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Escobarbarian posted:jesus christ read the loving OP Please do not fret. If someone posts a list that is just one game or does not meet the criteria through writing nothing then do not worry or get annoyed. Some people do just want to share a single game, or just list out stuff and I think that is neat. I will remind them but just continue to post about stuff you like with others. I am doing the counting and tallying and I will nudge them if needs be but it is all handled back here in the mysterious data cabinet of my machine. To everyone else, keep dem lists coming!!! The numbers are very interesting this year.
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Dec 12, 2023 08:52
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You're insane if you think I will continue to help you shove numbered lists directly down your cavernous pink gullet. I've seen what kind of monster you become when you've eaten all the lists!
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Dec 12, 2023 09:06
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Honorable Mentions: FFXIV: Endwalker - The game is in maintenance mode, but it continues to be a thing I boot up every day for some amount of time. Ryza 3 - A nice finale to the trilogy, if not way too easy to break open and make the battles a joke. Holocure - Vampire Survivors but cuter and more fun (for me) Spider-Man 2 - Spider-man, but more. As cool as Venom was the game itself just didn't do enough that was new to make the list. Wo Long - A game that probably would of made the top ten list if it wasn't for the fact I got it physical as a gift and my PS5's disc reader died as I was in the final stretch, so it got put on hold for multiple weeks. While it didn't sour me on the game, it sure killed the momentum enough to knock it down a notch. 10: Live-A-Live - Reverse recency bias, as I played and beat this like the second weekend of the year, but I'd be remiss to exclude it considering it was one of the best RPGs I've played this year in a year of many good RPGs. It's a bit tough to place thoughts on it due to that, but the most important part of it all was how I now understand why exactly it was so hyped up and people were excited for the remake. 9: Star Wars: Jedi Survivor - Despite the fact I played Jedi Survivor day one I nearly forgot I played it when I was thinking back on the year, solely because this year was just full of far too many games I enjoyed. There's not too much to say about it for me, it was fun, enjoyable romp through the Star Wars universe much like the first. I suffered none of the launch woes some did as I played it on PS5 and had a great time. The legitimate worse thing I can say about it is it just came out in such a stacked year it wasn't as memorable as everything else! Forgive me, BD-1. 8: Sea of Stars - Was it the best RPG I played this year? No, not at all. Was it the one that most felt like playing an old SNES rpg I never touched before, thus making me feel like a kid again? Hell yeah it was. While I think Sea of Stars has some big flaws, far too easy once you get strong enough, the final stretch is a touch on the weak side.. It was a game I enjoyed front to back and was like getting to wrap myself up in a cozy blanket patterned with SNES controllers. 7: Fire Emblem: Engage - I'm one of those Fire Emblem fans who started at Three Houses. My range of knowledge for the series beyond that is lacking. A thing I wish to try and remedy next year, perhaps. But even with my knowledge of games beyond that being entirely from the mobile game, word of mouth from my friends and a LP or two on this very forum... I fully enjoyed Engage for being the obvious celebration of the series it was trying to be. Sure, the story was quite possibly the most lacking of any game on my top ten list, but the characters made up for it. This game has perhaps the most charming, goofy and fun cast of characters out of any of the games I played this year and it was the driving force of me coming back every evening. Not to mention the gameplay itself was so much more enjoyable than Three Houses and had perhaps TOO much customization... I will likely revisit it some day and play on that mode that lets characters actually die. 6: Star Ocean: The Second Story R - Actual recency bias likely in effect, paired with huge, massive dorky nostalgia goggles but... I loved every moment of playing Star Ocean 2 again. It being jam packed of so many QoL features, just looking better in every possible way yet retaining the goofy charm I remember... and knowing someday down the line I can experience it all over again as Rena to burn a week... Just a great game that should be the standard for every remake of old classic RPGs should try to live up to and I'll compare to going forward. 5: Resident Evil 4: Remake - I would say the original RE4 is possibly the only game that comes close to Chrono Trigger in how many times I've played it to completion. As for the remake, I might have only actually beat it once this year, but boy did it leave a great impression. I was worried it was going to be bad, the humor wouldn't be there, the WOW! factors would be missing... which, to be fair, the last one was kiiind of missing. I loved RE4make but for as good as it was, it didn't come out at a time it could redefine a genre. Still, I'll assuredly play it again next year at some point during a game drought on a harder difficulty. This year was quite full of games that I'll be touching again next year, though I doubt any will be on my list again. 4: Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - I'll be honest, I kind of hated BotW. The stamina system, durability, step away from real true dungeons... it all made me lose interest after giving it a good 10+ hours as I found myself staring at the world around me and just... not wanting to continue. ToTK however managed to hook me, and I'm still not entirely sure how. I think the biggest factor was being able to fuse weapons with stuff to mitigate the durability complaint I had. I enjoyed the game significantly more once that factor was removed from the equation. The fusing and building stuff was novel, however I never felt like I used it beyond the scope the game kind of laid blueprints out for you. Yet at the end of the day, despite having a great deal of fun and playing it to as much completion as I felt inclined.. I truly and genuinely hope this is the last time we see this formula for a long time, as if another Zelda comes out in this exact style I'm not sure I'd want to do it all over again. Even with my complaints, however, I cannot deny it was without a doubt one of the best games I played this year and spent quite a good bit of time on. Thus it gets to place pretty high on the list. 3: Final Fantasy XVI - I love Clive Rosfield. I could stop there, honestly. Clive is quite easily the biggest factor in why I consider FF16 to be my number 3. He is probably my favorite Final Fantasy lead now. From looks to voice to personality, every part of him is just such a huge reason for me weighing it in this high on the list. As for the other reasons, the spectacle and good lord the MUSIC is without a doubt the others. The story, sure, that was good too. Perhaps better in the first half then the second but I still enjoyed it front to back. Unlike most I also enjoyed nearly all the side-quests as they had world building jam packed into them. Was the combat as good as I'd have liked? Sure, it wasn't the Devil May Cry some hoped it would be but I had a great time with it and apparently didn't use the insane one shot combos so I perhaps got more out of it than most just due to not be min-maxed. Regardless of it being a bit mixed in places, it was hands down one of my favorites this year. I still think about how cool parts of it were, and go back and listen to certain tracks almost once a week. I can't say that about too many other games in this list. 2: Octopath Traveler 2 - It's hard to truly pin down why I think Octopath 2 is second on my list. I played it at launch and that was nearly a full year ago now. Yet that two week period or so where I spent nearly 100 hours with the game are just burned in my memory as such a one game and one game only invested time. There's just something about the voice work, the battle system, the music and the distinct and varied tales that each character goes through that really pulled me in and left me glued to my controller for hours every night before I realized I should save the next one for tomorrow or I'd keep playing another hour. It just had so much charm and care put into the game that I when I looked back on every single game I played, it clawed its way to the top as I don't think any other game this year actually got the full pop off the final boss did in Octopath 2 when it transitioned to the fight. Just the perfect culmination of the battle system I somehow didn't see coming. 1: Baldur's Gate 3 - Imagine, you're standing off against the big boss hobgoblin. You put yourself down in a place you think is to your advantage. The fight starts, your two buddies launch spells to kick things off on the trash and you get some hits in. Then the hobgoblin turns to you and throws your rear end into a bottomless pit instantly killing you. You end up having to reload due to increasing comedy of errors and the plan turns into "Let's commit a war crime on him instead." and you explode him with tons of barrels of gunpowder. As if in karmic balance, his body gets sent rocketing into the very same pit he threw you into earlier, denying you his loot but providing immense satisfaction and laughs for all. Later on in the same trend, your friend says "hey can you save" and after a few minutes a massive explosion comes from the other side of the map and tons of exp floods the battle log as one of your friends set off a small nuclear explosion on top of a necromancer, instantly killing him and all his minions in one clean motion. Baldur's Gate 3 was just that experience over and over and over and I cant wait to do it all again next year with my friends after it has had even more patches and QoL content added to it.
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Dec 12, 2023 09:31
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Spoilered list for the impatient who don't want to read a million words, because I kind of went ham this year: HMs: Yakuza 6, Yugiohs Master Duel & (Rush) Duel Links 10: Mega Man Zero 9: The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog 8: Fire Emblem Engage 7: Great Ace Attorney 6: Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective 5: Resident Evil 2 Remake 4: Baldur's Gate 3 3: Octopath Traveler 2 2: Sea of Stars 1: Tears of the Kingdom Honorable Mentions Yakuza 6 – The Song of Life (2016) [1] [2] I finally finished the Kiryu Saga this year (until they put out a new Kiryu Game this past month, anyway...) and I wish I could rank this on my list, but as nice as it was to finally return to the Dragon Engine after getting a sneak peak with Kiwami 2, I really have to call a spade a spade here. This game's got some Problems. First one, might as well talk about the Dragon Engine since I brought it up; it's rough. It's really easy to tell this was their first game working in it, because as new and exciting as it is after they'd wrung dry the engine powering the series for close to a decade by that point, you'll run into bizarre physics nonsense, hilarious bugs, some kind of uneven difficulty, and just a general... off-ness to it. As far as the story goes, it's a loving wild ride, but that's not always a positive. Probably most peoples' big complaint about the story of Y6 is how it handles the “sendoff” for Kiryu as the centerpiece protagonist. Most of the game is spent in a new area of Japan, dealing primarily with that region's Yakuza clan, the Yomei Alliance, who've historically had no allegiances, but also no major conflicts, with the Tojo or Omi, and mostly remained isolated. While a unique setting, this unfortunately leads to a severe lack of presence for most of the game from the cast Kiryu's gotten to know over the prior 6 games, with the exception of Akiyama, who helps Kiryu a couple of times (plus a boss fight against him which is fun). But by and large, the old guard are shuffled out in favor of a new crew of younger guys who decide Kiryu is their new aniki after some initial hostilities, and while I like them, I do miss everyone else, and I feel like they should have been involved if this was meant to be the end of Kiryu's story. The progression of the plot itself... I mean, it goes places. It starts off as Kiryu hunting for the identity of Haruka's baby-daddy, and it just spirals out of control from there. Definitely worth seeing, that's for sure. But unfortunately it just sort of settled out in the middle of the pack, for me. It's better than 1 and 3, but not as good as 0 or 2. Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel & Duel Links [1] [2] Okay listen. I had a lot of fun with Master Duel this year despite some... questionable formats in the early months. Particularly I really enjoyed playing Spright and recently Vanquish Soul. Still haven't spent a dime on this game, close to 2 years later. Also, the music loving slaps, which makes sense because the composer is Yasunori Nishiki, who also does Octopath Traveler's music. Duel Links... yeah I'll be honest, I totally fell off it last year when MD came out. It was just not necessary anymore at that point since we now had an official client for the “real” version of the game, and one with a much more generous economy. HOWEVER, in the last few months DL has added Rush Duels, which are basically a brand new card game that shake up the mechanics, the style of play, as well as the card art finally. Only problem is it's been Japan exclusive since it debuted in 2020. This release in Duel Links is the only way to play it in English for some reason. So I'm back to grinding for gems and doing my dailies in this janky-rear end steam mobile port to see what kind of nonsense this new version of the game can produce, because so far it's a little braindead simple but it's surprisingly fun. Hopefully Master Duel gets a Rush mode at some point in the future too so I can finally uninstall this stupid game. 10 - Mega Man Zero (2002/2020) [1] [2] [3] Playing the Zero/ZX Legacy Collection here, for reference, which includes some... very much appreciated QoL features. This game is a unique specimen. It's an excellent action platformer, and a worthy successor to Mega Man X, but it's also not made by Capcom. The whole series was developed by Inti Creates, while Capcom internal was busy with Battle Network. I don't really know if that's terribly relevant, but it is noteworthy. The game's also brutally difficult, especially the original release. Frankly, I don't know how people tolerated the GBA version 20 years ago, because even with Save-Assist mode enabled and being someone who doesn't care about rankings, I found it a little too punishing and rude at points. Still, slicing enemies with the Z-Saber and a couple other new weapons was satisfying as hell, and when I did finally beat a boss after several attempts it was such a triumphant moment. Zero's so goddamn cool. 9 – The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog (2023) [1] [2] [3] I love the modern trend of “haha wouldn't it be funny if we had an April Fool's joke that seemed awesome and then announced actually it's real.” Sonic and pals get on a luxury train to enact a murder mystery dinner for Amy's birthday, and you play along as a new hire on the train, basically there to be an everyperson meeting a bunch of celebrities. This game's just full of charm and reverence for Sonic as a franchise, developed by people at Sega who clearly care a lot. I adore the art and music, it has its own identity while still being recognizable as distinctly Sonic-y. It's about 1.5-3 hours depending how long you spend messing about with trash cans while Tails sighs at you, and it's free, so I highly recommend it. 8 – Fire Emblem Engage (2023) [1] [2] [3] I had trouble formulating what to say here without prefacing it by being a bit overly negative about the last 15 years or so of Fire Emblem, which I generally liked at release only for my opinion on each one to sour over time. So I'll just say: I don't think that's going to happen with Engage. The systems here are, while not perfect, still really loving good. The map design is head and shoulders above most of FE for the last 2 decades. The biggest general complaint about this game was in regards to the characters and story, and all I really have to say is... it's Saturday Morning Fire Emblem, bay-bee! Take the stick out of your rear end and have fun with this colorful gang of dorks! I've quite frankly had enough of 3H Discourse™ to last my entire goddamn life so I was perfectly fine with a lighthearted affair like this. My two big gripes with the game are a specific REALLY stupid, terribly written, terribly directed cutscene that was so unbelievably lovely it still stands out harshly in my memory. For those who know: It's the one in the cathedral where Sombron kills Alear and steals the rings, while Veyle refuses to take off the mind control crown. This scene is Fates-level dogshit. The other gripe is the rings themselves. I don't loving care about Marth. I don't want to see his stupid mug anymore. Please stop nostalgia pandering by showing me Marth in every other loving game in this series. That said, Engage is good enough that it manages to be my favorite FE since Path of Radiance and I don't feel the slightest bit bad about that. 7 – The Great Ace Attorney (2015/2021) [1] [2] [3] I actually started playing this back in 2021 when the 2-pack of both games came out, but only got through the first 2 cases before finally picking it back up this year and finishing it, so I'm counting it for 2023. While I wouldn't necessarily have picked early 20th century London as your primary setting for a new Ace Attorney story, it allows for Shu Takumi to give us his version of Sherlock Holmes (localized as Herlock Sholmes, for legal reasons) so I think in the end it's a net positive. Things start off a little rocky in this game, as the first 2 cases proceed at... kind of a snail's pace, I have to admit, particularly case 2. However, once you arrive in London at the start of case 3, the rest of the game is pretty rock solid, and I came away really positive at the end. New gameplay systems like the jury and being able to question multiple witnesses at once freshen things up quite a bit. The first time you see the Dance of Deduction I cackled in glee with how silly and full of character it was; the style upgrade over the “main” series is so refreshing. Excited to play the second game at some point. 6 – Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective (2011/2023) [1] [2] [3] [4] I have a personal rule with these lists: replays of games I've already “finished” (meaning not necessarily beaten, but played enough of to be done with) in a prior year, I won't put in my top 5. Remakes are a gray area, it depends how different it is, but the 2023 version of Ghost Trick is... pretty much the same game, but much nicer looking, with some cool extras including an arranged version of the soundtrack. So, in lieu of it taking my #2 spot this year (because it's like my 4th or 5th favorite game of all time) I'm giving it #6 here. With that preamble out of the way: PLAY GHOST TRICK, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD IT'S SO GOOD. Seriously, it's a genuine masterpiece. The gameplay is creative, clever, and fun even a decade+ later, the writing is on point, the core plot is engrossing, and the characters are almost all ridiculously memorable. To make an extremely bold statement, I think it's EASILY in the running for best ending to a video game of all time. I remembered just enough from my original playthrough to make for a great replay; very clear recollection of a few key Big Events & Revelations, some foggier memories of the general progression of the plot and medium-sized beats, while pretty much all the small details had vanished from my brain, which made it a treat to rediscover them. It's genuinely a tragedy that this became one of those notorious “Oh, I always meant to play that but I just never got around to it” games for so many people. Get the new version and play it. You will not regret it. 5 – Resident Evil 2 (1998/2019) [1] [2] I'll fully admit I'm a fairweather Resident Evil fan; 4 was my first one, and I've really never gone back to the prior games. I mostly say that to preface the fact that I really loved finally getting to this game. The design of the old game translated better than I think anybody could've anticipated to a third person camera; I finally get why everyone was clamoring for a remake. I'll admit I let it sit on the shelf for a few years because I got it cheap and didn't prioritize it, but I wish I'd played it sooner. 4 – Baldur's Gate 3 (2023) [1] [2] [3] gently caress it, I'm gonna be lazy for this one. Everyone's got it on their lists. If you've even remotely skimmed this thread or paid any attention to video games on the whole this year you almost assuredly know what's up with BG3 already. This game is insane. I've never played D&D before, or really any tabletop game more complicated than, like, Betrayal at House on the Hill. I've never played a CRPG before this (outside of Disco Elysium, which only sort of counts). I'm coming at it from the perspective of a big weeb who doesn't like western fantasy settings/aesthetics. All that and even I felt the pull of this one. Full disclosure, I've only gotten to the end of Act 2, and I honestly just figured “gently caress it, I'm not finishing Act 3 before January, I'll just save it.” And even without having done Act 3 yet, what I HAVE played has been so killer that it EASILY hits top 5. Karlach is best everything. 3 – Octopath Traveler 2 (2023) [1] [2] [3] (Just a heads up here that song #3 features some kind of spoilery gameplay footage for one character's story, due to Square's policy for music uploads. But... it's a really good song, and I wanted to link it. So maybe just, tab out after opening it.) I never played the original Octopath Traveler. I was immediately interested in it based on the, at the time, wildly unique visuals, but it's wound up being the only HD2D game I never actually got around to. It being a Switch exclusive initially when I didn't have one meant I wound up hearing about it from friends and other people trying it out and generally enjoying it (particularly the battle system, which is more or less the same with some improvements in 2, from what I can tell) and everything people said about the party almost never actually interacting with one another and there not really being a proper central narrative tying things together just kind of soured me on picking it up. In 2 that stuff is... not entirely solved? But it's definitely mitigated to enough of a degree that it didn't really detract from my enjoyment. In addition to the non-voiced Travel Banter (essentially Tales skits between 2 or 3 characters based on story progression and location) that was present in 1, there are now Crossed Paths chapters, which are extra side stories featuring 2 of the travelers, and a much more fleshed out endgame featuring everybody. As far as the individual stories themselves go, pretty much all of them are compelling in some way. Partitio and Agnea are the low-stakes fun plotlines, whereas Throné and Osvald are our designated edgelords who get their hands much dirtier than everyone else. There's a bit of everything here, and even the least interesting of the bunch (Hikari and Ochette, in my opinion) are still nowhere near “bad.” It's mostly just in relation to how good some of the others are. Also, it feels weird to mention it since it's kind of the norm that video game voice acting is just good by default now but I really enjoyed everybody's performances in this one, particularly Alejandro Saab as Osvald and Jas Patrick as Partitio. Yasunori Nishiki, as shouted out earlier in my HMs, returns for the music in this one, and it's, I think, even better than the first game (which I did go back and listen to a bunch of tracks from, to compare). Visuals are on point, as ever. I feel like I've seen some people say “ugh enough with these HD2D games you've flooded the market already” and it's like, I dunno, 4 games in 5 years doesn't feel particularly flooded, but what do I know. I still think this style kicks rear end, and they toned down the obnoxious VFX a bit after the first Octopath. The loving gigantic boss sprites are still incredible. I know a lot of people fell off of the first game for various reasons, so I hope more people give 2 a chance because of how much it improves on what the first game did. I hit just about 100 hours at the end, give or take, and it was well worth it. 2 – Sea of Stars (2023) [1] [2] [3] This one hit real special. Everything worked in concert. I saw the initial reveal of the game and thought “oh, that spritework is really nice, this seems like it could either be Pretty But Uninspired or Really loving Cool.” As you may be able to guess by it being my 2nd favorite game I played this year, it is not Pretty But Uninspired. They did, in fact, make a Really loving Cool game. The sprites are absolutely gorgeous. I feel like sometimes we take for granted just how good sprites can still look, and this game's style really shouldn't be overlooked; the animations as well are just stellar. Similarly, the music, composed primarily by Eric Brown with a few guest tracks by Yasunori Mitsuda, aka the Chrono Trigger guy, is pretty much all killer no filler. Most tracks have a day and a night version, and several bosses have unique themes that don't play for any other fight (I desperately want to include a link to one in particular but it's way more hype of a moment to hear it in-game) Probably the worst part of the game, unfortunately, is the beginning. It does kind of frontload the exposition with a lengthy flashback to the dual protagonists Valere and Zale learning how to be Solstice Warriors by utilizing Lunar and Solar magic, respectively. But once you get off the starting island and a giant automaton statue baseball tosses the two of them and their childhood friend Garl (more on him in a bit) to a neighboring island to start their journey, the game very quickly picks up. The story can be a little tropey at times (which honestly isn't helped by the first mate of the Pirate crew you befriend mockingly referencing a bunch of well worn JRPG tropes; thankfully she's about as annoying as that sort of writing ever gets) and Valere and Zale aren't exactly brimming with personality but the rest of your party are a lot more interesting. Of particular note is my favorite, Seraï, a mysterious ninja who joins you around 7 or 8 hours in, and Garl, who is far and away the heart of the game. Not gifted with the power of the Sun or Moon, or possessing any particularly cool mysterious weaponry like Seraï, Garl gets by on being a sturdy lad with a disarming smile and instantly likable charm. And being a great cook. I'll admit I was fully prepared to do the cynical “Oh this game really wants me to like Garl, huh? Well we'll just see about that” thing but he legitimately did win me over pretty quickly. Combat-wise, this game takes some cues from the Mario RPGs with Timed Hits playing a major part as well as picking bonus stats upon level up. I also really love the inclusion of Chrono Trigger-esque Dual Techs, and while not quite the same, the Spell Locks are a bit reminiscent of Octopath's weaknesses and breaking mechanics. There's other cool stuff too like super attacks and Live Mana, plus the Relics, which are basically game difficulty and accessibility modifiers. Most of them are there to smooth over certain rough edges people may have with this genre, like making combat easier, giving more money after battle/reducing shop costs, making the timed hits easier to figure out, stuff like that, but there's also a couple that crank the difficulty up if you're so inclined. I really jived with this one on a level I wasn't expecting, even as someone who loves this kind of game, and the last third of the story just hit so hard, there's no way I wasn't rating it highly on my list. 1 – The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (2023) [1] [2] [3] [4] Video games are so back, people. I really, really liked Breath of the Wild. It was my favorite Zelda game until about 6 months ago. I liked almost everything it changed. The shrines and divine beasts, the Sheikah Slate powers, the nearly unrestricted traversal, the new combat tools you had, the weapon degradation which you're a baby if you quit the game over and i'll die on this hill come at me mfs, the armor and inventory systems, and yes, hi, it's me, the dreaded Zelda Story Liker/Lore Care-Abouter. I loving loved the story and cutscenes in BotW. My only problem with them was that I wanted more. So of course I'm excited for a direct sequel to my favorite Zelda game. Why the hell wouldn't I be? I don't care if it's the same map, it's been 6 years, I'm ready to go back. Surely it'll be good, maybe even a bit better than BotW, but the magic of it being brand new won't be there, that'll be working against- NOPE this game loving slaps so hard oh my god. Tears of the Kingdom makes Breath of the Wild, one of the most well made, finely polished games of the last 20 years, look like an unfinished early access game. All the stuff that wasn't broke, like cooking or armor or combat? Yeah that poo poo's all pretty much the same (with new enemies and the ability to re-make dishes you've cooked already), but what about the Sheikah Slate powers? Well those were all lame, actually, it turns out, so here's a new set and there's not a bad one in the bunch. What about the Divine Beasts? Well I liked those fine, and having shorter dungeons with cool setpiece entry events was great, but okay we gave them all unique aesthetics and mechanics this time. The story? There's more of it, and it's way better! The modern day champions even get to play an actual role in it this time! Something I noticed that I really appreciated was how most of the major objectives are relevant to your main quest. In BotW it could all feel a little disconnected, but here pretty much everything ties back to the Upheaval in some way, and it all feels important. I was a little disappointed to find out that the narrative is once again presented mostly in flashbacks, but the actual content of those flashbacks was SO MUCH more compelling to me than BotW's (which, again, I liked!) that it stopped being an issue pretty quickly. The story takes some pretty radical turns and at a couple of specific points I found myself about as invested as I've ever been in any piece of media in my life. I mentioned in my #6 entry for Ghost Trick that that game had one of the best endings in a video game, and well, this game is absolutely in that echelon. There's just so much I love about this game, and that's not even getting into stuff like the vehicles and various nightmare contraptions you can build with Ultrahand, or the goofy poo poo you can do to enemies with your infinite satchel of various armaments and prank items you can glue to the end of your sword, the front of your shield, the tip of your arrows, or just straight up toss at them. One minor complaint is I think they should probably have made the glider a bit harder to miss, because I ran into an issue where upon reaching the surface, as I mentioned, everything they were presenting to me felt important, so I wasn't entirely sure what the “core” main quest was meant to be and kind of wandered off track, hitting some places where they just sort of assumed I'd have a glider, and I didn't. That was a bit annoying. Also I wish there was a bit more to do in the Depths. These are my only actual complaints. This game is incredible. There was never any question that this was going to be my #1. It did everything I wanted, several things I didn't realize I wanted until it was already doing them, AND it gave us hot samurai Ganondorf. Just astounding.
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Dec 12, 2023 10:49
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TriffTshngo posted:I really, really liked Breath of the Wild. It was my favorite Zelda game until about 6 months ago. Same... but I also only played it for the first time like six months ago and liked it so much that I jumped straight to Tears of the Kingdom and... yeah, everything you said! Tears of the Kingdom loving rules and I gladly join you in the ranks of Zelda Story Likers 
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Dec 12, 2023 12:08
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i got stoned and am playing control for the first time and even though i hate third person shooting games im considering altering my list to throw dark souls off to make room for it, am i too high?
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Dec 12, 2023 12:23
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The thing you have to remember about Control is that, from a completely objective standpoint, it loving rules 
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Dec 12, 2023 12:26
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Jezza of OZPOS posted:i got stoned and am playing control for the first time and even though i hate third person shooting games im considering altering my Remedy makes some of the best presented and conceptually wild stories in the gaming industry There's also some shooting mechanics attached to them, somewhere (remedy games live in GOTY lists, but never at the top. it is their Curse)
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Dec 12, 2023 12:56
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Happy 2023. This year, I am writing this with a self-imposed restriction to not include games I played or considered last year and not include games I did not finish. Sorry, Victoria 3, Destiny 2, WH40k Darktide. HONORABLE MENTIONS (Because I did not finish them or ran out of motivation to finish them) Tears of the Kingdom, Cassette Beasts, Darkest Dungeon 2, Dead Space Remake, Resident Evil 4 Remake, Pikmin 4, Super Mario Wonder, Super Mario RPG, Fire Emblem Engage, Final Profit, Pizza Tower. 10) Crop Rotation 9/15/2023 Crop Rotation takes the Luck is a Landlord format and says lets also allow you to consider placements when plopping down combos and let’s make this about food and farming and instead of landlords its loan payments and hold on this is still Luck is a Landlord. There is an inane joy in reaping what you sow: the plants plopping at places for points and money which then allows for mutations and sick vegetable combos makes it satisfying to just rush headlong into the randomness and just bask in how it works. 9) Dangeresque: the Roomisode Triangulate 8/11/2023 Dangeresque the Roomisode Triangulate is a point and click adventure game that feels like a shitpost made flesh and bone. Homestar Runner at this point is almost 23 odd years old and the humor still hits. Baked into the bits about play pretend cops and faux action movies is the familiarity of the Chapman brothers riffing on games they know and love and all the while, I’m back on my dell CRT monitor watching and waiting as a flash sbemail loads. The puzzles aren't challenging and are well telegraphed with satisfying denouements. The animations are a joy to behold and the voice acting remains top tier. And above all else: i went into this game constantly grinning, part out of nostalgia, part out of anticipated payoff. As far as I'm concerned, this is a fine capstone on the Homestar Runner legacy and hopefully not the last. 8) Lakeburg Legacies 7/20/23 Lakeburg Legacies is a game about grooming a family and planning a community. That does not sound right. Let me rephrase. Lakeburg Legacies is about loving around with families and loving with families. It’s about finding the right person to work a tiresome job for the benefit of a small community. As a pastiche peasant population management game, it works to endear you to these randomized minions and their trials and tribulations. Workplace issues, rivalries, household drama, politics, and interesting roleplay elements helps to keep the plates spinning and the balance ever tipsy. As a romanticization of how peasant labor is organized and utilized, it felt a little under-baked but updates have addressed many of my launch complaints. It is enjoyable to just watch how your small town fucks around and fucks up. My highest praise comes with the how eventually, the gameplay and narrative takes on a darkest dungeon-esque approach to your paper dolls: the initial rush of seeing your couples setup, people working and dying, endeavoring to improve life lessens over time as the new families come in, the old die off and what continues is a need to persist instead of progress. the families become labor: a matter of filling slots for the sake of maintaining production. a slow devolvement of the pastoral lifestyle into becoming the roots of the conflicts of labor and organization against a royalty detached from the perils of the work. Of course, I may be reading too much into this. but did you hear? the Henderson’s son, you know the Johnny boy? I heard they ran off with Sally Bishop, the prostitute. How scandalous~ 7) Terra Nil 3/28/23 I have opinions about Terra Nil. It doesn't do enough. It is wish fulfillment at its worst with how magic all this tools in this game works and how complicated ecosystems can be made with the snap of a finger and hopefully wonderous with how it can all be done with your tools and technology. it feels programmatically problematic to puzzle out the margins where life can exist on this dead planet. and i keep thinking about it. i keep thinking about how adding things to this game like the scale of time to hammer home a larger point about how long it takes for an ecosystem to develop and how much i need to learn more about this kind of poo poo. I guess that’s the point. It is a city builder where you are rebuilding spaces for life to grow; from deep in the mountains among the magma fields to the deep sunken remains of craters long contaminated with fallout and puzzling out going from a blasted wasteland back to an actual environment. Its simultaneously suffocating and serene and I keep thinking about it. 6) Slay the Princess 10/23/23 Slay the Princess is a well-told, well voice-acted story about slaying a princess. You will not find a finer example of unreliable narration and the chaos that can unfold in one's own head just from such a simple task. Slay the Princess. Do it. Nothing is wrong with your task. What doubts? Stop doubting. You are only here to move the plot forward. And the plot is Slaying the Princess. Go do it. 5) Mech Engineer 12/16/20 Armored Core 6 is also on this list but Mech Engineer has a cloying persistence to it. its part Xcom base resource management, part mecha customizer, and part auto battler. There is a depth here that i will willingly drown in because it revels in the minutiae of the mechanized war unit: the engines and how it heats and cools, the ignition units and recovering a forced shutdown as the bugs close in, the matter of powering the weapons, the weapons themselves, the pilots panicking in these death machines as a thousand bugs descend on your base. It just coalesces into this one brainworm that Armored Core 6 shares. 4) Reverse 1999 10/26/23 Nostalgia for certain time periods often brings forward notable events and just says wow how cool was that. Reverse 1999 says what if we keep going forward in time while as all around us, time goes backward and washes away as if it never happened. Wouldn't it be cool if you be nostalgic for something that never happened? The character design in this gacha game is inspiring as it pulls through history to find the dog who found the world cup trophy as a playable character and presents them all like an art gallery for a period that never happened. It’s a little opaque with its narration and presentation of the plot but it presents itself well enough to be intriguing to notice that the concept of Issac Newton and the eponymous moment of gravity is represented by a sentient apple with sunglasses. 3) Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon 8/24/23 The main draw for Armored Core 6 can be reiterated with Mech Engineer but that undersells how From Soft has sold the mecha fantasy. Instead of relying on numbers like a nerd (it still relies on the numbers like a nerd), you feel the difference. you know what feels good, speeding like a bullet or running through like a brick shithouse. you know what satisfies your need for a 10m tall metal monster. you know what works best here: a giant shotgun blasting holes through tanks and turrets or a salvo of 200 custom tooled cartridges firing at 10000 rounds per minute all while your missile salvos keep on coming. the power fantasy is addicting and it clicks immediately why mech fans are like this. And when you think you've gotten it, the game says "Great! now beat OUR power fantasy!" and unveils a unholy monstrosity of missile mayhem with a flamethrower and you do. And then it unveils a Gundam protagonist and you can’t stop there. Compounded with solid voice acting and a melodrama that find details and nuance in the different playthroughs and Armored Core just hits like a pilebunker. 2) Baldur’s Gate 3 8/3/23 Cyberpunk 2077 Project Liberty 9/25/23 These are just good games. I am a sucker for good character work and voice acting and both games had it in spades. Idris Elba knocked it out of the park just as Keanu did before him and the Baldur's Gate cast all shine on their own. Special shout out to the dark urge playthrough. Both games deserve recommendation and commendation not only for its high quality but for how easy it is to sell how hard the developers worked on these games because it shows. There are details and concern shown through gameplay, storytelling, and polish in the details that the time and labor it took to get to this point is well worth it. Cyberpunk has had its storied development from launch up until now, resulting in a formal Polish Gamedev Workers Union, and the different quality updates along with this expansion makes a new playthrough more refreshing than my first time through. Baldur's Gate came out with some performance issues and an act 3 with no epilogue but Larian keeps cranking out new updates and keeps on delivering to make it feel more and more fleshed out. 1) Brotato/20 minutes until dawn/Holocure Last year had Vampire Survivors which i bounced off of but I will light a torch for Brotato. Smaller arena, tighter design, more item consideration for builds, more difficult bullet hell style dodging and more fun. 20 Minutes Until Dawn also launched this year which made it difficult to compare them but then Holocure also released for free so like, whats a guy to do? Brotato still blows them all out of the water with the more interesting challenges and just the fact I’m more comfortable with a gun. I admit, I am only able to complete Brotato with the help of an auto-battler mod that utilizes a bot to play for me but the challenge of itemization is still there with the added wrinkle of needing to accommodate for the bot's shortcomings. 1) gently caress you self-imposed rules its Victoria 3 gently caress you self-imposed rules, it’s still Victoria 3 as my game of the year. In a banner year of labor actions, unionization movements, and publicized strikes, Victoria 3, the Paradox game about the industrialization of the world, continues to roost in my mind with feathery aplomb. It’s the insidious tick of construction against the backdrop of human slavery, suffering, and subsistence. It’s the winds of change bringing the sum of simple motivations instead of a "great leader": the search for more resources, the desire for control, the pursuit of a better life. It's the patience needed walking that fine line of pissing off the right people enact a glorious revolution or a regressive backslide. it is an eternal question: how do you live without work? When 5000 pops create enough grain for 500,000 pops, when the demand for more production increases as your population increases, when you need resources more than people, what do you do? Since last year, there has been a shift in the updates and balance from focusing on the great and powerful historical figures as monumental forces of nature to the population driving social and market change. The South America content DLC this year exemplifies this change as leaders such as Petro II and Jose Gaspar Rodriquez de Francia take an influential roleplay approach to the population and what they are exposed to. It is frighteningly fun to realize you have created a modern military industrial complex in pre-1900's Paraguay under an enlightened despot with only one idea as to what it can be used for. It is depressingly enjoyable to observe as cheap inputs and labor spoils a Great Power's bourgeoisie to the point where losing access imperils the empire. (it’s me I’m the cheap inputs and labor) For all the game's missteps on diplomacy, trade, and the actual under the hood calculations, it still delivers the only rage inducing moments for social change and labor movements in players I've seen in games. It still delivers the satisfaction of plotting conquest through goods and services instead of guns and armies. It still presents the eternal question to a successful independence or revolution: What next? the work still needs doing and the population still needs a life to live. So what next? BigOwlGuyBMJ fucked around with this message at 16:14 on Dec 12, 2023 |
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Dec 12, 2023 16:07
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Hyper Inferno posted:Valkyrie Profile 2 is one of my favorite games of all time but it's definitely a completely different vibe than VP1. It's so much more mechanically focused on its systems which makes the combat really robust but it's nothing like the atmosphere of the first game despite the fact that it's both a sequel and a prequel at the same time. I like VP more than VP2 but I still like VP2 a whole lot. The absolutely batshit loving insane twist the story takes in the second half is worth the trouble and it just has a lot of great things. I also like Covenant of the Plume which is loving fantastic as a SRPG. Never been a bad Valkyrie Profile game. Valkyrie Elysium? Don't see Profile in there.
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Dec 12, 2023 16:40
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HopperUK posted:Bought those Alwa games someone was talking about! Assuming that was this thread. I'm quite tired. They're on deep sale though! These looked neat, thanks for the heads up!
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Dec 12, 2023 16:57
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Lisztless posted:Man who played final fantasy with his wife every weekend That's amazing, unfortunately, I never had any girlfriend who shared any interest in videogames. Help Im Alive posted:ascending list for all the psychopaths: Anyone who puts Stranger of Paradise on their list is a legend. Paranormasight looks interesting, gives me 999 vibes, definitely need to try it out. Fighting Elegy posted:I guess that would be sorta fun, but I do like shouting praises of Wanted:Dead into the abyss. I really need to try Wanted, totally forgot I have it but this year was so stacked, I never got back to it. Definitely one of the games I need to play next year.
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Dec 12, 2023 18:29
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You certainly can't accuse Wanted: Dead of being unmemorable.
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Dec 12, 2023 18:32
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Holy poo poo what a year lol
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Dec 12, 2023 20:20
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Figuring out my top ten & almost all of them are from the first half of this year. So many great games released in the last few months waiting in my backlog.
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Dec 12, 2023 20:48
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Ineffiable posted:Hell yes another person voting for AC6 as number one. We might have a shot at getting in the top numbers! there are dozens of us!!! dozens!!!
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Dec 12, 2023 20:52
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What a year it was that the hot new From release is in danger of being buried
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Dec 12, 2023 20:54
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Giant robots 😬
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Dec 12, 2023 21:16
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Jay Rust posted:Giant robots 😬
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Dec 12, 2023 21:38
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You dig giant robots! I dig giant robots! We dig giant robots!
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Dec 12, 2023 21:43
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ImpAtom posted:You dig giant robots! Nice.
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Dec 12, 2023 21:44
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FireWorksWell posted:Nice.
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Dec 12, 2023 21:50
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I haven't spent the time yet to get a list together, but I'm saddened by the lack of A Highland Song love so far. Ya'll need to play it and update your lists. It's a beautiful, atmospheric adventure, and my favorite inkle. Kind of like Heaven's Vault, things you learn in one play through carry over to the next. Unlike Heaven's Vault, A Highland Song respects your time and only takes a few hours to complete a run.
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Dec 12, 2023 23:48
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Escobarbarian posted:I bought Perfect Tides after I saw it at the top of a list last year but never got around to it. How does it play on Steam Deck? It should work okay. There was an update this October that added Steam Deck and controller support, which also had a hotfix in late November for initial issues (via Steam's community page). I'll install it and double-check if it all works correctly.
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Dec 13, 2023 00:24
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moosferatu posted:I haven't spent the time yet to get a list together, but I'm saddened by the lack of A Highland Song love so far. Ya'll need to play it and update your lists. It's a beautiful, atmospheric adventure, and my favorite inkle. Kind of like Heaven's Vault, things you learn in one play through carry over to the next. Unlike Heaven's Vault, A Highland Song respects your time and only takes a few hours to complete a run. It only just came out! And if it's half as good as Heaven's Vault it's going to be on my GOTY list for 2024, but this thread is about 2023.  ImpAtom posted:I like VP more than VP2 but I still like VP2 a whole lot. The absolutely batshit loving insane twist the story takes in the second half is worth the trouble and it just has a lot of great things. I also like Covenant of the Plume which is loving fantastic as a SRPG. I don't think I ever made it to the second half of VP2. I played through the first half, like, four times and always lost interest somewhere between the lake temple and the dragon palace. I think it was a mix of: - the combat isn't nearly as satisfying as VP1 - the graphics aren't nearly as good as VP1 - the equipment/crafting system encourages grinding - the equipment/crafting system also encourages endless fiddling with character loadouts in a way that VP1 didn't, while also being much more boring than any of the gear you get in VP1 where there's ancient mystical artifacts of immense power just lying around - the Einherjar are all randomly selected Generic Mage/Fighter/Archer with a single paragraph of backstory buried in a menu somewhere rather than actual characters ...so, basically, playing it just makes me think "wow, what a huge step back from VP1 in every respect this is", which is a shame, because I want to like it, and based on playing VP1 and what I have seen of VP2, there's probably some ridiculous time travel bullshit later in the game and that is 100% my jam. But it feels like mechanically, they changed a lot of stuff that didn't need to be changed for the worse, and narratively, they hugely overcorrected from VP1's half-hour-long unskippable cutscenes and instead ended up with a bunch of characters I don't know and have zero emotional investment in. And despite that, typing this up is still making me want to go exhume my disc, boot it up in PCSX2, and go back for round five. As for Covenant of the Plume, I never had a DS and wasn't really vibing with the idea of playing as some rando who wants to kill all the valkyries because he missed remedial norse mythology 101 rather than playing as a valkyrie, but I also didn't really look into it any further than that, so I can easily believe it's better than it sounds. ToxicFrog fucked around with this message at 00:31 on Dec 13, 2023 |
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Dec 13, 2023 00:29
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Kaz's GotYs Honourable mentions: Transistor Supergiant Games, 2014 This is the third time I've played this, and the first time in NG+. It actually loving rules? Before, the gameplay has been something I admired more than enjoyed, but this time around something just clicked, and I really got into learning how functions worked and interacted. I wound up playing the game mostly in real-time mode, totally ignoring the turn-based side of things. There's a lot of this game in Hades, more than you'd think. I also replayed Bastion and Pyre, but this is the one that really made an impact. Humanity tha LTD, 2023 A lovely chill puzzle game, a 3D Lemmings. This game absolutely seized hold of me for about two weeks - I was seeing solutions in the shower, or while I was trying to sleep. The perfect balance between genuinely difficult puzzles, and levels where you use the rules you've learnt to build a cool spectacle. Terra Nil Free Lives, 2023 Another vibes-based game, in which you use a limited set of tools to turn a polluted wasteland into a lush, varied ecosystem. Completing each level is technically easy; the real joy and interest of the game is making maps that are beautiful and naturalistic. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice From Software, 2019 This January I finally got around to doing the Shura route. In spite of putting the game down for a year, I still had the reflexes - everything in this game just feels so right. Perfect game. The Real List: 10. Ghostrunner One More Level/Slipgate Ironworks, 2020 I played this on a whim since it was included in a subscription. Anyway, it rules. You run fast and die fast and respawn fast, there's enough customisability to shave down whichever parts of the game give you the most grief, and the music is fantastic. The story is forgettable, but to the game's credit it doesn't really ask you to remember it anyway. This is, as far as I know, the best 3D Hotline Miami yet made. 9. Terraformers Asteroid Lab, 2023 It's an indie card-based colony builder, in which you settle and (maybe) terraform Mars. I've played like eight games in this vein recently, but this is the one that really grabbed a hold of me. It's got a nice board-game sensibility to it; mostly low numbers, and every resource counts. I love it because it's bite-sized; you get a complete experience in 60-90 minutes. The different scenarios give you reasons to really explore the economy and tech tree; if there's a particular version of colonising Mars that you're interested in, it's probably in here somewhere. 8. Total War: 3 Kingdoms Creative Assembly, 2019 I've dabbled in this game since its release, but this was the year where I finally committed, learnt my way around, and played through a full campaign. It's great! While Total Warhammer eclipses it in terms of unit and faction variety, this game manages to pull off interesting, meaningful diplomacy, in putting the player in situations where they aren't relentlessly expanding to avoid falling behind, and where economic development isn't purely about maximising income. In my game as Ma Teng, I spent most of the time vassalised to more powerful factions, paying my dues and picking off targets of opportunity. I went to extreme lengths to keep my southern border peaceful, so I could focus everything on the east. My national identity was shaped less by my starting traits and more by geography, as I took control of the Silk Road and the best lands for warhorses. And the campaign ended not with a relentless autoresolved march across the lands of a defeated enemy, but with a series of terrible, climactic battles right in the heart of China. It was memorable, in a way that TW games have struggled to be for a while now. I just wish they'd go back and take another swing at all the bugs. 7. Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores Guerrilla Games, 2023 It's a big new area and a post-game plot on top of HFW. Anyway, it has the same weaknesses as the base game, in that the fights are often overwhelming and the player lacks defensive options, while the economy is a deluge of loot of unclear value. But the highs are so high, man. I would spend hours just meandering around the world - very deliberately not looking at the map, just navigating by sight, on foot, going where my interest led. It's a strikingly beautiful game, and the new lava effects play off the existing water ones perfectly. All this is not to say it's bad, storywise - it builds on and advances past Forbidden West significantly - but it's the world which has really stuck with me. 6. Nier Automata PlatinumGames, 2017 Finally got around to this one. It's a wonderfully weird action-RPG, taking you through the last few weeks of a bizarre sci-fi war from several perspectives. It puts a great emphasis on player control, and is frank about its own video-game-ness in a way I found refreshing. The HUD elements exist in-universe, and you have to allocate resources to keep them. There are multiple endings, and the game just labels them all and encourages you to do weird poo poo to "collect" them. I spent about 50 hours playing this game, of which maybe 15 were spent fishing. Holy poo poo, do not try and complete the Fishing encyclopedia. After that, I looked at what it would take to actually complete every weapon and get every ending, and decided it would be better to leave the game wanting more, and just focused on the main plot til the very ending. Really only have myself to blame for that one. Still, a great game, and an utterly unique one. 5. The Roottrees Are Dead jjohnstongames, 2023 This is a small project by SA's own Superrodan, an Obra-Dinn-esque detective game in which the player unravels a complicated family tree of candy heirs. (I hear Her Story is probably the best point of comparison, but I haven't actually played that one). It's a game which rewards attention to detail, persistence, and organisation of thought. There's this fun rhythm to things, where you'll tap out your existing sources of information, get desperate, try locking in a few guesses, and then go revisit an old piece of evidence only to stumble onto a motherlode of new information. Just a really lovely surprise towards the end of the year - and hey, it's free! You can play it now! Right now! 4. Tunic Isometricorp Games, 2022 When I was a kid I lived overseas for a couple years, and legit games were hard to come by. I once got a copy of Pokemon Silver, for the GameBoy Colour, except it was all hosed up. As far as I could tell, it was some sort of botched pirate translation, of which about 30% was comprehensible English. I still played through the whole thing, barely able to understand what anyone was telling me, or what any of the moves or items did, or what story each area was trying to tell me. Anyway, apparently this is a way more universal experience than I had previously thought, and Tunic is a game made for people with these memories. Tunic is an isometric metroidvania. Almost all the text in the game is written in nonsense glyphs, and they don't get translated at some point, they stay nonsense til the end. It is actually possible to translate them, and it's a really cool system. The text is English, but it's not a cypher for the Roman alphabet, it's a new system of writing in which each character is a syllable, designed specifically around the sounds of English, which is insanely cool. Anyway, the player is expected to learn the game through experimentation, intuition, and the small fragments of text that are in English. There's a manual, which the player finds page-by-page around the world, but it's all written in the same gibberish, so again you've got to use the same deductions as in the game proper. This game taps into the same feeling as Dark Souls, of inhabiting a world where things just aren't explained to you, where the secrets are real secrets and not things to check off for each region, of having to interact with the game to understand the game. A gem. 3. Spider-Man 2 Insomniac Games, 2023 Yeah Spider-Man go Spider-Man get the baddies. 2. Golden Idol Color Gray Games, 2022 An investigation game, not unlike Return of the Obra Dinn, in which the player is presented with tableaus and left to figure out who did what to whom and why. It starts off very simple and straightforward, but steadily escalates until you're swapping between five screens, juggling secret identities, and keeping track of who can speak which language. The plot takes some wild swings, but it's all very consistent, and there's a lot of payoff for remembering the fine details. It really encourages you to learn the plot, you know? And you feel like a genius once you do. The game had two DLCs, both released this year, and both of high quality. They're shorter chains of scenarios, but demanding, weaving incredibly complicated scenarios for the player to unravel. 1. The Witcher 3 CD Projekt Red, 2015 I started this game in October of 2019, completing it in December of '22, and then played the DLC this year - but I didn't count it in any of the previous years, and Blood & Wine was the best part anyway, so I'm counting it as a '23 game. TW3 is an exercise in storytelling. Every part of the world has some history to it, has problems, has tensions. It's very good at giving minor characters a real sense of presence, like they've got their own lives which are merely being interrupted by whatever's brought Geralt to town. It's also willing to let the player really gently caress up, storywise, in a way that doesn't feel chiding or frustrating. While the base game has a certain clumsiness to it, the two expansions are immediately noticeable for how much more confident they are in their construction. Quests become more complicated, settings get more varied, even the cutscene camera is more adventurous. It took me ages to get around to this game and ages more to finish it - see you in 2030, BG3 - but I'm glad I did. It's one for the ages. List in alphab order of 3rd-last character: 6. Nier Automata 3. Spider-Man 2 2. The Case of the Golden Idol 5. The Roottrees Are Dead 1. The Witcher 3 9. Terraformers 10. Ghostrunner 4. Tunic 8. Total War: 3 Kingdoms 7. Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores
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Dec 13, 2023 00:37
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Kazzah posted:List in alphab order of 3rd-last character: Thank you.
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Dec 13, 2023 00:51
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Kazzah posted:Kaz's GotYs This is the correct way to order your list.
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Dec 13, 2023 00:52
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fridge corn posted:This was a really cool review of Persona 5. When art can inspire you in real life and get your brain juices flowing and making new neural connections it is a truly beautiful thing. Sounds like you guys had a fab time in Japan! What did you get up to outside of Tokyo? Thank you! I'll put my travel talk in spoilers so it doesn't derail the overall game chat and lists. Also, I plan to add a little more to the P5 Royal review since there's so much more about the game on my replay this year that stands out. Outside of Tokyo, we spent three days in Kyoto and two days in Osaka (really only one full day). In both cities, we chose hotels that were pretty much in the city's respective downtowns with a decent idea of where we would walk each day. Kyoto was incredible and totally understand why it's such a destination: lots of parks, temples, and walking paths to stroll down. We averaged ~11 miles walking each day throughout our two weeks in Japan and nowhere did we walk more than Kyoto. It was my first time visiting so we made sure to visit the major landmarks like the Inari Temple, Kinkaku-ji, Bamboo Forest, Nijo Castle, and Nishiki Market. Although it was raining for a good portion of our Kyoto trip, it kinda enhanced the greenery of where we visited. We visited the Inari Temple really early in the morning to beat the crowd and woo boy do you get the sense that everyone wants to visit here yet nobody else realizes this place involves walking uphill. Really scenic, but we passed by so many well-meaning people who clearly looked uncomfortable or unprepared. Literally stumbled across a Ramen restaurant which ended up being our favorite Ramen place of the whole trip. We also stayed overnight at a Ryokan which was far less time than it deserves, I could spend an entire day detaching from work, sipping tea, and staring at a small garden. Osaka was near the end of our trip and we pathed a route southward from the main bullet train station down to Osaka Castle, to Amerika-Mura (I passed this opportunity up but, how did this place know I would consider a Seattle SuperSonics 1996 Western Conference Finals shirt. I'm not even a Sonics fan, just how did this vintage shirt come into existence), and down further to Denden Town to pick up some gifts for our friends. We also stopped by two places my wife recognized from foodie blogs/Netflix, I wish I could recall both names right now. By this point, our legs accumulated enough miles and we were exhausted and headed back to our hotel. We ended that day with a dinner at Tempura Bonji and a few drinks at the 40 Sky Bar & Lounge while watching the sunset, which was the perfect cap on the day. After that, we headed back to Tokyo for a few last days before flying out. DMCrimson fucked around with this message at 01:06 on Dec 13, 2023 |
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Dec 13, 2023 00:53
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The bamboo forest in Kyoto is spectacularly beautiful, and I visited it in Winter when it's basically at its "worst"!
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Dec 13, 2023 03:37
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Just checked out The Roottrees Are Dead. Y'all were right, it's pretty cool! I haven't had a proper deduction fix for a while.
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Dec 13, 2023 04:08
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I'm going to first mention some old favorites that I went back to this year but opted against putting on my list, simply because it's too hard to evaluate where to place them. Cowardly for sure. Late last year I went back to Spelunky 2, one of my favorite games, and after many, many hours, in January this year I managed to get the super duper secret ending for insane people, which is almost certainly the most difficult feat I've achieved in a game. Huge highlight. It's a completely mad game and I love it forever. I also replayed Deus Ex for the first time in over ten years. What a game. Hong Kong must be one of the finest levels ever made, exactly the kind of intricate, labyrinthine level design that I adore getting lost in. Not going to pretend this game isn't immensely flawed in many ways, but there is magic here that goes way beyond nostalgia. It really is just one of the GOATs. And I revisited the humble Pixeljunk Eden, a delight of a game. Cleaned up the last ~15 achievements I had left unearned years ago, an experience which unfortunately highlighted some of the flaws in the game - ignorable when you're just growing plants and chilling to minimal techno, but amplified when you're trying to 100% each level. The sequel's coming to Steam soon but sadly I tried the demo and they made a few ostensibly minor changes that in reality change the controls/movement so much for the worse. It's no longer the smooth, flowing platforming of the first, but instead a constant frustration to perform even simple jumps. Heartbreaking. All of those felt notable enough to mention in my yearly recap, but yeah, hard to say where to put them on the actual list. Oh, shoutout to Glass Masquerade 3: Honeylines. Evergreen series. Cup of tea in the evening with some gorgeous jigsaws to put together is cozy and wholesome. I hope they never stop making these. Anyway, here are my top 5, presented in descending order due to peer pressure. None of them came out in 2023. I played a lot of other good games as well but these are the ones that really made an impact. ------ 5. Legend of Grimrock 2  Feels like the pinnacle of its genre. I can scarcely find a fault in this game, it knows exactly what it wants to do and achieves it to an incredibly high standard. Expertly designed. 4. Disco Elysium  It's taken me a long time to get to this one. Part of it was a stupid kneejerk reaction to the constant praise, which turned me off somewhat. But beyond that I've also felt over the past few years that my ability to focus and maintain my attention has declined, and knowing how text-heavy this game was I just didn't think I had it in me to get through it. Eventually I forced myself to install and launch it, but I was dreading it a little. Hey, you were right. It's good. Like, one of the best RPGs ever made probably. At first I thought there were too many skills, but actually I love how granular the system is. Clumsy know-it-all with a flair for the dramatic and an inexplicably high pain threshold? Sure. I'll take that anytime over INT/AGI/CON. The voice acting is sometimes uneven, and I turned some of it off. Cuno is a riot. Kim rules. The phasmid revealing itself at the end made me gasp. 3. Northern Journey  One of the most instantly captivating games I've played. A top notch entry in the "uncompromising single-dev this-is-my-vision-gently caress-you" genre. If you ever find yourself getting cynical and jaded about this hobby and you are not arachnophobic; if you need to be shaken and reminded that Games Are Good, Actually, give this a try. Most likely you'll know within five minutes if it's your bag. But, again, I must stress: only if you are not arachnophobic. There are big spiders and small spiders. There are green spiders and black spiders. There are boss spiders. There are spiders in the trees, and spiders in the grass. There are spiders in the swamp. Sometimes the only thing you can do is sling a small rock at them. 2. Paradise Killer   A beautifully designed island to get lost in. Absolutely banging soundtrack. Intriguing mystery. It's a fine example of what I like most in games, which is to simply exist in and explore a compelling world. Paradise Killer achieved this for me despite being a highly static world - in fact the player character's the only thing that actually ever physically moves. And yet.The map is built of the same stuff as Deus Ex's Hong Kong. It's intricate and detailed and initially overwhelming, and you're let loose in almost the entirety of it right off the bat. Getting familiar with the island is the fun of the game, though. It's ultimately a fairly simple collectathon otherwise but the atmosphere/vibe is top notch. And it feels like a very "yes, and" kind of game. You are highly mobile, there are no invisible walls and collectibles are everywhere - go. At the trial, you're free to pin any crime on any suspect even if you lack evidence (don't expect it to stick necessarily, though). Or you can collect evidence but choose not to present it. Maybe that stuff's standard for the mystery/detective genre but the game just felt very accommodating, very open to letting you do whatever and follow your own path. It's very far from perfect but goddamn I loving loved every minute. I've been trying to fit it into my list of all-time favorites but need to decide what gets axed. 1. Caves of Qud  It's Qud. I played 90 hours of it in 2021-22, and tripled that this year. Paradise Killer may be a candidate for my all-timers, but Qud is already there. It's one of those game worlds that I'm always thrilled to spend time in. It's Qud, what can I say. It's everything that I love in games. Sway Grunt fucked around with this message at 21:01 on Dec 13, 2023 |
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Dec 13, 2023 20:12
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I loved paradise killer. Awesome to see it on a list in 2023!
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Dec 13, 2023 20:32
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DMCrimson posted:So that brings me to something outside the game itself. Earlier this year, my wife and I went to Japan for two weeks, the biggest vacation I’ve ever been on. I didn’t grow up traveling and the concept of two entire weeks of international travel seemed impossible as a kid. We spent half our time in Tokyo, walking around various neighborhoods with a few locations in mind but ultimately, letting ourselves walk and wander. To be frank, I live in a big city and love walking around big cities most of all. There’s an energy and upbeat vibe that makes you feel like you’re in the middle of the world. We walked through Shibuya twice, once during the day and once during the night, and yes, we took pictures that P5 fans would appreciate. Construction prevented a truly accurate "thief's hideout overlooking Shibuya" photo but our attempt was close enough. We walked through Harajuku and Ann would absolutely wait 40 minutes for a Crepe here. We entered a Bic Camera store and finally realized why all those geeky-tech Futaba events took place here. On the subway, my wife leaned in my ear to say “that’s the stop where the Persona 5 school is located”. I swear we didn’t come to Tokyo for the game but I can’t deny it helped us become familiar with the city and make it a little more special. This is going to be me next year when I visit Japan as a Yakuza/LAD fan.
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Dec 13, 2023 20:34
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Mordiceius posted:This is going to be me next year when I visit Japan as a Yakuza/LAD fan. "Look! That's where the women dressed in skimpy outfits battle for money! And that's where the secret underground fight arena is located! No, no, the other one!"
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Dec 13, 2023 20:37
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ImpAtom posted:"Look! That's where the women dressed in skimpy outfits battle for money! And that's where the secret underground fight arena is located! No, no, the other one!" "In the 80s, I bought porn for a kid from a vending machine in this alley!" "Over here, there's always someone stuck in a bathroom in need of pocket tissues."
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Dec 13, 2023 20:39
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Mordiceius posted:"Over here, there's always someone stuck in a bathroom in need of pocket tissues." "My filth! It clings to me like wet clay!"
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Dec 13, 2023 20:48
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Lot of good stuff this year! Felt like once we hit summer, especially, we just got good game after good game, one after the other without enough time to appreciate them fully. There are quite a few excellent games that I just didn't have time to get stuck into this year, and I'll probably have to revisit them for 2024's GOTY. And now, without further ado, here is  #10:  #10: Case of the Golden Idol: This was a fun little indie I played earlier this year, although it released mid-2022. One of the games I picked up because it was on so many GOTY lists last year! I hope you like the ugly yet oddly-charming art, because staring at it is the entire game -- you'll go back and forth between a stationary scene (often involving grisly murder) and your notebook, where you attempt to fill in the blanks, Mad-Libs-style, to explain exactly who did the deed and why, along with what happened leading up to the event. Clever puzzles, although I fell off the DLC because it starts to get a bit too intricate with the logic puzzles for me to enjoy. Really fun when everything comes together, along with figuring out the plot following the titular idol from scene to scene. #9:  #9: Monster Hunter World: I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this! I downloaded it for free on PS+ towards the beginning of the year along with a few other games, when I was looking for something to play, and this was the one I ended up getting stuck into. It takes a little getting used to the systems and figuring out the kind of gameplay it wants from you, but once you do, it's very hard to put down. The gear treadmill is engaging -- each new monster brings recipes for new armor and weapons, and you always feel like you've got time for just one more hunt to finish that cool bowgun you've been looking at! And the weapons are both unique and offer a substantially different playstyle going from one to the other, so you've always got options to keep the gameplay fresh. I'll say, though, that it gets a bit too grindy for me in the endgame -- late-game sets of armor will require what feels like an obnoxious amount of monster kills, forcing you to go back and run the same hunt over and over again, and some pieces are dependent on a rarely-dropped gem that you may not find even after a dozen hunts. Still a very cool and unique action game, and I'm looking forward to the new one that was just announced! #8:  #8: Mortal Kombat: I'm not any good at this game, but it's a lot of fun to play! A nice big selection of characters to choose from, hitting just about every game in Mortal Kombat history, and amazing graphics that transition from cutscene to gameplay without a hitch. And the single player campaign is really well-done, and probably a better Mortal Kombat movie than the actual movie that came out a few years ago. And it is very nice to see that Sub Zero and Scorpion are still taking their Covid-19 precautions very seriously! #7:  #7: Spider-Man 2: I saw a lot of people upset that this didn't win any Game of the Year awards this year, but man, did it really deserve anything? Don't get me wrong, this was an excellent game! It's just fundamentally the same game that we played with the original PS4 Spider-Man, and then again with the Miles Morales game a year or two later. The graphics and presentation are still top-of-the-line, one of those tentpole Playstation games that make you feel like you're playing through a movie, and the combat is still a lot of fun. And they do a lot of cool stuff with the PS5, swapping between the Spider-Mans mid-combat and keeping up a 40fps framerate even though you're flying through the city -- there's a lot of technical mastery going on under the hood that I can't begin to describe. But it's just not doing much that we haven't seen before. Still one of the better games I've played this year, but there are plenty others that stand out much more. #6:  #6: Street Fighter 6: Fantastic return to form for the series. Great graphics and really fun voice acting, which is a subtle but important feature for a fighter. It adds a lot to playing Luke when you get to hear that excellent "per-FECT" when you nail the 1-frame flash knuckles, or that angry "Pierce" when you're playing JP. I've been a Street Fighter fan since I was kid -- my mom said I could get one more game for my Super Nintendo (aside from pack-in GOAT Super Mario World) and I chose Street Fighter 2 over Final Fight. I've never been super competitive at it, though, and so I loved that they put so much effort into the single-player mode, so I could mess around throwing fireballs without the pressure of PvP. World Tour mode is fun and surprisingly meaty, and the PvP mode where you can use the custom character you've created sees almost as much action as the real SF6 versus mode. #5:  #5: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: I know this is going to end up a lot closer to #1 for a lot of people, but Tears of the Kingdom felt a bit misguided to me. I love The Legend of Zelda, right? I've played almost all the games since the original Legend of Zelda on NES and they're all great games in their own way. But TotK almost didn't feel like a real Zelda game. It's got the same swordfighting and the same goofy characters we all loved in Breath of the Wild, and they've created an excellent open world that's huge and full of interesting things to find. It's a recipe for another great Zelda game. Except this one revolves almost entirely around the Ultrahand mechanic. Don't get me wrong, Ultrahand is a technical marvel! It's really impressive that they've been able to create such an open system that lets you put together so many different parts and do so many interesting things without crashing the game. But, at least to me, it's just not Zelda. I'm not a big fan of those kinds of "builder" systems in a video game, I just don't really get anything out of designing these free-form construction projects, or spending time lining up different parts to stick together, and the emphasis on Ultrahand kinda damaged the rest of the game for me. Exploring the open world was great, but almost every time I found something interesting, it was a puzzle that made me take out my Ultrahand and spend five minutes sticking bits together. It just took me out of the game every time I had to stop and turn on the "builder" side of my brain, whereas most other Zelda games don't give me such a disconnect between the running/jumping/exploring gameplay and "puzzle-solving mode". Still a great game, and one that I put a good 80 hours into, but slightly disappointing after Breath of the Wild. #4:  #4: Bloodborne: Oh man, fuckin Bloodborne. What an amazing feat of game design. Out of the Fromsoft catalog, I've only played Demon's Souls PS5 and Elden Ring before, but this seems like the most elegant and fluid version of that engine by far. Just an absolute joy to play. And the level design is absolutely brilliant, landmarks and shortcuts and secret paths everywhere, and the difficulty is so perfectly tuned that sometimes it feels like Fromsoft is looking over your shoulder and dropping off an emergency bundle of health precisely when you start to run low. The Nightmare of Mensis, in particular, is an unrivaled masterpiece of elegance, with a perfectly vertical series of shortcuts to mark your progress despite the level's winding twists and turns. And the (surprisingly complicated!) story is beautifully intermingled with every inch of scenery in the way that only Fromsoft can pull off, so that I found myself working really hard to piece together what was going on, pausing in the middle of levels to think about whatever weird bit of architecture I'd just seen. To be perfectly honest, this game should be competing for the #1 slot, except I feel like I need to leave my top 3 open for more recent games. But this was an absolute masterpiece. Practically flawless. #3:    #3: Paradise Killer: Man, I really hope at least one person sees this and plays this game. It's gotten very little press as far as I've seen, but this was nothing short of excellent. The mechanics are nothing special -- it's an open world walk-and-talk detective game with a retro vaporwave theme and a little minor platforming thrown in -- but the story and presentation truly set it apart. It's a game with a lot of heart, where you can tell the developers had their own unique vision and committed to it as hard as possible despite how fuckin weird it might be. And it gets really weird! You play as Lady Love Dies, and you're summoned from exile by the Syndicate to solve a murder on Paradise Island. The mystery comes together really satisfyingly from exploring the island and talking to the suspects and uncovering more and more leads, but just as important is figuring out exactly what the gently caress is going on in Paradise Island, and why everyone in the Syndicate seems so drat strange. Lady Love Dies herself is thoroughly familiar with the island and the Syndicate, though, and everyone you meet expects you to know already, so you're just left scratching your head when you're invited to use the Nightmare Computer, or someone casually tells you to go talk to the suspect being held in the Desolation Cell. Really worth playing through if you're at all interested, and worth doing without reading much more about it -- a lot of the fun is in the discovery! #2:    #2: Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty: The game is fixed. No, seriously! I felt like this deserved a fresh review after the release of Phantom Liberty, and man, this game really needs to be recognized as one of the greats of this generation. I fell off of it entirely back on release, played for an hour or so on my GeForce 1080 Ti, and it was just too buggy and half-baked to enjoy. Several years later, playing it on a 4070 Ti, it has got to be the most gorgeous game I've ever played, with all the settings on Ultra and all the raytracing effects enabled and AI Frame Generation smoothing over the FPS. Night City itself is an absolute triumph of evocative design, with so much character coming across in every single frame that I often found myself just aimlessly wandering around, looking at the people and listening to the ads and imagining myself living there, in the hellscape of endgame capitalism, and having to grab a foil pouch of cheap taco goop and a sexually-suggestive can of soda from the vending machine in between shifts of my 80-hour workweek. CP2077 has got to be one of the best examples of what gaming can do for traditional media. The characters and stories are as compelling as what you'd find in a traditional movie, and the cutscenes and conversations are as important as the actual gameplay, and the end result is essentially an excellent cyberpunk movie where you can make your own choices and experience being Night City's most unstoppable merc for yourself. And Phantom Liberty grafted a whole new (excellent) arc onto that movie, with some of the most intriguing characters yet, and an excellent addition to your protagonist's mythos. Please go play this, if you haven't yet. #1:     #1: Baldur's Gate 3: Baldur's GAAAAAAATE I have been waiting for this game for over a decade. I've played the original trilogy two or three times, and I never thought we'd get another game anywhere near as big and detailed. But Larian succeeded beyond anyone's wildest expectations. I don't think even the original games were so reactive to every choice you might think of making, and while the characters and quests in the original games were acceptable for their time, Baldur's Gate 3 brings such realistic, fully-voiced characters and intricate quest design that it will outright set the standard for every RPG to come. It's a shame that bugs apparently marred the console performance somewhat, I played on PC and didn't have too much trouble. A few crash-to-desktops over the course of 150 hours of gameplay isn't bad, and aside from a few minor things those were the only issues I had. And Larian's been pretty committed to smoothing out the problems people are having, with several large patches in just the few months since release. I don't know what else needs to be said. This was a masterpiece, an absolute triumph of game design, and its success shows the heights you can reach when you let a talented, creative dev team produce the best product regardless of the time it takes. I don't think that Game of the Year was ever really in doubt in my mind (except when I realized I might have to consider Bloodborne this year too). Baldur's Gate 3 was everything I'd hoped it would be, consuming my every moment of leisure for weeks. I almost felt guilty, like I must have done something wrong in order to be allowed to dive back into Faerun after work everyday. Just fantastic. And I think that's it for the top ten!  Quite a few games that stood out this year: Final Fantasy XVI - Not a bad game, and felt very stylish, but ultimately I think they needed to lean harder towards action or RPG, if not both. The action combat was fun but nothing was very challenging in the base game, and the RPG elements weren't deep enough to offer any variety. Still a pretty good time, though, and about the most anime game I've ever played. Starfield - What an utter, utter disappointment. Everyone knew a Bethesda game's campaign was going to be by-the-numbers, but this was so utterly bland and joyless that it's probably not even fixable with mods. I don't know if there's a single truly compelling character in the entire game, and the main plot is so superfluous and purposeless that even from an ingame perspective there's really no point in following it. And you don't even get the benefit of traveling the open world with random interesting things to encounter, because you just fast travel everywhere by design now. I came down with Covid during my playthrough, possibly because Starfield's boredom weakened my immune system, and when I felt well enough to play games again I just never bothered going back. Super Mario Wonder - This seems very good! I dunno, I haven't gotten very far yet, so I'm not comfortable rating it yet. But it's a lot of fun, very whimsical, and I've heard nothing but good things. I just haven't felt really compelled to dive back in, and I haven't played it in a week or two. Maybe I'm just not in a platformer mood at the moment, but maybe it'll earn a place in next year's GOTY. Armored Core 6 - Man, I really gotta go back and play more of this. I got stuck on Balteus pre-nerf, and I think I ended up playing Phantom Liberty instead. Very cool system though, and I really regret that I didn't unlock more parts to play mech builder with. Skill issue.  Diablo 4 - I've heard people complain a lot about this game since release, but I was never interested in the endgame stuff anyway. I didn't finish this, but I played a good ten or fifteen hours into the campaign and it feels great rolling around shooting monsters. Excellent sound design and a really well-done control scheme for consoles. I played a little on PC and a little on PS5 and while I think PC was a little more precise, it was still a very good experience getting to chill on the couch with the big TV playing on PS5. I guess the itemization and skills are supposed to be kinda lame once you hit endgame, but if you're just looking for a fun action-RPG campaign then D4 seems great! League of Legends ARAMs - I am a sick degenerate and its very likely that this is where more of my gaming time has gone this year than any other game. There is just not another MOBA out there that nails the gamefeel of League of Legends. You can say plenty about the toxicity, or the balancing, or the dev team's need to overload every champion with passive abilities and complicated mechanics -- and indeed, it's kept me from playing the main game for a couple years now -- but it's still a lot of fun to join a quick ARAM game and line up skillshots and set up a sneaky Nunu ult or something. The champions just feel great to use. Thanks for reading, everyone! What a great year this has been! For easy reference: #10: Case of the Golden Idol #9: Monster Hunter World #8: Mortal Kombat #7: Spider-Man 2 #6: Street Fighter 6 #5: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom #4: Bloodborne #3: Paradise Killer #2: Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty #1: Baldur's Gate 3 Phenotype fucked around with this message at 00:38 on Dec 14, 2023 |
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Dec 14, 2023 00:16
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Phenotype posted:came down with Covid during my playthrough, possibly because Starfield's boredom weakened my immune system Goddamn if this ain't the best review I've ever read 
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Dec 14, 2023 00:35
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| # ? May 20, 2024 15:17 |
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Love seeing Paradise Killer come back around on some lists this year. It made my list 2 years ago and now I'm a little tempted to boot it up again. Some of the most loving immaculate vibes to chill to in that game.
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Dec 14, 2023 00:37
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