Howdy partners!
Since the year is closing out and this is still (ostensibly) a gaming board I thought it might be kind of fun to talk about what we played this year, what our GOTY was, the biggest disappointments, etc.
I didn’t really purchase many new AAA titles this year, I think Elden Ring and The Callisto Protocol were it. Of the two Elden Ring met my expectations and was excellent, and TCP was monumentally disappointing.
I spent most of my gaming budget on indie titles this year, and while I loved Elden Ring it was narrowly edged out by Infernax as my Game of the Year. Infernax was a huge surprise for me, I don’t usually expect much from the indie-retro-nostalgia bait but it blew me away. A love letter to classic NES titles like Castlevania 2, Link’s Adventure, and Faxanadu, it combines gorgeous pixel art with a banger of a soundtrack and a fun story with multiple endings and unlockable characters and I can’t recommend it enough.
A close second would be Cultic; some people have complained that Boomer Shooters are reaching over saturation by now but I play the shit out of every one and I think Cultic is the best of the lot. The shortest way to describe it would be Blood crossed with Resident Evil 4; you’re a cop fighting a crazed cult and demonic monsters in the seventies, there’s a fun arsenal of upgradable weapons, cool levels to explore, and a shitload of monsters to kill, everything a fps ahould have in other words, go nuts.
As far as what I thought sucked ass The Callisto Protocol is the only big letdown I can think of, and I’ve bitched about it enough so now I want to hear what you guys have been playing, what surprised you, disappointed you, and what you recommend.
Cheers all, and have a Happy New Year!
I've been enjoying well made cute games like Pokemon Snap and Kirby. I got a switch this year and have a large back catalog from sales and pawn shops. Kirby is the game I play with my wife and we have enjoyed it.
The Castlevania collections and Cuphead have been played when I feel like a challenge. I'm collecting souls in the first GBA Metroidvania.
Harvestella is a lot more than it seems, though I kind of hate the art design for it.
Kirby epic yarn is so sweet it's nauseating. It's like watching a kitten cuddling with a puppy and a duckling and falling asleep.
Kirby has that power.
I don't get it. I remember Kirby games being awesome platformers with interesting combat mechanics as a kid. I tried one a year ago and felt like someone beat me in the head with a hammer and left me in a day care with barney on TV. Wtf happened?
I guess they specialized it away from their other platformers, like Mario. Odyssey is very much like a classic Kirby game with its borrowing of creature powers.
Aria of Sorrow was the third and final GBA Metroidvania as far as I'm aware, preceded by Circle of the Moon and Harmony of Dissonance.
I want the DS games to release eventually as well.
On other platforms? That would certainly be something, but the dual-touch-screen mechanics kinda make that weird for porting. Definitely not against it though.
They work pretty well on emulators, you can either use your mouse or get a mod that removes the touchscreen bullshit completely.
The Switch has touch controls
They got the ZX games to port, so it's not impossible.
I’ve been on a Castlevania kick myself recently, trying out some romhacks for all the IGAvanias. The new Kirby was awesome, I was surprised how well a 3D Kirby game could work.
It tells a compelling story using level design and fun.
I love the twist on the post apocalyptic nature of everything. Not to get into spoilers, but it was surprisingly optimistic for an end-of-the world scenario.
might try iron snout. it's this one-handed free-for-all where you play a pig fighting for his life against waves of wolves.
The art style heartens back to classic flash games, but it's pretty solid.
If you're into Pokemon, have you looked at Pokemon Legends: Arceus? It was recommended to me by someone here, and it's honestly not bad. It does a lot of things right, that I felt made modern Pokemon games too childish for me to care about at my age.
It's on my list, but I haven't gotten it yet.
I've mostly been going through my backlog and haven't really found anything awesome. It's all so .. samey. There's nothing really new after decades of gaming. My biggest disappointment wasn't one game in particular but gaming as a whole, I guess.
Finally managed to play Fallout New Vegas, after years of trying to find the perfect mods. That was the only memorable game. Just like with every Bethesda game the main quest line sucked and I never completed it, though. Explored everything and then left the horribly written factions to deal with their own shit.
Other than that I've just been playing some F2Ps like Warframe and Raid. Raid was literally the only game I actually spent money on this year AFAIR because most devs/publishers have become virtue signalling tards.
Anyway, happy new year.
It’s been like eight years and I’m still modding New Vegas.
If you use more than a couple of mods I can recommend Mod Organizer 2 (https://www.modorganizer.org/). Made it so much easier to try mods, change the order, etc. That thing is in a class of its own compared to the other mod managers I've tried.
Oh I’m well acquainted with MO2, believe me! I’ve probably spent more time futzing aound with load order and merged patches and stuff in MO2 than I have in every Bethesda game combined, and I’ll still run into problems and things I’d never encountered before.
But that’s more my problem, I want every mod in the nexus running at once even though I know it will only lead to disaster and hearbreak. I guess that’s half the fun of modding in the first place.
I apparently didn't do much outside of PSO2 and mobile gaming this year. Of what I did, Elden Ring absolutely deserves GotY, and I can't wait to see if they do expanded content, especially something centered around Miqella, whom everyone in the game absolutely simped for, but never truly showed up.
PSO2NGS is starting to shape up content-wise, but their ability to tell a story is still absolute shit.
Also played Atelier Ryza and Yakuza: Like a Dragon. Decent games.
Disappointments? I Yar-har'd FF7 Remake. Holy shit do I hate almost everything about it. I wouldn't even buy it half off on Steam. Modding Tifa into wearing Nyotengu's leather suit was the only thing keeping me going with it. The gameplay was fucked, the mapping was fucked, the "story during gameplay" was fucked. I can't even bring myself to climb the wall and finish the game. They took the three-hour introduction of the original and turned it into a 40-hour game of its own, and most of it is either padding or forced snail-pacing.
"Mobile"
"Gaming"
Exclusive concepts. Cell phone gambling addict machines made for bugmen living in cubicles are not games.
I would absolutely expect some story dlc within the next few months, there’s plenty of places they could go lore-wise and from what I remember there’s a lot of stuff about Miquella that was buried in the game data. Plus we’re coming up on a year from release so it would be a great time to put the game out there in the zeitgeist again.
Video cards still too expensive
After my 980 ti died, I "temporarily" replaced it for a 1050 ti years ago. I'm still at consistent 60 fps in my dual 1080p monitor setup no matter what I play. Granted, though, I almost never do play modern AAA.
I didn't really buy any games this year, I actually either went through my backlog of games or re-examined old ones.
I had a lot of fun for a while going through Stronghold 2 and checking out the custom maps and scenarios available, finally played and finished my Metro 1 & 2 deluxe and enjoyed playing off and on C&C Kane's Wrath
As for current games that get new updates, I did drop R6S because it got WAY too sweaty to not being fun anymore, I got back into GTA5 since they made some changes that means you don't need to deal with griefers at all, play Smite now and again and Warframe improved since they had a team shake-up with the old guys leaving to create a new game and guys like Pablo known to be great at rebalancing more prominent.
The games listed I haven't spent money on, if I was going to buy a new game, maybe Elden Ring, that new Dune game or Starship Troopers but I've been reading more so unless they come on sale no need to rush.
I’ve been meaning to get into the Metro games for a while, especially now that Stalker 2 has been delayed. I haven’t touched Warframe in a long time, I can’t imagine how different it would be if Instarted again now. I would absolutely recommend Elden Ring, as long as you kind of know what you’re getting yourself into with FromSoftware games.
I really enjoyed playing the Metro trilogy earlier this year. I got the first two game for free through various promotions and I liked the first two enough that I paid for the third.
My enjoyment of the metro games decreased with each subsequent installment. The series began as charmingly janky, but then it slowly morphed into a typical AAA FPS. Couldn’t bring myself to finish exodus. It’s just nonstop yapping. I wanted to shoot everyone in the head.
On PC I've been playing FS2020 mostly, pretty much exclusively.
On switch been playing through some old games on emulator box. Star Fox 64, Mario Kart 8 with my daughter, and lately, helping my daughter play through Pokemon Violet. My (and her) first ever Pokemon game.
Is Violet any good? I haven’t played a Pokémon game since Leaf Green for the GBA so I wouldn’t know where to start.
It's decent, not very challenging. I wouldn't play it on my own, but with my daughter it is fun. She likes to go around catching the Pokémon and only does the story parts when I can convince her to try something different. So by the time we get to a gym or titan battle her Pokémon are so leveled up it is too easy.
The performance on Switch sucks, clearly the hardware is holding the game back. We haven't encountered any serious bugs though.
Finally, we don't do online play at all. So I can't comment on that aspect. I have no desire to try to play against (or with) 11 year olds with too much time on their hands, and she is too young to do that on her own.
Honestly the games I want won’t be out til later like Starfield and Elder Scrolls 6. I’ve been playing a ton of Modded Skyrim, Sims 4, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, and I recently bought a Police Simulator. When I get my bonus next year I’ll go on a spree on Steam or Xbox game pass.
Fingers crossed for Starfield and ES6. I know Todd name dropped Daggerfall a lot recently so here’s hoping they go back to their RPG roots.
I need to check out Daggerfell. It’s the largest game landwise right?
Arena is a much larger worldsspace but a lot more barren and samey, Daggerfall’s landmass is much better designed using the procedural generation and just better overall than arena. Plus with Daggerfall unity it’s a lot easier to get it running and modded on modern systems. If you’re an ES fan I think both are worth looking into just to see how much the world and lore has changed.
Also Julian Lefay, the lead designer of Arena and Daggerfall is working on a game using similar procedural generation with some other former Bethsoft devs. He’s touting it as a spiritual successor to DF so that’s another one I’m really looking forward to.
Cool. I heard about that and plan on checking. Have you played the forgotten city game? I guess they turned the mod into a full game.
Yes, I never played the original mod but I liked The Forgotten City a lot.
I’ve played the mod but haven’t played the game yet.
It’s a little short so you might want to wait for a sale but the story is great, it would be interesting to see how different it is from the mod ,aside from the obvious stuff like not taking place in the ES universe.
In almost any other circumstance I'd agree, but the formula is so well understood by the people making these games that even with as many of them as there are, almost every single one of them is good, meaning there's none of that usual sifting through garbage that typically comes when a genre gets too popular for its own good. When I try to think of a 'bad' boomer shooter from the last five years, there basically isn't one - there's just ones that aren't as good as the others. If I pick up a random boomer shooter, I'm basically guaranteed at least a few hours of solid fun no matter how 'bad' a choice I made.
Based on that, I don't think the boomer shooter renaissance is ending any time soon, and that's fine with me. I've been playing Doom for 30 fucking years. I am never going to tire of this genre.
I went back because I really forgot what I played early in the year. I'd probably call my game of the year Yakuza 3 or Ys Origins. Only other things I played through was Sniper Elite 5 and Plague Tale Requiem. Second half of the year I've got a new gaming buddy, and we just play whatever sounds fun. A lot of modded car games. It's a drastic but good change, because I was in a huge rut it seems.
I love the Ys games, I’m hoping they bring back the Xanadu series eventually too. I’ve heard good things about Plague Tale as well, I might check it out.
Plague Tale is fun. It's fairly generic third person adventure game, but they were fun and not super-woke. Yeah it's a female MC, but it's a white girl that's not fattened up.
I've been going thru Ys VIII since, but my single player time is a lot less than it was so it's taking me forever
Only new 2022 game I've been into this year would be Symphony of War. It's what I've been searching looking for in a turn based tactics game in terms of squad composition determining a squad strength and the creator of it stumbled into the formula so much that it's his best selling game and he's planning a sequel.
I just try whatever is free on epic store and sometimes it grabs me like pathfinder kingmaker recently.
Think doom eternal was the last new release i was remotely hyped about and that didnt live up to expectations.
Happy to hear someone else didn’t love Doom Eternal. I felt like I was taking crazy pills with all the universal acclaim because I thought it was a huge step back from Doom 2016. The UI was ugly, the color palate was awful, the gameplay was way too gimmicky, the entire experience was less immersive and not as cool.
I thought doom 2016 was the perfect game. Would have been happy with a "doom 2" style sequel that was exactly like the first game but bigger.
Speaking from the opposite end I loved Doom Eternal and I can’t go back to 2016, it just feels to slow and easy now. I can see why some people prefer 2016 atmospherically and story-wise, especially since they went a little too full throttle with the DLC. Hopefully whatever third one they make will be a balance between the two.
The chainsaw is ruined in nu doom, and eternal is a game that revolves around unfortunate amounts of dash spamming. Other than the poor AI design because of that, it's pretty great, but they doubled down on the glory kill shenanigans that OG doom fans disliked as well.
It's a lot twitchier than 2016, which can be played more tactically.
Eternal wasn’t for me either. I really can’t say why. Played Doom 2016 and followed up with eternal immediately, it just wasn’t as much fun for some reason.
I also tried getting into the Metro games (redux and exodus), but got bored as fuck. Maybe I’m just getting too old for this shit, lol.
Glad to hear other people are enjoying them though.
Been picking up a bunch of their free games, too. Currently trying Eximius. I really wanted to like it because I love that type of game but damn it's a clunky mess.
Kingmaker was really good, I think Wrath of the Righteous is even better so definitely check that out when you finish it.
Steam's year in review tells me I spent half my time on DOTA2. Honestly amazed it's that much because I thought I had quit it finally.
Other than that played through the Destroy All Humans remake, a bunch of OpenRTC, 3 chapters into Higurashi When They Cry, and Slay the Spire as my background time-killer. Also maybe 1/3rd to halfway through Ookami, been great on the steam deck.
Don't think I've played anything new other than FFXIV Endwalker. Blind progging the raid tiers and made it to the final phase of the current tier but probably still a month off of a clear.
Gifted Chivalry 2 and Persona 5 for Christmas so excited to give those a try, P5 after I finish Ookami and maybe I play P4 first.
I just upgraded my computer, now I can play some of the newer games. I was on 10 year old hardware, and I was starting to get tired of all the shitty graphics. Along with the new parts I bought Elden Ring, Sekiro, Ready or Not, Killer7 and the Yakuza trilogy.
Throughout the whole year I've been playing through the Rance Series to improve my Japanese. 03, 4, 4.1, 4.2, Kichikuou, 5D, 6, Sengoku and finally Quest. Kichikuou Rance and Sengoku Rance were supremely enjoyable, mainly because I'm weak against strategy games, but I also love me some keks and it is one of the funniest series I have ever played, and I now understand why Sengoku is considered a "God Game". Rance 03 and 6 were pretty enjoyable as RPGs, and I'm still playing through Quest. 5D is one of the weirdest games ever. My Japanese skills now let me read even novels, and I cannot thank these games enough. A warning to those wanting to play them: You must have a really strong stomach for some games, Sengoku in particular.
Other hehoge I played were Beat Blades Haruka (Way too stimulating for me, I cannot play that shit), Toushin Toshi (Pretty fun for a 30 year old game, too bad it runs like dogshit) and Mamatoto (The gameplay and the hero's scenes were good, the villain is really interesting).
I finally finished Dark Souls, my personal game of the year. I also played Dark Souls II, my disappointment of the year, which was a pain in the ass due to the artificial difficulty. I didn't actually finish it because I thought it had cloud saves, but I discovered that it didn’t after formatting my hard drive. I was like 80% in, and I refuse to go through that slog again. I recently started Sekiro, all in Japanese, and I like it so far.
As for multiplayer games, Valorant and COD: Warzone 2 were the main ones. I've been playing Valorant less time each session because I only play it with my friends, and the sweatier ones don't play as much as before. We win a lot on Warzone 2, so it's still fun. I played Lost Ark for a couple weeks, but gave up because I don't have time to grind through such a boring game, I feel like my friend scammed me when I downloaded that garbage. We also played Fall Guys, Ready or Not, and Project Winter.
I also have a message for those who play Japanese games: Remember that you are getting an inferior product 90% of the time if you play the translated versions. It's never too late to start learning the moonrunes, but the sooner the better. Globohomo is putting a ton of pressure on the far east, and I fear they will crack within the next 10 years.
Happy New Year to all!
I made a similar attempt to get through the Rance games maybe last year or so and enjoyed the Rance 1 remake, but I stalled hard on Rance 2. Obviously the original is a very old game (again I was playing the remake) so it might be a bit harsh to say so, but even compared to the first game it seemed to be dogshit. Was I too harsh and should I revisit, or do you reckon 3 is a good point to hop ahead to and play from?
If you're looking for more good Japanese practice, I strongly recommend Full Metal Daemon: Muramasa. I don't think the JAST USA version released last year is dual language so you'll have to buy japanese or sail for it.
Also to get the most out of Sekiro, it's best to learn how aggressive the game wants you to be. That alone will coach you out of the dodging dependency that plagues a lot of players coming to it from Dark Souls.
Rance 02 is more of a remaster than a remake, meaning that the puzzles and the gameplay are quite dated. There’s no new content other than the BGM. Don’t skip it, because a ton of recurring characters get introduced in it. If you get stuck, look at a walkthrough, the game isn’t long at all when compared to the third one.
I’ll look into Full Metal Daemon. I prefer actual games over VNs, but if the story is good I’ll buy it (after trying it out, of course 🏴☠️🏴☠️).
As for Sekiro, thanks for the tip. I noticed that relying on one thing like blocking or dodging would get me nowhere, but I hadn’t seen the perks of being so aggressive.
I'm not interested in practically anything newly released and rarely play AAA any more, so a year end recap for me is almost never going to contain stuff from that year. Also I've been focussing more and more on japanese games in recent years, for obvious reasons related to the spirit of this forum.
That said, I very nearly bought and played something new this year when I got Scarlet Nexus, from 2021. It was OK. I played only one of the 2 main character campaigns and I've been planning to do the other, but I've hesitated because though charming and pretty fun, it's very samey (in terms of combat gameplay, enemies and environments; the level environments are kind of nice but they get revisited like crazy). I don't expect the other campaign to be a significantly different experience.
Alongside Scarlet Nexus I also bought Ys 8: Lacrimosa of Dana. Loved it. I had reservations about playing it on several levels - worries that it looked kind of plain, that the main char and others would be barely developed, that it would be a poor port, that it wouldn't be very good Japanese practice (part of what I get out of a game selection like this), and early on in the game that it would be too childish and cliched. But it's got nice crisp gameplay with great mobility and satisfying dodge/parry stuff going on, and as the story progressed it really came into its own. Great sense of innocent exploration and adventure, very likeable chars, a little bit of darkness and death out of nowhere, and even some challenging Japanese scattered around.
Aside from an atrociously bad ending (narratively speaking) which undermines a significant amount of the character-building that went before, it left me with nothing but good vibes, so I was able to enjoy the journey without holding the way it finished against it. Berseria was the same... I've gotten used to discounting the entire ending when evaluating JRPGs.
I spent ages reading it, since last year, but I finished reading Full Metal Daemon: Muramasa early this year. Excellent VN, definitely top 3 VNs I've ever read, maybe top 1 depending on the day you catch me, but then again I have skipped a lot of the supposedly godlike VNs people tout, because I don't like the look of them. It left me with a lot of themes to mull over in terms of Buddhism, pacifism, nihilism, justice and killing, which all coloured my increasingly philosophical direction in my thinking this year (which Muramasa was not at all the catalyst for, but everything helps).
I also caught up on my ancient gifted copies of Batman: Arkham Origins and Arkham Knight. Origins is jank trash, nobody can convince me otherwise, but hell, at least it was short. Knight is just tragic. It's got so much of Rocksteady's trademark loving sense of polish to the world and (some of) the gameplay, but the new designs, certain new combat and stealth additions, the Batmobile and the story in general are all majorly shitty ingredients that spoil the whole recipe. The Arkham Knight's voice acting was (unusually for the franchise) pretty shoddy and annoying, which didn't help since you hear so much of his taunting. Kevin Conroy great as always though, rip.
I liked Scarlet Nexus as well, it had a more interesting setting and story than I was expecting. Yeah Arkham Knight was a big letdown, I though a lot of the voicework was shoddy. Replacing so many of the animated series voices didn’t help.
Yeah the style and setting is underrated. It's probably the best depiction of ubiquitous augmented reality that I've seen, and the way they do it has a lot of in-world flavour and implication. I like that in the city there's a mix of projected storefronts and old fashioned painted signs, as if some stores are really old or else too poor to keep up with the tech. Or maybe they don't want to turn away 'dud' customers who can't see anything online. Speaking of which, the city is so incredibly drab and grey when the augment tech gets cut off, it makes you realise what the duds have been looking at all along.
I am also having a blast with retro shooters, and not getting bored with it one bit. Cultic is one of those that I am looking forward to playing.
The ones that I have gotten around to play and liked a lot were DUSK and Project Warlock.
The ones that I have not played yet, but have wishlisted are: the two new Postal games, AMID EVIL, Nightmare Reaper, Ion Fury, Chasm: The Rift, and the likes.
According to Steam Replay, I have spent the most amount of time this year in AC Odyssey, which reinforced to me that these games are just too long. The more it went on and on, the less I wanted to keep playing it. Still went for 100%, because I am retarded.
Close second to it was Frostpunk, which I would nominate for GOTY for me. It reignited the "plan shit out on paper" lunacy for me, something that I have not done in at least a decade, if not more. There simply wasn't a game that made me do it, besides Frostpunk. It shows how much I enjoyed it that I immediately wishlisted the sequel.
My graph in Steam Replay shows that the types of game I have played the most are City Builder, Horror, Open World Survival Craft (probably because of The Forest, which I have also liked a lot), Programming, Vampire, and Puzzle Platformer.
Played a fair bit of Elden Ring at the start of the year, but honestly it’s been a Pokémon kick for me all the year through. Legends Arceus was groundbreaking for the franchise in actually shaking things up, and Scarlet and Violet are a lot of fun to play with my little brother. As a whole I find the switch to be nice for a half hour to an hour before bed, which is most of when I can actually play. Just don’t have time to put into a game like when I was in college, so it’s nice to have that.
stuck mostly to indie stuff and picking up classics when they're cheap. I played Control. that was pretty fun.
Mostly it's been 7dtd and this free twitch-reaction game called iron snout (found it on steam a while ago, was a linux exclusive for a long time, oddly enough, but it has a windows version now, and possibly mac as well?)
Just picked up Infernax on your recommendation. Quite good so far.
Recently I went through SpaceChem and Salt & Sanctuary again. Picked up Vagante and beat it once. Over the summer I went through all the Shantae games when they went on sale on the Switch.
Pretty much only played elden ring and spt aki the single player mod for tarkov cause I have no time between work and my kid
There’s a single player mod for Tarkov? That sounds cool, I really like the look of it but forced multiplayer can eat my ass, same reason I haven’t gotten into Hunt: Showdown.
I've just been keeping to WoW Classic. Aside from that the only game I bought this year was Elden Ring which I platinumed after a few weeks. Went back from time to time to play with each update. Wrath Classic kept my attention until the release of FFXI Horizon two weeks ago. It's nice playing the game from my youth and it feels amazing adventuring again in this world that was so alive and full of threats. My one gripe is how much downtime there is with the game. Granted they were probably not expecting 4k people to be playing and logging in at the same time for a private server.
Funny thing, I'm a weeb and the main game that piqued my interest was that Vampire Saviors clone Hololive. It was very polished.
Another game - Acquitted, a based af game about the story of Kyle Rittenhouse cleaning hosue in Kenosha. Hard as nails.
King of Fighters XV came out. I'm a long time KOF fan - if you check my history on my banned Reddit account (fuck Reddit) I've been playing it since 98 competitively.
Oh, I played this softcore pr0n game called PumPum - I was just reeled in by the well drawn waifus. It's a shitty match-three game but the art is fucking semi-photo realistic yet anime looking top tier.
Another under the radar game that was unfortunately funded by Chinese money is Bright Memory: Infinite. It's made by a Chinese indie dev in Unity - one man wrecking crew. It's voiced in English, Chinese, and weirdly enough Japanese and the Japanese voice is Mikasa Ackerman (Yui Ishikawa) so it motivated me to play it. Plus the MC is a waifu. Game is a combination of Shadow Warrior, Devil May Cry, and a bit of CawaDooty and Bulletstorm and small bits of movement mechanics from Doom Eternal and other similar FPSes (double jumps, dashes, etc). Has a bit of jank but lots of fun. Linear story but combat is top tier.
Outfits are waifu outfits, bikini, mcheongsam, schoolgirl, etc. But again, Chinese money so, idk
I've picked up a new gacha mobile game - Goddess of Victory - Nikke. Time crisis shooter with waifus that are thick as fuck. Unfortunately, it's published by Tencent, but the dev is a Korean dev named Shift Up. I've been at odds with myself on whether to support it because it's a fun game and the character designs are top tier, but Tencent can get fucked. Also has AAA Japanese voice actresses that makes it even better.
You have my condolences. I hope Fiore was worth it.
I loved DQ11, I hope we get some news about the DQ3 remake soon. Everyone’s been telling me to get into the Yakuza series but I just haven’t found time yet.
Imma sticky this for being a good Board Gaming Post
SKYRIM FOR THE NORDS
Haven't bought any other games than Gran Turismo this year. Decent enough simcade racer, shady as shit business practices.
The game is maybe a 6/10 IMO.
tiny rogues - fun, and i'm not really into this kind of game at all. roguelike zelda?
minecraft - i mean it's minecraft
stardew valley - last time i played was in 2016 so i need to start a new save because i have no clue what i'm doing
i think this year i replayed lego star wars, which was fun. i'm not touching the new one with an 11 foot pole though.
replayed force unleashed, was fun.
i got some into force unleashed 2 and stopped for some reason, maybe i got sick and didn't feel like playing. i should pick that back up.
tried replaying republic commando but something about it was absolutely unplayable and couldn't be fixed.
Splatoon3 and Phoenotopia were the two that stood out to me.
In addition to the obligatory Elden Ring playthrough I've come across a few diamonds in the (very) rough of the gaming landscape over 2022.
Sniper Ghost Warrior : Contracts 2 - A fun snipey gadget-heavy game with hints of Hitman in it's sandboxy nature. Plus I recall they pissed off the soy games journos by daring to expose them to some testosterone and real guns in their pre-release press tour, so you know their hearts are in the right place. It's just more of the same from Contracts 1, but more is still fun.
Lemnis gate - Regrettably stillborn online FPS with time-looping, it did what Quantum League tried to do without gameplay sucking balls and its shitty art style. It's still good 1v1 so if you have a buddy to play with it's good shit, just don't expect to find a random match easily.
The Last Spell - Roguelite, (I know, believe me I know) turn based, castle defence wave survival thing. I know the format has been done practically to death, but it's beautifully balanced and fun and has bitchin' awesome concept art.
Against the storm - Short form colony survival management, again kinda oversaturated as a genre, but it does a few things quite differently and damn is it well made and fun.
Soulstone survivors - It's like vampire survivors, except made into a actual proper game instead of feeling like an early 2000s flash game. Balance is a little shakier on this one but still fun.
Honorable mentions to Satisfactory, Siralim ultimate, Barotrauma, Mechwarriors 5, Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children and X4 too.
Barotrauma looks like a lot of fun, too complex for me though.
Barotrauma is too complex for most the playerbase, that's half the fun. ;)
The number of times I've put out a barbequed engineer after they overloaded the nuclear reactor is comically high