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Mr. Crow posted:Should update the rules if its a requirement, but sure edited it Wasn’t it, like, completely obvious
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Dec 7, 2023 20:55
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Mr. Crow posted:Should update the rules if its a requirement, but sure edited it remember that the culmination of this thread is somebody going through and tallying the scores for all the games out of your posts. don't make that difficult please.
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Dec 7, 2023 20:57
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Escobarbarian posted:Wasn’t it, like, completely obvious No, because whats better? 1? 10? Is it a simple cumulative ranking system so 10 gets the most scores (so my goty would be 10, not 1)? I re-reviewed the rules and it is actually under rule three but I think it might be better to stand it out as an explicit rule. Or maybe im just an idiot  quote:If you do not want to rank your picks then that is fine as well but again, I will not count it. Thats the only thing i see about it but its not really explicit and a footnote of another unrelated rule. Mr. Crow fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Dec 7, 2023 |
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Dec 7, 2023 21:04
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I think the only logical compromise is to number games by preference but list them in chronological order to provide context for when you played them
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Dec 7, 2023 21:08
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what are numbers really though
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Dec 7, 2023 21:15
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Ive been sick the past week I'm perfectly fine just chocking it up to brain fog if I'm the only one struggling with it, I thought I skimmed through and it seemed 50/50 if people were ordering it or not but maybe I'm losing it, I didn't want to have to think about what was better
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Dec 7, 2023 21:15
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If you can't quantify your enjoyment of a particular piece of art, have you truly enjoyed it?
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Dec 7, 2023 21:17
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You can order them however you like, but there's some guidelines if you'd like your entries to be counted toward the final totals. If you don't care about that go wild, rank them toroidally even
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Dec 7, 2023 21:25
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It's interesting to see BG3 show up pretty consistently but lower than might be expected. It's only been a few people's #1 GOTY so far I think
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Dec 7, 2023 21:37
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I'm surprised Alan Wake 2 hasn't shown up more often.
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Dec 7, 2023 21:41
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If a list is posted without numbers, simply count the topmost games as 10 and then count down from there, the logical way.
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Dec 7, 2023 21:41
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Tosk posted:It's interesting to see BG3 show up pretty consistently but lower than might be expected. It's only been a few people's #1 GOTY so far I think While GOTY contender (and by default my personal GOTY when I actually get around to writing my post) it objectively has issues. Still a massive achievement and a solid 9/10 [with the most recent patch] for me but definitely not a clear-cut winner especially with TOTK, Alan wake, and cyberpunk 2.0 possibly on the table. Edit: Lester raised good points that frankly it's horniness/crudeness and the tone of its dialogue can come off as juvenile and not for everyone. Also before the most recent update the ending was genuinely total poo poo, being upgraded to "alright" but the back end of the third act is where the wheels come off objectively. Lawman 0 fucked around with this message at 22:12 on Dec 7, 2023 |
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Dec 7, 2023 21:50
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theblackw0lf posted:I'm surprised Alan Wake 2 hasn't shown up more often. Honestly, I'm trying to cram AW2 during December to see if I can add it into my list in time. Kinda similar issue with BG3, where I just need a large block of time for the game but have a fair amount of backlog ahead of it.
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Dec 7, 2023 22:56
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Gonna number my games using some ridiculous witness style puzzle* system that’ll keep Veeg occupied for weeks and delay the count :Edit: *puzzow
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Dec 7, 2023 23:05
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number them via pictoglyphs
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Dec 7, 2023 23:10
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Tosk posted:It's interesting to see BG3 show up pretty consistently but lower than might be expected. It's only been a few people's #1 GOTY so far I think Unfortunately all the people who have it at #1 ran out of movement, and have to wait for 10 other lists to be posted before they can post theirs.
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Dec 7, 2023 23:15
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Aipsh posted:Gonna number my games using some ridiculous witness style puzzle* system that’ll keep Veeg occupied for weeks and delay the count I have posted two lists. One of them is entirely truth, the other one is entirely lies. You may ask me one question
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Dec 7, 2023 23:40
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Tosk posted:It's interesting to see BG3 show up pretty consistently but lower than might be expected. It's only been a few people's #1 GOTY so far I think I won't speak for others but I didn't put it on my list because I assumed so many other people would be. Could be the same situation here.
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Dec 7, 2023 23:58
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Are we doing VGA chat here or another thread?
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Dec 8, 2023 00:05
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definitely not here
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Dec 8, 2023 00:08
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use the chat thread https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4048547
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Dec 8, 2023 00:08
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Usually there’s a separate liveposting thread, but if there isn’t one I guess use general chat? Or post it yourself
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Dec 8, 2023 00:09
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The lack of BG3 at people’s no.1s is surprising but I reckon it’ll still nab the top spot as individual number 1s are all over the place. It’d be made to argue it definitely doesn’t deserve it.
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Dec 8, 2023 00:20
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I like BG3 but I'm not sure it will even crack my top 5.
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Dec 8, 2023 01:17
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All the people who would rank BG3 as their No1 are too busy on their 7th playthrough of BG3 to post in this thread
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Dec 8, 2023 01:19
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Bad Parenting posted:All the people who would rank BG3 as their No1 are too busy on their 7th playthrough of BG3 to post in this thread  Honor Mode patch just released last week and we're all too busy trying to get the golden dice
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Dec 8, 2023 01:20
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I feel like BG3 is the definition of a flawed masterpiece. It's genuinely incredible in so many ways that its flaws stand out more than usual. For me, I put Lies of P above it because when I was thinking about it, I could really only think of one negative about that game (that green swamp motherfucker) and it's about the same level of excellence and enjoyment. But BG3 is definitely going down as a modern classic that will be discussed for years. It's a towering achievement, flaws and all.
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Dec 8, 2023 01:32
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Lid posted:Six pages and not one mention for last year's winner Elden Ring oof I assume the people who were really pumped about it played it last year when it came out and everyone else is, like me, waiting for the inevitable steeply discounted "Elden Ring Complete Edition" or w/e that includes all the DLC and a bunch of bugfixes that should have been released for the original game, but weren't, while we play through our massive backlogs. haveblue posted:I have posted two lists. One of them is entirely truth, the other one is entirely lies. You may ask me one question Is the list with Forspoken and Cocoon on it the true one? I ask because I remember thinking that the Forspoken trailer looked sick as hell, but then actually reading about it and deciding I wasn't interested, and I can't remember why, and your description makes it sound like something I might actually like. Similarly, I disregarded Cocoon because "by the developer of LIMBO" isn't actually a selling point for me, but it sounds like it might actually be pretty cozy? Argh, these threads always give me more game recommendations than I have time to play
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Dec 8, 2023 01:39
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Nobody has put Pentiment on their Top Ten lists yet, which is sad considering it was 2022's Game of the Year provided you accept Elden Ring's score was so high it hit a stack overflow and got reset back to 0.
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Dec 8, 2023 01:49
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Elden Eing literally too good to be in this year. If you could nominate a game you’ve been playing for more than a year then you’d have ten lunatics with TLOU (PS4) in the top ten
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Dec 8, 2023 01:52
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e:
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Dec 8, 2023 02:17
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What a season, what a season, what a season! Not only did some extremely baller games come out this year, I was able to check out and play some that I criminally missed out on. This one's gonna be real difficult given the utter quality of offerings, but something that stands out to me this year is a real feeling of love. I know game development is messy and brutal and full of all kinds of disgusting societal problems, but a lot of these games on the list feel like they were made with a remarkable amount of care and attention that you wouldn't feel from a brutal work environment. These are entries with real heart in them and man, can you feel it in their core. The fact that there's still a ton of games I just haven't been able to find time to play is exciting on its own! I've agonised over it, but 8 and 6 are both going to have to be doubled up: The one with >>arrows<< is my choice for nomination, but I loved both of these games equally. 10) Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengeance Of The Slayer tl;dr: Solid boomer shooter core with intentionally juvenile and amateurish writing, crude graphics and early 00's edge - utterly hilarious and full of surprises Time Played: 5 hours... bwl if u think thats low... im a real gamer heh  I adore Hypnospace Outlaw. A ridiculously well crafted love letter to the early 00's internet with a ton of character and indeed actual characters. One of those characters is edgy teen Zane, a lovably juvenile troll with a shaky home life who adores Hypnospaces' version of Linkin Park/Slipknot, "Seepage". This game is a tie-in that's based entirely around a game that Zane was making as a kid, finishing it off as an adult who never left his teenage mentality. What results in is a hilarious first person shooter that feels just like a Duke Nukem mod with everything that kind of person would have found awesome: A ridiculous self-insert main character fighting alongside his favourite band member with absurd weaponary such as shotguns that fire glass and a chainsaw chaingun, talkative rats as friends and a ton of rotten poop humour. That synopsis sounds like a recipe for disaster, but the sheer amount of care and attention to detail to get the vibe and feel of this game just right means that if you're in on the joke, you're going to love every bit of it. Although there is extra charm if you've played Hypnospace, you don't need to in order to enjoy Slayers X: just play it and feel yourself reverting into a giggling, sneering 13 year old as you watch some of the most hilariously cursed CGI to have been made for a game. 9) Apex Legends tl;dr: The Game That Isn't Titanfall But You Wished It Was is still a blast to play, but the mid year season was one of their worst yet Time Played: Less than usual, still too much  It's here again!! Everything I've written about it in the past still applies here. Fast paced and silky smooth shooting paired with Respawns' knack for keeping things fresh and interesting - for the most part - has kept Apex as a mainstay of my library, though less so than previous years. Two great new characters Ballistic and Conduit and some excellent changes to big fat Storm Point offset an utterly dire middle season where Revenant got a mechanic change and everything was boring for way too long. They worked on the matchmaking so that my average rear end is no longer being brutalised by tryhards, which was much needed. They need to keep making new weapon inspects, for god's sake 8) Roboquest AND >>Synthetik 2<< Roboquest: tl;dr: Big, chunky roguelite first person shooter where the guns are all insanely cool and the action is quick and captivating. One of the three cel shaded games on my list. Time Played: 11.5 hours, 2 spent yelling "IT'S THE FLAK CANNON!!"  Roboquest has been around in Early Access for a while and still has a bit to go before it's feature complete, but man what's there is so, so cool. Movement and shooting feels very much like DOOM Eternal with rapid air dashing, double jumping and a focus on fast-paced, reactive action. The real star of the show, however, are the guns: Just beautiful, personable designs and animation, fantastic feedback and the ability to stack skills and modifiers until you find the perfect weapon to synergise with your build until you become some hyper-quick machine of death, with cameos in all but name by some of FPS' finest contenders such as the UT flak cannon or Tribes Spinfusor. In true roguelike fashion it's the game that you just have to queue up one more run on and it eats time quicker than you'll realise. Goes on sale often, so if you like your first person roguelikes you owe it to yourself to give it a go. Synthetik 2: tl;dr: Finally almost the game the first one was with even more content and constant development, just so fun and rewarding to play with some of the most insane weapon feedback I've heard in a game. Time Played: 20.9 hours, several spent writhing in number-based ecstasy or maybe a seizure due to particles  Top-down semi-tactical robot shooter game Synthetik recieved a massive boost to its popularity when youtuber "Is this dude problematic? Is it okay to watch his videos? They're really good. gently caress it, I just won't tell anyone" SsethTzeentach covered it years ago, and it quickly became one of my favourite games ever. It was inevitable a sequel was going to be made, and Synthetik 2 has been in EA for a very long time, but everything I heard about it put it in a very negative light until really recently. I saw my friend who also loves it playing it and it didn't take long to be convinced to buy it, and man am I glad I did. Improving on every aspect of the original, Synthetik 2 wants you to break it over your knee before it does the same to you. The sheer power creep you can experience is just second to none, but it won't gently caress around: It's every bit as happy to kill you in seconds when you think you're at the height of being unstoppable. The high that comes from taking a silly gimmick gun and turning it into an army shredding chaos engine, or finding the right combonation of items to turn you into a walking explosion factory is one that you won't find anywhere else, and the original's 2d graphics translate gorgeously into the new fully 3d environments and characters. 7) Monster Train tl;dr: Multifaceted deckbuilding roguelike that whispers terrifying life-stealing curses to you as you play, turning you into a mindless husk that exists only to have one more run, just one more run PLEASE, JUST LET ME PL- Time Played: 39.6 hours, but time means nothing playing this game  No game should do this to a man. I had been playing Slay The Spire on my phone constantly for a while and though I love it, the allure was starting to fade. Seeking another card battler, I was very very late to the Monster Train, which had been sitting in my library for a year or so, installed but unplayed. Little did I know what I was unleashing on myself. The utter variety of playstyles, the different factions that all have unique characters, playstyles and mechanics yet all intermingle beautifully with the second faction choice you can make, the amount of intentional and unintentional ways to break the game while it effortlessly maintains a difficulty level that always feels fair as your skills improve, the wonderful presentation and just raw addictive potential makes it a game you will surrender your life to until you realise just how unproductive it has made you. Fitting. 6) Bomb Rush Cyberfunk AND >>Hi-fi RUSH<< Bomb Rush Cyberfunk: tl;dr: A team loved Jet Set Radio enough to make it again but bigger, better, and with enough heart and soul to whisk you away back to those Dreamcast days without the ear-tearing noise of a disc being read by a rocket engine Time Played: 26 hours of getting my HAIR DUN NAILS DUN HAIR DUN NAILS DUN HAIR DUN NA-  Some games call themselves "spiritual successors" while missing what made the original so great. Some follow so close to the formula it might as well be a ripoff. Bomb Rush Cyberfunk achieves the sweet spot of being a gold standard loving homage to everyone's favourite rollin' felony adventure Jet Set Radio while carving out its own identity with its off-the-wall story and great environment design. BRCF gets everything right that it needed to: The intentionallly low-poly graphics with wild and vivid area design and fantastic cel shaded effect (Second game, if you're counting!); The jump height is perfect, the railgrinds and wallruns are perfect, the lines through the environment are smooth as butter, the graffiti is beautiful, the music is wild, wacky and will crawl into your ears and DIE there and even features Hideki Naganuma! It sounds weird to say but the only thing holding the game back is a lack of variety in the trick system, with only one moveset for each of the three different ways of getting around the city. One of the chillest games I've played this year. Hi-Fi Rush: tl;dr: Came out of nowhere and stole everyone's hearts with a disgustingly beautiful artstyle, lots of humour, fun characters and strong rhythm game/spectacle fighter gameplay. Time Played: 13 hours, but now I'm in the postgame and everyone can be dressed up so who knows  It's not right. It's not fair. No game should look this good. No characters should animate that well. The music shouldn't be so loving good and the utter, utter love and care the dev team put into everything matching up to the beat, the wonderful environment design, the sweet and fun cast of heroes and villains, the snappy combat and hypnotic cutscenes just give everything a sense of the developers not only giving a gently caress, but actively rooting for this game from beginning to end. You'll probably be won over the minute that first cutscene ends. The writing is tight only occasionally dipping into "Alright, we get it" territory and I really wish combat encounters were a bit longer and platforming shorter, but that's personal preference on my part because platforming isn't really my thing. For every one of the minor flaws and fumbles that chips away at the game's immaculate image, there's a moment, line of dialogue or setpiece to put a big smile right on your face. The song choices towards the end are glorious. 5) Resident Evil 4 Remake: tl;dr: RE4's fun gameplay and baroque environments gorgeously re-realised with a lot of modern amenities that make it a joy to play. Time Played: 47 hours, 0 spent missing the old Ashley  Capcom hits it out the park once again with a sterling revisitation of a franchise mainstay, with enough changed to make the game feel better to play without changing the fundamental core, pacing and vibe. Marred only a little by my insistence on playing on Hardcore for my first difficulty due to being recently familiar with the original and finding that the game can be a little too stingy with ammo on certain bosses, though that might have been changed in the meantime. Ashley is now a hell of a lot less annoying, some of the more icky dialogue surrounding her is gone, and the characters are all around more fleshed out and likable (though the old shopkeeper was better and I'll fight you if you disagree). As shown in the screenshot, Leon still Says The Line About The Dog, which secures its place on this list easily. 4) Dead Space 1 Remake: tl;dr: Dead Space's fun gameplay and industrial environments gorgeously re-realised with a lot of amenities that make it a joy to play. Isaac swears if you stomp on corpses a bunch. Time Played: 46 hours, 43 spent stomping  Dead Space 1 in the modern era felt like a game that they could've just put a HDR pack on and fixed a lot of compatibility issues with the tech we use these days, re-release it for £25 and be done with it and it'd still be a fine and enjoyable time, but man was remaking it from scratch a great call. It's hard to talk about this when RE4 is in the same list because a lot of comments can be shared across the two games, but Dead Space ekes its place ahead of RE4 by virtue of its modernisations really pushing the game forward. Isaac talking gives the character much more agency, the updated graphics are both profoundly cool and just sublimely gruesome and the story is buffed out and given a new coat of paint. I, like many others, lost a lot of interest in the series after seeing what 3 turned out to be, but DS:R sucked me right back into reading about all the lore and looking up all the disgusting creatures and even playing 2 again afterwards. The care given to making this game shine makes me hopeful that they could maybe revisit 2 and 3 and make the series whole again. Yeah, I made that stupid fuckin' joke. Sue me. 3) Pizza Tower: tl;dr: As someone who generally has a really bad time engaging with and does not particularly enjoy platformers, I can only assume that fans of the genre may have died of joy playing this. Time Played: 16 hours of repeating the same few levels over and over again until I got it perfect, and I regret nothing  I've followed Pizza Tower's development ever since the early stages for one reason and one reason alone: Its artstyle. I'm (attempting to) learn and study animation and this game, made by a teeny tiny team, is an utter masterclass in detailed, hilarious and just so incredibly intricate cartoon action that I could gush for days about all the magical, bizarre things Peppino Spaghetti is put through in his remarkable adventure through the Pizza Tower. I mentioned during Hi-Fi Rush that I don't really like platformers, which means that people who do should not be reading this and should be playing this game because man the speed, controls, the levels and the response times are razor sharp to the point it's vorpal. I haven't completed it yet - in fact, I'm not actually all that far in being only on floor 3 - but that's because repeating levels and finding that flow until you get the best rank you can isn't just part of the fun, it's remorselessly addictive to a nearly obsessive point. It can seem stiff and awkward at first but when you get that flow going? God, drat, yes. Come for the visuals, stay for the fun, then realise the gigantic soundtrack is entirely made out of bops and that there's so much game there that I can safely say that if you have not played this, even if you are not a fan of the genre like me, you are doing yourself a huge disservice. 2) Armored Core 6: tl;dr: A game in a series I have always wanted to play has finally made its way to the PC, and it is FROMsoft funstration at some of its finest. Upset your space girlfriend for profit. Time Played: 93 hours of crushing my mindjack space parasite best friend's hopes and wishes, then everyone elses' too just for the hell of it  I know it sucks to hear this, but it's true and it's for the best: My cool robots are way cooler than yours, my loadouts are good and correct, and you're dumb and bad for using meta weapons and I'm laughing at you. I died a lot in this game and I am very bad at it because I build my robots badly and spend more time picking things that look cool rather than things that actually work. I played a teeny tiny bit of For Answer on the 360 before my console unceremoniously red ringed so my exposure to this series is minimal at best, but man did this game sell me on playing more in the future. While I do have complaints about the levels sometimes being awkwardly large or bizarrely small and feel like an Elden Ring style scenario would have felt much better, the joy of stapling together a mongrel robot from a collection of droolworthy weaponary and gear then scraping your way across oceans of scrap metal to complete your quest of disappointing, upsetting and betraying everyone who gave you even an inch of respect is palpable. AC6 feels like FROMsoft learned a ton of lessons from their Souls and friends game and applied them here with zeal. I know fans of the series don't necessarily appreciate it, but as a newcomer it felt really nice to know the language of the game from the get-go while facing the challenge of learning how to speak it again. You speak it by kicking sad people in the face until they explode, then taking all your money and making your ability to shoot them before kicking them more brutal than ever. A delectably miserable game and one I had a ton of fun sadding my way through. 1) Baldurs Gate 3: tl;dr: This game shouldn't have been good. It is leagues beyond good. It is disgustingly, insanely well crafted and made by a team that not only knew what they were doing, they wanted to show the rest of the industry HOW to do it. Time Played: Ah, the child of Bhaal has played 53 hours. It is time for more... gameplay. Interesting. You have much untapped free time. Do you even realise your potential?  It's an insult. I'm insulting the game by only having played 53 hours of this: A pittance, as I am still in the first act. I am insulting you personally by making this my #1 game when I haven't even scraped the surface of what's yet to come. I am insulting the developers by not devoting all my time to playing this game. I am a disgusting monster for even considering making this my number one and yet here we are. Why? It's because I love Baldur's Gate. I have played the series, from Dragonspear to the end of ToB, dozens of time and I have not gotten bored of it. When Baldur's Gate 3 was announced, I was cynical. Larian was behind it, and Divinity 2 was the closest I've ever felt to a spiritual sequel to the series, but let's face it: You can't bottle that kind of lightning when you're so far removed in time and team from the original. How do you rival that epic, sprawling adventure, that sense of dread and peril and power, love and hope against adversity, the seduction of evil and the drive to best the foes and challenges of Faerun across the five original games? The maniacs, the goddamn crazies, the absolute MADMEN did it. Whether they made a pact with a demon or prayed to the right gods I will never know but this entry into the series isn't just worthy of its place, it is one of the most disturbingly refined, all-consuming RPGs I've witnessed in a long time. It's not just the sharp, concise and often very funny writing; it's not the solid voice performances that really sell the bond between your party and the overwhelming amount of fully voiced NPCs with interesting things to say; it's not the combat system that gives you a ton of wild flexibillity and the chance to perform some absurd feats of synergy and destruction to shape the battlefield to your whims while facing the same kind of cunning from your foes; it's not the graphics that are frequently stunning in their sheer detail, nor is it the interactivity where every little item can be picked up, examined, tossed around, stacked and manipulated for purposes nefarious. It's everything. Even the EULA has funny things sprinkled into it if you're paying attention. THE EULA!!!! It's not just an RPG, it's an immersive sim. It's one of the closest experiences you can get to a single person D&D campaign and it's all yours to figure out. I've used spells to yoink chests from places I was supposed to reach far later into the dungeon I was visiting and I did it by accident. I've taken a look at intricate environmental puzzles, buffed my strongest fighter and smashed them all into little bits before waltzing through the door I made myself. I've harassed numerous corpses and dealt with many a sassy animal. I've kicked squirrels to death for looking at me wrong. I have nodded my head vigorously and shouted with joy when my githyanki waifu has suggested I - for the millionth time - ignored the formalities to instead ram the thick end of my boot up someone's arse in way of greeting. I have picked up corpses and stuffed them in my backpack for seemingly no reason. I have stolen every spoon. I have bloodrocuted someone. I pet the dog. I talked to the dog. I've abused a gnome in distress because it was funny to me and then helped him out and the game didn't sulk and give me Bad Boy Points or award me Good Boy Points, it just shrugged and let me. I pissed off a deity until they - in the middle of a conversation - gave the gently caress up and just evaporated me there and then to get my smarmy rear end out the way. I have taken what was supposed to be an intimate, romantic moment with a fellow party member and used it as an excuse to scream about how much cooler it is to be a sorcerer than a wizard. Sometimes things didn't work out the way I had hoped, only to be rewarded with a greater treasure for rolling with the punches. I have not eaten a parasite yet. I do not intend to, out of spite. So many great memories, so many tiny events weaving a tapestry of adventure, so many memorable encounters and worlds of possibility to be found within them, and I haven't even given the game its full dues yet. I have been thinking about this game while playing every other game on my list, cursing myself for not giving it the time to shine as it has shone persistently with every minute I spent playing it before stopping. The time quickly approaches to return to it, to finally see how it ties into its namesake. I cannot loving wait. Some honourable mentions: Cyberpunk 2077: For all intents and purposes it should be on the list. Just imagine it glitching in and out between all the other entries at random. It's finally the game it should've been in the first place, and they keep adding to it. I had an incredible time playing through it again and I've still yet to finish Phantom Liberty, which has been a real thrill to play through. I'm glad I waited for all these patches to land before going back to it. Trepang2: Bloody, violent, stylish action with FEAR's legacy smiling down upon it. Sometimes a bit of a messy bitch, frequently all over the place with some rough edges, but never not an utter crimson-hued blast to play through. A sequel with better AI and a more cohesive vision will make this join the ranks of the must-plays, but for now it's rolling in viscera with a big smile on its face that you'll claim for yourself as soon as that shotgun rips several men in half in just the right way. Quake 2: What the gently caress is this? Wh-- why did they revamp Quake 2? Why is it a free update if you own the original game? Why does it go SO loving HARD? It looks great! There's tons of content! There's even a bestiary and development documents to read?! What is happening?! What is THIS?! Grounded: I really don't like survival games much but I love insects, minibeasts and creepy crawlies of all kinds. This is a wonderful game that I lost hours playing. The bees are so cute, the spiders are so scary and the world design, aesthetics and tone is just Saturday morning perfection. Monster Hunter Rise: Still a mainstay. I am so excited for the World 2 reveal coming soon I can't possibly describe how hype I am. It's gonna be great. Hit a dragon, Switch Axe still best. Wildermyth: Reasonably priced mini DLC dragged me right back into playing this for weeks to enjoy a ton of updates they made since I last played it and now my roster of heroes is full of more beloved characters who kicked so much rear end that they are inspirations to my creativity just by thinking about them. We Who Are About To Die: Tiny dev team makes gladiatorial pit fighting physics game and somehow doesn't turn out to be a gigantic nazi chud. It's possible! Amazing! Persona 5: I know I'm gonna love you and I swear swear SWEAR I'll get back to you, Hi-Fi RUSH made me really want to I'm so sorry I'll play you soon I promise, I promise ...and now to read everyone's posts, the real game of the year Songbearer fucked around with this message at 22:15 on Dec 17, 2023 |
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Dec 8, 2023 02:27
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buddy when you actually get to the final sequence of events that occur in pizza tower's entire finale you are gonna poo poo if you already have it at #3 of your list. Look forward to it!
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Dec 8, 2023 02:58
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Songbearer posted:2) Armored Core 6: My exact experience. I love this game so much 
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Dec 8, 2023 03:10
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I would simply make a robot that both looked cool and performed well 
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Dec 8, 2023 03:15
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Oh boy oh boy GOTY thread! I've actually been working on my list all year, updating it as I play games so I'm not scrambling frantically in the last week of December to get my list posted! Now excuse me while I scramble frantically to get my list posted: 11) Wild Hearts One of my Monster Hunter friends gifted me this game to play after we largely exhausted Rise: Sunbreak. It... is a weird game. I am still not sure entirely how I feel about it. It basically is Monster Hunter with the serial numbers filed off. It does a lot of stuff really well, and even some things that I actually wish Monster Hunter would copy! Like largely doing away with items, and along with it item management. I also like the way it handles healing. You just nab little sips of healing water from springs. You can hold 10 sips at a time and the refill springs are all over the place. I also liked the "monster" roster! Monster Hunter frequently devolves into "here's another dragon that has more spikes on it and spits acid instead of fire," or "This one's a dinosaur that sneezes explosions." Wild Hearts remembers that mammals exist! Also the "Fortnite" style building things mid-battle was kind of janky and weird but I also kind of liked it? It's a cool concept, in any case. I sucked at it but it was cool how you could build things to counter what the monster was doing. Monster Hunter has mechanics like that too, but you're reliant on the items you bring with you on a hunt. The weapons are also really neat! They're all fun and have cool and interesting mechanics. They're not just carbon copies of Monster Hunter Weapons. They do their own thing, and that's great! However this one area where Monster Hunter does better. MonHun just gives you all the weapons right off the bat. In Wild Hearts you have to clear one entire story chapter before you get access to all the weapons. It's kind of weird and I don't like that! Speaking of weird, Wild Hearts did a lot of other weird stuff that kinda made me ... never really feel at home in the game, if that makes sense? The aesthetic is Aggressively Japanese, like even moreso than Monster Hunter. Very in your face This is Feudal Japan but with Monsters. So characters would sprinkle their speech with Japanese words, like "Oh thank you Hunter, arigato!" etc. Just felt kind of weird and stilted to me. Monster Hunter has characters that do that too, but it's played a joke, like Neko, means "cat". Wild Hearts plays it completely straight. Also the game had like 3 different names for things? Like, "This place is the Cherry Blossom Grove, also known as the [Japanese Word] and [Other Japanese Word]. The same thing applied to the monsters, which all had three different names. I don't get it and I wasn't a fan of it. I have trouble remembering names as it is! So yeah. All in all, neat game, just kind of weird. Has some cool ideas. I'd like to see it iterated upon and I'd like to see Monster Hunter steal some ideas from it! 10) Dracula X Chronicles - Castlevania: Symphony of the Night Hi, it's me, the last person on the planet to play SotN! I have a hot take that no one who has played this game has every said about it: it's good. I have had a significant paradigm shift in my gaming habits this year. Historically, despite having a nice gaming rig, I rarely played PC games. I just can't stand playing games while sitting at my desk. The usual mouse and WASD setup is uncomfortable for me, and even using a controller doesn't feel great. I just don't like it! I've tried several things, from Steam Link to running a cable to the same monitor the Switch is plugged into so I can play PC games on the couch. Worked fine for some games, but others had some nasty input lag that way. Late last year I picked up a Steam Deck, and that has been such a game changer! A friend who's good at hacking consoles helped me out, put a bunch of emulators on it, and that was the reason I was able to play SotN for the first time ever! I just never managed to own any system it was on. It has been a gap in my gaming knowledge for far too long. Well, no longer! I'm a lot more experienced with the Metroid side of the genre. Previously the only Castlevania game I had finished was Dawn of Sorrow on the DS (which I loved, and always wanted to play more games in the series). Anyway, yeah I expected to like the game, given how highly it's regarded, and I was not disappointed. What surprised me was how well it's aged! Very little jank, only a few things that made me raise my eyebrow and wonder wtf is going on with that. (Like rando breakable walls and floors, a switch that you need a specific Familiar to trip, that kind of thing. Minor poo poo). Still had a blast from start to finish! This is one of those games, alongside Super Mario 64, that invented a genre and just nailed it first try. Now that I have access to more of them, I'll definitely be checking out more Castlevania games in the future. Maybe on the Deck, maybe on the Switch. Who knows! I fully expect them to announce a modern port any day now that I, the last person on the planet to play it, have done so. You're welcome! 9) Fire Emblem Engage I kind of caught COVID while I was in the middle of this so much of my recollection feels like a fever dream. Impressions subject to change in hindsight but this game does a lot of things I like and a lot of things I don't like. Like: Cheesy schlocky plot that doesn't even try to take itself seriously. The plot is every bit as stupid as, say, Fire Emblem Fates- but Fates was in earnest and tried desperately to get you to take it seriously. Engage does not. Everyone in the army is insane and has stupid outfits and stupider hair and no one pretends it's for serious. More "classic" Fire Emblem experience. They scaled the social stuff from Awakening onwards way back. The game is a lot more linear, where you're meant to jump from story beat to story beat with the occasional side map (Paralogue). There are no child units, no timeskip, no tea parties. You have the Somniel, which is a bit like the Academy from Three Houses, but on a much smaller scale. Also the stuff you can do there isn't nearly as... game changing as what you can do in the Academy. You can fish and gather fruit to cook meals with, which will give you some support points and temporary stat boosts in the next battle. You can make the protagonist (Pepsi Hair) do some push ups and get a strength buff next battle. There's an Arena but it's limited uses, etc. A lot of the side stuff is scaled back. There's still a reclassing and skill system in place for those who like that sort of thing, but I went through mostly keeping everyone in their default classes and did fine. So speaking from experience as someone garbage at the game, you don't have to engage (heh) with that if you don't want to. At least on Hard. I haven't touched Maddening because I don't hate myself that much. No more weapon durability. It's just straight up gone. You don't gotta worry about it at all. I don't miss it. It was stupid anyway. Use that sick-rear end magic sword as much as you want. It will never break. And you can even forge it to make it stronger! Something I didn't figure out until WAY too loving late in the game but is a point in its favor: you don't need thieves to open chests. Now anybody can do it! If I'd figured that out, that would have saved me so much time on SO MANY MAPS. The enemy can, and will, still deploy thieves to loot the chests before you can, so you still gotta chase them down. But at least if you kill a thief, it drops ALL the loot it pillaged from the chest, and not just the last thing. Mechanically, in general, it's good. I like what they did with the weapon triangle after largely removing it in Three Houses. I like the Break system, I love the Emblem rings. It's all good. Real good poo poo all around. Just a very well put together game. Don't like: It's a "classic" style Fire Emblem but kind of wants to have it both ways? There are map skirmishes that pop up randomly, the sorts of skirmishes that you'd use in games like Awaknening or Three Houses to keep you B team caught up in levels with your A team (which you use for story maps). Only you kind of can't? The skirmishes are scaled to your highest level unit, so they very quickly will just tear your B team apart, so you can't use them at all to catch people up. In fact there's very little recourse if a favorite unit of yours falls behind, and that just kinda feels bad! The game is weirdly stingy with money! There's no weapon durability, so you'd think without the need to buy iron swords all the time to replace the ones you break, you'd have more cash to throw around right? Somehow wrong? There's this whole Donation level mechanic that lets you adopt pets to bring back to the Somniel, and probably other stuff that I ignored because PETS, but the amount of money you have to throw at it is kind of ridiculous! I even had the Silver Card from the expansion that reduces all shop prices by 30% and I still felt like I was strapped for cash. I think the side skirmishes are meant to alleviate that somewhat, as some of them will give you money, but again, they scale to your highest level character so they can be really punishing! On a similar note, the game seems to expect you to grind skirmishes to get skill points to inherit stuff from your Emblems, and get the Ore you need to forge weapons. But again, the skirmishes are weirdly punishing and not really useful for that sort of thing. Also if you grind you can pretty quickly break the difficulty curve over your knee. The game does the usual Fire Emblem thing where you have to collect MacGuffins and at some point your MacGuffins get taken away by the bad guy for gravitas. Spoilers I guess. The problem is, in this case, the MacGuffins are the Emblem Rings and they give extremely significant gameplay benefits. And you have these rings taken away for like, a third of the game. I get that you need some plot tension and a need to have the heroes struggle against something and blah blah blah, but taking away fun and powerful tools and keeping them away for THAT LONG is silly. And it feels bad. And it's annoying. Surely a different solution could have been reached. What solution, I don't know. I'm not a game designer. Overall I liked it (honest, really!). It's very silly fun and has a great cast, and is fun to play! Your mileage may vary on how the annoying stuff annoys you personally. 8) Rune Factory 5 Bought to play on my shiny new Steam Deck! I had a rough few weeks at work and having this to look forward to at the end of the day really helped me power through it. Good: Unlike Rune Factory 4, this game doesn't do the thing where certain character(s) are unconscious or otherwise out of commission for vast swathes of the story. Which got annoying when you were trying to do quests such as "get everyone in town up to 5 hearts of friendship." There is one character who you can't befriend until the credits roll, but thankfully they move to the town pretty late. Still sucks if you took forever to get everyone up to 5 hearts, only for them to show up when you're almost done! (This did not happen to me, nope, no sir. Why would you think that?  )There are lots of little QoL improvements that you wouldn't notice unless you played the previous game, such as the ability to pick up items automatically rather than having to mash a button, being able to shove all your wood/stone into the storage bin at once rather than taking it out of your pocket in stacks of 9 and plunking it in manually. Little things like that. Also, the crafting system is just nuts. It's ridiculously in-depth, if you're into that sort of thing. You can break the game over your knee with even a little bit of effort. I had to look up a lot of stuff because I am an idiot baby about this sort of thing and the game doesn't do a good job of explaining its crafting system. But boy once you get going, you are an unstoppable god. I also liked the post-game dungeon (Rigbarth Maze) a lot better than Rune Prana, its equivalent in RF4. Is it a lot shorter and easier? Yes. Is this a bad thing? In my opinion, no. It also has a fixed map, rather than being procedurally generated like Rune Prana in RF4. I burned out very early on in Rune Prana because I admit I suck at the game. What of it? On the other hand I was able to finish the Rigbarth Maze without too much difficulty, and even dipped back into it on a regular basis to get more loot. It's just overall a less stressful, more chill experience. Plus it was nice to not HAVE to dive deep down the rabbit hole that is the game's crafting system in order to get anywhere. Rune Prana seemed to be balanced around you doing that, so if you didn't, you had a bad time! It's just a nice chill game in general. It's really good at giving you incremental rewards. Everything you do benefits you in some way. There are infinite numbers to make go up and they all tie together to make you stronger. You can level up your sleeping and eating skills, for example, which gives you more health and stamina. Crops can level up, which makes them more valuable to sell and craft/cook with. Even the soil itself can gain exp and level up, which makes it more productive and resistant to damage from storms. The list goes on. I never felt like my time was wasted. There was always something to unlock, or some goal to work towards. Oh and last super important thing: YOU CAN BE GAY. This is a first for the Rune Factory series and it's a welcome addition. It also makes the choice of who to marry a lot harder. Overall I liked the marriage candidates a lot better in this game than in RF4, so it was a legitimately tough decision! Bad: The voice acting is terrible. The voices add nothing at all to the experience, and in fact they're distracting. The game is wildly inconsistent whether lines are fully voiced, or whether a character will just chime in for a few lines for emphasis. I would sometimes accidentally skip a voiced line because I didn't realize the VA was still going. All of this wouldn't even be so bad if the protagonist would just. shut. UP. The constant yelling of "Yes! All right!" every time you pick up wood, or the constant nattering while you tend crops or care for monsters was just a bridge too far. I'm usually pretty tolerant of such things but I ended up muting the voices entirely early in the game and I feel like I missed out on precisely nothing of value. The flower shop unlocks weirdly late for some reason? Like, after the first "act" of the game, late. Just kind of weird coming from Rune Factory 4 where you can buy flower seeds right at the beginning of the game. Don't know why it unlocks so late when there are a lot of early crafting recipes that use flowers. Speaking of late, you can't get married until the post-game for some reason? Which is just kind of weird. This was also an issue in RF4 so at this point I am left to assume it's intentional but for the fucks' sake the end-game grind for wood and stone is so. loving. REAL. Final upgrades to buildings take thousands of wood/stone apiece, and the only ways to get it are either grindy or RNG-dependent. Neither of which make for terribly engaging gameplay! I don't like that my choices were either go around smacking rocks and chopping trees every day like a peasant, or savescumming the shop that has a chance of selling any item in the game, randomly (including stone and wood). Stardew Valley figured this poo poo out, hombres! The town carpenter in Stardew just straight up sells wood (and also stone?) and you can buy coal and ores from the blacksmith. Sure, it ain't cheap, but in either game once you know what you're doing you're rolling in cash. What's the point of all this money I made from being a pineapple baron if I can't use it to shortcut the grind?! Nonsense! Just make wood and stone buyable, for fucks' sake. Make it a late game upgrade to one of the shops if you must, so you have to work for it, but give me SOME recourse around the tedium! Looking forward to playing more of this series because despite my bitching, I did honestly love it and this game is kinda right up my alley. You bet your rear end I am  as all gently caress for the new Fantasy Life next year!7) Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed I forget if expansions "count" in this thing as an independent entry. I don't mind if this counts under Xenoblade Chronicles 3, because I love the main game too! This expansion was great! I loved it. One of those cases where I got 100% of everything and wished I had more game to play! It had a lot of things I honestly wish had been back-ported to the main game, such as an in-game fillable bestiary. I just love having more checkmarks and lists to fill out! See also other games on my list. What can I say, I know what I like? DOUBLE SPINNING EDGE! 6) Super Mario Bros. Wonder There is not a lot I can say about this game. it is a Mario game and therefore it's amazing! Just good clean, sidescrolling platform action. I especially liked the titular "Wonder" effects you could get in each level. These did all sorts of wacky things: make pipes crawl around like caterpillars, flood the stage with singing Piranha plants, turn you into a Goomba or a spike ball or a character from World of Goo? SURE. We got it all! Also comes with not one, not two, but THREE playable ladies! (Including Daisy!) Plus a variety of Yoshis. Just an all around great game. I can't say even one negative thing about it. If you like 2D platformers even a little bit, why haven't you played this game already?! 5) Metroid Prime Remastered This was an out of the blue shadow drop that made me drop EVERYTHING ELSE I was playing for a week just so I could play it. This game was my introduction to the series back in the bygone days of... the Wii U. Back when they just vomited the Metroid Prime Triology onto the Wii channel for  out of the blue. I figured for a tenner I'd try it and if I hated it, I was only out ten bucks. Needless to say: I did not hate it. I don't know that I could say any words about this game that have not already been said a million times over and are no less true. I will just say this game is, has always been, and will always be A MASTERPIECE. The glow-up it got for the remaster only made it moreso. I wish with every fiber of my soul that they give the other two Metroid Prime game the same treatment. 4) Super Mario RPG (Remake) This game was just as good as I remembered it! Which is to say it's WAY BETTER THAN IT WAS, nostalgia being a thing. It's just the right balance of being faithful to the original while also bringing it up to modern standards. I don't know what kind of wizards Nintendo hired to do this, but they need to remake all the games from now on! They totally nailed it. This game was such a big part of my childhood. It was my first ever RPG. I didn't even know what an RPG was when I played it. Certainly it opened the way for me to move on to other "serious" RPGs like your Final Fantasies and Dragon Quests, but this game will always be my favorite one. Also I am pleased to report that Geno is just as cool as I remember him being as a 12-year-old and haters can go right on hating! 3) Baldur's Gate 3 I've played D&D for years, but somehow I've managed to avoid any official content related to it. I've never played a Baldur's Gate, or a Neverwinter Anything, or any official first-party module. So I guess here I am, after playing homebrew campaigns for like... two decades, finally playing a D&D RPG. I was mostly interested cuz you can be Dragonborn now. All I gotta say though, where the kobolds at? What about tabaxi? Elder Scrolls lets you be cat people! I played a dragonborn and just pretended she was a very tall kobold, but it's just not the saaaaaaame. Also it's kind of weird that the level cap is arbitrarily 12 here, when it's 20 in actual D&D. Maybe they're leaving it open for an expansion? And maybe said expansion will include more fun non-boring-human-looking races? I would buy it like an absolute sucker. Anyway, the cast is great, and the mechanics translate really well. I was instantly charmed as soon as I had to make a skill check and rolled the dice right there on the screen. It's just like coming home. Also comparing notes with other folks who have played, there are a ridiculous number of branch points and different ways you can approach each objective. Which is how it SHOULD be, considering it's D&D and all, but it's a lot harder to implement that in an actual big budget game than it is for your DM to go "Sure, you can try that. Roll Deception." I was super impressed by the overall production value and effort that went into the game. Just an all around stellar, well made game. This is the standard to which other AAA games should aspire. 2) Monster Hunter XX: "Cope" Edition This is a rebalance mod for Monster Hunter XX/Generations Ultimate (same game, but one is on 3DS and only released in Japan while the other is on Switch and was released worldwide), though the latter requires having a modded Switch, which I don't have! Broadly, it takes underpowered and underrated weapons and gives them a buff. Two weapons in particular: Gunlance and Prowler. The latter was of particular interest to me. See, in Monster Hunter, there are a race of sentient cats called Palicoes. You get Palico buddies to join you and help out on your hunts. They're adorable, helpful, and they speak in cat pun! What's not to like? Well, in Generations/Generations Ultimate and ONLY in those games, you can play as a Palico and beat up giant monsters as a tiny cat. This is Prowler mode. It only exists in these games. The Cope mod gives cats a buff, bringing them more in line with human hunters. It's good poo poo! Now please Capcom bring Prowler mode back! I miss it. You can't give me the chance to beat up monsters as a cat and then take it away.  1) Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Its the one, the only, MOTHERFUCKING LEGEND OF ZELDA TEARS OF THE MOTHERFUCKING KINGDOM BABEEEEEEE. Easily my most-anticipated game of 2023 and well worth the wait. Considering what a GOAT contender Breath of the Wild was, my expectations were sky high. And let me tell you did this game ever deliver! It seriously makes Breath of the Wild feel like a tech demo. It built upon the systems from the first game so seamlessly and then introduced a whole bunch of new stuff that I never knew I needed. I was honestly pretty garbo at the crafting system (you should see what other people can do with it, the mad lads), but that didn't stop me one bit from enjoying the hell out of it! Which is honestly a very good thing. I don't mind crafting systems but I don't like engaging with them fully to be REQUIRED to have a good time in the game. See also Rune Factory 5. Yeah sure you can build a giant rocket-powered crucifixion machine that spouts fire to carry the Korok where he wants to go, or you can just glue him to your horse harness and cackle madly as you drag him across the countryside! The world is your oyster. I confess I haven't actually "finished" this game. I have one dungeon to go and didn't beat the final boss yet. It is MASSIVE. I fully intend to go back to it and finish it up. It has just been quite a year for gaming and I haven't had the time! Bonus Twitch clip that pretty well captures my TotK experience: https://clips.twitch.tv/ConfidentExcitedPlumberPoooound-Ac9GkRvc88HOlSUY This game is the GOAT. If it doesn't win number one I... well I will do nothing really. I'll feel good for the game that did win and just be slightly disappointed. It was one hell of a year. Thanks for listening. Happy gaming, goons! Games are good. Easy to read numerical list without the wall o' text for VG: 10) Dracula X Chronicles - Castlevania: Symphony of the Night 9) Fire Emblem Engage 8) Rune Factory 5 7) Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed 6) Super Mario Bros. Wonder 5) Metroid Prime Remastered 4) Super Mario RPG (Remake) 3) Baldur's Gate 3 2) Monster Hunter XX: "Cope" Edition 1) Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Silver Falcon fucked around with this message at 19:05 on Dec 8, 2023 |
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Dec 8, 2023 03:27
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Lid posted:Six pages and not one mention for last year's winner Elden Ring oof i mean i mentioned it but i didnt play it much this year except to try out a couple of remix mods
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Dec 8, 2023 03:28
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Silver Falcon posted:4) Super Mario RPG (Remake) To answer your question: The person behind the Super Mario RPG Remake is ArtePiazza. The company behind such remakes as the DS Remakes of the Dragon Quest series, Dragon Quest XI's 2D Mode, and Dragon Quest V's PS2 remake, and Dragon Quest III, IV, and VII's scenario writer and CG design. So they've got quite the repertoire on making games!
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Dec 8, 2023 03:39
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Aipsh posted:Elden Eing literally too good to be in this year. If you could nominate a game you’ve been playing for more than a year then you’d have ten lunatics with TLOU (PS4) in the top ten I mean, this is is why Void Rains is on my list every year. Songbearer posted:I died a lot in this game and I am very bad at it because I build my robots badly and spend more time picking things that look cool rather than things that actually work. I haven't played AC6, but I have played a lot of Dark Souls and this is the true path. Yes, my stats suck and I die a lot, but I look mad stylish in the process. I am glad to hear that AC6 continues this tradition.
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Dec 8, 2023 03:42
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Talos should have won Best Art Direction.
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Dec 8, 2023 03:45
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