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YoshiOfYellow posted: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. Agreed. It'll be on my list this year, too.
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Dec 14, 2023 00:47
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YoshiOfYellow posted: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.  Also very stoked seeing it on the list right above mine, too! It was such a pleasure to play. No stress, just groove to the music and run around lookin at cool stuff and let the mystery turn itself over in your head. Very chill little game, and very well put-together for a detective story.
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Dec 14, 2023 00:49
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Paradise killer made my list last year I believe and yeah the game is amazing. I love how it just refuses to explain itself. There’s obviously a ton of weird as hell world building at play but it never dumps it on you in an exposition-y way. Why would it? You’re from there! Eating pieces of gods and the universe ending constantly aren’t weird to you! It’s this murder that’s the problem! It made me feel like I was playing myst again in all the best ways. Love seeing more people find it! 
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Dec 14, 2023 01:49
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I clearly gotta give Paradise Killer another shot, I think I put it down before the first hour was up before. (I don’t recall why, so good chance it was just ADHD.)
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Dec 14, 2023 02:00
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I think paradise killer was on my list last year. I liked the game a lot, I even got the platinum on it twice.
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Dec 14, 2023 02:28
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I was writing my dissertation most of the year so I have no idea what games released in 2023 aside from Zelda and BG3. And I only started playing Zelda recently So Zelda is my #1 game by defaut
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Dec 14, 2023 02:33
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Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising is coming out on PC tomorrow and I have the feeling it's going to end up being a last minute addition to my list.
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Dec 14, 2023 02:51
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A great year of gaming. A lot of stuff I didn't get around to this year that I'm still looking forward to like Chants of Sennaar, Cocoon, Sea of Stars, and System Shock Remake. A few disappointments like Starfield and Tactics Ogre Reborn, but much more good than bad this year. Here's my top 10: 10. Hitman: World of Assassination I’m on my second mission in IO Interactive’s new roguelike campaign game mode. My target is in a crowded atrium right across from an employees only door. My plan: open the door from the employees only side, throw my grenade, close the door before the explosion and quickly walk to a fresh disguise I’ve stashed. Execution: I open the door, throw my grenade, it bounces off a hanging light fixture and lands right at my own feet. Continuing my plan, I promptly close the door and explode. Well, time to start a new campaign.  9. Days Gone Three seasons of Sons of Anarchy mashed up with The Walking Dead. Yeah, it sounds like absolute poo poo. But it has really good motorcycle physics, some truly thrilling zombie encounters, and hordes of enemies that are actually very, very threatening throughout the entire game.  8. The Case of the Golden Idol I played this with my fiance and we both appreciated the weird art style and logic puzzles. Once I figured out what exactly was going on in the greater storyline, I became surprisingly invested. Peter Battley you absolute psycho genius.  7. Octopath Traveler 2 I never played Octopath 1. I’m glad I got Octopath 2 on PC, because the HD-2D post-processed out the rear end aesthetic gives me a headache in about 20 minutes. I had to open an .ini file to disable bloom, depth of field, motion blur, chromatic aberration, and who knows what else because the game doesn’t give you good graphic options. It looks perfectly fine without all that poo poo! Just put the options in there. Anyway, good game, charming characters, good class system, fascinating combat, and great music.  6. Disco Elysium Replaying this one with voice acting only made me appreciate it more. Being exposed to the nature of the DE’s world prior to this only made me appreciate the pace of reveals and revel in the endless details even more.  5. Darkest Dungeon 2 I made a mistake with Darkest Dungeon 1. I bought it in early access and ended up playing so much that I was burnt out on the game by the time it actually released as 1.0 and never was able to finish it. That’s why I waited for Darkest Dungeon 2. It seems the devs knew that this was a common issue when they were designing DD2 as well. The structure is much more amenable to making continual progress and I beat the game’s final boss in about 50 hours of playtime. I have 250 hours in Darkest Dungeon 1 - losing a high level character in Darkest Dungeon 1 absolutely sucks, that’s like a dozen hours down the toilet. In DD2, that’s probably the end of a run that takes a few hours at most, and you’re going to make some progress from the run regardless, and hell, maybe you could even salvage the run if you can limp to the next inn. It seems I’m in the minority here but I’m a firm believer that DD2 is better than the first. Now to get Steam Workshop support going. 4. Alan Wake 2 Remedy took Epic’s money and made a tremendous sequel to an ambitious but IMO middling game called Alan Wake. They jammed so much loving art into AW2 that I’m still amazed. Songs, FMV camp, acting, writing, beautiful graphics, a whole-rear end Finnish student art film. It’s all in here. It’s not my favorite Remedy game (that would be Control) but it’s made me a huge fan of Remedy as a studio. Can’t wait to see what comes next in this strange connected universe.  3. Chained Echoes Incredibly slick combat mechanics and exploration that feels just plain fast. The game doesn’t waste your time, it’s snappy. When you run around in Chained Echoes, your characters are loving booking it. Put in a story that just loving goes for it, and it’s the third best game I played this year.  2. Cyberpunk 2077 Ultimate Edition I didn’t play Cyberpunk 2077 when it was released. I waited, and was rewarded. After getting normalized to the headache inducing sheer volume of visual and aural clutter, the game got its hooks in me. I went with a Netrunning-Smartlink-Utilizing-Stealth-Knife Thrower and am already planning my next character. Sidenote: I played CP2077 after trying to get into Starfield for about 10 hours. Dear lord what the gently caress has Bethesda been doing for the last 8 years?  1. Baldur's Gate 3 I was a doubter. Baldur’s Gate 2 is my favorite game of all time. I didn’t believe Larian could pull it off. I only had fun in Act 1 of Divinity Original Sin 2 before bouncing off. In BG3, I was knee deep in a negotiation with a Hag that could go very wrong in any number of ways when I realized that these motherfuckers actually did it. They pulled it off. I was along for the ride for the next 80 hours after that. I couldn’t put it down.
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Dec 14, 2023 02:54
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Paradise Killer looks kinda cool, maybe I should check it out. Meanwhile, I've been getting sucked further and further into Cloudbuilt. I'm on the last (I think) level of the super-hard Defiance DLC, further than I ever got in the original back in 2014 or in the remake. I'm going to have to go back and update my list to swap out Super Cloudbuilt for Original Cloudbuilt at this rate, I think.
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Dec 14, 2023 04:49
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Chained Echoes is so fuckin good, it's gonna be a top 3 for me, got a lot to say about it but "doesn't waste your time" is spot on, by the standards of the genre it maintains a furious pace because everybody tears rear end across the screen and you get more powerful by pushing forward or exploring, grinding isn't even a consideration
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Dec 14, 2023 08:58
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SlothBear posted:Paradise killer made my list last year I believe and yeah the game is amazing. I love how it just refuses to explain itself. There’s obviously a ton of weird as hell world building at play but it never dumps it on you in an exposition-y way. Why would it? You’re from there! Eating pieces of gods and the universe ending constantly aren’t weird to you! It’s this murder that’s the problem! Yeah this is a good point worth emphasizing. PK is weird, but it doesn't try to draw undue attention to its weirdness the way some works do. A lesser game would be shouting at you "look how wacky all the character names are! aren't they weird??" I think that's a sign of a confident piece of work - comfortable to just be and trust the player to discover and experience it on their own. PK is never smug or coy about it. It just is.
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Dec 14, 2023 10:09
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Phenotype posted:Armored Core 6 - Man, I really gotta go back and play more of this. I got stuck on Balteus pre-nerf, Oh poo poo, that guy got nerfed? Had to put the game down because I didn’t have enough time to devote to it but that’s certainly where I got stuck too! And it was such a bummer because the aesthetics are so awesome in that fight. Sounds like we both need to go back
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Dec 14, 2023 14:01
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I'm updating my list I thought of more games I loved 7) Final Fantasy 16 - Whenever a new FF game comes out I always check it out. I have been playing these games since I was a literal baby. And I've loved most of them! This one is another good one. Epic is really the only word I can think to describe it. 6) Arcade Paradise - Great soundtrack, lots of fun to manage your arcade and all the fake arcade games are fun to play. Really fit a niche I was looking for at the time which was old arcade games haha. 5) City Game Studio - I sunk a lot of hours into this game. It dethroned Mad Game Tycoon as my favorite game dev sim. And the best part is it keeps getting new features added to it and has a pretty robust mod page on the steam workshop. 4) Super Mario Wonder- easily the best co-op Mario that's ever come out. A ton of characters to pick from, new animation, fun to play, you don't get in each other's way. I had a lot of fun playing this with my son. 3) Street Fighter 6 - A fighting game so good that I bought it day one even though I haven't done that for a fighting game ever. Modern Controls made it so I could actually learn strategy and the amazing netcode actually let me play like 100 online matches quickly. 2) Pizza Tower - the most unique game I've played in years. Feels hand drawn. The sprite work is immaculate. It feels like something you would watch on cartoon network in the late 90s in the same vein as cow and chicken. Soundtrack bangs so hard. Going for P rank was a ton of fun and challenging. My son got this before me and we played it so much together that it made it into my list. One of my favorite memories of the year was going for a p rank and my son and daughter cheering me on as they watched. 1) Baldur's Gate 3 - my favorite RPG of all time. It's arguably got too much content but despite that I have finished it 3 times and have 5 different save files going between the copy I bought on my computer and ps5. The support it has gotten is probably the best of all time. I can't think of any other company that has done as much as well or as quickly as Larian. It will be the rpg I judge all others by until it is dethroned if it ever is for me.
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Dec 14, 2023 15:41
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DMCrimson posted:7. Norwood Suite (4.5/5) This looks super weird and interesting! I checked out the other games by this guy on Steam, and they all seem trippy and crazy in a very cool way. Which one should you start with? Betrayal at Club Low looks like the most recent, but I guess Off-Peak is the first? And it's free, too! Out of curiosity, have you ever played Jazzpunk? It's a very cool game that seems like the same vein of chill trippy weird adventure FPS.
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Dec 14, 2023 16:45
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Phenotype posted:This looks super weird and interesting! I checked out the other games by this guy on Steam, and they all seem trippy and crazy in a very cool way. Which one should you start with? Betrayal at Club Low looks like the most recent, but I guess Off-Peak is the first? And it's free, too! It has to be between Betrayal at Club Low or Norwood Suite and up to your preference on gameplay style: Betrayal at Club Low if you want a goofy dice-roll RPG and are okay with random dice failures causing a fail state OR Norwood Suite if you lean towards walking simulator exploration gameplay akin to Gone Home. I found Betrayal at Club Low more engaging due to the bizarre RPG elements, much better replay value, and it hits the sense of "inch wide map, mile deep interaction" harder. You also have a better sense of what to do next in Betrayal whereas Norwood Suite depends on you combing a hotel for any interactions without much direction, it can be adventure game-esq on that front. But, both games have the best attributes, you can't go wrong with either as a first game choice and both are very short (less than 3 hours each). Jazzpunk is a very good parallel to Norwood Suite and Off-Peak. You're going through someone's unrelenting and pure vision for surreal comedy exploration gameplay. I feel like people will be split between Jazzpunk and Cosmo D games based on their sense of humor but, IMHO, Norwood/Betrayal found the perfect vein of absurd humor that I love. DMCrimson fucked around with this message at 01:20 on Dec 15, 2023 |
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Dec 14, 2023 20:56
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Honorable mention: Armored Core 6. This is a game I will definitely like at some point in the future, because it's fuckin great. Unfortunately, I was not prepared for the difficulty and dropped it for notably-not-appearing-on-this-list Starfield after getting bodied by Balteus. I do like hard games, but I have to be in the right mood and I just wasn't. The next time I want to get crushed though, I am going to play this and have a great time. 10. Dave the Diver - Everybody loves Dave and I did too in the beginning, but it wore out it's welcome by contsantly layering on system after system and it just got silly. Still good enough to make the list though! 9. Diablo 4 -Not the game I wanted them to make and I would not have bought it if my girlfriend hadn't. Even though I could complain for days about this game, in the end I played it for a hundred or so hours and had a reasonably good time with for most of those hours. They also seem to be working on things to make them better so it'll get there some day I guess. 8. Octopath Traveler 2 - Still working through it but it's fun. Gorgeous, great soundtrack, enjoy the combat system. What I don't enjoy is all the save scumming I do every time I get to town, blech. 7. Star Wars: Jedi Survivor - Enjoyed it a lot, great feelings of being a space bastard. Writing went over a cliff at the end so it ranks on the low end but still a great game. 6. Holocure - 100% achievements. Top tier bullet heaven. Also a bit of a schrodinger's pick because on any given day I'd put this or Halls of Torment here, but Holocure has more playtime so it gets the win. 5. Baldur's Gate 3 - An incredible game, empirically should be my goty, but I bounced off it towards the end of ch 1. due to events happening in game that killed my vibe completely. So it ends up low on my list despite being an absolute achievement in video games. 4. Final Fantasy 16 - A game I would mostly describe as competently good but unexciting. But when I say mostly, the caveat to that is the Eikon fights are some of the greatest spectacle I've seen in a game and that goes a long way in my book. Long enough to get this game to number 4. 3. Hexarchy - It's civ in deck-builder form. Two great tastes that go great together! It's my favorite deck-builder! It's my favorite 4x! Amazing little game where my only complaint is that I wish it would let me keep playing after getting a victory. 2. Final Fantasy Theatrhythm: Final Bar Line - I adore Final Fantasy music. I have 28 gb's of ff music on my hard drive (4,063 files). I have paid money for physical copies. A rhythm game of explicitly FF music that is fun and engaging and a constant source of warm, fuzzy nostalgia is a game that is explicitly aimed at me. And I love it, over 100 hours played. 1. Street Fighter 6. I picked this game up after seeing it had a Yakuza-like mode. I have virtually 0 interest in fighting games. I used to play the poo poo out of them back when arcades were still a thing, but the last non-smash brothers fighting game I played was Soul Calibur 3 on PS2. 100%'d world tour mode and was just having the time of my life, Modern controls and Marissa being so fuckin cool were probably the lynchpins. Didn't want to stop playing so I actually stepped into ranked play, which wasn't something I expected to do. And... I had a great time! It really brought back all the fun memories and excitement I used to feel fighting rando's in an arcade. The feelings of triumph from winning a close match were so fuckin good, and then slamming the rematch button to go again. I made it up to high silver before setting it aside for other things but just thinking about it now, Street Fighter 6 is the game that brought the most joy and positive emotions to me this year so it sits at the top of my list. So those are my picks! I am about to restart bg3 so don't be surprised if I edit this post and change it in the future. Shoutouts to totk, fe: engage, and the star ocean remake for being games I might have liked and put on this list if I had bought them, but this year was so stacked.
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Dec 14, 2023 21:02
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This list is slightly out of time, as I'm about four years behind on modern gaming and only just starting to catch-up as I've just gotten the new PC. I've not played Baldur's Gate 3 yet, so sorry for not including it! Honourable mentions – just misses and interesting jank Siralim Ultimate Silarlim is not so much as a game, as an invitation to break a game that happens to be attached to it. You select six monsters which all provide powerful and often interacting abilities and fight RPG battles. Very rapidly you discover busted combos and cake-walk the game until a new suite of monsters starts kicking your rear end regardless. It's an intriguing system and there's a lot of interest to be had in designing busted teams, but sadly the RPG that underlies it adds a bit too much frustration to that and it wound up feeling more like a hollow time waster getting the resources to level up the team. Enjoyable until that point though. Children of a Dead Earth I am sucker for weird little artefacts that rebel against the idea that a game has to be "fun" to be worthwhile. Children of a Dead Earth is unashamedly not fun, but instead aims to be the most realistic depiction of near-future space combat. There are no shields, no fighters, no heroics. Instead, you launch a barrage of a hundred nuclear missiles at some chump. You watch 95 of them blink out as the enemies lasers invisibly and silently overheat them, followed by a blinding flash as the 5 that survived take out their radiators, leaving them defenceless as a follow up of 20 drones with machine guns cut them up like butter. Frustrating, ugly and difficult, but a completely unique experience. Hope you like orbital dynamics. Chained Echoes I go through phases where I'll play a big highly recommended RPG, get incredibly bored, and start to wonder if I actually just don't like RPGs. Then I'll play something like Chained Echoes and realises no, I just only like good RPGs. Chained Echoes avoids the death flaw of many RPGs not boring you to death and having interesting combat where you have tons to balance and are at real risk of death with most fights. It also looks and sounds pretty good. The plot could be a little better, but I think it mostly suffers from frontloading about a million names and places that I don't feel any connection to. Signalis Low-poly Resident Evil-like. This didn't quite hit me as hard as some other people, but I'm excited to see the old-style horror games back. Bad inventory design and anime portrait aesthetics that feel out of place hold the game back, but if they do a sequel I can see that being a masterpiece. Mars First Logistics Quirky little machine building and transporting game. Build a modular robot to pick up a cargo, then drive across Mars. Ultimately a bit too janky and chance based to full recommend, but if the screenshots have you interested then it's probably worth giving it a spin. Top Ten 10) Phoenix Wright Trilogy - Trials and Tribulations for the specific game I'm not a fan of visual novels, but Phoenix Wright has a pace and humour that keeps things engaging. There's plenty of frustrations in the game, like some slightly strange adventure game logic in presenting evidence, and some bizarre flagging for story progression in the evidence find sections, but the air-punching joy of sending the prosecutor to the Columbo zone with one tiny detail while the triumphant music kicks in keeps me coming back. 9) Hardspace Shipbreakers I finally got a new PC, and this was one of the first games I spun up on it. Hardspace Shipbreakers has you dismantling unstable space ships under time constraints for cash, and winds up being a solid work simulator for a job that doesn't exist. The main plot delves into the capitalist horror which is becoming a lot more common for obvious reasons, but it mostly takes a backseat to perfecting your technique for gutting ships like crabs as fast as you can. Satisfying game, but it ultimately needed a bit more variety than was present. 8) Streets of Rage 4 I picked this up in a sale on a whim after feeling nostalgic for brawlers, and holy crap it's incredible. I spent my first few hours just button mashing, but then it clicked and I started dismanteling enemies and bosses like a puzzle mixed with a fighting game. Designed to be replayed, and with a highly recommended alternative mode, this is the pinacle of the Brawler genre. If you get that nostalgic feeling, or are just in the mood for a great little gem, check this out. 7) Infernax Indy gem time! If Shovel Knight was the Duck Tales that only exists in your memories, Infernax is the Castlevania. I do not understand why this game is so underrated, it's incredible. Tight and simple gameplay make this an easy game to blitz through, but a host of alternative characters, unlocks and alternative plots makes it a delight to replay. The boss sprites are gorgeous scene stealers. Originally a real pain-in-the-rear end to complete due to profoundly unwise adherence to unfair NES difficulty (ie. very tricky jumping puzzles with lethal bottomless pits), the addition of an "easy mode" that just takes away that friction has made it an incredible package. 6) Cassette Beasts The zoomers have finally done it, they've convinced me cassette tapes are cool, actually. Cassette Beasts is the best not-Pokemon I've ever played, and solves almost all of the long-running problems that have plagued that series. It doesn't quite have the mechanical polish that Pokemon has, but it was an absolute delight from start to finish. The highlight is the games much vaulted sound track which I immediately went and bought after playing the game for just a few hours. The regular tracks are pretty great in their own right, but then Cassette Beats pulls the Revengance trick of having the lyrics cut in when you use your special power to temporarily fuse your monsters together and it's just incredible. 5) Against the Storm We as a society are starting to rediscover the joys of quick and repeatable sessions in games, and Against the Storm has brought it to City Builders (although older games like Pharaoh and Caesar were built around completing lots of cities). Each time I'm getting better at building a town, my designs are getting better and I'm gradually working out how to plan for future developments. As this happens, I'm also incentivised to crank up the difficulty, and I'm gradually making meta-progression. It's an excellent mix, and this is an excellent game as a result. 4) Pikmin 4 I'm a big fan of the series, Nintendo's little pseudo-RTS with delightfully cute designs. I don't think four is my favourite Pikmin, but by gum it is the biggest by a long shot giving it a lot more staying power than previous entries. This one was a delight to play through with the family, and the kids loved coming with names for the enemies. 3) Super Mario Wonder Another triumph from Nintendo. It's a small game, but is a return to form for 2D platforming and keeps innovating and surprising with the Wonder seed mechanic which is the game's excuse to just do something off-the-walls crazy. Not quite as mechanically perfect as Super Mario World but the technological advancement does allow the game to do some fantastic moves. 2) Legend of Zelda - Tear of the Kingdom The early contender for GOTY. Nintendo took their revolutionary Breath of the Wild, and bolted into it a vehicle building system as well as Laputa and the Underground Jungle from Studio Ghibli. It's an incredible experience, and my kids watched their father confidently build a monorail that launched him to his death. It's got a confidence to it's design which I think is best displayed by the Gleeok optional bosses just flying a literal kilometre up into the air at half health to bombard you with projectiles, and screw you if you weren't prepared to handle that. I played for well over a hundred hours before moving on, but there was still plenty of side quests left. 1) Elden Ring Coming in a few years late thanks to needing the new PC, but oh boy this is a doozy. While it may have lost the tightness of early FROMSOFT designs, the open world we got in exchange is the best in the business and lets you easily bypass a sticking point until later on. The combat is the most varied and enjoyable yet in souls-like, and the exploration, aesthetics and design are at the top of their game. I'm currently bouncing off of Maliketh, but still having a great time as I'm gradually seeing how to duel this boss that seemed impossible when I first met him, which is the hallmark of the souls experience.
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Dec 14, 2023 21:28
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TheHoosier posted:5. Silhouette Mirage - I had no idea this game existed before it was a Saturn Game Club entry. It's an amazing 2D run'n'gun with light RPG elements for Saturn/Playstation by Treasure that's oozing with style and personality. I have no loving idea what's going on in the game, even with a translation patch, but I don't care. The game is a buttery smooth Rollercoaster of cool setpieces and amazing boss fights, with enough depth in the combat system to keep you engaged. Hell, the first boss is a bug wizard that opens wormholes from which goddamn Battleships fire on you. Another boss has to be killed by poisoning his soup, and yet another is a horrific anime girl fish monster. didn't see this list when it was posted and just wanted to say hell yeah. this is one of the all time great action games out there, so many of the boss fights are incredible. it's a shame the official PS1 translation ruined one of the game's core systems by loving with the weapon balance
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Dec 15, 2023 03:00
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Caught up with the entries and added them to the spreadsheet! I figured out how to rearrange things without messing up data in order to make adding stuff simpler. Very pleased with that.  Just two points: Firstly: I love your enthusiasm and I would like to count your votes. You have a few games all sharing a spot. If you want to keep the list as is then I will have to leave it to one side because I do not wish to make the decision on whether one ranks higher than the other as it is your list Also : If you are content with them just being a list sans words then they will not go towards the tally - so please let me know if you decide to add anything and then I can add them to the tally.
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Dec 15, 2023 10:50
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Top 10 shortlist 10. Final Fantasy XVI 9. Cities Skylines 2 8. Satisfactory 7. Company of Heroes 3 6. Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon 5. Against the Storm 4. Diablo 4 3. Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty 2. Cocoon 1. Baldur's Gate 3 Full writeup 10. Final Fantasy XVI The opening couple of hours of this game might be the most impressive and cinematic that I can remember. Learning how to master the DmC-lite combat system, what the hell is going on with Clive etc. But after the fight with Bahamut, the story and thematic thread of the game completely fall apart. The MMO like world and quest design gets really stale and the combat system gets shown up as 'wait for the cooldown'. The music still absolutely rips throughout though. A+ up to Bahamut, D afterward. 9. Cities Skylines 2 Not as good as it could, or should have been, but still a pretty competent Simcity-like. The road building itself is so far improved to be worth the pickup and it's fun to try and be creative in designing a city and force your mind to break the grid you make over and over again by habit. Ugh. 8. Satisfactory I need to make 1,000,000 more supercomputers and so I will load up, build another factory and continue sacrificing my sanity to the god of logistics. I really hope Coffee Stain bring this to 1.0 this year cause it has been a long time in early access. Harvest. 7. Company of Heroes 3 Felt like there was some interesting accessibility and change to the formula to reinvigorate the franchise. First run through the Italian campaign was fun enough, but there's not enough pushback, or real difference in how you approach the strategic map to make multiple playthroughs worth it. The destructibility is great and focusing on some of the other theatres, especially North Africa, was refreshing. I'm a little bitter they didn't take that opportunity to bring in the ANZACs, especially the Rats of Tobruk though. 6. Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon I loved the old mechwarrior games as a kid, and the recent Harebrained Battletech is a favourite tactics game, so I thought I was primed to get into some anime-mech poo poo and I typically love FROM's whole schtick. The aesthetic is great, the embodiment of being in an Armored Core is fantastic. Designing a loadout and logo was great fun. But still, I kinda bounced off early, because I felt like I had to repeat the missions I had already completed so many times, and not for mastery, but for grindings sake. And so after going away for a fortnight, I kinda didn't feel impelled to keep going through to the end. Will have to give this another crack some time in 2024 but yeah, enjoyed most of what I played but bounced off a bit because of the design. 5. Against the Storm A really creative take on the roguelike being stapled to everything, this time with city-building. The persistent elements and upgrades here really work, so if the randomisation doesn't really work out for you, you're still progressing in the meta game. Each map takes just long enough so that you get to the 'end' and don't dwell in the maps endgame too long. Haven't really committed enough time to this to see how far they really take it, but enjoyed the learning curve so far. 4. Diablo 4 So I am a casual ARPG and Diablo fan, but I was keen to see how Diablo took on the challenge from the other recent crop of ARPGs that the hardcore crowd say are better than what Diablo has on offer. I really liked the story (huh?!) and the final cutscene(s) actually really hit. The familiar twang of the guitar, Lorath's narration. I didn't really commit to the live service cruft after finishing the main campaign, working my way up to level 80ish and then checking out. I also tried playing some of the recent season, enjoyed it for a fortnight and then checked out. I'm already playing enough Destiny 2 to worry about another loot-treadmill. 3. Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty A really great reconstitution of the flawed launch game, taking the systems and making them work better together, the buildcrafting especially is so much more improved and allows you to lean into the power fantasies on offer so much more effectively. The framing of Phantom Liberty, the missions, the story, Dogtown, the characters, all work really well in the tighter package here and with less of the open world fluff to pad it out. But that loving stealth mission, oh my god that was such a hard turn that I considered not even finishing it cause I hated it that much. I was kind of left cold by the endings, felt like it couldn't quite cash the cheques the story had written cause I ultimately hated Songbird and didn't feel any kind of tension in the choices on offer. 2. Cocoon Some of the most masterful 'teaching' of mechanics for a puzzle game, wrapped in such an incredible aesthetic. I was so transfixed playing this game, I committed to playing it in one session, being so driven to see how the mechanics and environments would evolve and change. Certainly a unique take on a puzzle game and didn't become brain-bendingly hard as to frustrate a steady progression, but I can't wait to forget it just enough to play through again and see if I can pick up some of the secrets next time. 1. Baldur's Gate 3 An absolute generational achievement and the most maximalist culmination of the vision of a type of game that I thought time had passed by, let alone think could hold the gaming zeitgeist so completely. The ability to play how you want and be who you want is so fully realised here, across combat and character, that I'm anticipating playing it several times over and getting completely different feels across the game each time. The score is fantastic, the writing is fantastic, the acting is fantastic, the experience is so immersive and folds in so much of the DnD mechanical weight seamlessly as to almost goad you into becoming a tabletop nerd by stealth. The character and story pivots and turns are interesting, exciting, and have some of the best 'moments' in any game I've played (House of Hope being the absolutely cherry on top). I'm partway through my first Dark Urge run and the different lens it has provided on the moments I knew were coming somehow make it even more impactful. The original Baldur's Gate games were hugely formative for me and Baldur's Gate 3 lands the vision so completely, I could never imagine modern day Bioware delivering any kind of homage to their back catalogue half as good as this. Not only game of the year but best game I've played in years. Honourable Mentions; Older games I played this year again and enjoyed; Hell Let Loose Crusader Kings 3 Stellaris Paracausal fucked around with this message at 12:54 on Dec 15, 2023 |
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Dec 15, 2023 12:32
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WOW WHAT A YEAR FOR GAMING. Last year was the best year in gaming in quite a while, and this year was somehow even better! Gamers are still starving coming off the covid dev cycle, and the devs are more than happy to feed them. Let's start this post off with some shout-outs, these are games I didn't get enough time with but feel should be mentioned. They probably account for high placing in the lists of other posters. Blasphemous II Hi-fi Rush Resident Evil 4 (2023) Cyberpunk 2077 Street Fighter 6 Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon BattleBit Remastered Lies of P Super Mario Bros Wonder Play all those games, you fools! Now onto the actual list: 11/HM. Etrian Odyssey III HD I went straight for the third installment of this extremely aesthetically pleasing, classic 2010s dungeon crawler. I never played this the first time around, as IV was my introduction to the series originally. I've played every entry since then, and while each of the 3 that I had never played was remastered, i've heard very good things about III. I think it hit mostly as expected, with the challenging game play and masterfully composed FM synth tunes, I don't know when or if I will play the first 2 entries into the series, but I am excited at the prospects of more Etrian Odyssey games coming around in the future, because the dungeon crawler genre is mostly dead except for niche Japanese releases that don't particularly innovate well or balance game play, and EO is generally at the very top of the crowd. 10. Dave The Diver The not-so-indie game of the year. Everything about this game is delightful and charming. Of particular note are the pixel art graphics, and the goofy over-the-top writing of the characters and story, which both make it an appealing play. The game is structured around core game play that fits something of a farming/gathering type game, though the story progresses in a linear fashion a bit more closely to a story-driven game rather than simply being a game where the goal is to farm resources and expand forever. I think that element might make this game more attractive to the average gamer, but it might leave the farming game enthusiasts hungry for more. 09. Diablo IV Getting to much into this too much would be quite a headache, TBH. D4 is a game with a pretty engaging campaign, that has a lot of polish that you would expect from a stand-out AAA studio like Blizzard that has made a name for themselves over the last few decades. Unfortunately, a lot of the devs that had been around during the golden years have either disgraced themselves, or left of their own accord over the past 5ish years. The result is you have an inexperienced team of individuals in charge of the game who believe they are heavier hitters than they actual are making design choices both pre- and post-launch that could only be interpreted as sabotage. A common theme with both this game as well as the even-more-so disgraced Overwatch 2 is that the devs just don't seem to listen to the players until it is too late. The result is entire "seasons" of content in these live service games being complete downgrades in some of the most frustrating ways, and overwhelmingly negative backlash from the frustrated player base that feels ignored and doesn't have anywhere to turn to. There is a great game in there somewhere, when the devs actually listen to and work along with player feedback instead of drowning in their own hubris. 08. Pizza Tower The ACTUAL indie game of the year. It came out of nowhere with its MS Paint inspired character portraits, and game play that is reminiscent of classic 2D Sonic the Hedgehog games. This game, however, seems to properly implement the speed platformer style of level design in a way that actually works, which Sonic has fumbled with many times in more previous years. The soundtrack is great, and the art style is out of a fever dream at times. It seems impossible to hate this game, although it just might not hit with some people. 07. Final Fantasy XVI Ah, the controversial game of the year. Essentially everyone who plays games knows Final Fantasy, so this game had a hard bar to clear. My assessment is that it neither cleared nor did it quite fail to clear that bar; it made the mark, but the bar fell off the posts it was resting on before the vaulting attempt ended, resulting in disqualification. There are many aspects about this game that are at the very top of what we've ever seen in video games, and some of the encounters with antagonists are the most epic and cinematic battles ever fought in the medium. However, it falls sort in that it doesn't particularly feel engaging in its world-building, questing, and character gearing. Moreover, it is vastly different from what most people would expect of a game bearing the Final Fantasy name. It is a lot closer to an action game along the lines of Devil May Cry, and it feels quite silly to even label the game as an "RPG" at this point, yet some people still insist on doing so. The result is a game of exceptional production quality made by skilled devs outside of their comfort genre that people it wasn't expressly aimed at decided they didn't want. 06. Octopath Traveller II I was not too much a fan of the first Octopath game; I thought it was incredibly bland and middle-of-the-road in essentially every category, despite creating for itself a stand-out aesthetic that is a combination of modern high-definition standards and retro-inspired sprite based art. This iteration, however, is an improvement over the first in essentially every single way. The characters (both the ones you get in your party and the antagonists/NPCs) are no longer boring and for better or worse have story arcs that are actually meaningful, albeit a bit odd. It does seem like the series has yet to reach it's full potential as the late game suffers some variety problems, but this is a huge step in the right direction. I was cautiously optimistic going into this one, and if there is an Octopath III, I will probably still be the same, although next time it will be wanting for them to take it to the next level, rather than simply desiring a game that isn't a plain hamburger patty sandwiched between two buns with no condiments. 05. Dragon Quest Monsters 3 The Dark Prince I am basically one of the biggest Stans for this series (and Dragon Quest as a whole) you'll come across. I have experience with every previous title, and have even worked on unofficial translation projects for some of the ones that were not released in any language other than Japanese. I basically will take one of these games upon release and devote 90% of my free time to it until I have done everything or most of everything there is to do. This game was no exception, and it held my attention for 5 or so days. The fact of the matter is, it is unfortunately a downgrade over probably all 3 (4 if you include vanilla Joker 3) 3DS generation releases in the series. One might assume they were trying to restructure and streamline the game, which has not seen a global release in over a decade, for a global release. It's very apparent after playing the game and itemizing what is missing that this was not the case, and it probably fell victim to dev-cycle woes. Hopefully this incomplete offering is enough to garnish interest from around the globe for them to do better next time. There is still also a chance this version can be redeemed through DLC or an ultimate version release a year or two down the road, as the Joker series in this franchise has partaken in the two-version cycle for both Joker 2 and 3 in the past. Until then, I encourage you to check this out if you like monster battling games and want something with a little more depth than Pokemon. 04. Star Ocean the Second Story R One of my favorite jRPGs of all time struck back viciously, with this HD remaster. SO2 is probably the only jRPG where i've started a 2nd play through immediately after finishing the first, and I felt inclined to do the same a 2nd time with this remaster. The series hasn't exactly been charging forward, full speed ahead over the last decade, so it was refreshing to see them pull this one off correctly. It has another take on the HD 2D art style with implementation of sprites that Octopath utilizes, with some variation. The soundtrack is a good re-imagining of the music from the original game by one of the GOATs of Japanese game composition, the progmaster himself, Motoi Sakuraba. While some feel that his music is a bit less inspired in recent decades, I am more than pleased with the offering here. The re-balanced game play is just as challenging as ever on the harder difficulty settings, and basically requires enough knowledge of the game to know how to break the systems and respond with cheese. I think it might have fallen apart a little bit in the post-game, as it is just tuned in a way that makes for complete cheese being possibly the only way to succeed. This isn't necessarily too different than was the case with the original back in the 90s, however. 03. Grand Poo World 3 This is one of those cases where if you are in the know, you are in the know. For some more experienced gamers, games like Super Mario Wonder are simply not enough. I'd rather a game be too difficult than too easy, personally. So between THIS Mario game and THAT Mario game, the official one that most people were playing and enjoying was a bit of a letdown to me. I liked it overall, but I don't think I died more than a few times on any level in the entire game, save one or two. That's about as far from the reality of GPW3 as could possibly be. What we have here is a Kaizo style ROM hack of SNES's Super Mario World made by one of the top content creators in the Mario-sphere, BarbarousKing, that essentially took 4 years and many thousands of hours of work to complete. The result is one of the most ambitious and complete fan game projects ever seen both inside and outside of the genre of Mario. It has insanely difficult levels, rather easy (comparatively) levels, puzzles, custom boss battles, and well-hidden secrets. Technically, it wasn't even designed by a game dev, and managed to take the 3rd place slot in a year as loaded as this one, so that should tell you how praiseworthy this one is. Not only that, but when it was officially released on the 17th of November, which was the same day that the Super Mario RPG remake dropped, Super Mario World had more concurrent viewers on Twitch. The number of players of these sort of games might be relatively small, but they do attract quite a crowd as they are interesting to watch regardless. If it is out of the realm of what you are willing to subject yourself to to find fun, i'd recommend at least watching a play through of it on Twitch or Youtube to see what cutting-edge best-in-class platforming is like. 02. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of The Kingdom Much like Octopath Traveler II, this is a case of a game where we've gone from a base game to a sequel that has been upgraded in almost every conceivable way. The difference, however, is that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was already a masterpiece to begin with. Both BOTW and TOTK are games that have mostly simplistic game play elements and systems that are utilized in extremely complicated and creative ways in a large open-world environment. The world itself in both of these games also seems less complex in a lot of ways than other open world games like Elden Ring for example, yet the overwhelming majority of gamers will have no problem exploring as close to 100% (although with this game, saying 200%+ is a better assessment of exactly what that entails, possibly even 300% if you include the sky) as possible. It keeps a lot of the core game play similar to how it was in BOTW, yet still manages to feel fresh when you implement the crafting systems new to this version. It takes some time to get used to, but you'll have at least a hundred hours to do so while exploring the worlds of this game. More than enough time to make masterful use of your abilities, and build some actually interesting contraptions with which to torture friend and foe alike. I think even the most jaded of gamers will enjoy this one if they play it with a charitable attitude in mind, though it seems like some are turned away from it because they feel it is too similar to BOTW. I don't think this is the case at all, and even if it were, the former was already a legendary game. 01. Baldur's Gate 3 This is what you get when you have a developer that is whole-heatedly committed to bringing you the best possible product they can. Larian studios has hit really hard over the last decade with Divinity: Original Sin and Divinity: Original Sin II, both RPGs that revitalized the classic western PC-style RPG genre, and were candidates in contention for GOTY in each of their respective years. Both of those games had "definitive edition" updates in the years following their release that continued to improve upon already near-perfection, at no additional costs to the player. That is a testament to the hoops that Larian is willing to jump through to release and maintain the best possible product. In the case of BG3, they have taken everything they learned from and mastered while developing Divinity: Original Sin I and II and applied it to a classic PC RPG franchise with official Dungeons and Dragons branding and systems incorporated. They have hit production values so high that other inexperienced devs at relatively large studios like Blizzard put out salty call-outs over social media complaining that they shouldn't be expected to meet the standards set forth by Larian and BG3. You can play multiple times for many hundreds of hours and not interact with every game play element, or experience every line of dialogue, or meet every character. The game is just THAT varied; it seems to present highly-varied different reactions to player actions on a scale that no game has ever met. When you consider all these things, there simply can be no other choice for GOTY this year by a rational individual. BabyRyoga fucked around with this message at 21:20 on Dec 15, 2023 |
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Dec 15, 2023 21:16
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VideoGames posted:6. If you want to go back and edit your list after the fact then go for it, just shoot one of us a PM or post in the thread to let us know you have I edited my list to replace Super Cloudbuilt with Cloudbuilt, and completely redid the writeup for it (and added a video). The ranking is still the same at #1. ToxicFrog posted:1. Cloudbuilt (2014)
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Dec 16, 2023 03:30
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Honorable Mentions: Touhou: Artificial Dream in Arcadia: I love the oddball mashup of shmup and dungeon crawler mechanics, but I got distracted by other games and haven't finished it yet. In Stars and Time: Still playing this game. I like it so far, but I didn't want to rush it through to get it on this list. It'll go on next year's list if I like it enough. Stuffo the Puzzle Bot: Really great soundtrack. Still on regular rotation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtnBsTT_afA 10. Super Snail [Ios/Android]  This is a difficult inclusion. Super Snail is, and I don't say this lightly, an Evil game. It's the most monetized game I've ever played, for one. Every screen you can visit can trigger a special offer for a pile of goodies you don't need that you can buy with real money. It's a mobile gacha game, through and through, designed to eat up time and attention and offer back a distant illusion of progress that you could surely expedite, if you were just willing to kick in ten bucks for one of its dozens of customized season passes.... So, why is this game on this list? Developer QCPlay was already on my radar from previous release Gumball and Dungeons, a similarly high effort mobile game (amusingly originally intended as a Dragon Quest game, until they failed to secure the license and were forced to sand all the iconic teardrops off their slimes and call them gumballs instead). Despite their willingness to indulge in all the awful trends of mobile game markets, these are real, proper game designers, who have buried a real, actual game under all of Super Snail's idle timers and base management bullshit. Super Snail is constantly shifting, adding new layers of complexity and shaking up existing mechanics. It's the only gacha game I'm aware of in which your gacha machine can be stolen from you temporarily if you use it too much, forcing you to wait on spending tickets until the thief decides its rates are too poo poo to bother with and returns it to you. There's a dating sim mechanic in which various characters met in your travels (male, female, or both) will find out about your secret base and decide to mooch off you, which is some of the funniest writing in the game. On that note, the writing is weirdly good for a game that's approximately 80% random pop culture references. The eight demon lords you've been tasked with defeating by the mysterious god "Earth's Will" all have detailed and consistent backstories. There are a few honest-to-god effective twists in the plot, and a lingering question about how shady the god you've signed your life to actually is. A predatory mobile game shouldn't deserve one minute of my attention, let alone one of the coveted slots on my illustrious top ten list, but Super Snail spits in the face of all that, and god. I can't stop thinking about it, about how many interesting game design lessons are nestled within its strange and evil exterior. So, by compromise, it's grudgingly earned my #10. Just, for god's sake, if any of this backhanded review piques your interest, set a budget for yourself and don't exceed it for any reason. 9. BOSSGAME: The Final Boss is Your Heart [Steam]  BOSSGAME is an action rpg about two dirtbag lesbians, Sophie and Anna, trying to earn rent money by taking random mercenary work in the big city. The story is low pressure fun, with a little melodrama mixed in to spice things up. The plot is needs-suiting, even maybe good, but the reason this game is on the list is the gameplay. BOSSGAME is really, really fun to play. It uses a combat system reminiscent of the Mario and Luigi rpgs in which both party members are controlled simultaneously. Enemies telegraph attacks that need to be blocked using the left or right side of the gamepad based on character, draining stamina. Attacking also drains stamina, so a careful balance of offense and defense needs to be maintained to survive. Most interestingly, there's no turns: enemies repeat attack patterns usually without waiting for a counterattack, so combat becomes a brain-bending routine of multitasking, with one character needing to block attacks while the other sneaks in some damage. A combo system encourages keeping up constant pressure, with the reward being increased progress toward a super attack that can briefly stun bosses and allow some easy hits before returning to defensive play. The end result is fast paced, engaging, and totally unique combat that was fun to learn for each of the dozens of boss fights in the game. I'm glad this game ended up being good enough to recommend here, not just because I, too, am lesbian, but because I love designers that are willing to take a chance on unique control schemes. Part of the fun of playing BOSSGAME was getting to learn how to play without being able to rely on any of the muscle memory I've accrued over years of playing other action games. I only wish it weren't so short. Of all the games on this list, this is the one I would most want to see expanded into a full 40-60 hour RPG epic. 8. Slay the Princess [Steam]  A Myers-Briggs test for fetishes. Keep that in mind whenever anybody who tries to talk to you about their favorite "route". Great writing though 7. EDF 5 [Steam]  My official Multiplayer Game Experience of the Year. The EDF (EDF! EDF! EDF!) series is an alien invasion resistance simulator that exists somewhere between Dynasty Warriors and Monster Hunter in gameplay. I've known about the series for a long time, and I had assumed it was the kind of loud dumb fun that makes for punchy clips but wears out its welcome quickly. To be clear, it definitely is loud, and dumb, and fun, but it also has significantly more mechanical depth and complexity than I expected, which kept it fresh and engaging for as long as I played it. Mechanics like building destruction and corpse hitboxes looks like they're just they're there for spectacle at first, but as levels progress and more and more aggressive enemy types are introduced, these seemingly incidental details take on more and more importance as you need to manage cover and enemy sight lines more effectively. This is the game's most potent tool, I think: everything that makes it great as a ridiculous carnage sandbox has been meticulously designed to also work in the higher difficulty levels to deliver a genuinely tense and highly mobile shooter. 6. Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengeance of the Slayers [Steam]  A boomer shooter in the same canon as Hypnospace Outlaw, partially developed by troubled teen ZANE_ROCKS_14 and polished up for release 22 years later. For an elaborate shitpost, it's very well made, but what most interests me about it is its contradictory nature. Outwardly, it's completely juvenile and silly about everything it does, filled with poop jokes and mouthy rats and evil stepdads. Underneath that, there's the deep melancholy of a 36 year old desperately trying to relive the last time in his life that he felt cool. all the levels in the game faithfully recreate scenes of Zane's Idaho childhood, from ritzy suburban neighborhoods to car parks to the local fair, but they're all just a little bit too eerily empty for the settings they're trying to evoke. The protagonist's sincere love for his mother completely clashes with the badass attitude he brings to every other scene. Zane put his all into voice acting the protagonist's lines, while every other character sounds like they're reciting lines into their phone in a bathroom. The end result is a masterpiece in immersive game design, meticulously arranged to feel like it came from a very specific time and place in a fictional alternate universe. It's so effective that even the parts that don't work can be argued as a deliberate part of the overall period piece, like the confusingly short penultimate level or unnecessarily annoying final boss. 5. Cobalt Core [Steam]  A card battler built around spaceship combat. It should be immediately apparent to anybody who's played a lot of Slay-The-Spire-likes that Cobalt Core is on the easier side, but that's a deliberate choice here, in an effort to create an engaging narrative experience rather than a perfectly tuned progression treadmill. While Inscryption (another narrative card battler) managed its story by bringing the player away from the cards for cutscenes or escape room sequences, Cobalt Core delivers everything within its roguelike framework, even going as far as coming up with a time loop justification for why the player is repeating runs to progress the story. In that regard it compares more closely to Hades than other card battlers, and I also think that's a good comparison because I really like the characters and character interactions in Cobalt Core. Each round starts with the selection of three of the (after finishing a short period of unlocks) 7 crewmates available to play with, and every combination of characters has interesting discussions and interactions between them. Characters also have lines to acknowledge specific artifacts, cards, or game states (like big damage or status effects) that offers a level of reactivity to make each run that much more unique. Also like Hades, there's a concrete ending sequence. Backstory for each crewmate is delivered piecemeal throughout the game, and while there aren't any earthshattering twists or revelations, the ending does a good job of tying everything together for a proper sendoff. Shoutout to Riggs. Best possum in the galaxy. !Great Soundtrack Alert! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0b3p1teA9M 4. Going Down (2014 Doom megawad) [Doomworld File Depot]  This year, I played MyHouse.wad. More and more people were talking about it, and I wanted to give it a try myself before someone randomly spoiled it for me. I didn't end up caring for it much! It did some interesting things, and it was definitely well made, but I'm not that interested in the creepypasta style it was going for. It did pique my interest in the rich ecosystem of Doom modding that's been quietly trucking along for 30 years before myhouse ever released, though. A friend recommended Going Down, which I found to be terrific, and then I spent the rest of the year playing random wads (level packs) whenever I didn't have anything else to do. Doom has become invaluable to me as a podcast game, especially as I've only just been able to extract myself from Tactical Nexus's cunning grasp this year. So, without further ado: The Official Doom Wads of the Year Minilist: 10 Struggle: Antaresian Legacy - Most of the levels in this wad focus on low-pressure exploration, but my favorites were the wide-open chaotic battles. I especially like the capstone levels of the first two chapters (maps 11 and 20), which both feature massive arenas with hundreds of enemies active at once. 9 Ancient Aliens - A collab megawad with great aesthetic and theming. Level quality is inconsistent, which makes sense given how many authors were involved, but the best levels in the wad are excellent. 8 Dust Devil - A short campaign of two interconnected levels with a bunch of interesting custom content. The use of grenade launchers and shielded enemies was especially cool, and not something I expected the doom engine to be able to do. 7 Lullaby - A stylish single-map wad in a decidedly undoomlike blue dreamland. There's only five or so major setpiece encounters, but they're all very memorable. 6 Doom 2 - I love how experimental the design in Doom 2 is, especially given that the entire genre of fps was brand new at this point in history. there's abstract levels, puzzle levels, diagetic cityscapes, and more. It's easy to see its influence in every fps to ever follow in its wake. 5 Overboard - A newer wad by the same author of Going Down with a great gimmick- the first five levels are followed by a set of hard mode remixes that use the same maps with more aggressive enemy arrangements. I particularly liked the last map of hard mode, which is identical to its normal mode variant except that it spawns all 500 enemies in the moment the level starts instead of deploying in piecemeal waves as it does in the original. 4 The Thing You Can't Defeat - An experimental remix of the first chapter of Doom 1. Very interesting premise and punchline. If you liked MyHouse.wad, I'd highly recommend checking it out. 3 Tarnsman's Projectile Hell - This is the first touhou game I've played, technically. Deviously difficult design with an emphasis on long distance hitscan enemies that would be extremely annoying in the hands of a level designer any less obviously talented than Tarnsman. 2 Unloved - An ambitious continuous campaign that takes place in a Silent Hill-esque house with several portals to distorted nightmare realms. I like that small amounts of progress are made in each level at a time with frequent revisits to the main hub, and I love the dark atmosphere. Very creepy. Also insanely difficult. 1 Going Down - My favorite by a long shot. The amount of variety in level and encounter design is incredible on its own, but I particularly like the care that went into giving each level a unique identity that still makes sense in the context of the wad's premise (taking an elevator floor by floor down into the depths of hell). Every level is meticulously designed to use the entire space, usually multiple times as later encounters in each level usually reuse the same arenas with additional twists on the layout and enemy deployments. 3. Pizza Tower [Steam]  A fluid platformer heavily inspired by the Wario Land games. Its most notable design choice is the lack of fail state when exploring levels. There's no health bar, and falling into pits only resets the room, so there's no significant pressure until the timed escape sequence at the end of each level. That's not to say the game lacks challenge, though. Far from it- the challenge comes not from reaching the end of each room, but in doing so as efficiently as possible. Pizza Tower's principle antagonist is the 5 second combo timer in the top right, forcing a constant stream of action. Every level has just enough stuff in each room to allow a single combo to be carried from start to level finish, which confers the coveted P Rank medal on level completion. Full P Rank completion is what I spent three months obsessively chasing at the start of this year. Movement in Pizza Tower is so fluid, and so satisfying to learn how to fully utilize, that I couldn't resist going for it. I got so far into it that after finishing the game, I went back in immediately for an optional challenge that requires full P rank completion of the game in less than 4 hours, which required being able to clear each level with perfect consistency. !Great Soundtrack Alert! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWoTeTZL-C8 2. Beton Brutal [Steam]  The trailer for Beton Brutal immediately spoke to me. I've been a fan of persistent-state platforming games for ages, and it's a sorely underserved genre (mostly lurking in MMOs and player-made levels for games like Mario Maker). I like the emphasis on meditative upward progress, and I especially like the increasing pressure that builds as each subsequent jump risks losing more progress than the previous. Beton Brutal's developer was able to deliver this perfectly while also maintaining a consistent and interesting visual style (a stark contrast to the dreadful nft tie-in climbing game Only Up, which also released this year). For weeks, I opened Beton Brutal after work and played for thirty minutes to an hour, usually seeing some small amount of new progress before inevitably taking a long fall and rage quitting for the day. I don't think I can call this the hardest game I've ever played, given that there's an entire community of people that can complete the entire climb in less than ten minutes, but I do think I'm uniquely poorly suited for games like this, given the extreme precision required. Still, that made it all the more satisfying to finally complete the game after almost exactly 20 hours of effort. Three months later the DLC "Beton Bath", with another 500 meter tower with new obstacles, mechanics, and visual aesthetic (themed after public pool equipment, which honestly looks great decorating the tower), released. This dlc had mixed reviews, but it cemented this game as a whole as a favorite for me. The new tower has a very different design approach, with more focus on interpreting strange geometry, seeking out aggressive shortcuts, and taking giant leaps of faith. The last 100 meters particularly impressed me, with numerous falls onto trampolines 80 meters below to stride the entire tower in one jump and reach new ladders, before climbing just a few meters higher and repeating the process back to the opposite side. trying to settle on which screenshot to include with the entry was agonizing, so I'm going to post a bunch more here. I love how this game looks.     Don't worry about the vertigo meter in the bottom left. It's probably nothing to worry about. 1. Void Stranger [Steam]  Void Stranger is a tile-based puzzle game featuring a magic wand that can pick tiles up and place them elsewhere. Help the noble handmaiden Gray delve into the 256th floor of the mysterious Void to fulfill her heart's desire, learning more about her past by peeking into her memories as she rests at checkpoints along the way. ...But that's not sufficient to describe it, really. The best way I can come up with to describe what Void Stranger actually is, is as a seemingly normal block-pushing puzzle game that's had an entire additional Myst-like adventure game layered over it. The puzzle game is real, and it can be engaged with honestly from start to finish, but the true fun of the game (and several of its many, many possible endings) comes from interpreting obscure clues in the lore and interface to dive deeper. The more that's learned, the easier it is to navigate the underlying puzzle game. Almost every object in the game has hidden mechanics related to it, opening up easier routes through initially difficult puzzles or allowing the use of shortcuts to skip floors entirely. Once these tricks are mastered, only thirty or so of the game's 256 floors even need to be visited to complete a run, and most of them can be cleared in seconds. That's a good thing, too, because there's a lot of travel to specific floors needed to find all the secrets in the game. This is a game that thrives on friction in its play experience, which means it's definitely not going to be a game for everybody. If clues regarding certain shortcuts or secrets are missed, it can add a lot of unnecessary work to completing the game. But I personally love that kind of obscurity in games, and I really appreciate that the developer System Erasure (who made the similarly excellent ZeroRanger) was willing to take a chance on a niche-of-a-niche genre that could really speak to its core demographic: me specifically. I'm not going to talk much about the plot, because most of it is deeply tangled with the Void Stranger's deepest secrets. That said, I appreciate that every route through the game, even the ones that don't engage with all the secret hunting, have been given fully fledged stories. Even the bad ending has a loving awesome finale, to the extent that I would recommend seeking it out before engaging with the rest of the game's content (if you get offered a fruit, go ahead and eat it!) Void Stranger is good enough to make it onto my top ten list of games of all time. I've put it at #6, just behind Iji and just ahead of Full Bore. Everything about it is loving awesome. Check it out! !Great Soundtrack Alert! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrhqynzJUqY E-Z Tally Shortlist for the tally people: 10. Super Snail 9. BOSSGAME: The Final Boss is Your Heart 8. Slay the Princess 7. Earth Defense Force 5 6. Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengeance of the Slayer 5. Cobalt Core 4. Going Down (2014 Doom wad) 3. Pizza Tower 2. Beton Brutal 1. Void Stranger Venuz Patrol fucked around with this message at 06:56 on Dec 16, 2023 |
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Dec 16, 2023 06:53
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Venuz Patrol posted:4. Going Down (2014 Doom wad) Going Down slaps; it's the megaWAD that got me into Doom after not really vibing with the original game or its sequel, to the extent that I ended up playing a lot of other wads and then learning to write doom mods. Given that you liked that, you might also want to check out Overboard, a small six-level WAD, and The Eye, a single level (but what a level!), by the same author.
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Dec 16, 2023 17:00
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Venuz Patrol posted:especially as I've only just been able to extract myself from Tactical Nexus's cunning grasp this year. shoutouts to another tacnex player. i'm nowhere near escaping its grasp
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Dec 16, 2023 18:10
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Alright, we're into our Top 40 and we should be getting some more positive vibes than the previous batch. 40. Lacuna (6.23) - Sci-fi Noir Detective Mystery - Pretty straight forward and easy to follow along. You spend a lot of time walking to the subway and then from the subway to the next location that you have to go. If the game let you teleport from location to location like an Ace Attorney game, it probably would have chopped off about 25-30% of my total playtime, and not lost anything from the experience. The plot is decent. The character writing is... okay. It does what it needs to. The setting is surprisingly unexciting when it's got an inter-solar The Expanse-like conflict brewing and you play as a cyberpunk enhanced g-man. I wish that they'd gone harder on the science fiction. The aesthetic is good. This game has good pixel graphics. HD2D is... my jam. 39. Lego Builder's Journey (6.25) - Textless Lego Puzzle - Chill game with zero dialogue or text about a lego dude who wants to build a lego castle with his lego son but then lego dude is too busy at his lego job and then his lego son legoes on a lego adventure. Has Ray Tracing for some reason! 38. Tunic (6.27) - Action Adventure Zelda-like - A great game with a fun conceit about the game's manual being hidden across the world and the player being able to discover new mechanics that they actually had access to the whole time. I really enjoyed figuring out the Golden Path puzzle. 37. Tiny Tina's Wonderland (6.3) - FPS; Fantasy Person Shlooter - No surprises from Gearbox, it's another borderlands with a lot of Tiny Tina. Based on that description, you already know if you're going to love it, like it, or hate it. The best class is Clawbringer because you get a dragon pet and you can throw a hammer like Thor. It's empowering and sick as hell. Wonderland also has what is possibly the worst season pass DLC that I've ever seen. The entire set is about as much content as a single DLC from previous games in the series. Pretty disappointing and its Very Negative rating on Steam is well deserved. 36. Gerda: A Flame in Winter (6.4) - Historical Adventure Visual Novel - Gerda is a Disco Elysium-like adventure game set in the latter days of World War 2 in a small nazi-occupied town in Denmark. You play as a young woman whose husband has been arrested for being a member of the local resistance and it's up to you to free him as you spend your time managing relationships between the various factions and people in town. Do you cozy up to the resistance, knowing that they were the ones who got your husband arrested, or do you work with the nazis, knowing that your assistance might mean that your husband gets interrogated a little less violently while he's imprisoned? Despite the comparison to Disco Elysium, this game is definitely not disco. It treats itself with an appropriate level of seriousness for its story and setting. 35. Detective Grimoire: Secret of the Swamp (6.45) - Point and Click Mystery Puzzle Adventure - A short and sweet indie mystery game. While the mystery itself wasn't very challenging, it's well written and well voice acted. I quite like the deduction mechanic, which (afaik) is unique to the genre. 34. Arcade Spirits (6.5) - Visual Novel Arcade Manager - It's definitely a visual novel! Some of the writing is cringey but the characters are cool and I like the art. Low stakes and chill. 33. Sekiro (6.55) - Samurai-born - Alright, look... I didn't finish Sekiro. I only played it for three sessions, each lasting just under an hour, and each time I would stop playing and I would be sweaty and anxious and not in a good mood. I have played every souls game, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring. Sekiro intimidates me like nothing else and one day I will give it a legitimate go and I'll probably enjoy it and it'll probably be in my top 10. Just not this year. 32. Harvestella (6.6) - Anime Action-RPG Farming Sim - Harvest Moon with more emphasis on combat mechanics, dungeoneering, and story. Combat balance gets thrown out of whack about halfway through and bosses are a pain in the butt. Did not enjoy the final boss! Game could easily shave off like 20 hours by streamlining certain mechanics (actually, that was probably my fault with doing farm stuff and side-quests). Did farming actually matter at all? Note that I no longer have context for, "Running through the epilogue of the epilogue and it's hilarious watching the game's score tank in real time." I guess I just didn't like what was going on. I'm dogging on Harvestella a lot but it's a genuinely decent game with a truly hilarious twist for the setting (and if you know you know). I rated it quite poorly for Time and I think it's because there was a lot of stuff that I did that ended up feeling like a waste of time. 31. Sucker for Love: First Date (6.7) - Lovecraftian Dating Sim Visual Novel - Very short and cute visual novel about trying to smooch elder gods. Estir bestir. Sidenote: Played this in parallel with a pathfinder campaign that was ultimately about foiling Hastur (The King in Yellow, the Unspeakable One, who is the one true ruler of the universe, who sits upon his Golden Throne in Carcosa basking in the light of its twin suns) and no one else seemed to think it was funny that I kept telling the Bard to seduce and smooch the Elder God. Probably because the bard was running at 80% corruption and had recently vomited up a Mi-Go created of shadow and nightmare. It turned out okay, even when the planet exploded! 30. Yoku's Island Express (6.73) - Pinball Metroidvania - Yoku is a post office worker dung beetle (I originally used mailman in this description... mailbug?) and he has just recently been assigned to Mokumana Island. Yoku can move around, pushing his stone (it's not poop but you can make it poop), and he can also position his stone by blue or orange pinball bumpers which can be flipped to knock his stone around like a pinball. Yoku, attached to his stone, will ragdoll helplessly behind it as it slams around the terrain. The game is very novel, supremely chill ,and really cute. 29. Soul Hackers 2 (6.76) - Demon Summoning JRPG - A pretty okay SMT game. The combat system is crunchy and you're definitely rewarded for investing time into developing your demons. The overall story is pretty bad but I thought that the characters were alright. It does look pretty and the music is good. Had (probably still has) a weird bug on PC where it picks the wrong monitor to use as a display every time you boot it up and will ignore any attempt to correct it! 28. Grounded (6.8) - First Person Survival Bug-Crafting - It's Honey I shrunk the kids: the game (is that useful as a reference? Do zoomers understand Rick Moranis? (I just looked it up, they're working on a reboot that got delayed by covid)). It's a survival RPG based on building a base out of grass and mushrooms and murdering a lot of insects/arachnids. I played through it in multiplayer with two buddies. It was a pretty fun and chill experience up until you hit the upper yard and have to deal with Tier 3 enemies. You start fighting upgraded versions of all the bugs you've already been fighting but all their numbers are pumped up and they're all so tanky and it becomes less fun and chill. The combat can actually be pretty satisfying so long as you enjoy parrying attacks. Guarding at the right moment means taking zero damage and occasionally putting bugs into a stagger state. Up yours if you want to specialize in doing ranged damage, the game wants you in melee. Game has an Arachnophobia slider in the options that makes spiders less spider-like (removing legs and eyes until eventually you're left with two floating untextured orbs). You fight a lot of spiders in this game and they're assholes. Crafting and building is also really well done. You automatically pull materials from nearby chests, which is a HUGE quality of life feature. It also lets you automatically dump materials into the appropriate chests. You can also mark some chests to not get used for the auto-dumping, which again is big QOL. 27. Harmony's Odyssey (6.83) - Puzzle - Cloyingly cute, sickeningly saccharine puzzle game probably meant for children but I still enjoyed it. 26. Modded Multiplayer Stardew Valley (6.86) - Farming/Life Sim - Played this with a group of friends in multiplayer and boy-howdy that is a massive game-changer for Stardew. You can have people all running around doing their own thing or just hang out and talk poo poo about Pierre while fishing. We ended up doing a perfection run in just over two years (would have done it in Year 1 if we hadn't missed out on some necessary spring or summer crops but thats okay). Mods List: Range Highlight, Experience Bars, UI Info Suite, TimeSpeed (almost essential for multiplayer), Automate, StardewValley Anime Mods <--- Most Important! 25. Tangle Tower (7.0) - Supernatural Point and Click Mystery Puzzle Adventure - Big improvements and polish over its prequel, Detective Grimoire (#35). The voice acting is swell, and the puzzles are short and sweet. The characters are cool and the writing is good... except for the ending. The reveal wasn't satisfying, not only because it seemed to come out of left field, but there's also a huge logistical issue that's not really explained. 24. Flynn, Son of Crimson (7.1) - Action Platformer - It's cute and good! Bosses are annoying. 23. Red Dead Redemption II (7.2) - AAA Cowboy Simulator - This game is big AAA and you feel it every single second in this game. It looks good, it sounds good, it plays good, and it makes you feel like a cowboy. It makes you talk like a cowboy. With that said, you can feel when the game puts you on rails to try and ensure a more cinematic experience. It doesn't always work. My biggest gripe with RDR2 is that it's just real... methodical about how it goes about its business. Every action takes its time. I'd be willing to bet that you spend 30-35% of your game time galloping around on a horse moving from point A to point B. Probably in cinematic mode. If you're into that then that's cool. I'd rather fast travel. Biggest highlight of the game: While traveling to the next checkpoint for a mission, I put my horse into cinematic mode. As I'm getting up to get a snack, the horse immediately trips over a rock and breaks its neck. Arthur gets flung off his now dead horse and collapses in the middle of the road where he gets crushed by a carriage (this kills Arthur). Speaking of Arthur Morgan, he's easily a top 10 for video game protagonists of all time. Amazing character, well written and well performed. 22. The Looker (7.3) - Exploration Puzzle Parody - It's a very good riff on The Witness. The puzzles are exactly what they need to be and the jokes are actually funny! If you played The Witness, you should definitely try The Looker. 21. Vampire Survivors: Legacy of the Moonspell (7.4) - Bullet Heaven DLC - It's more Vampires and more Survivors and more Weapons and more God drat Achievements and there ain't nothing wrong with any of that. - I think I had to re-hit 100% achievements 3-4 more times after this DLC came out. And that's 40-21. Next, eventually, we'll cover our remaining 20 games, including our top 10. Really enjoying the variety on everyone's lists this year. Baldur's Gate 3 is probably going to take it (I was a less certain about a week ago, but it just recently nabbed 3-4 #1 slots so we'll see) but I know that Armored Core 6, Cyberpunk, and Zelda:TOTK have a lot of supporters. Things definitely feel competitive and exciting.
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Dec 16, 2023 18:28
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Godspeed, Belgian Waffle
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Dec 16, 2023 18:32
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ToxicFrog posted:The Eye, a single level (but what a level!), by the same author. i played this one a few days ago and loved it. midsize, single-level exploration wads are the best
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Dec 16, 2023 19:34
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Games 2023 These are the Sumerian games of 2023, revealing a deep yearning for the design sensibilities of 1998. 1. Morrowind Tamriel Rebuilt - Morrowind 2, sequel to the only good Bethesda game. 2. Blender - cheeky fun pick, clever little wanker, right naughty answer this one. However it is true I enjoy mucking about in Blender as much as I enjoy playing something like Sim City or the Kerbals. But better. 3. Thief The Black Parade - The real Thief 3 for true Thief zealots. 4. Underrail - cured me of depression 5. Entropy Zero - Revel in the banality of evil 6. Alpha Centauri - A roleplaying game wearing a 4x costume 7. Golden Idol - Spiritual successor to Obra Dinn 8. Prodeus - a shooter for a boomer 9. Hellish Quart - what you thought Soul Calibur should have been when you were a teenager 10. Tetris Effect - Advanced Tetris aesthetics Honourable mention -Tunic - an adventure I guess
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Dec 16, 2023 19:58
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Venuz Patrol posted:i played this one a few days ago and loved it. midsize, single-level exploration wads are the best What are some of your faves? It's not a style I've played a lot of but I like it.
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Dec 16, 2023 22:11
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Belgian Waffle posted:30. Yoku's Island Express (6.73) - Pinball Metroidvania - Yoku is a post office worker dung beetle (I originally used mailman in this description... mailbug?) and he has just recently been assigned to Mokumana Island. Yoku can move around, pushing his stone (it's not poop but you can make it poop), and he can also position his stone by blue or orange pinball bumpers which can be flipped to knock his stone around like a pinball. Yoku, attached to his stone, will ragdoll helplessly behind it as it slams around the terrain. I liked this game a lot when I played it years ago. more games should have pinball as a mechanic. I always wanted to check out Rollers of the Realm but it got delisted from PSN for what I assume are stupid reasons.
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Dec 16, 2023 22:45
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My brain is broken in a way that makes writing positively about things really difficult and take forever. I was going to write up something for every game I played but I decided to drop the games I felt 'meh' or worse about, as well as the ones outside my top 10 that I didn't have anything to say or are extremely well known already. This top 10 took me about 10 hours to write over multiple weeks and I will never be happy with it so it’s time to  .Honorable mentions: Amid Evil - Great fps, very cool and unique weapons, just barely missed the 10 spot. Dredge - Peak of podcast games, one of the few games I've 100%'d Last Call BBS - Just like every other Zachtronics game this is excellent but beyond my ability to get in deep. Taiji - The Witness but 2d and not stuck inside its own rear end in a top hat. Lingo - Word puzzle game, extremely good but I am bad at words. Doom 2 - Better tools than Doom but the map makers decided they needed the game to be hard more than they needed it to be good. I might try mods next year. Shadowverse - I played this ccg for the single player campaign. The first arc is absolute poo poo, every arc after that leaps up in quality until it’s actually pretty good by the end. Melatonin - Indie Rhythm Heaven, it doesn't match up to its inspiration but it's solid. 10. Patrick's Parabox - The peak of block pushing puzzle games. Most blocks are a level unto themselves, and can be entered by any other block, even if that block is a copy of itself. It constantly challenges you to think in new and clever ways to get the pieces where they need to be through methods that are really hard to describe but simple to do in practice. 9. Against the Storm - Roguelite city builder with an interesting setting. It manages a perfect balance where everything is just consistent enough that there’s always a path to success but you will be forced to improvise along the way. I like the seal maps they added recently, they add a few more challenges that force more adaptation on your part, both to complete the challenges and to keep your settlement going for longer than usual as your resources deplete. 8. Myst - I can hardly believe this came out in 1993, it looks so good by early 3d standards; a lot of it still holds up today. I found the worlds of Myst very interesting, seeing strange natural environments and how technology was integrated into them. You’re not doing arbitrary block puzzles to unlock a door, you’re figuring out how a machine works so that you can get it to do what you want. A lot of the puzzles feel natural as a result. My only issue is that there’s a few places where a path is hidden in a very pixel hunt adventure game kind of way. If every Myst game came with an option to highlight every path and interactable they’d be a lot better for it.. 7. We Were Here Forever - Last year I guaranteed that this would be on my list and it didn’t disappoint. Great puzzle game centered around communication between the two players. It has a good variety to the challenges you face, making you describe abstract shapes, decipher cryptic instructions, build a path for your partner etc. It also does a good job of mixing up what role you and your partner play in each puzzle. Sometimes you are on equal footing, other times one is a rat in a maze while the partner gives them directions. This lets them play with a lot of unique puzzle setups, though it occasionally makes a puzzle unsatisfying for one player. There are a couple of challenges where I don’t even know how the solution worked and just followed my friend’s lead. It’s a pretty big problem for the otherwise great series that keeps this game out of my top 5 this year. Still, it’s the best co-op puzzle game I’ve played so far. 6. Doom (1993) - It’s still one of the best fps games of all time. I’m not writing more about this, you all know about Doom. 5. Riven - The sequel to Myst, in case you didn’t know. It does a great job improving on the formula. The ages of Myst were beautiful, but also empty of any life. Riven is lived in, people and animals react to your presence, the villain is active and aware of your efforts, and you aren’t the only one opposing him. The puzzles are good, when they aren’t complete horseshit anyway. 4. Northern Journey - Don’t touch this if you’re arachnophobic. I had a great time exploring the strange world this game had to offer. There’s a beauty to the environments that I came to appreciate as I was slowly clearing the realm of every spider and bug while getting hopelessly lost. It’s important to keep your surroundings in mind as the mountains and fjords are treacherous as hell. It’s technically an fps, but where Doom wants you to feel like a badass Northern Journey wants you to feel small, and scared, and mortal, and it succeeds. All of your weapons are slow, weak, or inaccurate and you will often feel outmatched when a horde of spiders is trying to run you down. You will rarely fight in a flat plain where you can freely circle strafe the enemy, there is almost always a cliff or a river that will kill you if you get careless. The only way to overcome these threats is to fight cautiously, always keeping enemies as far from you as possible and engaging them in as few numbers as you can. 3. Mechabellum - A strategy game that requires no micromanagement of your units. Perfectly balanced; there is always a counter strategy to what your opponent is doing, though it is rarely obvious. In 40 hours I don't feel like any two matches have been the same. Looks good too. It’s absolutely worth buying right now, but it's important to note that it will be free to play on official release. 2. The Case of the Golden Idol - Great mystery game, the closest to the quality of Return of the Obra Dinn that anyone has managed. Each murder is a finely crafted puzzle to be solved through careful deduction… or sometimes by checking the grammar of the fill in the blank sentence. That’s my only issue with the game. The overarching story quickly goes to some completely wild places and has plenty of good twists to keep it interesting. 1. Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective - I love this game without reservation. I love the goofy characters, the story, and all the puzzles. Even the obligatory stealth section is good. The puzzle difficulty was never an issue for me, not to say that I never got stuck but it was always my own fault when I did, usually because I remembered trying a solution even though I hadn’t. Ghost Trick’s tone swings wildly between goofy cartoon antics and heartbreaking tragedy without cheapening moments on either end of the spectrum. sirtommygunn fucked around with this message at 16:50 on Dec 30, 2023 |
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Dec 16, 2023 22:45
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ToxicFrog posted:What are some of your faves? It's not a style I've played a lot of but I like it. I wrote about them a little bit in my list, but Dust Devil and Lullaby are both small wads with great exploration
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Dec 16, 2023 22:59
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sirtommygunn posted:
Myst holds up shockingly well, yeah. The puzzles are a little contrived, but I actually prefer that to the more integrated puzzles of Riven, where you're not even sure what is a puzzle. Really impressive game design chops in that series.
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Dec 17, 2023 00:34
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Games pretty much have been the one bright spot for me in a year full of uncertainty and while 2023 was undeniably great when it comes to new releases there still were a few from previous years that managed to hold my attention. honorable mentions AKA games I often found myself returning to when killing some time: Mythos: Sudoku: I found myself spending a fair amount of time on this one. Each game basically pits you against a set of 5 sudoku variants where completing squares in one lets you get clues you need to complete the others, not the most innovative game ever but it does its job as an enjoyable time waster very well. PowerWash Simulator: Perfect for those who want the satisfaction of cleaning stuff without having to actually clean stuff IRL. It can get a bit monotonous but sometimes that's exactly what you need to relax after a long day. Vampire Survivors, Holocure and Rogue Genesia: I honestly don't really know what to say that hasn't already been said about the VS-like genre but those 3 are the ones that I ended playing the most with each offering a unique twist on the formula. VS being obviously the most "standard" one that ended up defining the genre. Holocure being a bit on the harder side and making each character feel distinct from each other and Rogue Genesia mashing the formula with a more traditional "roguelite" progression. 10. Submachine: Legacy: I must say that I do have a bit of personal history with the Submachine franchise having played those games a lot back when I was younger so I kinda leaped on that one when I learned of its existence. Legacy is an updated compilation of the 10 original point and click flash games as well as some of the side games that came out between the main releases and a bit of extra content here and there. While there isn't much new content, I have always liked the atmosphere of these games. None of the puzzles are that hard to solve either but I still had a good time revisiting those classics. 9. Cassette Beasts: A pretty solid "Pokémon clone" that does a lot to differentiate itself from its inspiration. The game start with the player waking up on an island in a world that isn't their own and quickly meeting with a civilization of other people in a similar predicament. Not helping is that the island happens to be infested by all kinds of monsters as well as a few eldritch abominations. The good new however is that it is possible to "record" said monsters on cassette tapes to gain the ability to transform into them. While I wouldn't say the plot is anything you haven't seen before, it doesn't have any glaring flaws and the companions you end up finding on your journey can be endearing. When it comes to the combat, you have control over your monster and your companion's. Each move costs a certain amount of APs to use and you get 1 back per turn before taking status effects into account. Speaking of status effect, the way the game approaches typing is pretty unique, instead of moves dealing more or less damage based on weakness and resistances it instead applies status effects based on the type combo. Hit a water monster with a plant attack? It may not result in a loss of damage right away but the water monster will gain a buff for a few turns that will slowly regenerate its health for instance. The moves themselves take the form of stickers and can be switched around at will as long as the receiving monster is eligible to use the move allowing for a lot of flexibility in team composition. It also helps that the level is based around your character instead of the monsters (who can individually be maxed pretty quickly) which makes it a lot easier to try new stuff as well. The experience is overall pretty pleasant although relatively short if you don't stick around for the relatively grindy postgame. The soundtrack is fantastic too, many of the battle tracks even having vocals that switch in whenever you use the game's limit break mechanic to fuse your two monster together to unleash hell upon your foes. I'll also give a shout out to the dev's previous game , Lenna's Inception, which is a pretty interesting Zelda randomizer-inspired experience and may be worth a look if you're into that kind of thing. 8. La-Mulana 2 randomizer: For the (un?)lucky souls who have never heard of the La-Mulana duology, those metroidvanias are mostly-known for having some of the most obtuse puzzles to have ever graced a sidescroller. Hard to notice breakable walls, cryptic hints hidden in the lore of the ruins you are exploring, devilish traps that dump you into spikes, lava or put you right under an instant-kill crusher? All fair game here! While the games themselves are pretty hostile to the player it also makes overcoming their challenges that much more satisfying and what better way to prove mastery over the whole thing than shuffling the items and area transitions around? While it has been years since I first played the original games and the randomizer associated with the first one. I didn't enjoy 2 as much at the time(Mostly some of the boss/miniboss design that I didn't like as much as in the first game) and its own randomizer was still in a very rough state leading me to skip over it. However, LM2 ended growing on me quite a bit lately and so I finally decided to dive back into a version of the ruins slightly different than what I experienced before. Having to keep track of the layout of the ruins as well as what puzzles you can solve with your current items can be a lot of fun in addition to discovering interactions you never thought of before. The logic can be a bit rough when it comes to the strict minimum it can expect before throwing you at a boss but those cases tend to be uncommon. I would probably have put La-Mulana 1's randomizer in the same spot as I also played it this year but I didn't want to have two games overlapping and chose the one I didn't play previously as a result. 7. Tyrion Cuthbert: Attorney of the Arcane: What if you took your average Ace Attorney game but put it in a D&D-like setting? Well, it turns out courtroom antics still work pretty well when the case involves magic with extremely strict rules (not that PLvsAA didn't try something similar before but Attorney of the Arcane does push the concept a bit further) and other fun stuff like that as part of its setting. While I wasn't fully convinced by the first case the writing quality does improve as the game goes on and starts growing into its own distinct thing rather than staying too close to its inspiration. It does end up doing some interesting things with its setting too that I won't spoil here. My first impression about the character writing wasn't great either, the whole thing feeling a bit too derivative of Ace Attorney but that thankfully starts improving after the first couple of cases. The humor can be a bit hit or miss but tends to start hitting more as the game progresses as well. I would recommend it to anyone who is done with the AA franchise but still wants more in the same general style. Features a pretty nice and jazzy soundtrack as well. 6. The case of the Golden Idol: A really well-made mystery game in the vein of Return of the Obra Dinn. Each scenario puts you at a specific moment after the crime has occurred and asks you to investigate the scenes to both figure out what exactly has transpired and gather keywords in order to fill the blanks on the deductions sheet. I really liked the art style of this one, it kinds of reminds me of old point and click adventure games. The cases themselves tend to present some pretty unique scenarios and figuring out the ways each case is related to the others is pretty entertaining. The only real negative thing I can say about it is that it's pretty short. 5. Can of Wormholes: My favorite game of the year when it comes to raw puzzling. It is basically the result of a love affair between your traditional block-pushing sokoban and Snake. You control a worm that grows when you eat pellets spread around each level and the goal is to fall into holes of varying shapes. The game introduces many more concepts during its runtime that result in some really complex puzzles. I don't really have much more to say, it's just a bunch of really good puzzles. I think anyone who likes sokoban should probably give it a try 4. Pseudoregalia: Is anyone here feeling like the world needs more 3D platformers with a N64 aesthetic and cool movement? Because Pseudoregalia is exactly that. The game is a 3D metroidvania that puts a lot of emphasis on movement over combat. As you progress, you quickly find new abilities that open new ways to approach the many platforming challenges it throws at you, many having multiple ways to go through them especially if you get creative. It has some of the most satisfying movement of any 3D platformer I have played once you have a bunch of upgrades under your belt and is worth picking up based on that alone in my opinion. Unlike many other metroidvanias, it doesn't have an in-game map which can enhance the experience for some but may be rough for others. However, there are currently tests underway to add a map in-game on a beta branch if you really can't do without. In addition, while I must say the game isn't my GOAT it does in fact feature a cool goat lady as its protagonist, what more could one ask for really? 3: Void Stranger: The second game from System Erasure, the dev team responsible for critically-acclaimed shmup ZeroRanger. Like its predecessor, it takes a well-established genre (in this case grid based sokoban-like puzzle games) and Add a few twists here and there. It's quite hard to talk in details about it because it falls squarely into the Outer Wilds-like situation of the game being best experienced completely blind the first time. To describe the basic gameplay, your goal for each floor is simple : reach the stairs. In order to do so, you have the ability to pick the floor tile you're facing and then put it elsewhere in a vacant spot. While it does sound simple, the game quickly throws new mechanics in your way. Definitely my favorite among games released this year. Anyone who likes weird puzzle game rabbit holes that seemingly have no bottom or stories told in unconventional ways should consider picking it up. Don't be afraid to ask for help if you get stuck though. Oh, and like ZeroRanger before it the soundtrack absolutely slaps. Anyway, while on the topic of the void... 2. The Void Rains Upon Her Heart: Ah, good old TVRUHH. While I am kind of losing hope it will ever leave early access due to the dev constantly getting carried away with new features, at least the updates are still coming in and the game keeps getting better with each one. For the unfamiliar, TVRUHH is a boss rush shmup roguelike with a whooping 99 bosses as of now (and more are still coming...) with each having multiple difficulties they can be fought at that alter their patterns ranging from "baby's first shmup" to "actually pretty challenging". The game boasts 5 main game modes, each bringing their own twists to the table. The most standard one being the story mode where you have to fight multiple monsters in a row with each fight ramping-up the difficulty level. The game gives you a lot of control when it comes to this difficulty increase, nothing is preventing you from staying at a low level for the entire run but in exchange you are given less rewards after the fight, be they upgrades that help you during the run or score that can be used for metaprogression. Speaking of the metaprogression, it works in a rather unusual way here. While most unlocks are from completing achievements like in Isaac, you can additionally "radiate" monster and upgrades using the currency you get from scoring. This basically lets you see exactly what the rewards for each fight are and in some modes is required for the upgrade or monster to be able to show up at all. Unradiated gifts will instead show up as unknown, only letting you know what type and tier they are encouraging one to focus on radiating the ones they either would rather avoid or want to use more often. It is hard to put in perspective how much content there is in this game(And again, more keeps getting added with each update). Most bosses do bring something unique to the table and the whole thing is really fun to play. It is also one of the most beginner-friendly entry in the shmup genre so if you even have a passing interest in that type of game but always bounced due to finding them too hard, TVRUHH may be the game for you. Did I mention the soundtrack is pretty good? No? Well it is. 1. ASTLIBRA Revision: Astlibra is a complete anomaly compared to what I'm used to. The original Astlibra was, from what I understand, a freeware game developped over 15-ish years by a japanese dev during his free time using pre-made assets and royalty-free music. He later got his game noticed by one of Vanillaware's artists who helped him touch up some of the sprites alongside a few other contributors for Revision, an updated version of the original that also contains some extra content, some reworked systems and translation in multiple languages including English on top of these visual overhauls. The result is a sidescrolling action RPG that has an incredibly mismatched artstyle that I personally find charming in many ways and while the soundtrack cannot really be labeled "original" to say the least, the music selection on display is shock full of bangers and almost always fits with whatever is going on on the screen. This whole thing kinds of reminds me of turn-based RPG Crystal Project which also uses mostly pre-made stuff(and you should go play it if you like turn-based RPGs and haven't already) and screams "passion project" which I'm all here for. However, let's talk about the elephant in the room and real star of the show : how does the game plays? The base mechanics themselves are pretty simple : you hit enemies until they die and try navigating around their attacks in the meantime, you quickly gain access to special attacks that use stamina that you generate by hitting enemies and drains if you stay out of combat for too long. A key point of those special attacks is that they grant temporary invincibility which is one of multiple ways besides dodging to negate attacks. Another option is to use a shield which you may not be able to equip alongside certain kinds of weapons and can only take a certain amount of punishment at once before your guard breaks and lastly, if you look around enough early on, you can find the backstep move which gives a lot of I-frames but is on a cooldown. This result in having to constantly stay aware of your surrounding and what the enemies are doing to make sure you don't get caught without a way to deal with whatever is coming your way. At least on higher difficulties, lower ones let you get ahead of the level curve quite easily if you are willing to spend some time grinding. When it comes to grinding, the game does require a bunch of it but it honestly never really felt boring between the combat feeling as good as it does and the game having multiple interlocked systems rewarding you for said grind. First of all, there's the usual leveling system that grants you 5 points to assign to your various stats on each level up, respeccing is free and easy so no reason to worry about screwing up there (unless you save at a save point that temporarily doesn't let you backtrack to respec as happens relatively often in the game. I suggest keeping multiple saves for that reason. Unlikely you'll need them but you never know). Then there's the growth grid where you can spend colored "force" dropped by enemies to gain permanent stat boosts, new special attacks and more. The game even lets you convert any one of the 6 colors to another at a 3 to 1 ratio if needed. Finally, each piece of equipment that isn't an accessory can be mastered by being worn while slaying enemies. Doing so will result in either gaining a new passive skill or a point that can be spent to enable said passive skills and a stat boost to the weapon. This encourages using every weapon at least until mastered as those skills range from great QoL like a money magnet that saves you from having to pick up the coins dropped by enemies yourself to changing how you approach the combat like a skill that triples your attack at the cost of dying in one hit or one that lets you heal when negating an enemy attack by using a special attack. Getting said equipment of course require more grinding in order to get the money and materials dropped by enemies that you need to buy it. The game is really good at making you feel the progression from carefully navigating between slimes to turning into an enemy blender as it goes on even if it doesn't fundamentally get easier per se. As for the story, it really feels like the author took every anime trope he liked, threw them into a blender and then tweaked the result into something that is somehow coherent. While I won't describe it as a masterpiece or anything like that, it still does a fairly good job. The English translation has a few weird spots here and there (and that's after a re-translation, the original was almost machine-translation quality from what I heard) but is still perfectly understandable. The story itself is completely unhinged in the best way possible. It keeps topping itself and taking unexpected turns that still make sense in retrospect making for a pretty fun ride. It even managed to land a few of its emotional beats for me for that matter. The game can get a bit horny at times but besides parts of chapter 4 where I thought it was getting a bit too distracting I didn't have too many issues with it. A few scenes had my eyes rolling as well but nothing too important in the overall plot. While it definitely isn't for everyone, maybe give it a look if you're interested. Don't judge it too much based on the demo though, it kinds of throws you into the middle of the game without really explaining anything and only showcases a really small amount of what there is to see and do. Anyway, I guess I can finally go back to my impossible playthrough now that I'm done with that list. Shortlist: 10. Submachine: Legacy 9. Cassette Beasts 8. La-Mulana 2 randomizer 7. Tyrion Cuthbert: Attorney of the Arcane 6. The case of the Golden Idol 5. Can of Wormholes 4. Pseudoregalia 3: Void Stranger 2. The Void Rains Upon Her Heart 1. ASTLIBRA Revision teo4512 fucked around with this message at 15:48 on Dec 17, 2023 |
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Dec 17, 2023 15:34
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Reading through the thread now. We wouldn't have so many blasphemers making ascending lists if we were still under the Rarity Regime 
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Dec 17, 2023 20:25
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Dishonorable Mention: Errant Kingdom I'm that kinda nerd that loves a good, cheesy visual novel and I was primed to like this having enjoyed both its first few chapters and the dev's previous game (When the Night Comes), but goddamn guys. They paused on chapter releases nominally in order to just finish the game in one fell swoop but the result is an ending that's absurdly rushed - any choice you've previously made doesn't matter even a little bit, NPCs appear during the final 'battle' that the game expects you to know but presumably they're from one of the other two routes because they literally didn't make a single prior appearance in my playthrough, the style between various full CG scenes varies wildly, etc. I'd say the dev, Lunaris Games, probably stretched themselves way too thin for a relatively small studio by kickstartering another game (Call Me Under) before they'd actually finished EK, and now they've just recently announced similar delays for CMU even while having promised several months ago to fix up EK. (Extra dishonorable mention for having won a giveaway on Twitter from the devs that they never actually sent to me!) 10. Wylde Flowers Cute game, through I haven't gone back to it since before they added the ability to change your outfit. 9. Final Fantasy XVI I'm not all that far in playing it yet (BG3 came out and welp) but I've had fun so far. Characters enjoyable, Torgal is best boy, music kicks rear end, etc. 8. Midnight Suns What a loving silly but fun game. The card battling is a blast but it being so fun makes the monastery parts of the game (talking to NPCs, etc.) kind of drag, which is a bummer because usually I enjoy those parts of games as well (see: Fire Emblem 3 Houses). Worth it, though, if only for Captain America accidentally third-wheeling Blade and Captain Marvel. 7. Coral Island The first of two farming sims on my list that hit full (or "full") release this year that I'd previously backed via kickstarter. I've enjoyed what I've played so far, even if it's extremely similar mechanically to Stardew with a dash of Animal Crossing, but it's docked points on account of various storyline quests not actually being finished yet. Probably should've baked for another 6 months or so to properly finish at least the main narrative before launching an official v1.0 but I'm not a game dev! 6. Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader I have no loving idea what I'm doing with character builds - on account of knowing absolutely nothing about W40k - and Owlcat's still never met a trash pack of mobs they didn't both love and decide to double in numbers, but I've had fun thus far! This game has the kind of space exploration that lands better for me than my attempts at playing Starfield 5. Roots of Pacha The other of the my kickstarter farming sim releases. I don't know if I'll ever play it nearly as much as Stardew, or return to it with new playthroughs as frequently, but I had a ball playing it and liked the reasonably fresh take on the genre by setting it in a more prehistoric age. 4. Cyberpunk 2077 / Phantom Liberty Still so much fun to hop on a motorcycle and zip through Night City, only stopping to do whatever side content I stumble across. Haven't yet actually gotten to the expansion content because I started a fresh playthrough, and I still kinda don't care a whole lot about Johnny Silverhand's whole deal whenever I force myself through the main storyline, but this game and its world is just fun to play in. 3. My Time at Sandrock Sometimes I have to take a Dramamine to play it for extended periods but this improves on everything that Portia began. Voice acting can be kinda silly (I agree with everyone who's puzzled over what accent Catori's trying to affect) but not terribly so! I've gotten distracted from it by Rogue Trader but I'll get back to you someday, Mi-an. 2. Stray Gods I appreciate 2023 for giving me two games that catered to a lifetime of my own various interests. Musicals? Check. A fun take on the Greek pantheon? Check. Choices-matter gaming? Check. Thanks, David Gaider. 1. Baldur's Gate 3 For me, it was always going to be this game. Everything about it seems tailored specifically to the college me whose first experience with anything D&D-related was in devouring BG1/BG2 and then turning around and making my first real tabletop character a cleric of Selune with a Sharran archnemesis. I don't have much more to say that hasn't already been said by other posters.
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Dec 17, 2023 20:35
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Venuz Patrol posted:6. Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengeance of the Slayers Let's gooo  Sumerian Telecom posted:2. Blender - cheeky fun pick, clever little wanker, right naughty answer this one. However it is true I enjoy mucking about in Blender as much as I enjoy playing something like Sim City or the Kerbals. But better. Year 3 of working on my Blender animation that started as a dick-around-and-make-a-car back in 2020. I'm on sound design now. This program has ruined my life. How the hell is it free?! Songbearer fucked around with this message at 22:09 on Dec 17, 2023 |
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Dec 17, 2023 22:04
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teo4512 posted:4. Pseudoregalia: Is anyone here feeling like the world needs more 3D platformers with a N64 aesthetic and cool movement? Because Pseudoregalia is exactly that. The game is a 3D metroidvania that puts a lot of emphasis on movement over combat. As you progress, you quickly find new abilities that open new ways to approach the many platforming challenges it throws at you, many having multiple ways to go through them especially if you get creative. It has some of the most satisfying movement of any 3D platformer I have played once you have a bunch of upgrades under your belt and is worth picking up based on that alone in my opinion. Unlike many other metroidvanias, it doesn't have an in-game map which can enhance the experience for some but may be rough for others. However, there are currently tests underway to add a map in-game on a beta branch if you really can't do without. In addition, while I must say the game isn't my GOAT it does in fact feature a cool goat lady as its protagonist, what more could one ask for really? Hell yeah! Good to see someone else mention this one finally.
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Dec 17, 2023 22:07
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My first time posting in a list in a GOTY thread, here goes... Games I played that didn't make the top 10: Immortality, WH40k: Boltgun, Diablo 4, Blasphemous, Zelda: ToTK, Case of the Golden Idol (DLCs), Star Wars: Jedi Survivor, NORCO, Super Mario Bros Wonder, FFXIV, Wo Long, FFO:SoP, Metroid Prime Remastered, KarmaZoo, Dave the Diver, Guilty Gear -Strive-, Starship Troopers: Extermination, Cult of the Lamb, Theatrhythm Final Bar Line. Games I really wanted to play this year but have ran out of time: Cocoon, The Talos Principle 1/2, Laika: Aged Through Blood, Pizza Tower, Roadwarden, Forspoken, Horizon: Forbidden West + DLC, RE Village, Alan Wake 2, Nier Replicant, RE4 remake, Turbo Overkill, Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, Dead Space remake, Octopath Traveller 2, Persona 5 Strikers, System Shock remake, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, Chants of Sennaar, Lies of P, El Paso Elsewhere, World of Horror, Jusant, Robocop: Rogue City, Star Ocean: The Second Story R, WH40k: Rogue Trader, Ghostrunner 2 And now for my top 10... 10. HiFi Rush I love rhythm games, I love character action games, I loved Saturday morning cartoons as an 80's kid and this thing mashes all those things together and the result is amazing. It's got such a great sense of humour as well, the main character Chai could have turned out really annoying but the writing is great and he's really endearing instead. Only reason this isn't higher is I still need to get back and finish it. Soundtrack rocks as well. 9. Citizen Sleeper This had a great asethic, great writing and made me tear up a few times at some of the many possible endings. Stayed with me for quite a while after finishing it and I can't wait for the sequel. Another great soundtrack that I'll often have playing in the background, Ember's Wake gets me every time. 8. Pentiment Picked this up after seeing how well it did in the 2022 GOTY thread, but only got round to playing through it in the last couple of months. Amazing attention to detail and the characters are all really well written, actually gave me anxiety having to make the tough choices thrust upon you throughout the game. I go back and forth between this and Citizen Sleeper in 9/8th position, they are both amazing but very different narative focused games. 7. Spider-Man 2 This improves on the first two games in almost every way for me (except some of the side missions like the drone/bee stuff and Mile's college questline). The game looks amazing, the symbiote abilities are a ton of fun to use, fast travel is some kind of wizardary, and I think Insomniac may have actually outdone Naughty Dog/Uncharted with the spectacle/set pieces in this one. 6. Armored Core VI The other game in my list that would have ranked higher if I'd put more time into it I reckon. Unfortunately a certain other game came out around the same time that slowly took over more and more of my game time. Tried to get back into it after a couple of months break and had lost all my muscle memory, so will probably start a fresh save in 2024 when I have some time. The sense of scale is great, the mech tinkering is cool and I've barely scratched the surface of it, the combat is fun and feels good, and I love the setting/lore that they drip feed you. FROM don't miss. 5. Street Fighter 6 Fighting games are something that I've always massively appriciated and wished I had more time to dedicate to get good at. After spending a decent amount of time playing GG Strive last year, I said to myself this was gonna be it, the time I focus on getting decent at a fighting game. It kinda worked out, although as mentioned above a certain other game slowly ate all my free time and I haven't touched this for a while now, but I'm pretty sure I was about to hit platinum rank before I stopped playing (I was also trying to learn leverless at the time as well which didn't help). The World Tour RPG mode was a great tutorial for getting new players used to fighting game concepts. The game looks and sounds great and is fun to play (and watch). 4. Cyberpunk 2077 I played through this on PC when it first released and loved it back then in its buggy, unfinished state. I bought Phantom Liberty with the intention of just playing through the DLC, but with how much they changed the base game I instead decided to start a full playthough as male V this time focusing on shotguns and tech/cyberware, following a female V run at launch where I went deep into Netrunner/hacking. I'm a huge fan of the cyberpunk asthetic/world, and Night City is probably my favourite open world in any game, ever. Being able to listen to the radio while walking around is such a great QoL improvement, though after watching the Netflix Edgerunners anime it's rough every time 'I Really Want to Stay At Your House' comes on  It's such an easy recommendation now that they have sorted most of the issues that were present at launch, and with the 2.0 and 2.1 updates they've added or improved an incredible amount of stuff. I've not even finished the DLC content yet so this may end up jumping up a position or two if I get it done...3. Final Fantasy XVI So many times throughout my playthrough of this, I either shouted 'gently caress yeah' out loud, or fist pumped, or was just sat there with a huge poo poo eating grin on my face. Every boss fight seemed to raise the craziness more than the last, and whilst the last couple can't really keep that pace up, they are still cool in their own ways. I get all the complaints about the side quests being the lowlight of the game, but I enjoyed the majority of them and felt like they added a decent amount of world building or fleshed out some of the side characters a bit more, and gave the huge set pieces a bit more time to digest. The DLC is on my list of things to do in 2024. Ben Starr is the second best thing to come out of gaming in 2023. 2. Persona 5 Royal I tried to give this a go twice before (non-royal edition), never making it much past the first palace each time. I stuck with it on the third attempt and I'm really glad I did. Probably the coolest presentation & style of any game ever, along with possibly my favourite soundtrack as well. I thought I'd be burnt out after the 100+ hour playthrough, but as I approached the end I found myself not wanting to hit the credits as I enjoyed hanging out with my phantom thief pals so much (Makoto <3). I've got P5 Strikers in my backlog for next year, and I'm looking forward to the P3 remake thing as well. 1. Baldur's Gate 3 Here we are, the first best thing to come out of gaming in 2023! I don't think I can add much to everything that has already been said about this game, it's incredible that Larian pulled it off. BG1 & 2 were two of my favourite games, and this game reminded me of why I fell in love with games in the first place, years ago. If it wasn't for the fact there's so many things to play piled up in my backlog, I'd have immediately started a new run after rolling credits on my first run. Also contributed to one of my favourite videos on the internet this year being made - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjlYFWLUDBQ bard 4 lyfe
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Dec 17, 2023 23:21
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