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At last, it has arrived once more.
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Dec 4, 2023 00:32
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 20:37 |
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Please rename the thread subtitle to “Post at least 5 games and write a sentence”
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Dec 4, 2023 16:11
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Shard posted:In my defense the rules were really long! And also fine I'll put it in descending order because I don't want to be a cop. 
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Dec 4, 2023 16:23
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I believe the GOTY 2023 thread is a place where both the ascenders and descenders can coexist peacefully.
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Dec 6, 2023 19:09
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They said second-worst not second-best.
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Dec 7, 2023 19:30
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I won't, because it's better than both. 
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Dec 7, 2023 19:32
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Bad Parenting posted:All the people who would rank BG3 as their No1 are too busy on their 7th playthrough of BG3 to post in this thread  Honor Mode patch just released last week and we're all too busy trying to get the golden dice
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Dec 8, 2023 01:20
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I would say that BG3 and Zelda both offer deeply "immersive" experiences in the way that you use that word, but whereas Zelda mostly attempts to minimize the instances of number-crunching video gameyness in its presentation, Baldur's Gate 3 fully embraces it. All of those onscreen icons and buttons exist to find novel ways of approaching encounters at the vast intersection of environmental hazards, abilities, and dialogue that reward lateral thinking and player expression. For instance, there's one encounter in an ancient forge where you have to fight a huge metal automaton that is resistant to all forms of damage except heat and bludgeoning. You can beat him conventionally with enough blunt damage, but you can also make use of the environment by turning a valve that forces him to trudge through boiling lava, melting his armor. And once you know how the mechanics of this forge works, you can lure him into the big press in the middle of the arena to crush him when his armor is melted. But why bother with turning the valve when your mage can cast Heat Weapon, overheating his armor automatically. And then again, why bother with using the press at all when you can have your Wild Shape Druid sit on the rafters above the arena and piledrive him in owlbear form for brutal amounts of bludgeoning damage. And that's just one encounter among the hundreds of unique scenarios that also encourage you to think expressively and creatively. BG3 knows it's a video game and wants you to GAME.
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Dec 8, 2023 20:37
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If you're worried about forgetting to save in BG3, just play on Honor Mode. Guaranteed autosave after every little thing you do!!
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Dec 11, 2023 14:26
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Whenever BG3 decides to autosave that usually means you're about to get owned.
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Dec 11, 2023 14:43
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You certainly can't accuse Wanted: Dead of being unmemorable.
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Dec 12, 2023 18:32
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There are a bunch of exceptions and in-house rules for what can qualify as an action and bonus action in BG3. Typically in 5E both spells and cantrips will cost an action. Spells are more powerful and require a spell slot to use, cantrips are weaker but can be spammed every turn at will. And there are of course various ways to make your cantrips hit really hard and your learned spells usable on bonus actions through gear, class, permanent buffs, consumables, talking to a random NPC, etc.
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Dec 18, 2023 14:59
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Hooray, it's time for another one of these! This is always my favorite thread of the year. I finished 18 games in 2023, including DLC and expansions. That's two more than my completed total of 16 games from last year and two below my all-time record of 20 in 2020. Let's start with some stuff I played in 2023 that didn't make the list for one reason or another: Citizen Sleeper Vampire Survivors Batora: Lost Haven Vengeful Guardian: Moonrider Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores (DLC) Valkyrie Elysium Diablo IV Final Fantasy XVI Mortal Kombat 1 Now let's move onto some HONORABLE MENTIONS. These are games I mostly enjoyed but wasn't enamored with enough to provide a score ranking. WANTED: DEAD This is not a very good game. In fact, it's quite shockingly terrible in many ways. But it is certainly a very memorable game, one that compelled me to think about it long after I had seen everything there was to see. It's kind of rare to see a major release that's as bafflingly uneven as Wanted: Dead anymore and for that reason it has gained my appreciation and undying respect. I loved the claw machine, the exceedingly difficult karaoke minigame that only had one song despite cassettes being a common collectible, the awful AI-voiced NPCs in the four-story police station. All of it. CHOP GOBLINS I chop da goblins, they don't chop me. EN GARDE! Charming little action platformer with a beautiful art style, fluid swashbuckling combat, and a cute sense of humor. The story is a bit on the short side, but it's engaging the entire way through with a few survival style maps to tide you over after you've completed the main game. I've never heard of Fireplace Games before but I hope they continue to make tidy bite-sized projects like these. LIES OF P Fine I guess but they never tell you what the P stands for, kind of disappointing. Well that's that! Let's move onto my  TOP FIVE GAMES OF 2023!!! I'm proud to say that this ended up being a very diverse list of finalists, each belonging to its own (I think) genre. 5. ALAN WAKE 2  𝅘𝅥𝅮Follow You Into the Dark ft. RAKEL𝅘𝅥𝅮 Control was my 2019 GOTY and simply one of the most satisfying gaming experiences to go into completely blind, so I was absolutely going to buy anything that Remedy did next without hesitation. And while I still generally enjoy the kind of game Control is a lot more, I'm glad that Alan Wake 2 just conceptually exists as a product and that Sam Lake gets to continue injecting his own particular weirdness and humor into a creative space that is often critiqued for being so cynical and sterile. You don't get too many games in the AAA sphere that fully commit to a singular artistic vision, and despite it vast confluences of media referents and genre-bending, AW2 always feels like its own cohesive flash of brilliance. 4. OCTOPATH TRAVELER II  𝅘𝅥𝅮Partitio's Theme𝅘𝅥𝅮 After feeling somewhat disappointed in FF16 this summer I did what any responsible consumer would do and gave Square-Enix even more of my money to play another high-profile JRPG series that had always caught my eye visually but never quite had the time for. Despite my reservations, this ended up being a sound investment because Octopath Traveler II managed to consistently surprise and delight. The inventive combat, engaging cast of characters, and incredible soundtrack all contribute to a wonderfully complete retro "as you remembered it, not as it actually was" experience. Partitio is almost cool enough to make you think capitalism maybe wasn't such a bad idea, after all. 3. AGE OF WONDERS 4  𝅘𝅥𝅮Our Work Shall Commence At Dusk𝅘𝅥𝅮 I'm a somewhat lapsed 4X fan, having grown up playing a ton of HoMM III but never being a particular fan of the Civ and Endless Space branches that tend to dominate the genre. HoMM V was the last truly good game in that series, and since then Triumph has been the only other developer really taking an earnest shot at the RPG 4X with Age of Wonders 3 and the sci-fi themed Planetfall. I played a bit of both in their time, but Age of Wonders 4 stands head and shoulders above them as Triumph's finest game to date. The main innovation that Age of Wonders 4 brings to the genre is the ability to customize nearly every detail of your fantasy races, allowing for a ton of player expression and creativity. Industrious halflings that build sprawling structures all over the map. Plundering goblins with a fascination for trinkets and gold led by a fiery dragon lord. Reclusive space crystal-huffing elf babes that rain down devastating magic upon the battlefield. Insufferably pious toads that subjugate other kingdoms by holy decree. These are just a few of the stupid tropey factions I've spent hundreds of hours developing in my time with Age of Wonders 4, and I'll gladly spend hundreds more when all is said and done. Triumph has also done a wonderful job implementing new features and taking community feedback into account with their patch schedule. AOW4 is the definitive fantasy 4X experience. 2. HI-FI RUSH  𝅘𝅥𝅮Whirring - The Joy Formidable𝅘𝅥𝅮 This game is pure joy from an entirely different time and place. It feels like something that could have been released in my teenage years alongside Jet Grind Radio and Viewtiful Joe, but we're blessed to be getting it now. The dynamic rhythm-based combat, fluid cel-shaded visuals, madcap Saturday morning cartoon humor and  licensed music all combine to create something truly memorable, joyous, and cathartic. Hearing the wide open snares of Whirring by the Joy Formidable unexpectedly kick in at just the perfect moment in the story was a truly emotional experience for me. At every level, this game has that creative spark of life that you rarely see in today's risk-averse environment. It's already gotten some critical recognition, but whatever the extent, it deserves a lot more. Hi-Fi Rush is an instant classic.1. BALDUR'S GATE 3 https://i.imgur.com/qCFZav7.mp4 𝅘𝅥𝅮Raphael's Final Act - Borislav Slavov𝅘𝅥𝅮 Where to even start. Baldur's Gate 3 is a game where you can convince a group of spiders that you're their Goddess Lolth and command them to fight for you. It is a game where you can pickpocket explosives from a suicidal gnome to prevent her from blowing everyone up, and there is unique dialogue that acknowledges this incredibly specific and unlikely scenario. It is a game where having your 7 ft tall demon muscle lady throw Halflings at enemies is an effective combat strategy. It is a game where you can make a goblin kiss your foot, push him off a cliff, then accuse his corpse of having a foot fetish. It is a game where one of the main villains gets his own theme song, except when you cast Silence on him, then his vocal parts are absent. It is a game where you'll be 80 hours deep already thinking about what character builds you'll be bringing to this same exact point in the story on your next playthrough. It is a game where you can roll the same character, make 99% of the same decisions and still witness several wildly different outcomes through sheer luck of the dice. It is a game that consistently makes you wonder how in the world this got made, mostly for the better. There's a lot to appreciate about Baldur's Gate 3 -- its involving story and great performances have already been mentioned many times. So I'll zero in on something that I feel Larian does better than anyone else in the industry: Encounter Design. Across the hundreds of potential fights in the full 100+ hour span of this campaign, there is not a single encounter that I would qualify as filler. Every battle has its own specific combination of enemy quirks, party composition, and environmental gimmicks that require your constant attention and observation, lest your entire party wipe to a single thunder arrow. It manages to combine the same depth of roleplaying options you'd expect from any epic CRPG, alongside the often surprising interactability of items that you'd see in an immersive sim, with all the emergent and chaotic storytelling of a memorable tabletop session. You will oscillate wildly between moments of feeling like a tactical genius and a total idiot as you repeatedly, often unintentionally, set fire to everything in the room including yourself. I'll attempt to illustrate my point with a very early scenario in the first act. In most RPGs, you get a quest to go kill some big monster in a cave. Maybe you can squeeze through a crack in the wall if you're a dwarf, maybe you can jump to high ground if your Athletics score is high enough, maybe you find a cool little trinket off the beaten path, but the same basic structure remains. And that's totally fine, I've done that a million times before and will gladly do many times in the future. But in Baldur's Gate 3, you can come across an owlbear cave by way of two nearby NPCs that were attacked. Through dialogue, you can learn that they were actually hunting FOR YOU, and have the choice to send them on their way or fight. But maybe you don't do either of those things, and ask for their help to go fight the owlbear instead. Maybe while you're inside the owlbear cave, you solve an obtuse puzzle that opens up a whole slice of backstory for one of your companions. Or maybe you miss this because you don't solve the riddle, or fail the dialogue checks, or that companion is simply not there with you. Maybe you decide to get the jump on that owlbear and have your hunter shoot down a stalactite on its head to initiate the battle. Or maybe you drink a potion of Animal Speaking to negotiate and find that the owlbear matriarch you're hunting is injured. Maybe you use your intimidation or persuasion abilities to convince her to leave you alone. But maybe you also spot a valuable owlbear egg hidden at the back of the cave and decide to steal it. Now the owlbear matriarch finally gets fed up with you and the two NPCs that don't even have to be there leap into battle, with their own unique combat barks. After a grueling battle, you finally take down the owlbear matriarch and its consort, but maybe through no fault of your own, you left its hatchling alive. Maybe you decide to spare it, and many scenes later after another series of optional events it will join you at camp. Maybe one of the NPCs that helped you was killed in the battle, and you know from playing this segment before that her dialogue when you cast Speak With Dead is slightly different than had you used it after choosing to fight them yourself. Maybe one or both siblings survived, and you'll run into them at the Goblin Camp hours later, with unique dialogue acknowledging if the other one died or lived in an exchange that less than 1% of players might ever hear. Maybe the prized owlbear egg you've stolen can later be exchanged to a merchant for a storyline that flows all the way into the third act. Or maybe you just accidentally used the egg as food supplies at camp. Whoopsie! Except I wasn't being entirely truthful, because that whole exchange isn't actually part of any marked questline. It's just simply a small episode that the player can come across within a vast, sprawling, intricately connected story that you'll only start to appreciate the full extent of your second or third time through the game. Like any great tabletop campaign, BG3 allows you to orient yourself in almost any direction and become wrapped up in a boundless adventure. The densely packed secrets and surprising interactions on every corner of the map both reward and test your curiosity in equal measure. It's a tremendously ambitious and landmark CRPG, but it's also easy to identify the same exact DNA in the Divinity series Larian has been iterating on since 1999. It's funny to me how a game like Baldur's Gate 3 has gotten so swept up in The Discourse around AAA gaming and the state of the industry in 2023. I find these arguments to be mostly tedious. Every week I have to unrecommend some clickbaity thumbnail with Shadowheart on one side and a crying Todd Howard on the other with a title about how Larian is DESTROYING AAA gaming or whatever. It's stupid and I want no part of it. But I do think the success of Baldur's Gate 3 feels sort of important at a moment in time when all the publicly owned studios are laying off half their workforces to move up quarterly profit margins by single decimal percentages and most game developers seem to be treated like disposable circus monkeys. Larian themselves were on the ropes financially about 10 years ago, but instead of slashing personnel and chasing whatever trends were popular in 2013, built upon their internal strengths and community outreach to kickstart the Original Sin series. I've read some comments online that make it seem like Larian just lucked into making Baldur's Gate 3, and while every success story is by definition exceptional, I don't think that gives nearly enough credit to the prudent decisionmaking and talent development that even put Larian in a favorable position to acquire the IP. After a decade of being told that gamers don't actually want deeply reactive, branching narratives and... well whatever the hell Bioware has been doing, it does feel like a small bit of validation that a game like BG3 can achieve not just mainstream popularity, but its own cultural moment. All hail Larian.
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Dec 19, 2023 00:37
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Wyrmthang posted:I usually don't post too much, but I loved so many games this year I felt I should toss my $0.02 in. FYI you gotta rank at least 5 games for your votes to be counted!!
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Dec 22, 2023 21:54
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Rarity posted:HER EYES ON DEEZ NUTS Disproven as of April 2023.
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Dec 30, 2023 22:19
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I think From is the most interesting when they're being more experimental, which is why Demon's Souls and DS2 are still da best.
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Jan 1, 2024 13:44
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When VG announces that the real game of the year is YOU I will know this thread has officially jumped the shark. May that never happen.
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Jan 1, 2024 15:26
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Green line means ranking went up from last year, red line go down.
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Jan 2, 2024 03:10
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Jezza of OZPOS posted:i am going to play baldurs gate on easy mode uin 2024 and finally marry laezel If you want the maximum Lae'zel wife ending, make sure to roll a githyanki MC!
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Jan 2, 2024 13:08
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That's projection.
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Jan 2, 2024 17:03
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Of the two I think Disco Elysium cuts a little closer to the essence of goon.
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Jan 2, 2024 21:45
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Perfect Dark is so good, especially now that you can sometimes play it at higher than 15 fps.
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Jan 5, 2024 14:25
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The Villa -> Chicago Streets -> Infiltration sequence might just be the finest trio of video game levels ever assembled.
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Jan 5, 2024 14:34
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I think Octo 2 will actually be Top 5 or 6 based on my reading of things, it got a ton of votes.
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Jan 12, 2024 20:41
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I was hoping Age of Wonders 4 would make the Top 50, but fantasy 4X games remain kind of a niche genre. Oh well, it's really good!
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Jan 13, 2024 15:12
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That's quite a jump in points to 5th place!
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Jan 13, 2024 19:07
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ALL HAIL LARIAN https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMo7ugWudCA
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Jan 13, 2024 19:39
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I thought BG3 and TOTK were almost neck and neck, but it actually wasn't even particularly close! And TOTK was a full ~300 points ahead of AC6.
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Jan 13, 2024 19:42
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I promise to play all of these high-rated games as soon as I'm done with my 6th playthrough of BG3, this time with an Evocation Gnome Wizard instead of an Abjuration Gnome Wizard.
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Jan 13, 2024 19:51
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VideoGames posted:Just wanted to say that your post about Baldur's Gate III had me enthralled and desperate to play it. I read out the chunk you wrote about the cave to LVG and she nodded and said 'I know, you're going to love that game'. I think it will be a very entertaining game for you to play although perhaps somewhat infuriating for your streaming audience since you can spend literally 30 minutes rummaging through a basement and never get bored! It seems 2023 was my normiest year yet. Usually I have at least a couple picks outside the Top 50 but this year I had 4 games in the Top 11 and my last selection only barely missed the Top 60.
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Jan 13, 2024 21:43
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Does anyone have a quick reference to the point totals for the Top 10 winners in the last few years?
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Jan 13, 2024 23:09
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Microcline posted:Rank Game Points Percentage That's all very interesting. I suspected the point totals for the Top 10 were higher this year, but I didn't know how. It's hard to imagine a game like Elden Ring hitting 10% of all votes again, but who knows!
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Jan 13, 2024 23:44
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Jay Rust posted:I’m already getting annoyed at the nerds who are gonna a vote for an mmo expansion in 2024 Pray for good games in 2024.
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Jan 13, 2024 23:57
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Rarity posted:Just to give everyone some perspective on this quote discussion, that is absolutely the part of this operation that is the most work. Last year I spent the entirety of Jan 1st to Jan 3rd just reading though everyone's lists to pull out appropriate quotes before even starting the actual writing bits. Which don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed doing it but it's a huge time investment. I fully understand VG focusing on quality over quantity here. I'm more amazed that people are jealous of not being quoted, rather than finding it mildly embarrassing.
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Jan 14, 2024 13:26
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Microcline posted:Statistics post, 2023 edition Thanks for this. I’m too dumb to explain this correctly but IMHO deep red arrows = generally stronger years for new releases overall (because more games get pushed down the charts), less steep red arrows = weaker years as more people play recommendations or fill out their backlog. Everyone generally agrees that 2023 has been a really strong year so it’s interesting to see that reflected visually as well.
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Jan 15, 2024 07:26
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There are some releases I am looking forward to but I don't have any superdeluxe megahype games in 2024, which is liberating in its own way.
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Jan 16, 2024 19:19
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 20:37 |
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Ibblebibble posted:I do find it kinda funny how the person who got recommended me got recommended Elden Ring when I haven't played more than 5 hours of it. Based on Microcline's explanation I'm guessing that people who tend to rank more games on their GOTY list get matched more often than those who only list 5-6 each year.
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Jan 17, 2024 13:20
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