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jesus, i know some people put both in their lists. i'm just saying in scanning most of the lists out there, most did not. there are exceptions! i get it!
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Jan 1, 2023 04:52
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10. Immortality I love when games use weird and niche methods of gameplay to tell a story. This did a great job of having a nonlinear story told through different clips, with each building upon the mystery while being interspersed with interesting movies. Many of the twists led to some great "Whoa" moments as you begin figuring out more on how to get into the story behind the story. I felt that this was much better than the creator's previous game "Her Story" and had so many little secrets and things to find that it kind of encapsulated the mystery of an ARG within a game. It also helped that the acting was overall well done. 9. Enderal: Forgotten Stories A psychological horror RPG built on top of Skyrim? Sounds like it shouldn't work, but it is much better than I thought it would be. This mod makes a completely new game out of Skyrim with new and improved RPG mechanics. The world of the game is much better fleshed out than Skyrim's, with better characters and writing. The main story is definitely worth playing, and has a lot of secrets with multiple endings. The world was also beautiful and very rewarding to explore, with most locations actually having something important to find or quest involved. Having a reason to optimize your character build was nice, thanks to optional end game bosses that were pretty difficult. Overall, the game was very fun and handled moral choices and consequences better than most other games. 8. Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition I first played this game when it came out on the Wii and got burnt out on it due to trying to 100% it. I decided to try again as I found the story and world very interesting and wanted to also play through it to get ready for Xenoblade Chronicles 3. I was glad I came back as the gameplay and story continued to improve from the point I was at (around 1/3 of the wya through the game). I went into this planning to skip a lot of the boring side quests and only do those I needed to get the characters' extra skill trees and enjoyed the game a ton more by focusing on the main story. I felt the end game twists got a little overboard but were overall pretty interesting and I liked the subtle nod towards Xenogears. Future Connected added in the Definitive Edition was a good addition since it resolved one of the characters' stories that was left hanging in the original game, but I didn't feel like it was really too great. The final boss of that DLC seemed like it should have been more important or explained better, but I suppose it may have been related to Xenoblade Chronicles 2 or 3 and I just was not aware of it. I plan on finishing the sequels this coming year. 7. Dungeon Munchies The jankiest action RPG I played this year, but the jank was made up for by having a great sense of progression, build variety, decent humor, and crazy story twists. You start as a zombie that has no idea what is going on working for a ghost necromancer. As you progress you learn new recipes with a variety of effects which let you create a build with a large variety of different effects. Has a good but weird sense of humor and a lot of twists that take the story from extremely silly to SCP and cosmic horror. The gameplay was good, but overall the main meat of the game was in customizing your loadout with up to 10 different recipes that gave different perks and abilities and 2 weapons. This led to a lot of experimentation with builds which was very fun and the difficulty and variety of bosses from the 2nd chapter on led to needing to switch around quite a bit. The new recipes and unlocks keep coming the whole way through, giving a lot of freshness. Just get ready for a huge difficulty spike after the first chapter, which mostly continues till towards the end of the game where a new mechanic make things a whole lot easier. I would say this is probably the best hidden gem on this list, and would recommend anyone that likes build variety in an RPG with Symphony of the Night style combat give it a try. Just note that the exploration is pretty limited compared to a Metroidvania with usually just a few secrets to find in each level, although you can backtrack to find things you missed there is not a big reason on the main path to backtrack besides finding extra recipes and weapons. 6. Brotato The second best auto shooter roguelike of the year. This one improved on the formula by actually making things difficult and giving a lot of variety in characters and unlocks. Obtaining 100% of the achievements for this was a great way to relax when I didn't feel like getting into something more meaty and involved. 5. Signalis This horror title was a big surprise, marrying Silent Hill with sci fi, body horror, and cosmic horror. The gameplay took a while to click, especially getting used to the "Rule of 6". I found the inventory limit way less annoying once I started to store everything in the safe room besides a weapon and the flashlight or a stun baton so I would have more room for key items needed for the puzzles without as much backtracking. This meant I would heal and reload in the safe rooms only other than for boss fights. This also helped to make enemies respawning randomly less of an issue as I ran past most of them that I could. The cutscenes were well done and I enjoyed all the references to other works in the story, as well as the ambiguity left in the endings. This was overall the best horror game released this year and if the gameplay were better it would be higher up on the list. 4. Higurashi When They Cry During Halloween last year I started looking into more niche horror games and found a lot of buzz about this game. This took a bit to get into, but I am glad that I pushed through it to the end. It did so well at creating a sense of mystery with just enough clues and foreshadowing to keep you guessing through each chapter. The beginning of each chapter felt like it dragged on a bit as this game is very wordy, but the payoff was great and would not have been nearly as emotional and cathartic if not for the time given to flesh out the characters and environment. You have to not be allergic to anime as some of the characters fall into tropes as times, but even that is used to twist things around for cool reveals and story moments. For anyone that gets into this, I would recommend using the free 07th mod patch which adds voice acting as well as other features that greatly improve the experience. I have yet to read all of House in Fata Morgana due to getting a bit bored with the initial chapter, but I plan to go back to it so time will tell if I find it better. 3. Vampire Survivors A game that ushered in a new genre. This pulled me i like Slay the Spire and Binding of Isaac before it, which means I consider it one of the best roguelikes. Although it is not the first of its kind, it was the most influential and became my go to chill and relax game, especially when I was listening to podcasts or having to sit through videos that I didn't need to focus on. I have tried most of the other well reviewed clones (20 minutes Till Dawn, Spellbook Demonslayers, Rogue Genesia, etc.) and this was still the most fun of the genre to release this year. All the unlocks, updates, and interesting secrets made this the best of the genre so far for me, with something new and engaging every week - month. 2. God of War Ragnarok It was tough to pick between this and Elden Ring for the top. I played through it with my partner and it was great fun all through the main story and most side quests. Finishing up 100% was a tedious as the backtracking and having to climb slowly back to places was extremely annoying which made me decide to lower this to the second spot. The story and characters were very well done and this was a great focused experience overall with some good twists and much better gameplay than the previous entry in the series. 1. Elden Ring This game really took the Dark Souls formula and made massive improvements. I loved the open world and how rewarding it was to explore. The variety of builds, weapons, and spells added a lot of replayability. The story was also interesting and fun to piece together. I appreciated how this felt like a merging of Dark Souls and Bloodborne in a way. As always, the PVP and coop was a great time as well and the multiplayer messaging led to many funny moments and helped with discovering secrets. Overall I enjoyed Bloodborne more but this is the second best Soulsborne I have played. List: 10. Immortality 9. Enderal: Forgotten Stories 8. Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition 7. Dungeon Munchies 6. Brotato 5. Signalis 4. Higurashi When They Cry 3. Vampire Survivors 2. God of War Ragnarok 1. Elden Ring Lonegar fucked around with this message at 05:50 on Jan 1, 2023 |
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Jan 1, 2023 04:52
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hi i'm just chiming in to tell you that i'm another exception to your post because i also had both of those games in my list and they're fantastic. let me also say that the lists this year from everyone are sublime and i especially love to see the new posters.
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Jan 1, 2023 04:54
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abelwingnut posted:jesus, i know some people put both in their lists. i'm just saying in scanning most of the lists out there, most did not. I do not think your generalization is correct op
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Jan 1, 2023 04:55
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i put both
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Jan 1, 2023 04:56
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I foolishly procrastinated on this and unfortunately won't be able to put the same level of care and effort as so many of you wonderful goons have. Short list for ease of reference: 10. Warhammer 40,000: Darktide 9. Vampire Survivors 8. Dorfromantik 7. Tactics Ogre: Reborn 6. Total War: Warhammer III 5. Into the Breach 4. Inscryption 3. Perfect Tides 2. Elden Ring 1. Disco Elysium 10. Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Just sinking my teeth into this but it scratches that Left 4 Dead itch that I haven't had scratched in far too long. When I'm able to get some friends together to play this it's a real treat. 9. Vampire Survivors I just picked this up after seeing it on a ton of lists and I was not disappointed, best 5 bux I spent this year probably. 8. Dorfromantik This is one of the games I'll go to if I just want chill and it serves that purpose admirably. 7. Tactics Ogre: Reborn I can't believe I never played this sRPG before this year. It is definitely on par with or superior to FF Tactics. I am only nearing the end of my first playthrough and I can definitely see myself playing again to see some of the other ways the story could have gone. 6. Total War: Warhammer III This was a classic Creative Assembly rags to riches to story. The launch was a complete mess and the original campaign a real slog but the modding community came to the rescue as always seems to be the case with CA games. Then we got Immortal Empires which made a world of difference. I'm excited to see chorfs in the year. 5. Into the Breach Tight and expertly curated. I never felt like a loss was anything other than my fault. 4. Inscryption What a joy this was to explore and uncover, each subsequent layer added to my enjoyment of the game.  3. Perfect Tides Meredith Gran's first foray into gaming was a homerun I think. It did an admirable job encapsulating what growing up in the 90s was like.  2. Elden Ring This was the epitome of whatever the equivalent of event television is for gaming to me and my friends. It consumed us utterly for at least a few weeks and I enjoyed every second. I only wish I could have convinced them all to get it for the PC so I could take advantage of the modding community which sound like they're doing some pretty neat things.  1. Disco Elysium I believe this was my GOTY in 2019 and/or 2020 and probably still tops my all-time list. I came back to it this year with the complete voice acting and that only improved my opinion of it, even new Cuno grew on me eventually. Levin fucked around with this message at 18:15 on Jan 1, 2023 |
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Jan 1, 2023 05:02
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When I make my list, I am a Year Purist and only include 2022 releases in the official rankings. That said, I spent a lot of time outside those games lol, so time to acknowledge those first: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUdMLqzIxT0  Tekken 7 (250+ hours) 2022 was the year I "fought with honor." It really helps to have a good community to play with and the one from the forums has been great. Thanks to the People's Republic of Gamers and Ms_Unsmiley for making this a real thing! https://i.imgur.com/D0OrQ5Z.mp4 Magic the Gathering: Arena (200+ hours) Magic is an on-again, off-again thing in my life, and this was an on year. It helped that this year's first set was a mashup of the classic Japanese-inspired Kamigawa setting and cyberpunk, which pushed all my buttons (unfortunately there isn't an actual Hatsune Miku card)  Persona 5 Stikers (50 hours) My real-time playthrough of Persona meant that how I spent my summer vacation also included Persona 5 Strikers. This second time around, it still remains a great experience: action combat that still retains the feel of the key characters and summoning; the storytelling also benefits from moving past the constraints and setup requirements of the original to really just spend time with these characters, which is what most players probably want!  Parasite Eve (10 hours) My other real-time playthrough was the quintessential Christmas game, Parasite Eve, which really cut into my last-minute playtime this past week lol. It was ultimately worthwhile, however -- the game is a nostalgia bomb on all fronts and the score by Yoko Shimomura still holds up as one of the classics. Other games I played this year that didn't qualify Critters for Sale, Neon White, Stacklands, Samurai Shodown V Special, Magic Sword, Severed Steel, Outriders: Worldslayer, Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker patches, Vampire the Masquerade: Parliament of Knives, Disco Elysium, Dune Spice Wars, Scorn Games I wish I could have put more time in, that could have been contenders: Elden Ring, Soul Hackers 2, Triangle Strategy, Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, Ghostwire Tokyo, Monster Hunter Rise, Taiji, Roadwarden, Sunday Gold, Stray, Vampire the Masquerade: Swansong, Frog Detective 3, Hardspace: Shipbreaker, Chinatown Detective Agency, Chained Echoes, Bayonetta 3, Dwarf Fortress Steam Edition, I was a Teenage Exocolonist, Tunic, Atari 50, Tinykin, Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Prodeus, Live a Live The Top Ten List Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws0Khnzvc4I&list=PLAKA_FqM6wxKdAsofB4NdIh-wA_fRnRtF  10. Vampire Survivors A quick flash of enthrallment. A simple concept, one that is stretched to the limit and eventually made me think whether it was worth all the time it was taking, but until that point thinking through all the builds and the variety of characters was fun. 09. Melatonin Gorgeous art and a hypnotic soundtrack. I hadn't played a rhythm game like this before but once I got into the literal groove, I just flowed my way through the game. Considering I'm often happy for games to not drag out, I was actually left wanting some new levels after all was said and done! 08. Norco The center of my list is the year's fantastic sci-fi story-driven games and they're all basically at the same level for me. Norco captures the grit of a dystopic Louisiana, briskly weaving two storylines where the mystery keeps growing even as you learn more information and grow your mental map (bonus points for any game with a relationship web lol). The lyricism of this game's writing really got me. 07. Citizen Sleeper A game that crystallizes melancholy and hope. I love how the light RPG mechanics -- a few stats feeding into a whole host of dice rolls and checks, a la contemporary rules-light TTRPGs -- give enough crunch to the story progression, to guide you in selecting from the limited options you have at your disposal as an emulated robotic consciousness taking refuge on a space station at the margins. The vignettes that unfold and the characters whose paths intertwine with yours are all touching, which is a testament to the game's concise yet punchy writing.  06. Signalis Absolute mood. Parasite Eve reminded me of how much the PS1 aesthetic is a potent nostalgia trigger for me and this game activates that with precision. I often bounce off survival horror mechanics but these are designed "just right" for how I remember the PS1 classics doing it. The soundtrack is such a banger (listen to "Cigarette Wife" from the playlist if you listen to anything) and the elliptical, fragmented storytelling just gets its hooks into my brain. 05. Rollerdrome This is the game that I hoped Neon White would be. Action that moves at a blistering pace, stylish combat that's all about chaining together sick kills while doing a sweet 540 flip and entering into slomo for a multikill. The developers know how to sketch in the dystopian world of the game's setting, and the unfolding conspiracies, with a light touch that doesn't distract from the action. The Moebius-ish art style and 70s-inflected electro and synth soundtrack just add on to make this such a cohesive package. 04. Victoria 3 The intricacies of a Paradox grand strategy game are hard to convey in a short space, so a story about my political travails through a tumultuous 19th century will have to suffice. Any game that allows me to make the El Salvadorian film industry the envy of the world, and where the bandit queen union leader I was at odds with in one decade ends up being the key political leader that staves off the fascist ascendancy to help usher in the golden age of communism -- well, that's a great game. It's the first one of the Victoria games that has a comprehensible trade system, which is a huge accomplishment lol.  03. Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin I got to kill Chaos, automatic top 3. The combat in this game is some of Team Ninja's best work, and I love how it brings the feel of a lot of iconic Final Fantasy classes to action gameplay -- the dragoon has one of the most satisfying jump attacks in an action game. The story is cheesy and that makes it perfect, and now Frank Sinatra is officially part of the Final Fantasy Universe, a good year 02. Last Call BBS (bonus Zachtronics Solitaire Collection) Back when this seemed like it might be Zach Barth's last game, it felt like a momentous work and the end of an era. That era has apparently not closed, but the structure of this game (lots of smaller activities rather than drilling down on dozens of levels with the same mechanic) jived with me so well. You get to play solitaire! You get to do picross! You get to paint gundams! The fake classic computer interface also pushes nostalgia buttons (perhaps a theme with this list). Even though it's a separate game and thus I won't list it officially, the Solitaire Collection that Zachtronics also released this year is a great companion piece -- the tarot solitaire game in that one is one of their best solitaires, and considering they have enough to make a whole collection, that's high praise from me.    01. Pentiment When a game asks you to solve a mystery, there are a few templates -- it might be something with clearly delineated rules and structure where you can see the pieces and how they fit, like an Obra Dinn or an Ace Attorney. Or it might be a story-driven experience where the "mystery" is simply a device for the story and there's not much for you to puzzle over, like a Dontnod game. The genius of Pentiment is how the game obscures which one of these it is to the very end, and in that ambiguity and tension it made me care about every moment, every decision, and every consequence. The setting of Tassing-Kiersau in 16th-century Germany is so well-realized. Starting off, I was overwhelmed with how many characters and how many plot threads were being presented to me, but the game is careful and patient in leading you through it all, and by the end I felt so connected to this place and its people -- they felt real and meaningful and so any choice I made about them felt so momentous. Everything about this game has so much care put into it. The historical detail and research is obvious (I love that the credits have a full scholarly bibliography) but even seeing how much effort was put into the game's fonts blew me away. This is a game that loves writing, in all its forms and all its shapes, and that just makes me love the game even more. The shortlist: 10. Vampire Survivors 09. Melatonin 08. Norco 07. Citizen Sleeper 06. Signalis 05. Rollerdrome 04. Victoria 3 03. Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin 02. Last Call BBS 01. Pentiment CharlieFoxtrot fucked around with this message at 08:33 on Jan 1, 2023 |
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Jan 1, 2023 05:06
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abelwingnut posted:i've only glossed over the lists in here, but it seems like if you love elden ring, you don't list xc3. and if you love xc3, you don't list elden ring. i get it, very different games. still feels noteworthy, though, especially when i think elden ring will finish first and xc3 second. i didnt play either 
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Jan 1, 2023 05:13
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Defenistrator posted:So don’t think of this as a Top 5 list of games released in 2022 but more so a Top 5 gaming moments for me for 2022. In no particular order: Hi these are cool but if you want your vote to count you need to put them in order and you have until 12pm PST to do so (just under 4 hours). Sorry this is not more polite but it's 4am and I am very drunk and there are lots of posts in this thread 
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Jan 1, 2023 05:17
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Regy Rusty posted:I do not think your generalization is correct op just went over the first ten pages. there are exactly 40 lists where only one of either elden ring or xenoblade chronicles 3 exists in the top 10. there are exactly 5 lists where both exist in the top 10.
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Jan 1, 2023 05:21
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Lol happy new year bud
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Jan 1, 2023 05:24
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Here’s mine. 10. Genshin Impact - the best experience of exploration in any game this year not named Elden Ring. The Sumuru region was stunning in its environmental design. And for once the story was fairly strong as well. 9. Yakuza: Like a Dragon - it took a while for the story to get its hooks on me but once it did I was riveted to the end. Such a wholesome and heartwarming experience. 8. AI Sominum Files: Nirvana Initiative - Not his best story but maybe the strongest when it comes to characters. Personally I am preferring his later works that focus more on strong characterization over crazy plot twists. I went back and played some of his previous games and it showed how much he’s grown as a writer. 7. Judgement - This game’s story sucked me in more than any other Yakuza game. Also Saori may be my favorite character in a Yakuza game. 6. Rewrite - More epic than Key’s usual works; but had tons of humor and heart as well. Also one of my favorite endings in any visual novel. 5.Opus: Star of Starsong - it’s a shame more people don’t know about this game. The story is absolutely stunning and extremely moving. The world building is fantastic, with brief but impactful descriptions of the different places you encounter as you explore the galaxy, that reminded me of the descriptive writing of Inkle or Failbetter games. 4. Case of the Golden Idol - I can count the number of detective games that I think nail the detective aspect on one hand. This is one of them; and maybe the second best after Obra Dinn. 3. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 - Monolith Soft’s most thoughtful, introspective work. With the best cast and stellar world building. Also had the best moment in any game this year, or of any Xenoblade for that matter 2. Elden Ring - So many incredible moments of exploration. I still think Bloodbourne is the best when it comes to level design. But there’s no denying the incredible achievement in open world exploration. 1. Pentiment - Pentiment is a game I can see myself playing several times. Partly to see what effect different choices have. But also because I just loved spending time in that town with those people. And I don’t want to leave. It was the most memorable experience of any game I played this year. Gorgeous visual design, stellar writing that made the people feel real. Just an incredible accomplishment by Josh Sawyer and the team at Obsidian. theblackw0lf fucked around with this message at 05:44 on Jan 1, 2023 |
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Jan 1, 2023 05:26
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This is my first one of these threads, I've already found some neat looking games from reading all your kick rear end posts. Good posts, everyone! 2022 was notable for a lot of reasons, one of which was that I took a poetry workshop this fall and it was a lot of fun. And so, each of my entries gets a poem-pairing, kind of like a wine pairing i guess except you eat it with your eyes and then you burp it out in your brain. 9. Path of Exile code:POE is to me a game about opportunity cost. Maybe you take the keystone that makes you always hit, but you can't deal crits. Maybe you take the keystone that gives you more spell damage if you're at half health. Maybe you take the helmet that makes you hit like a bus but makes you weak to physical damage. There's hundreds of choices you can make, and the more I read the more I get to play the little mind puzzle of fitting them together in ways that address their inherent weaknesses. But mostly these things just exist in my imagination. OlliOlli World code:7. Chorus code:6. Splatoon 3 code:5. Gris code:4. Hades code:3. Breath of the Wild code:2. Elden Ring code:1. Citizen Sleeper code:The narrative texture of Citizen Sleeper reminds me of the best parts of Escape Velocity. For a few hours it took me back to sitting in my childhood kitchen, flying around and trying to get to the bottom of whatever little space opera I had going on. Just a fantastic narrative all around. For Rarity: 9. Path of Exile 8. OlliOlli World 7. Chorus 6. Splatoon 3 5. Gris 4. Hades 3. Breath of the Wild 2. Elden ring 1. Citizen Sleeper External Organs fucked around with this message at 05:56 on Jan 1, 2023 |
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Jan 1, 2023 05:33
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Stux posted:u will have to write "i like this game" after each one of those otherwise your list doesnt count god speed and god bless
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Jan 1, 2023 07:40
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Imho elden ring is very good
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Jan 1, 2023 07:48
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A good poster picked the same goty as me! thats the validation i crave The 7th Guest posted:
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Jan 1, 2023 07:51
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Normally I don’t participate in the annual GoTY threads because I barely play enough games as is (mainly due to the lack of a PC that can play things on medium/high settings and a very tight budget), but I always like reading everyone’s lists because of the huge range of titles and genres represented. It also helps as a general reference for which indie + AA games to buy in a few years, since I tend to get them only if they end up in bundles, giveaways, or on deep enough sale discounts… Anyway, this year had some personal standouts for me that I really wanted to highlight, though, so I guess I’m temporarily delurking to post a list. (Doing it all on the mobile app so please excuse any low-res images, mp4 errors, or formatting issues! It was an extreme pain) e: correction, much more pain than expected after editing this post a million times since nothing worked in the initial upload  10. YuGiOh Master Duel I was curious to see how modern YuGiOh actually plays compared to my understanding from watching the original show years ago (hint: it’s not similar at all!). Being F2P makes it a low barrier to entry at least. Basically picked themes at random based on cool card game art + whatever I got from the initial card packs (which turned out to be Mayakashi, then primarily Unchained after that) and had a good time learning how to maneuver around and beat some of the more popular/strong decks. Haven’t played in months though so I’m 100% sure I would lose in ranked matches now thanks to general power creep.  9. Project Sekai: Colorful Stage Turns out that F2P rhythm games on a smartphone are fun to play! The huge variety in Vocaloid music tracks and constantly updating song playlist makes Colorful Stage stand out from the rest along with its surprisingly decent story + characters. I had played a bit of the Japanese version previously, so I was excited when the worldwide release came out in December last year. Spent a lot of the first 3/4ths of 2022 catching up with the weekly/biweekly events and redoing all of my master rank full combos on old songs, but I eventually got burnt out by the fast event pace and haven’t got back to it. Not looking forward to seeing how badly my skills have deteriorated when I start replaying it…  8. Shadow Tactics: Blade of the Shogun - Aiko’s Choice I’m glad that EGS gave out Shadow Tactics: Blade of the Shogun as a freebie a few years ago, because I would have never heard of it otherwise. The real-time quicksave tactical stealth gameplay is really unique, so I’m glad that the developers have been releasing similar games like Desperados 3 which was also fun. Sneaking around as ninjas makes much more sense than as cowboys though. Since there aren’t too many missions in the new campaign (like 5? 8? I forget), I had waited until the DLC went on deep discount to get it. It’s good despite the short length and the maps are of similar quality to the original - perfect if you just wanted to play more Shadow Tactics. And of course since I had just bought it, EGS is now apparently giving it out for free starting Jan 5-Jan 12. Go figure. I don’t regret buying it though! Aiko’s Choice is also a standalone expansion iirc and doesn’t require the original game to install and play, so I recommend trying it out.  7. Animal Crossing New Horizons: Happy Home Paradise Thanks to Target (or whichever large retailer it was) having a pricing error where people were able to buy multiple copies of the DLC on major discount, I was fortunate enough to get a code from goons in SA Mart for $5. The home decorating portion of ACNH was one of my favorite parts about it, so it was extremely satisfying to be able to focus completely on that with even more furniture options! Another thing I like about the DLC is that it’s super easy to interact with way more villagers than in the base game and have them live on your vacation island - there are a lot of really cool villager designs out there, so I was happy to finally have them in-game. But as is the recurring theme for this year, eventually I got distracted with life and fell off playing part-way through. It’ll be perfect for the next time I want to relax and binge virtual home decorating though.  6. Rune Factory 5 The Rune Factory series is near and dear to my heart when it comes to the farming sim genre. It’s just something about the fast days plus the combination of dungeon crawling, bizarrely in-depth farming mechanics and skill systems, and lots of character dialogue/events that I can’t get enough of. When Neverland shut down their studio in 2013 after RF4’s release on the 3DS, I was bummed that we would never get a sequel. Close to a decade later, imagine my surprise when there was finally news about RF5 being ready for release! RF3 and RF4 are the gold standards of the series imo, but I even enjoyed the more jankier RF1/RF2 games and the 3D Wii games (Frontier and Tides of Destiny) despite all their faults. So judging from how Frontier and ToD went, I was expecting that RF5 would also have some growing pains compared to RF3/4 due to transitioning to 3D. Unfortunately it came with a lot more issues than anticipated! Things like long loading screens in the Switch version, worse textures/environmental design of the village compared to Frontier and Tides of Destiny, far less unique dialogue compared to RF4 (which somehow had new character greeting dialogue almost every single day for like an entire year of gameplay)… Honestly though, I still enjoyed RF5 a lot. The performance issues didn’t bother me since I got used to it, and the basic gameplay loop of farming-fighting-friend making is still plenty addictive to me. Hopefully they can make RF6 with a bunch of improvements.  5. Cook, Serve, Delicious 3! First of all: the soundtrack in this game is catchy as hell and some tracks will never leave your brain. This one still pops up for me from time to time. https://youtube.com/watch?v=aesfIE76h_4 CSD3 is different from 2 in that you’re not running your own restaurant. Instead, you’re working out of a food truck with your android coworkers and trying to win the #1 food truck competition (which also involves shooting at/ramming into the other competitors’ trucks and sabotaging their kitchen equipment) - or something like that, I don’t remember what the plot is. All that matters is the high speed/high pressure gameplay as you have to prepare all the food orders correctly and on time before the customers lose their patience and leave. One of the few games I pursued 100% completion on because it was that addicting for me and ran well on my potato computer. If you think about it, it’s basically like a typing game! (You can technically use a gamepad controller for this. I have no idea why you would do this since there are recipes with like 6-10+ individual ingredients.)   4. Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak Rounding out the Year of the DLC, Sunbreak comes as a complete package and is miles better than the original MH Rise release imo. There’s fun gameplay additions by expanding on the wirebug skill system for all the weapons and adding new move sets switchable on the go (my personal favorites: Switch Axe counter, SnS long distance shield bash, the Lance one where you can repeatedly tackle in any direction), along with crafting improvements like Qurio Augmentation and targeted skill rolls for talismans (which is a blessing since I’m on the Switch version and can’t edit save data). These improvements plus free title updates adding more monsters and repeatable Anomaly investigations make MH Rise: Sunbreak very easy to to sink a lot of time into. Some people describe it as more “arcadey” compared to World but it’s why I like it - it’s bright, colorful, and simple to get right to the hunting action in short 10-30 min pick up and play bursts. It’s one of the games with the most hours played on my list (probably tied with #1) and is a go-to comfort food for me.  3. 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim Vanillaware’s hit sci-fi visual novel finally escapes PlayStation prison and gets a release on the Switch! I had been looking forward to playing this for a long time since I love pretty much all of their catalogue but couldn’t get it because of console restrictions. Please release more of your games on Steam and Switch, Vanillaware. Also free Muramasa from the Vita (RIP, still my favorite form factor for handheld). The free-form nature of how you advance people’s story routes meant that some of the twists hit me way harder vs. if I progressed in a different order. I was comparing impressions with a friend who already beat it as I was playing through the game, and it was interesting to see where we differed on interpretation etc. The SRPG portions were also surprisingly fun, and the latter missions definitely got challenging since I was playing on the highest difficulty - barely beat the final mission by the skin of my teeth with hordes and hordes of enemies + missiles flying everywhere oh god One small thing I was personally impressed with about 13 Sentinels was its options settings, and I wish more games would emulate it. Along with granular text speed and auto advance options, there were a bunch of other neat things I can’t remember off the top of my head right now - but it was nice to see and made reading/playing the game a lot more comfortable. It kills me when text heavy games don’t have basic auto advance or skip cutscene functions (looking at you Harvestella, unless if they changed it from the demo). Anyway game good, highly recommend if you want to spend time reading. Eat some yakisoba pan while you’re at it. Obligatory protag route ranking (they’re all good though, just my preference on character personality + story developments): Hijiyama (+ Okino) Natsuno Miura Megumi (her walking around with a gun for a lot of the scenes in the beginning was very unexpected lmao) Sekigahara Iori (+ Miwako!!!) Kisaragi Yuki Shu Juro Shinonome Ogata Gouto Honestly you could ask me on a different day and the list would be heavily rearranged. Hijiyama definitely #1 though  2. Triangle Strategy Hello I received this for Christmas and have been playing nonstop for the past week, please help (don’t) I played the demo for this early on in 2022 and put it on my “definitely play in a few years list once it goes on deep sale”, since it catered well to my interests with the detailed world building, political intrigue, and lots of dialogue (visual novel SRPG with the promise of a lot of character development? Always a fan). Admittedly, the first 3 hours(?) or so that the demo covers is pretty slow and didn’t have the greatest words to action ratio - glad to report that rest of the game is waaaay better in quality though with a good balance of both. One of the off-hand suggestions I saw was to start the game off on Hard since you can adjust the difficulty later, and I’m really glad that I followed that. The lack of permadeath makes it a lot easier to do high risk-high reward strategies, and it’s led to some real nail-biters for the battles so far. First time I really felt this in full force was the battle with General Avlora and trying to keep the town safe (if you know, you know. Hughette indisputable MVP). I don’t do each mock battle more than once since I don’t think grinding is necessary in this game, and it’s been a lot more fun for me to go into everything underleveled since the characters quickly catch up in experience anyway. Anyway plot keeps happening, the war is getting crazier chapter by chapter, and I hope things go well for Serenoa and his merry band of misfits   1. eBASEBALL Powerful Pro Baseball 2022 So, Power Pro (or PawaPuro, whatever people want to call it). Did you know that Konami has been publishing this franchise since the 1990s? Probably not, since it’s been pretty much Japan-exclusive except for sporadic releases like MLB Power Pros for the PS2 and a few other ones. If I had to describe these games briefly: it’s arcade-style anime baseball incorporating real life statistics from current and retired professional players, and individual + team strengths fluctuate in game with updates throughout the IRL sports season. Another way to describe the gameplay might be Super Mega Baseball 2 and 3 meets Tokimeki Memorial meets serious NPB league simulator. There’s a lot of granularity in terms of how you can play this game, and that’s due to the wide variety of game modes included. Want to play the mode that’s mainly visual novels and just occasionally play actual baseball? Sure. Do character creation for a first year professional baseball player, raise your stats, go all in on manual batting/pitching operation for matches, and lead your designated NPB team to victory? You can do that. Or do you want to do away with the real-time action entirely and do a team management raising sim with generic character randomization and SRPG-like? (or more like turn-based) gameplay choices? No problem! There’s also multiplayer where you can make rosters of your characters and play against other people’s teams. I’m specifically highlighting 2022 because they’ve expanded on some of the modes in ways that I highly enjoyed compared to previous titles. Sure, they added additional story modes and a bunch of new mini games with Power Park, but the main culprit for my high save file time is the My Life mode. Konami basically revamped a lot of how it worked this year compared to previous editions, including a much improved/streamlined skill learning system and an official option to support character creation as a two-way player; why yes, I would like to play as the next Shohei Ohtani! (Unrelated: speaking of other famous Japanese MLB baseball players, Ichiro was also added in this year and he’s done some commercials) https://i.imgur.com/pSLn3oP.mp4 https://i.imgur.com/yqgh5eL.mp4 If you insist on manually playing all the at-bats + pitching whole innings like I do and don’t automate matches, the time adds up. Super fun, though. Technically there’s also an option to role play 100% of the game (i.e. besides swinging, you have to manually control the camera, base running, defense, tossing the ball) but that’s way, way too complicated for me. At this point I think I’m at about year 6 or 7 of My Life so far, and it’s been a blast training up a mediocre character to something extremely powerful with even more room to grow. Along with the actual baseball gameplay, there are also a bunch of missions to do, home base leveling systems, hobbies to rank up, etc. The max timeframe for My Life is 20 years, so there’s plenty of game left for whenever I just want to pick up my Switch, hit some baseballs, and keep my winning streaks of the annual league + worldwide tournaments.  Anyway, if you have a passing interest in baseball or sports games and can read Japanese (or just do everything by feel, nothing stopping you), I highly recommend this game! It’s surprisingly easier than I expected to buy digitally now too vs importing a physical copy. Power Pro is great and I love it. Also it is extremely satisfying to hit home runs in this game! https://i.imgur.com/CqGmTFc.mp4 Bonus: here’s a 45-min compilation of anime baseball theme songs from all the games: https://youtube.com/watch?v=9CwaUSmTVnI The condensed shortlist: 10. YuGiOh Master Duel 9. Project Sekai: Colorful Stage 8. Shadow Tactics: Blade of the Shogun - Aiko’s Choice 7. Animal Crossing New Horizons: Happy Home Paradise 6. Rune Factory 5 5. Cook, Serve, Delicious 3! 4. Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak 3. 13 Sentinels 2. Triangle Strategy 1. eBASEBALL Powerful Pro Baseball 2022 Judging from other demos I had a chance to play + other previews I’ve seen, games like Harvestella, Potionomics, Potion Craft, Pentiment, and Strange Horticulture would definitely fall on my GoTY list if I had the chance to play them. Still waiting for Sakuna to go on deeper discount, too. But that’ll be for another year I suppose! Nondevor fucked around with this message at 08:43 on Jan 1, 2023 |
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Jan 1, 2023 07:51
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10: Monolith Monolith is a very stylish and tightly controlling bullet hell roguelike. If I wasn't awful at bullet hells I could easily see sinking a lot of time into this, but as is I couldn't even beat the final boss. This low ranking reflects more on my lack of skills than the game. 9: Vampire the Masquerade: Coteries of New York Coteries of New York is a visual novel that gets by entirely on atmosphere. The art, the music, and much of writing very effectively sells the lush yet oppressive vibe of New York's supernatural underbelly. Unfortunately, the plot and characterization often falls flat, largely due to the decision to make the protagonist a blank slate with no connection to the story as it occurs. Even so, ~4 hours of cool vibes left me satisfied. 8: Gnosia Gnosia is a single-player social deduction game, which sounds like something that should not work at all. I honestly can't explain why it does, but the mechanical focus of the game does make it somehow satisfying. The metaprogression being RNG-gated is slightly irritating, but overall I enjoyed it a fair deal. 7: Magic the Gathering: Online MTGO is most comprehensive online client for playing Magic: The Gathering online. In most respects, especially in the monetization, it is a very, very bad videogame. I do not recommend playing it. Why is on the list, then? Well, I only got this list written on the 31st because I couldn't stop doing Cube drafts. At that point, it felt disingenuous to leave it off. 6: Peglin Peglin is an Early Access pachinko roguelike strongly inspired by Peggle and Slay the Spire. The game is obviously not finished at this point, but what content is there is quite interesting. The variety in enemies, boards, and builds makes every run feel very different and I'm curious to see what the finished game will look like. Also, the right build can put so many explosions onscreen that the game slows to ~3 FPS, which is always a plus. 5: Victoria III Victoria III is a grand strategy game set in the Victorian era and focused on economic development. It is that central, pervading economic focus that sets it apart from other games in the genre. The result is that every subsystem in the game and every decision the player makes feels integrated and coherent in a way that was not the case for Parodox's previous games. The effect is this: this is the first Paradox game where I have finished an entire campaign. This games, and all of the ones above it on the list, could easily have been my GOTY in a different year. 4: Pokemon Violet It's a good Pokemon game! The much ballyhooed performance issues are real, but what would be crippling in an action game end up ranging from charming to mildly irritating in a turn-based JRPG. Everything else about the game is great. It's the best written Pokemon game ever (not that that's saying much) and the open-world elements end up letting you pace the game how you want to. 3: Hades Hades was the 2020 GOTY for a reason. It's beautiful, the gameplay is tight, and the writing is fun and charming. There are a few small flaws, like some of the metaprogression being RNG-gated, but overall Hades avoids most of the repetition problems that come with the roguelike genre. 2: I was a Teenage Exocolonist I was a Teenage Exocolonist is a lifesim/narrative adventure game set during the colonization of an exosolar planet. It's a game that I couldn't stop thinking about during the entire time I was playing it. There were two things that most impressed me about the game. First, the game has an impressive breadth of content. During my first playthrough of the game, I had not idea there were sapient aliens running around and in general it took 4+ playthoughs before I really felt like much was being repeated. This breadth of content is made more accessible by the structure of the story, which has the protagonists entire life set as a time loop. In subsequent playthroughs, you can draw on knowledge of your past lives to either access new content or streamline bits you've already seen. The second thing that impressed me was how well the writing weaves together disparate tones. The game treats starvation from crop failure and your friend trying to hide his new pet bug with equal focus, but it never feels dissonant. 1: Elden Ring Elden Ring is a very large game. Not merely in the sense that it has an impressively sprawling gameworld, but in the sense that there is so much going on at each point. It's a 100+ hour game that I completed and immediately wanted to play again. I've never had a game make me feel that way before. Most games, even very good ones, wear out their welcome much more quickly than that. The reason, I think, is that everything is so carefully designed. Every enemy in the game is placed exactly where it is for the purpose of creating a specific experience. As I write this, I find that I am gushing excessively, but there is really no way I can overstate how revelationary the scale + tightness of was for me. Elden Ring: It's good!
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Jan 1, 2023 08:03
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2022 GOTY List Honorable Mentions: The other Monster Prom games, which I'd only started playing in earnest this year. Literally every mainline Ace Attorney game, which I replayed to stream for friends. Peglin. Gundam Evolution (RIP). Haven. Warriors of the Nile 2. Vampire Survivors. 20 Minutes Till Dawn, the other game in the VS genre I actually like. Icarus. For me, 2022 was the year of co-op experiences and, for single player games, Discord streaming for my friends. I don't have anything deep or heartfelt to say about that. I just really enjoying playing games with friends this year and every game on this list was played either in co-op or streamed for a live, voicechat audience. I will be briefer than I usually am, as I am cutting this really close to the deadline and I want to get back to gaming for the new year 10 - Power Wash Simulator - Well pardner, it's time to clean up this town The chillest way to hang out with friends while someone streams a podcast on discord. https://giphy.com/gifs/EAXkYytHiDThy7yaPv 9 - Gunfire Reborn - Repeatedly hunting the bear that lives in the pole (NOT a polar bear!!) While some people on my friends list picked up Destiny 2 I decided to blow up the entire Spiritual Realm as a Chinese woodland creature and managed to lure some other friends over to hang out. This game ate up a few good months, love to see it. 8 - Terraria (patch 1.4.4 Labor of Love) - One of these days I'm going to clean up the entirety of the hallow and the crimson/corruption. I came back to this game after half a decade and so many things have changed for the better, but it's still as good a time as I remember.  7 - Earth Defense Force 5 - "Humanoid Aliens?! They've got 2 arms, 2 legs and a head - almost identical to humans!" I love this game so much I actually unlocked the online Armor and Weapon Limits legitimately. If you've never played this you have no idea how much of an ordeal that actually is. I wasn't expecting there to be as much story in this one, and it's good! It's delightfully cheesy but hits all the right notes, as a reboot and origin story for STORM TEAM, the legendary heroes of the EDF. 6 - Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries (With Mods) - what the gently caress when did this game become good? I only started playing this game last week but I'm obsessed. I've already grabbed all 150 gigabyte modding tools off EGS. Also, I signed up for EGS, after years of not giving a poo poo. Much like HBS Battletech, the inclusion of a Career Mode dlc and a healthy modding scene breathed much needed life into the game. Though arguably this game started out in a much worse place. As Battletech nerds are some of the most detail-oriented tabletop gamers on the planet, the mods available for this game vastly increase the complexity of its company management and mech design elements. And I am here for it. 5 - Ace Combat 7 - Stick with Trigger and you'll make it. I got this game on sale on a whim and uh holy poo poo. I think I need to go back and play all the other Ace Combats now https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsvmvxgVrUo&t=355s Obligatory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGZJnLYvio0 4 - River City Girls 2 - Local idiots beat up entire city, again This squeaked in at the end of the year but I was immediately charmed once again by this series. An excellent little mini-rpg taking place entirely in a single city you can wander around and explore. It's not quite the same tone or vibe as the Yakuza series but it hits similar enough notes and lets me team up with friends. Even more than the last game, this is a love letter to the defunct developer Technos, creators of the Kunio (River City) and Double Dragon games, with easter eggs, references, and secrets galore. Fun, funny, and full of personality.    3 - Elden Ring - Ranni ftw A game I respect as a masterpiece, the first half was some of the most magical and fascinating open world exploration I've had the pleasure to experience. Not coincidentally, this is also where I felt the world at its most free and open. While I found some other games more compelling and emotionally resonant, on a personal level, sometimes I still think about riding around Liurnia, looking up at the distant city of the gods and remembering the sense of wonder I felt. It's not my personal number one but I'm glad of the two months I spent with it, and I'm glad it's the clear winner for the position of game of the year.  2 - Monster Camp 3: Monster Roadtrip - This is a time loop and we're all going to die. Of fun! The third and most recent release of the well known cult classic partygame+VN wombo combo franchise by the Barcelona-based developers Beautiful Glitch. I really only got into this series this year and while the first game's cast was the best by a long shot, the second game had funnier events and more robust ways to mess around, mechanically. Unfortunately, again, the first game had a much funnier and more charming cast of romanceable monsters, so for the third game Beautiful Glitch decided to split the difference. With the cast of both 1 and 2, and a completely new stat system and end goal, Monster Roadtrip is a huge and winding misadventure I loved replaying every few nights. Again, with friends! Monster Roadtrip has so much content and so much art that it makes the setting feel more alive, which amuses me as the Monster Realm pretty much just started as a surreal parody of modern America. And it still is, mind you, but there's also just so much of it that it's become a fun little hell-country to revisit time and again.           1 - Great Ace Attorney Chronicles (again) - "No games now. Time is of the essence!" I actually replayed the entire mainline Ace Attorney series for my friends on Discord. I'm one of those fans of the series who believes that, really, there is no such thing as a bad Ace Attorney game. There are Ace Attorney games that are better than others in the series, and others that are worse, but even when the franchise is at its weakest it's still a great time. But the Great Ace Attorney Chronicles? This is Ace Attorney at its best. Well, in terms of whodunits, arguably individual cases from previous games outdo the GAAs, such as the final cases of the third and sixth games, and the investigation minigames in GAA are more about sprucing up the presentation of information than actually presenting an interesting puzzle to solve. But! The music, characters, and story are the strongest they've ever been. In replaying the entire franchise, you get a feeling for the different styles of the various playable characters you inhabit. Phoenix Wright is prone to bluffing, delaying tactics, and scrambling for any advantage he can get when he's constantly on the back foot. After the first trilogy ends, he's a legend in his field and much more crafty, clever, and confident, but he's still the king bullshitter. Contrast this to his ancestor, Ryunosuke Naruhodou, who is much more earnest, inquisitive, and, for better or worse, honest. One must imagine Nick inherited his craftiness from Ryunosuke's legal aide and love interest, Susato Mikotoba. Who, it must be said, is easily the more competent of the duo. I think, when 2023 hits, I might replay it again. There's some conversations and achievements I haven't gotten, and the music is still a hell of a vibe. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCd4hq14WVg Condensed list for Rarity 10 - Power Wash Simulator 9 - Gunfire Reborn 8 - Terraria 7 - Earth Defense Force 5 6 - Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries 5 - Ace Combat 7 4 - River City Girls 2 3 - Elden Ring 2 - Monster Roadtrip 1 - Great Ace Attorney Chronicles Runa fucked around with this message at 08:08 on Jan 1, 2023 |
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Jan 1, 2023 08:04
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Runa posted:5 - Ace Combat 7 - Hell yeah you do. Glad to see more Ace Combat on the list, go back and start with 4! Skip the PS3 entry!
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Jan 1, 2023 08:11
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10. Uncharted 4 Remastered I played Uncharted 4 around when it first came out in 2016? Then I played Lost Legacy in 2017 but left it on the back burner for a while and eventually finished in 2019. I replayed Uncharted 1 and 2 in 2020, then 3 in 2021. This year, playing the remaster of Uncharted 4 means I've been playing these games around once a year for the past few years not counting the time I spent playing them originally and having Uncharted 1 and 2 be the first PlayStation games I ever Platinum'd. I really just love this series and everything they borrowed from and contributed to gaming through every iteration. Even though it's part of a trend of Naughty Dog rereleasing games sooner than they need to, I'm happy to re-experience one of the most fun and cinematic action adventure games I've ever played on Sony's newest console. As a side note, it's nicer to have too many remakes of a game if every new version is actually the best and most capable version (if you don't care about multiplayer, that is), than for a game to never get rereleased and be stuck on a two-generation old console that you're never actually going to hunt down just to play Metal Gear Solid again. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 9. Bloodborne This was number 2 on my list in 2020, and in 2021 Demon's Souls and Dark Souls 1 were in my number 2 and number 1 spots. This year, Dark Souls 3 and Elden Ring are in the number 2 and 1 spots, respectively. The Souls games, along with the Uncharted games, are now S Tier gaming experiences for me and gaming for me has changed across the board thanks to having played them. This year, I jammed through Bloodborne again just for a kick between big releases. When I first ever fired it up as my first Souls game ever, I never ever would have imagined that I would: - play a Souls game at all - be able to handle their difficulty and beat, let alone Play, one - once finished, actually replay one "quickly" just to bust through the campaign again for kicks Playing through Bloodborne again after everything I learned on my first playthrough and everything I learned playing other entries in the series just made it a no-brainer and a total blast to get through. I was pleasantly surprised by some of the bosses that gave me a hard time the first time around where I was able to cut through them with relative ease, and then I was also pleasantly surprised at the bosses who still pack a punch and humble you regardless of how good you think you've gotten. No matter which game ends up in what position on a ranked list of all the Souls games, I'm pretty sure Bloodborne will almost always top the list of games in the series I'm most willing to fire up from the start again just because I have downtime. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 8. Tunic This is only so high up on my list because I didn't get a chance to actually finish it, and I'm not sure how much longer I have to go in it. Truth be told, I bounced off of it not because I don't like it, but because it just feels like a lot to consume. I actually really love everything about this game. It's cryptic, it has great music, it doesn't hold your hand, it thoughtfully borrows mechanics/outlines from legendary games (Souls, Zelda) that, while not exactly subtle, are not shoehorned in without care and finesse to deliver a tight, intentional experience. I'm really eager to either pick this back up and run through it, or just chance it and pick up where I left off and finally finish it. Either way, my goal is to roll credits on this next year and I expect it to make another appearance on the list in a higher position. Right now, this is the game on my list with my highest expectations for what it will be like to actually get through the whole thing. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 7. Ghost of Tsushima: Iki Island + Legends I was so surprised when I begrudgingly gave GoT a chance last year and it actually drew me in and made me because I was feeling the FOMO from people saying it was a great game + it getting a thorough technical enhancement for PS5 + wanting to consume Sony first party titles and maximize the breadth of my PlayStation gaming experience (idk how to not make that sound like poo poo, but go with it) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 6. Neon White This is my most recently played game on this list, I just picked it up on a whim like a week and a half ago, and right out of the gate I stayed up way later than I should have blasting through every medal on as many stages as I could. This game intrigued me from everything I read and saw about it, but I was skeptical that anything could really live up to the Mirror's Edge experience I've been longing for ever since I played that game back in, what, like 2009 or something? The hype is real. This game is phenomenal to play. It's like if Celeste was a 3D FPS and the point of the game was to make you better at playing the game. Even the anime story stuff, which is normally my kryptonite, feels tongue in cheek in a way that totally makes me laugh and appreciate. I think some quote from the creator was that he created Donut Country for "everybody" and he wanted his next game, Neon White, to be not as palatable for most people and for it to really only appeal to a small group of freaks who like this kind of thing. It's me, I'm the kind of freak who likes this kind of thing. I'm really glad a game like Neon White exists, I'm really glad I get to play it, and just like Tunic, I imagine this is going to have a higher place on the list next year when I finally get through it all. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 5. Returnal: Ascension Returnal rules. This is legit the one game on my PS5 that's never getting deleted to make space for anything else, especially now that there's an "endless" mode that I can fire up when I want to turn my brain off and shoot lasers at alien bugs. As far as I can get in the Tower of Sisyphus mode doesn't really matter. If I get farther than my previous attempt, that's great, but will happen rarely. I'm no slouch, and I think I do a pretty good job as far as normal humans are concerned, but I don't really care about performance as much as I care about going as fast as possible, being reckless but careful, and trying to get better and smoother at the game each time I run through it. If I die, I die, and I just keep going, and it's a blast every time. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 4. God of War Ragnarok I've complained about this game a lot in the PS5 thread, but the fact is: this is a fantastic game. It's essentially everything I loved about the last installment plus a whooole lot more. The problem is that, I think this game gets in its own way more than it needs to or should and it suffers unnecessarily for it. It doesn't need to be locked to this "single-camera" thing that robs periodic moments of their ability to be truly grand and epic, the way a story about gods and dragons and realms should be. And the traversal choices that stuck around from the previous game that were a slog are basically all back and are even more glaring bc of how much has been added to this game. The last one wasn't as massive, so the slog traversal could be overlooked a bit more, but in a year when Elden Ring basically perfectly enhanced the mechanics of a long running series to accommodate for an open world, GoW has no excuse. Anyway this game is really good and the combat is depth, robust, and seriously fun. I just wish it wasn't as restricted as it is and it would have wound up being a much better game overall and maybe one of the best ever. As it stands, it feels like a really long and expertly crafted expansion to the last game. Not a bad thing, but not the showstopper I thought it might have been. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 3. Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe I first played The Stanley Parable on my macbook a bunch of years ago with just the trackpad and keyboard; no mouse. The beautiful thing about the game is that, bc it's such a simple idea and execution, you don't really need more than that at all. Hell you could play this thing entirely with just a keyboard and have a good experience. Point is, I really haven't stopped thinking about The Stanley Parable since I first played it on a tiny laptop screen with rudimentary inputs. I told as many people as I could about The Stanley Parable whenever I met someone new or talked to someone about being into video games. Maybe I'm an inexperienced dullard when it comes to what will impress me about a game playing with the concept of "knowing" it's a game, but I just love everything about how The Stanley Parable doesn't feel like a game as much as it feels like a conversation with the games creator. In so many games, I'm always looking for where there was an invisible texture added to prevent the player from accessing certain areas just because the game doesn't want you to vs what the game tells you your character should be able to do. Maybe that sounds weird, but I enjoy poking around and testing the limits of the game world I'm inhabiting so I know what I can reasonably expect or not. Can I jump off of this cliff for no reason and die? No? Ok the devs must not have wanted to (or had time) to code in what happens if I could. Can I launch over this knee-high wall obviously low enough for my player character to easily step over like I can with clearly designated and marked similar height walls? No? Ok the devs must not have wanted (or had time) to code in what happens if I could. In The Stanley Parable, all of the decisions are deliberate, all of the things you can and can't do are strictly the point of the game itself, not a byproduct of whatever the game is that you should be paying attention to and not trying to go in directions you shouldn't. I've had three separate friends over my apartment this year who I sat down, fired up Stanley Parable, nuked my save file, and insisted they start playing without any instruction from me at all. Each reaction (whether impressed or only slightly amused or whatever) was a joy for me to experience bc it felt like I could live through another person re-experiencing for the first time what it was like for a video game to do what The Stanley Parable does to and with the player. It's a way for me to nonverbally communicate to other people, just by showing them this game, that media can surprise you and play with your expectations and tell you it knows you're experiencing it and... just... idk. I'm afraid I've typed all of this in stream of consciousness and I probably sound all r/ImThirteenAndThisIsDeep or whatever, but I just love this game, and I'm actually moving it up a place in my list after writing all of this. Sorry God of War. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2. Dark Souls 3 I have 58 minutes left to submit this list so I won't go into much more detail here (anyone reading these? hello to the mods/thread runners who actually count and tally these - thanks for your time and effort!) Dark Souls 3 takes what is excellent about DS1 and Bloodborne and makes something nearly equally as excellent as those games. For a lot of it, I felt like I was kinda going through the motions, but in the last third + the DLC, I was extremely locked in and in the zone. I loved fighting the Soul of Cinder and hearing the pling pling plong music, knowing that this was the culmination of a trilogy that has such a huge impact on the gaming world. As loving corny as it is to say, it made me feel like I was sharing an experience with the whole community even though I was doing it alone. I love this series, I love this game. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. Elden Ring You reach a site of grace in a snowy mountain range, you meet a guy with a weird hat talking about traveling below the Erdtree. He's shouting "may chaos take the world!" and it's weird and rad the way a dark fantasy character should be. The companion NPC tells you not to do it, but you're intrigued. You start looking for ways to go below the Erdtree. You rummage around in the sewers below Leyndell, you get lost in its labyrinthian pipes. You eventually find a lift that takes you down a deep plunge. You fight a boss, another boss, more descending. You find a secret alter you can go behind. You find a deep vertical room full of bones and planks. You've played Bloodborne before and know what it's like to do Souls game platforming. You die a bunch of times but you know getting to the bottom is going to be worth it somehow, even if there's nothing there, just to say you did it. Maybe leave a message for another player or find one from someone else who was brave/bored enough to keep trying. You get to the bottom and the floor gives out --- how far below the surface are you at this point? How deep does this world go? You continue on and go even lower, there are thick tree branches and vines and huge bees buzzing around. You see a message from another player hinting for you to check the map --- everything's gone! A whole open world of maps pieced together and sites of interest visited - gone. You plunge deeper and lower and a whole new part of the world opens up. This game world grows and grows and unfolds more than you ever thought it possibly could, and it's all painstakingly intentional and filled with lore and feels alive. The above is a gaming experience I will never forget and Elden Ring is the best game of the year because of that and so SO SO much more ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 10. Uncharted 4 Remastered 9. Bloodborne 8. Tunic 7. Ghost of Tsushima Iki Island + Legends 6. Neon White 5. Returnal Ascension 4. God of War Ragnarok 3. The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe 2. Dark Souls 3 1. Elden Ring
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Jan 1, 2023 08:15
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just as a general fyi I believe aikos choice will be free on epic starting on like the 5th? shadow tactics does indeed whip rear end so I'm looking forward to playing the expansion. if you've played ST you will probably also like desperados e, and vice versa, if anyone out there has tried one but not the other Edit: oh wait this was said and I missed it lmao still play these games
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Jan 1, 2023 08:15
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my 2022 goty post is here, finally, after putting it off until the last min again … unfortunately this year i didn’t really Game as much let alone complete as many, so this will be shorter than last years; unless noted otherwise i haven’t completed them either (tho i tried to list stuff i went at least slightly into) also i'm too  to put pics this year so,10. pokemon shining pearl 9. digital devil story 2 8. smt1 gba 7. story of seasons trio of towns 6. smt3 (freedom + tde) 5. fe8 sacred trilogy 4. pokemon violet 3. fe6 project ember 2. live a live 1. kirby and the forgotten land 10. pokemon shining pearl this game was a very cute remake of a classic of mine  unfortunately there's like, 5% of the plat changes i was expecting which kind of put a damper on my score; i gotta get back to it at some point9. digital devil story: megami tensei 2 this is the first megaten game to be, effectively Not based off a book and you know what? it holds up pretty well, feeling kind of like a proto mainline megaten game with a destroyed tokyo and saviors going out to help the common folk against demons! unfortunately they didn’t invent a comp minimap yet so unless you like looking up maps or busting out graph paper then that's quite the barrier to entry (there's also the snes remake of ddstory 1 and 2 called kyuuyaku megami tensei which has a minimap + extra QoL but it really hurts the music of 2, and the aesthetics as well, also they moved the level up theme in this into the name screen which you will hear for like 10 secs per game before never again????) also it's like, 100x faster than ddstory1 so far on autobattle which is another plus 8. shin megami tensei 1 (gba) the minimap in this doesn’t suck like snes smt1 and the official (now unavailable) localization, which can be jammed into the gba ver now, means names and stuff are Generally consistent to the newer games, and it carries over all the QoL the ps1 version too!! plus u get Extra Unlockable Lore it's basically refined ddstory 2, though you start out in a 90s tokyo with some spooky stuff happening instead downsides are that the music and sfx take a Massive hit, being a gba port, and also oh god why is the mall so huge (also don’t check pascals status in the cathedral of shadows; maybe that was a ps1 bug too???) 7. story of seasons trio of towns since i hacked a new 3ds xl i got on ebay in 2022 and did a transfer, i was able to slap a lot of stuff on there and one of those things was this game! its a real farming classic for sure, with a ton of stuff to unlock what with the, well, 3 towns im only like at the end of summer year 1 so far but its a purestrain farm sim through and through; theres only really minor issues i have so far like less seasonal bg music than stardew (also it sucks you can’t be gay without a fan patch)6. shin megami tensei hd remaster (freedom + tde) last year i said i had to beat smt3 on freedom as well, and you know what? right at the start of this year i did!! i did the tde first before 2022, and then went back to my other save and did freedom since i branched my save before the cutoff, and they were both wonderful times (though i think i prefer freedom a tad more) minus some slight QoL jank and dungeons dragging on a tad too long, this game is a classic for any rpg fan5. fire emblem: sacred trilogy i love fe8 (the sacred stones) and i discovered this hack a few months ago! so far it's pretty cool and there's a lot of variance in stuff like whether you want a smart ai or a lot of skills or w/e also there's casual mode in this??? im playing it on my 3ds though so, im living On The Edge 4. pokemon violet i'm not super far in this game yet but so far everythings been a delight and i like just looking at wild pokemon, slight jank with flickering shadows and whatnot aside (god i hope the devs stop getting crunched so hard) 3. fire emblem 6: project ember this was my first ever playthrough of anything fe6 (the binding blade) related, being a hack of the original game while adding a lot of extra bells and whistles and you know what? it was a blast! though there are some frustrating moments and the somewhat thin cast/plot kind of hurt it, and the fact that barely anyone except roy and merlinus get the lion's share of dialogue isn’t so great either, but other than that if you like classic fe you’ll most likely enjoy this also wolt and gwendolyn were my mvps along with lilina 💪 (i hope they can figure out a way to add a support log too) 2. live a live (remake) beautiful remake of a classic rpg and a so far fun dub along with excellent music by yoko shimomura push this to the near top of my list, even though i’ve only completed 3 stories so far 💃 1. kirby and the forgotten land this game was incredible stuff!! it was an absolute blast to play, the music was fun, and i loved seeing kirby's adventures (finally in full 3d!!) also the final power is op as gently caress,  honorable mentions: persona 2: eternal punishment (psp) after digging around to find a way to jam my psp p2 IS data into my comp so i could do the save game bonus the fan tl had. i was only really able to play like the first 10 mins… but you know what?? i was mega hyped that there's finally a way to play a version of EP that isn’t kind of a janky old version!!! i’ll probably get back to this at some point too harvestella after transferring my demo data i played a bit more of this game and it’s real cool! unfortunately the controls feel kind of janky in a lot of ways and idk if you can rebind them or add a auto swing the camera back behind u button also you can’t change your hair/eye color after character creation which is bizarre, hopefully they add that at some point sega ages phantasy star i played like an hour of this after getting it on sale, it seems nice and i like a lot of the QoL so far etrian odyssey 5 i'm only like 3 floors into this after transferring over my old demo data and hacking the 3ds and it's cool! classic EO, tho idk how it’ll rank vs 4 shin megami tensei 5 i finally beat the first boss after dropping the difficulty from hard and then put it down for a few months now… one of these days i’ll get back to this!! super robot wars w i’ve only played 1 stage but so far the fan tl seems great and also robots punching other robots is always fun animal crossing new horizons i was finally able to get all the animals into the museum (even the diving ones) and Hell Yes!!! i hope the next AC is great like this one too dishonorable mentions: digital devil story: megami tensei 1 don’t play this game. its somehow bizarrely slow especially when autobattling, clunky af, and the plot is thin as a wafer if you Must play this game, play the kyuuyaku megami tensei remake for a better QoL at the cost of a better aesthetic (rip the cute anime portraits on the status screen + izanami) and music
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Jan 1, 2023 08:31
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Booky we should both play Live a Live in 2023. Also there's 15 minutes left... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTicU8jklyI
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Jan 1, 2023 08:44
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i apologize for my rushed list, i have pictures i'm editing in, including a custom one for my number 1 pick 8. somerville how is this game so underrated? I dont want to say too much about it, but it's from one of the creators of Inside and it plays like it, but a little more 3d, but not that much, and it's like if Inside was War of the Worlds. It rules and you should play it if you have game pass. 7. Tunic Initially I played this for like 20 minutes on game pass and was like that was cool, but i get it. and didnt play it again until it was released on Playstation 5, and holy gently caress i'm an idiot, there's so much going on in this game, the in game manual, the made up language, the interesting take on perspective, etc. and like even the music apparently has it's own complex set of rules that's directly tied to the rest of the cryptic stuff in the gane. I was also pleasantly surprised to find the combat and gamepaly in general was much more Soulsborne than Zelda, and I just read an interview with the creator who said that he was intentionally trying to capture the feel of bloodborne, which is my goty 2015. 6 SIFU I've been dying to play a Sekiro like game that actually feels and looks as good as the combat in Sekiro since I beat Sekiro a few weeks after it came out in March of 2019. I'm not even really into martial arts movies or the plot or the art or anything, but the combat is so fluid and satisfying in a way that a lot of other games have attempted, but as far as i know, none have achieved. Also, it looks stylish as gently caress when you're in combat, which is also just incredibly rare, similar to how sekiro just looks infinitely cooler than the souls games' combat where you just flop around on the floor, getting i frames for whatever reason, in sifu, every single punch and swing is felt, and the way you chain combos together between different enemies is literally the best ive seen in a game. 5 SABLE There's not much 'gameplay' in this game, but there are quests, you can upgrade your stamina meter by turning in collectibles, get new outfits, new bike parts that have different stats and there's a bunch of quests and a quest log that help it feel gamey and keeps you motivated to keep playing. but the most important part is the art style, like holy poo poo, it looks like a moving Jean Giraud comic, it's insane. I've never seen 'cel shading' or whatever this is done so effectively. It's a shame this came out with a lot of performance issues because it deserves a lot more love, and i hope more indie games attempt really bold art styles like this in the future. 4 IMMORTALITY i loved telling lies, so i was incredibly excited for this game and it far exceeded my expectations. if you don't know of sam barlow's other works, they're FMV games, and you click on words or objects in one scene that take you to the same word or object said or shown in another, and you piece together the story or mystery that way. this game is about the making of 3 films, and you get to see most of the footage from the films in one way or another, either through table reads, rehearsals, unused takes, or actual final takes. but poo poo gets weird, straight up lynchian af. if you're a david lynch fan, especially mulholland drive, inland empire, twin peaks, etc. you absolutely need to play this, everythhing about it is so well done, give Charlotta Mohlin some Oscars and whatever other awards for outstanding performance. 3 ELDEN RING dude it's elden ring, i was literally checking the elden ring news youtube page daily, basically since the reveal trailer came out at the xbox e3 press conference. it's literally just all of the stuff they'd learned about making souls games since 2009 packed into the most gorgeous triple a sized open world ive ever seen. also miyazaki's best take on hogwarts yet with raya lucaria. 2. Neon White: if u like to go fast and look cool doing it, play this game. it's a first person sort of obstacle course game where you pick up cards that act as different types of guns but each one has a different ability like a jump, or a launch, or a sticky bomb that you can launch yourself off of etc. you can hold 2 different kinds of cards at a time and up to three of each and the game is designed in a really clever way that makes finishing each course on the first attempt seem very doable, even if you have a split second to realize what card you've just picked up and before you have to use it. it's basically a puzzle game as well in a lot of ways, as every level has a shortcut that a lot of the time aren't really that obvious at all and figuring them out gives you the same sort of satisfaction that figuring out a puzzle in portal does. plus the soundtrack owns. 1. Disco Elysium The Final Cut I don't know why, but this year, aside from elden ring, felt sort of lackluster, and also i replayed the final cut again and it's just the best game of the year, for the second year in a row.  (i extracted the assets from the game and for some reason there's two meshes called 'tequila right finger' and 'tequila left finger'. included is the boom box in the back ground and on the right is of course our good friend the blue medicinal spirit, looking fashionable with a little neck tie) HONORABLE MENTIONS scorn: I would've definitely played this in its entirety if it was on PS5, but I'm weird and don't like to play this type of game on my computer. Incredible art direction though, it's seriously insane to me that so few games take inspiration from Zdzislaw Beksinski (I know it's much more inspired by HR Giger, but aside from The Medium, and like Returnal and a few specific things in A Plague Tale, there's nothing else really that I've seen). Really cool story too, feels like they felt pressured to shoehorn in combat when it could've been more like Soma or Myst or something and been much better for it. horizonforbidden west (anhd i guess this applies to god of war too, aside from the story bits, but i also enjoyed the story in spite of it mostly being a very samey sequel) I did really enjoy this game, I just expected it to have a little more than the first game in terms of QoL upgrades or upgrades in general besides a glider and the one ability you get like 10 minutes before the end of the game. Love Carrie Ann Moss and her crew's designs and the weird rear end story surrounding them, but everything that wasn't directly tied to them was just a bit dull imo. hindsight and Stray very cute annapurna games that do some really unique things i've never seen before with perspective and the overall artstyle and transitions between scenes(hindsight). for fans of annapurna published emo interactive story games with not much gameplay. stray is also just a really adorable adventure with a great artstyle and the best portrayal of a cat player character that i can think of. Inscryption Never played a card based video game before, besides the pokemon trading card game for game boy color, and i loved it. i wish the entire game had the same vibe as act 1, but i still enjoyed the rest of the game, and the story quite a bit. imhotep fucked around with this message at 09:44 on Jan 1, 2023 |
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Jan 1, 2023 08:59
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I shouldn't have waited till the last minute to do this, gently caress!
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Jan 1, 2023 08:59
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) and lots of forking decisions, some being really mean no-winners.
) and so rear endumed the only way out was through. 
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not game related but my favorite live action film was Everything Everywhere All at Once, and favorite animated film was Turning Red. very normie picks i know!! good luck to rarity in counting all the votes up!
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Jan 1, 2023 09:13
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I really hope they localize the power pro baseball games again because they own. Sadly their attempt at doing that on the wii flopped hard and they cut out a lot of features from them so rip
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Jan 1, 2023 09:22
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Genuinely surprised by how much I Was A Teenage Exocolonist didn't appear in goon lists that games like Citizen Sleeper, Scarlet Hollow and Pentiment did show up in. To be fair, I think all of those games are superior to it and ordered my list as such. I just would've figured "choice and consequence VN where you get to make poker hands out of your memories in card form" would've been a bigger hit. I'm probably not going to 100% it but I spent like 3 days getting the endings I did (including a surprisingly solid and accomplished first run that only fell over at the last hurdle).
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Jan 1, 2023 09:24
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Thank you, rarity.
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Jan 1, 2023 09:28
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Jay Rust posted:The question on everyone's lips... who will be taking home the SA GotY silver Wow! It’s also Elden Ring!
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Jan 1, 2023 09:36
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CAR CRASH CRACKERS posted:
Playing this on PS5 thanks to Christmas and I have a strong feeling it'll be on my list next year. I'm absorbed!
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Jan 1, 2023 09:43
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Thank you so much to all the goons who posted a list. It is so good to be reminded of what a dedicated and passionate community this is, and I loved reading everyone’s thoughts. Got a lot of exciting stuff to play now. And of course thank you so much to Rarity for running this every year.
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Jan 1, 2023 10:24
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Ok folks, that is it! The votes have been counted and verified and your GOTY for 2022 has been decided! Join myself and VG on Saturday 7th at 2pm GMT for a star-studded extravaganza as we countdown your top 75 
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Jan 1, 2023 10:35
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Hell yeah, thanks Rarity and to everybody who posted a list, and particularly for those of you who correctly put Pentiment on your lists. Unreasonably excited for Saturday the 7th at 2pm GMT!
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Jan 1, 2023 10:37
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Rarity posted:Ok folks, that is it! The votes have been counted and verified and your GOTY for 2022 has been decided! Join myself and VG on Saturday 7th at 2pm GMT for a star-studded extravaganza as we countdown your top 75 
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Jan 1, 2023 11:25
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The 7th?! What am I not paying you for?
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Jan 1, 2023 11:25
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Rarity posted:Ok folks, that is it! The votes have been counted and verified and your GOTY for 2022 has been decided! Join myself and VG on Saturday 7th at 2pm GMT for a star-studded extravaganza as we countdown your top 75 Thanks so much Rarity! If I can’t get the csv from Microcline, I’ll be in touch to get your excel spreadsheet.
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Jan 1, 2023 11:49
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in my opinion according to science ...i suspect a lot of people voted this year.
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Jan 1, 2023 13:27
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CAR CRASH CRACKERS posted:
I love the Procession to Calvary so much I keep buying copies of it and giving it to people and they go “what the gently caress is this” and I go “just play it it is very silly!!”
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Jan 1, 2023 13:28
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