|
9: Devotion A neat little horror game from Taiwan that isn't particularly scary but does hit hard emotionally. 8: Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin The rice farming minigames are so detailed that it is really satisfying when you start doing well at them. The combat sections are all about flinging enemies into each other and using equipment that is situationally appropriate. The final battle is perhaps the worst designed final battle I have ever seen. It should be used in classes as a lesson on what not to do for your final boss. 7. Golf with your friends This is just about the perfect game to play with friends when you're really more interesting in hanging out chatting. 6: Cyberpunk 2077 I started playing this a couple weeks ago and am about 40 hours in. When my friends ask me how it is, I make a pained noise and say something conflicted like, "Well it's not good, but it might be kind of great. Maybe." This game tries to do 100 different things. It is 50-90% of the way to greatness for each of those, but this misses put it in an uncanny valley of quality. And everything is so uneven. Some quests have had really great writing that made me laugh or maybe made me feel empty quiet despair. But then some quests are truly pathetic references to other games. It's such a mess. But driving around Night City? Even with how bad the driving controls feel, driving around and seeing how spectacular Night City is really does feel special. 5: UnearthU This is a mobile game meditation app that is also a short story criticizing meditation apps. Pretty interesting experience. 4: Inscryption I think this game is overrated, honestly. It's a good game, but I don't think it's doing anything that I haven't seen done before. It makes the reactions I've seen about it being so mind-blowing a little perplexing. That said, it is doing those things well. 3: Prey This is basically a bioshock or system shock game, but they did such a bad job of letting people know that I didn't play it until this year. It's very very good. The opening is an all time great video game opening. It so effectively set the tone and the emotions which I should bring to the rest of the game. I'm not sure the rest quite lives up to that opening, but the environment and the systems are so well done that it doesn't matter. Great game. 2: Toki Meki Memorial 2 This game is absolutely nuts. I don't understand the systems at all. (Why do people sometimes spread bad rumors about you? What is the ratio of stat training to going on dates that is "correct?" Why is it sometimes a jrpg?) It's so funny and charming and reactive, though, that it was a real joy to play. 1: Psychonauts 2 The original Psychonauts is one of my favorite games ever, and I had some trepidation about Double Fine revisiting it so many years later. Turns out the sequel is even better. It's a true masterpiece that does level design as storytelling in a way that is more literal and also better than just about any other game. I played some Jupiter Hell, Teardown, Umurangi Generation, and Oxygen Not Included this year, but not enough to know where I would put them on a list like this. Wittgen fucked around with this message at 08:34 on Dec 31, 2021 |
#
?
Dec 31, 2021 08:10
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 25, 2024 13:17 |
|
|
Wittgen posted:Golf with your friends Is this a video game or literally just playing golf with your friends?
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2021 08:16
|
|
|
Rarity posted:Is this a video game or literally just playing golf with your friends? Haha, it's a video game.
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2021 08:18
|
|
|
Wittgen posted:Haha, it's a video game. Oh thank god, I was feeling very awkward at having to explain the latter really didn't count as a video game 
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2021 08:30
|
|
|
(RARITY ALERT) What a coincidence, I just updated my list to include Before Your Eyes. It was added at #6, bumping everything below (and knocking "Deathloop" off). CharlieFoxtrot posted:
Updated list: 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
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2021 08:31
|
|
|
Real hurthling! posted:Anyone else love everhood this year? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSxa6GAsVZw
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2021 08:38
|
|
|
Ms Adequate posted:10: Growing Up. I'm not big into Visual Novels but I gave this one a shot despite that and was very glad I did. There's a bunch of enjoyable characters to befriend/romance, a nice element of resource management to make sure you don't gently caress up your SATs, a cute soundtrack and aesthetic, just a chill time. This looks like my kind of jam. Looks a lot like Chinese Parents from a quick look, I'll be sure to check it out. Good list!
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2021 08:40
|
|
|
i have a question for all the final fantasy fans - is the first x amount of hours in the game still so slow and boring? i tried it on my ps4 a few years ago and could not get over the combat and dropped it after like five hours.
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2021 08:41
|
|
|
All The Games I Liked This Year, an essay: Shouts to: (Games I enjoyed enough to give a little wassup) Spyro games - I played both them and the original Crash games in their lovingly crafted remakes. Crash did not hold up at all (I hate how it controls) but the Spyro games are still solid platformers. Outer Wilds DLC - A wonderful little coda to a masterpiece, the new space they built for the experience is very cool. Hyrule/Fire Emblem Warriors - I bought these when I was suffering musou withdrawals after finishing a couple games higher up on my list. Neither are quite as good but they’re still fun in a “Mash Button Kill Dudes” way. I don’t have quite as much a personal connection to the casts of these two though. Pokemon Cafe Mix - A very good time-waster. Free-to-play but I put a little money into it because I just really enjoyed it. Bloodborne - I had a big breakthrough playing this and actually progressed much further than I have in any From game to this point, but I still set it down after a while because I had other things I wanted to play. Maybe someday… Jedi Fallen Order - I expected a Souls-like game and while it does handle like a really rudimentary one of those, it’s also got lots of Metroid Prime in its blood, which comprised most of the parts I liked best. I still set it down after a while. Returnal - I had fun with it but didn't get good enough to make an impact. I could see myself coming back to this one someday too. Big Brain Academy - I bought this for myself and for my sister, and it immediately conjured memories of competing on the original for the DS. The games are simple and addictive, and the asynchronous multiplayer is perfect for this sort of game. We’ll see if I keep going into the new year. Grindstone/Islanders - A pair of great time-wasters for Switch, although not quite as good as Dicey Dungeons. XCOM 2 - For my one real vacation during the year, I brought my Playstation along to download stuff and ended up starting this on a whim. I was totally engrossed for about 48 hours, and I’ve played it maybe once or twice since. The perfect vacation fling. Runners-Up: (Just sitting outside the Top 10) Pokemon Unite - My internet access has always been such that multiplayer gaming hasn’t been an option for me ever. When I was young, we upgraded from dial-up to satellite internet and I was so excited that I would finally get to play multiplayer games that I bought Halo for PC (back when that was still a novelty), but when I logged on the lag was so bad that it was unplayable. Since then, with very few exceptions, I haven’t played many real online games. This means that I missed the MOBA craze in its entirety, so I laughed when they announced “The Pokemon MOBA” because it felt like such a cash-in. Fast-forward a few months and Unite comes out on Switch. I download it for free just to see how much better my internet is these days, and lo and behold not only can I play matches without any noticeable lag (thanks Verizon!) but I also really like it, and am good enough at it that I’m not embarrassing myself! I played every day for about a month to unlock all the beginner stuff and play a few very fun rounds with goons and then kinda fall off of it, but I feel like I could very easily pop in at any point and get back into the swing of things. Deathloop - This game was both wonderful and frustrating, the latter mostly due to my sky-high expectations. I love Prey and Arkane in general and the combination of an Arkane game and a timeloop was supposed to be a shoe-in for GOTY for me specifically but the moments where the game was fully working its magic were spaced out pretty far, and in between was a lot of underwhelming combat and stealth and menus, and the story was also a little underbaked. I wish it was a little more like Outer Wilds, but also I think you could take this format and engine and do something a little more interesting. I also had no interest in the multiplayer aspect, which limited my fun. Mario Party Superstars - It’s got things from all of the Mario Party games that I love, and within a few weeks of buying it I had played two 4-player games with two different groups of people and won both, re-establishing my dominance in the field. That week just happened to be the week my dad passed, so having something communal to do with my friends and family was very nice. I haven’t played it much since but Mario Party isn’t something you play like a single player game, it’s for when you have friends over and need something to do, and for that it is perfect. The best Mario Party in years. Dicey Dungeons - The best little time-waster I played all year. It’s got just the right amount of replayability with its different characters, and runs last just the right amount of time. Subnautica - I love the exploration in Subnautica, but it was just a little too unfocussed for me. As someone who is more utilitarian with their base-building, that part didn’t have enough to keep me coming back forever. But again, that exploration is top-notch, diving with your oxygen limited really wrenches the tension up and the resource collection loop is exactly the sort of thing that really captures my attention. I want these guys to make something bigger, I’m sure it will be amazing. Have started, will likely be on next year’s list: Persona 4 Golden - I bought a Vita so I can dive into the other Personas and I hope I enjoy them as much as I’ve enjoyed 5 (and maybe I can finish them in time for 6?) Loop Hero - This game hits all of the “Make Numbers Go Up” buttons in my head and will likely be my time-killer game for the first half of the year ahead. REVII VR - The few hours I’ve played are incredibly intense, I normally game for hours at a time so I’ve really had to change up my patterns to finish this because I can’t do that long all at once, but it’s the best VR experience I’ve had to date. Disco Elysium - I bought it at console launch but it was a little buggy so I set it down until it was updated and then haven’t picked it back up, but what I played of it was incredibly engaging and I will get back to it soon enough. Excluded for being too obviously great: Breath of the Wild - I replayed it for the first time since it came out after giving it as a gift for Christmas last year and it’s still as wonderful as ever. The sense of adventure and discovery in this game is perfect and it’s a masterpiece, so I didn’t think it fair to put it in contention with the others. Picross - Picross is a part of my being at this point. The act of playing Picross is essential for my self as much as eating or breathing. I need Picross to live, and I will be playing Picross until I leave this earth. As much as I love the rest of the games, none of them are Picross, and so out of fairness, Picross is removed from contention. And Now, My Official Top 10 Games of 2021: 10. Super Mario 3D World/Bowser’s Fury - A new Mario game is always gonna be a fierce competitor for my GOTY list. Since this is about half a new Mario game, this position feels right. It was nice to go through 3D World for the first time since it came out. It’s got the carefully crafted precision of the best level and game designers Nintendo has to offer and there’s so much there and it’s all so good, but Bowser’s Fury is interesting in its own right because it feels like the sort of iteration that Nintendo normally does behind closed doors. Clearly, Nintendo is trying to figure out what aspects of open-world games it can use in its signature franchises, and this has a very testing-playground feel to it. It uses elements from the main game in an entirely new single map, with Bowser as an ever-present threat, but each of the individual islands presents individual isolated challenges befitting a Mario game. It’s a short experience and it feels perfectly paired with 3D World, representing the present and a possible future of Mario. 9. New Pokemon Snap - Pokemon Snap is a landmark game in my own personal gaming history. I got my N64/Snap bundle for Christmas the year it came out, and it’s one of the few video games that my mom enjoyed playing and has fond memories of. I thought the time for a possible sequel passed with the Wii U’s demise, so I was thrilled beyond belief when they announced and it perfectly lived up to my expectations. The gameplay is largely the same, with a few new features here or there, but the joy of Snap was always in the craft of the levels. Having the game on rails means that you can get much more creative and detailed with the areas that players see, and each level is stuffed to the brim with Pokemon, fun environments and lots of interactions between the Pokemon. Having the day/night options was a brilliant way to pad gameplay and add more opportunities to see more Pokemon, and the different stars meant that you have a lot of deployability, even if some of the 3- and 4-star pictures are incredibly obtuse, even with hints. With the social picture-sharing aspects, it really is exactly what one would expect from a Pokemon Snap game in 2021, right down to the really expensive peripheral to print your photos (RIP Blockbuster). 8. Control - I bought this game when I first got my PS4 and played it for a little bit and then set it down, knowing in my heart that if I waited until it was on a next-gen console it would be worth it, and let me tell you it is. This game doesn’t have a wide variety when it comes to its environments but what it has is all well-crafted and fun to smash up with telekinesis, and the vibe of this game is flawless. It feels like the paranormal investigation shows that it cribs heavily from, complete with a tongue firmly planted in its cheek. The gameplay is nothing revolutionary but it provides the right level of challenge and fun, but it never threatens to overwhelm the real star of this show: the production design. The building, the characters, the monsters, the story, all of the little details on the walls and in the side-rooms and in the files you can find and read, it all serves one single goal of making The Oldest House feel real and terrifying. Also shout out to Courtney Hope, who gives probably my favorite performance in a video game ever. You can see that the entire dev team is clearly a little infatuated with her and she clearly loves being Jessie Faden. I want more Control immediately. 7. Persona 5 Royal - I don’t know if I could tell you what exactly triggered me to finally put P5R into my Playstation and start it up. I’ve been getting it (and its predecessor) recommended to me for years, and I picked it up on Black Friday last year with the expectation that I might play it someday, but there are a whole lot of games that I buy with that expectation that never get touched again. All I know is that I was looking for something to sink my teeth into with little preconception of what I actually wanted, and that whatever possessed me to put that disc in my PS5 ended up changing my entire year. I was completely engrossed in this game for months. I learned exactly what Fire Emblem: Three Houses cribbed from and just how much it did so. It came with a copy of my favorite card game that I could play with all my new anime friends! (Please put out a mobile Tycoon Atlus please please please!) This game is just so stuffed with stuff! It’s got a turn-based battle system that feels energetic and not boring, all of the social link stuff gives you a good amount of time with the characters, and the vibe of this game is so self-assuredly cool, from music to menus to the plot. All that said, there was always that little devil in my head yelling about some of the more icky parts of the game. The way this game treats its female characters is incredibly rough, and for a game about misfit teenagers in one of the largest cities in the world, it’s conspicuously not queer, and don’t get me started about the romances in this game. It also gets easy at the end; leveling up and getting money is comically simple, although there’s a nice difficulty boost during the Royal-exclusive content. Overall, I’m very glad that P5R exists and I love the characters and am glad it introduced me to the SMT-iverse (which will be popping up again, fear not) but there are just enough quibbles that knock it down a little bit. 6. Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut - If I’m not mistaken, this is just about where GoT appeared on my list last year, when I was in like but not in love with it. Now that the DC is available, it’s blossomed into full-fledged love. The environments, which are the true star of the game, shine even more on PS5. The entire setting, both Tsushima and Iki, feel lovingly handcrafted in a way that harkens back to Breath of the Wild, and all of the weather effects contribute to a variety of moments that make you go “oh poo poo I need to screenshot that”. The story is fine, getting by mostly on the stylistic flourishes that pay tribute to all of the Japanese cinema and Samurai films that the developers have ever loved. I left GoT last year after feeling overwhelmed by the sheer amount of things to do leading into the second chapter, but coming back at that point after some time away felt more manageable. It was easy to get back into the swing of the combat, which really makes you feel like a badass slicing down baddies left and right, especially by the end when you can take down 3-4 guys before the fight even stars with the Challenge function. I also loved getting to play more with the stealth elements as the game progressed, I feel like they were a little underutilized as there were almost no challenges where you needed stealth, but it was fun to take the entire population of a small village down with nothing but ninjitsu and assassinations. Not quite as fun as the “Come Get Some” button, but close. 5. Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity - Nintendo was happy to inform me in my Year in Review that I put almost exactly 100 hours into this game in 2021, by far the most of any Switch game (and I think any game in general), which makes perfect sense to me; This game feels designed to make hours just melt away, whether it’s playing through the very meaty story missions, replaying those story missions to level up my characters and get more weapons, any of the hundred or so side-missions, spending time min-maxing weapons, resource collecting. I was happy to do all of that stuff, mostly because it made such good use of the world that Breath of the Wild built and expanded upon it in really fun ways. Even the biggest proponents of BotW know that the story is not why you play that game, but Age of Calamity takes the story of BotW and really fleshes it out in a way that feels both authentic to the source material and enough its own thing to not be just a retread. I won’t go into great detail, but I can say that this is very much Zelda’s story, and AoC's Zelda is far more interesting than she has been in any previous game. It feels almost like fan-fiction, but the absolute best possible kind where someone who has a feel for the characters is able to craft their own narrative (with a heavy dose of tropes) that is as enjoyable as the original. Obviously this game doesn’t anywhere near match the gameplay or exploration of BotW, but it doesn’t really try to (except for a few hidden bits and bobs in the story missions). The gameplay is typical of a musou, but because it’s using BotW as a base you also have the rods and Sheikah Slate, which make it feel fresher. I still have a few things left to pick up here and there but from January to December this game was a constant through the year. 4. Shin Megami Tensei V - Someone in the SMT thread (or maybe the Switch thread? I can’t remember) asked the hypothetical question, “who thought adding Jak and Dexter to a SMT game was a good idea?” The very unhypothetical answer to that question is “me, I think it’s a great idea!” The jumping in this game isn’t quite up to a Mario (or even a lesser platformer like J&D) but the sense of vertical exploration in this game feels of a kind with the platformer genre just as much as it does with the open world games it’s more obviously inspired by. It’s exactly what I need in a turn-based RPG to keep me engaged, even more than Persona’s social-sim elements. I want more platformer-RPGs, we can’t let the genre end with this and Super Paper Mario. Otherwise it’s just another solid RPG. The characters are not nearly as interesting as Persona but the angels and demons mid-apocalypse-war story is exactly my poo poo, and it stays so serious that the little moments of levity (the writing for the demons) are incredibly funny. I sort of wish there was just a little more end-game content to help the leveling along at the end, you really never need to grind until the very end, which is when I least want to do it. 3. Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart - The Ratchet & Clank games have a sort of workmanlike appeal to them: When a new one comes out you know exactly what you’re getting every time, and every time it’s good. This time that is still the case, but now Insomniac has been given the budget and freedom to make the Ratchet & Clank of their wildest dreams as a showpiece for the Playstation 5, and they really go all out. It's not just showing off the sorts of graphics the console is capable of, but crafting a game that really puts the fast-loading hard drive to the test. Without having to change anything else, it’s a real game changer. There is no downtime here. There’s no loading screens and no long, hidden loads during cutscenes; the cutscenes and the gameplay are seamlessly intertwined and you can jump between worlds with a snap of your finger. It makes the story feel propulsive in a way most games haven’t really been able to capture, almost like the pacing of a Star Wars movie. This also makes the last little bits of exploration and trophy-hunting quick and easy. The gameplay is the same loop that R&C games have had since the PS2 days but you can only really iterate so much on perfection so much at this point. This time they added stuff like a dodge and the Rift Gun, which also really revs the PS5’s engines, but in the end it's the same perfect jumping, shooting, upgrading and laughing that have been mainstays of this franchise for as long as it has existed. But still, this game really makes me excited for what we might get a few years down the road when more dev teams get a good grasp on the PS5’s tech. Over the last 5 or so years Insomniac has been topping themselves with every new game, and this one is no different. 2. Persona 5 Strikers - What happens when you take the good parts of Persona 5 (the characters, the energy, the style) and shave it down into a lean, mean 40-hour experience and turn it into an Action-RPG Roadtrip Game? Absolute joy, as it turns out. Sure, you don’t get the individual social links or the joy of getting to intimately know an area like Shibuya or Yongen-Jaya, but the writing of this game is really something special, capturing a unique feeling that I haven’t really seen any game attempt to tackle: the Last Summer. There are a whole lot of movies about this feeling, about good friends going through something major together over the course of [a night, a summer, etc], but this is the first game that I’ve played to go for that and it really nails it. Strikers doesn’t have to deal with the get-to-know-ya stuff for every party member like P5 does (and I do mean P5, Kasumi is MIA, presumably doing backflips somewhere exciting), it just does it once at the beginning for Sophia and the rest of the game is the Phantom Thieves we all know and love having fun traveling across Japan eating and fighting demons and Anime Mark Zuckerberg having the best Last Summer anyone could dream of. I don’t know if I can convey exactly what made this game special to me because I’m sure it was wrapped up in part with what was going on in my life at the moment (having been denied that sort of Last Summer because of the pandemic), but the feeling of hanging out on a roadtrip hit me at exactly the right place. Nostalgia, but not the lame sort of nostalgia most games go for, but something much more down-to-earth and authentic. Also the food in this game is the most delicious food I've ever seen in a game, this game is basically an advertisement for traveling to and within Japan. 1. Metroid Dread - It’s the first new mainline Metroid in almost 20 years what else would be up here? The cinematic were awesome, I had little-to-no problems with the controls, the designs for the EMMI and the bosses are cool as gently caress, Samus is cool as gently caress, the Chozo are cool as gently caress, the exploration is exactly what you would want and expect out of a Metroid, it’s just 4-10 hours of pure Gaming with almost no downtime (the shinespark treasures being a little frustrating was my only complaint during the whole thing). Funnily, despite not being a Souls fan at all, I feel like I roughly got the Souls experience learning how to beat the bosses by repetition and learning patterns and weaknesses, and the pride from finally beating any of them after having to replay a bunch can’t be topped. I hope they make like, 4 more games in this engine with this team, I don’t want to have to wait another couple decades even if it means another game as good as this or Super Metroid or Metroid Fusion. edited for a few small writing tweaks, I didn't change the rankings at all DC Murderverse fucked around with this message at 11:08 on Dec 31, 2021 |
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2021 08:44
|
|
|
Foul Fowl posted:i have a question for all the final fantasy fans - is the first x amount of hours in the game still so slow and boring? i tried it on my ps4 a few years ago and could not get over the combat and dropped it after like five hours. FFXIV assumes that players have never played an MMO before and the 1 - 50 leveling experience reflects that. It's faster than it used to be, but if you couldn't get through it I don't think they've changed anything fundamentally enough that you'd not just have the same problem again.
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2021 09:02
|
|
|
yeah that's kinda what i figured 
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2021 09:24
|
|
|
10. Yakuza 4 Started to play though the 2nd half of the chronological Yakuza games involving Kiryu this year (3-6) and of the ones I've so far completed, I was in love with how 4 plays. Saejima is pretty much my favorite of the new characters in this one for fighting skills alone. 9. Everyday Genius: SquareLogic It's a game I bought a long time ago and dropped after clearing the mandatory stages, but the rules are very engaging and I'm a big fan of those moments where solving one section opens up everything. I still need to clear out the Ocean area completely and then maybe I can move onto clearing out the next sometime in 2023 lol. 8. Library of Ruina Deckbuilder that I bought because the setting of the first game was interesting. The tunes are choice and I have fun trying to make the best of a bad hand because sometimes I don't think things through all the way and need to salvage it. I got the achievement for forgetting to set actions on the very first fight I did, which was pretty funny. 7. Umineko (1st half) Dense as poo poo mystery story. I knew of it because of jokes on the internet, but it's a very compelling read. Pretty drat dark at times, too; had to take a break every now and then to process some things. Planning to read the 2nd half once I get a lot of spare time. 6. Hades After being late to the party, I'm glad I picked this one up. The writing's pretty drat good and the controls own. I can see why people talked it up so much last year. 5. Dying Light Was also late to the party with this one, but at least it was after everything important was fixed and Techland still runs little events and updates every now and then while they work on DL2. I was always a little soft on Dead Island wrt the gameplay part because it was a mess and this carries that spirit while also being way more competent about it. 4. Control The game was a touch too hard for me, so I will admit to flipping on some stuff so I could get through it. But I'm in love with the writing and the weapons and powers are actually a lot of fun. 3. Spider-Man (PS4) I was someone who really, really loved Spider-Man 2 on PS2 and I'd say this one outdoes that on all fronts. Eventually, I want to come back to it and do one last run on Ultimate difficulty. 2. Nioh 2 There are a handful of things in Nioh 1 that I enjoyed more compared to 2, but this was my ideal sequel otherwise. I sunk in as many hours into 2 as I did with 1, so they must have done something right. Fists4lyfe. 1. Lost Judgment Pretty much the most fun I've had with RGG's combat system and the 2nd RGG Studio game that I bothered to go out of my way to get the Platinum.
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2021 10:00
|
|
|
I played a lot of games this year but most of just got into the "yeah this was pretty good" tier so I don't really care about ranking them so I'll just do my top 5 (and don't really have that much to say about most of them either). 5. Shin Megami Tensei V Also just another entry in a long-running franchise. It has all the stuff I like and love about the series and executes it well. I don't think it quite reaches the heights of Nocturne but it is very good. 4. Monster Hunter Rise Yet another Monster Hunter and it's a good one. There isn't much to say here since MH is a very iterative franchise and you generally don't get very large changes between the entries. Rise does a good job of iterating on World and the silkbind gimmick is very good. 3. Metroid Dread Another entry where there isn't much to actually say about it. They finally made a new Metroid and it turns out that Metroid is still great.  2. Sonic 2006 Ok, hear me out. I am not calling this game good, it is in fact the exact opposite of it. Every part of the game is a mess, the laughable story where Sonic has a romance with a goddamn human lady, the physics that seem to change how they work on a whim, terrible controls, horrible loading times and so forth. Somehow the game manages to loop around being incredibly entertaining if you go in knowing what you are in for. It hits the perfect mix of tense gameplay, funny story and being just broken enough that you can kind of work with it once you start understanding the exact ways the brokenness works while still seeing baffling poo poo constantly. Now that I have actually played the game I really understand why this game is so popular with speedrunners. Against all odds I had a great time with this game. No other game is as good at being bad as Sonic 2006 is and that is a goddamn achievement. It is immaculate.  1. New Pokemon Snap I was a big fan of the original Snap as a kid and played it to death. It was really short and kind of shallow but god drat did I love it. New Snap exceeded all the expectations I had for it. They somehow managed make every single Pokemon cute and something you want to see. I really didn't expect to go "Hell yeah that's a loving Morelull!" about pokemon I have never cared about before but they did it. Just an incredible game that really brought out my inner child.
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2021 10:01
|
|
|
No separate lists this year. I went a bit overboard last time and wasn’t satisfied with some game’s placement and also ruined a couple games for me trying to rush them before the deadline, so I’m simplifying things. 10.) Cyber Shadow BOSS: MEKADRAGON - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZimhBcg5fs Latest beaten game on my list. I think I ignored it because I figured it would be just another in a pool of retro throwbacks despite Yacht Club’s backing, but then Gamepass was a dollar for 3 months and I figured I’d try it. Charming little ninja game that actually takes advantage of modern conveniences so that it can throw ever-so-slightly assholish challenges at you, but which never seem unfair. Lasts about as long as it needed to. 9.) Stranger in Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin Alpha/Beta https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHQij1sRCT0 What? Not like it’s going to win. Once again I may have spent too much time on the Nioh team’s early demos. It’s pretty satisfying to parry and absorb a poo poo ton of magic and then use it to rush in and punch the crap out of a magic fire man in his loving face. Hope the weird performance issues I saw get ironed out before release. 8.) Scarlet Nexus A Broken Promise - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x05Dh7YGtPo I wasn’t going to play this because it seemed just a touch too generic and also the demo felt kinda stiff, but I ended up really enjoying it. Something about the combination of unique encounters like this in an action rpg and various poo poo to throw at enemies while jumping in and out of close combat just felt fun, especially after you start unlocking party members’ follow-up attacks and more abilities. Cool final boss spectacle, too. 7.) Ys: Memories of Celceta Gust of Wind - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trWtq5fOwJw I’ve enjoyed every one of thYs I’ve played, but I go through one only when the mood hits so I’ve kind of fallen behind. They really just fuckin’ nail the soundtrack every time, huh? Not sure I have anything too revelatory to say, while I liked the older style of Ys games, I also loved the gently caress out of Seven so I’m not too worried about some of the fatigue of that style I’ve seen from some others with the latest games. 6.) Tales of Arise https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfaXaWGXQqo I feel like a few aspects of this game could have used another pass, but otherwise this is a pretty solid entry in the series. The actual feel of fights is pretty great even if there are unbalanced bits about it, I like the party and the characters in the game even if there are some odd bits here or there, and the convoluted ending was kind of cool even if there are parts that feel rushed about it. Sakuraba was also let out of his cage a little! Here’s hoping they can build on this for the next game and fix some of the bothersome aspects while they’re at it. More god-tier character designs like Dohalim, please. 5.) Illusion of Gaia - Apocalypse Gaia Hack Clash of Light and Shadow - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKpKXe3iyLA This hack only changes one thing, and it’s to restore three cut phases to the final boss. I almost managed to forget I was playing a hack since I can comfortably breeze through this game, but then I was viciously reminded by Satan’s flashing rear end in a top hat itself. It was a challenge to overcome, but it’s pretty obvious why it was cut, especially after you realize the hack lets you retry as many times as you want with the same number of healing herbs going in. 4.) Breath of Fire III For the Dragons - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYxwVM1zM3I I was real worried I wasn’t going to like this as much as I did back in the day. Replays of 1 and 2 came off way worse than I remembered (especially 2), and 4 ended up being sort of barren plot wise in a way I never picked up on at release, but if anything I’ve come out of these really marveling at how great 3 is. I still really like the characters and the central plot, and also how tidy the fights are in this game. Ended up with Ryu as an absurd physical powerhouse so I didn’t even use the cool Dragon gene system that much until the end, but it’s still fun to gather your abilities that way. I’m a little sad the Desert of Death wasn’t as confusing as I remember it, though I think my opinions on that have always just been the exact opposite of everyone else. 3.) Resident Evil Village Monstrosity - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vctV8zpqj0E Capcom just loving killing it lately. I think I replayed this game like 8 times for the platinum, just because it plays like a dream and has fantastic pacing. I don’t share the opinion a lot of people seem to have on the second half, I loved the sunken town and factory areas just as well. I think maybe the only complaint I have is an esoteric one, the haptic triggers don’t work right for the second half of mercenaries so if you have them on you actually can’t shoot as fast and those levels are more impossible than they already are. 2.) Metroid Dread Cataris II - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEBumox63D8 I was a big fan of Samus Returns, but it was beholden to a lot of things from Metroid 2 and being on a EOL portable that probably weighed it down more than necessary. So it was great to see MercurySteam had another chance to work on that gameplay to make what is possibly the smoothest 2D game I’ve ever played. I really liked the E.M.M.I. segments too, I just think it would be cool if they weren’t walled off in their own little areas (you even kind of see one enemy in the forest area that kind of moves like them). Hopefully it doesn’t take 2/3 of my life again for them to release another 2D Metroid on a console. … And then, from out of loving nowhere. https://i.imgur.com/qbjq761.mp4 It’s loving Einhander. 1.) Einhander Badlands - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Okz36R-sQWI “Excellent! Excellent!” “Don’t be afraid of failure in your mission” “Now keep an eye on the enemy’s move.” “Trust your power, your luck, your spirit.” “You. Are. Excellent!” So I was watching my cousin play Bloodborne, and after he got a little tired of dying to a boss he quit and said “hey I’m going to grind out some materials I need for the ultimate weapon in KH3”. He just happened to immediately go to the gummi ship fight that’s a reference to one of the later bosses in Einhander, and I went “I haven’t played that since, what, the 90s? Is Einhander still sick?” Einhander is the sickest poo poo in the world. And I loving forgot. The music is so god-tier that I couldn’t get it out of my head until I just bought a soundtrack on eBay to have whenever. I love how every stage just has a midboss that ends up coming with a track that pulls double duty as both the theme of the midboss, and also of the stage after them, usually syncing up perfectly after you’ve beat the midboss. Heck, just how each stage progresses helps sell you running an assault on enemy forces, the train stage alone is some masterclass poo poo. The gameplay gimmick of stealing enemies weapons and then finding new ones through hidden challenges is still incredibly fun. I like that you can just start with whatever after you’ve found it, so you can just start with something incredibly powerful to get you back on your feet after a death. Really hope this gets put on whatever weird dartboard Square uses to decide new remakes or new releases someday. I don’t think it particularly needs one but I’d easily play whatever they’d release for it.
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2021 10:02
|
|
|
There's now less than 24 hours to go to get in your lists in folks. This will be a strict deadline so don't delay! 
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2021 10:08
|
|
|
not long ago I revisited einhander myself and it is still so good. Why hasn't someone ripped it off and put modern graphics on it by now? Has someone done this and I just missed it?
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2021 10:08
|
|
|
Looper posted:Part Two is this sky tides from ecco 2 but just an entire game of it? that's a loving nightmare
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2021 10:17
|
|
|
after posting mine I went through the thread and read everyone else's and then immediately went and bought Gnosia for my Switch since it's on sale for the next 24 hours. Single-player mafia-like is exactly my poo pooLooper posted:Part Two the game boy Hamtaro games actually loving slap, my sister owned most of them when we were kids and I think I played all of them
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2021 10:30
|
|
|
khanstant lmfao great job looper 
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2021 11:04
|
|
|
quote:
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2021 11:10
|
|
|
Phantasium posted:… loving hell yeah
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2021 11:55
|
|
|
Endorph posted:hey the, the music is genuinely good, it has that going for it. Not wrong
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2021 11:58
|
|
|
Putting Sonic'06 on your goty list in the year 2021, is incredibly powerful
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2021 12:03
|
|
|
Whizzing Wizard posted:Putting Sonic'06 on your goty list in the year 2021, is incredibly powerful It's an enduring classic
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2021 12:46
|
|
|
 Updated list alert I have had to make an 11th hour edit to my list (complete with new NFT content, the post is here) in order to include New Pokemon Snap. New Pokemon Snap 
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2021 12:54
|
|
|
So for those who don’t know me the way I game is by living in the past. I have an XBox 360, a PS3 and a Wii and I have made it my mission to play every cool game to come out for these consoles. To make my journey easy to track I play games in chronological order of release. This year I was deep in 2008 a big year for games but how many of the heavy hitters would make my list? Read on and find out... “Where are the cops when you need them?” 10. SIREN: BLOOD CURSE (Japan Studio) I went back and forth about whether to include Blood Curse in my list because it’s not a great game. I’m not even sure it’s a good game. This stealth-based survival horror features grainy graphics, clunky tank controls, awkward combat, some inscrutable puzzle design, an unnecessary sightjacking gimmick and in many places demands pitch-perfect timing from the player to avoid failure. Trying to legitimately play this game is an exercise in frustration to the point where I quickly broke down and opened a walkthrough. So if this game with all it problems is such a miserable experience to play then why does it feature in my list? Well, for all the things that it gets so wrong there’s also a lot that it gets so right. Blood Curse tells the story of a collection of individuals trapped in a Japanese village in mystical upheaval following a failed attempt at human sacrifice. The narrative jumps back and forth between these characters slowly teasing out clues about the cause of their troubles while they try to escape from the Shibito, deformed zombies with blood streaming out of their bodies. The game evokes the tone of classic Japanese horrors like Ringu and The Grudge and the story is a fabulous mindfuck of demon cults, time loops and a final bossfight against a giant moth in an acid trip hellscape. There are games I’ve played this year which were by all standards of definition better but none will stick in my mind for as long.  9. VALKYRIA CHRONICLES (Sega) “Once the war is over the real work will start” Unfortunately I’ve not yet completed this game but I am about halfway through and based on what I’ve seen so far it definitely merits a spot in my list. I didn’t know too much about Valkyria Chronicles going in. My basic preconceptions were that it would kinda be like Fire Emblem set in WW2. And there is a little of that in there but really if you were to break down the VC formula it would be more like 25% tactical RPG, 25% XCOM, 50% visual novel. Somehow it’s a combo that works. At first glance it seems like tactical options in combat are fairly limited with only a handful of different classes being available however the game’s strength is in creating maps and scenarios with a wide variance of gimmicks and objectives. My initial fears that the gameplay loop would get repetitive were quickly laid to rest. Away from the battlefield the game focuses on the relationships of Squad 7, a plucky band of the civilian militia trying to defend their small country from foreign invaders while also being disrespected by their own nation’s armies. Despite the setting and gameplay the story carries a strong anti-war message and doesn’t shy away from displaying the atrocities that can be committed during a time of conflict. It also veers hard into romantic anime tropes with grown adults acting like teenagers as they try to work out who likes who. It’s a combination that shouldn’t work but somehow just about does and even when it doesn’t any they jump straight from a beach vacation to a concentration camp all you can do is chuckle at the chutzpah. It’s a unique combination but it’s one I dig. There’s really no other video game like it.  “This is what the dream feels like?”' 8. GRAND THEFT AUTO IV (Rockstar) This is actually a repeat performance as GTA4 graced my list last year as well. The difference is last year I wasn’t gaming so it’s ranking was based on about an hour’s play. In 2021 I truly dove into Liberty City to follow Niko Belic’s attempts to build a new life for himself, a struggle exacerbated by his cousin’s gambling debts and his own personal quest for vengeance. The GTA trilogy on the PS2 rank up there as some of my favourite games of all time so I was all primed and ready to get the most out of it. That it fails to live up to the lofty standards of its predecessors is not some grand revelation so I will flit away from its shortcomings to focus on the positives. The amount of work that Rockstar has put into creating Liberty City is astounding. Every corner, every inch feels alive and lived in to the point that if you told me it was based on a real city I would believe you. Out of all the open-world games I’ve played this is the most I’ve enjoyed just going from place to place. I never lost that sense of wonder for what may be waiting around the next corner. Even if what’s round that corner is likely grey and busted and miserable. For in building Liberty City Rockstar have held up a mirror to the world of 2008 which is still very much applicable to the world of today. From the racially segregated projects of Bohan to the rundown dormant factories of Broker through the drug laced towers of East Holland one thing is abundantly clear. Liberty City is the place where the American Dream goes to die. It would take a certain kind of man to live in this kind of world and in Niko Belic the series produces its most well realised protagonist yet. Niko is a man who is beyond flawed, a man who always finds himself back in the same old poo poo but never loses the desire to be better. He is a man defined by the key relationships in his life whether its his cousin Roman or his war comrade Darko. Where the game really shines is that it gives you the choice to maintain your relationships as you see fit. You can nurture your friendships or you can leave them neglected, most likely the latter, and when given the opportunity to decide whether to give in to petty revenge or start a new chapter as a better man it’s you, not Niko, who will make the choice. And believe me, it will be a hard choice. In GTA4 Rockstar have presented a game where doing what is fun is often at odds with doing what is right. So sure, maybe your idea of a good time is jacking the first sports car you see and shooting up Varsity Heights to rake in the big bucks but me, I’m gonna take Roman bowling. That’s the only dream I need.  7. STAR WARS: THE FORCE UNLEASHED (LucasArts) “I have a really bad feeling about this” One of the things about my method of playing games is that when I come to a game it comes to me with its reputation. I’ve known about these games for years, I was reading reviews for them over a decade ago, many of these games I’ve been wanting to play for a very long time. What I’m saying here is that when I fall in love with a game it’s normally not a surprise. But not every time. The Force Unleashed was the one I never saw coming. I’ve never considered myself a major Star Wars nerd. I mean, sure I’ve seen all the movies but I’ve never dived into the extended content and my interest in the franchise has never been close to major loves like Marvel or Final Fantasy. And sure, I’ve done some of the video games but none have ever stood out as exceptional in their own right. So when I got to The Force Unleashed I wasn’t expecting anything more than a momentary diversion before breaking into the real heavy hitters of 2008. Instead what I got was a tightly focused character action game with stunning environments, responsive combat and the thrilling use of Force Powers. Whether it was blasting mooks to nothing with lightning or jumping into a throng of enemies only to blast them off a cliff with a Force Sphere using these powers never got old. If I didn’t have dozens of games stacked up waiting for me I could easily see myself taking another run through this game just for the fun of it. But the combat isn’t even The Force Unleashed’s best selling point. What really struck me about game was how easily it weaved itself into the wider Star Wars mythos, telling a story that both felt like an essential edition to the canon while staying true to the themes which permeate the franchise. Heritage, betrayal, redemption, balance, corruption. It’s a classic Star Wars tale complete with classic archetypes like the apprentice perched on a knife-edge between the Light and the Dark, the comedy relief droid which whom you build a deeper emotional connection and wise Jedi master who knows more than he lets on. Throw in some big crowd pleasing set pieces like a trip inside a Sarlacc beast and pulling a Star Destroyer out of the sky, add a plot that explains how the Rebel Alliance was formed while leading directly into the events of A New Hope and you have the recipe for a huge Star Wars success.  6. MARIO KART WII (Nintendo) “Wahoo!” Oh geez, this is going to be a hard one. See normally when I write these list entries I have lots of material to delve into about the game expressed itself to me. About its stories and characters and themes and how I related to them and how they made me feel. But I can’t really do that here because Mario Kart Wii has none of that. It’s just… fun. It’s fun. What more do you want from me? It’s fun. It’s loving fun! Ok I guess I’ll try at least a little bit more. I’ve always been a fan of the Mario Kart games ever since borrowing the original from a boy at school and I even have some fond memories of getting drunk and racing against my mates late into the night from a few years ago. I was very looking forward to doing a full solo playthrough and it did not disappoint. The track design was superb, the difficulty curve was on point, the tragedy of the blue shell was heartwrenching and look, I just had a big drat smile on my face the whole time I was playing and if that’s not what video games are all about then what the hell is.  5. SAINTS ROW 2 (Volition) “This is the loving life” I’ve already talked at length in this list about my love for the PS2 era Grand Theft Auto trilogy and for that particular style of gameplay. It’s a style that has definitely become more prevalent in this next generation of consoles but until late this year no game yet had really delivered that classic GTA experience. GTA4 chose to go in a different direction, Crackdown came close but lacked the depth required but Saints Row 2... now Saints Row 2 is an entirely different proposition. Under normal circumstances I am loathe to make direct comparisons between video games on my list because every game is a different work with its own intended aims and direction but in this case it is difficult to avoid it. The GTA formula runs through Saints Row’s lifeblood and the franchises released these entries less than six months apart. GTA4’s release was met with somewhat muted acclaim and a disappointed fanbase and while I chose not to address those issues earlier I have to admit that the criticisms are not without merit. GTA4 is a flawed masterpiece then, and in its failings it left a space for Saints Row 2 to come screaming into. With a bright colour palette, an extensive array of activities competing for your time and a no fucks given attitude Saints Row 2 was the antithesis to everything Rockstar had created. You want to drive down pedestrians in a buggy that’s on fire? You can! You want to dress up as a cop and commit fraudulent examples of police brutality? You can! You want to riding round the streets spraying the city in poo poo? That’s weird but sure, you can! And that’s not mentioning the main story which pits your balls to the wall Boss against a cast of colourful antagonists and manages to dress up a by-the-numbers gangland turf war tale with plenty of badass moments and a surprising amount of heart. For all Rockstar brought a talented writing team, a realistic world and grounded characters to GTA4 there was still no moment more poignant than the one where the Boss had to put Carlos out of his misery. In a franchise that had initially struggled to establish its own identity this game really set a marker for what Saints Row could and would be.  4. DEAD SPACE (Visceral) “Maybe we wouldn’t like the answer even if they told us” As I mentioned earlier in this list what I look for most from video games are games that will give me an emotional reaction. That’s something which all of my top four games have in common. Though some reactions were much different to others. I considered myself very lucky this year to be able to participate in Spooktober. My gaming schedule doesn’t normally line up such that I’ve got a horror game on the docket as we get to Halloween but this year was different. This year I had Dead Space, a game I knew by reputation was pretty drat scary. Now let me tell you, I did not shy away from Spooktober. I went all in. We’re talking lights off, curtains drawn, volume up, just me and ship systems engineer Isaac Clarke and the empty hallways of the Ishimura. And let me tell you, it was loving terrifying. I said that I love games that make me feel something. Well Dead Space made me feel legitimately uncomfortable, like the entire time I was playing it there was a pit growing in my stomach. Never in my life have I wanted to play a game less. I had to emotionally build myself up to turning on the XBox. Once I had I was counting down the minutes until I’d be able to turn it off again. Just… ugh, no. So what is it about Dead Space that caused me to have such a – if you’ll pardon the pun – visceral reaction? Where do I even begin? Everything about this game is fine-tuned to provoke fear. The tight halls of the Ishimura are oppressive and claustrophobic filled with distant screams, unexplained creaks and whispered voices that may or may not be real. Even before you encounter the aliens with their hideous shrieks just the threat of danger alone is enough to have your heart racing. Then there’s the Necromorphs themselves. Some will ambush you with a jump scare, some will ambush you from behind, some will ambush you while you are in a loving store just trying to shop, some will ambush you AND THEY WILL BE INVINCIBLE AND THEY WILL NOT STOP HUNTING YOU. These ones are literally the worst. There is one particular moment that I think can sum up my Dead Space experience. It came in chapter 4 when you first step out onto the command bridge and are presented with a wide open view of the meteor storm threatening the ship and the planet you’re slowly falling towards. In that grand hall I stood in at the front of the deck and contemplated my fate. There were pressing concerns but I needed a moment to process. Here I was, one tiny being on a giant ship facing impossible odds to escape imminent death. No one was out there. No one would save me. I was an insignificant speck lost in the vast emptiness of space and I was completely alone. I want to play games that make me feel and it is an undeniable fact that Dead Space achieved that so I have to recognise that in my list even if the experience itself was horrible. So thanks Dead Space, I hated you. You were awesome. gently caress you.  3. METAL GEAR SOLID 4: GUNS OF THE PATRIOTS (Konami) “I’m no hero. Never was, never will be.” One of my favourite parts of my gaming experience is when I get to livepost a game in the chat thread. I love being able to share my joy with my goon buddies, entertaining them with my reactions and giving them the opportunity to vicariously relive an old game through my journey. Plus I get to be the centre of attention and as the OP of this thread will attest I love it when people are looking at me. Unfortunately it’s surprisingly rare for me to a play a game that has the cultural cachet to be widely known while also providing a rich story that merits the full liveposting experience. Mass Effect was one such game, Disco Elysium was another but when it came to 2021 the only time that intersection was met was Metal Gear Solid 4. Here was a game that had long ago permeated into the public consciousness giving me full license to riff off its convoluted twists and delightful weirdness and let me tell you, it was an absolute blast. This was not my first Kojima rodeo. I was already well aware of the levels of insanity that he had sprinkled through the MGS series but even I wasn’t prepared for sheer degrees of crazy that would be on display here. From the moment I started the game and was met with a number of completely irrelevant adverts for products that don’t exist I was transported into a world of ridiculousness full of ballet dancing ninjas, robot cows, whatever the gently caress those three armed balls were and a hot soldier with diarrhea. It was an absolute riot and the chat thread was there with me every step of the way. But while it’s easy to laugh at all of Kojima’s excesses it’s undeniable that the man knows how to spin an effecting yarn and as the official culmination of the MGS series (please ignore MGSV) this game delivers one emotional climax after another. The corridor sequence in particular is a triumph of the medium, artfully involving the player in the direct destruction of their idol while all around them veers towards catastrophe. Then there’s the return to Shadow Moses, a loving tribute to the foundation of the franchise that pays tribute to its most memorable moments while also adding its own unique flavour. And how could you talk about MGS4 without discussing its climatic confrontation in which two old men are stripped of all the pomp and circumstance and left to fight it out in the setting sun as the music, UI and combat itself flashes through the proceeding games in a stunning homage to the series. While I would still have enjoyed this experience if I hadn’t had an outlet to express my thoughts my memories would not be quite as fond. One of the things gaming does is that it brings us together. As someone who is always so far behind the pace of the modern gamer MGS4 brought me closer to my community and that’s something I value even more than the game itself.  2. NINJA GAIDEN II (Team Ninja) “Righteous flames will cleanse the Earth of your kind” A couple of years ago I played Ninja Gaiden Sigma. I’d heard of Team Ninja’s update to the NES classic when it originally came out and I was intrigued to experience the much vaunted bastard hard difficulty. The game certainly delivered on that – it kicked my rear end over and over again – but the rest of the package was somewhat underwhelming. The setting of Tairon felt manufactured and devoid of life, the enemy variety was poor and there was some horrendous female objectification. In the end I couldn’t complete Sigma, my disc had a scratch on it and froze 2/3rds of the way through the game but I felt like I’d seen enough. All of this is to say that I had zero hype going into the sequel which probably helped because holy poo poo this game blew my socks off. Ninja Gaiden II does everything a sequel should, it takes all the original was trying to do and gives you more. More weapons with which you become a whirling seething tide of death, more environments of more variety all displayed with a searing level of graphic fidelity unlike anything I’ve played up to this point in time, more enemies of more challenge that will send you crying to your parents again and again. Because yes, the difficulty level has not dropped an inch in the course of the updated gameplay. This game is balls hard. For all that I love video games I’ve never considered myself to be particularly good at them. When I was young it would be rare for me to see a game through to the end credits. I was still automatically dropping difficulty levels to Easy well into my twenties. And sure, I’ve made an effort to not wimp out in more recent years but I still don’t consider myself to have too much skill. The thought of playing a game like Ninja Gaiden has always filled me with fear that these games would kick my rear end. And sure, NG2 kicked my rear end for a while but halfway through something shifted. All of a sudden I had found a weapon style that worked for me. I didn’t need to check the combo controls, I didn’t even need to think about the combo controls, all of a sudden my mind and body were in sync as controlling Ryu Hyabusa turned into an elegant dance of thrusts, slices, dodges and parries. Near the end of the game I walked up a staircase to be met by literally a hundred ninjas swarming down to face me. A young Rarity would have trembled at the sight but I was no longer a young Rarity. Instead I stepped up to meet them, began to wield my blade and shredded them apart like paper. And that really is the crux of my love for this game. Ninja Gaiden II didn’t just make me feel like I was a good gamer. Ninja Gaiden II made me feel like I was a beast.  1. OKAMI (Capcom) “Put your hands together and pray” With its artful cel-shaded graphics scheme and unique story of a fallen goddess using the power of art to regain her following you could easily have the perspective that Okami is somewhat of an oddball game. And in fairness you wouldn’t be entirely wrong. Where else in the land of video games are you going to be asked to shrink down inside the Emperor of Japan to cure him of the plague or defeat an 8-headed devil with the power of sake? So sure Okami is an oddball but what else it is is exceptional; an expertly crafted piece of work that bursts with wonder and life. Let’s start by talking about those cel-shaded graphics, an art-style that was all the rage in the 00s but quickly fell out of fashion. While most cel-shaded games land on a cartoonish tone Okami approaches their use very differently with artful brush strokes and a softer colour palette. Rather than playing a cartoon it feels like playing a painting, creating a timeless look that will never stop being gorgeous even as graphics reach the world of ultra HD 4K Blu-Ray. This unique visual flair ties in with the innovative paintbrush mechanics which allow you to pause the action and effect the game world by painting a decal. Winds can be raised, flowers can be grown, bombs can be created among other things and every power can be used for both progression and combat, adding an important tactical dimension to the action. Lush graphics and some nifty mechanics are all good enough but it’s time to talk about the real selling point of Okami, it’s story. The player controls Amaterasu, the goddess of the sun who’s powers have waned as the people of Japan stopped believing in her. She is accompanied on her travels by Issun, a wandering artist who wants nothing more than to shirk his responsibilities and stay away from trouble. Along the way they encounter an eclectic bunch of characters with as much eccentricity as emotional heart. From the cowardly warrior Susano to the impetuous youth Oki, from the wise priestess Rao to the mysterious prophet Waka, everyone gets their own growth over the course of the game. Much of the negative talk around Okami comes around its length and it is certainly a long game but I see this as one of its strengths. By spending so much time with these characters it allows you to grow attached to all of them, increasing the impact of a plot that twists in so many unexpected directions. All of which culminates in one of the most emotional climaxes I have experienced in life of gaming. I said that I want games to make me feel, I’m not ashmed to admit that the closing act of Okami had me crying my eyes out. We’re talking big messy tears streaming down my face. As soon as that happened I knew it would take an impossible effort to knock it off my top spot this year. It’s an artistic feast for the eyes, it’s a rollicking adventure, it’s moving, it’s powerful, it’s loveable, it’s the best game that I played in 2021.
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2021 13:19
|
|
|
Rarity posted:So for those who don’t know me the way I game is by living in the past. I have an XBox 360, a PS3 and a Wii and I have made it my mission to play every cool game to come out for these consoles. To make my journey easy to track I play games in chronological order of release. Have you considered hit game Sonic 2006?
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2021 13:24
|
|
|
Andrast posted:Have you considered hit game Sonic 2006? If only it was Sonic 2008
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2021 13:25
|
|
|
HMs: Loop Hero, Fuga: Melodies of Steel, Total War Three Kingdoms, Dead By Daylight, Dungeon Encounters, Undernauts: Labyrinth of Yomi, Katamari Damacy: REROLL Stuff I probably should get around to playing: Lost Judgment, Gnosia, Forgotten City (Welp.) Guess which games got put on this list because they made me think things, and those thoughts caused me to write words about them. Here's a hint: It's all of them. Apologies in advance for the lack of brevity. This will require multiple posts. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________  10 - Humankind The balance? Wack. The multiplayer functionality? Wack. The buggy Dia De Los Muertos event? Wack. Fun, but still wack. I still put in 130+ hours into this game and don't regret it. This game's entire design is centered around its core gimmick, each time you progress to a new Era (by meeting certain progression criteria across various categories like Technology, Growth, Expansion, Construction, and so forth), you get to pick a new Culture for your civilization. This is Humankind's strength and greatest weakness, as each Culture adds to your constant stacking passive buffs. Each Culture unlocks powerful new Districts and units you can construct, the former of which stick around and let you reap their benefits for the rest of the game, so you snowball out of control much more quickly than in Civilization. This situation was even worse before the Khmer culture was nerfed, their industry and food production were absurd, and easily synergized with later Science culture bonuses (since as a Scientific Culture type you could activate a mode that converted a city's entire surplus production, of all types, into Science). The balance was, indeed, wack. And so when playing single-player it's very easy to get into a rut and just focus on particular culture-stacking builds to easily win. Especially since the default AIs were hardly a challenge on release, except perhaps Gilgamesh, who was only interesting because he's the only genuine bastard of the bunch. This would be alleviated by patches buffing the AI, and you could download AI profiles designed by other players, but that didn't change how most people tend to just beeline to the meta builds if given half the chance. If you wanted to spice things up, you had to do it yourself. Or you could be encouraged to do so by stuff like the recent Dia De Los Muertos event, which had specific challenges you could do in order to get cosmetic prizes, including a new preset avatar to select. This was actually a lot of fun and required that people change up their playstyles a bit. The only problem was that progress for these challenges were tracked by Amplitude Studios Games2Gether social hub. Their internet connectivity was always buggy in the best of times, so it came as no surprise to find that every other day my challenge progress would reset or change to a wildly different state, and that everybody else who tried to engage with the event suffered similar problems. In the end, the devs threw their hands up in the air and decided to give every participant the cosmetic rewards regardless of their challenge progress. If this sounds like I'm complaining a lot, it's because I am. But these are not the complaints of someone who dislikes the game! Far from it. I wound up falling pretty hard for Humankind, warts and all, and only wish that it was better. That choosing Cultures was more impactful for your unit selection besides unlocking a single signature unit for a single era tier. That the Contemporary Era cultures gave your leader clothes that actually reflected the society and style of the culture you're adopting, like those of previous Eras. That the music was more evocative. That there was a way to enable semi-randomization of your selection of available Cultures per Era, like some kind of Draft Mode, to force you out of your rut and vary up your playstyle. Amplitude's other 4X games, the Endless franchise, are known for their wildly asymmetrical factions and it would have done them well to bring a little more of that creative energy here. Granted, it would've been a lot of work, but they're the ones who chose this game's core design gimmick. I just think it could've been explored more deeply. As it stands, this game's good enough that I'm willing to rank it in my top 10, but it's not a great game. If I'd put more time into other games, including some of my Honorable Mentions, it's entirely possible this could've fallen off of my list. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________  9 - Ring Fit Adventure (Any single Ring quote I could put here would sound weird out of context. And a lot of them in context, too.) The first of the returning games on my list, I felt it was time I gave a more detailed accounting of my feelings on it compared to my more truncated opinion in the GOTY 2020 thread. If there was a single game that could be said to have become a genuine part of my life, and I wasn't allowed to pick the game I chose as my number 1, it would have to be this one. When my friends saw my tentative Top Ten list, they couldn't help but notice this entry and confirm that, yes, in fact I do Ring Fit a lot. If I'm honest, it's basically the thing I use the Switch for. The game itself is fairly simple, being a very lightweight RPG combat system tied to pilates ring exercises and a series of minigames. In a few ways, the Adventure Mode's systems might tempt players to alter their exercise for in-game numbers instead of letting you choose exercises more appropriate for muscles and body parts you might instead want to work on, physically. But if you resist that urge, and engage with the game in the spirit of self-improvement, then it becomes a fun way to provide immediate feedback on your selected exercises, something a normal exercise routine generally lacks. The story's a light romp filled with an amusing cast of characters that doesn't take itself too seriously. What it does do, however, is fill you with encouragement and provide a positive environment. The only negativity comes from the antagonist, Dragaux, and helping him overcome his own toxicity is the thrust of the overarching story in the New Game campaign. Unlike previous Nintendo exercise games, you're not even passive-aggressively shamed. If you're not doing an exercise correctly, Ring will just encourage you to adjust yourself in a very, "it's okay, you can do it" tone. Compare this to Wii Fit, which would take a more scolding tone, however mild. It's a very pleasant experience.  And the music is also better than it has any right to be for a fitness gimmick game. Each track is one of those multi-layered affairs with elements fading in and out based on in-game context and activity. Meaning a youtube OST track won't quite capture the full experience, but it's close. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qU6fRj1IDZ4 _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________  8 - Deathloop Life’s full of maybes, Julianna. That’s what makes it life. This game disappointed a lot of people, and in the end I have to agree with their complaints. But! I still have to admit I found it charming and fun for the bulk of my time with it. Its main weakness is the fact that, at the end of the day, there is just a single critical path to actually beat the game. And the ending, to be fair, is rather weak. Compared to other games in the Immersive Sim genre, Deathloop is lighter on content and potential for mischief, and its central story, while filled with its own twists and turns, actively chooses not to live up to its own potential. Instead, it's content to concern itself with its own mysteries and characters, and you are given the opportunity to dig deeper if you so choose. But there are few mechanical rewards for doing so and what rewards exist are disappointing, thus the player is disincentivized from it. Which is a shame, because I found myself more interested in and invested in Deathloop's little world full of petty tyrants and doomed hedonists than the sweeping portentous plotlines of its not entirely spiritual predecessor, Dishonored. The strength of Deathloop's story is in the little stories you can uncover, the humanity of people trapped in a potentially centuries long time loop without ever realizing it, and all the ugliness that entails.  The two main characters, Colt and Julianna, have phenomenal chemistry with some of the most fun, casually antagonistic banter I've had the pleasure of experiencing in a videogame. As they are the only people capable of retaining any memories of the time loop that the player is aware of at the start, they're the only characters that get to really feel like people. And that's intentional. Everyone else is trapped, and while they're obviously NPCs in a videogame, their predicament draws attention to this fact in a way that highlights the tragedy of their existences. And both invading, and being invaded by, friends lets you turn a stage into a veritable playground of stealth super-powered nonsense. Invasions involving randos are less fun, however, and unfortunately it does seem like multiplayer was intended to be the long-tail driver for this game's success. In spite of its weaknesses, I think it's still worth playing and digging into. And I still think about it sometimes. Also, by combining the Aether and Shift slabs, you can kind of be a ninja. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________  7 - Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness & the Secret Hideout  One nice thing about hanging around various threads in Games is that you might come across recommendations for a game you wouldn't normally give a shot, and sometimes it turns out you really enjoy that game. Thanks to the RPG Thread, I decided to try an Atelier game, of which there are apparently quite a few. So I picked one. What a chill experience it was. I'm told some older games in the franchise have a time management element. I'm glad this doesn't, I just wanted to grab materials and beat up monsters at my own pace. And then apparently spend multiple in-game days making bombs, weapons, and armor? I'm not sure how much time passes during crafting sessions, I never really bothered breaking it down. Why would I? I was too busy crafting. That's how you get everything you need, you craft them using the alchemy system. Or you progress the story a bit to unlock new recipes, then you craft them. Apparently different Atelier games even have different alchemy systems? This one I got the hang of pretty quickly. The story is cute, in a very earnest, youngsters-on-an-adventure kind of way. Ryza and her friends live in a village on a secluded island, cut off from the rest of the country by what's honestly a suspiciously large and dangerous swathe of mainland dominated by the ruins of a lost civilization. A civilization of which the villagers are implied to be the last surviving descendants by their geographic position, their reliance on that civilization's ancient infrastructure, their lack of an immigrant historical narrative, and the considerable number of local taboos and traditions surrounding the ruins. The area's dangerous enough that villagers only rarely step foot on it, thanks to those taboos, and contact with the outside world is done either via sea routes, well-defended caravans, or through sufficiently powerful adventurers who can take care of themselves well enough not to need either. It's a very small, idyllic town with a whole wide world out in the distance, one filled with mystery, adventure, and new potential friends. The plot doesn't concern itself with threats on a wide, world-spanning scale, and is perfectly content to be the story of a village and their lost history, and the band of plucky teens who uncover it. Small town rivalries and dramas unfold, tensions emerge between the people who want the village to reach out and build connections with the outside world and those who don't. Alchemy, the core system behind the game and the professional field that Ryza aspires towards, provides a flashpoint for these tensions and concerns. Many of which are well-founded, given their people's history and the truths the kids uncover. But it's also a wonderful, magical thing that brings a spark of inspiration to the heroine's life and gives her the means to help the people of the village, too. It's nice! And the music is very pleasant. The title theme pretty much gets the tone of the whole game right in a nutshell. It starts off very jaunty and eager and a little goofy, like kids taking their first steps on an adventure on a lark, but it grows into something more grand, sweeping, and moving. The first Atelier Ryza game is a warm and light-hearted, and just a little bittersweet, coming of age story about a girl who collects recipes for bombs and saves her hometown by blowing up monsters. I ought to try the second game, too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XY8GCsgXaso _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________  6 - Guilty Gear Strive Totsugeki! (Was nerfed, thank goodness) A game where you can play not one, but two members of the US President's security detail, but for some reason you can't actually play as the President himself. I do not know how to play Guilty Gear. I don't really know much about Guilty Gear at all aside from seeing a few memes. But Strive looked cool and was apparently designed to be easier to get into so I gave it a shot. I had quite a lot of fun just playing casually, including with friends, and I even thought the weird lobby system was okay after a while. Never really got deep into it, as fighting games are functionally a sport unto themselves, but just loading it up and getting tossed around in tussles is always fun. Hot drat does this game have style. The art is incredible. The controls are silky smooth. The netcode is rollback, and I've come to understand this is a good thing and a Big loving Deal for fighting games. The music is full of bangers, including a lot of unconventional tracks that really showcase Daisuke Ishiwatari's range as a composer and musician. He's also the lead artist, lead writer, director, and creator of Guilty Gear. But god drat is he a composer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-h-h7hoQxg These are all top-notch, but I can't really say very much about the game beyond that due to being unequipped to do so. So, what is it about Guilty Gear Strive that gave me pause for thought? What about this game drove me to share my thoughts with people online? Simple. The Story Mode. It's a 4-and-a-half hour long CG anime movie that throws you into the deep end of GG lore and wraps up a wild and utterly bizarre storyline spanning over two decades. It's flashy, bewildering, and clearly counting on familiarity with the lore, and at least familiarity with the previous game, not to be completely lost. Now recall that Strive is designed to be the most newbie-friendly installment in the series, a fresh starting point for a much larger audience than the series had managed to garner up to this point in time. How the heck do you reconcile that with this? Well first you have to admit that you don't, not really. But then you try anyway. So to do that, you boil things down to digestible stakes. The plot might be some bullshit about the G3 Summit and the President of the United States, and basically the Wizard Joker helping I-No and turning her from an incomplete deity into, uh, I guess a giant woman who is also the sky? But really, it's Sol's story, and that's the one thing that makes the whole show work somehow. Not entirely, but enough. It's also an incredibly buckwild Hollywood popcorn action flick, for some reason. Hell, it's even a specific one. It's Olympus Has Fallen Starring Sol Badguy, but one that has the audacity to take that premise and go even further beyond, right up into the stratosphere. Why does this movie exist? Why is it as fun as it is? Did anyone even try to stop Daisuke from making this movie? Why does President Vernon have a cyborg arm powered by magical nuke batteries? Why isn't President Vernon a DLC character?  However, you can be a ninja. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9MrABvmjhk _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________  5 - Nioh 2 ...Hiddy! Do you know what this means?! I should mention I'm quite bad at Souls games. I also have to confess I don't really enjoy them, they are very well-made games that, for some reason or another, are just not my cup of tea. I was put off by Bloodborne because it struck me as still being more Souls than not. Sekiro, that I liked because it was laser-focused at what it was trying to do and there were frames of reference I could draw upon that reminded me of games I knew I did like, such as Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance and the Tenchu series. That, and you got to be a ninja. No surprise that I decided to give Nioh 2 a shot, then. And goodness gracious, what a game it is. I'm better at it than I am at Souls or Sekiro, despite it being a much bigger and more technically-dense game. And when I say bigger I do mean that. While there's discrete levels instead of a single detailed locale with intertwined zones, each main campaign level is very long, and there's dozens of side-missions remixing those levels besides. And there's a dozen different weapons to learn with distinct fighting styles. Like Monster Hunter, choosing a weapon feels almost like choosing a character in a fighting game. Though in this, you can switch between two different weapons on the fly. And each weapon has three different stances each with their own movesets, which you can customize. And you're encouraged to swap between weapons and stances on the fly, and do so with the correct rhythm, in order to maximize the benefits of the timing-based stamina (Ki) regain system. There's just so much if you want to engage with it. Or you could tough it out and make do with Odachi High Stance overheads like a GS user, that's entirely valid too. Also you can unleash three rotund housecats to beat a grown-rear end samurai demon man to death while you watch, but that's less of a build and more of a means of showing disrespect to a boss. I deeply admire Sekiro. It's my favorite game I'm terrible at, though I'm less terrible at it now than I was when I started. It's a lean, tightly-tuned, precision work of art. It's a 3-star Michelin fine dining of gaming experiences. Sekiro is a masterpiece. I have so much fun playing Nioh 2. It's big, it's messy, it's earnest and excited to let you take a bunch of yokai and samurai toys and mash them together and make big ki explosions and also regular explosions, if you are a ninja. It's dark and moody but also loud and goofy. Playing with friends, again, feels less like Souls and more like MonHun, with much the same energy as playing multiplayer in that series. It's Sunday Dinner at Grandma's and everyone's invited. Nioh 2 is a big, beautiful soul food extravaganza.  And when I say it's goofy, it's in relative terms. On the face of it this is a fairly dark and sombre rags to riches to rubble story with a bit of a quirky historical fantasy core conceit. In the first Nioh you play as a fictionalized, and Irishified, version of a real historical figure, William Adams, one of the few foreigners to be granted the rank of samurai. In Nioh 2, you create your own hero, "Hide," a silent protagonist who manages to have twice the charm and character as ol' William. Both games involve Forrest Gumping your way through the Late Sengoku Era but I feel the story works more effectively in Nioh 2. (I suspect making Nioh 1 about a Westerner was a calculated move to increase its global appeal. Nioh 2 however decides to just get weird with letting you make a self-insert in a key point in Japan's history and lets you run loose from there, which in my opinion plays more to the setting's strength.) I'm going to spoil some early and mid-game plot points that really sell the idea of why I think the story of Nioh 2 is as fun as it is. Hide, you see, is actually the bastard daughter or son (your choice) of the daimyo of Mino, Saito Dosan, the result of an affair between him and a mysterious yokai woman. Those of you who might know who that is will realize that this means the player character is the half-sibling of Lady Noh, the wife of Oda Nobunaga. Thus, you play as Oda Nobunaga's brother- or sister-in-law and, by twist of fate, are recruited to become one of his retainers along with your partner in crime, a merchant and salvager named Tokichiro. After years of brave and loyal service, the two of you are given a noble name and title by Lord Nobunaga. The same name and title, actually. Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the man who would later become the successor to Nobunaga and the second of Japan's three Great Unifiers. While Oda Nobunaga is often depicted as a "demon lord" in popular media, including other Koei-Tecmo works, by all accounts he was no more or less ruthless than any other autonomous warlord of the time. In fact, most historians agree he was more open-minded, tolerant, and forward-thinking than his peers. Nobunaga disregarded the constraints and prejudices of the society in which he was raised to the best of his ability, and saw potential in people who other lords disregarded. He elevated commoners to the ranks of the samurai and even did the same for foreigners, including a brave soul who, in the most grievous of injustices, was owned by another human being for no reason beyond the misfortune of being born black. From what we know of Nobunaga's character, the very thought of slavery must have deeply offended him on not just a moral, but also utilitarian, level. Nioh 1 and 2 do a very good job portraying Oda Nobunaga, fully aware of his reputation as a fearsome tyrant while also tempering it with knowledge of his personal history that contradicts the popular depiction. Both in life and death, Nobunaga is treated with care, humanized by a fictional story that is otherwise mostly concerned with the question of "what if magic and monsters were real in Sengoku-era Japan?" In contrast, Toyotomi Hideyoshi is a monster. This is a matter of historical fact. He was a tyrant who, having been raised to the nobility from common stock, enacted laws that ensured that no other commoner could rise up the ranks and threaten his position. He ordered the massacres of Christian missionaries and his own extended family, all for being potential future threats to his power and influence. He invaded Korea twice and attempted to exterminate their entire culture and history, just to make them a more convenient-to-use stepping stone in his long-term goal of invading China. A goal which, one might note, he failed at, miserably. And his catastrophic military adventurism all but ruined and bankrupted his clan, setting the stage for the rise of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the man who would eventually succeed in unifying the country. In Nioh 2, that controversial figure is split into two people. You play as the half of that team that could be described as a literal, physical monster, at least by mortal reckoning. A half-yokai warrior who transforms into demon form to gain an advantage in battle, an anomaly feared and resented by some others in Nobunaga's camp for unnatural powers. But you are, ever, a loyal and good person, whose forthright earnestness earns Nobunaga's respect. (As much as your player character has a character at all, being silent.) Tokichiro, on the other hand, is born human. He's crafty, clever, and almost monkey-like in his antics. But as he achieves power and fulfills his ambitions, he slowly becomes the moral monster we know to be the man who bears the name Hideyoshi. While depicting his crimes against Korea would obviously be a tough prospect for Koei-Tecmo, considering the ever-present diplomatic tensions between Japan and Korea to this day, the Nioh games depict his growing corruption and cruelty in other ways as his increasingly tyrannical personality drives a wedge between the two of you. Nioh 2 is the tale of the rise and ruin of Toyotomi Hideyoshi and, despite being told in a somewhat slapdash manner across multiple acts, it kinda works! Well. It does suffer from assuming you know who everyone is and why they matter, but that's the price of playing up the historical fantasy fiction angle. As a game it's just a rip-roaring good time and you genuinely don't need to give a drat about all the stuff I just talked about to enjoy it. As a story, though, it's clearly for the kind of person who wants to nerd out about Warring States era Japan through their bespoke historical fiction self-insert avatar. And you can be a ninja. And also Yoshi-P. At the same time.  (Yes, the Director of FFXIV, Naoki Yoshida, is one of the character presets in Nioh 2. No, I don't remember why he was put in.) _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________  4 - We Love Katamari My, Earth certainly is full of Things. There is a reason Katamari Damacy: REROLL is in my Honorable Mentions for this year. That's because playing it filled me with a great and terrible nostalgia for its sequel, We Love Katamari. Due to a lack of a rerelease, I did have to go off the beaten track for this one. Arguably the best game in the franchise, taking what was good with the first game and iterating on it with quiet confidence, providing more rolling-up action with the understanding that you're probably going to keep playing and replaying these levels for the fun of it. In the first game you could unlock the ability to play Endless Mode, kind of a sandbox with no pressure where you could just roll around, picking up everything in a stage, until there was nowhere else to go. In this game, instead, you're given speedrunning incentives to keep playing stages repeatedly and get better and faster at your runs, because that's what people were already doing with the first game, so why not tie some flavor and character interactions to it? And they made a wider variety of stages with different objectives, with the full confidence that the base idea of the game worked, so they could instead push the design further in interesting directions. The story of the game is, amusingly enough, the story of the game's development. Katamari Damacy was, by every measure, a surprise hit. Extremely so, especially to Bandai Namco, who had no idea that a weird little quirky puzzle game would make so much of a splash. Not just in Japan, but abroad as well. It was so popular that they had to make a sequel. The fans demanded it and they already had the assets. So the creator and lead designer, Keita Takahashi, was given the task of making Katamari Damacy again, only moreso. Thus every single level in the game is a request by a fan. And you're tasked with fulfilling their requests the only way you know how: by rolling everything you come across up into a ball and turning that ball into a celestial object. You know, katamari things.  This was also the last Katamari game that Keita Takahashi was involved in, as he moved on after this. Unsurprisingly, due to being so cheap to make and because of the popularity of their best two entries, the franchise continued on without him. All while slowly declining in quality and that playful, creative spark. He still makes games these days though by all accounts they're more like very chill toys you can mess around with if you feel like it. Not unlike the original Katamari Damacy, come to think of it. And, thus, Katamari Damacy: REROLL. Which is just the original game, but sharper, neater, and importantly for me, available on Steam. But really, what I would love most is an updated re-release of We Love Katamari. Also you get to roll up a ninja. The game claims he is a burglar. He is a ninja. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________  3 - The Great Ace Attorney Herlock Sholmes is proud to present… his “Logic and Reasoning Spectacular!” (Sholmes, let's go over that again…) The second returning game, this one from my GOTY 2019 list. So what changed here? Well, in 2021 it was actually officially released in English! With no help from the Doyle estate, that's for sure. As the most prominent example of the whodunit genre in gaming, the Ace Attorney series owes more to the Sherlock Holmes stories than most. So, it stands to reason that Capcom would want to pay homage to the grandfather of the genre. But, as it turns out, paying quite as direct an homage as they did would make releasing this game in the US a bit riskier than Capcom would like. Bit of a history lesson here. Back in the early 1900's, French author Maurice LeBlanc, gaining fame for his short stories and novels centered around his most popular character Arsene Lupin, gentleman-cambrioleur, decided to write a few short stories setting his character, Lupin, off against the most famous detective in literature, Sherlock Holmes. As this was a clear case of copyright infringement his British counterpart, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, put forth rather reasonable legal objections, all told. In response, Maurice LeBlanc complied with Doyle's demands in a manner he deemed most appropriate. By which I mean he moved a single letter in Sherlock's name. And changed Watson's name to Wilson, too, just to be safe. A century later, in homage to LeBlanc's infamous act of copyright mischief, Capcom would do the same in order to sidestep trouble with the infamously litigious Doyle estate. Which is just as well, as fan translation projects might bring a bump of attention to a game but that kind of momentum doesn't last forever. Capcom could've waited a couple years for the entirety of the Holmes canon to enter into the public domain in the US, sure, but this was faster and honestly pretty funny. Back when the only way for English-only audiences to experience the first game was through the fan translation patch, and only the first game, responses were mixed. In the years between its release and the first fan translation, GAA had earned a bit of that mystique that comes with a Japanese game that was never released abroad. So when it came out and people could try it out for themselves, it was impossible for the first game alone to live up to its reputation. "Pretty good, but overrated," was a common assessment. The music was incredible, the characters charming and lively, and the cases for the most part fun, twisty, and well-made. So what did the first Great Ace Attorney game lack? Catharsis. As an obvious first half of a two-party story, the first GAA game is incomplete not just in terms of a broader plot left unfinished, it's incomplete in tone as well. While you solve cases and find the real culprits, in the first game there's always something that robs your victories of their cathartic power. Either the culprit manages to weasel out of punishment, the culprit isn't the real villain, or there are tragic circumstances that render the culprit pitiable rather than fully, easily contemptible. Even the plot itself, incomplete as it is, defies any expectation for emotional satisfaction. Taken alone, it somehow feels a little hollow. Unfulfilling, even. The effect must be intentional and the complicated feelings it inspires are themselves worth considering. But it's clearly only half of the Ace Attorney experience. (I can't even imagine what it was like after the original release for the Japanese audience!) The second game takes everything the first game establishes and builds upon it, bringing much needed resolution both plotwise and emotionally. It's most obvious in the second game's tutorial case, which while being a lot of fun in its own right (and cleverly avoids having to give the protagonist, Ryunosuke, the tutorial as he should clearly know how to do his job by this point), also resolves a dangling plot point from the first game. It is however a bit long and, frankly, so are many of the cases, but that's not a severe flaw. And even the second game's special prosecutor directly follows up on a strangely hanging thread from the first. But released together, they can be judged as a complete package. And the Great Ace Attorney Chronicles are some of the best adventure games I've ever had the pleasure of playing.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvBXIk0smBA To be honest, there's only one adventure game I would rank higher. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________  2 - 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim You overestimate your Hemborger, my friend. My third returning game, and a masterpiece overlooked by the broader gaming audience at large. Despite the fact that I beat it last year, I still think about its structure, its characters, how cleverly it misdirects and reveals information. A lot, actually. I even occasionally spin up my PS4 and just play a few of the post-game tactical battles, just because I can. https://i.imgur.com/s00He0l.mp4 I went into more rambling detail last year, so I'm willing to settle for a more reasonable overview on what I feel 13 Sentinels does right.  It sets out with the incredibly ambitious goal of telling a coherent and interconnected story from the perspective of thirteen characters. And it for the most part succeeds. A lot of games that let you choose from a large number of multiple protagonists with their own stories do so by collecting their stories in an anthology format, rather than trying to weave a single broader narrative from their disparate pieces. This is true of Octopath Traveler, SaGa Frontier 1, and for the majority of Live A Live. In 13 Sentinels, though, there is a single timeline of events that occur in the game and each character's story takes place across various points in that timeline. Some are, by design, more independent and self-contained. But even these stories spill over into the others, sometimes in subtle ways, sometimes by providing important context to another character's story. Some stories take place across a wider span of that timeline, and the perceptive player can use those to piece together a bigger picture of events on the ground. Because of how the game is structured, different players will develop different theories about what's really going on based on what order they play each route. And it works. It's an intricate story that deliberately invokes cliche and archetype in order to turn the player's expectations on their head, but rarely for the sake of simply playing with the player. Instead of shocks and twists for the sake of it, every single reveal, every single added detail builds on the themes of the story as it pertains to that character's own, personal development. Themes of identity, determinism, and memory, all are explored in detail. Even characters who don't appear to have as much depth as the others are still juxtaposed against their predecessors and counterparts, clearly embodying those themes in straightforward fashion. After all, if multiple versions of a person exist, physically, mentally, and even digitally, are they not all equally valid existences, regardless of how identical they are? Are they not their own people? Well of course they are, and 13 Sentinels will illustrate this assertion from multiple angles. More than just a great adventure game, or even a great videogame, 13 Sentinels is great science fiction. It presents a mystery and uses the unfolding of that mystery to speculate, and posit, and explore. It's terrifying and overwhelming in its cosmic scope. It's rousing and touching in its humanity. It's a masterpiece that came out of the blue, drawing from their wealth of experience in creating beautiful and beloved, if niche, games (most noticeably, Odin Sphere and Grim Grimoire) to craft something spectacular. While not without flaws, it's still brilliant and breathtaking and there's nothing else quite like it. Apparently next year there'll be a Switch port of this game. Curiously, it's scheduled to come out in the West two days before a domestic release in Japan. And it looks like every character is getting some unique weapons and gear pieces for their mechs, too. So I guess I'll be double-dipping. Triple if they ever actually make a PC port. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oq9utTsAMg Runa fucked around with this message at 14:32 on Dec 31, 2021 |
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2021 14:07
|
|
|
 1 - FFXIV Endwalker Walking alone unto journey's end, the burden weighing heavy.  While technically a new release, this selection represents my feeling on the entire game as a whole. Before 2019, my relationship with FFXIV was decidedly more mixed. I played this game because my friends did, even though I didn't really stick around much between major expansion releases. I had limited experience with other MMOs. Their stories were perfunctory at best and while I understood this to be standard for the genre, they still left me with not much to emotionally latch onto. Oftentimes you were just another random adventurer (or setting-appropriate analog thereof) and if grander designs were in motion you only played a bit part. While a number of older-school MMO players preferred things this way, to feel as though a wider world were going on around them while they were merely a part of that world, this narrative approach left me cold. In Final Fantasy 14, however, I was presented with the opportunity to take up the role of the Warrior of Light (or WoL for short), a recurring title with no small amount of symbolic cachet within the Final Fantasy franchise as a whole. And I wouldn’t have taken this shot had Naoki Yoshida (Yoshi-P) not somehow pulled off a miracle and salvaged one of the most notorious failures in gaming history. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________  A Realm Reborn, while an impressive technical feat on the development side, was merely "good for an MMO" rather than genuinely good. The story was less personal, more generic. For the most part fine, if standard fantasy fare, though not without its problems. If the ARR story had a theme it wasn't one that was distinct enough to note. There were genuinely interesting moments, sure. Almost all of them surrounding the early game's major threats, magically summoned deiform constructs called Primals. The most urgent threat facing the realm, a single Primal is capable of corrupting the minds, and eventually bodies, of any souls unfortunate enough to draw near in a process called tempering. Right from the start the WoL is introduced as one of the chosen champions of the goddess Hydaelyn. And you are charged with protecting the world from an unnamed threat. They are eventually named soon enough, though. And they are the Ascians, devotees to the sundered god Zodiark, split into fourteen pieces by Hydaelyn's power. They seek to bring forth Calamities in order to reawaken their god and to bring forth what they maintain to be the true world. This is all established as far back as ARR, though what these motivations actually mean, and the mechanics of what they're actually doing, aren't made clear until much, much, much later. You can be forgiven for assuming it's all a bunch of cryptic folderol. I certainly did at the time. However, chosen by a goddess or not, every hero has to start somewhere. They first make their name as one of those adventurers with an uncommon, but not unheard of, resistance to a Primal's corruptive influence. This is understood to be part of Hydaelyn's blessing though why her chosen have this resistance is left a mystery. Shortly thereafter they are recruited by a fellowship of scholars and adventurers dedicated to defending Eorzea from the Primal threat, the Scions of the Seventh Dawn. Or Scions for short. They quickly find distinction among even this group by defeating many of these threats, most notably an invasion force sent by the mighty Garlean Empire, thereby becoming Eorzea's preeminent godslayer by the end of ARR's main storyline. But yes, dramatic fights aside, significant portions of the ARR story, before the patch content, were simply, well boring. Not just a matter of having lower stakes with less personal investment in events, chunks of the story were deliberately and blatantly put in to waste time. Unfortunately, those chunks of story also provide just enough worldbuilding and context that they couldn't simply be removed. And the main antagonists lurking in the background, the Ascians, were utterly uncharismatic. Cryptic black-robed masked men and women, they were like Kingdom Hearts rejects who were ashamed to show their faces. There were hints of personality and charm in the story, if you cared to look, but it was the ARR patch content (patches 2.1-2.55) that took the pieces provided by the base game and started to build towards something special. Something that set its sight on loftier goals. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________  The first expansion, Heavensward, was the release that first earned FFXIV its acclaim not just for the circumstances of its revival but on its own merit as a game and story. On the broad scale HW's plot centers around a thousand-year war between the alpine country of Ishgard and the dragons of Nidhogg's Horde. Though the story itself was concerned with how prejudice, societal injustice, and vengeance feed into each other and perpetuate a vicious cycle. Well-trod territory, to be sure. But it's told effectively through not just the main storyline but the sidequests as well, including a number of class-specific questlines. As the WoL discovers the facts behind the events which predicated this war and the truths underpinning the whole of Ishgardian society, they are aided by companions and confidants with differing backgrounds and beliefs whose character development forms the story's emotional core. The story of Ishgard matters because the people of Ishgard matter and the characters put a human face to their tragedies and triumphs. When the WoL and their allies work to challenge the social injustices in Ishgard, to strive to build a better future for a people once bereft, when you actually change the status quo for the better, in an MMO no less, you feel it. And near the end, something happened. Through most of the game up to that point, whenever the player is given the opportunity to make a dialogue choice for the WoL, the choices given are usually blandly inoffensive. Generic "you're a hero" fare. In the wake of a tragic event in late Heavensward, the player is given another opportunity to respond in dialogue. And one of the options was noticeable in that it was surprisingly intense. Not particularly notable in a vacuum, but taken in the context of prior opportunities for characterization, it stands out. From that point on, the WoL slowly but surely, over the course of many years of expansions, grows to become not just a blank slate avatar but a character in their own right. A character who, while mostly unspoken, begins to develop an implicit personality through their expressions and the tone of their dialogue choices. And whose personal story develops through the various class quests they can pursue, as told most powerfully through the Dark Knight questline. The Scions, too, start to develop into a role beyond simply being colleagues, advisors, and questgivers. Their designs become more distinctive and they're given more characterization. They don't go so far as to steal your spotlight but as characters they become more comfortable fitting into the role of your direct supporting cast. After the villain of Heavensward is defeated, as he lays dying on the floor, he looks up in horror at the Warrior of Light and asks, "Who are you? What are you?!" Normally, when a villain says this it is a purely empowering moment for the hero as the villain cannot fathom how the hero can accomplish the things they've done. But something about the presentation of this scene, how ominous the Warrior of Light looks, and how genuinely terrified the villain was, sat uneasily with the players. These were words that would linger for years, inspiring speculation as to what he actually meant. What did he see, as the light faded from his eyes? A question worth asking. The story of Heavensward affected so many players that, for a large part of the playerbase, Ishgard felt like home. Which makes the fact that nobody can buy a house there pretty funny, to be honest. Next year that will change with one of Endwalker's patches. Until then, there's always the Firmament. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________  Stormblood, the second expansion, is interesting. In terms of gameplay it was clearly superior to both the base game and the prior expansion. Here, the devs really started to get a feel for how they wanted the game to play and both of the later expansions iterate on the design principles that StB established. To this day, I genuinely feel that Stormblood's Alliance Raid series is some of the best 24-player content I've played. Unfortunately it's paired with some of the worst story a raid questline has ever offered. Storywise, reception was more mixed than Heavensward. In terms of pacing, it's gutted by having two distinct major story arcs with their own tones and climaxes, one interrupting the other and playing out in full before returning to the first. In terms of core characters, the writers try to do something similar to HW's companion characters though they're limited by the fact that these characters don't have the same tension in their dynamic and thus room for interpersonal growth. Frankly, the two primary companions who follow you throughout StB are fundamentally very similar characters--brave, outgoing fighters who wear their hearts on their sleeves. While they have their charming moments there's just less character work being done when they're on screen. The main antagonist, Zenos, was as divisive as the story itself. He starts off aloof and uninterested, and thus uninteresting, before the WoL's ability to stand up to him in a fight inspires the most excitement he's had in his entire life. Shallow but straightforward, he had both fans and detractors. Thematically, Stormblood was more grounded than Heavensward but no less ambitious. A tale of revolution and the effects of colonialism on occupied peoples, Stormblood was stark, nuanced, and dreadfully realistic. The story shows what happens to people raised in a society that teaches them their race, and the cultures of their parents and grandparents, are inferior to those of their abusers. How monsters are made by internalized hatred and a desperate desire to earn a better place for themselves and their families. But, well. You can't go through four entire zone arcs hammering the same relentless message of how hopeless things are without the player starting to get emotionally exhausted. One zone, the Azim Steppe, became my favorite of the expansion by virtue of being a palate cleanser from the heavy tone and subject matter of preceding zones. It's an introduction to a Mongolia-inspired culture that treats its source inspiration with genuine affection, with a story filled with larger-than-life characters and refreshingly enthusiastic competition. In other fantasy works the Mongols are usually the primary inspiration for a faceless marauding horde, if not outright monsters entirely. Here, the Xaela of the Azim Steppe are treated as people with a charming culture and longstanding martial traditions that would probably be some cause for concern if the result weren't so drat fun. In terms of story momentum, the Azim Steppe is also the point where Stormblood's theme of revolution begins to look like it's finally within reach. It's where things start to feel like they're turning around. Also the scenery and music are pleasant, too.  But as Stormblood wrapped up, and a final confrontation with the Garlean Empire seemed imminent, the story took a surprising turn. After cooling on StB, I was unsure of what to make of this new direction, to be honest. Going into Shadowbringers, my expectations were low. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________  And when I played it, I fell in love with this game for the first time. The music was incredible, the world vibrant and haunting, the characters endearing, and the story a triumph. It's very difficult to talk about Shadowbringers without spoiling things. Even the premise itself is a surprise. With an unexpectedly fresh setting and a hard reset on the narrative momentum, Shadowbringers has to work hard to make the player care. And in its first zone arcs it spares no effort to establish the stakes. The player bears witness to the injustice, tragedy, and suffering plaguing their dying and broken land. And it gives you the opportunity to do something about it. The results are dramatic, breathtaking, and extremely effective at making you feel like a hero. The trajectory of the first arc establishes the basic structure for what follows, both in each individual zone arc as well as the expansion at large. Though it must be noted the first two thirds of Shadowbringers are very deliberately paced. While other expansions focused on pushing forward with constant forward momentum, each zone arc in Shadowbringers is treated as its own story with its own distinct take on the expac's themes and tone, and structurally there was a clear intermission between each arc. Some players disliked that, and felt that the story only really kicks into gear in the final act. I understand those criticisms, but I cannot agree with them. I came to become deeply familiar with the lands and their people and only cared more and more strongly about them as time went on. And every return to the Crystarium--the WoL's home for the duration of the expac--gave me valuable time to decompress and process the emotional rollercoasters the story insisted on putting me through. And most importantly, gave characters the opportunity to be people. The Scions receive a good deal of character development here, just in time for the player to finally be able to bring them into dungeons as actual party members. After years of being a more distant supporting cast, in Shadowbringers they together with the WoL feel like a cohesive team. Which is good, because the bonds between these characters, including the WoL, are what gives the story of Shadowbringers its strength. Thematically, it's about love and sacrifice. From individual zone arcs to the motivations of both your allies and your antagonists, every major plot throughline illustrates and reinforces these themes. Shadowbringers does not ask how much would you be willing to sacrifice for those you love. The answer to that question is treated almost as a given as heroic characters are constantly shown to be willing to sacrifice themselves while villainous characters are all too ready to force others to make those sacrifices for them. Instead, Shadowbringers presents you with the costs of these sacrifices both of the self and others. It asks of the selfish to consider the lives of those they mean to sacrifice to be of equal worth to those loved ones they've lost. It asks of the selfless to value their own lives as much as those loved ones they hope to save. And it asks the Warrior of Light to carry a special burden. To truly become the protagonist of the story. Even as the plot grows in scope to the scale of worldwide threats, even as the curtains are pulled back and the man behind the man is revealed, Shadowbringers focuses first and foremost on characters. As the scope increases the context becomes more intimate, more emotional. For the Warrior of Light, Shadowbringers is their darkest hour and most personal triumph. It's a brave decision for an MMO narrative to take the player avatar, especially one that began as an entity with as little narrative presence as possible, and build them into a character in their own right. By giving that avatar a range of personality that exists within the narrative, however limited, that avatar becomes constrained by new limits that would otherwise not be present. This sacrifices the freedom of imagination and pure player-driven roleplaying in order to allow this avatar to exist as a character in a written narrative. And we are richer for it, because this allows the Warrior of Light to become a character for the player to grow invested in. This approach has not gone without some pushback. More than a few times you may find people posting online about how the WoL's personality, personal attachments, and even priorities, do not match how they imagine their self-insert character to be. This is a fascinating problem to have. Contrast this with SWTOR which wrote its player avatars to be characters from the start. And voiced, too. Though that approach also has its limits, especially when it effectively meant they had to write eight different main storylines in parallel. But a story with a villain is only as good as that villain and FFXIV had for years been saddled with carrying the burden of being driven by the actions of the then-maligned, once-forgettable Ascians. Shadowbringers, in focusing on characters first and foremost, did the same with these black-robed blackguards and humanized them. They became tragic, even sympathetic. And it was thanks in no small part due to the lead writer, Natsuko Ishikawa, giving us the greatest and most compelling villain in the entire history of Final Fantasy, Emet-Selch.  (I will note here that Ishikawa also wrote the Dark Knight questline, the Crystal Tower quests, and the Far East half of Stormblood. She'd cut her teeth telling emotionally charged stories with charismatic and compelling characters, including the WoL themselves. In retrospect, had I learned who she was and that she had been selected to be Shadowbringers' main writer ahead of time, perhaps my expectations would not have been so low.) Among the greatest of the Ascians, Emet-Selch is a sneering, tired, depressed old rear end in a top hat who had been working in the background of the story under other aliases, one of which was actually known to the player before this point. Here in Shadowbringers he steps out into the spotlight and he milks it for all its worth. This slouchy, greasy rat man inveigles his way into the story in charmingly catty fashion and steals every scene he's in. And most refreshingly, and surprisingly, he's upfront and honest. Disarmingly so. Worryingly so. He's incredibly frank about what he and the Ascians are doing and he's even willing to entertain the idea of trying to recruit the WoL and the Scions to do it, though the likelihood of them agreeing is infinitesimally faint. More so than any other Ascian, he takes a genuine interest in the Warrior of Light. It's clear he sees something in them that the other Ascians didn't and that makes his involvement in these events deeply personal to him. (While I will not go into detail or explain more than the broad strokes, just talking about the thematics of the final confrontation at the end of 5.0 veers close enough to actual spoilers that I felt it was appropriate to provide spoiler tags as a courtesy. Whether or not you choose to read this following passage, be reassured that you have my thanks for reading this far regardless of your choice.)  Emet-Selch is the one who draws back the curtains and finally explains, in full, who the Ascians are and what it is they are actually fighting for. They were victims and now perpetrators of an incredibly profound tragedy on a grand scale. And when presented with what the Ascians, what Emet-Selch, had lost, and the burdens they carried, I felt that loss keenly. I was heartbroken, not just to be presented with this tragic tale, but to finally understand what Zodiark fought for and what it truly meant when Hydaelyn sundered him. But allowing Emet to succeed in his goals was unacceptable, however much I understood why he fought. A victory for the Ascians would mean the end of everything, everyone, the Warrior of Light held dear. The Warrior of Light had to keep fighting. I had to keep fighting. And when it looked like Emet was about to win, and all hope was lost, we got a little push. A gentle shove in the right direction to turn the tables and take one final stand. We could prove to him, here and now, that the Warrior of Light was not just some broken shattered thing. That they could challenge Emet-Selch not just as a trumped up mortal pawn but as a peer and fellow champion. As someone who he could respect, however much he denied it. Someone whose existence, and by proxy the lives of those they fought for, was of equal value to his and those he had lost. The finale of 5.0 was the first time I'd actually cheered and shouted at the climax of a story. It's deeply rousing, spectacular, and heartfelt. Every little bit of presentation lands perfectly and by the end it was the most satisfying conclusion to a Final Fantasy I had ever played. The follow-up story, from the Eden raid questline to the MSQ patch quests from 5.1 to 5.3, had a lot of expectations to live up to. But they met them with great aplomb. The 5.3 trial is still an utter delight to play and the patch as a whole was a fantastic send-off to an amazing story. A heartwarming coda that brought me to tears multiple times. And the Eden raids left things on a highly optimistic note, even showing the opportunity of redemption for an Ascian, and helping them find a place in this world, with people who love and care for them. A deeply satisfying conclusion in its own right, Shadowbringers still laid down the foundations for what was to come. It paved the way for us to walk to the End. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________  This is the hardest part to talk about because everything is a spoiler. The devs made sure to meet the expectations players had, both in terms of quality as well as content, and then continued far past those limits. Even the narrative structure of the expansion pack is a spoiler, A Realm Reborn, and even 1.0, had a particular theme song. Composed by Nobuo Uematsu, whose legacy Masayoshi Soken carries forth to this day, its lyrics ask a question common to the human experience. Why do we continue to live, and why must we fight on, if to live is to know suffering? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39j5v8jlndM This song not only sets the stage for A Realm Reborn, but it also encapsulates the story of FFXIV as a whole, as it stands. It is the theme of the saga of Hydaelyn and Zodiark, of which Endwalker is the final episode. Both Endwalker and this song pose the same questions on a philosophical level, and, indeed, provide their Answers. Going into the final expansion, the Warrior of Light knows who they are. The player knows. The only thing to do is to go forth and make things right. Right? Well. Endwalker has the unenviable position of being the sequel to a wildly, fervently beloved chapter in a long-running series. Everyone going in had their doubts, especially about the villains that dominated much of the promotional material. Emet-Selch is an extremely tough act to follow and, even in the best of times, Endwalker's villain hadn't really wowed the audience. But it works! Powerfully so. As a conclusion to the FFXIV story it succeeds and leaves room for new stories to be told. It's satisfying, and moving, and brings a strong sense of closure and resolution. Thematically, well, EW opens with its themes right when you load up the game. The instant you hit the title screen you're presented with a voice softly singing, "Tales of loss, and fire, and faith." The opening zone acts spur you on to adventure, a relatively breezy aperitif for the largest expansion pack by sheer volume of content. While mysteries emerge, and dramatic reveals are made, Endwalker begins with an air of excitement. We're about to reach the end, it seems to say, we're going to cancel the apocalypse! But make no mistake, Endwalker is not afraid to lay on the heaviest of drama and most painful of tragedies. Because the core theme, spoken right from the start, is the question of suffering. We're made to bear witness to countless tragedies, many preventable, if not for all too-realistic human flaws and prejudices, but many that are not. Tragedies that people are forced to endure regardless of anyone's best efforts because this mortal world is not a kind and perfect place. When the tragedies compound on each other it's all the heroes can do to take what small victories they can, to save those who are willing to listen and to place their trust in them. Nowhere is this most clear than in Garlemald. Before Shadowbringers, and before Stormblood, players would often discuss what would the story look like should the war finally move away from defending Eorzea and its allies and towards the Garlean Imperial homeland. People were genuinely worried about what things would look like should Eorzea become the conqueror and Garlemald the conquered. No surprise, then, that this was an ever-present worry among Garlemald's citizenry, too. The entire Garlemald zone arc is a study in the effects of war, not just occupation, and generations of propaganda on an otherwise innocent population. Instead of an army of conquest, Eorzea and its allies send its best on a mission of mercy. They make an honest show of good faith to save the civilians of an embattled country faced with the prelude to the apocalypse. One that nearly backfires in spite of their best efforts, as the world is never quite so simple. Pride and patriotism nearly doom a dying people. But the heroes never stop trying. The world is a place of suffering, but they believe they can build a better one and will not give up on it. It's a powerful story arc, with a resolution that brings a lot of closure to the story of the Garlean Empire. It could've been a rather fitting ending in its own right if not for the fact that the story was still in its first act. Like in Shadowbringers, the writers have learned their lessons from Stormblood. Rather than compounding tragedy after tragedy, Endwalker gives the player time to digest the story they've experienced, to recover from any hits they might've taken. And, importantly, to remind them of the beauty and wonder of the world, and what it is they're fighting for. Heavy story arcs are given time to wind up and land harder while lighter story arcs give time to provide important information and context. And this also allows the characters time to breathe as well and, once more, be people. To be fair, it is not subtle in expressing its themes. Large portions are clearly informed by Buddhist philosophy, which should come as no surprise considering that the story is greatly concerned with suffering and what best to do about it. Faith is a major part, not just in terms of religion and spirituality, but faith in people. One of the most compelling, and controversial, character arcs in the story is predicated on one particular character’s faith. Not just in mankind as a whole, but in one brave hero with whom they could entrust a light into the future. Endwalker goes big, and I mean really big. Cosmic, even, though always grounded in an emotional context the reader can still connect to. It’s endearingly self-indulgent, relentlessly powerful, and a musical delight. Its story and characters inspire fierce discussion, philosophical and otherwise. It swings for the fences and knocks the ball out of the park. It’s easily my second favorite Final Fantasy. After Shadowbringers. 
Runa fucked around with this message at 11:00 on Jan 1, 2022 |
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2021 14:07
|
|
|
Also, you can be a Ninja, I guess.  Runa’s Summary List, for Rarity’s Sake: 10- Humankind 9- Ring Fit Adventure 8- Deathloop 7- Atelier Ryza 1 6- Guilty Gear Strive 5- Nioh 2 4- We Love Katamari 3- Great Ace Attorney 2- 13 Sentinels 1- FFXIV Endwalker
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2021 14:07
|
|
|
Oh poo poo Rarity posted while I was assembling my stuff
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2021 14:10
|
|
|
Runa posted:Oh poo poo Rarity posted while I was assembling my stuff 
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2021 14:16
|
|
|
Thank you, Runa!
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2021 14:17
|
|
|
I love the goty thread.
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2021 14:55
|
|
|
Hellyeah
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2021 15:15
|
|
|
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0vPXkNgr-I Little tutorial if youre struggling with a list
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2021 15:20
|
|
|
Honorable Mentions What the Golf This game was great for a couple of evenings just seeing how they could turn everything else into a golf game (or in some cases, turn a golf game into everything else). There was only one section of the game that ended up being frustrating because my wife wanted to watch me play it but the game kept insisting "No, you must pay this in undocked mode." Still, a great game to play nonetheless and I recommend it to anyone who likes these kinds of gimmicky experiences. Boyfriend Dungeon  The game plays like a poor man's version of Hades, but there's something to be said about the story the game presents to you. I love that the game's central villain is someone who believes that they can gamify relationships. Several of the weapons that you meet in-game are pretty well-rounded characters (although I wasn't too keen on the weapon from the cover-art). Dishonorable Mentions (Disappointers): The Medium  Did you know that child abuse is bad? You'd say that child abusers are evil, right? What if that child abuser... was a victim of the holocaust? I bet you feel bad now, don't you. Suicide is bad, though, right? Well, what if the only way you didn't kill people... is if you killed yourself? These kinds of questions will endlessly frustrate you and let me make the next Silent Hill game. This spoiler bar is the psychic world of my posts. Oh, but there isn't actually anything interesting here. So it's just going to take up thread real estate while contributing nothing of value. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The Good Life  Swery, for the love of god, please make a game that's fun to play. The Good Life has some serious jank to it, and I love a lot of those elements, but it is such a chore to even go around and explore that I had to put this game down. THE ACTUAL LIST 10. Returnal  I don't know what I was expecting when I picked up Returnal, to be quite honest, but I can safely say that I didn't expect it to be as good as it was. As far as a shooter/roguelite/metroidvania? game with horror elements goes it's a pretty unique and worthwhile experience. There's a lot about the character of Selene that I think is explored in very interesting ways, although I can't say I was that big of a fan of the game's true ending (although I did love how much 'Dont Fear the Reaper' came up throughout the whole game.) Still, I recommend it as one of the few PS5 exclusives available. 9. The Eternal Cylinder  We found this game while trolling the Playstation Store; I think after we were particularly disappointed by one of the other games that had come out this year. It looked really interesting from the art style to the world design, so we took the plunge and decided to give it a try. It did not disappoint in the slightest; you get to play as a tribe of cute little creatures that evolve in different ways depending on the food they eat. Sometimes you have to navigate through environments with "servants" of the cylinder - human-machine hybrids that try to assimilate you and your tribesmen into other servants. Sometimes you have to solve puzzles with your powers on how to meet the next Elder Trebhum and get advice for how to proceed. Oh, and you have to do all this while outrunning a world-encompassing cylinder. The game has several memorable moments, my favorite of which being early on you try to outsmart the Cylinder by Just... flying behind it. Of course, when you do you see that absolutely nothing survived the Cylinder's roll- it consumes everything on its path through the planet. The game goes to some pretty interesting places from there; several times I thought the game was going to be ending soon only to be pleasantly surprised that "No, that plan won't actually work" and get to play the game more. I think I only got frustrated a little bit towards the end when dealing with some creatures that can take away your powers by looking at you (and every once in a while when your tribe AI starts to glitch out and get stuck in an area taking some damage.) Oh, and the soundtrack is fantastic. 8. Metroid: Dread  It's almost a shame that Metroid: Dread is sitting at my #8 spot this year, considering just how drat good the game actually is. It's finely tuned, it absolutely nails the feel of playing a metroid game (with some very light suspense elements to keep the gameplay varied and interesting) and rewards mastery of base elements that the game puts in boss skips dependent on you sequence breaking to get items out of order. They do a great job of establishing the character of Samus Aran in very subtle ways; they don't give her a monologue about he she feels or a 20 minute cutscene establishing her history with a certain enemy, they show it through her actions and emotion (or in some cases, lack thereof). I feel okay putting it at #8 because this list isn't about which games are the most mechanically tuned or the most fun to play; because this game is both of those things. I ordered this list based on how the games resonated with me, and this isn't one of those games. It's a great game, don't get me wrong, but I ended up liking the others below a lot more. I hope this shows you how arbitrary my GotY lists are going forward. 7. Resident Evil 8  I think that a lot of what I can say about RE8 has already been said by a lot of people in this thread. It's a great game from start to finish, and the standout moments hit really well. I think during the week of release my wife and I tried to watch every streamer we could go through Beneviento's manor and see just how they responded to the stuff inside it. I don't really think I have much else to say about RE8 aside from that it's a very good game and I look forward to whatever RE9 is going to give us. 6. Hades  I've been on-and-off Supergiant games for a while now. I wasn't too keen on Bastion, but I loved Transistor. Never really got into Pyre after several attempts so I couldn't really give you my opinion on that one one way or another, but seeing everyone vote Hades as their #1 GOTY last year got me interested enough to give it a shot, and that's pretty much how I spent my March. Pretty much every day before work (and immediately after) I'd do a run or two of the game and try to get as far as I could, until eventually I found myself farming every boss on their harder modes. One of my favorite things to do in an RPG (or any video game, really) is build a character and see how those abilities synergize together. Hades has that at its core- you choose which gods you want to favor in your run and your build your character around that. And it's a ton of fun to experiment around and see what all works out, especially when you factor in the different weapons and trinkets you can slot onto Zagreus. Hades is an incredibly game that I cannot recommend enough to others, and I hope that anybody who enjoys action rogue-lites will give it a try. 5. Divinity: Original Sin 2  Did you know that when I started making this list back in November I had this game firmly at the #10 spot? My wife and I had a great time playing it earlier in the year (January -> February) and I thought it was a great time, but not as good as a lot of the other games on this list. Well, when my wife's sister died on Thanksgiving she ended up needing to go across the country to clean her apartment while I tended to our 17 year old dachshund, but every night we would play this game on our respective switches because we were still aching for something to do together on our evenings. Not only that, but it's still fun as hell to play on a replay, too. The first time I played I was playing a pure summoner build (points in everything to get every summon spell), but the second time around I'm playing as a huntsman/scoundrel and the game still feels incredibly fresh and fun to play. The story I wouldn't say is anything to write home about - it's not bad, but it's not great either. But the level design is fantastic, character building options always remain fresh and fun (unless you decide to cheese the game with Barrelmancy), and there are so many encounters that will have you biting your nails and trying to figure out the best path forward for an optimal resolution; which works so well in a game designed for cooperative play. Even after playing through this game a second time, we managed to convince a couple of friends to join us for a four-player co-op campaign of this game and I'm already planning out an elementalist build. I really hope that Larian is able to recreate the co-op magic with Baldur's Gate 3, or at some point release an Original Sin 3. 4. Psychonauts 2  I was a pretty big fan of Psychonauts 1, and when Psychonauts 2 was backed on whatever crowdfunding service they used to fund it, my expectations for this game were incredibly low (especially after Broken Age ended up being a little bit disappointing). I'm very happy to say that I was wrong about how Psychonauts 2 was going to turn out. It's weird to think that it had been approaching 16 years between the first Psychonauts and Psychonauts 2, but it doesn't feel like any time had passed at all between the two games- apart from the second game handling the idea of "going into people's brains to try to fix them" with a lot more maturity than the first one did. This game has a lot of memorable moments that I end up rewatching over and over again on youtube because of how impactful they are. It has a lot of standout levels and messages that hit really hard in different ways for different people. Bob's Bottles and The Feast were both great levels for me, while my wife in particular enjoyed Cassie's Collection. The overall villain I thought was a little toothless for who it was supposed to be based on (which kind of has the game go against its overall themes to try to dunk on someone the way it does) but final confrontation aside I thought Psychonauts 2 was a great game and will very likely be replayed several times in the years to come. 3. Devotion  I think part of what made Devotion such a memorable game for us this year was how we learned about it. A coworker of ours told us about it and that if we wanted to download it we'd need to google it. After that, of course, we had to go to the Red Candle Games website and buy it directly through there; which gave us that "word of mouth horror experience" that we were both suspicious of and excited for. As far as a PT-like goes, this game hits the nail right on the head; although giving it that sort of genre I feel does it a disservice, because the game is anything but derivative. Exploration of the apartment the main character lives in, how it evolved over time to accommodate the family life he wanted to have, as well as discovering the moments that were defining for both him and his daughter. The game doesn't slouch when it comes to expressing these moments to you, either- one moment you'll be watching an FMV of her on the television while the next moment you'll be playing a side-scrolling platformer that looks like something out of a storybook. Overall, the experience is short, sweet, and very memorable, although I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who cringes at the sight of self-mutilation. 2. 428 Shibuya Scramble  As far as visual novels go, 428 Shibuya Scramble does a great job of sucking you into the story with its memorable characters and bizarre antics. I remember playing it on the Power of the Playstation 5- watching the introductory cutscene of someone tied up in the back of a car while the car explodes, and then getting to the very first part of gameplay and realizing that the entire game was going to be text over stock photos of characters. And you know what? For the next five days this game was all my wife and I did and talked about in our evenings together. We both grew attached to our own favorite characters, had speculations as to who the mastermind behind the whole thing was. It has some problematic issues with it; there's a character that's pretty much just a nonstop reservoir of fat jokes. The story doesn't end conclusively- it just kind of leads into what I hear is a mediocre anime. That's about my only grievances with the game; apart from that, I had a fantastic time playing it through from start to finish. The game even has a bonus story that's the visual novel equivalent of an "I luv u 5ever" facebook post, but you know what? That story brought us both to tears. 1. FFXIV: Endwalker  If you had told me in 2011 that in 10 years I was going to be putting Final Fantasy XIV as my #1 GOTY in 2021, let alone one of my favorite video game stories of all time, I would have laughed in your face. The game was an absolute mess at the time and I was of the opinion that MMOs were incapable of any form of competent storytelling. I was very wrong. This year, my wife and I played through Stormblood, Shadowbringers, and Endwalker and Shadowbringers alone was enough to put this game at my #1 spot. I was torn between giving FFXIV two spots on this list (Shadowbringers and Endwalker), omitting Endwalker entirely, or consolidating both games into one entry. As you can see, I opted for the last option for two reasons. 1) I wanted to give Returnal a spot on my GOTY 2021 list. 2) Endwalker took a lot of what was built in Shadowbringers and really went places with it. I wish that other MMOs would look at FFXIV and at least see what they can learn from its monumental success. I don't mean to imply here that FFXIV is the be-all-end-all of the genre (far from it), but it's at the very least a game that respects the user's time. I don't feel pressured or rush to do as much content as I can as fast as I can. If a new game comes out that looks like it's more fun than FFXIV, I don't get punished for putting it down to play something else - the content will be there for me when I get back, and (more importantly) I'm not going to need to do so much grinding to get on the same level as other players. In 2014 I had given this game a shot (and bounced off of it, eventually) because I had built my character in a terrible way and didn't want to go through the hassle of doing that again. In 2017 we had both given it shot again but bounced off it for two different reasons (she hated queueing up for dungeons with other people, I fell off in the interim quests of A Realm Reborn -> Heavensward). Somehow in early 2019 we both decided to give it another shot, this time saying "Alright, we'll do the Main Story Quests together." and somehow that seemed to be the key to us getting our MMO brain worms firing on all cylinders. She spends most of her free time leveling the different tank jobs and gathering jobs (did I mention that she absolutely loves the spearfishing changes? She used to hate spearfishing with a passion). While I spend a lot of time crafting and getting enough jobs to cap that I can do the role quests of the game. Entering Endwalker, this expansion started firing on all cylinders. The soundtrack is Absolutely incredible and the gameplay doesn't stop with its high-hitting moments (first EW dungeon spoilers) like this callback fight. I could write pages of black bars about its story, but I think the most satisfying part about this expansion is that from the very start it's clear that everything you've been doing since the start of A Realm Reborn has been building up to this. Your scions are with you because they believe in you; some of which are only alive because you didn't stop believing you could save them. Half of the armies that fight by your side are only able to do so because of the work that you put in several expansions ago. You get several moments of dialog choices that let you decide which story characters made an impact on your Warrior of Light (one of which brings my wife to tears every time they're referenced). I could go on and on, but I'll finish this off by talking about the gameplay. Even as they add multitudes of classes to the mix, every class has a unique and interesting gameplay rotation. I'm maining this expansion as a Ninja (because I think the fast paced gameplay suits me), but I also love playing Summoner. And Machinist. And Dragoon. And Astrologian. And Warrior. gently caress, i'm probably going to pick up Samurai soon and see how much I love that class. The game never fails to keep the gameplay of each class interesting and unique in that regard. Oh, and we made a Chocobo Cake to celebrate the new year. Okay, I made it. All she did was cut the strawberries  Concise list for Rarity 10. Returnal 9. The Eternal Cylinder 8. Metroid: Dread 7. Resident Evil 8 6. Hades 5. Divinity: Original Sin 2 4. Psychonauts 2 3. Devotion 2. 428 Shibuya Scramble 1. FFXIV: Endwalker
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2021 15:28
|
|
|
I think I'm going to play ff14 in 2022
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2021 15:37
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 25, 2024 13:17 |
|
|
wuggles posted:I love the goty thread.
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2021 15:51
|
|
