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GROUND FLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRR
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Dec 9, 2020 12:10
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| # ¿ Apr 20, 2024 04:42 |
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I'll do short blurbs about 20-11 and longer blurbs about 10-1 ------ 20. WipEout 2048  Never played this one back in the day. Fast as gently caress and twice as difficult. Much more of a spiritual successor to WipEout XL than HD/Fury turned out to be. 19. Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number  A fun and weird sequel. Full of interesting spatial puzzles and gory, hypnotic, visuals. A bit on the hard side, I think, but worth it alone for the amazing music. 18. What Remains of Edith Finch  Artsy, emotionally compelling, walking sim that can be completed in 2 hours. Worth the ride for some genuinely innovative and sad moments. 17. Dragon’s Crown Pro  The original horny beat-em-up in all its HD glory. Fantastic AD&D atmosphere and quest design, great fun for couch co-op. Another beautiful Vanillaware game. 16. Vanquish (remastered)  Platinum's best all around action game imo, just a jaw-dropping awesome gem from the gen 7 era. 15. Astro’s Playroom  Great little pack-in, more than a demo and less than a game. Some real Nintendo-tier platforming quality here. Too bad nobody could see this in store kiosks due to COVID. 14. DOOM (2016)  Great presentation on this stellar reboot which gets most things right. A bit repetitive and not much of an ending, but who cares. Well worth a play. 13. Catherine: Full Body  One of the best puzzle games I've ever played combined with a rather thoughtful interactive story about a giant loving slob idiot. Great remaster with a ton of new content, versus multi, etc. 12. DOOM Eternal  Two steps forward and one step back, I think. Eternal is bigger, brighter, more technical, and kind of silly overall. I had fun with it, but I can't deny that there's something missing...something I can't put my finger on. 11. Spelunky 2  I spent good amount of time with this one during the last 4 months despite the fact that it's way way too loving hard for me. Has great co-op and I enjoy watching stream of people with god-tier skills. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 10. Prey (2017)  Now this is a bit of an interesting case, because Prey had me from moment one. Those environments!, the music and sound design and atmosphere! This truly is the thinker’s FPS, a game that is absolutely dedicated to making you think about your environment and how to manipulate it to your purposes, a corporate hellscape that’s more than it seems. The set-up is so astoundingly good, and the atmosphere so rich, that I can almost forgive it for not sticking the landing. Almost. Technical issues, bugs, confusing quest markers, rampant end game loading times, stiff controls, and a rather unfulfilling narrative conclusion manage to hold it back from a top spot on my list, but what is there is already so engaging that it’s worth the stretch of the rough parts. 9. Amnesia: Rebirth  Frictional Games is my jam. Ever since finishing SOMA (one of the best sci-fi stories in gaming) there’s been a Frictional-sized hole in my gaming life, and I truly will play anything they put out. In this case it’s a dreadfully spooky and disgusting return to the themes and game mechanics of their early success story, Amnesia. While Rebirth never quite nails the highpoints of its more sophisticated cousin SOMA, it does manage to deliver a compelling personal story, fantastic puzzles, and a straight up out-there hosed up melange of frightening environments that completely hosed with my brain. I can’t wait to see what the studio puts out next. 8. Command & Conquer: Red Alert Remastered  The series that invented the genre, and the game that opened up the series. I chose Red Alert in this exquisitely restored package (despite the gif above) because it was the one that I actually played with friends, which would eventually lead to a longstanding association with multiplayer RTS, Red Alert 2, Starcraft, and beyond. That said, the focus here is on historical accuracy and preservation for the most part, and color me surprised that EA didn’t gently caress something up for once! What the devs accomplished with this restoration project is truly magnificent, and the bonuses and quality of life features that were added really serve the whole package well. I cannot wait to see if they’re allowed to remaster the holy grail of traditional RTS Red Alert 2, and if this effort is anything to go by it will be magnificent. 7. Cuphead  Cuphead makes me want to scream, but usually in a good way, and usually with a buddy in the room to feel the co-op pain with me. All of the plaudits this game got upon release were so deserved. The music, charm, color, and creativity of its art style and world are like nothing else out there and are a true testament to the developer’s commitment to a specific vision. It’s not that the game doesn’t have flaws, it’s just that the flaws are so easy to overlook when the end product is this gorgeous and wild. My only reservation is that this game may end up breaking me. 6. 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim  Never played a visual-novel type game before so this was a new experience. The RPG combat that makes up the other half of the game, however, felt nice and familiar, and quite exhilarating. 13S is a weird amalgamation of game concepts that ends up feeling like more than the sum of its parts. The artwork is gobsmacking, the music is by turns quaint, beautiful, and pulse-pounding, and the story has more twists and turns than an ant colony. Never has the set-dressing of ‘Japanese High School’ had a more interesting pay-off in one of these peak-anime games. This one was a joy to platinum, a nice breath of fresh air between cinematic prestige titles, and a complex and surprising turn for Vanillaware. 5. Monster Hunter World: Iceborne  Considering how near and dear MHW was to me for an entire year I felt a bit bad that it took me so long to get around to Iceborne, but goddamn this has to be one of the biggest expansions I’ve ever encountered to a game. So many new monsters, so many new clothes! A vest from real gorilla chest, and loafers from gophers! It’s hard to really describe to others how addictive and involving the gameloop of MonHun can be when you’re caught up in its ‘flow-state’ of resource gathering, menu tinkering, crafting, and down-and-out dino-smashing! I adore all the effort Capcom put into the finer details of Seliana’s flora and fauna, and I can’t wait to assemble a crew of people to tackle a bunch of the harder fights (holy moly are some of these fights involved), because working through all the systems, mechanical tiers, and discoveries with friends is such a good time. Also, I am a bit glad I waited to play Iceborne on PS5 because the loadtimes for the expansion were getting a little long on my pspoor, and this thing runs like a dream on the new console which doesn’t even seem to break a sweat over it. Really hope we get MH Rise on PS5 someday, but I’m sure a new AAA installment in the series is only a matter of time. 4. Disco Elysium  I’ll freely admit that this isn’t normally my type of game, as I tend to fall for games where I can run fast or fall from great heights or whathaveyou, and dialogue trees are kind of my worst nightmare. With that out of the way: my my my what dialogue trees they are! God, I love how much this game respects the player’s intelligence and time. The writing is so wonderfully witty, relevant, and lovingly crafted, and not just interactions either, but flavortext and incidental skilltree type stuff, too. It all really just speaks to the issues of our present day in a manner that few games have the guts or confidence to try. DE approaches a degree of thematic consistency that I just don’t see in much of anything these days, and its atmosphere, pathos, and political/philosophical nuance are a dream come true in this medium. I feel like the mere existence of this game will serve as a reminder to other devs that their stories can in fact grow the gently caress up and start saying poo poo about the world rather than trying simply to escape it. 3. Demon’s Souls (2020)  Wowzer, it feels good to be playing a souls title again in 2020, especially one with such a unique, singular identity. In a normal year this would probably be in my top spot, but 2020 was an epic year for prestige releases. Bluepoint absolutely killed it here with their striking visual update to one of the most iconic games of the last decade, and all without trampling on a single pebble of the gameplay idiosyncrasy that defined The. Original. Souls. As far as traditional remakes go (not the FF7R variety, which is more of a full on reimagining), nuDeS 2020 is the finest I’ve ever seen, far surpassing even Bluepoint’s own excellent work on the Shadow of the Colossus remake a few years back. The fantastic new visual flourishes they’ve provided demonstrate almost uniformly excellent judgement and understanding of the original game’s themes and art direction, and Bluepoint lets the refined and revolutionary simplicity of FROM’s (now almost universally standardized within gaming) control mechanics speak for itself. What the new artwork and sound (holy poo poo did I mention the sound design?!  ) manage to beautifully highlight is just how original, weird, and awe-inspiring Miyazaki’s vision actually was at the time, a bold step into unknown gaming territory by a team taking full advantage of their own creative authority, and unafraid to take risks and be different…even if it failed. One may recall that this type of innovation was exactly how other well-regarded masterpieces of the medium came about, too, like say Final Fantasy, or even Pac Man. Demon’s Souls feels just as surprising and bizarre as it did to me on PS3, even though I didn’t play it in 2010. What a way to start a new console generation!2. The Last of Us part II    You know, I think the controversies surrounding this game (both the fake and the real) actually added to the experience on the whole, or at least the mood. It was a hard year, a dark year, one that pushed my personal limits, and no game felt more in tune with the experience of living through 2020 than 2LOU. Like the year itself 2LOU tested my boundaries, made me assess my surroundings in new ways, made me revisit and rethink my feelings about the past, about people, society, struggle, and even the legitimacy of the original game’s monumental legacy. I was uncertain at the outset that anything more needed to be said about TLOU’s world or its characters, but after the experience had wrapped I felt hosed up in the brain in a way that only a profound piece of storytelling can do, and it stuck with me and informed my thoughts for the rest of the year. 2LOU itself is a massive piece of rather intimate storytelling that kicks your rear end every step of the way, makes you work for that catharsis, makes you confront your own assumptions about the original game. In that sense its ‘dramatic’ reception somewhat reminds me of the way people responded to MGS2 upon release, and I think it’s the first game in 2 decades that has managed to fill those particularly large shoes. Never mind that it’s a masterpiece of tense, manipulative, embedded thriller storytelling, or that it achieves astounding visual feats on a 7-year-old piece of console hardware (played on my pspoor), or that it manages to make full use of state of the art mocap technology for the express purpose of actually provoking emotions in its player, but it’s also just one hell of a ride. 2LOU, in all of its provocation (both in game and in general culture), managed to innovate bigtime with its themes and structure while still feeling directly connected, both mechanically and emotionally, to the original game’s storyline and gameplay. That’s no mean feat, I think, considering the original game’s impact was as much due to what was left out, pared down, or only alluded to. So the result was worth the seven year wait, worth the vitriol and anxiety, and 2LOU is an all-timer. The only thing that really kept it off of my #1 spot was that the Factions multiplayer was even more near and dear to me than the original game’s singleplayer, and it was sorely missed here. Factions, to my mind, is the best multiplayer game ever released and, as I’d sunk more than 2000 hours into it (across both PS3 and PS4), by the time 2LOU shipped it’s become more and more of a sore spot with me the longer Naughty Dog has stayed silent about it. Granted, if 2LOU gets a re-release next year with updated graphics/features and Factions pt 2 then it’s probably going to be pretty high up on next year’s GOTY list, too. 1. Final Fantasy VII ~ Remake   It was kind of a tough choice this year, mainly because the margin between my top three was so thin, but in the end it comes down which game felt the most miraculous. While 2LOU delivered one of the most insanely detailed and cinematic prestige experiences ever, the absence of Factions was never far from my mind. FF7R, on the other hand, was releasing as a sort of Frankenstein’s monster of development paradigms pillaged from the last decade, and delivering only 1/3rd of the eventual story. And yet, it had no right to be this good...or to be this polished (literally unpatched for 6 months), releasing balls-deep amid a plague after almost a quarter-century of hype and buildup. God, the sheer bravery of that decision on Square’s part, it almost felt like a love letter straight to my heart at the perfect possible time. And I mean this game gets EVERYTHING right about FF7, even down to feeling like a PSX game in spirit, like they wanted to throw all the flash and glitz of contemporary graphics tech in there while still simultaneously acknowledging that FF7 was always a weird collection of tropes, mechanics, whimsy, humor, and seriously earnest environmental critique. In other words, it stayed true to the original, to a fault. A few years ago I never would’ve thought Square could recapture the intangible videogame magic of an experience that existed inside my memories from childhood half my life ago: the emotional connection to bizarre, hosed-up, larger than life characters; the frustration of dungeons and strict rpg menu mechanics; the exhilaration of a perfectly fought almost cinematic battle; the awkward humor and humanity inherent in all these disparate elements jutting up against each other. The music is sweeping and nuanced with little background flourishes put in only to be heard incidentally; character designs feel exactly right even down to their full-bodied reinterpretations of classic blocky super-chibi animations; the english voice work is spot-on and wonderfully captures the arc of the characters’ interactions both in battle and out; combat is probably the tightest a jrpg has ever managed to accomplish; the story’s themes are more relevant in 2020 than ever before, and most of all, more than any game this year, FF7R made me want to look toward the future, not only of its own story elements to come in later chapters, but the new horizons of game design that are upon us…and how Square might take advantage of them. And that feeling is worth GOTY. Congrats, FF7R! Every minute spent with you was sheer joy.   
BeanpolePeckerwood fucked around with this message at 01:58 on Dec 28, 2020 |
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Dec 10, 2020 05:32
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TriffTshngo posted:1 - Breath of Fire III (1997) BoF III is definitely the best of the series, and a drat fine jrpg. The combat is just so loving tight and flashy, and the character line-up is uniformly excellent, Momo especially. BoF IV was also loving excellent, and better in certain ways but a bit more linear, tho I wasn't a big fan of what they did to dragon transformations overall. LionEyez posted:
Ever since I played it in '99 Valkyrie Profile has been on my top games of all time. Indivisible looks extremely dope, I had no idea it even existed.
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Dec 10, 2020 09:39
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congrats veegy, enjoy your day, thanks for the rad op and thread 
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Dec 10, 2020 11:22
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neil fuckman has consolidated his power. his game awards are snapping onto his skeleton megazord style
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Dec 11, 2020 10:01
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yeah, i was gonna say, any old goon can post a bunch of screenshots. it takes a brave and methodical goon to help realpolitik an anime game to the top spot
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Dec 13, 2020 00:42
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LionArcher posted:It is also thematically, a perfect mirror to the first game. Neil and Haley are truly two of the most underrated people in the industry today, at least by reddit, twitter, and these forums. I can't wait to see what they do next. I think Neil is done directing because he was just promoted to co-president. Looks like ND will be allowing fresh blood to direct projects going forward.
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Dec 13, 2020 02:25
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RazzleDazzleHour posted:fiiiiiiiiine badaboom
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Dec 13, 2020 02:40
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fridge corn posted:13 Sentinels will definitely win GOTY because I hate every thing about it lol
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Dec 13, 2020 10:00
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holy poo poo videogames are back
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Dec 13, 2020 11:24
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Infinitum posted:I will not be lazy and I will get a list together. It will be primarily board games. 1. Fireball ISland 2. Mr. Bucket 3. Bop-It 4. Crossfire 5. Don't Wake Daddy
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Dec 13, 2020 13:49
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pSh0VAVYn4
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Dec 14, 2020 03:06
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haveblue posted:This OP gets good after the first 30 hours maybe if you didn't play the OP on last gen hardware you wouldn't have so many issues
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Dec 14, 2020 03:25
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During the month I was playing this game I would sometimes sit on the titlescreen and just listen to this loop for an hour, I wish there was a longer version.
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Dec 15, 2020 02:13
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anime game gonna goty haha
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Dec 15, 2020 02:14
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CottonWolf posted:1. Final Fantasy VII Remake   
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Dec 15, 2020 03:53
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Just letting you know you have 11 games, which is fine, but the last 3 aren't numbered.
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Dec 16, 2020 01:52
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Party Boat posted:Yeah I said in the post that they're ones I'd enjoyed but not really played enough to fairly place on a list. The "real" list is the top 8, edited to make it clearer. Thanks! sorry, i'm an idiot. carry on
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Dec 16, 2020 10:06
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nice to see an automata mention in 2020
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Dec 16, 2020 22:36
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Stux posted:
Sakura Dragon is one of the more beautiful and interesting boss concepts I've ever come across, just incredible.
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Dec 17, 2020 01:41
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Nice list!
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Dec 18, 2020 00:53
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dex_sda posted:So true. This is such a good way to put it.
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Dec 18, 2020 22:11
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Bloodborne doesn't need a patch. Stay in the nightmare, folks!
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Dec 18, 2020 23:46
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hehe, noice pics
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Dec 19, 2020 05:32
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Arist posted:It's not good it's not good, and yet simultaneously it's a staggering achievement that it was done by a single human
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Dec 19, 2020 21:16
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SeXReX posted:
Is this the type of thing they might release as an update?
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Dec 20, 2020 01:01
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SeXReX posted:Naw, the devs promoted it but that's it. Bummer. Well that's cool anyways
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Dec 20, 2020 01:08
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LawfulWaffle posted:
i assume the cumming animes are some kind of unlockable or
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Dec 20, 2020 11:10
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LawfulWaffle posted:It’s pretty much the noises I made the first time it asked me to do mountain climbers. lol
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Dec 20, 2020 19:56
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Ouch, I love 13S but...FF7R was a loving revelation imo
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Dec 21, 2020 22:37
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ShoogaSlim posted:i'm perplexed at all the mentions of FF7R on people's top 10 You're purplexed that the fantastic reimagining of an utter classic both sold well and delighted nearly everyone who played it? Dunkey's alright but that video isn't the unimpeachable teardown you seem to think it is.
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Dec 22, 2020 00:10
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FlowerRhythmREMIX posted:Was it top ten good though? Stay tuned and find out! 
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Dec 22, 2020 00:58
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Waffleman_ posted:FF7R isn't good and my evidence is this Youtube Man who explicitly does not like JRPGs as a genre didn't like it lol
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Dec 22, 2020 01:11
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ShoogaSlim posted:drat y'all a sensitive bunch. being nostalgia driven will do that to ya i guess lol Eugene V. Dubstep posted:ff7r looks like a load of tedious crap so I'm inclined to believe the actual gameplay video over the nerve-stapled weebs itt lol
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Dec 22, 2020 04:07
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Escobarbarian posted:anyway I guess I should actually write my list instead of just talking about it!!!!! There isn't another list this year I'm looking forward to more than yours, and I think you know why. So I'm expecting great things 
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Dec 22, 2020 11:11
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VideoGames posted:thanks You're a firm, unshakable, mega invincible #2 wrt the goty lists especially since you write such nice things (and an honorary #1 in every other life category), tho Esco somehow played 6 FROM games for the first time in the last 4 months...and you gotta admit there's some insane list potential in there. Rest assured I follow your progress with great enthusiasm. 
BeanpolePeckerwood fucked around with this message at 11:36 on Dec 22, 2020 |
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Dec 22, 2020 11:33
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Nice list, Tea.
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Dec 22, 2020 11:41
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VideoGames posted:It will be coming Tales From The Borderlands on a technicality!
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Dec 22, 2020 20:46
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I think turn-based combat might be a legit draw for me because I was not into whatever Yakuza was offering in that aspect
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Dec 23, 2020 01:26
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| # ¿ Apr 20, 2024 04:42 |
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punk rebel ecks posted:I find it unfair that voting ends on January 1st. early adopter goty list tactical advantage
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Dec 23, 2020 07:48
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