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I nominate this thread for Thread of the Year. okay I guess i'll make a GOTY post as well.
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Dec 11, 2022 15:27
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 03:39 |
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Rarity posted:Note to self: find way to turn the countdown into 80% ads If you think about it, the GOTY list is already 90% ads.
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Dec 12, 2022 18:37
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Relax Or DIE posted:10-1 is just basic showmanship 
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Dec 30, 2022 19:47
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Would be GOTY if it was a Video Game: Frosthaven Oh jeez i love playing this game. Not only does it expand on every idea that was introduced in Gloomhaven, but they iterate on them in fun an unique ways to actually balance the game while keeping the gameplay engaging in unique. Character classes all have pretty fun playstyles and puzzles that you need to solve and adapt to each situation. My wife and I have unlocked nearly every playable character in the game and they all have a very different-yet-satisfying gameplay loop that has different challenges to overcome- and yet they all mostly feel balanced. I.E. you have the Blinkblade whose primary mechanic is declaring if they're going at supersonic speeds or if they're out of juice and letting their batteries charge. Or Fist where you consistently recover cards from your discard pile at the cost of your own health, meaning you're an indefinite fightining machine so long as you have your health management down or Coral where you're actually playing an engine building game to create the strongest character possible until you rest, when all of your buffs go away and you get to start the machine all over again or Astral where You create a chain reaction of destruction every time you play one of your infusion cards, or go in the opposite direction and never attack at all and let your animated sword do all the work Exception being Comet because lmao spamming hazardous terrain that you and your allies are immune to is ridiculous. Which is impressive because there's still a pervasive thought that "balanced = everything plays the same" when this is clearly an example of that not being the case. Outpost building is nice and satisfying when enemies try to break themselves against your defenses. Scenario design becomes more than just "kill everything" and gets to be nice in fun and exciting ways. Obviously it's not a video game so I can't nominate it, but if it was it would be at my #1 spot. Coral is the best class. GOTY that I have never (and hopefully will never) play:  Juggernaut (PS1) This game is loving wild. Your girlfriend is like, possessed by satan or something, so you enlist the aid of a pastor to go into her mind and try to de-possess her. So the gameplay itself is kind of MYST-like where you're given this big open world with several puzzles that you need to solve, but lmao guess what there's pretty much a short story collection/anthology within where you play as several different characters dealing with different iterations of Satan. In one story you play as an insurance agent investigating N. Atas and their company that seem to be killing people in hospitals to harvest their organs. In another story you play as a graduate from Mars University traversing the internet trying to solve who killed your father, delving into the idea that "anybody on the internet could be anything" when the story kind of rugpulls you and tells you YUP, you were actually an antivirus program the whole time. There's another prison infiltration/spy story where the main character learned all of their moves from a karate correspondence course. The gameplay itself is plodding and boring and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, but man oh man is it worth watching a let's play of. The Actual GOTY list  10. Tunic I never thought that a game developer would try to recreate the experience of downloading a ROM of a game in a language you don't understand and incorporate trying to piece together what everything means into the gameplay. Tunic does a pretty great job of recreating that experience. There's a lot more to it, but I went into it expecting a pretty simple zelda-like and came away having played one of my favorite action/adventure/puzzle games of the year. I think the only thing I didn't particularly enjoy was some of the combat sections- it felt like the controls were too unresponsive to do some of the moves expected of me at certain points. Apart from that, it's a very enjoyable experience and I highly recommend it.  9. Risk of Rain 2 This game was responsible for a lot of really fun late-night co-op sessions this year. Being an Adult with a Real Job I normally don't stay up that late, but the first time my gaming group played it together we ended up staying up until four in the morning just trying out different characters and doing different runs. After that, we tried to keep our gaming hours in check but it's just really hard to with this game. There's just so much to do and it's so much fun to play. I think I played this game in Early Access and wrote in my feedback form "I hope the Acrid makes a return" and i'm glad it did! The soundtrack is fantastic as well.  8. Gnosia Honestly, I think this game is on this list because we played it at the right time in our lives. The actual game itself is a pretty simple single-player werewolf/mafia simulator where you sometimes play as the imposter and sometimes play as the crew (or sometimes play as something in-between). But it manages to maintain a storyline that keeps itself engaging the whole way through. Somehow, it also managed to help us through the grieving process of the death of two very close loved ones as well. Overall, a very good game and I'm glad I played it at the recommendation of last year's GOTY thread.  7. Trombone Champ It's a meme game where you make funny doots and that gives you toots. But it's also really fun to play! I think the best part of the whole experience has been the fan community that repeatedly produce video after video after video. Trombone Champ is the game that keeps of giving and I don't want it to stop.  6. Tactics Ogre: Reborn I've played the original Tactics Ogre I think three times now, and this game I have to say is the best iteration of it. The voice acting is good enough that it doesn't take you out of the experience and the changes they've made to the combat have made it pretty fun and engaging like it never has been before. The only reason it isn't higher (or at my #1) is because I've already played this game so many times. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in playing SRPGs. It also does a branching path thing, with the moral compass of the game determining if you value law/loyalty over compassion, or if you're a filthy loving centrist and deserve the worst fate and characters.  5. Kirby and the Forgotten Land It's a pretty great 3d Kirby game. My wife had a great time playing Bandana Waddle Dee and I had a great time playing Kirby. Going through every level to try to ace every challenge was a ton of fun and the extra content/boss fights were swell as well. We ended up getting 100% on this game we played it so much.  4. AI: Nirvana Initiative Uchikoshi is at it again, and he made a sequel to what is probably my favorite one of his works. Do I think this sequel is good? Yeah, I do. Do I think he's up to his usual bullshit again? Yeah. It seems like every time he gets involved with a project he keeps wanting to go back to ever17 for his writing. Which is still kind of his thing, I get it, there's gonna be a blick winkel reference in just about everything. NirvanA Initiative has more of that stuff, to the point where a lot of the game doesn't make sense unless you consider that aspect of his writing. But in this case I kind of like it because ultimately Your curiosity and your desire for characters in the story to have a happy ending causes you, the player, to lose. I think he's probably done the same thing that he did in VLR where he wrote himself into a corner that he can't get out of, so if there's a third AI game you can probably expect some really stupid plot twists in that. But this one's good at least!  3. Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous Wrath of the Righteous is a game I would recommend to everyone but also a game I would recommend to no one. It's overly ambitious to a fault, which means that you end up with a game that gives you six early game paths (and 10 late-game paths) all with the same objective of "hey let's kill these demons that are invading our world" but with different means. You can be an angel and use your divine light to drive the forces of the abyss back, or a twee little azata that only cares about doing good and freedom and anyone who dares malign others will face dire consequences or you can even be a trickster and tell your companions "lmao this is a videogame let's speedrun this poo poo." Which means that a lot of player's experiences going through this game are going to be different with only a few similar touchstone markers to compare to. What that also means is that this game is a buggy mess. It's been what, a year since it left early access? And this game still crashes and chugs and has all sorts of issues. Abilities and features don't work as advertised, quests sometimes just end or fail to continue onwards, and good lord act 4 can have some serious issues but also I love this game and hope to see it evolve more as time progresses and want to play through it three more times.  2. Live a Live Remake This game is SO GOOD. I think if someone picks this game up expecting a regular ol' JRPG they might be a little disappointed because the mechanics get sort of flipped around for each chapter. There are some chapters that are what you would expect from an SNES game, and some chapters that go in a much different direction. I don't really have much else to say about it other than the fact that distant future & wild west are my favorite chapters. Near Future dragged on for too long IMO but even then I still had a great time with it.  1. Triangle Strategy I'm kind of surprised that this game is where it's at on my list. When I was playing it earlier this year I kind of felt a little... underwhelmed? So much of the dialogue is so plodding and it didn't seem as compelling as a game like Tactics Ogre or Final Fantasy Tactics (literally it's all about a war for salt and/or iron.) But honestly, I kind of love it. Every character has their own special uses (while some characters are a LOT more useful than others). But also the branching paths do a good job of putting you as a player in a moral predicament. In my first route I went full Morality and decided "gently caress this land let's free the slaves" and in my second route I went full utility and said gently caress Hyzante let's align with the empire and wreck 'em. I still have yet to do the actual golden route to the game, but jeez give me a break i've played through it twice already. So, why is this at my GOTY spot? Simple -It's a new title/new IP -It has actual branching paths in the story -New Game+ keeps the experience interesting and entertaining Concise list for Rarity's Sanity 10. Tunic 9. Risk of Rain 2 8. Gnosia 7. Trombone Champ 6. Tactics Ogre: Reborn 5. Kirby and the Forgotten Land 4. AI: NirvanA Initiative 3. Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous 2. Live a Live (Remake) 1. Triangle Strategy Arrrthritis fucked around with this message at 20:27 on Dec 31, 2022 |
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Dec 31, 2022 18:11
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anakha posted:Triangle Strategy I think rounds out that top 5 and might even leapfrog some of those other games in your list. I hope Tri Strat takes #3
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Jan 1, 2023 16:11
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sirtommygunn posted:I underestimated Pentiment Same, looks like i'm gonna have to play it for next year. We just got to the conversation w/ Illuminata on Day 1 and it's really good. I hope they do a re-release at some point with full VA but for now i'll take the alexa voiceover
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Jan 7, 2023 23:53
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Great countdown and thanks again for running the thread Rarity. Give me a probe now for the eventual year I do end up with enough free time to play ER. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Jan 8, 2023 00:49
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 03:39 |
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Anno posted:Maybe Symphony of War? Yeah Symphony of War is pretty solid. I'd recommend it as well.
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Jan 8, 2023 21:27
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