rebuilding her crew, from familiar faces to new ones, and getting to spend time with each of them both on missions and in the ship, feels more natural than it did in 1. It also feels more in line with the situation they are facing, while 3 made improvements to crew interactions it did sometimes seem to forget the crew was on a desperate war footing and facing extinction: in 2, the stakes are high but Shepard's movements and his/her mostly unofficial status makes the slightly less rigid atmosphere on the Normandy work better. There are problems, of course. The game never quite gives you the freedom to outright reject Cerberus or tell The Illusive Man (Martin Sheen!) to gently caress off, and it feels like the developers were hoping to somehow convince you the war criminal terrorist racist torturers were just a little misunderstood. The player is left to do a lot of the heavy lifting in constructing their own narrative to explain why Shepard doesn't get to do or say things that the game simply doesn't ever give them the option to do. The thing is, in trying to talk about problems with Mass Effect 2, to acknowledge that no game (except The Witcher 3) is perfect... well, it just keeps reminding me of all the things I loved about it. It's a fantastic game, just incredible, in 2010 it was one of - if not THE - best games I played that year, and in 2021 it's still right up there with the best of the best. https://gfycat.com/sociablehilariousekaltadeta.mp4 2. Deathloop Arkane has never made a bad game and this one continues that streak. A tremendously stylish, easy to play and also very, very funny game, it manages to capture the usual Arkane flair for enjoyable gameplay and the rewarding of exploration, adaptation as well as the by now very recognizable setting of a gameworld that is past its prime/showing signs of decay or degradation. One criticism, and it's a fair one, that has been made about this game is that it is largely retreading old ground familiar from previous games. Ironic, perhaps, given the narrative is all about playing around with variations of reliving the same day. This is Groundhog Day mixed with Dishonored/Prey, as the main character - Colt - wakes on a beach and quickly discovers that he's been reliving the same day for a VERY long time and regularly loses his memories. He has no idea how long he has been at this, who any of the people he encounters are or what relationship he has with them, why one in particular keeps harassing him and killing him but also continually just wanting to have a chat. As you play, you learn more. As you learn more, you get better at the game. As you get better at the game, you get more experimental/risky, knowing that ultimately if you die you'll get another chance at it. The overlap between the player's mindset and that of Colt himself is almost a circle, and one of the many remarkable things about the game is how often Colt's various lines/reactions not only feel natural but exactly how the player themselves might be feeling at the time. I get the impression a SHITLOAD of playtesting went into this game. Oddly enough, this isn't a game with a lot of replay value. Well, it is. But the replay value comes in a first playthrough only. When I finished, I felt like I had seen and done everything there was to do in the game, because the way it was designed it was intended to encourage the player to keep trying new things, work different processes in different orders to see what happens. This wasn't a game where I felt,"Well now I need to try again as a very different type of Colt" because, well... you could be very different types of Colt every single "day" of your first playthrough. Hell, you could be very different types of Colt in every quarter of every hour (the days are divided into morning, noon, evening and night) or even in a single quarter. You weren't punished for experimenting, you were rewarded, so when you were done you were REALLY done. Which means I probably spent way longer than I would have normally to complete the game, because I wanted to do EVERYTHING, but when I was done I didn't feel the urge to play again (and the multiplayer didn't really interest me beyond doing the bare minimum to get new outfits for Colt). The game ends with a hook for a couple of very different potential sequels, and I'd be excited to play either. The game, as noted, is incredibly stylish with very accessible gameplay. But it's the personalities of Colt and Julianna (and to a lesser extent the Visionaries) that really gave the game personality. The voice acting from both is just great, but especially from Colt. Jason E. Kelley plays Colt's frustrations (and his goofy cockiness when he gets the advantage) wonderfully, adding real moments of levity at needed times but also the dread and despair of somebody who realizes - not for the first time! - the true horror of the "amortality" he had a part in creating. In terms of the visuals, the sound, the gameplay, characters and voice acting it was hard for me to find a better game than Deathloop this year, even if some complaints about it being shallower than prior Arkane games have merit. Hard... but not impossible. https://gfycat.com/disfiguredresponsiblejaeger.mp4 1. Psychonauts 2 In 2005, Psychonauts was released, but I didn't play it. A few years later, a very kind goon gifted it to me on Steam because they thought I should play it. I did. I loved it. So did most everybody else who played it, it's widely considered one of Double Fine Production's best ever games, and people really wanted there to be a sequel. Unfortunately, it didn't sell very well on release, and though it did well when made available on Steam it didn't seem likely that would happen. By the time the game was announced through a crowd-sourcing campaign on Fig, the interest remained but people weren't entirely sure if the Double Fine of 2016 would be able to recapture the magic of 2005. It took until 2021 for us to find out, but luckily the answer was a resounding yes. Psychonauts 2 is... exceptional. It's a sequel that took over 15 years to be made, and somehow it both feels modern AND like it really has only been 3 days between games, like it was for Raz and the rest of the characters. All the characters sound exactly the same, but more importantly those who are returning are also largely written the same, their personalities are intact (including those with fractured ones!) and the new characters feel entirely natural as fitting into the weirdass environment of the Psychonauts Universe. Which isn't to say the developers were just pretending it is still 2005. Considering this is a game about people with the ability to go into the minds of others and fundamentally change the way people think, Psychonauts 2 does a great job of dealing with some surprisingly mature topics, particularly around consent as well as the dangers and irresponsibility of trying to "fix" somebody to what you consider to be the "correct" way to be. Raz very quickly learns his lesson and is suitably distraught about the implications (and consequences!) of his mistakes. This isn't just there for a quick moral lesson, it informs the entire rest of the game and especially the main narrative where we see Ford Cruller has made plenty of mistakes - which Raz calls him out on - in the name of what he considered the greater good. It also doesn't just pretend saving the day magically makes everything okay, there are repercussions to actions and people don't always act logically: there is a difference between intellectual and emotional forgiveness and the game does a really good job of demonstrating this in a way that feels healthy. Just like in the first game, there are some tremendous thematic levels found in some of the minds that Raz enters. Perhaps the most compelling is the realm of the PSI King (the images in the banner for this entry were taken from it), but Bob's Bottles, Compton's Cookoff, Strike City and Cassie's Collection are all standouts. They play with their themes in a fun way, and showoff some delightful visual imagery as well as very clever/fun use of both the game mechanics and the creativity of the level designers. While this game as a stand-alone is very good, where it really shines is in its status as the sequel to such a beloved original. It doesn't (and shouldn't) be considered in a vacuum, because it is so specifically a sequel as opposed to just a game sharing the same name/universe. This continues the story of Psychonauts, and it does it better than I could have ever hoped it would, and leaves me excited at the potential for another game in the series. If they keep being as good as this, I'll just keep playing them, though hopefully this time not 15 years apart.... because this was the best game I played all year. Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 13:57 on Dec 20, 2021 |
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Dec 18, 2021 12:00
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Speaking as a non-FFXIV player separating the expansions doesn’t really seem to me to make any sense at all?
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Dec 18, 2021 13:06
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Escobarbarian posted:Speaking as a non-FFXIV player separating the expansions doesn’t really seem to me to make any sense at all? Think of them as like sequels in the same series. FFXIV-2, FFXIV-3, etc
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Dec 18, 2021 13:21
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Escobarbarian posted:Speaking as a non-FFXIV player separating the expansions doesn’t really seem to me to make any sense at all? People do it for other MMOs, WoW for example
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Dec 18, 2021 13:32
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Escobarbarian posted:Speaking as a non-FFXIV player separating the expansions doesn’t really seem to me to make any sense at all? I think the reason is that, when people are ranking FFXIV expansions on these lists, they're not really talking about the overall MMO experience of playing the game. It's not usually FFXIV as a whole that's being listed. Instead, it's the main story of a specific expansion that's being brought up, and each expansion's main story is a 40-60 hour JRPG in and of itself. I'm ambivalent about whether they should be counted separately or not but it makes more sense to count FFXIV expansions separately than it would to count, like, a Civilization game expansion separately, at least to me. Votes for Endwalker might as well be votes for the game as a whole, though, given that the whole point of Endwalker is that it's the ending of the entire main story up to this point.
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Dec 18, 2021 14:06
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Darkoni posted:1: Metroid Dread (Switch) Seems like every year this thread gets made I end up thinking,"Man I should get a Switch....". I haven't even played any Metroid games before and this write-up made me wanna play Dread!
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Dec 18, 2021 14:19
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Jerusalem posted:Seems like every year this thread gets made I end up thinking,"Man I should get a Switch....". I haven't even played any Metroid games before and this write-up made me wanna play Dread! You should have got a switch 4 years ago
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Dec 18, 2021 14:39
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Darkoni posted:6: Trials of Mana (PC) Just wanted to chime in and say I loved this write-up. I think SD3 is in a pretty unique place outside of Japan, where people who have the biggest nostalgia for it aren't people who grew up with consoles, but people who grew up with PCs and emulation. I grew up in a PC (specifically Mac) only household and a high school friend introduced me to emulation and console games in general with a pack of the same 3 games that your brother gave you plus Link to the Past. I also had a really great nostalgia trip with the remake, and around the same time had a blast playing 2-player co-op for the first time on the original SNES version via the Collection of Mana re-release. It's nice to see Square giving a bit of love to overlooked series recently between this and stuff like NEO TWEWY and the SaGa Frontier remaster.
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Dec 18, 2021 14:53
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FF14 is like a prestige TV series in JRPG MMO format so each expansion is more like a season of a really good show
Feldegast42 fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Dec 18, 2021 |
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Dec 18, 2021 14:58
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Escobarbarian posted:Speaking as a non-FFXIV player separating the expansions doesn’t really seem to me to make any sense at all? To use a hypothetical example, imagine if there were votes for both WoW Shadowlands and WoW Burning Crusade Classic, they're the same game but two completely different experiences
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Dec 18, 2021 15:50
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Rarity posted:To use a hypothetical example, imagine if there were votes for both WoW Shadowlands and WoW Burning Crusade Classic, they're the same game but two completely different experiences I suppose that the argument for FFXIV being different is that it doesn't really handle expansions the same way, with each building on and continuing the story of the previous one to tell one continuous story. You can't just play one expansion without going through the others that came before, so for someone playing them all at once it is just one complete experience rather than several distinct ones. But in practice I don't think it matters if we all just put Endwalker.
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Dec 18, 2021 16:03
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Yeah that comparison doesn't quite hold up because there aren't two different versions of FFXIV running at any given time. WoW Shadowlands and WoW Classic: TBC are functionally entirely separate games in a way that FFXIV Shadowbringers and FFXIV Endwalker aren't. FFXIV expansions are in a weird spot where you could make very strong arguments either way, though. You could argue that if FFXIV expansions can be counted all together than maybe Yakuza games should all count together, because they also tell a sequential story? But then there's no progress carryover there so it's not quite the same. You could argue that FFXIV expansions are functionally like the separate discs of a PS1 FF game and wouldn't it be weird if Disc 3 of FFVII had to be counted separately from Disc 2 even though they're all part of the same continuous story experience? But then the discs of a PS1 FF game all released at the same time and not as separate purchases years apart. So yeah it's a weird spot for the purposes of a ranking like this. This distinction is mostly academic though because I would be very surprised if enough people voted for FFXIV but specifically not Endwalker for it to actually affect the rankings in a meaningful way.
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Dec 18, 2021 16:29
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Jerusalem posted:Seems like every year this thread gets made I end up thinking,"Man I should get a Switch....". I haven't even played any Metroid games before and this write-up made me wanna play Dread! Do it. Even if there wasn't a handy slide show to catch you up, each game is happy to more or less be self contained. Item Getter posted:Just wanted to chime in and say I loved this write-up. Emulation is so important for game preservation. The biggest irony is that if we never 'stole' the games to begin with we would never have the chance to buy them today. Darkoni fucked around with this message at 19:08 on Dec 18, 2021 |
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Dec 18, 2021 19:05
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Rarity posted:To use a hypothetical example, imagine if there were votes for both WoW Shadowlands and WoW Burning Crusade Classic, they're the same game but two completely different experiences It's less this and more like, hmm Taking One Piece and splitting each arc up into its own series? It's not a perfect analogy but it's closer to the truth than not. Someone picking up Endwalker today is is going to be experiencing fundamentally the same game starting from ARR, continuing on to Heavensward, Stormblood, Shadowbringers, and finally Endwalker. It's one single experience to the point where people describe the entire package as one 300+ hour JRPG. (You can even see examples of this in past goty threads.) Which is extremely daunting when phrased this way but also entirely accurate. Basing expectations on how WoW does things has caused some misunderstandings in the past but they're following completely different design philosophies, including wrt expacs. E: Much as how it think it would be hilarious and a little absurd for FF14 to show up multiple times in a single ranking, and as much as it's a moot point considering that most FF14 voters are making sure to just vote Endwalker to represent the whole game, I just felt I ought to explain my reasoning. Runa fucked around with this message at 20:03 on Dec 18, 2021 |
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Dec 18, 2021 20:01
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I mentioned this a few pages back, but I think that argument only works for new players. For established players, they feel far more like sequels than a single continuous experience
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Dec 18, 2021 20:09
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My top 10 games that I played in 2021- 10. Monster Sanctuary: Interesting pokemon-like which never outstayed it's welcome and definitely recommended if you thought "oh I like pokemon but those games are way too easy!", very gameplay focused, the story is practically non-existent but it's a very good use of ~20 hours. 9. Gunfire Reborn: Enjoyable roguelike shooter which scratched my yearly "I just want to shoot things" itch very well, it's easy to pick up and play and quite addictive but the balancing of enemies is just... not there. You can blitz through 2-3 rooms and get 2 shot by a new enemy you haven't seen before. Would be a lot higher if they can fix that up. 8. Digimon Cyber Sleuth: I've been playing this game for on and off a good 2-3 years and the requirements to get some of the digimon and fulfill my need of getting every single one is outright absurd. It is still a very enjoyable RPG and probably the best digimon game out there if you need your fix. 7. Hades: Friend bought me this for my birthday and strongly recommend it and while I absolutely love the art style, the story, the atmosphere, the characters, I just absolutely can't get past the gameplay and I know it's probably great but not really my area of expertise or cup of tea. Please make a hades visual novel in the future instead of going through tedious gameplay loops thx 6. Mini Healer: I picked this up for next to nothing on steam and didn't expect much, but is a extremely enjoyable little strategy RPG of being a healer for a party and negotiating through more complex and different boss battles while getting fulfilling loot and skill trees. It really pressed my number go high impulses and the later stages are an absolute treat of that feeling of healing a difficult raid in an MMO. 5. Monster Hunter: Rise: As a jaded and aging monster hunter player who has played since it's inception on the PS2 and probably dumped thousands of hours into it, I was definitely not warm to Rise at the start, with some of the QoL changes making the combat almost *too* quick at times and I feel that a lot of the strategy of the fights are kind of lost in such fast paced battles. Then I got to harder modes and everything clicked again and I am currently absolutely loving it. Some of the new modes like the tower defense mode should not exist which makes it only my number 5. 4. Deltarune Chapter 2: Toby fox has done it again and delivered this extremely enjoyable few hours of happiness into my life and really would be my number 1 if I could play the entirety of it and not play a part every few years or something. TOBY FOX LET ME GIVE YOU MY MONEY! 3. Path of Exile: Allows me to the loot goblin that I truly want to be in life. Not much really to say to be honest, if you like diablo-clones, this is the game to play right now. 2. Shin Megami Tensei V: This was SO close to beating endwalker for me, the gameplay QoL is fantastic, the new demons are great, the graphics and things they are doing with the switch is outright extraordinary, the hard mode is absolutely kicking my rear end and reminded me as a teenager banging my head against nocturne hard mode. Unfortunately, it lets itself down in two areas, story and level design. Now, SMT doesn't really usually have good stories in general (looking at you nocturne) but was always enough to just keep you on the edge of your seat. For me, SMT 5 fell way short of that and it's such a shame. Level design also feels very antiquated and isn't varied enough, in nocturne I go from a hospital, ruins, a park, underground caves, lairs etc and SMT 5 is just mainly ruins with a lot of sand. So close to a perfect game however and I am very happy of where the franchise is going. 1. Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker: I have around 5600 hours logged into this drat game. I have cried 10+ times in the last week. They can't keep getting away with this. From the sound design (Soken the head lead is an absolute genius) to it's story spanning almost a decade expertly told with a few pacing issues but I can forgive them for that. The love, care and attention this game gets has no equal. Just let me play more of it, I need to level my crafters!!!! Samael fucked around with this message at 20:15 on Dec 18, 2021 |
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Dec 18, 2021 20:12
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cheetah7071 posted:I mentioned this a few pages back, but I think that argument only works for new players. For established players, they feel far more like sequels than a single continuous experience I mean I'm an established player now and I'm gonna vote for Endwalker specifically but it's not like I'd mind my vote being lumped together into one FFXIV pile.
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Dec 18, 2021 20:14
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6. Pokémon Unite It’s a free-to-play team MOBA so it was doomed from the jump but I had some fun times. I do appreciate them adding playable characters like it’s a fast food menu though. 5. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Sora. 4. Animal Crossing: New Horizons This game saved my rear end in the 2020 pandemic. Unlike most people I played straight through to the one year anniversary before I become a full-time computer toucher. The 2.0 relaunch rekindled my interest in redesigning my entire island but not actually doing so. And I haven't even touched the paid DLC yet. 3. Resident Evil Village It’s camp. I really enjoyed the first half of this game. Vampire castle and the doll house were by far the best stretches whereas I found the second half to be a bit of a slog. I think the characters really carried the narrative because overall he plot was underwhelming. Everything involving Lady Dimitrescu, Angie the Doll and Heisenburg were all hilarious. Moreau and Duke were charming. Mother Miranda was ultimately an anticlimactic presence after all of them. 2. New Pokemon Snap I honestly still can’t believe a Pokémon Snap sequel actually came out this year. It had decades of nostalgia to combat with but fortunately it’s bigger and better. What I appreciate most about this game is how much personality is being exhibited by these Pokémon compared to the mainline games. It’s the best the series has ever looked. It also feels much more adventurous despite being on-rails. 1. Disco Elysium I lost count of how many Nintendo Directs I sat through waiting for a Disco Elysium release date. Finally this year I get my hands on this masterpiece. I’ve somehow managed to avoid spoilers despite the reputation the game has here. I found myself really savouring this game, sometimes getting lost in a single conversation for an hour. The worldbuilding is fascinating even when it’s delivered in Encyclopedic exposition dumps. The insane skill tree single-handedly defeated the illusion of choice. Disco Elysium really did raise the bar for video games.
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Dec 18, 2021 20:22
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Hell yeah Disco Elysium!! Ahem, cheetah7071 posted:I mentioned this a few pages back, but I think that argument only works for new players. For established players, they feel far more like sequels than a single continuous experience Fair, but there's just so many new players that I expect that people experiencing FF14's Hydaelyn-Zodiark Saga as a single contiguous experience will be the norm rather than the exception. And the feeling that the expac was a sequel rather than a continuation was strongest moving from ARR to Heavensward. There weren't the same expectations of strong narrative and progression continuity because there weren't other expac releases to compare it to. The transition from HW to Stormblood was smoother and since then the in-game presentation from expac to expac has felt less "please look forward to the sequel" it's "please look forward to the next season, where we will pick things up immediately from this point in the story following a brief hiatus."
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Dec 18, 2021 20:30
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| # ? May 23, 2024 13:16 |
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I think even if FFXIV was counted as a single entry, most people voting for it would always be referring only to the latest expac anyway
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Dec 18, 2021 20:55
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