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I stared at the 2020 affinity map for like 10 minutes and I still didn't understand it.
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Dec 12, 2022 17:08
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Life is Strange games I find myself thinking about often but almost never replay. Just doesn't feel right to see the alternate choices play out after that first connection you make.
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Dec 20, 2022 16:06
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You don't need to play Blue Reflection 1 at all to understand Second Light, and arguably, you shouldn't. Everything about the returning characters is explained to you as needed.
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Dec 20, 2022 16:26
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I haven't replayed True Colors since last year but I feel like the Wavelengths DLC recontextualizes a lot of things about Steph's character that would lean more towards a specific ending choice.
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Dec 20, 2022 17:22
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It’s nice that they finally had a decent hetero romance option for Life is Strange although you sometimes wonder why they still even bother.
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Dec 20, 2022 20:37
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Relax Or DIE posted:asking for a modicum of thought owns actually
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Dec 25, 2022 07:33
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CottonWolf posted:Rarity, do you want some very simple similarity stats for lists this year? Just so people see whose lists they were must close too, some measure of who had the most distinct list, etc? Yes do this but please put it in an ordered chart form with like an affinity % between consecutive posters rather than a graph that I will stare at for another 20 minutes and not understand!!
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Dec 25, 2022 14:22
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If Sonic 2006 can make a GOTY list, then anything can.
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Dec 25, 2022 16:06
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Godlike posters know to include both.
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Dec 26, 2022 01:35
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Oh boy, it's another one of these! I did a whole lot of gaming in 2022, pouring almost 300 hours into at least three games on this list, so let's not waste any time on a lengthy preamble and get right down to business. Honorable Mentions: Returnal, Dark Souls 2, Prodeus Did Not Finish But Maybe Will Someday : A Plague Tale: Requiem, God of War: Ragnarok Did Not Start But Maybe Will Soon: Pentiment, River City Girls 2, Citizen Sleeper And now, for my Top 9 Games of 2022 [56k go maidenless]. 9. STRAY https://i.imgur.com/ttyvm5h.mp4 I have long had high hopes for the cyberpunk cat game and for the most part, it delivered. The little character flourishes and unique perspective kept some otherwise rote adventure gameplay from becoming too monotonous, and while some of the narrative decisions didn't work for me, it was an enjoyable experience overall. Impressive work from what was effectively a three-person development team (including the cat). 8. TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: SHREDDER'S REVENGE https://i.imgur.com/YRzUUfN.mp4 After decades of patiently waiting out the neverending onslaught of cookie cutter pixel art roguetroidvanias we are now (hopefully) in the midst of a true beatemup renaissance, with the excellent Streets of Rage 4 debuting in 2020 and a worthy TMNT sequel coming out earlier this year. A fun and efficient arcade experience with an enormous amount of love and attention paid to the original animated series, even if the gameplay never quite reaches the technical mastery of SOR4. 7. TITAN QUEST ANNIVERSARY EDITION https://i.imgur.com/zvfixH5.mp4 Bit of a surprise entry for me on this list. TQ is probably my favorite of the off-brand Diablo clones and I had a great couple weeks revisiting Iron Lore's particular take on the ARPG formula. Still manages to look pretty great despite being over 15 years old at this point, with some surprisingly forward-looking design decisions. I'm not normally a "mods are better" kind of person, but if you want to give this one a try, then installing X-MAX is absolutely necessary to prolong your enjoyment of the game. 6. SIGNALIS https://i.imgur.com/sq7B6Mp.mp4 I think this game had been on my Steam wishlist since 2017, and I was somewhat resigned to let it fall into the same abyss of overambitious unfinished indie projects as Eitr, Hellraid, and countless others. I'm happy that after however many years, the two-person development team at rose-engine could finally release such a confident and complete debut. Signalis is a PSX-era sci-fi survival horror about one person's doomed journey into darkness. It is also, at times, a sapphic love story between androids and humans finding connection under a totalitarian Soviet Bloc-era regime. Or if you like, it is a literary survey of Lovecraft, Chambers, and 19th century ballet. Deeply committed to its Resident Evil 1-3 and Silent Hill roots, Signalis is an affecting and gripping experience, even if it can't quite escape those very generously borrowed influences in its final moments. 5. THIS WAY MADNESS LIES https://i.imgur.com/v34cR2B.mp4 This Way Madness Lies is a turn-based retro JRPG where you play as a group of magical girls that also moonlight as a Shakespearean acting troupe. If you don't already know whether or not this game is for you based on that description alone, then there's very little else I can say. The kind of light, breezy, yet surprisingly inventive gameplay I've come to expect from Zeboyd, who have quickly emerged as one of my favorite indie developers of the last five years. So unabashedly corny at every turn that it wraps all the way back around to being endearing. Haven't seen it mentioned on a list yet, but a strong recommend from me. 4. DIABLO II: RESURRECTED https://i.imgur.com/0kjqWB9.mp4 Another game I didn't really expect to show up on this list, but life is full of happy surprises. Like COVID!  In July I came down with it bad and was just looking for something to munch down several dozen hours of languishing in my bedroom. That combined with a relatively free work schedule over the summer meant that I could just pound away at building up my trapsin to a proud degree of no-lifership unseen since my high school glory days. Vicarious Visions has brilliantly translated "Diablo II as you remember it, not as it actually was" with just enough quality of life additions and visual upgrades to make it feel like a fresh ARPG experience instead of an old chore. I was shocked at how much time I ended up pouring into D2R this year, rebuilding my old Enigma Assassin loadout from scratch and then even going on to make a kitted out Nova Sorc in Season 2. The old terrible fire of unwavering confidence against infinitesimal drop probabilities bellowed within me once more in 2022. I literally gasped when I found a Ber rune from a random basket in Durance of Hate (if you know, you know). Supreme loot gremlin energy, congrats to Vicarious Visions (now Blizzard Albany) on winning their union vote.3. ELDEN RING https://i.imgur.com/IQFr7F6.mp4 I purchased Elden Ring at the very end of February, which ended up becoming an unexpectedly crazy time for work. I have some pencilneck writing job so any level of actual mental or physical exertion is uncommon for me. Anyway, I didn't really get as much time as I would have liked to put into Elden Ring's systems or game world within those first few weeks and ended up mostly limping through my initial run as a pre-buff colossal hammer user, missing almost all the optional content and struggling mightily against the last couple bosses. But as things began to settle down, I kept at it. I went immediately into NG+ and just crushed everything that gave me trouble in my first, far more distracted playthrough of the game. Then I did it all over again with a sorceror build and annihilated the remembrance bosses once more. Then to make sure it wasn't all a fluke I started a completely fresh run and did every single little lovely cave and catacomb again just to prove that Gelmir Hero's Grave Wasn't poo poo. By mid-April I had platted Elden Ring and poured nearly 300 hours into it over 5-6 complete runs. My entire existence outside of work was this game during that time. One nice thing about From products is that their kinetic "language" is very similar across titles, so mastering one game opens up an entire decade of previous work that will feel at once fresh and familiar. I took my hard knocks from Elden Ring and applied those lessons to absolutely steamroll some prior From releases I had never gotten around to, including Dark Souls 2 (the best of the trilogy) for the first time. But  PLOT TWIST: Elden Ring was NOT my favorite Souls game that I played this year! That honor would belong to...2. DEMON'S SOULS (2020) https://i.imgur.com/fu8re2n.mp4 After wrapping up Elden Ring I went on a repeat tour of almost every Souls game, from DS3 which I never finished to slaying the final few DLC bosses in Bloodborne. Now, I think Elden Ring is a great game and totally deserves its immense popularity, but while platinuming Demon's Souls Remake in May, I was reminded of all the reasons why Demon's Souls is still my favorite Fromsoft product all these years later. Although subsequent Soulslikes have evolved and expanded upon the very rough draft that was the original back in 2009, Demon's Souls just has that special something that makes it stand apart from what has now become a very well-studied formula. There are a lot of things I can say about that here, so I'll just leave a couple salient bullet points. Atmosphere: You can say that From significantly improved their looping map design in Dark Souls and beyond with inventive shortcuts and more bonfires, but part of what makes DeS so interesting to me is how experimental and freeform its worlds are. There are just so many weird little quirks to the maps -- random merchants in the middle of nowhere, featureless rooms that don't do anything, some stages that elegantly loop back onto each other while others are sprawling and labyrinthine. To some that would be obtuse and confusing, but to me it really helps the world feel lived-in in a way that later From titles would not. Elden Ring's world is also very cool and atmospheric, but there are many choices that feel video gamey for the benefit of the player rather than feeling bespoke and immersive. When you go up an elevator in a dungeon that also somehow takes you back to the first bonfire, that might feel really cool, but it also reminds you that you're playing a video game in a very direct way. Every new map in Demon's Souls feels like it was made by a different person, but still remains thematically intact. I also love that you can wrap up the entire story in like 15 hours on a fresh save, which makes NG+ something to look forward to instead of an obligation. Dungeons: I love good boss fights, as they're one thing that I think From does better than any other developer in the business. The music, the visuals, the mechanics, every From game is just top notch in this department. But in gradually shifting their focus onto creating these super hard, visually stunning and epic encounters, I think From kind of lost their roots of creating brutal, foreboding, methodical dungeon crawlers. Demon's Souls strikes a great balance by making the dungeon itself the actual difficult part of the game, while the bosses mostly serve as an exclamation point at the end of a particularly challenging journey instead of something you're gonna have to waste another two hours on before being able to move onto the next map. I appreciate how many of the bosses are more of a puzzle to be figured out, and while some of them don't exactly work (Dragon God, what were they thinking), I appreciate their relative simplicity. While I think the addition of an Estus mechanic and more checkpoints were ultimately good for the direction of the series, I like how in Demon's Souls you actually have to prepare for the dungeon ahead and think carefully about what you're going to bring. It really makes you pay more attention to your surroundings and weigh the benefits of venturing even deeper, knowing how long it took to reach this point. SORCERY: I love rolling mages in RPGs. Give me a blank stat sheet and I'm going to pick an Intelligence user almost 100% of the time. Even if the game doesn't have a formal magic system, I will still probably find some way to cobble together a sorceror character. It's no secret that sorcery is incredibly strong in Demon's Souls, probably even overpowered given how easy it is to get to your endgame setup and how many bosses you can just delete in seconds, but you know what? I don't care. It's fun, it feels awesome, and the remake took things up to 11 with the visual and aural feedback. From steadily nerfed magic in subsequent Souls games all the way through DS3, when it was probably at its weakest point, and I think this was ultimately a bad decision creatively. Despite seemingly encouraging diverse builds and playstyles, I saw every Souls game gradually become melee-centric, which is just not the way I prefer to play most RPGs. I'm happy that From course corrected in a huge way with Elden Ring, as sorcery feels super fun and powerful again on a level not seen since the original Demon's Souls. I hope that From will continue this trend of keeping magic on a relatively even keel with melee builds. I think there's a pocket universe in some remote corner of the galaxy where From pursued more of a dungeon crawl philosophy to their game design rather than the Zeldalike influences that would later take over in Dark Souls. I'd like to inhabit that alternate reality for awhile, or at least see more developers take direct inspiration from Demon's Souls instead of the more well-trodden path of everything that came after. I think it has so many unique and weird elements to offer. 1. HORIZON FORBIDDEN WEST https://i.imgur.com/K5JpDsH.mp4 This was my favorite release of 2022. Sometimes you just encounter a series that feels like it was specifically created to your exact taste and aesthetic, and the Horizon games are 100% that for me. What sets Horizon apart from other open world titles of similar repute is that grand sense of adventure -- how the story conspires to unravel and leave the player in a very different place from where it begins, both physically and thematically. But I also feel that Guerrilla didn't simply play it safe here, making some creative changes to the gameplay and narrative that, while they might not have worked for everyone, definitely worked for me. As a lover of a good crunchy RPG, I love that Forbidden West opened up so many different playstyles and idiosyncratic mechanics that make you feel awesome for mastering. And as a hater of billionaires, I love that the primary antagonists of this game are evil craven Musklords from the future. But rather than just write a whole lot more text, I wanted to instead draw attention to my favorite and perhaps most overlooked element of the Horizon series -- their incredible soundtracks, particularly the newer contributions of composer and violinist Oleska Lozowchuk. His beautiful flourishes of melody and emotion weave a texture of majesty, sadness and adventure that perfectly encapsulate the frontier spirit of these games. I think if you have that musical frisson gene within you, the Forbidden West OST just hits. Almost every single track is memorable in its own right, but here are a few choice selections. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4MXYEaUP5Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-85gLLR4Xn4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyCWedrKiMU EZ List: 9. Stray 8. TMNT: Shredder's Revenge 7. Titan Quest Anniversary Edition 6. Signalis 5. This Way Madness Lies 4. Diablo II: Resurrected 3. Elden Ring 2. Demon's Souls 1. Horizon Forbidden West
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Dec 30, 2022 09:39
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I have some important RFP due next week that I haven't even started because I spent the last few days finding cool clips for my GOTY list instead, true story.
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Dec 30, 2022 10:05
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lunar detritus posted:There's still time for people to play Citizen Sleeper and update your lists, it's a very short game!! I saw there is a Part 3 that's coming in early 2023. I imagine if you buy it now then you'll get that episode automatically when it unlocks?
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Dec 30, 2022 14:28
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I’m traveling rn but I’m definitely going to make an effort to start Citizen Sleeper in the new year, it looks cool 
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Dec 30, 2022 17:05
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The 7th?! What am I not paying you for?
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Jan 1, 2023 11:25
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morallyobjected posted:I will be picking up This Way Madness Lies at some point because of this thread because it sounds like extremely my poo poo, and maybe like the battle system is different than Cthulhu Saves the World, which I didn't really like. It's turn-based combat very similar to Cosmic Star Heroine where each character gets a limited number of active skills and three passives. Debuff skills inflict vulnerabilities while others "detonate" them, and these abilities are often split between party members so you want to choose the right balance for the team. Most spells often take on different traits when a character is fully charged up, so you sometimes want to be strategic about the order in which you cast them. All this being said the combat is quite easy on Normal and my party was never really in danger of wiping at any point. The most fun part is finding the best team configuration.
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Jan 1, 2023 20:40
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I've already rebought a few indie games I first found on Gamepass through Steam because I felt strongly about them and/or just wanted their achievements to be on my Steam profile instead of M$'s crappy analogue.
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Jan 1, 2023 22:33
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BeanpolePeckerwood posted:the soundtrack in Forbidden West is incredible One neat thing about the Base music is that after each major quest (Aether, Beta, Poseidon, Demeter), some new musical element from that part of the storyline is incorporated into the track, so that by lategame you have this very lush instrumentation until the final mission where it gets stripped back down again. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nt81snYJQME exquisite tea fucked around with this message at 12:11 on Jan 2, 2023 |
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Jan 2, 2023 12:05
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Perfect Tides has been on my wishlist for ages, think 2023 is finally the year I'll get to play it!
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Jan 7, 2023 15:35
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A Second Year for Second Light!
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Jan 7, 2023 15:36
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Jerusalem posted:It's not on Steam, is it a console game? It's an Atlus game, who have a spotty track record of porting anything to PC. It's on PS4 and Switch.
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Jan 7, 2023 15:56
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morallyobjected posted:that's called "principles" and you're entirely correct to have them I don't, that's why I'm a gamer.
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Jan 7, 2023 16:47
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Maybe kind of an indicator of how many points Elden Ring hoovered up is that over 25 more people voted in this year's GOTY thread yet the point totals between 2022 and 2021 at this stage of the countdown are almost exactly the same.
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Jan 7, 2023 17:17
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2023 is gonna be stacked for fighting games, Strive will have lots of competition next year!
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Jan 7, 2023 17:46
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Team Tidus 4 lyfe
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Jan 7, 2023 18:19
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lunar detritus posted:Very happy that it got a big entry. I wish more people played it but everyone cringes at the title. I agree, it should have been called I Was A GAY Teenage Exocolonist, then I definitely would have played it in 2022.
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Jan 7, 2023 18:22
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Feels like Stray should be showing up somewhere around here...
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Jan 7, 2023 21:33
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A bold move to be sure but it doesn't compare to Looper putting Sonic 2006 on his GOTY list last year.
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Jan 7, 2023 21:37
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Live a livle bit, live a livle bit of your GOTY
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Jan 7, 2023 21:41
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I think this might be my most normie GOTY list yet. Shameful...
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Jan 7, 2023 22:18
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I played Citizen Sleeper because of this thread and it was good!
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Jan 7, 2023 22:26
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Shoulda called it Elevenic
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Jan 7, 2023 22:38
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These are some very close point totals for Top 10 finishes.
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Jan 7, 2023 23:08
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Ineffiable posted:So the top ten is gonna be pretty dominated by Playstation and switch exclusives eh. Pentiment and VS are gonna be way up there.
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Jan 7, 2023 23:11
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I've just started to play Vampire Survivors in earnest and it rules. Big early 2023 GOTY contender for me!
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Jan 7, 2023 23:47
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Microcline posted:So another statistics post. Love dem stats! It's interesting to see how goon GOTY lists kind of confirm that 2020 and 2021 were relatively weaker years for new releases, with a lot of games that got attention from the previous year staying on the countdown or even rising in rank. But then for 2022 you have a lot of popular new releases so almost everything is a red streak down.
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Jan 8, 2023 05:05
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wuggles posted:I think Rarity is always going to win the hipster award because of the way she plays games, so it would be interesting to know who the second biggest hipster is. We could even call it the Rarity Award. I was thinking there could be some kind of Anti-Generic Goon Award but it's relatively easy to come up with a Top 10 that doesn't have any ranked games on it, and how would you compare someone's list against another? It might be more interesting to have a Fringe Hero Award for the poster with the most placements within the Top 75, but the lowest ranked cumulatively.
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Jan 8, 2023 12:10
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Excellent work CottonWolf, and grats to my gaming twin morallyobjected!
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Jan 8, 2023 15:32
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Escobarbarian posted:Don’t really know how the list similarity works as the person I was paired with had the same top two and then they had VS in their list at 3 whereas it was 8 in mine but then we didn’t have the other seven in common at all I imagine that higher-ranked games are given a much greater weight, such that you're much more likely to match with someone if your top choices are similar. It's messy because most people have quite diverse lists and I don't think anybody's Top 5 is exactly the same. One thing that's apparent is that the Switch has its own unique ecosystem as there's a lot more parity between users there.
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Jan 8, 2023 17:49
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| # ¿ May 11, 2024 10:48 |
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I'll forever remember 2022 as the year that watch_dogs (2013) was ranked #1.
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Jan 8, 2023 18:11
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