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Can I just say that I really love when people do lists of extremely esoteric things that I will probably never play but it's fun to get a window into something so specific that is giving someone joy? Please keep doing this.
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Dec 28, 2022 15:39
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I'm finally caught up on this thread and I have to say I love seeing people play games they enjoy. So many good games on all these lists this year. I will shamelessly say I was also digging through the lists to add stuff to my wishlist and there's also a few games that will definitely stay on my wishlist after reading reactions to them as well.
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Dec 28, 2022 16:53
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I have horrible undiagnosed ADHD or something similar so this is basically "games that got me to spend more than 10 minutes before getting distracted" Honorable Mentions
The List 6. God of War (2018) I think I've played the previous games maybe five minutes in total so it was all new to me. The combat never grabbed me so the narrative was what got me through. It's a very focused game, besides the combat worlds I ignored, every side quest felt natural when I took them and it never quite fell into open world hell. Mostly here because it did get me to finish it even though I dreaded getting into the boat to slowly sail somewhere else after a while. 5. Horizon Zero Dawn (2017) I originally played this one on PS4 and got maybe half-way before getting annoyed at the combat. I understand most people like it but I just wanted to get more plot and having to fight multiple robots multiple times on the way was not my idea of fun. Now that it got released on PC, having grown up as a gamer, I decided to lower the difficulty a bit and had a blast. It's one of those games where I'd have enjoyed a book about it more than the game itself. gently caress Ted Faro™ 4. Pokemon Legends: Arceus I almost didn't include this game because I forgot it had been this year. Did almost everything I want from a Pokemon game and I'm glad they took some of the lessons from here into Scarlet/Violet. 3. Rimworld (or Biotech DLC, vote goes to whatever has the most votes) Rimworld is by far my most played game this year, and the previous year, and probably the year before that. Right now I have 782 hours logged on steam and I expect that number to climb over a thousand next year. In theory it shouldn't be a game I like, I tend to get bored of direction-less games where the only goal is to survive or "make a story" once I see most of the content. But, Rimworld has thousands of mods and my mod-list never goes below 300+ mods, so there are always new things to see. And Biotech adds an enormous amount of possible variety. The most fun playthrough I had this year was a group of four, where there were two couples. One of the spouses died and everyone else plus friends went into different directions to see how to resurrect her. One became a druid, others got into crafting to get enough money to buy a resurrection serum. Her wife, however, went heavy into the necromancer tree, consuming bodies to increase her power. Every step into her power meant more and more sacrifices and war crime-y stuff, in a colony that so far had been very pacifist, even helping enemies recover before letting them go. A year passed and she had finally learned enough to revive her wife, to much joy of everyone. A month later they divorced. The game doesn't really give reasons for that kind of thing, but it's hard to not imagine it was because of how much she had changed trying to revive her. Perfect gameplay + narrative moment.  2. I was a Teenage Exocolonist You're a teenager born into a cult of hippies that escaped into space to hopefully colonize a planet away from earth. 10 years pass and the game ends, showing in a series of slides how your life went after that. The game is bright and colorful, about every letter in LGBTQA+ is wonderfully represented in some way, it's mostly hopeful about human nature and every character is great and shows growth in those 10 years. On the other hand, it doesn't shy away from tragedy and people are going to die during your first playthrough, because colonizing a new and strange planet is hard. But, because of plot reasons, your character can try again, and again, and again. I avoided this game for months because, being a narrative lifesim game with choices that matter and multiple endings, it's basically custom-made to make me obsess over it. And it did. In less than 5 days I had already played 30 hours and wanted to keep playing, and there are still characters I haven't seen. My only complaint about it is that about every mystery it has gets a very clear explanation, which some people may prefer but I'd have liked some things to remain unexplained. 1. Citizen Sleeper. You're a "sleeper," a human consciousness downloaded into a mechanical body created to skirt around a ban on AIs, that escaped its corporate masters and crashed into a decrepit space station where people are trying to make a living a century after it was abandoned. Unlike Exocolonist, the game starts dark and bleak, every day is a struggle. The gameplay is probably the best representation of living with a disability I've seen. Every day you get a number of pre-rolled dices that represent your energy and that's it, gotta make due with what you have. You didn't get enough money to get medicine or food? Did you get hurt doing a risky job because you needed the money? Enjoy having less energy/dice. Sometimes you feel like you can conquer the world, with 6 sixes, sometimes you wake up with one dice and barely enough energy to eat. Every choice you make influences how your next day will go. Making the wrong choice can cascade into having an incredibly bad week or month. With a mechanic like that it'd be very easy for the game to fall into being a misery simulator, but it avoids that by focusing in building a community and how everyone together can pull through. Some people will help you just because you look like you need help, some need something in exchange. Sometimes helping someone even though it'll leave you in a bad place is the only choice you can make, because they were there for you when you had nothing to give. Its biggest strength is that it's a very focused experience. Every gameplay mechanic, every character arc, every ending, are all tightly designed around the game's themes. In 6 hours it does far more than Exocolonist does in 30. After that one playthrough in May, I basically stopped and told myself that I had just finished my GOTY. And it's still true, no game managed to surpass that evening this year.
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Dec 28, 2022 17:36
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Since Citizen Sleeper is getting a decent amount of attention in this thread, may I suggest to anyone who enjoyed it that they check out the developer's previous game In Other Waters. I was literally the only person who put it on my top 10 list in 2020 so I'm glad to see his latest game getting more attention.
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Dec 28, 2022 17:41
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Regy Rusty posted:Since Citizen Sleeper is getting a decent amount of attention in this thread, may I suggest to anyone who enjoyed it that they check out the developer's previous game In Other Waters. I was literally the only person who put it on my top 10 list in 2020 so I'm glad to see his latest game getting more attention. Oh that was their other one? I'll second In Other Waters as well then, been slowly working through it on my Switch and it's very novel and interesting, I'd especially recommend it to anybody who would've liked Subnautica if it was just exploration and a relatively straightforward plot with none of the perilous depths and monsters. Leans really heavy on the theater of the mind (which you'd guess from the screenshots) which I adore. It's very likely going to end up on my own list, if only because Elden Ring consumed me such that it appears I hardly played anything this year lol
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Dec 28, 2022 17:49
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Regy Rusty posted:Since Citizen Sleeper is getting a decent amount of attention in this thread, may I suggest to anyone who enjoyed it that they check out the developer's previous game In Other Waters. I was literally the only person who put it on my top 10 list in 2020 so I'm glad to see his latest game getting more attention. Haven't put my list up yet but Citizen Sleeper is my number 1, too, and I'd never even heard of Other Waters! Holy gently caress! Gonna buy it right now, looks like it's  on switch atm.
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Dec 28, 2022 18:09
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I love this thread. The previous iterations inspired me to try 7 of the things on this list! And my wishlists are already filling up again! Damnit! Honorable mentions (all of which I would recommend, but I played more than 10 great games this year):  Raging Loop - Fun visual novel with lots of twists, turns, and mysteries that kept me invested throughout. It takes a bit of an Uchikoshi turn about 3/4 of the way through, but that's fine. I know from experience that endings are hard, but HOLY HELL this one poo poo the landing harder than almost any game I've ever seen. If you want to leave the game on a high note, quit after the main character says something like "I have to kill God." because that's the game's last great moment. I'd still recommend it, though, 95% of the VN is good times.  Anodyne 2 - Cute adventure / puzzler with plenty of variety in style and gameplay. Interesting decision to scatter a lot of information about the development of the game throughout the actual gameworld. Very impressive for a game made by only two people in a year and a half.  Slay the Spire - Excellent deck-building roguelite. Very easy to get into. Every time I try to genuinely win, I lose. Every time I just carelessly screw around, I win.  Everything - Third-person... something. (Walking sim?) (Maybe?) Basically a chill way to listen to the philosophical works of Alan Watts for a while. Sometimes I just want to be an argon atom and listen to a dude wax about the nature of perspective, and sometimes I want to be a herd of trees rampaging across the countryside. This game provides these things. Strong metaphysical protagonist.  Chicory: A Colorful Tale - Beautiful, chill top-down style puzzler with an artistic twist. Very laid-back and it OOZES charm and care. It's a fantastic game by a very small team that does nearly everything right. Lena Raine rocked the score. I'd never thought of Lena Raine as "that composer who makes the perfect soundtrack to draw dicks on every inch of the world to", but here we are.  The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe - Genuinely funny first person walking sim / light puzzle game. Very self-aware metagame-y humor in a rare way that actually works. Short but sweet and the extra content from the Ultra Deluxe edition is pretty good. Only gripe is about the two red herring endings that make the player feel like they've done something wrong or just haven't figured out what to do yet. It's a lot of frustrating head/wall beating as you waste time trying to solve puzzles that don't exist. Had to use a guide to find the last few secrets, but it had me chuckling until the very end.  Creature In The Well - Top-down action adventure/puzzler that finally answers the question, "What if Zelda, but PINBALL?!?". (ed: mention style, creativity, and composer Jim Fowler) (ed note 10/2/22: Am I ever going to beat this final boss rush?) (ed note 12/28/22: no) The list:  10. Necromunda: Hired Gun - First person movement shooter set in the Warhammer 40k universe. Cons - -HAHAHA the jank is SO REAL. -Bugs on the character select screen. -The first thing you see in the game are GIANT signs littered with typos like "NO TREPASSING. VIOLATORS WILL BE SHOTS" hahaha. -It goes pretty heavy on the spawning/respawning enemies and monster closets. Not a fan of that but I get it. Kinda like my gripe with Control where the combat is mechanically very good but not always used well in-game. -The game's pretty short. -The ending was abrupt and made no sense to me (why did he put that new bounty out? WHY?). It definitely feels like there was supposed to be more but it got cut due to time and/or budget constraints. Pros - -Solid options screen, inspires confidence. -You can pet the dog right out of the gate as your first interaction of the game. -It's the folks who made E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy! -Controls feel pretty good. Lots of movement and mobility like dashes, air dashes, double jumps, wallrunning, and a grapnel. -They did a great job with the visual design and really locked down that WH40k vibe. -They did not skimp on the skulls. It plays well and it's a visual treat. If it's on sale and a 40k version of the new Dooms sounds good, you'll have fun.  9. A Short Hike - Chill third person indie exploration game with a bit of Metroidvania. A good time! An island with a host of entertaining little things to do and explore until you get around to climbing a mountain.  8. TOEM - Very chill, very cute indie adventure puzzler. Man, I've been cleaning house on those this year! This one's photography-themed. Short and sweet.  7. The Forgotten City - First-person mystery adventure and a very captivating one at that. Can't remember how long it took me to get all of the endings, but I did it in one sitting and was VERY tired by the end. I wasn't expecting it to draw me in nearly as much as it did. Very impressive work for such a small team on a project that began life as a Skyrim mod.  6. Vampire Survivors - This "one-stick shooter" roguelite is dumb, brainless fun. SGF said something to the effect of "This looks like an XBLIG. This shouldn't be good, but it is.", and he was right. Coming in at $3.99 USD, this is value!  5. Cyberpunk 2077 - Open-world "immersive sim" that I liked a LOT more than I was expecting to. I'm glad I waited a long time to play it, because it was still very rough around the edges when I played it after the February update. I could DEFINITELY see why folks would've been upset with its state at launch. That said, I have a lot of good things to say about it. The gameplay's solid, if a bit to the easy side. There are difficulty settings, but the game gives you enough fun gameplay options that you can pretty much trounce any issue that gets in your path if you're paying attention. It's visually fantastic (on PS5) and load times are few and short. They absolutely NAILED the cyberpunk aesthetic with this. While the visuals and general style will get your attention, it is the story, setting, and characters that really keep you there. The areas feel unique and distinct with little environmental storytelling flourishes to each one, every inch of the city bleeds cyber-dystopia and usually has a story to tell. The character writing is uniformly pretty excellent. Keanau Reeves gives a great performance as a very fun and memorable character. The voice acting is rock solid in general with one exception: the main character. This is not the VA's fault. I played as a female main character and the VA for her (Cherami Leigh) is a legend, but she clearly never knew the context for the lines being delivered so I'm assuming that she (or the director) just guessed. This leads to a lot of lines being confusing as to why the MC would suddenly be so lovely or melodramatic or whatever. Also, as talented as she is, she could not do a "gruff mercenary" voice to save her life. It's like when Tara Strong was hired to voice X-23 in the X-Men cartoons. Not a dealbreaker, but you WILL notice. (The male VA does it well, though.) All in all, I really liked Cyberpunk 2077. It felt like an even better version of the last two Deus Ex games.  4. Webbed - Absolutely delightful side-scrolling free-roam physics platformer. Ever just immediately fall in love with a game? It happened here for me. IT HAS A DEDICATED "DANCE" BUTTON! Has an option for arachnophobes to turn spiders into adorable blobs. Cute, sounds and controls great, neat mechanics. Strong female protagonist.  3. Elite Dangerous - Vast sandbox space sim with optional massive multiplayer. I love this game. This is my chill-out game. When I find Stardew Valley too stressful, I play Elite Dangerous. It gets compared to Euro Truck Simulator for a good reason. It's great for just putting on a podcast/documentary/Drawfee and flyin round the galaxy doin thangs. The game looks and sounds great and is pretty easy to get into as far as space sims go. It takes place in a 1-to-1 scale representation of the Milky Way Galaxy. At release it probably earned its reputation for being "a mile wide and an inch deep" but in its current state it's an almost endless collection of fun little space things to see and do. While I've been playing it for years, it's on this list because I'm finally putting it down and it deserves a shoutout.  2. Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous - Did you ever wish that the isometric Dungeons and Dragons games and the Heroes of Might and Magic / King's Field series were the same thing? Here you go. This is it. It's ambitious and it's janky and it rules. Puzzles ain't great. Writing is pretty solid. Not as good as Obsidian, but better than Bethesda. I'd put it around Bioware-level. Oh my god the puzzles are so bad. Tedious and obtuse, together at last! The game gives you a LOT of rule customization when starting a game. Really gives you that "agreeing to the house rules before we start" vibe and does a great job of letting you get the sort of experience you're into that day. (Pathfinder: Kingmaker did this as well) OH MY GOD THE PUZZLES ARE SO BAD. Also, I can't stand plot contrivances like characters dying for dramatic effect. Like, we HAVE cure spells, remove curse, and RESURRECTION. Stop giving dramatic speeches, everything's fine. We thought ahead. No, there's no moral dilemma from "you can only save one" scenarios when we have scrolls and clerics. Forced drama for drama's sake (completely ignoring lore and game mechanics) is a lazy type of writing I can't stand. I know, everybody else does this too, but these things really stand out in such a good game. The characters are pretty good and the range of options for building your main character are frankly absurd. In a good way! If you can imagine a fantasy RPG character, you can probably make it. As critical as I'm being, I dearly love this game. It swings and misses a lot, but it swings for the fences every time and I respect that. It (and PF:Kingmaker) really do feel like some of the closest that a CRPG has come to a tabletop D&D experience. THE PUZZLES ARE SO APPALLINGLY loving BAD  1. Dragon Quest XI S - I love Dragon Quest XI S. It's exactly the brainless popcorn JRPG I've been wanting for a very long time. JRPGs tend to be forgettable clichéd affairs, but DQ11 celebrates this. It's self-aware, but not in a *nudge nudge wink wink* "JRPGs, am I right?" sort of way. It doesn't subvert any expectation. It's like the developers took every JRPG cliché they could think of, made a bingo card out of it, and used that as the design document. There are a few moments when it seems like the game is going to have a bit of a twist but then surprise!, it pulls the rug out from underneath the twist and does exactly what you expect it to instead. Oh, DQ11, you cheeky little slime! JRPGs all try to do something different to stand out, but they usually fail and become as forgettable as all the rest. Not DQ11. In a crowd of self-concious overweight people, DQ11 is Garfield. Rarity version: 10. Necromunda: Hired Gun 9. A Short Hike 8. TOEM 7. The Forgotten City 6. Vampire Survivors 5. Cyberpunk 2077 4. Webbed 3. Elite Dangerous 2. Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous 1. Dragon Quest XI S
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Dec 28, 2022 18:55
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Hell yes, it is one of the things I love about DQ XI, it's "just" a JRPG, it's just that it is an exceptionally loving great one!
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Dec 28, 2022 19:27
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xoFcitcrA posted:
Holy poo poo, buying this right now
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Dec 28, 2022 19:41
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Together we can make the dream possible: Dragon quest XI in the top 10!
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Dec 28, 2022 20:03
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Or, hear me out, Dragon Quest X in the top 11.
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Dec 28, 2022 20:21
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Honourable mentions to games I watched my partner play and thus could not list here: Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Chained Echoes If you love JRPGs don't miss either of these two. If you loved Chrono Trigger, go buy Chained Echoes immediately. 10. FIND ALL 2: Middle Ages A charming hidden object game where you color in the picture as you find all the objects. FIND ALL will not be a game you play over multiple sessions, but it is a simple and relaxing game. Middle Ages feels like the true entry to the series, but they are all so cheap you can start anywhere you like. 9. Life is Strange: True Colors This was gifted to me recently and is my first foray into the LiS universe aside from half-watching a Let’s Play of the first game. I will say, the over the top allegorical naming conventions did kind of make me roll my eyes a few times. Ultimately, though, this was a game that gave me the exact outcome I was gunning for and I appreciate that. But not enough kissing for a game that allows me to “romance” someone. 8. Sun Haven Do you enjoy Stardew Valley? Do you wish you could dash through the air and ride a skateboard all while looking like a Maplestory character? This game reinvigorated my sense of exploration and taste for farm simulation games. Also, I can summon a raincloud to water all my plants AND I can do all of this with 7 of my closest friends. This game received 3 major patches in 2022 and is so close to full release. Don’t sleep on Sun Haven. 7. Raft Raft is a game that I played this year. Raft is a game I avoided playing for a long time. I’ve got that pesky thalassophobia thing going on. Nothing made me clench up more than falling off the raft far, far away from an island. Well, aside from when I would fall in and get stuck under parts of the raft. Luckily, I had a few friends along the way to rescue me from the varied horrors of Raft’s world. I was able to mostly focus on my tasks of water purification and grilling, along with the occasional raft decorating. Raft has something for everyone, even people who can’t scroll out on Google maps without wanting to vomit due to the vast ocean that surrounds us all. 6. I Was A Teenage Exocolonist This is a very personal game and a dark game at times. “The Choices You Make, Make You” kind of game. But it is also a game, with deck building mechanics and lots of reading, and I like those parts too! If you like the idea of space, alien planets, hanging around beautiful people, and being open to change then this is a game for you. 5. PowerWash Simulator My first game I played in 2022! Now that’s some staying power. Bring a friend along and blast away the grit, grime, and questionable “rust” colored spots that stain your life. The sound direction in this game is phenomenal and is topped off by just how satisfying it is to hear the *ding* when an area is fully cleaned. If you want to play a game with friends and not hate each other at the end of the night, this is the game for you. 4. Splatoon 3 Splatoon is the only reason I ever owned a Wii U. I love this colorful and fantastical franchise. Splatoon 3, so far, has taken the best parts of previous entries and expanded on them. The co-op horde mode “Salmon Run” alone is worth the price of admission. I look fresh and I can’t hit the backside of a barn, but by god am I trying my hardest. There’s a Splatfest in about a week, if you’re on the fence about this game now is a good chance to get in. 3. FFXIV: Endwalker The best Final Fantasy game keeps getting better. The patch content dropped this year has been fantastic once again and I keep getting drawn in for months at a time to knock out various side content. This year I finished a few long term goals (card mount, ugly dog mount), but my one true Goal of home ownership still eludes me. Seriously, though, I love this game and the communities I have found within it. I love doing Hunts and spending all my free time in this game trying to spawn S Ranks. I love running content with the people I have met. This would still be my #1 game of the year if my true #1 slot didn’t take me away from ffxiv for months this year. 2. Pokemon Scarlet For me, this is one of the best Pokemon games of all time. It is also the worst Pokemon game I have ever played performance wise. Even with the task of slogging through mud to do pretty much anything in the game after hour 3 of having it open, this game deserves so much praise. And so much criticism. Anyway, I caught 5 full odds shiny Pokemon just walking around the world in my 140 hours of this game. The first of which I found 20 minutes into the game. Before this game, I had seen two shiny Pokemon, one of which is the Red Gyarados in gen 2. After getting the shiny charm/completing the Pokedex (for the first time ever), I’ve enjoyed chasing Outbreaks to hunt cute shiny Pokemon for myself and my friends. So yeah, game #2 of the year for me hands down. The story is groundbreaking for a Pokemon game. The music is insane and has been constantly on loop for me during this past month. If Game Freak keeps going in the direction they seem to be going with Scarlet/Violet/Arceus, then I am fully on board. 1. Eco I wish I could just drop an image here and be done with my write up.  Eco is a game about how terrible the world is. They don’t bill it like that. Strange Loop Games has managed to carefully skirt out of the way of having a truly good and interesting game in some misguided desire to make it “educational” and “backed by science.” What they have managed to do, though, is create a captivating multiplayer community-based world. There is so much potential in this world. But people are terrible and they will ruin it, ruin your playthrough, ruin the environment, ruin EVERYTHING you hold dear to you. But you need people, you crave people, people make your life easier, people make it so you don’t have to do everything yourself. Eco seems like a social experiment, at times. It seems like a spreadsheet kind of game too. And a game where information is presented poorly to the uninitiated. If you can take the time to learn the game, the systems, the flow of technological advancement, how to feed yourself, how to know what skill relates to the tasks you want to set forth to accomplish in the world.. If you can manage to figure all these things out, Eco will still have assholes that will ruin the game for you. And that is Eco. A deeply community driven experience. It is like nothing I have ever played before. Each patch seems to break something new or somehow introduce things I am pretty sure no one wanted (eating animations???). Eco is a flawed game. But it is a game where I can sit in the government building figuring out how to make a functional tax law for hours on end while on a voice call with 3 other humans also bashing their head over the law system. And it is game where I can grab a shovel and dig sand for hours on end, slowly, painfully, one scoop at a time in a Vanilla server. It is human will versus an uncaring world.
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Dec 28, 2022 20:33
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i didn't see it in the op or the first few pages, but is there a link to the results from prior years? i see the links to the old threads, but didn't know if anyone had the links to the exact posts or a spreadsheet with the results.
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Dec 28, 2022 21:28
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Incredible posts, keep 'em coming! I don't know how gussied up it'll be but plan to at least toss up my list before the deadline.John Charity Spring posted:1. Pathologic 2 Great writeup and thrilled to see this at number one on a list. CottonWolf posted:Sir Brante was surprisingly good. I suspect there were lots of ways it could go, but I was happy with my first ending and never went back to it, perhaps I should. I definitely felt there was still plenty of meat left on the bone after my first run but I could also see being content with walking away after that. I believe someone discussed not playing through a Life is Strange game again because they were satisfied with the choices they made and I think that can apply to this game as well. Tulip posted:1. Perfect Tides Amazing writeup, a friend of mine turned me on to Octopus Pie and couldn't be more grateful to them for that. Here's a holiday treat just for you: https://vimeo.com/8303495
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Dec 28, 2022 22:18
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I've been busy this year so I'm definitely not going all out with my list
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Dec 28, 2022 22:26
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abelwingnut posted:i didn't see it in the op or the first few pages, but is there a link to the results from prior years? i see the links to the old threads, but didn't know if anyone had the links to the exact posts or a spreadsheet with the results. I was wondering the same thing, so I poked around and found: 2021 2020 and 2019. I don't think 2018 had anything like that, but the thread's only 9 pages long.
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Dec 28, 2022 23:06
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Doing this in I guess reverse order cause I started with my GOTY and worked my way down. 1. Elden Ring. I haven't read the whole thread yet but I'm guessing everyone's said all that needs to be said by now. Amazing open world, amazing combat. Least handholding, too -- they know what they've created, and they want you to put in the effort to experience it. Difficult, but in a way that makes your triumphs all the greater. A sheer masterpiece. 2. God of War: Ragnarok. Fantastic ride the whole way through. Combat that's satisfying and fun, but nowhere near as tight as Elden Ring. Gorgeous cinematography and spectacle, but Elden Ring is competitive and has the caveat that everything feels more impressive because the game didn't lead you there by the hand. I think this would be a real contender for #1 in any year that Elden Ring didn't come out, but alas. 3. Horizon: Forbidden West. Oh, how I loved you. It kills me that GoW knocks it out of the #2 spot, almost as bad as it killed me that Elden Ring robbed it of its moment in the sun. Loved the story, loved the setting, and would rank it over GoW or Elden Ring if we were going solely on that, but man, GoW is just so much tighter as a package and so much better directed as a movie, and Elden Ring is Elden Ring. 4. Demon's Souls Remake. I'm not a big Fromsoft fan either, or at least I wasn't until this year, but I played my first two of their games this year and both of them make the top 5. You can feel the age of the game even through the swanky new graphics, and that makes it seem all the more impressive because they'd just gotten so much right even at their first attempt at the Souls formula. Top tier level design, and the graphics and sound design and haptics are some of the best I've seen on the PS5. 5. Cyberpunk 2077. I think people generally agree that the patch it got this year finally made it into a good game. I played it for the first time this year on PS5, and yeah, I think it's one of the greats of this generation now that they've finally ironed out all the bugs. Great characters and such an impressively-realized cyberpunk metropolis. 6. High on Life. Full disclosure -- I'm a big Rick and Morty fan, and I could have Justin Roiland babbling at me through every game I play. But more than once, I felt serious nostalgia while playing this game, like I wish I could go back to my ten-year-old self and put him in front of this game and watch his mind get blown. It feels like what I thought the pinnacle of video games could be back then -- a wacky, cartoon, planet-hopping sci-fi adventure, with actual shows on the TV and crazy aliens to meet and strange environments to explore. I wish a real studio would throw triple-AAA money behind this kind of creativity -- I can't imagine how amazing the game would have been if they had the resources for more planets and sidequests and better FPS combat. 7. South Park: Fractured But Whole. What the gently caress?? How did this game have any business being this good?? I was just expecting a playable South Park episode (and it IS an incredibly good South Park episode) but the strategy RPG backbone is really deep and satisfying to play with. 8. Marvel's Midnight Suns. Fun game -- more of a card battler than an XCom-like, but very satisfying to play and improve your decks for each hero. I've played quite a few strategy games, so I was pleasantly surprised at how well it made you feel like an actual superhero slamming lightpoles down on bad guys and kicking them into your superfriends. (Although when I sit down and think about it, Fractured But Whole has both a better story AND a better strategy game layer.) 9. Pentiment. I'm sorry, y'all! Everyone keeps talking about this game like it should be much higher up on my list, but I was just not super impressed. It wasn't BAD, but it felt like any other indie adventure game I might have picked up. I guess the historical accuracy was nice -- I definitely learned something -- but it also meant the game felt kinda dull to play, because farming villages in 1500s Bavaria are kinda dull places most of the time (and it's not even a historical period I have any real interest in). I didn't dislike it, and I'm glad I experienced the story, but I just didn't think it was really anything special. 10. League of Legends ARAMs. I'm a filthy degenerate. No one has made a MOBA engine that feels anywhere near as good as League of Legends. It just feels so satisfying to nail skillshots and last-hit minions and initiate teamfights, and there are like 150 unique champions (and at least 30 that I like to play!). But I can't stand the idea of getting stuck in a terrible 30+ minute game anymore, so I only play ARAMs, which don't have anywhere near the depth of the main game but let me play around with the fun champions like a child with his toybox while I constantly remind myself of what I'm missing. I disgust myself, really. I had to include this because it's one of my top 10 games for this year, but please don't include this as a vote for League of Legends GOTY because no one should ever do that. It surprises me, but looking back I didn't play Arceus or Scarlet this year. For some reason I just haven't been in the Pokemon mood in a while. For ease of use: 1. Elden Ring 2. God of War: Ragnarok 3. Horizon: Forbidden West 4. Demon's Souls Remake 5. Cyberpunk 2077 6. High on Life 7. South Park: Fractured But Whole 8. Marvel's Midnight Suns 9. Pentiment 10. Game Not Found Phenotype fucked around with this message at 02:45 on Dec 29, 2022 |
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Dec 29, 2022 02:31
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abelwingnut posted:i didn't see it in the op or the first few pages, but is there a link to the results from prior years? i see the links to the old threads, but didn't know if anyone had the links to the exact posts or a spreadsheet with the results. Bottom of the second post in the "Hall of Fame" section, each graphic is clickable and links to the thread for that year.
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Dec 29, 2022 04:36
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op link images need a playable tutorial or one of those sony running monologues everyone is so fond of
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Dec 29, 2022 04:43
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Cannot scroll down until you click a hall of fame image
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Dec 29, 2022 04:57
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Rarity posted:(Held for results) Quoting you for ease of visibility: I've revised my list. 10. The Forgotten City 9. La-Mulana 8. Dicey Dungeons Reunion 7. AI: The Somnium Files - nirvanA Initiative 6. Vampire Survivors 5. South Park: The Fractured But Whole 4. Apex: Legends 3. Live-A-Live 2. Pokemon Scarlet & Violet 1. Elden Ring. YoshiOfYellow posted:5. South Park: The Fractured But Whole I suppose it wouldn't be a year end game list if I don't have to gently caress with it at least once. 
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Dec 29, 2022 05:18
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Abelwingnut was asking where the results were, not the threads, yeah? In case my last post wasn't clear, I found them on page 64 of the 2021 thread, page 66 of the 2020 thread, page 34 of the 2019 thread, and the 2018 thread either didn't have anything like that or I didn't see it. But if there's a more concise tally somewhere, I'd be curious to see that too!
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Dec 29, 2022 06:52
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xoFcitcrA posted:Abelwingnut was asking where the results were, not the threads, yeah? Yep, I got so excited to say where the links were I missed that they'd said they already knew that 
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Dec 29, 2022 07:02
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I'm both surprised and not surprised at all that the Cuphead DLC hasn't really shown up on anyone's list.
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Dec 29, 2022 08:21
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Two games took up almost all of my play time this year; unsurprisingly, they're my top 2. I do have a top 5, though. This list will not feature Elden Ring - I've accepted that FromSoft games are just Not For Me. 5. Great Ace Attorney, Part I. This goes on the bottom of my list kind of by default because while I cleared the first game in the duology, it's been a bit of a slog to get through. While the cases themselves have been interesting, and the mysteries fun to work out, the characters are not nearly as endearing as previous Ace Attorney games, the casual racism gets really grating, and the animations take too long to play out between every important point in each case. I'll see how the second game goes, but for now the first part was weirdly disappointing. 4. Disco Elysium. To be honest, I haven't finished the game yet, so I'm not sure if I should put it here. I was really, really enjoying what I've played. The unbelievable amounts of voiced dialogue and dynamics between all the interested parties are really fun to watch play out, and I'm very intrigued to see where it all leads. However, bad RNG on a pretty major roll put me in a position where I have to basically run around advancing the in-game timer until something new in the main quest pops up, since I appear to have used up every other available line of dialogue and side quest to this point. That's soured me on the game quite a bit, but I'll probably just have to suck it up and power through. 3. Metroid Dread. I'll preface this by saying that I'm not oversaturated in the genre, so a lot of the genre conventions haven't become old hat for me yet and the flaws are less glaring. The EMMIs were kind of frustrating in their behavior at times, but the fluid movement and the solid twist on a lot of the classic item collection sequence kept things really fresh for me in Dread. When I play Metroid, I've often forgotten that there's supposed to be an overarching story, so some of the ways Dread tied into past games really meshed well with me. I'm half-tempted to go for another playthrough, because my item collection rate in Metroid games is so bad without a guide to help me. More than anything, I just really want another game from the development team to see how they can refine things further and also literally anything new on Metroid Prime 4. 2. Guilty Gear -Strive-. I've played a lot of fighting games casually on and off, but never really got above a bronze level in ranked before 2021. Part of this is because fighting games have, historically, had dogshit online play. Without any real knowledge of a local scene I could play in, I relied on the few scraps of meaningful online play I could find. I was also mostly a Street Fighter person and never had much interest in the anime games: a lot of them had combo strings way too complex for my puny brain. Guilty Gear was especially intimidating because every character in +R and Xrd has so many options that understanding what I should be doing at a basic level is exhausting. But I got access to the open beta once Arcsys announced rollback netcode for Strive. I played it, and I liked it. I really, really liked it. On release, I played it nearly every day for 2-3 months straight. I learned more, I played more, I got better. The simplified nature of the game, which some old heads say makes it "not real GG," was ironically what I needed to finally, finally sink my teeth into a genre that I love and wish got more shine. I got enough motivation to finally make the jump. For a literal decade, I watched Evo at home. I never felt anywhere near good enough to compete at that level, but this felt like a now-or-never kind of experience. I registered and expected to walk in, play 30 minutes or so, go 0-2, and float around playing casual sets or gambling some money for the rest of the weekend. I played, and lost the first game of my first match. Okay, I said, trying to readjust my expectations, I just want to win one game. Then I did. And I won the next game. And the next game. And the next match. And the match after that, too. Even though I lost my fourth match, I was playing with house money. I won again, and as everyone else at the table was leaving, I won one more time. The bracket runner put the sheet in front of me and told me to take a picture, that I'd be playing the next day, and it didn't hit me until he said "Congratulations": I made it out of my pool at Evo. Strive gave me the tools to finally learn and succeed beyond my wildest dreams at something I thought I'd never be good at; for that, I'm grateful. And coming home from Evo, I started playing my Game of the Year: 1. Xenoblade Chronicles 3. I loved the original Xenoblade when I first played it in 2011, and I played through it again when Definitive Edition released. It blew away every expectation for what I'd come to think of a JRPG and gave me a lot of things I never knew I wanted in a game mixed in with things I knew I loved: real time, MMO style combat that emphasized combinations; huge amounts of side quests I could complete at my leisure, monsters of all sorts of levels mixed into different sections of each area, a world teeming with life and beautifully constructed, a plot with small but good and meaningful twists on JRPG character and plot archetypes, British voice acting, and an OST that I still put on heavy rotation when I need to focus on working or writing. The moment I heard that Monolith Soft provided development assistance on Breath of the Wild's environmental design was the moment I knew why I had found exploration in BotW so compelling. With all that said, Xenoblade 3 has surpassed Xenoblade DE and Final Fantasy X as my favorite JRPG ever. Is it a perfect game? No, there are some pretty valid criticisms out there, and it's not everyone's speed. But I don't give a gently caress, it's perfect for me. The game knows its tone and even with some good moments of levity, the game is built on unease and melancholy grabbing you from the first ten minutes and upping the stakes from there. Mastering combat can make enemies 5 or even 10 levels above you melt in seconds. The side quests are often meaningful to the story and its themes; the Hero/class system incorporates and develops characters beyond the main party smoothly. The world is still teeming with life, but by design it's not the same, and even so, it's still so calming to explore every square inch. The main party gets better and better as the story progresses, and their designs and models convey so much character and emotion. The OST kicks rear end. Very strong contender for my favorite game OST ever. For its themes and philosophy, for where the plot goes, for how the actors breathe life into the characters (not only does Harry McEntire do a wonderful job as Noah, he also comes across as a total sweetheart when he streams his playthrough of the game on Twitch), for how much I found myself rooting for the party, cheering them, crying for them oh my god I have never cried at a game like I cried at this game, Xenoblade 3 felt like it was tailor-made for me to love it. Every story choice, every design choice, I see the intent and execution perfectly and it all makes sense - well, okay, except the inventory system. Even 2 months after I finished the main story, I still think of specific lines of dialogue or certain scenes. It's the kind of game that I want to share with people, in the hopes that they'll love it and continue to share it.
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Dec 29, 2022 08:49
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attn: Rarity, i have updated my post with a hot hot late entry. Valheim knocks out Dinkum and snags the number 2 spot! i'm a fuckin wizard!! no one can stop me!!!!!
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Dec 29, 2022 09:04
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JollyBoyJohn posted:
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Dec 29, 2022 14:26
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Wittgen posted:1. Rogue Legacy 2 Thank you so much for this write-up since I just got Rogue Legacy 2 and I am LOVING it. And I HATED the original. This is what the original should have been. Too late to add it to my current list but it will most likely be in my 2023 list.
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Dec 29, 2022 15:54
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Darke GBF posted:I'm both surprised and not surprised at all that the Cuphead DLC hasn't really shown up on anyone's list. I saw it a page or two back. They even placed it at #5. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4019454&pagenumber=12&perpage=40&userid=0#post528611227
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Dec 29, 2022 16:02
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Manoueverable posted:
That's some uplifting poo poo right there! GGS is a game I'd like to get back into. I'd always liked Tekken, Dead or Alive, and Soul Calibur so I figured it'd be right up my alley. I played it for a while and got absolutely stomped. In the tutorial. I haven't made it past the tutorial yet, but I'm looking forward to giving it another go!
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Dec 29, 2022 16:05
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I always enjoy reading these threads but never did one of these before. Thought I'd drop in just to throw a couple points towards Splatoon in the overall rankings. That said, 1. Elden Ring (2022) - A very predictable choice for #1 and I don't have much to add to what other people already said. I played all of the Souls games, Bloodborne and Sekiro for the first time last year so it was fun to be able to experience one of these games around the launch window for the first time instead of years after the fact. This game really puts Breath of the Wild to shame for having both a huge open world that you can organically explore and find interesting stuff in any direction, plus a lot of the big intricate dungeons that the Souls games are known for and a wide variety of enemies to face. As someone who was a fan of Dark Souls 2 and its open-ended nature it's nice to see it expanded on here, where if you are stuck on a particular boss or area you can come back to it later after exploring other paths in the game's vast world. Nth-ing that going down the Siofra elevator the first time was amazing. 2. Splatoon 3 (2022) - I put way more hours into this than any other game this year and probably got more enjoyment out of it than anything else. Though it's largely an incremental upgrade to Splatoon 2, so objectively speaking it feels wrong to rank it above the likes of Elden Ring. That said, while it doesn't bring anything hugely new to the table, it's the best version of an awesome game. I never got hugely into Splatoon 2, picked it up long after all its updates were over and it felt a little lonely that all of the Splatfests were already over. For this one I was lucky enough to pick it up on launch day, really fell in love with it and have 2 years of updates to look forward to. I don't know how conventional shooters can compete with this slick and stylish game where you can swim up walls and through floors to get the drop on unsuspecting opponents. The PvP modes, Salmon Run horde mode, single player campaign and even the deck building card game are all a blast. While the PvP can be frustrating at times, it just makes it better when things finally start going your way. I usually treat games as one-and-done affairs of a couple weeks, but I think I'll be coming back to this one for a long time. 3. Triangle Strategy (2022) - A solid SRPG. Gameplay-wise I think it's better than the likes of FF Tactics, where character building could overshadow or trivialize the tactical combat. The story may seem a bit rote at first but the frequent plot-branching decisions keep you engaged, and its focus purely on "mundane" matters comes off as surprisingly original in the genre. It's brilliant how the Final Fantasy-esque MacGuffin crystal that's of earth-shattering importance to the characters of its world is just an ordinary salt crystal. I got a bit burned out on New Game+ leveling up B-team characters for the Golden Route, but I plan to go back to it eventually. 4. Hades (2020) - The other game I've been coming back to on and off for months. I like it a lot, though while there's a fair amount variety in how the game plays based on your character build I still feel like it's a bit too repetitive by nature and should've required less successful clears to reach the ending. Still looking forward to Hades 2 next year though. 5. Tunic (2022) - Glad that I picked this up on a whim, had a lot of fun staying up way too late deciphering the manual's language and figuring out its puzzles and secrets. Really clever game and it's been a while since I broke out the old pen and paper. For anyone else who enjoyed the final puzzle I recommend you check out the old (now free) puzzle games The Fool's Errand and 3 in Three which have a similar vibe. The combat was a bit iffy or unfair at points but it's forgivable knowing the game was largely the work of one person and it's an amazing achievement otherwise. 6. Hollow Knight (2017) - The excitement over Metroid Dread last year got me to pick up some Metroidvanias for the first time, and this was overall the best of them and the only one which really delivered on the promise of exploring a huge interconnected world. 7. Live A Live (2022/1994) - This is a really cool game, and much like Trials of Mana a couple years ago, amazing that it got a full remake and official English release out of nowhere. Square Enix makes some questionable business decisions sometimes but it's cool that they are showing some respect to their older non-FF/DQ titles lately. A really charming JRPG short story collection that would have been amazing in 1994 and still holds up pretty well today. It's impressive how differently each chapter plays and feels in spite of them sharing the same engine. The ridiculous encounter rate in the last 2 chapters did sour me on the game a bit towards the end though, I guess it's a case of a remake being a little too faithful to the original. 8. Ori and the Will of the Wisps (2020) - One of the other Metroidvania games I played this year, really cool game and beautiful to look at. gently caress the sandworm chase though
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Dec 29, 2022 17:26
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AceOfFlames posted:Thank you so much for this write-up since I just got Rogue Legacy 2 and I am LOVING it. And I HATED the original. This is what the original should have been. Too late to add it to my current list but it will most likely be in my 2023 list. Is it worth getting on Switch? I want to play it on the big OLED from the couch, but I dunno if the low resolution would bother me too much. I've been eyeing it for a while but I wish they'd do a PS5 port already. 
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Dec 29, 2022 18:09
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Phenotype posted:Is it worth getting on Switch? I want to play it on the big OLED from the couch, but I dunno if the low resolution would bother me too much. I've been eyeing it for a while but I wish they'd do a PS5 port already. I'm playing on the PC. Don't think the low resolution will be a problem, especially since they ditched the pixel art in favor of a more conventional cartoon style.
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Dec 29, 2022 18:32
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Manoueverable posted:2. Guilty Gear -Strive-. I've played a lot of fighting games casually on and off, but never really got above a bronze level in ranked before 2021. Part of this is because fighting games have, historically, had dogshit online play. Without any real knowledge of a local scene I could play in, I relied on the few scraps of meaningful online play I could find. I was also mostly a Street Fighter person and never had much interest in the anime games: a lot of them had combo strings way too complex for my puny brain. Guilty Gear was especially intimidating because every character in +R and Xrd has so many options that understanding what I should be doing at a basic level is exhausting. But I got access to the open beta once Arcsys announced rollback netcode for Strive. I played it, and I liked it. I really, really liked it. On release, I played it nearly every day for 2-3 months straight. I learned more, I played more, I got better. The simplified nature of the game, which some old heads say makes it "not real GG," was ironically what I needed to finally, finally sink my teeth into a genre that I love and wish got more shine. I got enough motivation to finally make the jump. hell yeah
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Dec 29, 2022 18:49
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I didn't play a very wide variety of games this year! Much of my gaming time was spent with FFXIV, which I'm not including on the list because while the recent updates were very good it feels weird to include it for patches and not a full expansion. 5) Cuphead (specifically the Delicious Last Course, but "Cuphead" for the purposes of scoring) Cuphead's a fun game, and it turns out it's even more fun multiplayer. However, since there's no "real" online, if you do a remote play session the player who is not hosting is at a pretty notable disadvantage, but it's still a very good time. The majority of the new bosses are great, though the difficulty is a bit inconsistent. I don't actually have that much to say about this one. It's more Cuphead! If you liked Cuphead you'll probably like the DLC! 4) Disco Elysium This is ranked a bit lower than it probably should be, but I only played the last third of the game this year after a long break, which isn't quite as strong as the first two thirds (in my opinion). Disco Elysium has already been talked about extensively, especially here on SA, but it bears repeating that it truly is an excellent, unique, and unforgettable game. Quality humor, great writing, and plenty of choices that you may even be led to believe "matter"! However, I think the parts around the end are a bit weaker than the rest of the game (though not bad by any means), and while initially the game plays with the idea that sometimes failing checks can be as interesting as passing them, there's not actually that many situations where that is true. Those are pretty minor complaints, all things considered, and if there were anyone left on this forum who hadn't yet played the game I would encourage them to give it a try 3) Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe is a lot of things. It's kind of a remaster, kind of a remake, kind of a sequel, kind of a whatever-you-call-those-rereleases-that-add-some-content-like-with-KH-Final-Mix-or-every-Atlus-game. It's one of those games that's sort of about itself, and while that can be offputting to many I think it's very well done here. It's got a lot of funny moments, weird moments, unsettling moments, and many other types of moments. If you passed on it thinking "well, I already played the original", I strongly recommend playing it regardless as there's more to it than it may seem. My biggest complaint is probably that a fair chunk of the new stuff centers around the same joke, and that joke does start getting old after a while. However, the rest of the new content has plenty of surprises, and the game has a "completeness" that I think the original lacked. If you like games that are mostly just walking around while someone talks at you, this is about as good as that genre gets. 2) Grounded I'm very surprised how much I liked this game. The premise is that you've been shrunk down and stranded in a backyard (a very oddly designed and varied backyard, but a backyard nonetheless), and you have to CRAFT and SURVIVE and EXPLORE until you can find a way to get back to your normal size. I'm sure a lot of people read "craft" and "survive", said "ah, one of those games", and promptly disregarded it entirely. I was one of those people, until a friend talked me into trying it. Of all the games in that genre, this is by far the one I've enjoyed the most. I think the key (other than the unique premise) is that the game world is relatively small, but varied and dense with things to explore and discover. Unlike a lot of craft/survival games, it's also got a lot of clear objectives. There's caves and labs to serve as "dungeons", bosses, and a really good sense of progression. That said, it's a game that's best played with at least two players - everything's doable with one but the game was definitely designed around playing with multiple people. Personally, I played with one other friend, and we had no real issues as a group of two (except for the last challenge, but I won't go into that). I very nearly listed this game as my number 1 game of 2022, but after a lot of thought I decided that might be recency bias and that it just barely loses. 1) Elden Ring. Yeah. It's Elden Ring. It's open world Demon's Souls. It's got a lot of interesting things to find and a lot of interesting things to fight. While the open world aspect was not perfect (there's a lot of samey dungeons and repeat bosses scattered around), it really helped bring something new and fresh to a series that, after five entries (including bloodborne), was starting to risk becoming stale. What makes the game work is that there's plenty of areas that are explored in a manner much more like "traditional" souls, which helps prevent the open world from getting old (and vice versa). There are, as I mentioned, a lot of filler bosses and areas, but that ones that stand out really stand out. The game excels at giving you choices - for reasons even I don't understand, I went through refusing to use spells, regular summons, spirit summons, and shields. This meant every boss was focused on me the entire fight, and neither blocking nor ranged attacks were an option. It was an incredibly fun way to play the game! However, I've seen plenty of posts from people who did use all of those things, and had just as much fun as I did. A few recent From Software games (especially Sekiro) emphasize a specific playstyle over others, and while that can lead to plenty of interesting challenges, I think it was the right choice to give more options in a giant open game like Elden Ring. Though it's not my favorite From Software Souls-style game, it's pretty close, and I'll probably head back for a second playthrough soon enough.
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Dec 29, 2022 19:28
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Manoueverable posted:2. Guilty Gear -Strive-. I've played a lot of fighting games casually on and off, but never really got above a bronze level in ranked before 2021. Part of this is because fighting games have, historically, had dogshit online play. Without any real knowledge of a local scene I could play in, I relied on the few scraps of meaningful online play I could find. I was also mostly a Street Fighter person and never had much interest in the anime games: a lot of them had combo strings way too complex for my puny brain. Guilty Gear was especially intimidating because every character in +R and Xrd has so many options that understanding what I should be doing at a basic level is exhausting. But I got access to the open beta once Arcsys announced rollback netcode for Strive. I played it, and I liked it. I really, really liked it. On release, I played it nearly every day for 2-3 months straight. I learned more, I played more, I got better. The simplified nature of the game, which some old heads say makes it "not real GG," was ironically what I needed to finally, finally sink my teeth into a genre that I love and wish got more shine. I got enough motivation to finally make the jump. that's crazy, nicely done e: which char do you play?
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Dec 29, 2022 19:41
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Honorable Mentions: Metroid Dread - I played this earlier in the year, so that probably worked against it, but I also recall not really liking the boss battles all that much and I barely remember the story. It was great while I played it but obviously left no impression on me. Sorry Metroid. Tactics Ogre - I like Strategy RPG's but I am not unemployed anymore and consulting FAQ's and walkthroughs to make sure I follow the super secret handshake to get a character that's dangled in my face just isn't as fun anymore. The gameplay itself is solid and the story is amazing, but the game rides high on making things difficult by having bosses be broken as hell. Not my idea of fun. A game I have on my top 10 really just shows how much better the genre can be, IMO. Guardians of the Galaxy - RIP Guardians. You might have made my top 10 if I didn't play a bunch of other stuff right at the end of the year you would have made it. Honestly, don't sleep on this game, especially now that you can probably get it for super cheap. The story is a ton of fun and the gameplay is actually quite good. Top 10 10. The Centennial Case Yeah, this might seem odd considering I left off some heavy hitters and by all rights Guardians, Tactics, or Metroid should be here. Reviews all have this as a middling game. I happen so love games that have weird ideas and interesting stories. It's an FMV game where at times you have to answer questions and piece together how these small murder mysteries happen. It's not a difficult game by any stretch, but the story was fun to follow and it had some fun twists near the end that really left an impression on me. I would love to see them take another stab at this because if they could hammer out a bit more interesting gameplay mechanics it could have been a lot better. As it is, Centennial Case is a flawed game, but it was a memorable game, and so I felt it deserved a spot. 9.Live a Live Live-A-Live in 2022! Awesome! Always heard good things about it and now I had the chance to play it. Live-A-Live is a good game and its biggest strength is that you play a bunch of scenarios where the stories are all self-contained and there's a different narrative but you have the same battle system throughout. Live-A-Live's battle system is fun and interesting and I'm surprised I haven't seen more games try to rip it off (Radiant Historia definitely drew inspiration from it). Live-A-Live's biggest strength however, is also its biggest weakness. If you don't like a character or scenario, even though it's not long it can feel like a slog. I sat on the game for months because the far future scenario was just so boring and I knew what the twist was. When I finally forced myself to finish I managed to beat the game in a couple more sittings. However, I found out I didn't get the good ending cause I messed some stuff up. I honestly didn't really care by the end. Live-A-Live is a game that will grip you with its incredible highs, but will utterly bore you when it hits the lows. 8. The Quarry The Quarry marked a big budget return from the creators of Until Dawn. They've been stuck doing the Dark Pictures games which I like, they're weird and fun stories, but super jank and pretty short (which makes sense when they're billed as co-op games). The Quarry is them with a big budget and they make the most of it. The gameplay is long enough (8-10 hours) and they got some really good actors to work together. While it might not be worth the full price to some, The Quarry is an absolutely solid game and well worth a play if you are hankering for the cinematic "telltale" style game. 7. Voice of Cards: Isle Dragon Roars Voice of Cards really doesn't get talked about much, and I get why. Voice of Cards is a very simple game, that relies on a gimmick so that it's incredibly cheap and quick to make. Everything is made of cards, so you don't have to animate characters moving around and walk cycles and all that stuff. Just cards fly around on the screen. Easy. There's a narrator who voices everything as well so your VA budget is quite low. As such they can really pump them out, but that doesn't mean they're bad games. I'd argue that Voice of Card's biggest strength is that it's comfortable being a fun budget RPG. It won't do anything amazing, but what it does, it does well. The combat is fairly fun to figure out how to break things so you can do big damage, and the art is quite nice which helps me like the characters. Voice of Cards offers a fairly down to earth standard fantasy JRPG, and really, that's something I want at times. 6. Great Ace Attorney This game felt like it took forever. It took me almost a year playing it off an on in order to get it done, but unlike Live-A-Live it was never that I felt it was a slog, but that there was so much to it that I really just had to put it down to digest everything and make sure I thoroughly enjoyed myself. The characters are incredibly fun when they play off each other, there are plenty of great jokes, and the cases get downright riveting at points. Great Ace Attorney is a high mark for the series and if you're a Phoenix Wright fan or want to see what the fuss is all about, this is honestly one of the best ways to get into the series. 5. Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth I heard of this game, but not having any interest in Record of Lodoss War was writing it off and I don't know why I thought it was some kind of dungeon crawler. My friend earlier this year told me it was a game more like Castlevania and with a holiday sale I figured I'd check it out. I'm glad I did. While I'm sure the story would have hit harder if I knew anything about Lodoss War, the gameplay and boss fights were so much fun it didn't matter. It was incredibly fun to explore the Labyrinth and figure out how to get to certain areas and I loved that the game was usually pretty good about just needing to be observant to figure out there was a secret area. When I died on a boss fight it always felt like I died because it was my fault. The fire/wind mechanic was pretty fun to play with and made boss fights exciting to realize I could quickly switch and put myself in an advantage. If you enjoy Castlevania/Metroid style games, even if you don't care for the property, Deedlit is a fun, exciting adventure. 4. AI: Nirvana Institute Absolutely loved the first game when it came out so I was excited for this. I didn't play it until recently, but I'm glad I managed to get to it. While I don't think the game hits the story highs that the first game managed, the story was incredibly gripping. I was engrossed with how the half-body murders was being done, and the reveal behind it had me scratching my head, but it the best way possible. The Somnium's this time around really seem to work on a logic that makes sense as I never felt that I had to consult a guide for them. However, there's a couple puzzles in the game where they don't really give any hints and are quite hard to solve. So people wanting a bit of a mental challenge at times will still get it. I'm curious to see if this series will continue on because it's got a cast of absolutely goofball idiots, but it somehow all comes together and even when the plot goes off the rails, it somehow all works. 3. Like A Dragon I wanted to play this when it came out, but I told myself I would go through the other Yakuza games first. This year I finally followed through on it by beating 4,5, and 6 all this year as well. While I wouldn't have lost out much, it was still great to see how the series has evolved. Like A Dragon is a great first step in a new direction. The RPG combat and how it's setup in the world is incredibly well done. A cast of characters that have incredibly chemistry together, and the side stories retain Yakuza's craziness and charm. While the combat could be improved on, it was such an incredible first outing that I can't be helped but excited for the next entry. Like A Dragon gets so many things right, that it's hard to fault what it gets wrong. 2. Triangle Strategy For a good chunk of the year, this was my Game of the Year until my #1 dethroned it. Triangle Strategy is exactly what I was looking for in FFT/Tactics Ogre inspired game. A heavy focus on the political with some mystical elements thrown in. The vote system was a great way to go down a story path as one time in first playthrough, my party outvoted me and we went down a path I didn't choose, but I loved that it happened. The combat system really is my ideal. Instead of filled up with generic units you'll eventually all replace for hero units. It's all hero units. They all have something they do that's unique and I found myself constantly swapping people in and out depending on the situation. The game offers an easy catch up mechanic if you decide you want to have someone in that you haven't been using for a while. The fights are also incredibly well done. Playing Tactics Ogre just made me realize how much they emphasized balance. I never had a fight where I felt like I lost because some OP boss ruined me, but because my Tactics weren't up to par. Every fight I felt like I was winning or losing by my choices. I stalled on my third play through, but honestly? I know I'm going to get around to it again someday because it's just that good. Triangle Strategy has become my new gold standard for what I am looking for in a SRPG. It's clear the developers loved Tactics games and poured everything they could to make a Tactics game that would hold up to the test of time and that learned from previous entries. I honestly would be okay if they don't make a sequel and just let this stand on its own as the accomplishment that it is. 1. Xenoblade 3 I really did debate putting this second but I'm such a huge Monolith Soft mark that I had to put this at number one. It was too good not to. Xenoblade 3, is an absolute masterpiece. Is there issues with the game? Sure, the battle system can eventually get a bit repetitive, and the world traversal can be a pain at times (I think everyone knows what area I'm talking about) the things this game does right just makes those complete non-issues. The focus on a small core cast of characters where you can have one additional group member works so well. By having the party established right near the beginning of the game, it means they can grow and come together as a crew and you can really see as the game goes on how they all manage to come together. It does this is in so many small ways as well, I always had a dumb smile on my face when I opened the camp menu to see a character playing with someone else hair, doing strength training, or other random things. It's so small, but it adds so much personality to the characters. I hate open world game. Loathe them. I don't like being told "okay just go do whatever" and then having to figure out what the game actually expects of me, while I traverse a big empty nothing. Horizon Zero Dawn is neat, but I fast travelled whenever possible because I don't care about a big empty vista that looks neat. Xenoblade rewards exploration by always having something around the corner. A unique enemy? A treasure item? A vista? A new location? There's always something happening which I love. When I get bored from the exploration, it's always quick to point out where I should be going. I like that the game keeps me on track. The open world always never felt like it was too open (except in one area). The story was also really engaging. I loved the concept of 2 opposite factions whose lifespans are shortened so the only thing they know is constant war. It works so well because as the characters explore and learn about the world it feels natural because, of course they don't know these things as they were forced in a bubble all their life. There is so much to do, and while they are not essential, all the big side quests that you can do add so much to the world and story. There's some really fun scenes and comedy, but when it wants to turn into heart wrenching as well, it's incredibly great at it. Xenoblade 3 is a lot. It knows it's a lot. It shoots for the stars and while it might not always get there I have incredible respect for a game that's willing to say "this is what I want to be, get on board" and go for it. That kind of mindset always makes for something interesting and fun, which I think you usually don't see in huge big AAA releases these days. I give nothing but praise to Monolith Soft, and to Nintendo for buying them and supporting them for seeing something there, because they give us something you just don't find these days. What a game.
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Dec 29, 2022 19:55
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Manoueverable posted:2. Guilty Gear -Strive-. I've played a lot of fighting games casually on and off, but never really got above a bronze level in ranked before 2021. Part of this is because fighting games have, historically, had dogshit online play. Without any real knowledge of a local scene I could play in, I relied on the few scraps of meaningful online play I could find. I was also mostly a Street Fighter person and never had much interest in the anime games: a lot of them had combo strings way too complex for my puny brain. Guilty Gear was especially intimidating because every character in +R and Xrd has so many options that understanding what I should be doing at a basic level is exhausting. But I got access to the open beta once Arcsys announced rollback netcode for Strive. I played it, and I liked it. I really, really liked it. On release, I played it nearly every day for 2-3 months straight. I learned more, I played more, I got better. The simplified nature of the game, which some old heads say makes it "not real GG," was ironically what I needed to finally, finally sink my teeth into a genre that I love and wish got more shine. I got enough motivation to finally make the jump. hell yeah dude that is awesome. congrats
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Dec 29, 2022 20:14
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Foul Fowl posted:that's crazy, nicely done Thanks! I've played Ky since the beta, but the recent patch didn't do him any favors so I'm in a bit of a character crisis at the moment.
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Dec 29, 2022 20:16
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It's the end of the year, and wow! I played a lot of Roguelites this year. I also played a few open world games, and mostly didn't finish them. There were some games I really liked that I fell off of, and some that I played a lot of and ultimately didn't like at all, but it's safe to say that 2022 was a really interesting year in gaming. I probably should have played more Monster Hunter! Oh well. I played more than 8 games, but most of the games I didn't include on this list are games that I didn't play enough of to feel comfortable rating or games I didn't especially care for. With that being said, here are, in my humble opinion, the best eight games of the year. NUMBER 8: Little Noah: Scion of Paradise Little Noah is a game I remember seeing in a Nintendo Direct, getting interested in, buying on release, then forgetting about until I started thinking about how I didn’t have ten games to put on this list. I still don’t have ten games to put on this list, but after playing Little Noah, I strongly feel like this would belong here even if I had finished more games. I played a lot of Roguelites this year, from new games to older titles that I revisited, and a common theme was that most of the new or updated ones I played were absolutely incredible. Little Noah is no exception, with the caveat that it’s a bit more slight compared to some of the extremely content-heavy titles I played this year, but that’s not a bad thing. This is a game that you can finish your first run through in about ten hours, and spend many more plumbing the depths of the post-game unlocked Hell Mode, which exists to justify a lot of the character progression upgrades that you don’t need to finish the main story. The systems this game presents are a lot of fun, with interesting combinations of moves and synergies with your accessories that can lead to very different playstyles. Little Noah: Scion of Paradise may not be the best roguelite I played this year, but it’s a real gem regardless. NUMBER 7: Pokemon Scarlet There’s no getting around it: Pokemon Scarlet and Violet are deeply flawed games that desperately needed another several months if not moreso for QA and performance optimization. The game often runs like poo poo, and you will encounter some pretty rough bugs. The game crashed to the Switch main menu for me once. Despite all of that, I had a blast playing through Scarlet. The writing was on point, with me emotionally connecting to characters and storylines in ways I had never done with a Pokemon title before. The designs of the new Pokemon for the ninth generation were almost unanimously stellar. As much as it pained me to deal with the performance issues, running around the open world was fun and actually seemed to benefit the game, rather than detract from it like most open world games. It’s a real shame that Scarlet and Violet were released in an obviously unfinished state, because they have some of the best content Pokemon has ever had. NUMBER 6: Gotham Knights This game got a lot of mixed reviews, and it’s a real shame, but I kinda understand where some of the detractors are coming from. This is a game from WB Montreal, which previously made one of the games in the Arkham series of Batman games, and the way Gotham Knights plays, it demands comparison to the Arkham games. As much as I enjoyed this game, that is just not a favorable comparison. Gotham Knights is an action RPG, whereas the Arkham games were action games with light RPG elements, and unfortunately Gotham Knights is one of the few games on current gen consoles that doesn’t run at 60 FPS. However, I’m no stranger to playing games at 30 FPS, and the Arkham games had their own issues. I really, really liked Gotham Knights. I love how they wrote the characters, the main story was compelling, and the core combat was in-depth enough for me to have a really good time just tooling around Gotham and clearing the challenges that they populated the world with. I only played Gotham Knights the one time, but I look forward to giving it another look to see how the story adapts to playing as different characters. Given what I saw playing as Nightwing, I think it’ll be a good time. NUMBER 5: God of War Ragnarok In another world, this game would be much higher on my list. The 2018 God of War game is fantastic, and unfortunately there’s something about this game that doesn’t quite measure up. I heard that this was planned to be two games at one point? I could see that. In any case, even while it didn’t quite measure up to its predecessor, Ragnarok is still really, really good. I really like what they did with the characters, and the big twist at the end of the story was surprising, but upon reflection, had some good build-up to it. The combat is as good as it was in 2018, and the game even had some sections that really mixed up how you approached combat scenarios. If there’s one thing that I didn’t like about this game, and it’s really a fairly minor thing in the grand scheme of things, it’s the Runic Arrow puzzles. They’re not very interesting and they’re absolutely everywhere once you unlock Runic Arrows. Oh well, no game is perfect. NUMBER 4: Rogue Legacy 2 Hey, it’s another Roguelite! No, it’s not the last one you’ll see on this list. Rogue Legacy 2 is a game that was released in Early Access a year or so back, and I remember thinking that was cool, but I would wait for it to release in 1.0, especially once I heard that early reports weren’t amazing. I am so, so glad that I waited, because 1.0 hit early this year, and this game is an absolute blast. It still has that fantastic formula that Rogue Legacy innovated, while updating and refining it to keep it fresh and interesting. One of the biggest innovations is serious class variety. As much as I liked the original Rogue Legacy, most of the different classes were basically modifiers on the baseline. That is not so in Rogue Legacy 2, or at least it doesn’t feel that way the way it definitely did in the first game. Between the different class weapons and skills, playing different classes really does mix up the gameplay and keep it fresh. The new movement abilities are a lot of fun, and while I only dipped my toes into NG+, it seemed like there were some really dramatic modifiers you could put in play to make exploring the castle for the second, third, fourth time, and beyond more interesting than just tweaking the numbers. NUMBER 3: River City Girls 2 I really, really did not expect this game to release in 2022. Furthermore, when it finally did release early this month, the way they announced its release made it feel like they were sending it out to die, so I was worried that this game wasn’t going to be great going into it. Then I actually played the game, and my worries washed away. The writing was really charming, and the beat-em up gameplay was sharp and fun. I really liked how the enemy recolors made it feel like there was more variety to the enemy encounters than there actually was - and there was a decent enemy variety, don’t get me wrong - and the simple process of running through the city, beating up local toughs and yakuza, and buying food and new moves from the local shops was so much fun. The story was simple, straightforward, and basically predictable, but it was executed in such a fun way that I could see myself playing through the game again with some of the additional playable characters just to see how they handle their presence, whether it’s the boyfriends you rescued in the first River City Girls or the new friends you made along the way in this new game. Beat-em ups are back, and I couldn’t be happier. NUMBER 2: Horizon Forbidden West It’s so weird to me that there are people out there that don’t like this game. Unlike some other games I played this year, I genuinely don’t understand it. Not only does the game give you more variety in terms of ranged weaponry Aloy has access to, they actually made the stealth and melee combat feel interesting. The story was fantastic, with the game letting you do one of the things that the first game teased as a potential option: you got to shoot arrows at the rich assholes that destroyed the world. Beyond that, getting the gang together and having Aloy have compatriots who have a fuller understanding of the world was a really interesting and yet simultaneously obvious direction to take the story. While I’m gushing about the writing, I need to talk about the Tomb of Ted Faro. Ted Faro was unarguably the biggest rich rear end in a top hat among all of the rich assholes who destroyed the world in Horizon’s setting, and this game decided to approach dealing with what happened with Faro after he hosed everything up. As I explored the tomb, and learned more and more about Faro’s experiments with immortality, I wondered: was this game going to let us fight Ted Faro? The answer, as it turns out, was no, and for the absolute best possible reason. Ted Faro was still alive, but he engineered for himself a fate worse than death, and he was too pathetic to bother dealing with. The game did end with a sequel hook, and I’m actually curious to see what that will wind up being. I’m not sure I need another Horizon, but if the third title is as good as the first two, I’ll definitely give it a look. NUMBER 1: Dead Cells: The Queen and the Sea https://i.imgur.com/r1430mZ.mp4 So, here’s a fun caveat for my Game of the Year 2022: it technically released in 2018! However, it was regularly updated, and in January of this year, they released a new DLC. With that DLC’s release, I decided to revisit Dead Cells, and guys, I cannot emphasize this enough: this game is still loving incredible. Dead Cells is so good that I can say, with absolutely no hyperbole, that it’s one of the best games ever made. I played a fair amount of Dead Cells back in 2018 and 2019, and I even beat the game fairly regularly at the base difficulty, but it wasn’t until The Queen and the Sea that I really decided to dive deep into the game and really explore everything that Dead Cells has to offer. Dead Cells has a pretty simple difficulty system: once you beat the final boss of a given difficulty (or the Giant in Nightmare mode), you will unlock a Boss Stem Cell, the next difficulty level. As the difficulty increases, you will gain access to new enemies, new outfits, new areas within the various levels, and eventually, in Five BSC (AKA Hell difficulty), you can unlock the final main level and final boss of the game. This year, I went from having just unlocked the first BSC to beating the true final boss and getting the true ending. I explored areas that I had never played before, unlocked dozens of new weapons, skills, and cosmetics that I had never seen before. I played over a hundred hours of Dead Cells this year. It is unarguably one of the hardest games I have ever played, and I don’t regret a single second…but most of this could be written about the game as it existed in 2018. Let’s talk about Dead Cells as it exists in 2022, and The Queen and the Sea specifically. The Queen and the Sea DLC added a few major content updates to Dead Cells: it provided a new endgame, with a new level, two new bosses, a small selection of new weapons and powers, and an alternate ending for the headless one. You get the opportunity to fight against the Queen of the island, who is unsurprisingly (for those familiar with the game’s story) very much like you. The new level is a ton of fun, the Gilded Yumi and the Maw of the Deep are some of the most fun weapons in the game (the Maw of the Deep is literally a shark, you hit enemies with a loving live shark), and the bosses are both very fun and, in true Dead Cells fashion, incredibly difficult. The new ending is, entertainingly and appropriately, a new bad ending, because the world of Dead Cells is not the kind of world where you can escape your problems by crossing the sea. God, I love Dead Cells. King of Solomon fucked around with this message at 20:44 on Dec 29, 2022 |
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Dec 29, 2022 20:42
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