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Dec 11, 2022 09:22
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VideoGames posted:a motherfucking trombone. Hallelujah!
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Dec 11, 2022 11:21
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Lies! 
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Dec 11, 2022 12:43
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Regy Rusty posted:I'm gonna be down to the wire this year cause I'm getting GoW for Christmas and gotta beat it in time to submit my list. I'm also getting gow for Christmas but I always submit my list on the 24th, so i dont feel i have to rush my Christmas games. I did this with control one year and feel i would have wanted more time with it
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Dec 11, 2022 14:04
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I voted for Shadowbringers one year even tho I had only played up to Stormblood at that point 
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Dec 12, 2022 13:07
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Rarity posted:Pentiment director posting in SA's GOTY, we get all the big names This thread is a bigger deal than Geoff Keighley Presents: The Geoff Keighley Game Awards brought to you by Geoff Keighley
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Dec 12, 2022 18:23
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I wish I could poop games like god of war out of my butt
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Dec 12, 2022 21:00
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Endorph posted:light jokes about games being bad is to me a much more positive and uplifting experience than enforced positivity all the time, which sounds actually miserable. i get not wanting it to be in this thread specifically but i would not describe calling god of war bad as 'devolving' The problem is that cheap boring jokes like "god of bore" are sort of rampant around the subforum atm. Its only funny the first few times and ultimately adds nothing to the conversation. There is absolutely nothing wrong with thoughtful criticism of any game, but "slog of snore" or whatever is not that
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Dec 14, 2022 14:40
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Epic list esco. A jrpg in at number three... hold on, there seems to be something in my eye...
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Dec 16, 2022 19:56
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My cutoff date for the year is the 24th, but it's actually already gone cuz I've started writing my list earlier this year
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Dec 22, 2022 14:46
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Dec 22, 2022 15:22
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Would be mental of enough ppl played elden ring next year for it to win goty two years in a row But who are we kidding, FFXVI will win goty next year. Book it
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Dec 22, 2022 21:54
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Oh I thought everybody had a ps5 my bad
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Dec 22, 2022 22:46
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GOTY 2022 It’s Christmas Eve and time for my annual GOTY list. Happy holidays everyone! I have been looking forward to this thread from the moment I hit send on my post for last years thread. This has been quite a wild year for gaming with tons of massive new releases and had I a rather tougher time than usual trying to arrange them in a nice ordered list. First though, a few words on some games that I felt were notable but not quite notable enough to make the list Honourable Mentions: Final Fantasy VII Remake: Intermission (Square Enix, 2021 – PS5) - Final Fantasy VII Remake place number 2 on my GOTY list for 2020. I only got round to playing the DLC this year. Every bit a delight as the main game. Eagerly awaiting part 2. TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge (Tribute Games, 2022 – PS5) - I was a big stupid fan of the Ninja Turtles when I was a kid. I had all the toys. TMNT IV: Turtles in Time was one of my favourite games back in the day. TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge aims to recapture the look and feel of the old school Turtles games and wider franchise. It’s not perfect but it comes really close and it’s clear a lot of heart went in to making this game. Besides, it’s a great couch co-op beat-‘em-up for Fridgelina and I to play together and I’m always looking for games that appeal to the both of us. FIFA 22 (EA, 2021 – PS5) - I somehow played this game for the exact same amount of time as my number 1. Oops. Magic: the Gathering Arena (Wizards Digital Games Studio, 2019 – Android) -I’ve been meaning to try and rank this with the heavy hitters of the gaming year, but ultimately its just a dumb phone game I play from time to time. I do love it tho… sometimes haha. List: 10. Gran Turismo 7 (Polyphony Digital, 2022 – PS5)  The Gran Turismo series is one of the most storied and revered members of the video game pantheon, made most noticeable for its extreme attention to detail even from its earliest beginnings on the PS1. Gran Turismo is more than just a racing game or driving simulator, it is a celebration of the automobile and of CAR LIFE. My own CAR LIFE owes a lot to the Gran Turismo series. Cast yourself back to around the turn of the millennium and picture a young and eager Fridge Corn playing Gran Turismo 3 in his parent’s living room, wrestling a 1990 Mazda RX-7 Turbo tyre-screechingly around Deep Forest Raceway accompanied by the dulcet tones of The Cult’s “She Sells Sanctuary” when the thought occurs to him: he could get one of these cars, in REAL LIFE. Thus began my CAR LIFE and a few years later I had acquired that RX-7 Turbo, and another one, and car meets, track days, long drives out to nowhere, all perfumed by the sickly-sweet smell of unburnt hydrocarbons in the air. I went on to get a job as a technician at a local Mazda dealer, and while I am not so involved in CAR LIFE as a hobby these days, I still make my living by fixing cars and along with a few other major life decisions I can easily say that CAR LIFE has decidedly put me on the life trajectory I am still happily living today. And that can all be traced back to the Gran Turismo series. Cue 2022 and the return of Gran Turismo after a sort of disappointing hiatus for its 7th instalment of the series. Gran Turismo is back and its back in a big way. The fabled attention to detail has been ratcheted up to a new intensity. All cars in the game have fully modelled interiors, accurate and working instrument clusters. Even the grain in the leathers is perfectly spot on is how fine-grained the level of detail is in this game. Also included are small interviews and quotes by famous car industry personalities, often the designers themselves offering a few words on the cars that helped shape their lives and that their lives helped shape. Gran Turismo 7 is unabashedly proud of what it is: a virtual museum and theme park dedicated to the celebration of CAR LIFE, and while as a video game it didn’t suck me in as much as the series did when I was a fresh-faced teen with a gleaming new (and spotless) driving license, the long history I have with the series and this latest instalment being perhaps the most earnest and delightful yet, and certainly by far the most technically impressive, gives it more than enough reason to land at number 10 on my list. 9. Wild Arms (Media.Vision, 1996 – PS1)  First time a game older than a few years makes an appearance on my GOTY list and boy does it feel cheeky. Earlier in the year PlayStation revamped its PS+ subscription service, adding tiers and charging more money, while promising enhanced offerings. One of those enhanced offerings was to greatly expand the amount of PS1 and PS2 games available to play on the system and while the list of available games was (and still is) embarrassingly and disappointingly short, it does include the classic PS1 JRPG Wild Arms. Wild Arms had a lot of things going for it back in the day. It featured a fully animated opening sequence produced by the notable anime studio Madhouse. It boasted an absolute banger of a soundtrack by Michiko Naruke which, heavily influenced by the music found in Western films and that of Ennio Morricone in particular, gave the game a certain feel and style that was unique to JRPGs at the time. Wild Arms is also notable for having been released just prior to that of Final Fantasy VII and as such exists in a very particular point of time in the evolution of the JRPG, seeming to straddle two eras simultaneously. On one hand you have the very detailed sprite-work and top-down 2D town and dungeon environments you would expect to see in 16-bit era games, but on the other you have fully 3D rendered battle sequences that were soon to become the norm in games everywhere. Playing Wild Arms in 2022 was a treat as I haven’t visited the game in a long, long time, and I’m happy to say it mostly holds up. The soundtrack is still an amazing classic, the 2D graphics are easy to read and charming as hell. The 3D battle graphics are…. well, ugly as gently caress but to be quite honest, they were ugly in 1996 anyway. The gameplay itself is relatively simple, and battle animations are perhaps a bit overlong, but the experience is made just a bit smoother with a few QOL enhancements coming from playing the game on PS5, most notable of which is a save state and rewind feature. The plot and characters don’t go through a whole lot growth and the game never dives too deep into developing either, but even as simple and straightforward of an old-school JRPG that Wild Arms is, its still got a heck of a lot of charm and heart put into it, and that’s why it makes it into the number 9 slot on my list. 8. Horizon Forbidden West (Guerrilla Games, 2022 – PS5)  The hotly anticipated next chapter in the Horizon saga, follow up to 2017’s fantastic Horizon Zero Dawn, Forbidden West follows Aloy on her continued quest to unravel the mysteries of her peculiar post-post-apocalyptic world. The Horizon series quickly became one of Sony’s most recognised brands which was quite a feat coming as a completely new IP when it was released back in 2017, the small hiccup of being released concurrently with Nintendo’s Breath of the Wild aside. Surely now having established itself as powerful totem of modern gaming, the follow up could be released safe in the knowledge that no other title could possibly upstage it, right? It would be really bad luck to for another game to come out, one almost presciently prescribed to highlight Horizon’s more glaring flaws. Surely not… Horizon Forbidden West seeks to tell its tale and entertain the player in the typical Ubisoft-style of open-worldism. What sets it apart from the usual offerings is the uniqueness of its setting, and the combat, both of which were delights in the previous instalment. While I feel Forbidden West improves greatly in one area, it perhaps took a step back in the other. The Great Mystery having been solved in Zero Dawn, Forbidden West is free to develop its present-day world. Aloy travels further than before, meeting new peoples and tribes who appear to have at least a bit more thought put into their design. The character animation and voice acting are much improved, giving the vibrant world a much-needed breath of life. Where the game falters however, is in the combat. More options, more skills, more weapons, more elements all serve to muddle and overcomplicate the combat system. The machines are tuned to be highly aggressive giving the player smaller windows in which to line up the perfect shot. Getting hit usually means finding yourself flat on your back and immobile for what seems an inordinate amount of time. All this just served to frustrate me as the player, especially as I felt I had reached a certain level of comfortableness and mastery of the combat in the previous game. The loot and tedium required to obtain upgrade materials for your equipment didn’t help much either. The story, the characters, the vibrant world that has been built around it are all were fantastic enough for me to call this game a success but its few notable flaws are what puts this game at number 8 and ultimately behind the next item on the list. 7. Kena: Bridge of Spirits (Ember Lab, 2021 – PS5)  Kena: Bridge of Spirits is an action-adventure 3rd person character action platformer puzzler something something game. In this game you play as Kena, a young spirit guide whose job is to help troubled spirits pass on to the next world. She comes across the ruins of a town with a lot of troubled spirits. Gameplay is mostly combat oriented. It draws from the typical post-Dark Souls character action playbook. There’s a light attack, there’s a strong attack, there’s a charged attack! You can block, you can dodge, you’ve also got a bow! And some bombs? Did you mix up some Zelda in my Dark Souls?? But what really sets this game apart is the beautifully styled animation. It literally looks like a Pixar movie! Which isn’t entirely surprising either since developer Ember Lab was primarily an animation studio. This is their first attempt at making a game. Really. The game is beautiful to look at. Its characters are expressive and well-acted. It has a heartfelt story to tell of loss and regret, but ultimately of redemption. The soundtrack is a pure delight of traditionally-inspired Balinese gamelan music. I could honestly listen to this game all day. Its styles and themes of Asian-inspired mysticism feel thoughtfully applied. The only downside of this game I feel is in its combat, which although perfectly serviceable feels a bit muddled and lacking in responsiveness. It probably could have gone back in the oven for a few more minutes, but considering this was a tiny studio’s first attempt at making a game I can’t dock it too many points for that. A truly wonderful showing from Ember Lab and firmly puts them on my watchlist for whatever they happen to do next. Kena: Bridge of Spirits is a delightful little game created with a level of care and craft that many larger more established developers oftentimes lack. Its because of this that ultimately, I decided to place this game ahead of Horizon Forbidden West at number 7 on the list. 6. Demon’s Souls (Bluepoint Games/FromSoftware, 2020 – PS5)  That this is here is in all honesty, a bit of a surprise. I received this game for Christmas last year and played it for all of 5 minutes. Died, and turned it off. Now, I’m not new to the Souls series. I’ve played all three Dark Souls games (although I’ve only beaten the first one), I’ve platinumed Bloodborne, and I’ve beaten Sekiro, those last two games were my number one GOTYs for 2020 and 2021 respectively. However, I’ve become accustomed to only being able to devote the time and effort into one Souls type game per year before getting burned out, and there was something (what could that have been…??) about 2022 that made me think that Demon’s Souls was not to be my FromSoft game for the year. Fast-forward to just a few days ago and I’ve found myself in a bit of a gaming doldrum. Its getting toward the end of the year. I’ve finished lots of games, I’ve left many unfinished. I’m looking forward to potential games I may be getting for Christmas. I’m thinking about this list. Family is hanging around and I’m trying to prepare for the holidays and don’t have too much time to play much of anything. Let’s just faff about with whatever’s at hand instead with what time I have and not think too much about it. I booted up Demon’s Souls. Holy poo poo. It’s beautiful. It looks beautiful, and it runs beautifully. It sounds absolutely goddamn amazing! I mean, you can tell it sounds amazing the moment you start it up, but by the time I got to the Stonefang Tunnel I realised it was actually on another level. I’m sure it helps that I’ve recently upgraded my entire 5.1 system, but that is only helping to do the game justice. My speakers have nothing to do with the incredible sound design and mixing in this game. It doesn’t have anything to do with the mixture of sound and haptics coming out of the DualSense either. At time of writing, I have only played the game for a total of 7 hours. I’ve killed three bosses and have reached a fourth, but I am absolutely floored with the quality of this title. Having never played the PS3 original I wasn’t sure what to expect from the gameplay but it feels like a modern Souls game, but it looks and sounds like a next-gen Souls game. All my hats are off to Bluepoint for what they were able to create with FromSoft’s wonderful title. Even with so little time on the clock Demon’s Souls has managed to impress me to such a degree that it rockets out of nowhere to land at number 6 on the list. 5. Stray (BlueTwelve Studio, 2022 – PS5)  I’m not particularly big on indie games typically. Not that I have anything against indies it’s just that oftentimes I find them lacking in areas. There are compromises that need to be made when designing a game with a small team, with a small budget, and limited time to work. I guess it helps that the industry is evolving to accommodate for these shortcomings. You have publishers like Annapurna who are able to bankroll some of these smaller projects and provide resources that otherwise wouldn’t be available to independent teams. A lot of indie developers are being founded by experienced professionals who have worked in the industry often for some of the biggest developers, as was the case with BlueTwelve Studios being founded by former Ubisoft employees. This all leads to certain indie projects coming out looking, sounding, and playing just a good, if not better than, some higher budgeted titles, all while not losing the craft and focus that the project had in the first place. The best part of an indie title is the level of artistry that you can only get from small teams or individuals; the exact thing you tend to lose first from most AAA productions. Stray has all that in spades. Did I mention you play as a cat? You play as a cat! Press O to meow! You can jump on tables and knock everything over! Press O to meow! You can rub yourself along the ankles of a robot and get scritches behind the ear! Press O to meow! The best part though was finding a cosy quiet place to take a little nap, curling up and having the DualSense controller start purring. Hah, I was beside myself. One of the singularly most memorable moments of all my time gaming in 2022. But aside from the sheer joy of playing as a cat, there is more than just novelty to Stray. The team at BlueTwelve created a vibrant and lush atmosphere dripping with character – environmental storytelling at its finest, and this is the true strength of Stray. The narrative is fairly short and sweet, the gameplay perhaps even simpler, but the environments and locations and overarching mystery are so compelling that we can’t help but let our cat-like curiosity take over and guide us through this lovingly and carefully crafted world. Stray is a game that is more than the sum of its parts, and its successes are not just reliant on the novelty of the cat protagonist. It is a game that truly offers and wonderous and memorable experience, and that’s why it comes in at number 5 on the list. 4. SaGa Frontier Remastered (Square Enix, 2021 – PS4)  There was a very special time that a lot of us game-playing folk remember quite fondly. It was a time of wonder and a time of plenty with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of rich and varied gaming experiences available to us. I am speaking of course of the late 90’s. If you were like me, a devout worshipper of the church of JRPG then you may have also elected to follow the true messiah Squaresoft to the temple of the Sony PlayStation. In the late 90’s our faith was rewarded when Squaresoft released veritable flood of games of biblical proportions. Recite with me a few of our holiest prayers: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy Tactics, Bushido Blade, Einhander, Xenogears, Parasite Eve, Ehrgeiz, SaGa Frontier. Amen. SaGa Frontier was released in 1997 in Japan and 1998 in the West, and we all got it simply for being a Squaresoft game and it was our religious duty to play it. However, I was not prepared for the arcane nature of this particular bit of JRPG scripture and struggled greatly with it. What is the purpose of this? Why has god deemed it necessary to test me with this? I lacked the theological acumen to decipher its mysteries and discarded it, my faith shaken. The SaGa series has long been known for its idiosyncratic and inscrutable mechanics, a deliberate choice on behalf of the game designers so that even they would struggle to predict outcomes with accuracy. SaGa Frontier is not the first game in the SaGa series, nor would it be the last, but for many it was the first taste, and boy was it a taste that needed acquiring. SaGa Frontier was remastered and released again across multiple platforms in 2021. At the urging of some of our community and due to my own curiosity, I decided to revisit this peculiar game. I’m glad I did. Some things need time to mature, and sometimes answers will only present themselves when we are ready to receive them. In the case of SaGa Frontier, both of these ring true. Older and wiser now, and with the help of the learned scholars of gamefaqs.com, some of whom have seemingly devoted their lives to unravelling the mysteries of the SaGa series, I can finally say “I get it.” SaGa Frontier Remastered comes to us with up-ressed graphics and few QoL updates (like being able to run risk-free from most battles), a new game + feature that allows you to tailor which aspects you want to carry over between scenarios, and the reintroduction of an entire character cut from the original release. Having finally come to grips with SaGa, I was free to drink in the whimsical nature of this game, its quirky sprite-work, and fantastical pre-rendered backgrounds. SaGa Frontier is pure delightfulness and a JRPG that every fan of the genre should have under their belt, especially now with having the definitive version to play with this remastered edition. SaGa Frontier Remastered sparked something inside me that I wasn’t expecting and that’s why it comes in at number 4 on my list. 3. Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker (Square Enix, 2021 – PS5)  The much-lauded and SA GOTY 2021, Final Fantasy XIV was curiously absent from my list last year, despite appearing for both of the two years prior to that. There are several reasons for that, I suppose. First off is that Final Fantasy XIV is not a forever MMO game for me, it is primarily a single-player experience, especially playing it on console where chatting with other players is insanely cumbersome, so I feel no particular need to join in with the community to experience the game concurrently. Second of all, the later half of 2021, and the majority of 2022 was an absolutely hellish experience for me work-wise. I was working longer hours than usual commuting an hour each way into the city, to a job at a company that seemed determined to tear itself apart and destroy all the good things it had built over the years. We sometimes wouldn’t get home until 8pm, barely enough time to get showered, dinner on the table, and the kitchen cleaned up before collapsing from exhaustion only to get up at quarter to six to do it all over again. I wasn’t about to spend precious sub monies on a game I would barely have the energy to play only on weekend mornings. Luckily all that changed toward the end of the year when we got ourselves new jobs; ones much closer to home. To celebrate I bought Endwalker and reactivated my long dormant account. Jimothy Fridgecorn, potato bard and Warrior of Light was to ride again. Oof. Taking two years off from playing the game was not kind on the muscle memory. Further complications arose from playing on the PS5 client for the first time meaning I had to recreate my hotbars from scratch. I know you can import from other clients but my PS4 is not hooked up and I wasn’t about to faff about behind the telly to get it working again. Needless to say, I was probably not a very effective party member for the first few duties I had to complete. I had left off right at the end of the Shadowbringers main scenario so at least I had all the 5.x patch content to get myself up to speed before starting Endwalker proper, but it wasn’t too long before I was back to spinning plates and juggling cooldowns like a pro. The story of Endwalker seeks to put a capstone on pretty much everything that had gone before and as such feels a bit unfocused compared to previous expansions. Throughout the narrative you get the feeling of everything culminating to an eventual wrap up and doesn’t linger too long on location or detail. Instead of a single geographical area or two to focus on, the new zones added with Endwalker are, literally, all over the place. This disjointedness is I feel to the expansion’s detriment as you are breathlessly whisked away from place to place, never allowed to hang about too long and chew on the scenery. All in all, it gets its job done in the end and the inevitable climax of this long running story hits all the right notes and hits them hard. It’s a beautiful and heartfelt conclusion to a great many things that have been very special to a great many people but Endwalker’s focus on sticking the ending, rather than the journey to it, leaves it feeling a little lacklustre compared to previous expansions. Similarly, with Soken’s incredible turnout of stellar tracks for this game, his output remains of the highest quality, yet perhaps not quite as memorable as previous expansions. Still, as the dust of it all settles around me, I can hear his tunes ear-worming their way through my brain even now. Overall, while I wouldn’t consider Endwalker the best expansion of Final Fantasy XIV, it’s still Final Fantasy XIV which has become so synonymous with a level of quality that had been missing from the franchise and the entire JRPG genre for so long, and then to be able to maintain that quality for so long and over multiple expansions is a more than resounding reason for it to land in the number 3 slot on my list. 2. Tactics Ogre: Reborn (Square Enix, 2022 – PS5)  Tactics Ogre: Reborn is a 2022 reworking of the 2010 PSP reimagining of the 1995 SNES SRPG originally developed by Quest. This game is quite possibly the granddaddy of strategy RPGs and its star-studded development team features many now household names: Yasumi Matsuno, Akihiko Yoshida, and Hitoshi Sakimoto all lent their talents to this game and developed what was later to become a bit of a trademark style. Tactics Ogre: Reborn features the signature turn-based isometric grid gameplay that is the staple of the genre, tweaked and updated slightly from the original. Similarly, the sprite-based graphics have also been updated but with only minor adjustments, keeping the games original look intact. Some other updates to game systems have been added, most notably in the way the crafting and character levelling systems work, but the most significant changes are the addition of a fully voice acted script and a completely rerecorded soundtrack, which work magnificently to give the crunchy story and weighty dialogue some extra punch. I had never played Tactics Ogre before in any of its previous guises (minor lie, I tried emulating the PSP version on my phone once but it ran so poorly I didn’t stick it out for long), but I had long been a fan of the SRPG genre as far back as Final Fantasy Tactics. Seems somewhat odd that I had left this game off my radar for so long, but imagine my surprise and curiosity being peaked when this rerelease was announced. While it clearly wasn’t a game that I was going to go out of my way to play, but as soon as Square Enix saw fit to deliver it straight to my lap I was buzzing with excitement. In a gaming landscape that is becoming increasingly populated with remakes and remasters and rereleases Tactics Ogre: Reborn is perhaps one of the best I’ve yet come across. It looks and feels great in the way that it probably matches more closely with our nostalgia for 1995 games rather than actual 1995 games. The menus look and feel snappy to navigate, the sprite animation is luscious and smooth. The voice acting is really really good and the character performances suit both the video gamey nature of it being voice acting in a video game but also gives weight and believability to the narrative’s serious themes. The soundtrack is incredible. Tactics Ogre is a fantastic game in its own right, but Tactics Ogre: Reborn is so much more, a perfect combination of modern sensibilities and classic old-school gameplay and game design. There is something here that is wholly unique to the art world and it can only exist in video games. Sure, lots of films can be remastered, or rereleased with extended or director’s cuts and what have you, or music can be rerecorded or covered by other artists, but only a video game can be remade in this way. Tactics Ogre: Reborn is Tactics Ogre, but made in a way that maybe is closer to what the original developers had in mind at the time. But it is also made in a way that the developers probably could have had no idea of at the time. Tactics Ogre: Reborn makes very clever and subtle use of the DualSense controller’s haptics and adaptive triggers in ways that legitimately surprised me. These added features serve to simultaneously help replicate the feel of an older video game, while also adding dimension that would have been impossible at the time. That and all the other bits and facets that have gone into Tactics Ogre: Reborn make it clearly the definitive version of the game, but in a way that doesn’t tarnish or diminish the original in any way. Tactics Ogre: Reborn is a fantastic and nearly flawless game, but it is also a powerful showcase of the mercurial nature of video games as an art form, and for those reasons it takes a well-deserved spot at number 2 on my list. 1. Elden Ring (From Software, 2022 – PS5)  Ooooooohh. Elden Ring. From Software has been the unassuming elephant in the room of the gaming world for over a decade. Their games are famously well-known, routinely imitated, and exhaustively compared to literally everything else. The amount that From Software and Dark Souls are spoken about is unmeasurable. You can’t as much reach for your controller without tripping over some Dark Souls these days. You would think we would be tired of it by now. Thirteen years after the release of Demon’s Souls on the PS3 and the fundamentals haven’t changed much. I spoke earlier about Demon’s Souls (2020) and even having never played the original, it immediately felt like I had been playing it for years. Because I have. We all have. And yet, no one is tired of it yet. It is testament to the dedication, vision, and hard work that Hidetaka Miyazaki and the team at From Software have put into their games over the years, the level of detail and fine tuning to world-building, environmental storytelling, and meaty, rewarding gameplay mechanics that keep us buzzing for more. And we are never disappointed. All hail Big Dark Souls. For me personally, majority of the hype and buzz around the release of Elden Ring was the fact that this was to be the first From Soft game that I would be getting on release day, and playing along concurrently with the entire community. I came late to the Souls series, having played my first one, Bloodborne, in 2017 – only to swear the entire genre off for years. I didn’t play another until Dark Souls Remastered in 2019, which I managed to complete and bolstered my confidence in approaching the other Souls games. When VideoGames began streaming Bloodborne in 2020, my confidence was bolstered again, because “Heck,” I thought, “if Veeg can Magoo his way through this game, then so can I.” So I did, not only completing it and the DLC, but getting the platinum as well. I played through and completed Sekiro the following year, my winning run at the final boss still remaining as one of my most ultimate video gaming experiences. That was it. I was a From Soft junkie, but never had I gotten the opportunity to go into one completely blind and unspoiled with everyone else. How lucky for me that my first chance of doing that was with Elden Ring, From Soft’s biggest game yet. Elden Ring is Dark Souls writ-open world. I think many were rightfully wary of the concept, and to a degree I can understand a measure of distaste for it, but confidence in From Soft to not-gently caress-it-up is never unfounded. Few of us could imagine what an open world Souls game would look like other than that it would be Good. The details of course would always be down to Miyazaki and his crew to work out, as they always do. And did they how. The open world element of Elden Ring manages to reframe the entirety of the open-world genre and it does so in such a painfully obvious way: make your world interesting and intriguing to explore, and your players will explore it. No need for map icons, checklists, fetch quests constantly pushing and pulling the player this way and that. Just incredible vistas, dark corners, and illegible yet unmistakable marks on a weather worn map. So compelling was this world, The Lands Between, that one could (almost) be forgiven for not noticing the compass at the top of the screen. Elden Ring is the epitome of what the open world genre was always capable of, yet no one seemed brave enough to commit to. Elden Ring is in many ways a Souls-themed theme park. Its big, its expansive, there’s tons to do. There are small dungeons, there’s big dungeons. There’s tons and tons of weapons, spells, and newly added to the formula: spirits to summon. Respeccing is fairly simple once you get to a certain point in the game so you are free to experiment and try different weapons and builds. Elden Ring is perhaps the most accessible Souls game yet made. With so many directions to travel and options given to the player at any moment, From Soft’s traditional difficulty is never a roadblock like it sometimes could be in their older games. There’s always another route or another dungeon to delve into and a few more levels to acquire before attempting that tricky boss again. A new dynamic with your mount Torrent gives the option to players to tackle some open-area bosses on horseback rather than traditionally on foot. But in many ways, as is usually the case with From Soft’s games, we can spend ages talking about the fine delicate details yet the conclusion is always the same: this is a game that even with the best ingredients still ends up being somehow greater than the sum of its parts. With a world filled to the brim with secrets and an unending supply of surprises, and of course From Soft’s trademark gameplay there is no doubt in my mind that not only is Elden Ring the greatest game of 2022, but it just might be the greatest game of all time. If I were stranded on a desert island with the means to play only a single video game, that game would be Elden Ring, and that’s more than enough reason for it to be number 1 on my list. Easy list for Rarity: 10. Gran Turismo 7 9. Wild Arms 8. Horizon Forbidden West 7. Kena: Bridge of Spirits 6. Demon’s Souls 5. Stray 4. SaGa Frontier Remastered 3. Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker 2. Tactics Ogre: Reborn 1. Elden Ring E: Two secs while I edit some images in fridge corn fucked around with this message at 21:16 on Dec 24, 2022 |
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Dec 24, 2022 21:12
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Lol I think I wrote way too many words.
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Dec 24, 2022 21:25
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Rarity posted:No such thing Escobarbarian posted:Fantastic list, fridge. Your passion shines through so much. And the veeg compass joke got me BeanpolePeckerwood posted:Fridge that is a really thoughtful list! You came at things from angles I hadn't considered. Thanks! Love you guys! And hell, I love video games too 
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Dec 24, 2022 22:54
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Looper posted:congrats on getting a new not lovely job fridge corn Thanks!
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Dec 25, 2022 08:01
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That's exactly why I made sure I had plenty to say about elden ring
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Dec 25, 2022 16:39
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Roth posted:The last boss was like three hours of me memorizing his attack patterns, getting angry and sweaty shouting curse words and declaring it unfair. Exactly same except instead of three hours it was more like three days haha
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Dec 31, 2022 00:41
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Rarity posted:wb king Thx queen
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Dec 31, 2022 00:47
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Dont agree with the 1-10 numbering system but I do appreciate a bit of deviant behaviour every now and again
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Dec 31, 2022 01:06
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VideoGames posted:Quistis is easily my favourite character of this game because she has a great bottom
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Dec 31, 2022 01:48
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Loved reading your list veeg, it was like a big end of the year recap of all the streams! When I got to number 4 I did a bit of a gasp cuz I knew instantly then what the top 3 were 
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Dec 31, 2022 01:52
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Cant wait for Rarity to play more ffxiv 
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Dec 31, 2022 14:52
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BeanpolePeckerwood posted:I bought quite a few games full price this year that I prolly could've waited on but the thread has taught me that I should've listened to my instincts and gotten Stranger of Paradise on day 1. I really wanted to like Stranger of Paradise but it seems I still suffer allergic reactions to Team Ninja games 
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Dec 31, 2022 14:55
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Some drat fine Toilet Opinions there
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Dec 31, 2022 19:13
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Defenistrator posted:
Hell yes Day of Defeat owns
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Dec 31, 2022 22:40
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I think elden ring might have a shot at winning this year
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Jan 1, 2023 01:17
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I want to know why they put minstrel song as their number 1 cuz I had a blast with saga frontier remastered this year (my number 4) and itching for more saga. Talk to me
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Jan 1, 2023 02:39
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Final fantasies 1-6 gonna be big contenders in 2023 when they hit consoles
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Jan 1, 2023 03:14
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Rarity posted:Ok folks, that is it! The votes have been counted and verified and your GOTY for 2022 has been decided! Join myself and VG on Saturday 7th at 2pm GMT for a star-studded extravaganza as we countdown your top 75
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Jan 1, 2023 11:25
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Escobarbarian posted:What do you think will win Us, the gamers
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Jan 1, 2023 13:47
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ShallNoiseUpon posted:Gamers Wtf
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Jan 1, 2023 13:47
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Jan 1, 2023 22:20
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Rarity posted:gently caress I need to go back to Eorzea Yes, yes you do
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Jan 2, 2023 11:17
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Aipsh posted:drat wish I played Neon white before doing my top ten Theres always next year! Or this year. Whichever
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Jan 5, 2023 15:09
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Goty day@!!
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Jan 7, 2023 08:35
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Jan 7, 2023 12:02
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Rarity posted:Three hours Enough time to get a little Valkyrie Profile in before we start. So far it's my number 1 goty for 2023!
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Jan 7, 2023 12:18
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Goty got goty goty goty *knives and forks etc*
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Jan 7, 2023 15:02
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