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I feel like a Gaga concert would be receptive to weird poo poo
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Dec 13, 2021 03:54
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I'm going to be writing up a top 18, because there are 18 games I want to talk about this year. And also 18 is an idoneal number, which makes it cool. 18. Shadowverse  I swear this screenshot is hilarious if you know what the cards do All the way down here at 17, we have games that have some pretty big issues, but nevertheless have some real strengths. Shadowverse is a card game of inconsistent quality. Sometimes there's really fun decks and a diverse meta and sometimes it's just misery incarnate, and I stop playing for a while. But the actual card game isn't why it's on my list. I recommend anyone who is interested in this game to completely ignore that, at least at first, and go to story mode. Then skip the first 10 or so chapters of the story and begin at "Fate's Trigger", which is a good starting point and far higher quality than the stuff that came before it. Treat it like a visual novel where every so often you play a card game (using the starter decks to progress despite not having a collection). I guess if you like the card game you could keep playing it after, but the story is the part I want to talk about today. The story of Fate's Trigger seems to be a story about revolution--about the people at the bottom deciding that there's no recourse but violence against the systems that oppress them. But as the chapters unfold, you slowly realize the truth. It's not a story about revolution. It's a story about the crushing despair of having nothing and trying to fight against somebody who has everything. The characters struggle and fight and hope and in the end are left with nothing but death and misery for their efforts. The world is so ruined that in the sequel arc, the bright cowboy-themed world has become a dark bloodborne world, with new characters trying to make their way through a world even more openly hostile to them, and with even less hope of anything positive coming out of it. But, in what will become a bit of a theme in the games I rank highly this year, it continues on with a message of hope. It makes you feel the pit of despair firsthand to continue on by reminding you that as long as you can put one foot in front of the other, you aren't done yet. The quality never quite meets the highs of that first arc, and it's not done yet and may still flub the ending, so it's not in my top ten. But It's still a game I liked a lot, this year. 17. Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwE_08Fw4w0 This isn't my rank of ShB as a whole, but my ranking of ShB, as I played it this year. That means patches 5.4 (it came out in December 2020 but I wasn't done with it till months later) through 5.55. The story continued to be good, but the majority of my ffxiv experience in that period was raiding. I have a lot of games on my list this year where the theme is overcoming challenging content through persistence. And in raiding, for better or for worse, it comes with a social element. At its worst, that means dealing with scheduling and playing when you aren't feeling so hot (because that's the day you scheduled and you don't want to let people down). At its best, it means you have seven buddies to share the load with you, joking and having fun the whole way. And the fights are a lot of fun! (...Mostly, I won't pretend lions doesn't suck rear end). I spent a lot of gaming hours raiding, and enjoyed most of it. 16. Shin Megami Tensei 4: Apocalypse  I went on a bit of an SMT trip this year. SMT4A is the weakest one I played, but still a pretty good game. Rather than the more typical message that, in a world of demons, people tend to become demonic, 4A posits the opposite: that despite everything, humans can stay normal even in horrible circumstances. The story does get a bit self-indulgent here and there, but the gameplay is still SMT, and still great. You're still going to get owned every so often, and need to spend a lot of time thinking about how to fuse and how to prepare for battles, and the press turn system is still great. If you want to dip your toes into mainline SMT but are turned off by the usual atmosphere, 4A is a good compromise for you. 15. Golden Sun Dark Dawn  A lot of ink has been spilled about how Dark Dawn was bad, or how actually Golden Sun was always bad and Dark Dawn was just more of the same, but I got an urge to play it after seeing The Lost Age being run at GDQ and you know what? It was fun. The djinn system was always cool. It's hard to go wrong with puzzle dungeons and with dragon quest style combat. The story was kind of whatever, but it had Sveta in it, and Sveta owns. gently caress the haters. Golden Sun Dark Dawn is solidly a Good Game. 14. Atelier Ryza 2: Lost Legends & the Secret Fairy  Same, comrade Ryza I bet you're all shocked that the new Atelier that came out this year isn't even in my top ten, but this year was seriously stacked for me. I've sort of had a feeling for a while like Gust is no longer making games that I adore, with all their best work in the PS3 era, and is now making games that I "merely" like. More on that in my top ten proper. Spoiler: this isn't the only Gust game on my list. As far as the game itself goes, it's very much Ryza 2. You'll probably like it very close to the same amount you likes Ryza 1. The combat system is moderately improved. The alchemy is about the same. I'm still mourning the loss of time limits. I understand that they cause a lot of potential players anxiety no matter how lenient they are, but to me, they really felt like they were the connective tissue holding Atelier together. The inherently grindy nature of finding the perfect ingredients, or obtaining large quantities of rare ingredients, has nothing counterbalancing it without a looming deadline. Spending hours crafting away at the perfect items was always a series staple, but now there's nothing stopping you from doing it every time you get a new tier of gear, and it just sort of drags the pacing down a bit. That said, I don't want to just complain about modern Atelier. Ryza 2 is still a great game! The alchemy and combat are fun (though I wish the combat system allowed you to use items from turn one--the way it's set up, it felt pointless to bother with items half the time). The characters are charming. It's a lighthearted adventure story that moves into a slightly different space than usual for Gust, by focusing on a grown adult rather than being a coming-of-age story. My heart can't help but compare it to the titans of the past, but taken on its own merits, it's a good game. 13. Atelier Marie  Ignore the text box, I just wanted to show off the art style here The first two Atelier games, Atelier Marie, and Atelier Elie, got fan translations a while back. I ended up playing them straddling the new year: Elie in December 2020, and Marie in January 2021. Elie didn't make it into my top ten last year, so I didn't post about it, but this year I'm doing a top eighteen, so I get to post about Marie! These super-early Ateliers are really fascinating. They have a bit of PS1 jank in their DNA: in particular, it's really unclear how you're even supposed to get started, especially in Marie; once you're past the first few hours, they become a lot more reasonable. But all the things that are beloved in the series Atelier became are right there, from the start. It's clear to me that Rorona, the soft reboot following the bizarre PS2 era, was explicitly an attempt to return to the series' roots. Stripped of all the bells and whistles that have been added to it over the decades, Marie stands proudly, holding high the core essence of Atelier: a resource management sim with a low-stakes, chill story, good music, and characters pulled from the pages of shoujo manga. And you know what? That's all it needs to be. 12. Deltarune  I have no doubt that when Deltarune is finally done, it will be in my top ten. But for now? A near-miss. Not because it's bad, but just because it's incomplete. I can't wait to spend another five chapters with my good friend Susie. Toby Fox has created a world full of wonder and joy, but with just enough of a dark edge to make it shine even brighter. Unless it falls flat on its face in the future chapters, it's going to be a worthy successor to Undertale. 11. The House at Fata Morgana  This is a visual novel, that is, a book with a soundtrack which gets classified as a video game because it's software instead of physical media. But, as long as that's the case, I will rank it alongside other games. It's a story about absolute misery, depression and despair. A story where almost nothing good happens to anyone, and every time it does, it's yanked away moments later. Almost every way one human can be cruel or malicious to another is depicted at least once. And yet, in the end, ultimately, it's a story about not letting your tragedies define you. Not about forgiving, per se, but moving on and achieving mastery over your abusers by not letting them ruin your life. If that sounds like a story that would resonate with you--and you can stand to see the prerequisite abuse depicted intensely--I cannot recommend it enough. I'm lucky enough to not have the story resonate with my personal experiences, so it's down here at number 11 on my list. Buy it absolutely has the potential to be number one for somebody else, and if that sounds like you I highly recommend it. It does occasionally veer into the clichéd and trite, and unfortunately the first few hours spend a lot of time in that territory. But if this description sounds worthwhile, please push past that to at least the end of the second door. 10. Gnosia  Gnosia is a mafia-style social deduction game, but played against AIs instead of other humans. This has the notable advantage that they can be programmed with quirks, and you can learn their personalities, and how they behave. It's a great feeling when you figure things out like "Character X is only aggressive when they're the traitor," or "Character Y clams up when they're the traitor," or "Character Z only makes accusations when they're completely certain about it...unless they're the traitor, and using their reputation to steer you wrong." You learn their personalities in the course of gameplay, and that feeds in perfectly to the story being told, about slowly unraveling the layers of your companions over repeated time loops. And I love almost all of them. It also has some excellent non-binary rep, if that's something important to you. Even if it isn't, play Gnosia. 9. New Pokemon Snap  Are you a millenial, and thus have terminal pokemon brain because you grew up at the height of the craze? Do you like cute things? Do you like puzzling out how to combine a handful of elements to achieve the desired results? Boy do I have the game for you! Never before have pokemon felt as real as they do in New Pokemon Snap. Every single 'mon that appears on screen is incredible. There are no misses. You will go from "oh? Liepard? Whatever" to "Wow!!!! It's Liepard!!!!" in the course of half a second. I don't think I can express the sheer joy I feel when snapping away in mere words. If you like pokemon, but somehow haven't played this, you're doing yourself a huge disservice. 8. Shin Megami Tensei 5  apples SMT5 is SMT. Demon fusion, press turns, hard bosses, it's SMT alright. Rather than having the traditional gridded layout of a dungeon crawler, it evokes a similar feeling in an open-looking but ultimately maze-like 3D world. It isn't truly open world, like some people claim, because there's no real choice in your destination: there's only one place you're going, and the rest of the paths are just dead ends with treasure in them, like a dungeon crawler. The magatsuhi meter is a great addition to the formula, as are miracles. My only real gameplay complaint is that the game just hands you the essence of nearly every demon, meaning it's very easy to create perfect demons. I would have preferred it more if you had to work to obtain essences, so that taking a midgame demon and pumping them full of drugs wasn't both easier and more powerful than fusing them away. I also think the world aesthetics are a bit repetitive, and that the characters who you're ultimately supposed to be deciding between don't really do enough to feel like their philosophies are fully fleshed out. Still, it's a Nocturne-style game. Not being as good as Nocturne is no great shame. A very solid game, and I can't wait for the enhanced version which Atlus will inevitably put out in mid 2023. 7. Touhou: Subterranean Animism  This game has a bit of a personal story in it, for why it resonated so strongly with me. Around a decade ago, I played a lot of Touhou. But, ultimately, despite all the hours I dumped into them, I never completed a single one. I would always get a game over and need to continue (thus depriving myself of the true ending) at some point before the end. When I played a Touhou fangame this year (coming up further down this list!), it reminded me how much I enjoyed them, and I swore to myself that this time, I would buckle down and finally beat one of the drat games. I picked Subterranean Animism because my favorite character was in it. Little did I know that it has a reputation as the second hardest Touhou game, by a pretty wide margin, and the series is never easy to begin with. Brimming with pride, I set the goal to complete the game without continues on normal difficulty, deeming easy to be beneath my ambitions. It was brutal. It's a game that takes around 5 minutes per stage, and only has six stages. It took me 20 hours of dying, over and over and over, to achieve my goal. I didn't keep records of how many attempts I made--I just checked my playtime on steam when I was done--but that's a lot of dying. I spent hours despairing over whether I was even capable of it. I spent hours dying to easy stuff that I thought I had mastered already. But ultimately I pushed through, and got my clear. The feeling was ecstatic. And that's why it's on my list. 6. Desperados 3  I don't think any screenshot can really capture what Desperados 3 is really like, unfortunately I learned about this game in last year's goty thread. When it went on sale, I bought it, and it was really good! It's a top-down stealth game where you control multiple characters and have a number of cooldown abilities you can use to try to distract, move, kill, or otherwise deal with the numerous guards in your path. It sort of feels like untying a knot, where at first it feels so solid that you can't imagine how you could possibly make headway, but you slowly, bit by bit, find openings and cracks and pull it apart, until you're through and onto the next knot. But the entire thing is just executed nearly flawlessly, with a ton of bonus objectives to insert a bit more challenge into maps you've already completed. Just a great game. 5. Labyrinth of Touhou - Gensokyo and the Heaven Piercing Tree  This game is a pure dungeon crawler, in the vein of things like Etrian Odyssey. It's extremely punishing, often confusing, and very rewarding. The big innovation in this game is that, rather than giving the player strong character customization options, it instead gives you 40 characters, each with relatively constrained customization. So the game is absolutely not afraid to tell you that the party you brought is not up to the task of this latest boss, and to go try again. Whereas in another game, that might mean a bunch of grinding to set up a new character build, in this one, it just means swapping which characters you have deployed. It's a great system, with a surprising amount of depth. One of the characters who I dumped early on, basically as soon as I had enough party members to dump anyone, ended up playing an absolutely crucial, irreplaceable role against the final boss. But none of it is signposted or made evident to the player. You have no choice but to use your brain to figure out who is good in which fights, and struggle through and figure it out for yourself. Toss in nice looking art and you have an all-around excellent game for any fans of difficult RPGs. Just don't do the postgame, it replaces all the depth with mindless grinding. 4. Fire Emblem 6: Project Ember https://i.imgur.com/B5ju56b.mp4 Project Ember is a romhack of Fire Emblem: Binding Blade, a game which was never officially released in English. It changes a lot of the game, and overall, I feel, produces the single-best retro-style Fire Emblem game I've played. It refocuses the gameplay from cutting through hordes of weak enemies, to rewarding (or requiring) combining your forces to aggressively defeat powerful enemies who are more than a match for you one on one. It's not afraid of giving you extremely powerful toys, but structures itself in a way that demands you use them. It's a love letter to what Fire Emblem used to be, made by people who truly understand what made those games special. 3. Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3PujvkIZug I played three SMT games this year. And Nocturne, despite being the oldest, is still the best. Press turns and demon fusion are the same in all three, but Nocturne just nails the atmosphere and minimalistic storytelling in a way SMT5 can't quite manage. And as much fun as it is to abuse all the ways you have to make demons powerful in SMT5, it does end up making you too powerful, if you use them to their fullest. Nocturne doesn't have any of that. If you want a strong demon, you have to fuse it the hard way. This ends up meaning that your team is always kind of janky, and results in more nailbiter boss fights over the course of the game, which is when SMT is at its strongest. Plus, I like the random encounters. It means that things like MP efficiency matter, and you need to balance your skill slots between skills good for mobs and skills good for bosses. And the game is just gorgeous for a PS2 game. Cannot recommend highly enough for fans of difficult RPGs. 2. Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker  Numbers nine through three on my list are all selected for their gameplay. They're all hard games that demand a lot of their player, with the reward being that final moment of victory. My top two are not in that vein. Endwalker will be, eventually, but the difficult content isn't out yet and won't be until January. For now, it is an easy game. The reason it's in my list is its incredible emotional impact on me. The culmination of ten years of story, which I've been a part of for nearly eight years. And incredible tour de force that had me crying, laughing, and smiling till my face hurt. It's all too common for fantasy stories with strong emotional cores to be kind of lackluster on the actual fantasy story side; i.e., the story would be boring if it were stripped of the emotions and just left with the bare facts. Not so Endwalker. Not only is it incredibly moving, it's just chock-full of moments that are cool as poo poo from the perspective of pure fantasy. The only complaints I have is that there's a few moments where the pacing kind of drags, and a few moments that reveal minor plotholes if you spend all week posting about them on internet message boards. The game is unabashedly about something in a way few AAA video games are. And that core message resonates through every scene to incredible effect. And it isn't even pulled out of nowhere for the finale! This is technically spoilers so I'll use tags, but it's completely fine to click if you aren't like, right in the middle of endwalker right now. Nine years ago, when the 1.0 servers were shut down, the cinematic that played had a song called Answers. Answers is a song about how you deal with tragedy. One lyric that has always stuck with me is "Tell me why, given life, we are meant to die, helpless in our cries?" Endwalker makes that question, or one very much like it, its emotional core. Given that life is full of suffering and in the end you die, why live at all? And I cannot find a single fault in how it explores or answers that question. A truly inspiring story that, along with Shadowbringers, will last the test of time. I only hope Square-Enix gives it the FF7R treatment some day, so it can be freed from its MMO shackles. 1. Blue Reflection: Second Light https://twitter.com/c7071screenshot/status/1465212818978836481 Hand-holding algorithms! The AI-controlled character realizes she's about to crash into a wall, lets go of my hand, follows for a moment, and sees her opportunity and runs ahead, to hold my other hand. Truly the future of gaming is now. Blue Reflection 2 is a game I played on a whim. I had finished SMT5, and had about a week and a half until Endwalker came out. I wanted to play a new game in that time, and people in the RPG thread had been talking it up. My expectations weren't super high, because Blue Reflection 1 kind of sucked, but the posters assured me that this one was a lot better. So, I played it. And I am absolutely glad that I did. It's a game like no other I've played. Like Endwalker, this game is on my list for the emotional impact the story had on me, rather than for being the best gameplay ever, but hoo boy did it have an emotional impact on me. It's a surprisingly domestic game, said without a hint of derision. Most of the scenes revolve around cooking, or improving your living space, or just hanging out with your friends--the ordinary day-to-day things that most people spend most of their time doing. They do these things by transforming into magical girls and hunting demons of course, but there's gotta be that fantastic element somewhere. Like Endwalker, it's unabashedly emotional. If you just examine the raw plot points, basically nothing happens all game. The game is entirely about the feelings of its characters. As a flirty goofball of a girl, you make friends with the other girls, share happy moments with them, lend them a shoulder when they need it, and enjoy a quiet summer vacation with them. It's sort of hard to express what exactly makes it work so well, because I don't think it's any single thing. The setting, the tone, the writing, the characters, the music, they all come together into a cohesive whole that is far greater than the sum of their parts. And it doesn't hurt that Ao Shinozaki is my absolute favorite character of 2021. I said earlier in my list that I'd come back to modern Gust games later. Well, here it is. Here's a game, made by Gust this year, that can stand proudly with the PS3 Atelier games. I was wrong. Gust still does absolutely have the capacity to blow me away. Blue Reflection: Second Light is my goty, and I look forward to what Gust can put out in the years to come. Also it's gay as poo poo if that's something that's important to you. cheetah7071 fucked around with this message at 04:52 on Dec 25, 2021 |
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Dec 13, 2021 03:59
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Is there a FF14 movie or recommended let’s play or something? Every year this thread makes me very sad because I will never be able to find the time to experience this game as it should be.
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Dec 13, 2021 04:05
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I'm not going to post a whole top 10 list, so my post doesn't have to count for the rankings. My GOTY this year is Returnal. Highest marks for graphical prowess, technical gameplay, haptic feedback, enemy and encounter design, art design, sound design, etc. The story is also there, and is told in an interesting way that leaves much to interpretation, but I personally wouldn't rank it as highly as other aspects of the game. The power curve does involve permanent upgrades but the most important part is that you get better at the game as you play it. Runner up is Deathloop. For a hot second this might've been my GOTY - this was a pared down version of Arkane's formula that encouraged you to go stealth until the poo poo popped off and then go loud instead of reloading. Or hell, go in guns blazing. Or you know, the type of choices Arkane games do. Plus! Trash talking main characters that are pretty funny sometimes. Anyway, my heart sank as I realized that there is only one way to do a "perfect" day by killing all of the Visionaries in one go. Once you get to the target you can choose a few different ways to kill them usually, but they are always going to be in the same location at the same time of day if you're doing the "perfect" run. I suppose my expectations were too high? Too many permutations if I wanted to say, gather every Visionary at the party at night in Updaam and kill them at once somehow? And the endings were bad. Arkane is mediocre to bad at endings. Also Colt and Julianna's relationship ended up being kinda weird. Biggest disappointment this year was Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales, a game released in 2018 but first played by me earlier this year. I had it on my wishlist for a while, picked it up in a sale, and dove in expecting a fun little 3rd person RPG with quests, and maybe you collect cards along the way and build decks, and then have fun Gwent battles like in The Witcher 3. What I got instead was some of the questing, some of the deck building, and instead of fun, I got Gwent-based puzzles, where 90% of the time you had to look at the cards you had, look at the cards they had, think about battle positioning, order of play, etc. and figure out how to beat them in like 3 turns or something or you instantly lose. This is from my memory after playing it for 3 hours. I should have played it for 0 hours. I should have not bought it. Do not buy it. Ridiculous. Absolute trash.
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Dec 13, 2021 04:51
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None of the best games I played this year were made this year. 3. Horizon: Zero Dawn Normally in games I pursue side quests before bothering with the (usually boring) main storyline. I did the opposite here because I was riveted by the main story. Maybe the best sci-fi story ever in a vidya game. 2. Mass Effect Legendary Edition It's ME1-3. Great games. 1. Hades The best game I've played in years. A masterpiece. Played a bunch of good games, but none deserving a vote. Psychonauts 2 and Cyberpunk were good... not great.
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Dec 13, 2021 05:30
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  10. The Good Life (directed by SWERY, developed by White Owls, Inc.) The Good Life is a game that I felt conflicted about the entire way through. SWERY's latest release, funded through Kickstarter, feels like a tangled mess of concepts that seem to compete both against each other and against the overall feeling of a typically compromised Kickstarter product. Having to puzzle your way through a murder mystery in a small England village brimming with secrets is complicated by multiple survival systems that add little but frustration, the plot forking off into three seemingly completely unrelated tangents, a photography system that seems like it was supposed to be more important than it was, and an ending that while seeming to go for some kind of thematic relevance, just feels unsatisfying and slightly insulting. And yet, I did not completely hate my time with it. Along the way, I could feel the glimmer of what this game wanted to be, buried under the jank and bloat. It reminded me a lot of SWERY's original idea for what Deadly Premonition would be without the combat, just solving a mystery in a weird town. But The Good Life doesn't really have as much of the charm that DP did, and it just leaves a competent game that could be so much more.   9. Sam & Max Save the World (directed by Brendan Q. Ferguson & Dave Grossman et al, developed by Telltale Games, remastered by Skunkape Games) Telltale's first big point and click hit was rescued from the ashes of the company by a team of former developers and updated for modern systems last year, and hey, adventure games are still pretty fun. I haven't played one of Telltale's original adventure games in quite a while, and I've never played a Sam & Max game, and Save the World was a pleasant, if slightly dated, ride the whole way through. One thing I forgot about the episodic Telltale point and clicks is that outside of Strong Bad, each episode has like three areas, which makes sense for the release model, but can make the individual episodes feel a bit narrow, but that's a minor thing. The sense of humor felt like it would have hit for me more if I was 15 in the 2000s, but there were yucks and chuckles to be had. I'm definitely looking forward to the planned remasters of the next Sam & Max seasons and I hope Skunkape gets a shot at some of the other Telltale classics (Strong Bad please)   8. Return of the Obra Dinn (directed and developed by Lucas Pope) I've always loved logic puzzles, and when I realized Return of the Obra Dinn was one big process of elimination puzzle, I was tickled pink. Obra Dinn requires a sense of observation so thorough, I was making notes on paper, a thing I haven't done for a video game in a long long time. Really not a whole lot to say about it, other than it was a pleasant weekend puzzle with appealing visual presentation and an intriguing story under the mystery.   7. Okami HD (directed by Hideki Kamiya, developed by Clover Studio, remastered by Buzz Co., Ltd. & Vingt et un Systems Corporation) For years, I had considered Okami to be my favorite game of all time. However, until this year, I had probably not played it in at least a decade, despite having picked up the remaster when it hit modern systems. I sometimes make it a point to explicitly revisit media I consider my favorite, to see if it holds up, maybe if something's come along since that I like more, avoiding that mental entropy. Good news, Okami is in fact still a wonderful game, and while it is a bit long in tooth, I feel like people overstate how big it is if you're just doing a basic runthrough. Having not played this game for so long, a lot of my playthrough was defogging old memories. Do I consider Okami my favorite game anymore? Nah, I wouldn't say so, but it's up there.   6. Star Wars - Jedi: Fallen Order (directed by Stig Asmussen, developed by Respawn Entertainment) EA finally made a good Star War! Hey, they made a good Star War! Jedi: Fallen Order is a pretty drat good SekirolikeMetroidvaniaSoulsish kinda game, and my first major interaction with that open adventure kind of gameplay. It's a Big Cinematic AAA Game and sometimes you just need that kinda popcorn game. Lightsaber combat has never felt more satisfying, the worlds on offer are varied and fun to explore, and I even found myself listening to the music on its own at times. I only played it a few months ago, and I've been getting the urge to replay it at times already, which usually never happens this fast. Hoping hard for FO2.   5. Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies (directed by Atsushi Shiozawa & Hiroyuki Ichiyanagi, developed by Project ACES) Sometimes you just gotta try a series you've never really thought about before because it has kickass music. Yeah, I picked up Ace Combat 04 on a complete lark, and though I've played some of not only 04, but 5, Zero, and 7 this year, 04 is the only one I finished within the year and it's the one that made me fall in love with this series. I never thought I could wind up enjoying something like a dogfighting arcade flyer, I had always just assumed my brain would just not comprehend, but man...feels good. And as if that's not enough, the previously mentioned badass music and the in-depth lore of Strangereal just sweeten the pot of Metal Gear With Planes.   4. Disco Elysium: The Final Cut (directed by Robert Kurvitz, developed by ZA/UM) Disco Elysium has been on Something Awful's Game of the Year rankings for two years in a row, and received a large update in 2021 including additional content and full voice acting. Doesn't it only make sense to try out such a critically acclaimed game in its definitive form? I found myself with an experience like few others I've had. I spent the first day much like the good detective, fumbling about in a haze as I tried to figure out where I was and what I was doing. As the pieces came together, the process became smoother, and things fell into place. After a certain point, I was hooked until the end. Disco Elysium is a game with a lot to say, and boy howdy is it going to say it to you. My playthrough barely scratched the surface of the game, and I'm already eager to jump back into Revachol. I love Kim Kitsuragi.   3. AI: The Somnium Files (directed by Kotaro Uchikoshi, developed by Spike Chunsoft) The top three games are all games that essentially dominated my every waking moment when I was playing them. Just absolutely hooked in deep. I adore the Zero Escape series, so this year, I finally did the needful and checked out Uchikoshi's big post-ZE project, just in time for the sequel to be announced. Uchikoshi is probably one of the best mystery writers in games today, using the visual novel format to its fullest to create tightly woven stories with endearing characters to boot. AI takes what seems like a simple murder investigation and frays it out into conspiracies, corporate intrigue, political machinations, and Minecraft. The game sometimes relies a little too much on cringeworthy sex jokes, but it's not enough to ruin the best cyberpunk game of 2021 of 2019.   2. The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles (directed by Shu Takumi, developed by Capcom) Finally! Finally we got a new Ace Attorney game in English! And finally, it's a localization of the two Great Ace Attorney games, thought to be lost causes due to rights issues. These games, series creator Shu Takumi's return to the series after Ghost Trick and the Professor Layton crossover, have been hailed as the best in the series, and boy I'm right there with it. The 19th century setting not only brings a fresh look and feel to the world, but helps to bring the proceedings back down to a more relatively grounded level compared to the mainline game that were releasing alongside which were escalating with new gimmicks and higher stakes. Being released as a collection means that the two games can be enjoyed as a single story as they were intended, even if the way the original games were released leads to the beginning of the second game dragging a bit when played all at once. The story is gripping, bigger than any other Ace Attorney game, and only makes me want Takumi to return to the main series with the in development 7th game. Now if you could only announce that one officially, please.   Game of the Year: Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker (directed by Naoki Yoshida, developed by Square Enix Creative Business Unit III) Final Fantasy XIV is my favorite game of all time. Endwalker serves as not only the latest expansion, but as the culmination of nearly a decade's worth of story, a feat on a scale not seen too often in the gaming space. And while the expansion as a singular product certainly isn't perfect, as an ending, it more than wraps it all up in a satisfying way. I laughed, I cried, and I flipped the hell out. Final Fantasy XIV is a game that means a lot to me. Though I had been playing it intermittently since 2017, it was after I lost my first full-time job late in the next year that I found myself with an abundance of free time and got deep into the game, helping me get through countless days of job applications, and catching up just as I had found new permanent employment. The game has one of the most welcoming communities of any game out there, and it makes the game feel like a second home. I adore this game and I don't think much else will top it in my life because it means so much more to me than the game itself.
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Dec 13, 2021 06:21
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10)  Sudoku (Android app)  If we go by hours spent in a game, this is by a decent clip my #1. I've solved over 2,000 Sudoku puzzles over the past year, because it's a relaxing thing to do while monitoring my work. Honestly it's mostly here because I didn't think any of the other games I played this year deserve a spot on the list lmao. 9)  Dark Deity  A love letter to GBA Fire Emblem. I played this in the completely broken unfinished state it was in when it first came out and had a ball. I've heard it's gotten a bunch of balance updates since then, but I don't want to hear it because the busted version was super fun. 8)  Luck be a Landlord  Just one more spin, and I'll finally be able to pay off the landlord! 7)  Bowser's Fury  (Click image for source)I played through the entirety of this game while my brother was in town. He was Mario and I was Bowser Jr. This was a fun little diversion and it was fun. It also came with some 3D Mario game or whatever. 6)  Monster Train  While Slay the Spire will always be my first love, I will say that Monster Train does a lot of stuff that makes it more versatile. While Monster train is a bit more complex than Spire, the concept of mix and match for the clans ensures that I will always have a different experience each time I play. 5)  Final Fantasy 4: Free Enterprise  Last year's #1 still scores high on my rankings this year! A combination of me burning out on it, it already being on last year's list, and other games I really liked coming out reduced its positioning this year, but I still had fun each time I played it! Especially with the addition of the wacky flags where I can have Rydia wielding two spoons, an Adamant Armor, a Ribbon, and a Heroine Robe. 4)  Mass Effect  With the Legendary Edition coming out, I finally got a chance to see what the Mass Effect games were all about. I had a ton of fun with two of them, with Commander Shepard, Commander of the Normandy. I named her Commander. Anyway I had fun with this, and now I see why people liked the game. 3)  Super Robot Wars 30  There are two types of SRW30 players. People who have accepted Ernesti Echevalier into their hearts, and people who play it wrong. I have been a massive SRW fan for years, and now that I can legally obtain a copy without paying an importer to send it from the Philippines I am happy. It's not the BEST SRW but it's very fun. 2)  Mass Effect 2  I liked Mass Effect. I loved Mass Effect 2. The game built on everything set up by 1, without going so far up its own rear end that it came out the other side (looking at you, 3). I liked the characters of 2 the best of the 3 games. Jack is the best and I will hear no different opinions. 1)  Gnosia  Raqio, my beloved. If nobody got me I know they don't got me either, can I get an amen? I love Mafia, but I hate other people, so Gnosia is a game made for me. The day I bought this game, I spent 6 hours just playing it, only turning it off when I was informed I was on loop 70. I have 100%ed the game and still sometimes I go back and play a round just to waste 15 minutes. Gnosia is great, and now it's on steam! Give it a shot!
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Dec 13, 2021 07:12
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 Same energy
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Dec 13, 2021 07:18
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I mean he does also come off as a gay "alien enthusiast" yes.
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Dec 13, 2021 07:30
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Most of my favs were played on Switch, because I haven't owned a Nintendo console in years and I'm glad to remember why I loved them in the past. 1) Animal Crossing New Horizons I picked this up in January 2021 and it saved my sanity in the latter portion of lockdown times. It was great to actually see something change a little bit every day after being trapped in the house for months. ACNH has been an oasis of peace in hosed times, and the first game in many years that actually improved my wellbeing in a noticeable way. 2) Dragon Quest XI Last year I'd have never though that I'd play a JRPG again after a decade and a half hiatus, but this brought me around. Utterly charming, accessible, and breezily paced, I'm grateful to the devs for showing me the potential of the JRPG formula. The only negative is that it sets the bar so high! 3) Monster Hunter Rise It's one of the best action games I've ever played. The maps are stunners, the monsters are brutal, and the multiplayer is seemless. QoL improvements make it easy to pick up and play. A very good entry in a special series. MHR is a Big Game 4) Spelunky 2 As with RPGs, I had written off platformers many years ago and had not played any since the mid 00s. For some reason this one spoke to me, and training up my skills here led me down a rabbit hole to Castlevania, Super Metroid, and several other classics that I've ignored for years. Thanks Derek Yu! 5) Jupiter Hell I play more roguelikes than any other genre and this one blew me away. I love the art, the music, the build strategies, it's everything I want was in a modern roguelike. Totally kickass, just like Doom. 6) Shiren The Wanderer 5: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate Another roguelike, and a very drat good one at that. The DS port of the first Shiren was my first roguelike win, and seeing the manifold updates and brilliant refinements on display here was heartwarming. This dev team has clearly thought A LOT about roguelike design and created something like a Swiss watch. I'm extremely impressed. The sprite art is fantastic too and the rococo level designs in the deeper floors really pop. I'm glad to report that the online rescue system is still highly active. 7) Monster Train Another feat of brilliant design. I love all of it, even the WoW art. Slay the Spire is still the king but MT was something of a relief to play since it doesn't stomp me into the ground as hard. 8) Caves of Qud I didn't play a lot of this in 2021, but it's always in the back of mind when I play other games. Qud is a big loving juicy steak of a game, filled with secrets, personality, difficulty, grace, speculation, community, comedy, and queer utopian bears. It's a look at post-catastrophe life without pessimism. A big chunk of lore was added this year along with many new features, including some big gains in accessibility and flexibility. The pinnacle of the roguelike genre imo and landmark among RPGs more broadly. 9) Chivalry II A lovely community and lovely performance did not stop me from giggling like a fool every time I booted this up. Chivalry II is a blast in spite of itself and I never walk away from a match dissatisfied. Combat and movement feel super heavy and crunchy, aided by some gnarly sound design. 10) The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening Remake This one brought me around to classic gaming, along with Spelunky 2 and DQXI. I've never been a big Zelda fan, despite trying several since the N64 era, but none of them hooked me like this did. The map is small enough to run across quickly but dense enough with content to keep you searching and thinking constantly. There's very little wasted space or down time, which was frankly a relief after 60 hours spent running around in BotW, which I finished shortly before starting LA. There's a tightness and directness to the design that I find so appealing. No need for padding out content or side quests, alternate endings etc, just an amazing interlocking toy maze. The soundtrack is awesome, and I love the graphical presentation.
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Dec 13, 2021 09:45
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 10: Tales of Arise "You guys are really bad at helping." After 2015's disastrous Tales of Zestiria, the decades old Tales franchise was left completely rudderless. Zestiria sold well, but reviewed modestly at best, and was extremely divisive among the hardcore fanbase, while also being way overbudget. With the departure of several of the franchise's longtime shepherds, it fell on an inexperienced team to attempt to turn the series around. They made Tales of Berseria which was good but sold much worse, and thus didn't. Instead, the Tales team was shuffled around yet again, with the addition of many longtime Bandai Namco employees, including a large chunk of the God Eater development team. With a much larger budget and a much longer timeframe, they were on a mission to prevent the franchise from being three strikes and you're out. In terms of saving the series? Arise absolutely did. It sold amazingly well, reviewed great, and is pretty well-liked. Well... mostly? As a game, Arise is a mixed bag. It has a pretty breakneck opening, a kind of slow middle, and a completely baffling third act. I honestly like the third act and where it goes, but there's almost zero hints it's going to go in that direction, and it doesn't have enough time to flesh out the bonkers ideas it's going for. And gameplay-wise, Arise marries a very fun and fluid combat system with terrible enemy and boss design, featuring bosses who are almost impossible to flinch and have way too much HP and are capable of one or two shotting your characters even on normal. And the characters are... fiiiine? The party struggles to establish a strong group dynamic, typically one of the trademarks of the series. There's funny individual scenes, but they rarely coalesce into a strong sense of camaraderie. And it must be said that the game's insistence on making sure every party member has a heterosexual romantic pairing is kind of weird for a series that traditionally leans on gay subtext pretty strongly. And in at least two cases, outright text - shoutouts to my boy Wingul. It feels a bit like they wrung out some of the series' personality in an attempt to make the franchise more appealing. However, as a base to build on top of, I think Arise works very well. The combat, as mentioned, *is* fluid and fun to control, and presentation-wise it's excellent. Sakuraba's OST even has a pulse for the first time in fifteen years - it doesn't reach the highs of Abyss or the goofy energy of Eternia, but it's a solid JRPG soundtrack. I left Arise feeling cautiously optimistic on the direction of the series, and that means it did its job. And as a game on its own merits, I think it's pretty good, too. Definitely flawed, but there's a lot to like.  9: Blazblue Central Fiction "Ghosts? Ahh!" Blazblue's plot is competely incomprehensible, but I love the characters way too much. It recently got a rollback patch on steam, so this entry is channeling the spirit of teenage me, who wrote blazblue fanfics, wished Makoto Nanaya was my girlfriend, and thought thin RED line was the greatest song ever written. And to be fair, thin red line is pretty banging. It's a very fun fighting game, too.  8: Utawarerumono: Mask of Truth "Courage is a heart that conquers its fears. It is not one that denies fear." Utawarerumono was a 2001 PC Strategy RPG. It, inexplicably, received a pair of sequels nearly 15 years after the fact. Mask of Truth is the second of these sequels, and pays off a ton of stuff both from the first sequel, Mask of Deception, and the original 2001 game. It's a love letter to people who have been waiting fifteen years for any kind of followup, and also a very fun fantasy epic with a great cast of characters. It's got issues, for starters it knows about a third as much about historical politics as it thinks it does, and it tends to dump three big twists on you in a row when one would do, but it's a fun story. It deals a lot with identity - the masks we wear to convince ourselves we're stronger, to look better to other people, and the overwhelming joy of being with people who you can truly be yourself around. The strategy RPG is also kind of fun.  7: Super Robot Wars 30 "He gets the love of his life and a house. I get two old guys and I'm still homeless." Super Robot Wars 30 is not my favorite Super Robot Wars game, but it's a Super Robot Wars game you can buy on Steam without any loving around, in English. It's existence is a small miracle, and despite the flaws of its main gimmick, being able to do missions in mostly any order, it's easy to tell how much love and care went into it. And it has Gridman.  6: Great Ace Attorney Chronicles "As a lawyer, I have the perfect poker face. You'll never be able to tell what I'm thinking." Great Ace Attorney is, in my opinion, the best Ace Attorney game since Ace Attorney 3. Solid mysteries, fun spins on the court gameplay, an incredible localization, likable cast, and an interesting exploration of racism in the time period it's set in. Ryunosuke isn't gonna turn society around or even really change anyone's minds, beyond a few people he's very close to. It's just a difficulty he deals with, same as anything else. Considering it's a Japanese game with a clear love of classic British mysteries, it's hard not to read it as the developers themselves engaging with their own mixed feelings on the stuff they love. Really funny animations, too.  5: Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker "People just want to do right by themselves and do right by others." i predict this game will get 50 other nominations so ill save my breath and say FF14 is very good and this game has some issues but is a very good conclusion.  4: Soul Nomad & The World Eaters "Someday, we'll be forgiven, and we can be born once again." Next year will be Soul Nomad's fifteenth anniversary. This is its lifetime achievement award, for being Soul Nomad & The World Eaters. I play it once a year and every time I come across some line I didn't remember that makes me laugh, or some janky squad build that is surprisingly effective. It's presentation is incredibly barebones and the Evil Route feels like it was slapped together in a weekend without telling anyone, but the evil route comes to an amazing conclusion and the game as a whole is unique, engaging fantasy adventure with a fairly unique cast of characters, anchored by a protagonist (Gig, not Revya) that is simultaneously cruel, petty, malicious, and very, very human. It's a funny game that manages to touch on very heavy themes without undermining or making light of them, and it knows how to let the characters have a moment to shine without trying to wink at the audience that it isn't taking this THAT seriously. Sadly, NIS would promptly lose all ability to write video games, thus leading us to our current state of affairs.  3: Blue Reflection Second Light "I don't want that past anymore - until the day I rot away, I'm going to keep walking." The original Blue Reflection was a fairly bad game. Not terrible, but janky, listless, and filled with mildly weird asides that weren't exactly fanservice but still felt like they put the writers' niche fetishes before fleshing out the characters. I liked some of the tone, but it was a mediocre work all together. Despite selling fairly poorly, it inexplicably got a spinoff anime and pseudo-sequel this year. The anime was very good. Second Light is also, very good. Cheetah already covered a lot of what I wanted to say, so instead I'll simply add that this deeply, deeply feels like a game the developers wanted to make. Almost a dream game. The game is positively flooded with tiny little moments and asides, little jokes and character beats, that make it clear the developers loved this cast, this game, and were pleased to be making it. Nothing about it feels cynical - it's a story about young women leaning on each other written by people who hoped those characters find resolution as much as the characters themselves do. It's got a ton of little issues, like a slightly janky camera, equally janky stealth sections, and bizarre newgame+ features like locking the last two seconds of the ending and the hard mode behind it, but it's a very, very good game.   2: Project Sekai Colorful Stage Featuring Hatsune Miku "Boys and girls, face forwards! Find hope even in the blazing heat!" Project Sekai is, in fact, a gacha rhythm game with three separate battle passes whose premise is that teenagers are magically transported to a realm where Hatsune Miku exists to just kinda vibe with her, and it's hilarious because Hatsune Miku is also a fictional personification of music software in their universe, so it's literally like if you said you had depression and then Hatsune Miku showed up. It's also incredibly well written, does a lot to smooth out the design flaws of other similar mobile rhythm games, a loving celebration of the Vocaloid culture that was huge in the late 2000s/early 2010s, and has amazing music and art. The highlight of all of this is one of the character groups, Nightcord - while all the groups are pretty well-written and likable, Nightcord is just a tour de force of how to handle depression and even suicidal imagery in an otherwise pretty lighthearted game. They're a group of musicians, amateur singers, and one artist who meet online and don't know each other in real life, and their whole arc is just the exploration of how they're all extremely sad and lonely and individuals. It's a very nuanced exploration of those kinds of emotions and 'bonding with other weirdos online.' They don't really offer each other platitudes, and when they do it often goes poorly. When one of the characters uses the 'magical empty void' element to just literally vanish from real life and exist in said empty void forever, one of the other characters advises against going after her, pointing out that she's hardly the only person in the world with problems, and that they don't know her well enough to offer anything but empty truisms. And when she's coerced into going after her anyway, they actually do offer empty truisms, and the situation's turned on the other characters by pointing out they all want to disappear too. You can read this as a metaphor for suicide or becoming terminally online, and either way, the story does a great job exploring that, yeah, they all kind of do want to disappear. Kanade wants to touch other people with her music and help them out of their funks, but she feels like that's a ridiculous proposition when she's not even over her own depression. Ena is an artist, but a fairly mediocre one who reacts sharply to criticism - she puffs up her own ego by posting selfies online and searching her own name on twitter, but her selfie account gets more attention than her art account, so she gets even more depressed. Mafuyu, the girl who ran away, has a mother who puts a ton of pressure on her to be perfect and hardworking, to the point she doesn't even know what her personality is like when she's on her own. And then there's Mizuki, who's a legitimately well-done exploration of gender identity. Mizuki is DMAB, we see them in a male uniform in flashbacks, but they prefer to wear feminine clothing. They were bullied for this, naturally, so they skip school a bunch and mostly go to night classes. The trick with Mizuki is, rather than being another put upon trans character, they're just... y'know, Mizuki. They don't really know what their gender identity is to begin with - there's later events where characters prod at them for a clear answer and they actually get legitimately mad, and characters backing off on that and just letting them be themself is seen as a good thing. Mizuki's mature and well-adjusted, actually outgoing socially and doing alright in school besides how much they skip, but they wish they could just live their life without having to fall into anyone else's preconceived notions. They dislike false sympathy or pretending at understanding as much as they dislike people just finding them strange. There's an early event where a character mentions Waiting for Godot around them and talks about how it doesn't have any real conclusion, it's just kind of aimless musing, and Mizuki is all 'yeah, I really like that.' It's a legitimately cool take on a character with gender identity issues, even if there's a tiny bit of weirdness in the margins. Mizuki'd be a cool, dynamic character even without the gender stuff, and the gender angle of their character isn't really labelled clearly for easy consumption, it's something they're figuring out too. It's treated the same as Mafuyu's identity issues. It's not only cool on its own, it fits a lot of the aesthetics of Vocaloid stuff - lord knows there were and still are plenty of Vocaloid songs about working out depression, gender identity, sexuality, etc. Mizuki not really knowing isn't treated as a crisis to solve, it's just something Mizuki's working at - the struggle is them finding a place they can be comfortable admitting they don't know. And the solution the game presents as correct is them just getting some space to figure it out as they go. Like I said, the other groups are good too, in the way you'd expect a story about friends making music together with Hatsune Miku to be good, but I was really, really impressed by Nightcord's stuff, Mizuki especially. The group starts to grow and trust each other more when they push past the urge to offer easy answers and just admit that all they can really do is lean on each other, talk to each other, and hope the work they're putting out helps other people, even a little. Plus, they have this line, so truly Sekai gets being online and having Gender in 2021.  And also there's another group named VIVID BAD SQUAD who want to host a concert called RAD WEEKEND 2 so really it has it all. And hey, a bunch of random guys who made popular vocaloid songs a decade ago are getting paychecks.   1: Blaze Union "For what I've lost, this is all I've gained. The uncertainty of the future, and a single grain of hope." im going to keep doing this bit until Blaze Union gets on the actual list. you cant stop me. i challenge any of you to try. Yggdra Union was a GBA strategy RPG by Sting, noted developers of Baroque, Baroque (Wii), Baroque (PS2), Baroque (Switch), Baroque Typing, and also Riviera: The Promised Land. It had a unique if slightly janky card based system and a fairly good plot, starting out as a seemingly bog-standard 'princess deposed from her kingdom by the evil empire, take back her country!' story before delving into the antagonists, their motivations, and the lengths Yggdra would go to restore her country, no matter the cost. It was later ported to the PSP, and then received a prequel, delving even deeper into those antagonists. Featuring three routes (only one of which is canon, natch), Blaze Union is a story of cycles of abuse, unjust power structures, anger, loss, and frustration. Gulcasa, our protagonist, gets murked in Yggdra Union, his entire grand campaign accomplishing the sum total of overthrowing the guys he doesn't like for about three months. This isn't a spoiler, it's something the game toys with and outright points out several times, with a wink and a nudge at the audience. Gulcasa isn't quite aware of it, but he knows what lies on the path he's walking. Even Yggdra's story in Yggdra Union doesn't end on much of a hopeful note, only the promise of more wars to come. Yggdra isn't a bad person, but she's single-minded and prefers incredibly direct solutions, with little room for nuance. With her at the wheel, she's going to build a new golden age, with the bodies of anyone who disagrees with how she gets there as the foundation. And all Gulcasa gets for his efforts is trauma, loss, and a historical footnote about his failed occupation. This is the space the game exists in, the inevitable end result. And it's not a tragedy. It loves these characters way too much for that. It's a story about their momentary bonds, the ways they rely on each other, and the question of if it's all worth it if it made them and others happy in the now, if feeling like you're fighting for something is worth as much as the ultimate result. Will the next generation be free from the cycles of war and abuse? Will the one after that? Who knows, but people will keep being people, and that means you'll always have someone to turn to. Despite the space it exists in, it's a bizarrely, almost morbidly hopeful game. The artist has also seemingly never seen a child before in their entire life.  And Eater is, uh, not, a nuanced exploration of gender identity issues, even if I still really like them. Endorph fucked around with this message at 10:00 on Dec 13, 2021 |
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Dec 13, 2021 09:49
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I only played 4 new games I would consider good, I consumed too many comfort games (that I already played and rated last year and older) and Trash I Thought Would Be Good. 5. Cyberpunk 2077 My game of the year 2020, I played another 50 hours or so this year and still loved it like last time. Would have been higher with DLC or an expansion, maybe next year. 4. Gloomhaven Very tightly designed turnbased tactics game with a bare bones rpg overworld. Massive amounts of gaming, still playing it. One biggest draw for me: it's its own thing, no IP tie in or remake or stuff. 3. Forza Horizon 5 Perfect balance between an arcade and sim racer, georgeous graphics, buggy multiplayer, great music selections. But came out too late in the year to make GOTY and won't be either next year too. 2. Hitman 3 Same great formula since 2016, always top ten. Would be GOTY if it had more levels, the formula gets shaken up with gimmicks that actually reduce replayability for me. This version would have been ripe for mod support, but alas everything is online only. 1. Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous Even with lots of bugs and a boring strategy part, this RPG delivers exactly what I want from a game. Great NPCs, power fantasies, fan service, speculative fiction, insanely complex character system, vastly different playthroughs (6+) and some very hard challenges, extensive mod support. Giving you the choice to switch on the fly from turn-based to real-time is genius. Goa Tse-tung fucked around with this message at 09:27 on Dec 15, 2021 |
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Dec 13, 2021 09:58
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10) Hylics I don’t really know what to say about Hylics. It’s an rpg in the vein of like…Earthbound I guess, but it’s less about that and more about just the art. I love the way this game looks and feels and I highly recommend it to people but explaining why feels impossible. You either get it or you don’t. I need to play the second one soon. 9) The Good Life  I kickstarted this game like 5 years ago and I was not disappointed. A bizarre immersive sim set in rural England where you can turn into a dog or a cat and just hang out with SWERY’s weird characters? Yes please. If you liked any of SWERY’s previous stuff you’ll like this, if you didn’t you won’t. If you’ve never played anything designed by him in the past I recommend giving it a shot and keep an open mind. His games are that beautiful blend of ambitious and broken jank. I love it, but I understand why some people are put off by it. 8) Halo Infinite (multiplayer) https://twitter.com/ponybop/status/1461056838313689097?s=20 Honestly I’m not going to be buying the campaign until they add co-op to it. My wife and I are both big into Halo and the idea of switching off on death in Halo just feels weird to me, needs to be co-op. Anyway, I put 60 hours into the mp beta in the first 2 weeks of it being released and dragged all my friends into installing it and playing it with me. The progression system for the battle pass is poo poo (although their most recent update did improve it a bit) but the gameplay itself is just stellar. I tend to play a 5 hour session almost every night and I still don’t feel bored of it. Just needs the progression system fixed, more maps, and better playlist selection. I love oddball and ctf as much as the next spartan but sometimes a girl just wants to play slayer for 3 hours straight. 7) Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes  Welcome to the Suda51 section of Xinder’s GOTY list. TSA is a return to Suda’s classic text-based adventure game style with a twin-stick beat-em-up layered over the top of it to keep the masses entertained. I’d actually say playing this game was my awakening to just what an amazing write Suda is. Like sure I’d played Killer7 and the previous NMH games before, but I didn’t really get it until I played TSA. It feels literary in a sense, drenched in theme and subtext about the idea of nostalgia, while also being another goofy game about a funny assassin man who murders people with a lightsaber. Also if you skip this before going into NMH3 you deserve all the confusion you get. These two games are part of a set. 6) No More Heroes 3  God I love No More Heroes 3. This is like…the ideal video game in my head. It just hits everything I want from a video game and then gives me more on top of it. That it isn’t even in my top 5 just shows how brain-damaged I am. I’d say this is the first time Grasshopper has actually cracked a really fun gameplay where I’ve actually wanted to keep playing and do fights not for any reward but just because the combat feels really fun. I also managed to go through all of Suda’s classic games over the summer before it released so I was primed for everything this game wanted to give me. My brain just stewed in this really pleasant feeling the whole time I was playing it. If this was Suda’s last game, I’d be fine with that. It’s the perfect send-off. That said, I’m really happy to hear he’s already working on more games (including a collab with SWERY). 5) The Silver Case  The Silver Case is best looked at as a sort of cipher for understanding Suda51’s writing. You can enjoy his later games like Killer7 and No More Heroes on face value and they’re really good like that, but revisiting them after playing The Silver Case is like seeing them through newly opened eyes. Themes and connections exist that I just hadn’t considered at all. Honestly, I think playing through this game and it’s sequel this summer have affected the way I view video games (and art in general) to a greater effect than anything else in a very long time. 4) The 25th Ward: The Silver Case  Speaking of the sequel, here it is. This game will slide right over you without meaning anything if you try to play it without going through The Silver Case first. It’s basically the same thing as The Silver Case but more in every regard. It does an amazing job of building off the previous game(s) and reaching new highs. Special shout out to Masashi Ooka, the writer of the Placebo storyline, for giving me a surprisingly excellent representation of a trans woman (in the sense that her struggles feel relateable and her solutions to the problems feel real). 3) Psycholonials  Yes, the new visual novel from the person who inflicted Homestuck on the world. I’ll admit I was really into Homestuck back at the start of the last decade (and then fell off on it hard) so I definitely have a starting point here. But honestly I think Psycholonials works really well, maybe even better, if you don’t know anything about Homestuck. It’s just a game about two mentally ill and online-poisoned girls who don’t know how to de-escalate constantly making a situation worse until it spirals so far out of control that they can never go back to how things were before. Also its very political and if you’re not at least a little bit of a leftist you probably won’t have a good time with it. 2) Fallow  It’s hard to write a review of a game that affected me so deeply. I'll start by mentioning that I've followed Rook for a few years now so I knew I'd enjoy this game, but I was unprepared for how deeply it impacted me. In just a few short hours, Fallow managed to touch on a great many of my own feelings and insecurities about things that I often cannot talk about, not out of fear but because there simply aren't words to describe them. It did this in a way that felt totally genuine. Fallow touched me in a way I would say is underneath words. The game also has Rook's wonderful art and music so obviously all of that is fantastic. I'd recommend everyone I know to play Fallow, but I don't think I can really talk about it any deeper than I have here. I can't really articulate what makes this game so good. You just sort of have to go through it yourself. 1) Shogi  Got a shogi set as an xmas gift last year and proceeded to spend more time playing this funny little game than I have any video game I played. I’m still pretty bad at it, but I have a ton of fun finding a hole in an opponent’s defense and levering it open with intense pressure. Games like shogi and chess just sort of never get old, there’s always a new strategy to try and it just feels good to sit across from each other and move the little pieces around the board. I love shogi. Honorable Mentions: Flower Sun & Rain, Re:Kinder, Rule of Rose, Sine Mora, American McGee's Alice
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Dec 13, 2021 10:05
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It's hard to come up with a list for 2021, the Year of No Games, but I'll give it a shot. Dishonorable Mention Twelve Minutes - In a crowded field, Twelve Minutes easily claimed the title of Worst Timeloop Game of the Year. A game that wasted a great setup, good mechanics and pretty solid execution on just an abysmally bad story. Honorable Mentions Ultimate Admiral: Age of Sail - A solid RTS from the Ultimate General developers focused on naval and some land-based combat in the American Revolution and Napoleonic Wars era, with a campaign culminating at Trafalgar. Does what it does well, worth a look if you're into that kind of RTS. DCS World  My most-played game of 2021, maybe because there was nothing else to play. I played this before it was even DCS World, back when DCS: Black Shark came out, and again when DCS: A-10 came out, but was never able to get as deep into them as I'd hoped. I picked up the F/A-18 this year on a sale and ended up really getting hooked on it (and then several other planes). It's crazy expensive and has all sorts of issues and there are just a lot of reasons not to recommend it, but if you're into modern military flight sims there's just nothing Far Cry 6 - It's another Far Cry. I think it's probably the best of the numbered ones, but like the others it doesn't do nearly as much with its setting or story as it could. Fun enough to play, but it's nothing at all unexpected or original and Mass Effect 1 Remaster - A solid update of the original. Even with the updates it's still pretty dated--the AI's pretty much nonexistent, it reuses levels and assets all over the place, there are a lot of busywork kind of sidequests, etc.--but it's still one of the foundational modern RPGs and does a whole lot of things right. I hadn't played the original since it first came out, and it was a lot of fun to play again. Top Ten 10. Lake  It's a slice of life game about a middle aged lady with a stressful job in the big city returning to her small-town home to fill in as a postal worker for her father while her parents are on vacation. It's exactly the kind of Hallmark movie story you'd expect it to be, but it stands out to me because that kind of story is something that games just don't really do--and I don't understand why not. One of the unique powers of games is that ability to live another life, and yet games seem to always decide that that other life must be something extraordinary--something involving lots of violence or superpowers or something somehow fantastic--and rarely anything where you play a pretty regular person facing pretty regular challenges. These kinds of stories are commonplace in novels and television and movies, but games, despite that unique ability to really put you in another person's shoes and force you to make the hard choices they're facing, never seem to use that ability to examine choices that common people actually face. Games need more of this kind of thing. Also, it's an extremely chill game. 9. Wildermyth  A fun game with a pretty interesting take on RPG storytelling, where random events can permanently alter your characters. Solid mechanics and design, fun writing, good all around, but lost my interest a bit once I started seeing repeated events. 8. Overboard!  Neat puzzle game where you try to get away with murder. It has a fantastic style, great dialogue and all. A small game, but a good one. 7. The Forgotten City  The second-best timeloop game of the year. I never played the original Skyrim mod and had no idea what was getting into. The game starts off incredibly strong, building a fantastic sense of mystery, but then slowly loses a few steps as you begin to unravel everything--like every other timeloop game, it starts getting a little tedious as you get late in the game and have to continually redo things. Despite that, the game has some great ideas and scenes, like discovering that the city is built on the ruins of an earlier city that's built on the ruins of an earlier city that's built on the ruins of an even earlier city. Great to see an indie game take an ambitious and crazy kind of story like that and do such a good job telling it. 6. Mass Effect 2 Remaster 5. Mass Effect 3 Remaster  Good enough remasters of the originals, though it would've been nice to see more improvements to both 2 and 3 (for example, completely replacing the endings in both with something better). I had also never played the DLC for either game, and some of those (Leviathan and Citadel especially) really were great additions to the games. After having not played the games since their original release, this was a great way to re-experience them. I'm having a hard time ranking 2 and 3 against each other--they both do a lot right and a handful of things wrong, and on balance I think they're pretty close--but I always thought that 3 got judged a bit unfairly just because of the ending, so 3 gets the higher vote from me this time. After all, 2's ending is just as bad. And, of course, Dragon Age was always the better series anyway. 4. 13 Sentinels  I started this after seeing all of the mentions in the GOTY thread last year and finished it this year. It's a great pastiche of sci fi stories, and told in a way where just about every 10 minutes there's some other ridiculous twist you didn't see coming, while still managing to be coherent and comprehensible the whole way through. The action gameplay didn't seem necessary though, and it has a bit of cringey anime stuff that it could've done without. Still a lot of fun. 3. Psychonauts 2  I had no faith that Double Fine would pull this off, but they nailed it. Great characters, great levels, great story. I wasn't a huge fan of the combat, especially when there were just waves of trivial enemies, but that's a relatively minor complaint. Overall, a perfect follow-up to the original, an amazing feat a decade and a half later. 2. The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles  A really fantastic addition to the series (even if it was a remaster, I never played the earlier translations). The jury setup and the variation in the way cases were investigated were great twists on the usual flow of cases in the series, the characters are great, and with few exceptions the cases were excellent. This also gets my nomination for Witchiest Witch of the Year, in Madame Tusspells. 1. Deathloop  This is also my nomination for Best Timeloop Game of the Year. Look, immersive sims are the best kinds of games, and no one does them better than Arkane. The level design and worldbuilding in this are as incredible as they always are in Arkane games. The artistic style is just wonderful (and makes me want another NOLF even more). The gameplay, both in mobility and in combat, is perfect, and finally unburdened by the morality choices that accompanied combat in Dishonored, letting you use all the abilities without regret. My only major complaint is that the invasions were actually detrimental to the game and that their inclusion badly missed the mark of what makes e.g. Dark Souls invasions work so well. Invasions are a relatively small part of the game, though, and the strength of everything else more than makes up for that issue. This is also my nomination for Best Timeloop Game of the Year. Extortionist fucked around with this message at 08:50 on Dec 14, 2021 |
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Dec 13, 2021 11:38
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Point of Clarification: The Mass Effect Remasters will be counted as individual games, not as a whole collection
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Dec 13, 2021 12:05
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6. Jackbox Party Packs I got these for pretty cheap and they allowed me and friends to play games of varying quality together during a lockdown so what the heck, they get a place on the list. 5. Wizardry 8 I double checked to make sure I'd played this one this year, and was delighted to find out I had so I can give a nod to probs my favourite game of all time that I first played about 20 years ago and that I am still not sick of despite having a total of 389 hours listed on Steam, which doesn't take into account the high likelihood that I have many an offline hour, plus played it off Steam years ago. 4. Little Big Adventure & Little Big Adventure 2 I'm including these as one game because what the hell, no one else is gonna vote for them anyway. Decided to replay these when I heard the best and most exciting gaming news of the year which is that LBA3 is being made. Please to report that these still hold up, and also that playing them quickly one after the other pointed out to me that there had been a number of improvements made between 1 and 2, which made me semi confident that the devs are not wedded to 20 year old design decisions. I think I maybe prefer the first one because there is just slightly more nostalgia to it for me, but they're both pretty great. 3. Guardians of the Galaxy The combat was kind of OK but the plot was absurdly satisfying to follow, and the exploration side of things was pretty fun too. If it gets a sequel I will play it just so I can find out what happens to our heroes next. 2. Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous I played 277 hours of this, including probably 10 hours or so within the first day of owning it, so you'd think I'd have this higher, but even though I really have enjoyed it, I spent a lot of time restarting because one of the bugs screwed me over. So many bugs, and there's still heaps and every time they patch it they introduce some new ones. Also, I eventually disabled the crusade mode entirely because it's just terrible. Still tho, 277 hours. EDIT: Since I posted this list initially that number has topped 300 hours and I am just liking it more and more so it's number 2 now but I refuse to give it the number one spot because there are some annoying design decisions. 1. Monster Train Last year this was my runner up for game of the year after Hades, but whereas I've kinda finished with Hades, I've gone ahead and purchased this again on the Switch, played it several hours there, and also gotten my hours on PC up so that it has now toppled Wizardry 8 from the throne of my most played game. I'm not done, either, because it is just so fun putting together a bonkers unbalanced run and wrecking everyone. (Or dying over and over again, but runs only last like 30 minutes tops so who cares.) Chairchucker fucked around with this message at 01:43 on Dec 30, 2021 |
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Dec 13, 2021 12:29
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lmao great op. bookmarked and 5'd
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Dec 13, 2021 14:08
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Rarity posted:Point of Clarification: What about Great Ace Attorney, since the collection is their first western release?
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Dec 13, 2021 14:13
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Waffleman_ posted:What about Great Ace Attorney, since the collection is their first western release? They should be counted together since they also function as one complete story.
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Dec 13, 2021 14:23
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Regy Rusty posted:They should be counted together since they also function as one complete story. If people list GAA2 as their number 1 and GAA1 as their number 5 or whatever then they should split them up, but I think everyone who will list them will list them as one entry.
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Dec 13, 2021 14:49
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Mass Effect 1-3 also tell a single complete story... the story of Shepard, alien fucker
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Dec 13, 2021 14:54
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Arrrthritis posted:If people list GAA2 as their number 1 and GAA1 as their number 5 or whatever then they should split them up, but I think everyone who will list them will list them as one entry. Yeah I'm happy to go with the GAACs being listed as one unless there's a strong  to the contrary
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Dec 13, 2021 15:01
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Hmm, the Mass Effect Legendary Edition counting as three separate games instead of one complicates things a bit for me. To my mind they should count as one, since it's not like you can purchase the individual games remastered, and they share a launch screen.
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Dec 13, 2021 16:25
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I played a ton of games this year but there are only a few I feel strongly enough about that they're GotY material for me. 1: Unsighted The gameplay is pretty similar to Death's Door (also quite good but I only have space for one of these on my list), which I think got a lot more buzz, but it uses time limits in an interesting way that I'd rather not spoil. You learn about it in the first half hour but I found the reveal to be a really cool moment. Anyway it completely changed up the way I approached the game compared to how I would typically play a game like this. You can turn off the time limit if you really want but I'd strongly suggest not doing that at least on your first playthrough. That said, it's still a great game without the gimmick, lots of cool bosses and abilities and secrets. 2: Binding of Isaac: Repentance An absurdly huge content drop + visual update for Binding of Isaac. I still think Binding of Isaac is the best roguelite ever made so a shitload of new content is pretty cool. Despite some no fun allowed balance decisions and a few heinously lovely characters (Tainted Lazarus...) the good in the update massively outweighs the bad. Out of all the games I played this year this is the one I spent the most time with. Ultimately it's More Isaac so if you didn't like it before this won't change your mind, but if you did it's pretty amazing. 3. Omori This came out on like 12/20/20 or something so it was doomed to never get any GotY hype, but I played it this year so yeah. It's basically Earthbound + Yume Nikki. I know you're probably rolling your eyes now like you saw the phrase "Souls inspired" in a kickstarter pitch, but seriously if you like those games you'll probably like this, it's real good. I don't want to talk too much about it as it's best experienced going in blind. 4. Ender Lilies Best metroidvania of the year, at least if we're sticking to sidescrolling platformers (see no. 1 otherwise). Not a whole lot to say here. Good gameplay, good level design, and I think it nails the art and story where I often find these games lacking. It's not quite Hollow Knight tier, but what is. 5. Geneforge: Mutagen Remake of a classic CRPG, it's still good, how about that. Games That Were Pretty Good: Monster Hunter Rise, SMTV, Ace Attorney: Blighty, Psychonauts 2, Tales of Arise, Tails of Iron, Conquest of Elyisum 5, Last Epoch.
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Dec 13, 2021 17:27
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Making a more full write-up for my top ten shortly but here's my top 2021 list among games that I rated at least a 3.5 out of 5.0. If you’re ranking this by the sheer volume of amazing games played, this is arguably the best year I’ve ever had playing games. My GOTY of last year’s list, Super Mario Galaxy, would likely place tenth on my 2021 list. Hades was my second best game of 2020 and would be…fifteenth here? Just a sheer wave of fantastic games to appreciate. 39. Timespinner – 3.5 38. Mario Kart DS – 3.5 37. Eastward – 3.5 36. Sable – 3.5 35. Pokemon Brilliant Diamond - 3.5 34. SLUDGE LIFE – 3.5 33. If on a Winter's Night, Four Travelers - 3.5 32. Death’s Door – 3.5 31. Bugsnax – 3.5 30. ULTRAKILL – 3.5 29. New Pokémon Snap – 3.5 28. Everhood – 3.5 27. WarioWare: Get It Together! – 3.5 26. Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword – 3.5 Nowhere near as bad as I feared, this was an unequivocally better experience than Wind Waker. SS is great experience if you're the type of Zelda player to zip through the story, these dungeons are fun!, and less fulfilling if you’re the type to walk off the beaten path for side quests. You really get the sense of BOTW’s open world philosophy as a pendulum swinging away from Skyward Sword’s more linear form. 25. Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne – 4.0 Not a bad game at all but clearly surpassed by SMT IV, IV:A, and V. I can't imagine playing this game without following a guide, never a great sign when recommending a game. 24. Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights – 4.0 23. Resident Evil 3 – 4.0 22. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 – 4.0 I spent an incredible amount of time in high school playing THPS2 on the PC (look up the keyboard bindings for a laugh, one of the most hand-cramping controller mappings you'll ever see) and, although this is the ideal next-gen port of THPS, feel a bit tired of the original two-minute formula. This game should likely place higher for other players, given my oversaturated experience. 21. Umurangi Generation with Umurangi Generation Macro – 4.0 The superior version of the movie "Don't Look Up" is the political attempt at Pokemon Snap. 20. Aviary Attorney – 4.0 19. Kid A Mnesia Exhibition – 4.0: Wonderful little 1-2 hour walking simulator around Radiohead's music and art styles, situated in a virtual museum. This isn't a disposable experience, the game did justice to the source material. 18. The Forgotten City – 4.0: Anyone who's looking for a new Outer Wilds experience should look no further, this is the closest approximation we've found so far. A little jankier and inventory-based than Outer Wild's information-based purity, but still prioritizes the best ideas of timeloop gameplay. 17. Cruelty Squad – 4.0: The most CSPAM day crew game is here, Rainbow Six-esq levels to hunt down bizarre targets in bizarre levels made by someone who learned that Freddy Kruger’s sweater had red/green stripes because of how painful the color combination is to look at. It works: This is likely the most complete answer to how a game's environment and gameplay supports an intended mood...this time for overwhelming dread underneath a garish bright superficial coat of paint. I'm not the biggest fan of Cruelty Squad's difficulty spikes, unintuitive progression, and motivation to replay levels over and over. LIke, the stock market system is a funny idea but you really can't call it fun. Cruelty Squad also harkens back to one of my most nostalgic memories of gaming, when Half-Life mods dominated and people built enormous and deep maps that captured a wide swath of gaming experiences. It didn’t matter that the graphics were rudimentary, the average player could make a singularly-focused game from scratch with a far lower barrier to entry. I’ll play a Cruelty Squad level and find a larger environment than expected, and more than any game I’ve played in years, recall memories of opening up Hammer or UnrealEd and building bizarre levels with hidden rooms everywhere. I should give a quick shoutout to The Beginner’s Guide which captures this same memory in a great walking simulator. Also, as obvious as the answer feels like to this forum's members, I wonder how many people playing Cruelty Squad would consider the game political? 16. The Procession to Calvary – 4.0: This may be lost in the overall list of game reviews but this is one of very, very few games to actually make me laugh out loud. Not breath slightly heavier through my nose or quietly think “that is funny” and move on, but actually laugh and stop playing. How many games describe themselves as funny and how many actually are? 15. NEO: The World Ends With You – 4.0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iv_yrqIi-M0 Just like the original TWEWY, the battle system breaks JRPG conventions by being fun enough to purposefully run into random encounters and overlevel significantly. Although the overarching story resonates well with players of the original game, the inter-day stories and can really drag on and get tiresome (Scramble Slams, ughhh). 14. Chicory: A Colorful Tale – 4.0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n6m422t7H0 I have one "Before You Play" recommendation for this excellent 2D Zelda-like, and that is to play with a mouse/keyboard rather than a controller. The speed of the brush with a mouse compared to your right analogue stick is worlds apart, you will have far more fun and effectiveness in puzzles/combat. I really appreciate the trend of games that de-emphasize combat in favor of exploration and puzzle design, sometimes I just need a chill experience that supports how you want to play, no matter how lackadaisical or inefficient you may feel at the moment. 13. Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury – 4.0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGj-D890CbI This one’s unfair. 3D World is a solid 4/5 Mario game that anyone would be happy to play but would be forgotten afterwards. Bowser’s Fury on the other hand, is a fantastic refinement of the SM64 approach to tiny open-world levels and deserves to be in the same rarefied air as Galaxy and Odyssey despite it's short game length. I'm caught between wanting a full game of the same gameplay/environment or acknowledging that the short length kept the experience as amazing as it could go. A minor level pack would've been enough as an add-on for the 3D World Switch port, and they went ahead and added what's arguably the best Mario game yet (not my favorite Mario, just that you wouldn't flinch at the opinion). 12. Persona 5 Strikers – 4.0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3cQWze0YRo It’s funny that people consider Persona's dialogue scenes fluff when it's exactly why I treasure the series so much. It's not filler, it's the reward! Strikers keeps the story momentum going by doing the smartest thing it could: cramming all the characters into a single van for a road trip. The bosses/dungeons aren't as quality as Persona 5's, in the sense that Kamoshida and his dungeon are better antagonists than anything in Strikers, but the new dungeons smartly give more development to your team and remind you that their lives are more than just the Phantom Thieves. The combat is the most frustrating part, not only for throwing players a dozen different systems to track simultaneously but for spongy bosses that take far too long to kill. I recommend turning the difficulty way down and enjoying the story first, the selling point of Persona to begin with. 11. OMORI – 4.5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzgYj_qCHLg OMORI’s dream world is the closest a game has reached to capturing Earthbound/Mother 3’s unique vibe. The game nails it in ways so many other games fail when trying: the wild characters and their weird desires, the vibrant adventures with your friends, and the silly side quests that build the world in bizarre fashion. You can tell OMORI was born as a devoted passion project and those games are the most rewarding to experience, warts and all. I'm more negative about the final chapters and real world scenes than most players, in a way that I'd love to drag through for a breathless fifteen minutes, but won't spoil the plot here and acknowledge that most players liked these aspects. 10. Yakuza: Like a Dragon – 4.5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ouq00ZJc7Q The Yakuza series was always a strange beasts of obvious-but-bizarre influences, especially Grand Theft Auto and Dragon Quest, so it's a fun moment of clarity that a step towards the Dragon Quest end of things created the most entertaining Yakuza game yet. 9. The Great Ace Attorney – 4.5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNNnDTaVO7E I've played every Ace Attorney mainline game and these are likely my favorite two entries so far. Not necessarily the absolute best cases, but they are consistently solid throughout. The sequel is a little better than the first game, but it really is a consistent and stellar level of quality between both. However, the problems that plague past titles around matching the game's logic and your personal logic are still here. Oh, and Herlock Sholmes is the greatest character in Ace Attorney history. It’s striking how the first GAA title tries to distance itself from the “normal” case setup. The first case you are accused of murder and your friend acts as the lawyer, the second case never takes place in a court, and the third case features no investigation and a guilty defendant. It’s surprising how few cases across the first game take the familiar investigate-court-investigate-court route from beginning to end without throwing a structural twist into the mix. It's like the development team was bored with the past and wanted to try new things, constantly. I wish the writers would trust themselves to write even more unique characters, since so many characters appear in two or more cases across both games while the one-off characters are incredibly memorable. Vilen Borshevik’s understated appearance on the 1-5 jury may be the best moment across both games. 8. Metroid Prime (Primehack) – 4.5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbbUv1hz6mE The game feels like the "right" way to bring Metroid into 3D, an translation of Super Metroid’s world with fairly easy moment-to-moment gameplay but taking advantage of 3D to emphasize the exploration and immersion. That's fantastic for me since I am an explorer junky: scanning things, all the time, to discover the world as much as I want to explore the map. It's one of the game designs I wish the 2D Metroid titles integrated more often. Even though I have a copy of the Prime Trilogy for the Wii, the mouselook/resolution benefits of Primehack are so obvious and rewarding that it's a clear first-choice for players. The downside is that the first Prime is clearly an early attempt at 3D metroidvanias, with some annoying backtracking/artifact-hunting in a genre that prides itself on intuitive map exploration. 7. Shin Megami Tensei V - 4.5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6B8FmThqiqc It's not that the previous SMT games are not worth playing anymore, just that mainline SMT games seem to only get better and better with SMTV as the greatest version of the series thus far. A massive step up in environments and graphics does a lot to place your character in the thick of the apocalypse, along with a refinement of the classic turn-based system. 6. Hitman 3 – 4.5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13OBTgoE1yU I fully expected this to be my GOTY when it came out at the start of this year and, for most years, it would be. It’s the best Hitman title yet but I can’t help but feel fatigued of the gameplay loop. After three titles, the same micro-challenges to distract guards or enter a fortified building has finally gotten repetitive. Not stale enough to significantly hinder my enjoyment and there’s plenty of unique love across these levels, some of the best levels the team's ever built, but I’m okay closing the Hitman book for now with arguably the best video game trilogy of all time. 5. Deltarune Chapter 2 – 4.5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72tHaw7Hxgs I don’t think Toby Fox will ever top Undertale’s cultural impact and novelty but the latest Deltarune chapter is the best game he’s ever made. The tone and direction of the humor is virtually identical to his past games, and I don't understand how it only gets better and hasn't gotten repetitive yet. As a giant fan of Deltarune's current output, the only real downsides are the future scope of the total game: Can this story keep up for another five chapters? Are there enough new wells of humor to remain fresh? Will we finally find a genocide route that we get bored by or feels like a retreaded idea? Are we going to wait too long for the next chapter? The good news is, the answer is "not yet at all" for Chapter 2. 4. Deathloop – 4.5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8q5d7AUKbY Arkane’s main output can do no wrong. Deathloop rightfully lives up to the pedigree of Dishonored and Prey with a rogue-inspired gameplay loop to permit running-and-gunning. I still had a transition period of sneaking around every corner and systematically taking down guards silently but, once I let myself use all the tools available instead of hoarding, had the best FPS experience in a very long time. 3. Psychonauts 2 – 4.5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxJzlRDetBc Tim Schafer is still a man who’s life goal is a big-budget animated Netflix comedy miniseries but happens to give his attention over to video games in the meantime. This is the pinnacle of Double Fine's output across all fields they specialize: in humor, in art design, and in characters. The combat is bland and the puzzle-solving can be trial-and-error, but the rest of the experience is so stellar, it more than makes up for it's minor downsides. 2. Metroid Dread – 4.5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UA0v3EcxDbo I was a fan of Samus Returns despite the mixed reaction and Dread feels like the right amount of refinement to Mercury Steam's initial attempt. This is as tense and action-oriented as Metroid's ever been, which is a welcome change from the admittedly hamstrung shooting gameplay of past titles. Debate if the map is too linear, I would agree since Super Metroid remains the standard, but the fighting, movement, and bosses have never been better. There’s more story here than usual but intelligently shows-not-tells (incredible it took this long to see Samus act as a confident fighter) except for one unfortunate time-for-exposition cutscene. Dread marks the end of the threadbare Metroid 2D overarching story but I can't imagine Nintendo wouldn't approve a follow-up, and I'll be there to see if the sequel finally adds Prime's best features. 1. 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim - 5.0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oq9utTsAMg 13 Sentinels is a celebration of plot twists. 100+ scenes and every single one throws a twist at you that energizes how you comprehend the game’s world. So many AAA games with massive budgets and staff end up with cutscenes that are too long, with weak characters, on a story beat I just want to end (Far Cry, Assassin's Creed, and Fallout 4 came to mind quick). It’s refreshing to see a game like 13 Sentinels throw every bizarre sci-fi plot together and actually have the chops to bring it all together and keep the story propelled. Good writing isn't just prose, it's the ability to juggle a wide swarth of characters and plot twists without losing readers. It also doesn’t hurt to have a gorgeous eternal-sunset painterly art style and an incredible soundtrack. The best visual novel of all time, if you happen to classify it as so, and the most successful "lots of individual stories with partial perspectives, piece together the truth yourself" hyperlink media in recent years. DMCrimson fucked around with this message at 23:32 on Jan 4, 2022 |
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Dec 13, 2021 18:11
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DMCrimson posted:1. 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim - 4.5  It begins....the runback!
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Dec 13, 2021 18:32
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Waffleman_ posted:
I bought 13 Sentinels after seeing where it placed on last year's GOTY thread. No regrets!
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Dec 13, 2021 18:34
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every 13 Sentinels list is a good list  The Switch voter block is going to push it even higher next year
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Dec 13, 2021 18:40
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Less than 24 hours and we already have over 100 unique games listed!
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Dec 13, 2021 18:50
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Rarity posted:Less than 24 hours and we already have over 100 unique games listed! this was such a good year for games haha
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Dec 13, 2021 18:56
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Rarity posted:Less than 24 hours and we already have over 100 unique games listed! I drafted a write-up of my top games list in preparation for this thread being opened, I look forward to it every year!
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Dec 13, 2021 18:58
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I think it's rad that there's so much variety in what people are posting and that nobody feels confined to making a top 10 or whatever since what matters more than sticking to a strict format is talking about whatever games you thought were cool. Sometimes that's more, and sometimes it's less, and sometimes it's an older game that didn't come out this year, and that's cool too.
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Dec 13, 2021 19:46
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6. Cloudpunk I technically played this at the tail end of 2020, after composing my entry for that year’s GOTY thread, but I’m sneaking it in here mostly because it’s aesthetic as gently caress. It’s an endless neon wonderland where fog dances and tiny sparks flitter in the distance as you soar over the nightlit plazas and past, under, and through the Cyclopean skyscrapers of a decrepit cyberpunk metropolis. The game layered over this is frankly thin- a series of endless fetch quests and trips across town to make space for radio exchanges with largely unseen characters- but that’s fine because the driving/flying experience is all I want and all I need. If I used drugs while gaming this would definitely be the game I used them with. Now release the expansion on Playstation already. 5. Resident Evil: Village  Resident Evil Village is ultimately unpretentious despite itself, just a hoot of an action game and a great example of how the kind of modern “horror” that’s just a shooter with the lights turned off and gross-looking enemies can work. It’s not deep, it’s not cerebral, it’s not impactful, it’s just the high-budget thrill and chill ride it always should have been. There are times when it reaches beyond this, and sometimes it succeeds (the dollhouse) and sometimes it doesn’t (the factory) but the foundation is solid and carries it through. (It was hard to find a good gif that wasn’t of the big lady) 4. Disco Elysium: The Final Cut  I knew how popular this game was just by existing in the games forum for a year, but I was finally sold on it by the tagline on its steam listing: “Become a hero or an absolute disaster of a human being”. Naturally my playthrough ended up being a bit of both, which I suspect is common. There’s already been more than enough written about this game so I can’t possibly add to it except to acknowledge how rare a game with this level of intellectual depth and responsiveness to choice in its writing is, or this level of freedom to go around telling people you’re a communist. 3. Psychonauts 2  The original Psychonauts was a weird little gem, a masterpiece of storytelling and a not-so-masterpiece of gameplay that spun one exceedingly fertile kernel idea (a summer camp for kids with psychic powers!) into bushel upon bushel of high-concept humor and heart and memorable levels that weren’t always as fun to actually play as they were to ponder. The sequel, whose existence is no small miracle, maintains both traditions by keeping the then old-school, now positively ancient platforming and collecting systems but embedding them in a whole new set of worlds based on a more modern and enlightened understanding of mental health and its portrayal in media. The hardest part of growing up is learning that the adults around you are flawed and this game is a great dive into that concept while also being funny as hell most of the time. 2. Returnal  I didn’t expect Returnal to be so good; the previous Housemarque games were fun but I was never able to keep up with them skill-wise. But when they did a fully 3D third person action game, I meshed with it better and saw it through to the end, such as it is. Returnal’s story is obtuse to the point of being deliberately opaque, an example of the hostility that permeates every aspect of its world. As a character you’re an astronaut trapped on a planet where everything is either dead or trying to make you that way, dying over and over and finding evidence of the toll it takes (took? will take?) on your psyche. As a player, you’re assaulted perceptually by the brilliantly executed visuals and audio, and intellectually by confusing and difficult mechanics and frequent losses of progress and time. This is one of those games that hates you to a degree that winning feels like you actually defeated it. All that and it’s still not the best roguelike I played this year. 1. Hades  I was so sure the new Supergiant game would be a home run that I’ve been sitting outside their office with a baseball glove since 2019, and it didn’t disappoint. They’ve finally mastered the isometric action they made two attempts at before, by adding the randomness and paced building of roguelikes and a huge web of interlocking options to explore. And they also mastered the interactive storytelling mechanisms they first tried in Pyre, by adding a much larger cast with their own stories and agendas and relationships. The tick-tock between those two modes is the core of the game’s appeal- dying in the world advances the story back home, and by the time you’ve talked to everyone you feel like you could go for another try. Thematically, it was also very appropriate to play in 2021. It’s a game about making the most of your situation at all times, and not falling into despair when the prospect of changing the system you’re trapped in seems entirely out of reach. It’s about forming connections and strengthening each other and teasing apart ancient feuds even when the forces that produced them are still there. It’s about the interplay between love and respect and responsibility. It’s about going on when you realize that your original dream is unattainable, because you’ll still end up somewhere that’s better than where you were before. Honorable mention: Hog Crankers  The best puzzle game I’ve played all year about cooking barbecue and definitely nothing else. And I’m not just saying that because I made it haveblue fucked around with this message at 22:27 on Dec 13, 2021 |
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Dec 13, 2021 19:52
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haveblue posted:Honorable mention: Hog Crankers Put it on Android and I'll buy it 
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Dec 13, 2021 21:08
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I played a lot of decent games this year but barely any that really captured me. The only one that I can say absolutely surprised me was: 1. Returnal Returnal's sound design is on another level compared to the rest of video gamedom. It's fun to play, the guns and movement are good, it looks great. The story is intriguing and then (mild spoiler) completely fails to stick the landing but that's OK. Selene is a good character. People rave about Hades, and I enjoyed that like all of Supergiant's other games, but imo Returnal is far and away the best of roguelikes. A couple of others that hit me at just the right time: 2. Art of Rally I had to take an extended, month-long trip in August to visit family and mostly stayed with inlaws. I randomly downloaded Art of Rally from gamepass on my laptop and it was the perfect chill-but-still-requiring-attention game. It's solely responsible for a newfound interest in rally games, though none quite hit the same note as AoR. 3. Desperados III Also randomly saw this on gamepass... looked at the screenshots and thought: that looks like Shadow Tactics! And it was-- Shadow Tactics transported to the West. I love this style of game. Weird that something that requires you to constantly save and reload is so satisfying. It was the game that taught me how to half-listen on work meetings while playing video games. Lastly, (edit: ADDING numbering), but 2021 also proved that (5)Mass Effect 1, (4) Mass Effect 2, and Diablo 2 are still excellent games, even when no longer new. ME3 is still bad, but was interesting to revisit dispassionately. I wonder if anyone will ever make a game in either genre as good as those ever again. ultrachrist fucked around with this message at 22:26 on Dec 15, 2021 |
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Dec 13, 2021 22:20
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2021 for me felt a lot better than 2020 did. Though I didn't spend too much time playing things that were absolutely brand new, I did engage with many things that I had always wanted to get to, but never did. And that gave this year an overall pleasant feeling as I conquered challenges old and new and broadened my horizons further beyond the scope of Nintendo. Let's talk about a few of the games that stuck with me. 10) MONSTER SANCTUARY  Though most of the game is in a splendidly chibi style, the detailed pixel art in the monster manual is quite fetching too. An indie game that combines metroidvania dungeon exploration and progression with monster collecting and turn-based battle systems sounds like a recipe for success. Even better when your monster designs are by and large cool, cute, and everything in between. But what really marred my experience with this game was the high difficulty. The game scales to you as you go through it, as you can explore various areas in any order you desire, so grinding wasn’t much of an option. You also hit a level cap by the end of the story, so when I found myself struggling with a battle near the endgame, I realized that my team and strategy simply weren’t good enough which meant I would either need to redo and re-grind an entire team back to the level cap from scratch or just give up. I chose the latter, unfortunately, and though they have since added an easier difficulty and further nerfed the challenge of those battles in particular, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth knowing that some devs are still unable to understand why Pokemon is so approachably simple to clear and only tends to get hard after the credits. Still, the journey through it was by and large enjoyable, and I don't regret the time I spent on it overall. 9) NEXOMON  My final team had some strong rare guys and some buggos, as is customary for my style. Between the prior game, Pokémon, and my frustrating foray into Digimon World: Dusk, I played a lot of monster collectors this year. Uh, anyway, Nexomon is something I heard about from a personal friend of mine. They had played and enjoyed the sequel, Nexomon: Extinction, and recommended to me to play the first game as the story logically follows from it. Nexomon started life as a mobile game, so when it came to Steam it had a bit of its blood sloshed around in wonky ways. Items that were normally in-app purchases were found in random places as hidden treasures, for example, and characters often made metatextual references to the fact that I was playing on a phone, when I wasn’t. However, the world design was quite pretty, the characters were amusing, and the actual creature designs for the Nexomon are impressively solid - more than the game frankly deserved, I think. Battle itself is a stripped down version of Pokemon. Speed isn’t a thing, you always go first and the enemy always goes second. A defeated enemy will be able to switch in and attack you immediately. Every single status ailment is immensely debilitating and remarkably easy to abuse. Also, every Nexomon only has a single type, limiting potential fun combos, along with many mechanics being obscure and difficult to figure out. Now that I’m saying all this to myself I’m surprised that I still left this game feeling positive about it. It only makes me more excited for the sequel, which I’ve heard fixed basically all of these issues and made things a lot more interesting. 8) HYPER LIGHT DRIFTER  An example of the game's "dialogue". Can't say it isn't pretty, at least. Hyper Light Drifter is a game I enjoyed purely on the back of its gameplay. Combat was very tricky, but I never felt cheated by the game, and checkpoints weren’t too crippling. I've even been complimented in my persistence and skill in figuring out the combat system as quickly as I seemed to. My only main issue was difficulty in locating some of the important collectables you need to progress. But, this game has a bit of a hard to understand story! It’s told entirely through actions and pictures, which is not my favorite thing in the world. I didn’t really Get It my whole time through and needed to rely on outside material in order to have a semblance of an idea on what was actually happening. There was also a myriad of optional content and hidden items I never found, and I wasn’t really encouraged to go back and seek them out without any kind of guidance. This isn't to say that these are things that can't be good or that aren't good, but it doesn't personally jive with me. I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t as overall solid as some other indies I explored. 7) HYRULE WARRIORS: AGE OF CALAMITY  Maybe not the most original scene to capture, but definitely the best one regardless. I never played the original Hyrule Warriors much. I would play it at a friend’s house here or there, take in some of the coverage as it got its DLC updates and eventual release on Switch. And that’s also why this game is in my list - I borrowed it, not bought it. And for the price of free, this was a splendid experience. Though the story’s “alternate timeline” approach is seen by some as cowardly or unfitting of Breath of the Wild’s atmosphere, I greatly enjoyed the opportunity to see things from Zelda’s perspective, get more fleshed out characters beyond the champions and fall in love with an adorable time-traveling egg baby. It was a deceptively simple game all things considered and bad framerates never marred my experience personally. Something fun to waste time with. 6) THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: SKYWARD SWORD HD  I loved the original races in this game. Future Zelda games should come up with more unique ones. Skyward Sword was one of two Zelda games I had never played before (the other being Spirit Tracks) and I had heard tons of opinions about it. All ranging from, fantastic story, great dungeon design, creative items, to the other end of repetitive bosses, lack of freedom, annoying fetchquests, and boring traversal. So where do I land? I generally liked the game, and its flaws didn’t overwhelm its good points to me. I got a bit annoyed with Scrapper, and the dungeons blended together a bit for me, and that second Imprisoned fight really blows… but I would die for my best friend Beetle whom scout, acquire item, and kill small foe. Also one of the most satisfying acquirals of the Bow in the series with it coming so late and allowing you to pretty much trivialize basic combat as a result. The story was good as advertised, Groose entirely lived up to the hype. I am glad I played this game with the new button controls though. 5) BASTION  This game's heart is in its action, but there's plenty of fun little nonsense if you poke around. A classic indie game, the first of Supergiant’s ilk, that I had always said I would play but never did, until this year where I finally followed through as part of the aforementioned indie focus. And you know what? It lived up to the hype! Some of the things I liked about it were the great soundtrack, the challenging but not overwhelming combat, the variety in weapon choice, and the story’s framing and presentation were far from Hyper Light Drifter's muddled style. Sure, it helps that I have a sweet talking narrator to get me through everything... but still. This is a game that’ll stick with me and I’ll always remember. 4) PSYCHONAUTS  Every so often you feel like you're falling back into normalcy, then the game shows you something like this and you remember where you are. Yes, not the sequel, but the first game! Psychonauts was always one of those games I would lightly hear about every so often. Someone would be like, oh man this old game was great! And I never knew why or how it had come to be that way. I was graciously able to win a Steam copy of this game from a giveaway and decided with the sequel looming that this was the best time to finally give it a try. This game blew me away! There’s an insane amount of love and detail put into the voice acting and the character interactions, the overall world and mental worlds are designed with the utmost care and sincerity, and it was all wrapped up in humorous and wacky hijinks that kept me guessing as to what nonsense would be happening next. My only main criticisms are the lack of ease with which you could find all the collectables and some annoying puzzle aspects in levels like the Milkman Conspiracy or Gloria’s Theater, along with a bit of motion sickness potential in the way some levels move and shift. Psychonauts 2 looks immensely fantastic and a perfect evolution of the first game’s personality, so I’m really glad that their legacy was able to continue. 3) DELTARUNE (CH 1 & 2)  It might be a Picture Taken Moments Before Disaster... but it felt cozy in a way I envied. My secret shame is that I never myself played Deltarune when it first released three years ago. I watched one person play through it on a livestream and from there I felt like I had seen it all. When Chapter 2 was announced, I thought that maybe this time I would finally play it myself, but I was feeling pressured at the time and didn’t want to commit to it yet. But the amount of spoilers I had seen almost immediately basically forced my hand and made me play the game very quickly after its console release. And for once that kind of pressure didn't make me regret my decision. Deltarune is an interesting game because it’s still currently incomplete but it feels very evolved and beyond its time. Like Psychonauts it has a solid amount of comedy weaved in with its setting, but it also tells some very important stories for its characters. The battle system is also much more fleshed out in Chapter 2, feeling like the numbers and equipment I acquire are mattering in a way that they never did in Undertale. Plus being able to see your “spare progress” is just smart. The endless theorizing, discussion, and obsession with this game is one of the few “popular” things that really has its hooks in me, and I don’t feel ashamed to admit it - it’s a good game! 2) MONSTER HUNTER RISE  It's so cute before it spews fire at your toesies! There’s not a lot to say about Monster Hunter that hasn’t been said already. So for my part, I favorably compare this game to its predecessor, Monster Hunter World & Iceborne, in several aspects. The silkbind skills flesh out a lot of weapons, feeling more like core parts of their movesets in many ways that the Hunter Arts from Generations did not. The Wirebug adds accessibility in recovering from fumbles and new ways to traverse the terrain that never existed before, but there’s also an element of skill in using it right, and not just launching yourself straight into the monster’s next attack. And I don’t know about you, but I like that monsters are just always on the map 100% of the time and you don’t need to bother throwing a paintball at them or gathering their footprints. I’m looking forward to this game reaching new peaks with its expansion, but as it stands now I’m not dissatisfied with Monster Hunter Rise. Also, one of the best final bosses in the series, and this is a series that had a final boss that was a bug. Just saying, if it managed to impress me despite that, it surely did something right. 1) FINAL FANTASY XIV ONLINE (count it as Endwalker I guess for voting purposes)  Being only lightly perceived at the precipice of existence is kind of swell. From the moment this game was new and fresh off the cusp of its A Realm Reborn stuff, I knew that I would like it. However, I was not a very privileged person in that I didn’t own any Sony consoles, nor did I have a PC capable of running the game. So the game mostly left my mindspace beyond a few mentions of it here and there as my life progressed. This year, I finally decided that after all the quest culling, the addition of flying to ARR, and the new expansion hot on everyone’s minds, that I would finally give it a try. And you know what? Big fuckin’ surprise, I love it. I loved it in ARR. I loved it more in Heavensward. I loved it a lot in Stormblood. I loved it more than that in Shadowbringers. I caught up fully, and despite the pressure to make it just barely right on time for its release, I loved this game more than I thought possible in Endwalker. And the best part is as I go through the tedious tasks I love in games like these, I can feel myself improving not just in my number go up, but in my own personal skill in hitting my buttons, dodging mechanics, understanding the flow of battle, so on and so forth. It feels like something I have been missing from my life that I’ve finally found. It’s so great to be able to share this experience with friends who support me and want to see me succeed in this game as much as they did when they were newer. It’s a game that makes me feel loved, both in-game and in real life. And there’s nothing more valuable than that. GAMES THAT DIDN'T MAKE THE TOP TEN: Digimon World: Dusk, for being just awful in almost every way. Fire Emblem Awakening, for being totally Seinfelded into not making much of a personal impact for me. Baba is You, for spooking me with its metaverse manipulation. Pokémon Shining Pearl, for losing the polish that one would expect after foisting it off to a third party. Technically I'm still playing gachas and MapleStory but those feel less like games and more like an extension of my daily life so they don't count. I hope you all liked my post! I'll get to reading some poster posts myself soon enough. Alxprit fucked around with this message at 22:49 on Dec 21, 2021 |
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Dec 14, 2021 00:36
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It always surprises me when people are so stingy with their rankings they won't even list 5 games, if only so their favorites can actually be counted! Meanwhile I've got 13 games that already feels like I've cut my list to the bone and I somehow have to cull 3 more!
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Dec 14, 2021 04:57
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I'm loving passed at the tyranny of base ten for meaning I didn't give gnosia any points
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Dec 14, 2021 05:09
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cheetah7071 posted:I'm loving passed at the tyranny of base ten for meaning I didn't give gnosia any points Holy poo poo I just realized I somehow never added Gnosia to my games beat list Make that 14 games 
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Dec 14, 2021 05:13
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Without further ado, here's my Top 10 Games From 2021 10. Bowser's Fury (Switch) This game was a bit of a surprise since it was just a throw-in with 3D World, but it was actually really fun! An open-world Mario with everything in one level instead of the usual structure. Constant threats from Bowser, using the same geometry in different ways (and seeing how things change), and procedural unlocks of new areas kept the Mario formula fresh! This game could have easily been higher up this list were it not for the god-awful performance issues that made it almost painful to play a lot of the time. The framerate chugged like an old steam engine whenever Bowser was on screen 9. Celeste (PS4) There's a lot to enjoy about Celeste--the simple but responsive controls, the ethereal soundtrack, the great pixel art--but I think what kept me coming back to it was the fact that risk taking wasn't punished for the most part. If you died, you just went right back to the start of the same room, and sure, some of those rooms went on a bit too long, in my opinion, but overall it was a challenging experience that I thoroughly enjoyed. The sense of achievement I got from beating some of those B-sides and later main-story rooms is hard to match (I never did finish the space level though) 8. Disco Elysium: Final Cut (PS5) I loved the story of this and the RPG aspects a LOT. The voice acting was also top notch, and the writing was fantastic. That said, the dice-roll RPG aspect of this was NOT for me, because I save scummed every single roll lol. I know I'm missing the point, but it was still beyond frustrating to roll snake eyes on a check that I had a 97.33% chance of winning, so I just played it the way I wanted. Great game, highly recommend to anyone. Highlight was when Kim roasted me at the end for yelling loudly about communism to everyone I met but also asking them for money. 7. Scarlet Nexus (PS5) This was a fun, stylish romp that was exactly what I wanted going into it. The powers were fun to use, and it was basically like anime Control, in that I spent a lot of time just throwing random garbage and poo poo at my enemies. The story was suitably weird, what with the moon surrounding the Earth with a field that turns people into monsters, and it had social link building like Persona 5. All in all very solid. 6. Returnal (PS5) I will start this off by saying I do not like the modern roguelike formula. I tried one a couple years ago and I thought it was dumb. The whole randomisation thing coupled with having to start over just didn't vibe with me (nothing against people who like it). HOWEVER, I gave Returnal a try since it was the only big PS5 game coming out at the time and the environment/atmosphere looked really cool. Plus most of the roguelikes I'd seen at that time were kinda lame-looking 2D stuff and Returnal had spectacular art design. The combat in this game was fantastic--Housemarque made some truly fun guns and really used the Dualsense controller in a neat way. The story was cursory but enough to keep me curious, and the only reason it wasn't higher was that I STILL don't like roguelikes (this one was just a lot better than I could have expected, but I probably won't give another one a shot, especially after Hades), and having to rely on RNG spawns to get the last bit of collectables to clear out the biome surveys is dumb. 5. Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart (PS5) Some people harped on this game for being short, but I like a game that doesn't wear out its welcome. Ratchet and Clank has been known for its guns for a long time, and the ones in Rift Apart didn't disappoint. They felt and looked great, had all sorts of cool effects. Plus, they finally made the hoverboots fun to use. My list of slight negatives is that they didn't use the rift stuff enough and no chicken/sheep gun. 4. 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim (PS4) I didn't get this game until January, or it would have been on my list last year. I can't count the number of times I thought I knew what was going on and the game just kept dropping more layers on me. The mystery and puzzle solving was great and the tower defense kaiju stuff was, if not necessarily a blast, still unoffensive and engaging. But the real number reason this game deserves so high a spot? Yakisoba pan and hemborger. Chaotic disaster bi for life. 3. Final Fantasy IX (PS4) Sony have been adding Final Fantasy games on PS Now for the past couple months (including FFX/X-2 this month and Zodiac Age next month), and I've been using that as an excuse to re-play some of them (I started with 8 since I don't really like *playing* 7). While I have a number of issues with this particular port from Guild Studio, FF9 showed me again just why it's been my favourite Final Fantasy game ever since the first time I played it. The world is charming as gently caress, the story is touching, the characters are fully dimensioned, and the music is the best soundtrack overall in any video game. I beat the original game on the PSX at least 6-7 times, and just like this time, I got every single Chocograph treasure in Chocobo Hot and Cold and every single hidden treasure on the world map. There is no such thing as too much time spent on Gaia. And as a bonus, the port doesn't have a scratched Disc 4 that froze after You Are Alone four times in a row. 2. Life is Strange: True Colors (PS5) I wasn't honestly sure how much I was gonna like this game when I got it, but I was optimistic. Dontnod's first installment remains tied with this one as my favourite, with either one perhaps edging the other out depending on my mood that day, but they really made a lot of missteps with LIS2. On the other hand, Deck Nine, who made this one and Before the Storm, really showed that they knew what made these little slice-of-life decision trees a blast to explore. While Alex Chen's powers aren't quite as cool as time travel, and the story doesn't have *quite* the same emotional weight as the abandoned and rebuilt relationship of Chloe Price and Maxine Caulfield, True Colors has plenty of punches to throw, and the incidental writing is a joy to listen to. HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE: Alex singing Blister in the Sun (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Cy-juXetCs) The LARP/RPG Steph getting completely flustered in the magic shop (assuming you made the right choice about whom to romance) Steph trying to throw off your foosball game by asking if Alex is into girls Also, the DLC they released later that's just about Steph's arrival to Haven Springs is well worth it. Anyone who enjoyed the game should definitely get it. 1. Persona 5 Strikers (PS4) As someone who had never really played a Dynasty Warriors/musou-type game before (aside from the demo of Hyrule Warriors, which didn't really draw me in), I was curious to see how much I would actually end up liking this game. Persona 5 was one of my top games last year (coming up short only due to the release of TLOU2 and FF7:R, which was a surprise smash), and I loved the characters dearly, so there was no question as to whether I would pick this up. I just don't know if I expected it to essentially consume my gaming life for two weeks while I got the platinum (and played pretty much nothing else in between). The story picks up basically at the end of Persona 5, with the gang getting back together for reasons, and it trades the turn-based combat of P5 for real-time battles with swarms of enemies all around, forcing you to use Persona abilities in new ways to clear mobs, avoid damage, and generally show a bunch of fuckers who's boss. There are a lot of parallels to P5, but it diverges in interesting ways with some new characters. The social link stuff isn't nearly as developed as the original game, but I wasn't necessarily expecting it to be (and god knows how much longer the game would have been if so, haha). I played through once on regular and once on NG+ merciless, where it took me like five tries just to get out of the opening tutorial, but it still felt fresh and fun the whole time. Some of the end-game Personas really are awesome and contribute a lot to the enjoyment. As mentioned before, I was a newcomer to musou games, and I don't think I'll pick up another one, as I've heard they tend to be kinda grindy/sloggy, but this one never seemed to get too dragged down in all of that, and it helps that I really liked the wrapping they put around it. I recommend this game for anyone who liked Persona 5 and just wants some more time with the characters. I certainly didn't think it was gonna get my top spot for the year, but I can't think of any game I enjoyed more than my time back with Joker and the gang. ----------------------------------------------------------- Honourable Mentions FF7:R InterMISSION I decided not to include DLCs in the list for this year just as a personal choice. If I had, this probably would have bumped a couple things down the list, as Yuffie was like a faster, cooler version of Tifa in terms of combat. It was a good-sized DLC and even managed to make me enjoy Fort Condor, which is about the most praise I can give something. Ghost of Tsushima: Iki Island Ghost of Tsushima was a surprise for me last year, and Iki Island just added on a bunch more of what I loved about it. Vaguely mystical psychological trauma, engaging combat, and some new multiplayer additions at the same time. Hades I don't want it to sound like I didn't enjoy my time with this game, because I did, overall, but this is the one that really solidified that I just don't like games that rely on RNG for progress. I spent way longer than I should have had to waiting for the game to decide to give me the right dialogue trees or spawn certain characters and it made the choice to set it down for good all the easier. Fare thee well, Meg. I'll never get a full bond with you, because the game decided to never let you show up in the House ever again once I got you to six. Kena: Bridge of Spirits I think I'm going to enjoy this game a lot--I just haven't played it enough to give it a full ranking. I might roll it over to next year's list, but what I've played so far suggests a beautiful world, some fun combat that still manages to throw some challenges in here and there, and some quality animation/voice acting to boot. Worth checking out, especially if you can get it on sale like I did.
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Dec 14, 2021 05:13
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