|
Nottherealaborn's Games of the Year Bad Games
10. TheHunter: Call of the Wild (PS4) 9. Rollercoaster Tycoon (PC) 8. PGA 2k21 (PS4) 7. Abzu (PS4) 6. Mount and Blade: Warband (PC) 5. Hell Let Loose (PS5) 4. Astro's Playroom (PS5) 3. Control (PS4) 2. The Witness (PS4) 1. Horizon: Zero Dawn (PS4) Nottherealaborn fucked around with this message at 14:55 on Dec 28, 2021 |
#
?
Dec 28, 2021 05:21
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 24, 2024 10:39 |
|
|
10. Team Fortress 2 As it tends to happen every now and then, TF2 just kinda started soaking up a bunch of free time again this year. The Uncletopia servers have been a godsend in getting games that are free of bots and jackasses, and I've been having some really good games throughout the year. It's always good to know that I can return to this game at pretty much any point and there is still a really dedicated community for the game keeping the game engaging after all these years. 9. Great Ace Attorney Chronicles  Really hoping to see ports of the other Ace Attorney games soon, because there's just not a whole lot else like them really. I generally don't find most visual novels all the engaging, but Ace Attorney always just makes it fun to wade through the repetitive dialog to the part where you are really figuring out the mystery in each case. I don't think I can get enough of watching absurd characters have over the top meltdowns when caught on their lies. 8. Mass Effect: Legendary Edition  As with Team Fortress 2, it was nice to be able to just return to this series after so long, this time with all the DLC and whistles I didn't have the first time around. It still ends on an unfortunate wet fart, but I still really enjoy all the stuff leading up to that moment. This I played as Femshep, and I really just can't help but feel like she gets the short end of the stick with romance options. I'm not into me, so even though I really like Garrus, I don't want to romance him. Basically, i wish games with romance options would let you do romance options regardless of gender since it's all your fantasy anyway. 7. Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart  They did a really good job bring this to a new generation and taking advantage of all the new things the PS5 can do. Dualsense is such a dumb sounding gimmick, but it's so neat actually playing games with it and feeling it effect games. The game itself is a really solid entry to the Ratchet & Clank series, and a really finely tuned one at that. 6. Quake  Finally ended up finishing this one after the remaster came out, and it's a really solid boomer shooter. One of the weaker of the big ones in my opinion, but there's some really cool level design and enemy design. My big complaint is that the super shotgun just doesn't feel like it has the impact of Doom 2's super shotgun. 5. Persona 5 Strikers  I'm really glad to get a continuation of Persona 5 that isn't a dancing game. The new characters are fun, and while the story isn't like a grand epic or anything, it's pretty much what I wanted exactly: A fun road trip story with solid character writing. 4. Halo Infinite  This is purely for the single player because I think Halo's multiplayer is a bore. Feels like 343 has finally gotten a good handle on the series, and I'm just glad to play a Halo single player where there's no bad third faction that's way less enjoyable to fight against, nor is the story obnoxiously obtuse. 3. Metroid Dread  Feels good to finally have a continuation of the story, and it's pretty much everything I wanted from a new 2D Metroid. I can only hope Prime 4 nails it like this one did. 2. Resident Evil Village  Liked Metroid Dread, this pretty much met all my expectations. Only real reason I have for putting it over Dread is just due to aesthetic preference for Village over Dread. 1. Deus Ex  I feel like every year I play one classic that I've been meaning to play for ages, and it blows me away completely. The ambition of this game is so cool, and figuring out little tricks like "Oh, I can just blow up a door to get through" is so sick for figuring out just how many ways you can get through each challenge. I feel like a lot of mainstream games don't even try to have this kind of ambition with the game design, and it's a shame because it makes all these archaic PC games so fascinating to go through. I'm still playing Guardians of the Galaxy, so maybe that would make my list, but I doubt I'll finish by January 1st. It's pretty good so far.
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2021 07:18
|
|
|
This was a tough year, and maybe that contributed to me being less adventurous than I like, with my plans of playing a variety of games being winnowed down to focus on comfortable genres and franchises. Nevertheless, this was a good year for them, so... (Note that I am a year purist and even with this thread's rules I self-impose only having 2021 releases in the main list, because I use this to remember what a year was like in terms of game history. Thus, the first "special award" category...) Best Old Game:  Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne HD Remaster (Runners-up: Persona 5 Royal, 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, Astro's Playroom, Wingspan) Some things in this game feel ageless, and the things that feel firmly rooted in an older era (particularly its dungeon design) were totally my jam. What makes this game resonate with me, even coming to it decades after its original release, is how much of an Absolute Mood this is, evoking the sense of wandering post-apocalyptic wastes and confronting truly inhuman visions of the world with a minimalist yet striking visual style that completely holds up. Perhaps set unfair expectations for SMTV lol Best Future Game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctS9DPDdPbA Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin I spent more time with this game's two demos this year than some full games (including some of the ones on the top ten list lol) because it really is a lot of fun. It's already getting some traction because of memes but the core combat and gameplay is really strong (should have been expected from Team Ninja) and just being layered with Final Fantasy trappings just amps up my excitement even more. The Dragoon Jump in this game is extremely satisfying, and I will probably main that, but the wealth of job possibilities and how differently they play really has me anticipating even more varied encounters and experiences beyond the two levels they've already shown. Best Game Soundtrack for a Game I Don't Actually Want to Play: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18RxkHgNAGg Battlefield 2042 I spent so much time listening to this OST and literally getting Jokerfied (award-winning hildur guđnadóttir's work here) by its haunting industrial soundscapes that capture the mood of glimpsing the end of the world in sight as devastated climate refugees turn to the only option left to them, the meatgrinder of perpetual war. Obviously none of this actually resonates with the game but hey they spent the money to get a good soundtrack album out of it. The List  10. NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139... I wondered whether to count this as a "new" game at all, a la Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne HD Remaster, but I feel like re-recording the whole soundtrack, plus all the stuff with Ending E feeling like the real capstone after so long deserve it to clock here. And although lots of things about this game are still beautiful and powerful (none more than the soundtrack), the structure of repeating busywork in the subsequent playthroughs really grates, and shows why Automata would modify things years later. That new addition, on the other hand, was a poetic way to close things out...  09. Outriders Yes, this game's story is laughably bad and edgy to the point it becomes enjoyable again like a SyFy Original, unlike their attempt to do the same with Bulletstorm. But the main reason it clocks on this list is that the gunfighting, mobility, and moment-to-moment action feels so good. I legitimately don't understand what people mean when they say the shooting in Destiny "feels good" and assume it has to do with controller vibration, but here you genuinely feel like a demon tearing through the battlefield, like Doomslaying but with cool loot drops. In most circumstances, the enemies just have enough resilience to feel satisfying when you punch through them with your special abilities, without them feeling like bullet sponges that are just wasting your time. Yes, there is a cover system in the game, but the moment you realize that the cover is for them, not you, and that it mostly serves for you to know where your enemies will be pinned down so you can teleport behind them and go "nothing personnel, kid" is when the game creates a paradigm shift for you. It almost dropped off the list (or would have been here with an asterisk) because of some embarrassing attempts to "balance" a co-op shooter along with a bunch of technical issues, but thankfully they managed to right the ship and at this point I can recommend it without any reservations.  08. Metroid Dread I haven't played a Metroid game since Super Metroid, but I immediately felt right at home here. I am not an expert in the Metroidvania genre and I can't point to any significant innovations or things that the game does exceptionally well, but it felt like a solid and cohesive journey, the momentum just carrying me forward for all ten hours. The parry feels great to use. The early stealth sequences where suitably tension-filled and did the thing that I constantly blame survival horror games for not doing, and that's threading the needle between making chases too easy that there's no feeling of danger, and ones where you die so much that any tension evaporates to be replaced by annoyance. The midgame EMMI sequences started to drag, but overall it paid off with some great moments at the end. The final boss was especially fun to work through -- one time I felt great that I managed to do a phase skip and then immediately threw it away by dying. I feel like one of my defining gameplay traits is enjoying bosses where I bash my head against the wall until things click (like in Souls games) and they managed to capture that here, too.  07. New Pokémon Snap I have never been able to finish a mainline Pokémon game, as I missed the boat on being enthralled with the franchise as a kid and the games really seem too lightweight for me now. This, on the other hand, was perfect for me -- delimited gameplay, getting to see and catalog all the mons, and just bask in the sense of wonder of being in this world.  06. Before Your Eyes There's a certain niche of narrative indie game, short-story-like meditations on life and death, that sometimes feel like easy outs, especially when there are certain tropes and strategies that seem somewhat manipulative to me. This game certainly trends in that direction. This kind of game, therefore, is something that can be made or broken by a couple key design choices, and in this case the developers made the right ones. The gameplay "gimmick", using blinking as gameplay input, is extremely interesting to me in the way it creates a different embodied relationship with what's going on. (It might seem overly fussy to make a webcam a requirement, but if you have a laptop or a phone to hook up to your computer, you can probably play this game.) Whether you eyes are open or closed might seem to be limited design space but they do quite a good job of enabling different kinds of action, and different conduits for narrative, using it. Particularly, the way that the game might become a staring contest in some points, because you're straining to stay in the moment but your body won't let you, is used to powerful effect. And without spoiling too much, they are quite aware that tearing up might affect someone's ability to control their blinking and they certainly play with that, too. Get it on sale! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaqDu16Rfe4  05. Unbeatable [white label] This one came out of nowhere. Again, classification questions about a Kickstarter free "prologue" to what will be a much larger game, and who knows how that will turn out, but all I know is that this feels like a full-fledged rhythm game with over a dozen tracks, and with enough narrative vignettes around the edge to evoke enough of its setting and characters like a clipped but poignant short story. The style is extremely confident out of the gate, and the music is really drat good, what else do you need from a rhythm game? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXhYlgvCbfE  04. Shin Megami Tensei V This game feels incredibly good to play. The SMT Press Turn and Fusion mechanics continue to be polished and link throughout all of the game's other systems of exploration and overcoming powerful challenges. They've done an amazing job of translating the exploration of dungeon crawling out into sprawling spaces that recall open world games but without feeling as rote as the standard AAA activity-menu open world. It remains a satisfying puzzle to navigate through the environment and get a sense of its geometry and geography, and the boss fights are really thrilling -- this is one of the few JRPGs where I can suffer multiple losses in a fight and still feel like I can pull things out with reinforcements. The story is... fine, I'm not complaining that it needed to have more endearing characters or anything like that, if anything, the petty squabbles among pantheons pale in comparison to the cosmic horror that underlies Nocturne, but I blame my expectations more than the developers for successfully doing what they sought to do. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tghBJbeMQRQ  03. Final Fantasy VII Remake: INTERmission A rich, full, experience in itself, and I'm not just saying that because it obviously has to be with a 3-disc OST including a full 15-minute jazz suite. FF7R fully realized "active time battle" as an actual combat system that married tactical decision-making faithful to the original with a flowing battle system, and the refinements they've made to make playing just Yuffie were all successful. It really does make you feel like a descendant of shinobi, and the character they sketch here is one I hope to see in the main story soon enough. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Q92loM2fE8  02. Persona 5 Strikers Just like with FF7R, another move into action RPG combat from a turn-based system that still feels "true" to the tactical foundations of an older system, really satisfying to unleash the all-out attacks and team-ups that were slightly more abstracted in the original. Moreover, I was blown away by encountering what really is a true sequel to Persona 5, and not just a less-essential spinoff like previous side games. It was just long enough away from these characters to geniunely be glad to see them again, and the story in a sense addresses many of the complaints one might have had with the original, especially in terms of characters with less screen time getting their chance to shine. I'll be playing this one again next year when it's time in my "real-time" playthrough lol https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXYUjJrGMjA (pictured: me wandering aimlessly waiting for Early Access to drop lol)  01. Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker Near the end of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, a tech quote cites Soren Kierkegaard, saying "And when the hourglass has run out, the hourglass of temporality, when the noise of secular life has grown silent and its restless or ineffectual activism has come to an end, when everything around you is still, as it is in eternity, then eternity asks you and every individual in these millions and millions about only one thing: whether you have lived in despair or not." Regardless of the merit of this mote of existentialist thought, it landed so strongly with my younger self because of how it meshed with the game I had been playing up to that moment: building a colony from the ground up, year by year, seeing them be able to make and do more miraculous things, to the point where their technology became indistinguishable from magic, and it was fitting that at the end of that story they would be thinking: what does it mean? I was thinking: my playing this game, taking this time -- what does it mean? This is the same territory that Final Fantasy XIV walks, and it is a landmark achievement that across all these years, they have successfully reached the end of this journey. One of the major skepticisms I see leveled at the game is its basis in MMO gameplay, and yet this is something that fits me like a glove. The feeling of etching a class's rotation into muscle memory (you're free to do all the classes on one character), and taking that into the boss fights where you link up with others in ways that sometimes feel like a struggle but sometimes move like music, and each of those battles capturing both the satisfaction of unlocking a puzzle while also being a dazzling spectacle of sight and sound. That works. But even the smaller mundane things, the dailies and the sidequests, the things which are more routine but which never cross the line into exploitative addiction fodder -- even those work, even those matter. This is because of what FF14 achieves with its time, with its years of building its world and all its locales and all its characters great and small. So many games ask you to save the world, but it's always in the abstract. You only see a sliver of it on a single path, and the rest is some vague archetype of duty. But when Endwalker asks its protagonists to save the world (this is hardly a spoiler lol), there is something meaningful in remembering the moments I spent in Ishgard literal years ago (and many more years ago for others), and the people there; the people in Doma, in Norvrandt, in every city that was home to not just epic battles but minor things like crafting decorations for a festival celebration. All these moments underpin the meaning of where FF14 takes its story. The title announces what this game is about, and the trailer signals that this is an End: the End of Days in the story, and the end of this current storyline in the game as a whole. There are so many ways in which it sinks its teeth into our current moment, in witnessing the world collapsing and some people rail against what seems like inevitability, other continue pointless petty struggles and cruelties, others hope to escape their problems by literally running away from them, and others give into despair. It legitimately and thoughtfully raises the philosophical question of whether what these characters do has any meaning, if the struggle is worthwhile if it will end up in the same place regardless. And in there, there's perhaps the echo of what meaning the players of this game find in it. The other note of trepidation that people have with the game is the sheer time it takes -- at this point, five full-length JRPG campaigns, literal hundreds of hours. A quantitatively signification portion of one's life. Is it worth it? Every person's life is different, so I cannot answer that. But I think about the concept of "legacy" that permeates this game, both in its narrative about people in the present grappling with the challenges left by those that have come before, and in the game's literal legacy built upon the ashes of a dead game (which continues to rear its head -- the infamous "2002" error that plagued slammed launch servers was a problem built into 1.0 code...). A game with a legacy, with history. It was what I was thinking when (ENDGAME SPOILERS IN LINK) this musical cue dropped. It is a moment that works because it recalls all of the game's history, stretching back years, to remind us that the moment we are playing was built on top of all those other moments. Maybe some people skipped to get here; the game will not begrudge you for that and they will be happy to take your money. But for those who worked their way through the journeys of the Warrior of Light to reach this point, it makes those layers of experience etched over the years that much more meaningful. I have also been thinking about Alpha Centauri because it gives me the confidence to think this about Final Fantasy XIV: This will undoubtedly be one of the greatest games I will experience in my lifetime. // (tl;dr) 10. NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139... 09. Outriders 08. Metroid Dread 07. New Pokémon Snap 06. Before Your Eyes 05. Unbeatable [white label] 04. Shin Megami Tensei V 03. Final Fantasy VII Remake: INTERmission 02. Persona 5 Strikers 01. Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker CharlieFoxtrot fucked around with this message at 08:22 on Dec 31, 2021 |
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2021 10:41
|
|
|
Gaming rules. Honorable Mentions: Devotion: Good scares, great imagery, a personally really resonant plot. If you’re into horror games I’d recommend getting your hands on this one. It’s a pretty short playthrough. Dishonored: Death of the Outsider: Not quite as good as Dishonored 2 but still a good time. Pretty short and I think none of the levels rise to meet the best ones in the other games, but Billy’s power set is pretty fun. Jupiter Hell: The Doom Roguelike is probably my all time favorite roguelike, and this successor to it is really good too. Most of the reason it isn’t higher is that I haven’t spent too much time with it yet. Also, while I don’t think it looks bad, the art doesn’t quite match the charm of Derek Yu’s Doom monster sprites. It Takes Two: The Keighley of the Year is a blast to play co-op and has an embarrassing understanding of relationships and divorce. In fact it’s so bad that it actually elevates the game as a co-op experience because you and your friend can dunk on how dumb it is. Omori: I love the story and art of this game, but it’s a slog to actually play. Significantly fewer battles would help it a lot. Tedium for thematic purposes is a really hard line to walk and Omori does not quite get there. Doom 64: I’m glad this got ported, it’s a solid Doom game. Raging Loop: This game is honestly kind of silly but it’s a good ride. I’m game for a VN only now and then and if I’m gonna read one I want it to be at least a little weird. Doom Eternal: The Ancient Gods 2: Doom Eternal is a great time, as always, but the second half of the DLC goes even further on adding enemies that require very specific solutions to harm. I think it’s the wrong way to go about forcing the use of more niche weapon options. Tormented Souls: Could be a game transported directly out of the Wal-Mart PS2 bargain bin, it has a charm that comes from aping the second and third string games from when survival horror was a real genre people made. Blazblue CentralFiction, Street Fighter 3rd Strike, Vampire Savior, Marvel Vs. Capcom 2: I’ve been able to play more fighting games with friends this year than ever and I loved every second of it. These were my favorites. Rollback becoming more and more prominent is a blessing. The List 15. Hedon Hedon is an extremely charming amalgam of old shooters. It’s Doom-y but has an increased focus on story and some light puzzle solving. The levels are combo of old Doom mazes with light immersive sim elements scattered around. It has an inventory system similar to a Build engine game. In the most positive sense it is what playing your friend’s D&D campaign via Doom would feel like. It’s got the level of roughness – sometimes important objects can be easy to overlook, lots of text-based exposition that sometimes is a little silly, the odd slightly clumsy mechanic – that sort of works in its favor because it makes it feel like a really dense mod, which I guess it sort of is. I feel that these things actually become additive given that this is so clearly a passion project for someone. While I was working through it, the developer added a sequel to the game for free. Everything I’ve heard implies it is more and better than the original and I cannot wait to get around to it. 14) Psychonauts 2 What was good about Psychonauts before – the writing and performances – remains good in the sequel. What sucked – most of actually playing it – is improved here to the lofty heights of ‘fine usually.’ It’s still not a good platformer and I think there is strong argument that it would be better with most to all of the combat removed, but it’s passable enough to not really stop you from getting to the good parts. I think the levels are less interesting and weird than the original too overall. Nothing as memorable as the milkman/velvetopia/kaiju levels from the first game for me. The overall look of the game is actually really solid so it’s disappointing that, with a couple of exceptions, they didn’t go as far with it as I would have hoped. 13) SaGa Frontier This was one of those games that I rented several times as kid but never really had the chance to own, and I was fascinated by it. I loved JRPGs and this one felt so different and so full of secrets even though I never made it very far into the game. Returning to it with the remaster, child me was right: I really like this game and it’s jam packed of weird stuff. It’s also, I think, sort of the ideal remaster. As far as my understanding goes they largely left the game intact only changing things that were strictly beneficial to the experience. They also added in some cut content. Last year around this time I decided to make 2021 the year I played the entire SaGa series and while I completely failed on my deadline I did enjoy every single one of the games I did play. I plan to continue trying to finish the series in the future. 12) Hitman 3 I think the modern Hitman trilogy is straight up one of the best things you can get in the sphere of video games, if you can figure out how to buy it all. The entire trilogy being one giant game under the Hitman 3 umbrella is just an incredible amount of game and pretty much all of it is good. It’s not a new take but climbing inside the various clockwork machines you’re presented with and tinkering with them loving rules and every time you’re able to utilize obscure knowledge of the level to accomplish something or save your rear end you feel like a genius. I think Hitman 3 itself is weaker than 2 overall, and my experience was soured by them struggling to connect content you owned across platforms. The always-online stuff is also still a millstone around the neck of the experience. While I think the elusive targets are cool, logging into the game to see a bunch of timers for how long you have to do something before it vanishes just sucks. The always-online stuff is still a millstone around the neck of the experience. 11) Black Mesa Half-Life is one of my all time favorite games. The sounds and iconography of Half-Life haunt my dreams due to spending days upon days of hours in it and the swarm of mods that existed for it. If there was a mod for Half-Life of even minor note I probably played it at the time. I still judge the multiplayer fps space against the sort of things you were seeing people make for this game and modern games basically always fail to pass this test. I used to play through the game at least once a year though I’ve fallen off in the past few. Black Mesa, for someone who loves Half-Life so much, is a great time. It misses here and there in the accuracy but that does not really matter to me. I just really enjoyed taking a very familiar trip presented in a sorta-new way. Before Xen it’s going to be what you remember and a strong take on it. Xen, however, is wildly different. Much longer with several new types of area which look fantastic. Each one also goes on too long leaving Xen feeling kind of bloated and filler-y at times. In the end Black Mesa is a great way to replay the Half-Life 1 campaign and it ends up being more faithful than it intended because I would skip Xen in this one, too. 10) Collection of SaGa I’m counting this as one because GoTY Cop Rarity cannot stop me I had Final Fantasy Legend as a kid and loved it but never made it anywhere. I was the kind of kid that would hit a wall in a game and often just start it over. I assumed that if I just played it better the next time through then I would arrive prepared to handle whatever challenge. The knife-fight bosses and wide open party selection hit me hard in this regard and I spent a lot of time playing the first 1/3 then starting over to try a new team. The monsters especially got me because I was not the kind of kid who would right anything down or try to solve the inner workings, so I relied on raw memory and luck to manage these. Playing these games as an adult who can just pull up charts on anything I need to now, I still think these games own. While extremely simple by modern standards, it really works for them. Each game is a relatively breezy playthrough but the starkness of a lot of spaces, due to being Gameboy games, really works to sell the worlds they’re trying to show you. Also, I am a sucker for the sort of amalgam setting thing they do here where it’s swords and sorcery but also real guns but also cartoon guns but also robots, monsters, and mutants. I would love to see modern graphical power be put behind RPGs where you can shoot a flaming bird god with a rocket launcher as you flee from it on a hoverbike through a ruined city, or battles with random monsters starting off with your spaceship lighting them up with some missiles. I spent a chunk of my playtime here shocked that I hadn’t seen some of the scenes or imagery in these games manifested in something with more graphical power. 9) NEO The World Ends With You I loved the original and the improbable sequel is almost as good. Despite some issues with pacing, late-game combat encounters, and a couple of sections that felt like filler overall I think it manages to feel like TWEWY without being a direct copy of its predecessor. While the scope is still JRPG as hell I really like the TWEWY games taking place in a very small area. A strength and weakness of this game is its love for the original game. You could probably play this one only and be just fine – despite many Nouns it’s not that complicated to pick up, at least in a broad sense. But, for me, the time between games actually works in its favorite in this regard. I am actually someone who has held TWEWY in high regard for many years and the game reflects this attitude toward the events and characters of the original works to instill a sense of in-setting nostalgia that is pretty impressive. 8) Resident Evil Village I love Resident Evil and Village is a fantastic escalation on 7. For my taste, it gets wild and stupid in ways I like without going over the line. The Metal Gear-esque swarm of weirdos often remind me of the cast of some lost movie from the 80’s. RE 7 and 8, being first person, really touch on a prime gaming experience: getting an excuse to go through other people’s drawers and take cool stuff. The combination of these things makes this a real ride and helps smooth over the issues with pacing that happen as the game goes on. Village, in the footsteps of 4, is a bit too silly and keeps you a bit too well-armed to be scary for the most part. It turns away from really trying to shock or horrify you – outside of the odd jump scare – and moves to try and delight you with how weird and gross this monster is or how over the top the next trap will be. I’m generally going to be here for this particular type of self-indulgence. My one concern is that it leaves you with the taste that the RE series is a couple of bad calls away from going down the path of trying to be a big budget for everyone action series again and that would be really disappointing to me after they’ve been knocking it out of the park for several years. 7) Inscryption Inscryption is a game best played for yourself. It’s got a great aesthetic and the runs are not overly long, so you can put whatever new bit of knowledge you gained to work pretty quickly. 6) Guilty Gear Strive Strive managed to drag so many dabblers I know into fighting games. If you’ve ever clicked on the fighting game thread chances are good you stumbled into an argument about what features serve to bring new blood versus those that just make the games worse for no gain. Whatever you think about Strive solely on its merits as a fighting game I love what it’s done to get people I know who were always kind of looking for that on-ramp to get further into the genre. On its own merits, I really enjoy the game. While not as complex as some, and maybe lacking in the staying power of the goats, it was easy to just hop in and quickly get in matches and iterate on what was going on. The relative simplicity and readability made it much easy to help newer players see what was going on. 5) Metroid Dread Simply the best Metroid game. 4) Outer Wilds I’m behind the curve on this one, and I still haven’t played the DLC, so there’s a lot already said about Outer Wilds. The feelings of discovery, mystery, and peril at top of their field when they land. I also think it trucks in an under-explored genre of games that heavily feature a vehicle that reminds largely separate from your avatar, but that’s a long boring post I already made. This is a minor structural spoiler so skip past if you are trying to remind totally blind on this game: One thing I personally really enjoyed was the very clear last minute or two before a loop ended. I found it relaxing. Games are always trying to keep you engaged, managing your attention and energy to make you want to keep plowing forward. The game saying, “nothing further will get done this loop” was really excellent and I loved stopping to just be in those moments and reflect on the story bits I had picked up. To make an annoying comparison, it sort of forced this quiet time on the play in the same way Pathologic 2 forcing to you walk across town a lot did. 3) Monster Hunter Rise A strict improvement on World. Rise feels like it got a little more of the MonHun energy back after the World’s reboot, and the wirebug is a fun toy to play with. More importantly, though, I just love Monster Hunter. There aren’t too many others games out there – especially outside of MMO raiding – that provide the same level of co-op challenge. That’s what lands it so high on my list. Most people I know that I would like to game with are unwilling to put in the time to catch up in an MMO they don’t already play, and rightfully so. Monhun let’s you jump in with your pals and fight monsters basically immediately these days, and you can always mitigate the ease of early monsters by trying out weapons you aren’t familiar with. If we’re being real, though, triumph and friendship are great reasons to play a video game but we all know the reason in your heart: to become a grabby little loot goblin. To fill your storage chest with items and crafting materials and weapons and all kinds of bugs you’ll never use but you need 300 of them anyway just in case some fusion of dragon and fighter jet just so happen to have a weakness to Bitterbugs. I personally take a very base joy in how every outing in this game lines your pockets with more and more stuff. Between sending your pet army off on adventures and your own hands it’s constant. 2) Umurangi Generation I bounced of New Pokemon Snap hard despite really liking photography in games – it’s the only real reason to play the otherwise mediocre Assassin’s Creed games. Umurangi Generation is my poo poo, however. In look and in message I just really vibed with this one all the way through. Like Inscryption this is a game I feel is better experienced, however, so it’s difficult to go into detail about what really works for me here. What I will say is that as a kid I remember loading up multiplayer levels in games like Perfect Dark or Half-Life and just poking around. I don’t remember why I did this, but the result was experiencing these spaces under a different atmosphere, sort of like still being in a store after it closes. Umurangi Generation sort of captures this feeling, but toward narrative ends. 1) Final Fantasy XIV Online: Endwalker A lot of words have already been spilled on this game, so: I’ve been hugely into Final Fantasy since I got the first game as a kid. It and I were released in the same year. It is probably my favorite media franchise. FFXIV acts as a combo museum/theme park for the franchise as whole, packed to bursting with reference and new takes on ideas from the other games. FFXIV has also been a massively important game to me as a person, helping buoy me when things were dogshit and giving me the chance to meet all sorts of new people. Some of these people are very important to me now. FFXIV is probably my favorite game and arguably the most important to me, finally unseating Half-Life. The fact that Endwalker is a triumph in it’s own right is just a bonus.
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2021 10:52
|
|
|
Some good lists this year
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2021 10:57
|
|
|
Relax Or DIE posted:GoTY Cop Rarity cannot stop me I guess you don't want your votes to be counted this year 
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2021 10:59
|
|
|
I expect a ton of 2021 stuff -- Guilty Gear Strive, Inscryption, Fuga: Melodies of Steel, Tales of Arise, Returnal, Deathloop, etc. -- would've slotted in nicely in my top 3-10 had I played any of it, but I didn't get to buy more than two games actually released this year (not counting the ones I played through Game Pass). So this is kind of a rinky-dink list that would've looked a lot differently had there been about twice as many hours in the day and an extra zero or two in my bank account. Anyways, I do greatly enjoy this season of listmania, so here's my broken English ramblings for 2021. (Also, this was my third (non-consecutive) year playing Final Fantasy XIV. I have hope I'll one day get to the cool expansions and story stuff, but at the pace I'm going, it probably won't be until sometime in the 2030s.) 10. Caligula Effect Overdose - While I wouldn’t recommend Caligula Effect to anyone, it wouldn’t feel right leaving my premier mindless-thing-to-do-while-listening-to-podcasts of 2021 off this list. Its interesting and ambitious concepts are way too undercooked for me to talk them up as positives, but something about the gotta-catch-em-allness of finding connection-pairs on the wildly populated (if tragically barebones and samey) social link sphere grid thingymajig just tickled and/or shut off my brain in a pleasant enough manner to keep me going. 9. DELUGE  (Full disclosure: I’m friends with the developer.) - DELUGE is a horror-tinged RPG adventure about a skeleton whose dark lord has granted him sentience and burdened him with the task of destroying his home town. It's a bite-sized love letter to 16-bit JRPGs, impressively put together entirely in a dusty ol’ RPG Maker engine (RM2003) that was put out to pasture six generations ago. Short'n'bleak, with a remarkably good jazzy OST. 8. Apex Legends - I played a couple dozen games of Apex during season one, but didn’t jump back in until earlier this year. Big mistake! Turns out Apex Legends is horribly fun and addictive. Took me a few months to shake the habit. 7. Final Fantasy XIII - XIII probably doesn't crack my top 10 when it comes to Final Fantasy entries. Still, since I eventually want to get around to XIII-2 and Lightning Returns and I'm a decade removed from my previous playthrough, I really had to play it again to remember all the stuff I quickly repressed after my original playthrough. I’m having a surprisingly decent time with it! I remember really struggling to enjoy the first half of the game. Maybe going in knowing and accepting that it'll never become a typical JRPG with towns and Final Fantasyesque coziness is what's making all the difference. Or maybe I've just become completely unused to seeing really good-looking JRPGs in recent years, and this is still very much a visual treat. 6. Nowhere Prophet - Post-apocalyptic deckbuilder that I had good fun with for a short period of time (that could’ve been much, much longer, had I not forced myself to put it down before it became an unfortunate time sink). 5. Tales of Vesperia (remastered) - Vesperia was my first Tales game, back in 2009ish. I’ve since played through a handful of Taleses, with Vesperia more or less setting the baseline for what I consider a good one -- Symphonia and Graces f made slightly more of an impression on the story/character and gameplay fronts respectively, so those might be my favorites. I’ve been jumping in and out of the remaster on Switch for the better part of a year, and it very much seems like the same ol' solid-across-the-board JRPG I remember playing back in the day. Nice, cozy times. 4. The Forgotten City  - Despite decades full of a dozen desperate, sunk-cost-driven attempts, I’ve yet to outright enjoy any of Bethesda’s beloved offerings. Had I played The Forgotten City when it was a Skyrim mod, I suspect that would've finally broken the cycle -- because, as a standalone experience, this is a very intriguing project that still feels extremely Elder Scrollsy. Perhaps a few conversation variables could've been tinkered with to make characters react slightly more appropriately (or at all) after you've time-looped and are supposedly meeting them for the first time, but all in all, the writing hooked me more than anything ES ever has. The setting, the characters, the mystery, and the premise gave it the feel of a real swell mini series. And as someone prone to getting lost and losing track of quests, The Forgotten City being a pretty compact experience with a bunch of easy-to-latch-onto leads was much appreciated. (Its sorta-Bethesdanian DNA did rear its ugly head in the sense that it's by far the least stable game I played this year, with dozens of crashes during my time with it on Game Pass.) 3. Trails in the Sky The Third - On the one hand, I was a bit distraught when it dawned on me that The Third wasn’t just looking to turn traditional JRPG structure upside down by having the opening chapter take place in an oversized final chapter/final dungeon-type area--the final chapter/final dungeon-type area -is- the game, it seems like. As a sucker for aimless treks to whatever random JRPG towns a game will allow me access to, this more FF13-y approach gave me pause. The Third also gave me strong direct-to-video half-assed sequel vibes right off the bat, as it's conveniently bringing together large portions of the classic cast + repurposing existing areas as new “dungeons” under mysterious circumstances. On the other hand, the further in I get, and the more things I unlock, the more fun I seem to be having, and the more its seemingly unappealing structure is starting to click with me. If I think of the main setting of the game not as a huge and mostly-linear dungeon, but as a JRPG Super Mario 64 castle full of doors and rooms leading to various exotic setpieces, I suppose it ain’t so bad. Besides, with the first and second Trails games having you visit all the same towns and areas a whole bunch of times, mixing things up a bit here instead of going welcome-back-to-Kamurocho-again-again-again was likely needed to not make players completely burn out on the Trails in the Sky setting. It’s still early days for me in Trails The Third, but it's been good fun seeing less prominent characters from previous games interacting in leading roles, and so far I think this is the best the battle system’s felt to me in the early stages of any of the games. If it keeps doing right by the cast and doesn’t somehow fumble the ball near the finish line, Trails in the Sky will probably end up my favorite video game trilogy. 2. Trails in the Sky Second Chapter  - I loved the first Trails in the Sky First Chapter. I also loved Trails in the Sky SC, its considerably lengthier direct sequel —and this is despite me managing to be the worst gamer in the world, getting impossibly stuck for nearly a full calendar year in a section of the game that normal people (according to my bi-month Google searches after each time I failed to make progress) didn't really struggle with.  (Believe me, I didn't get it either!) When I finally realized what I'd been doing wrong, the Trails in the Sky universe sucked me right back in. In what felt like no time at all, I'd somehow merrily spent another 20-30 hours in the company of one of the more likable/good-chemistry-having JRPG casts I've ever encountered, not even minding the formulaic and extremely long-lasting dungeon/boss structure it eventually railroaded me into. I’m excited to continue the good times in the aforementioned Trails in the Sky The Third! I suspect I'll be playing through the Trails in The Sky series every decade or so from now on. And I very much suspect that I'll never even come close to seeing all the dialogue they've managed to cram into these babies. 1. Wooden Ocean  (Full disclosure: I’m friends with the developer. While I -have- told him his marketing is inexcusably dire (his reply was something along the lines of “murda!” and/or “death to the PR!”), I have zero financial stake, creative input (other than me mentioning the Danish flag and that making its way into one of the in-game books), or anything of the sort in the project—I just really, really dig the game.) - Wooden Ocean is a completely bonkers one-man open-world JRPG-styled fever dream. It’s absurd in its ambition, its tone, its story, its systems, its mathematics, its inscrutability, and its ever-changing(-yet-ever-present) jankiness.  Wooden Ocean’s Steam description effectively scares away any potential buyer by wasting it on a nothing joke stating that it’s a game about killing, homiciding, and genociding things. To be clear, it IS a game with a ton of killing — potential encounters are visible on screen and therefore mostly avodiable, but they’re rarely alone, they're happy to chase after you, and they're frequently almost entirely obscured by darkness — but to reduce Wooden Ocean to just that would be doing it a big disservice. The overworld comprises dozens of interconnected zones, and you can, theoretically, travel to most areas right from the jump. There’s a bizarre main/meta plot to follow, a ton of secrets to uncover, books to read, riddles/puzzles to solve, side quests to complete, and some optional-but-highly-recommended mini game/resource-management elements related to you being put in charge of the development of a ghost town. The latter’s not quite like Yakuza real estate or hostess clubs or building your Suikoden base, as your recruits are all nameless ghosts doing your bidding (as miners, bankers, police, soldiers, artists, and even customizable blank-canvas party members), but they provide engaging distractions whenever you need a break from all the mandatory murda the game throws at you. That being said, the murderin' part definitely has had a lot of work put into it. You get to choose elements for your three main cast members, each of which has more than a dozen corresponding skills to spend ability points on. But each weapon type also comes with one such skill tree. Some weapons even let you choose between (and manage the skill tree of) two types of weapon attacks (for example, my main character has been using a scythe that doubles as a sword for the past twenty hours), while certain pieces of equipment gives you access to other elements than the ones you chose at the beginning of the game. There's also an entirely optional sphere grid located in your ghost town that lets you affect some real major stat-/city-/enemy-/gameplay-related upgrades once per 10th level up. In other words, there's a lot of build variety here, and the maths at play to differentiate all the skills and enemies is pretty staggering for a janky indie title like this. The main draws for me, however, is the exploration and the whole entire mystery of it all. (Oh, and the music -- the developer's steadily been adding more original piano pieces to the game, all of which hit exactly the right atmospheric and emotional notes for me). It's an unabashedly and sometimes abrasively political title, for better and for worse (depression- and PTSD-fueled bursts of inspiration sees the game taking aim at capitalism, anti-science doofuses, and a bitter military past -- often in very spontaneous and sometimes sloppily first-drafty ways), but the extent to which that's true is shrouded in the dark fog of fantastical, shlocky, and occasionally even poetic moments of auteur weirdness.  Because of Wooden Ocean’s many systems working/competing with each other (a temperature system was recently added, where the use of hot or cold spells eventually raise or lower the heat levels of an area, conferring boons and weaknesses to enemies that thrive better in one climate than another), its database numbers constantly being tinkered with in its frequent updates, and the creator suffering from the control freakish urge to test and figure everything out on his own, each new patch is a bit like playing whack-a-mole with bugs of all shapes and sizes. Amazingly, I haven't had a crash once in 100 hours of gameplay, but there's definitely been some "welp, pretty sure my other party members weren't all supposed to disappear when I agreed to have the golem join us in this area" moments. While the original version of the game released on Itch.Io half a decade ago, the game and its story has been constantly expanded ever since (even after its Steam release late last year) -- personally, I would've slapped an Early Access tag on it due to its constant growing pains and moments of first drafty sloppiness, but it seems like the developer is committed to having this be his life's work for as long as he has a creative bone in his body. At least he's been quick to churn out hotfixes. (And, I gotta admit, I've had a weirdly fun time jumping in and seeing what's going wrong/right whenever something major's been changed around.) For all its flaws, I haven't been this keen on diving into and ruminating about a bizarre fever dream since obsessing over Twin Peaks: The Return. Once I realized I was actually more invested in the goings-on in Wooden Ocean than I had been in my #1 and #2 entries from last year’s list (FFVIIR and Hades, both of which are legit all-timers for me), I had little doubt it was going to end up my game of the year. Can't wait to aimlessly search for the impossible-to-find next chapter sometime in 2022! Edit: Easy-to-count top 10 for Rarity 10. Caligula Effect Overdose 9. DELUGE 8. Apex Legends 7. Final Fantasy XIII 6. Nowhere Prophet 5. Tales of Vesperia (Remastered) 4. Forgotten City 3. Trails in the Sky The Third 2. Trails in the Sky SC 1. Wooden Ocean Skjorte fucked around with this message at 12:27 on Dec 28, 2021 |
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2021 12:22
|
|
|
(I would also like to thank Skjorte for forwarding my complaints/triumphs to the developer of Wooden Ocean).
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2021 13:54
|
|
|
I was putting this off because I thought I might be able to finish a game before the cutoff but then I got distracted with the game I'm currently playing so that got thrown out the window. So here's my list. There's some stuff I probably wouldn't normally throw in a top 10 but I played few games for the back half of the year as I was super busy with school. Here's my list 10. Trails of Cold Steel 4 ToCS4 ends up on the list, but barely. I like the combat system and it was great to finally see the conclusion of a huge sprawling story. However, it really felt like the game had no teeth in it and tries way too hard to make sure you don't ever actually hate any character by the end because what if you actually like that character? It's a decent game, but it's nothing I'm clamoring that people absolutely must play. If you want a solid JRPG series with fun characters and combat, it's something worth checking out. 9. Ys IX I know a lot of people are down on this one compared to VIII, but I liked IX. I liked the story, and the cast of characters clicked with me a bit more than the ones in VIII did. Ys IX is a great solid action RPG. 8. Control Control is a great game and would be higher on my list if this wasn't a replay. If You've never played Control you really need to check it out because I haven't played another game that really nails an atmosphere that Control had. 7. Atelier Ryza 2 Atelier Ryza is a perfect comfort food JRPG. It's light, nothing complex and it's fun to just chill with. I bounced off earlier Atelier games because getting ranking, specific scenes, and all other busywork just didn't do it for me. Ryza might turn off people because it's very simplified and honestly incredibly easy. I think that's its strength. It's something I was content to just lose myself in and could count on it to relax me. 6. Mass Effect 3 (Legendary Collection) Screw that haters. Mass Effect 3 is still by far the best Mass Effect game. The combat feels incredibly satisfying, and while the ending does incredibly poo poo the bed hard, everything that was leading up to it felt great. The included DLC, especially the Shepard send off mission was incredible front to back. If BioWare just wrote a new story and shoved the gameplay of Mass Effect 3 into a a new game it would be hands down a contender for Game of the Year. However, they're dumb and made Andromeda, and Anthem so I'm super cautious about a new game. 5. Persona 5 Strikers I was honestly not expecting to like this game as much as I did. A sequel game to something that doesn't need a sequel and now it's an action RPG? I totally expected a lame low budget thing that I would be like "that's a shame." Strikers blew me away, the combat was really fun (a little repetitive) but they nailed a fun post wrap up story that let you really bond with the characters more and really get to have them work as a group. Strikers is by far a shining example of the effort companies should go to when wanting to do a sequel that doesn't involve the original creators. 4. Bravely Default 2 This will be a controversial pick among Bravely fans, but here's the thing. I never played the original games. By the time they came out I just wasn't played handheld games much anymore (I vastly prefer to play on TV) and I just never got far into the original. So having a Bravely game that I could play on my TV excited me. It didn't let me down. I sank a good 80 hours into it and loved finding completely new ways to just completely break the game open and find fun combos that worked. The story was a generic fantasy thing, but I thought the characters charming enough that I never found myself bored with the game and always wanted to press on. I was actually a little sad when it was finally done. Would love to see the original games make the jump, or even more new Bravely games come out. 3. Resident Evil Village I loved the Resident Evil series. 5 started to lose me, and 6 was plain bad. When 7 came out, I wasn't a huge FPS fan so I originally passed on the game and thought my time with the series might be done. After absolutely loving Resident Evil 2 Remake, I figured I might as will give 7 a shot and liked it way more than I thought I would. Village, though, absolutely floored me. It was the perfect storm of creepy moments and being completely over the top. It felt like a great merger of 4 and 7 and I even got the platinum trophy I enjoyed my time so much with it. Resident Evil Village is fun thrill ride from start to end and I hope Capcom manages to keep the series at these heights. 2. Neo: The World Ends With You A World Ends With You sequel? After all this time? May we play it? Yes! Neo is a reminder of just how much JRPG games creators can come up with inventive and fun battle systems and why I absolutely love the genre. The game oozes style in everything it does. The only downside the game has, is the story isn't the most compelling thing, but I never felt as if it ever became something that would drag the game down. The characters were incredibly fun, and it was fantastic to revisit some characters from past games as well. 1. FFXIV: Endwalker I don't have anything to add that others don't really. I've been blowing off other games to just sit in this world again. It's insane to me how they constantly manage to keep making small improvements to combat and other things that just makes the game feel better and better to play as time goes on. It doesn't feel anything remotely like what A Realm Reborn was. While I think the story stumbles and a few key parts, it absolutely nailed the ending and I can't wait to see what grand adventure my hero will go on next. Final Fantasy XIV just proves what having a passionate staff who understands (and has a company willing to give them the opportunity) the fans and will do what it takes to make sure their experience is a good one. Before FFXIV I would tell you that MMO's suck, and they're just boring time wasters. That's probably still true, but I'll be damned if FFXIV isn't the best time waster I've ever played.
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2021 17:02
|
|
|
Not going to be able to play anything else until the new year so here it goes. 8. Psychonauts 2 Was not following this at all so it was a total surprise to me when it released. The fact that it picks up right where the previous game left off and ended up being as good as it was a feat in itself. I think it peaks with the psychedelic music festival level and the back half seems rushed compared to the start. I also just wasn't that into the main storyline unfortunately. 7. Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart Just had a fun time with this one. The graphics were incredible and some cool tech showing the PS5 capabilities with the refined gameplay you expect from the series at this point. The story was just ok and wish there was more variety in some of the bigger fights. Would like to see them explore more of the big open spaces and the concept of two different dimensions in one level was cool but a bit under baked in this one. 6. Blasphemous Had never heard of this game until a friend recommended it on a sale. The atmosphere and style were immediately my jam. Enjoyed exploring the world and fighting some of the weird bosses and creatures they came up with. Had to look up some of the more esoteric items and the fact that you don't need any of the navigational items to finish the game was an interesting choice. I immediately played through a 2nd time to fight the new bosses, unfortunately the new DLC requires yet another playthrough and I'm not sure I can set aside time for a third one anytime soon. Too many new games coming out next year! 5. Resident Evil Village Took a long break from this series (yet to play 7 or any of the remakes which I should probably remedy), but jumped into this one after I heard comparisons to RE4. Indeed the opening is strikingly similar! Loved the atmosphere of the village, the castle, and the dollhouse was one of the creepiest sections I've played since Silent Hill days. I think the back half of the game isn't as strong, the lake area being way shorter than expected and the factory just didn't have the same care as the castle to me. However that amazing first half puts it in top 5! 4. Demon Souls Remake The reason I was refreshing for that PS5, running through this classic with the updated graphics was a treat. Not much more to say, the game is still as fun as I remembered though definitely much easier too. Definitely looking forward to what Bluepoint does next and what From can do when they build a next gen only game. 3. Outer Wilds Just a great game, the concept that all you're missing is the right knowledge is something I've not seen pulled off before. Again got stuck at a couple points and the thread here was great at pointing me in the right direction without spoiling further solutions. Looking forward to what the team does next and still have the DLC to try out! 2. Dark Souls 3 Having bounced off this initially when trying on the PS4, decided to give this another shot on PS5. Decided to play the whole game with DLC with no shield after coming off Bloodborne. The 60 FPS mode of PS5 just makes this feel perfect and as many have stated I think this game by far has the best boss fights of the series. First time attempting the DLC and while I think the level design got a little too frustrating at times (The Ringed City is just brutal) the DLC boss fights were all incredible. 1. Hollow Knight Had attempted a playthrough of this when it came out and never got very far due to life getting in the way. With a baby on the way this year it was the last game I was determined to finish before all my free time disappeared. Just an amazing game and by far my favorite game I played this year. The level design, atmosphere, gameplay all work together to create something special. The scope of the game is so intimidating at the start and even near the end you're still finding new areas. The fast travel system isn't perfect but with all the abilities you get it's amazing how fast you can backtrack through previously explored areas and what was scary at first is a mere road bump on the way to the next thing. What truly solidified it at number 1 for me was as soon as I finished I was desperately looking up Silksong news for any hints at when the sequel is coming, of course finding nothing for this vapourwave shitshoe.
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2021 18:29
|
|
|
i wonder if we got more lists this year than last year
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2021 19:52
|
|
|
Apparently the previous stats werevg posted:- in 2018 we had 59 goons who listed 232 unique games.
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2021 20:00
|
|
|
I'm thinking we'll definitely have more unique games this year.
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2021 20:10
|
|
|
I appreciated the OP history post. I didnt really play games this year due to *gestures in a futile manner at world* but i wanted to come say that
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2021 20:31
|
|
|
We're currently on 105 lists
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2021 21:03
|
|
|
Is there going to be a "top lists of the year" thing?
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2021 21:05
|
|
|
punk rebel ecks posted:Is there going to be a "top lists of the year" thing? There'll be a most accurate predictions and biggest hipster award
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2021 21:07
|
|
|
Blue ribbons like at the county fair!
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2021 21:07
|
|
|
excited to receive my 1st place ribbon for 'largest gourd'
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2021 21:10
|
|
|
Biggest hipster award has to be curved by release year though, you can’t just miss with a list of games all from the 1990s.
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2021 21:11
|
|
|
exquisite tea posted:Biggest hipster award has to be curved by release year though, you can’t just miss with a list of games all from the 1990s. rarity explicitly makes that category so she has an excuse to give herself a medal every year
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2021 21:16
|
|
|
exquisite tea posted:Biggest hipster award has to be curved by release year though, you can’t just miss with a list of games all from the 1990s. I don't think so, all my games are from the 00s and I still don't think I'm winning it this year!
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2021 21:17
|
|
|
cheetah7071 posted:rarity explicitly makes that category so she has an excuse to give herself a medal every year How can I be the biggest hipster gamer when I'm not a gamer? 
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2021 21:17
|
|
|
i have a few 2021 games in my top 20 that haven't shown up on people's lists yet, at least i don't think. it's an opportunity to get them some more visibility at least! also i am angling to get to a top 69 list instead of a top 50, i'll see how close i get by NYE
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2021 21:30
|
|
|
Rarity posted:There'll be a most accurate predictions and biggest hipster award I'm shocked that I didn't win biggest hipster last year by including the Guardian crossword on my list
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2021 21:32
|
|
|
man like 4 days left, WHERE ARE ALL THE LISSTS??
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2021 21:40
|
|
|
I'm working on it!
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2021 21:42
|
|
|
Party Boat posted:I'm shocked that I didn't win biggest hipster last year by including the Guardian crossword on my list I was thinking about including the NYT Crossword on mine this year... but I didn't know what would count as "finishing" it and also I guess Deathloop was "slightly" better
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2021 21:46
|
|
|
Party Boat posted:I'm shocked that I didn't win biggest hipster last year by including the Guardian crossword on my list It's about quantity of unique entries, not the most unique entry 
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2021 21:57
|
|
|
rarity alert: I swapped 2/3 around on my list so it's now: 3 - Metroid Dread 2 - Fxnxl Fxntxsy XXX: Xndwxlkxr 1 - Gnosia now that I've finished it i can also reveal that the mystery game at #2 was actually "Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker" it should probably be #1 but I'm not changing it
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2021 21:59
|
|
|
Help Im Alive posted:now that I've finished it i can also reveal that the mystery game at #2 was actually "Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker" *shocked pikachu*
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2021 22:00
|
|
|
BeanpolePeckerwood posted:man like 4 days left, WHERE ARE ALL THE LISSTS?? Mine's taking a while to make because I'm a massive diva and want it to be unique.
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2021 22:02
|
|
|
mine's taking a while because I'm lazy and only started in earnest yesterday
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2021 22:09
|
|
|
My extremely PC gamer top 10: Dishonourable mention: Satisfactory After *checks Steam* 171 hours I decided randomly one day in the middle of building a beautiful railway line that this game is just incredibly disrespectful of the players' time. Some of this is the conveniences (that other factory games have) that the developers are explicitly excluding, some of it is inherent to the chosen viewpoint (first person) clashing, in efficiency terms, with the genre itself. I quit and deleted the game and I doubt I will go back even on full release. It just takes too long to carry out what you've already figured out in your brain. I wouldn't recommend it. (And I'm reminded of a similar remark this time last year about MTG: Arena. Note to self, don't get stuck wasting time in unrewarding games) 10. Quake Remaster Quake is good. Noting here that I played through Dusk but the tribute didn't make it over the original. 9. Titanfall 2 Short but impressive single player campaign. 8. Baba Is You A game I was able to confidently give to my completely-non-gamer buddy, for low system requirements, guaranteed comprehension, and hours of hair-pulling fun. One of those games that is so pure in essence that it seems like it should always have existed. 7. Death Stranding I've never played any Kojima games before, I loved the weird sci-fi settings and all the contraptions were neat. This was the first game I played after setting up my incredibly loved treadmill+wall-mounted-ultrawide gaming "desk" and the many, many hours spent strolling briskly along through the wilderness were a real treat in the confines of lockdown. 6. SOMA I never really got the concept of 'liking' horror (games, movies, whatever) before I played this game. Came for the philosophy, which turned out to be not so impactful, stayed for the incredibly frightening monster sections. 5. Dyson Sphere Program Spoiler for my number one, but this is a logical progression from Factorio and ticks all of the same boxes. 4. Outer Wilds + Echoes of the Eye Brilliant. I played this after my SOMA experience so I was freshly into being frightened while gaming - because of this I liked the DLC even more than the base game, which is probably a rare opinion. 3. Disco Elysium Rarely will a game impact me emotionally, this one did. 2. Subnautica Subnautica suggests an epic journey without forcing you into it, letting you take tiptoe steps into incredibly foreboding destinations at your own pace. It's sheer brilliance. The sequel Below Zero is worth playing but doesn't reach the same heights. 1. Factorio Late to this game, I know. The screenshots put me off  . There's a particular feeling this game gives me, a sort of 'being in the eye of a hurricane of a million things to do', it's a giddy, giggly kind of feeling, and I chased that dragon for hundreds of hours across several playthoughs and into other factory games. Shoutout to the mod Krastorio 2, which is a solid expansion pack without exaggerating the game to absurd levels like other popular modpacks.Completed games that didn't make the list: Airborne Kingdom Opus Magnum Doom Eternal DLC 2 Wilmot's Warehouse FTL Inscryption DUSK Another quick note because I have nowhere else to gush about this: My lockdown-project tread desk has completely transformed my gaming habit, turning that vaguely guilty sedentary feeling to the point where I feel positive about gaming in every way.  
Chadzok fucked around with this message at 22:32 on Dec 28, 2021 |
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2021 22:12
|
|
|
Rarity posted:It's about quantity of unique entries, not the most unique entry I don't think any of the games on my list appear on anyone else's.
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2021 22:23
|
|
|
I would be shocked if anyone else had Brigandine on their list or if anyone else was even thinking about that game at all but the rest of my list was pretty standard.
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2021 22:30
|
|
|
CaptainRat posted:I would be shocked if anyone else had Brigandine on their list or if anyone else was even thinking about that game at all but the rest of my list was pretty standard. I actually think about that game quite a bit and I'm just waiting for it to go on sale for a reasonable price
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2021 23:00
|
|
|
I might be the only human being who played Nexomon 1 this year
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2021 23:06
|
|
|
2021 was a good but not fantastic year in terms of video games I enjoyed. It may be that there were few truly standout releases, it may also be that now that we're in the 2nd year of the novel coronavirus, I'm getting a little sick of staying at home and playing video games. As a result, there will be a lot of games that I started but haven't finished. I'm gonna start with 2 honorable mentions: 12. Melty Blood: Type Lumina 2021 was the year I got into fighting games and throwing daggers at people with Ciel was a pretty fun way to spend a few evenings. It's a shame that the EU playerbase on PS4 is kind of small, had I already had a solid gaming PC when this came out I would have played it a lot more. 11. Monster Hunter: Rise This was one of the 3 releases I really forward to the most going into 2021. I loved playing Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate on my 3DS back in the day. Unfortunately, this didn't really manage to capture the same magic for me. Part of it was that I wasn't in a great mental state when it came out and could barely focus on games. Another thing is that it's a great Monster Hunter title but perhaps a little too streamlined for my tastes, I found myself missing the old jank at some point. Now, my top 10 of 2021: 10. Hitman III The Hitman series is simply the best stealth game series right now, nothing even comes close and that's for reasons entirely unrelated to the (extremely solid) stealth gameplay. Just walking around in these levels and absorbing all the incidental conversations and details is tons of fun. In terms of dark humor, always on important element of Hitman titles, this may be the funniest entry in the series since Blood Money. The detective mission story is the absolute highlight of the series for me in this regard and the best mission story in the whole series while featuring precious little stealth. 9. The Great Ace Attorney I love Ace Attorney and this may very well be one of it's best entries excluding the original trilogy. I say "may very well be" because I haven't actually finished it. It's a very charming set of games and it has the strongest cast of all the AA games but I found myself a little worn out by how long some of these cases drag on by the 2nd game. I have to give a special shoutout to my boy Barok Van Zieks though, who is simply the best character in the whole drat series. While I got bored with some of the investigation sections, I never tired of watching him play off Ryonusuke during their courtroom battles. 8. Persona 5 Strikers While I enjoyed Persona 5 a whole lot, this game fixes 2 of the issues I had with it: Namely that the character writing in Persona 5 is a bit dull in places and the game as a whole takes forever. By comparision, this is a very snappy experience and there are a lot of more fun group scenes in this one that remind me of Persona 4 (the best Persona). Ironically, while I finished Persona 5, I didn't manage to finish this one. It may be because the main story in this feels like a bit of a retread, almost like fanfiction. As a result, while I enjoyed my time with it, I didn't have the drive to finish it when I got distracted with other things. Still, this was a very fun way to hang out some more with my anime friends. 7. Tales of Arise This is the 2nd game I was hyped for this year. I'm kind of torn about this one because when I think about the individual elements, story, characters, combat, exploration, graphics, there's nothing that really stands out and a lot of it feels a bit janky. Why is there such agressive pop in even on PC without mods? Why are the bosses so tanky? Why is every explorable area so tiny? The story in general is quite strong (at least so far, supposedly it gets kind of crazy later but again - that's one of those I haven't finished it) but feels oddly underwritten in other places. Still, when I sit down and play it, I'm always having a good time (excluding the boss battles). The individual elements may be flawed, but the combination just tickles the right spot in my weeb brain. A lot of it comes down how flashy the basic combat is. It's just extremely satisfying to press buttons, do some anime super moves and watch things explode with a million particle effects. Despite it's flaws, I got it twice (once for PS4 and once for PC) and I'm currently on the way of going through it on PC. So either I'm an idiot or this game must be doing something right. 6. Shin Megami Tensei V This was by far the game I had the biggest hype for this year. Why is it so low on this list? It's not because it disappointed me. However, it is the final of those games on my list I didn't manage to finish and I want to make sure that at least my Top 5 only contains games I completed. This game runs terribly on the Switch and the story is a bit too minimalistic for my tastes but everything else is fantastic. The highlight for me is the level design, I just find it really fun to explore those complex, winding, vertical, kinda open-worldy levels that represent different parts of post-apocalyptic Tokyo. It's such a marked improvement over the dull dungeons that appear in past SMT titles that I find my excitement levels drop rapidly whenever I acutally have to go through one of those again. Thankfully, I've only encountered 2 so far in over 50 hours of playtime. I'm also impressed by just how rock solid and well balanced the numbers and the basic game mechanics feel in this game. Fusing a new powerful demon is always a huge increase in strength but you never feel like you're getting overpowered. While a lot of the combat encounters pose no serious threat if you know how the press turn system works, they're still exciting because getting a bad turn can be a death sentence in this game. Luckily, this game gives you more tools than ever to mitigate that with how customizable not only your demons but also your main character are. The 2nd best JRPG this year, I'm sure it would have made 1st place if I had managed to get past that drat castle before the end of the year. 5. Metroid Dread This one has rightly recieved a lot of praise so I'll be brief. I'm not too keen on platformers but I enjoyed the poo poo out of this one. If you can stand the idea of Metroid 4. Lost Judgment Best JRPG of the year. RGG games are essentially Japan's Far Cry in that they're just variations on a theme. The difference is the sheer charm and personality that these games exude. This game seems to be somewhat less popular than last year's Yakuza 7 but I enjoyed it a whole lot. The main story is gripping, the side quests are as wacky as ever and the school stories feature some of the most fun (and unfortunately also some of the most tedious) minigames the series has ever had. Some people have criticised how the game juxtaposes a very serious main story (by RGG standards) with wacky highschool detective adventures but that kind of contrast has always been the selling point in Yakuza games for me and here it's stronger than ever. Highly recommended. 3. 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim This feels a bit like cheating since I picked this one up near the end of last year due to it appearing on so many lists and I finished it just a few days after New Year's Eve. Still, it had to be on this list, because it's miles ahead of any other VN I've ever played. What I adore is the breakneck pacing of this thing. A lot of mystery VNs have moments that drag or scenes which just repeat things you already know (see the Great Ace Attorney above). This one hits the ground running and never stops but it all stays perfectly comprehensible thanks to the very helpful compendium that comes with the game. I hope that Vanillaware keeps making games like this, because they're absolutely brilliant at it. Extremely high recommendation for people who have working eyes and don't actively hate the idea of Sci-Fi. 2. Disco Elysium: The Final Cut Again, this one has universal acclaim so there's not much to say. This game has the best story in any videogame, ever. It sometimes gets pigeonholed as the wacky C-SPAM brain simulator game where you can roleplay as communist art cop who believes in race theory. I've laughed a lot more playing this than any other videogame but in reality, a lot of it is darker and more serious than I expected, and my favorite scenes do not feature any humor at all. It's also the only game that allows you to feel cringe in a way you've never felt before. When you fail an empathy skill check and your character starts spouting MRA talking points, you can't help but laugh and feel a little ashamed at the same time as if it's you who's making an rear end of yourself, even though you yourself had very little to do it, technically. What unites these different moods is the basic warmth and humanity that shines through in every scene, serious or funny. 1. Guilty Gear -Strive- I've never played a fighting game once before Guilty Gear Strive, but the game's very attractive graphics and excellent soundtrack piqued my interest. Seriously, I can't praise the soundtrack enough. It's the only video game soundtrack that I want to listen to when I'm not playing. The amount of virtuosity and personality that goes into each and every single track is astounding. I've never even touched the games story mode but I feel I don't need to, each playable character's personality is already contained so well in their respective songs. When I started playing Guilty Gear, I sucked hard, I wasn't even able to do the basic inputs for my character's special moves and learning how to do charge motions alone took me way longer than I care to admit. Still, thanks to some very helpful tutorials and a great matchmaking system I carried on. More importantly, fighting in this game feels just so drat satisfying, bonking people with a giant anchor and charging into them with a dolphin never gets old. I perservered and I managed to go from floor 1 to floor 10 in the game's ranking system. That's a small achievement if you're a fighting game expert but I'm quite proud of myself. Whether I'll be able to reach Celestial is another matter, but I still had a fantastic time so far. This has been quite a terrible year, a fact I think many of you can relate with. A lot of bad poo poo happened that I'm not too happy with, most of it in the world at large and but some of it in my personal life as well. Almost all of it was stuff I could do nothing about. The greatest thing about playing Guilty Gear is that it gave me a sense of self-efficacy I rarely got anywhere else this year. I can do gently caress all about this global pandemic but I sure as hell can grind in training mode until I'm able to hit those combos consistently and counter my opponent's bullshit. That sounds a little pathetic when I write it down like that, it's still just escapism after all. But sometimes, a little escapism is all you need to keep you going and in the end it's all this artform can (and should) provide. e: shortened list: 10. Hitman III 9. The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles 8. Persona 5 Strikers 7. Tales of Arise 6. Shin Megami Tensei V 5. Metroid Dread 4. Lost Judgment 3. 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim 2. Disco Elysium: The Final Cut 1. Guilty Gear -Strive- KonvexKonkav fucked around with this message at 23:48 on Dec 29, 2021 |
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2021 23:15
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 24, 2024 10:39 |
|
|
I don't think anyone else has a PS2 plane game on their list
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2021 23:18
|
|
