I only played two games released this year. This is pretty typical for me. I tend to buy games only when they go on sale, and I've built up a large enough backlog that I never lack for something to play. This year, I made a conscious effort to clear out as many titles from the backlog as I could. I'll finish a game unless it gives me a reason not to: stiff controls, boring story, or any other reason I feel like it's wasting my time. I dropped about 12 other games this year for various reasons, but that's another post. The ones on this list are all amazing in some way or another. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed playing them.
Tears of the Kingdom
I first played The Leend of Zelda on the NES back when it was released. It was, and remains, in my personal top 5 games of all time. It was a huge open world with no signposts to tell you where to go, with secrets and mysteries around every corner. There were so many ways you could make your way through it and no one had quite the same experience.
It felt impossible, and yet there it was.
The series was one of my favorites for a very long time. I bought and finished Zelda II, Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time, and Wind Waker...and then came Twilight Princess. I'll be honest: I don't remember what it was that made me stop playing it. I remember that the sense of wonder and discovery I always felt with these games just wasn't there. I dropped it and didn't touch another Zelda game afer that. It saddened me to fall out of love with one of my favorite series, but it's inevitable that we outgrow our childhood.
Breath of the Wild pulled me back in and transported me back to 1986. Once again I was enthralled with a world that let you go anywhere you wanted, where secrets were around every corner. It was magical. I played through it twice, taking a completely different route each time and marveling at how fresh it felt even after almost 200 hours.
It felt impossible, and yet there it was.
Tears of the Kingdom is everything I wanted out of a sequel, and more. I fell into it just as quickly as Breath of the Wild, stayed with it nearly as long, and enjoyed it every bit as much. I can recall dozens of moments from it that made me laugh, shake my head in wonder, or stare in open-mouthed awe: the first dive from the sky islands; the terror of exploring the depths for the first time; encountering the gloom hands; the battle against the wind temple boss; drawing the master sword; helping Addison put up signs for his boss; fighting Ganon for the last time; discovering the incredible variety of ways to fuse things together; attempting to solve puzzles in the most convoluted ways possible and seeing them actually work; finding out what a Zonai rocket did when attached to a shield; I could go on for hundreds more words.
It shouldn't be possible, and yet it exists. It's a monumental achievement.
Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights
This is a beautiful, haunting game. It tells a story of a desperate struggle against an implacable force, about corruption and purification, about the unintended consequences of well-meaning actions and the dangers of experimenting with things you don't understand and can't control. Underneath it all is the importance of keeping hope alive in the face of unrelenting despair and heartbreak.
It's a world where everyone has been corrupted by Blight, turned into horrific monsters. You, a young girl named Lily, are the only uncorrupted human around. A ghostly shade of a knight is your only protector at first, as you explore the blighted lands trying to find a way to escape. You can purify the blighted creatures, but doing so takes a terrible toll on you. Eventually, you will succumb to it if you can't find a way to cleanse it.
The creatures you purify become your allies, spirits that defend you against the creatures trying to kill you. Each of them gives you a small piece of the overall puzzle of what happened and why. Their stories are classic tragedies, futile tales of bravery and love.
I was enthralled with this game from beginning to end. Every location, every creature, every moment was drenched in pathos.
This wouldn't be enough to carry me through the game if it didn't control as smoothly as it did. Lily moves through the world gracefully by running, jumping, dashing, and swinging. Movement feels and looks great, animated beautifully and cleanly.
It has one of the best maps in these exploration games, showing you not only what paths you have opened but which ones are still unexplored, and marking rooms that you have found everything in. It made the backtracking that is a central part of this genre much easier. The only thing missing is a way to drop pins or notes on particular rooms to remind me of what movement abilities I needed to open up the unexplored routes.
Aside from this minor complaint, it's a near-perfect game.
I accidentally found an ending after only about 8 hours in. I had explored less than half of the map, but went right back to it. I didn't stop until I had experienced the other two endings. It's a special game and deserves every bit of praise it got and more.
Final Fantasy Theatrhythm Final Bar Line
I'm not usually someone who plays rhythm games, but I made an exception for this. I love the Final Fantasy series, even if I've only played I, IV, VI, VII, and IX. The series has consistently excellent music by some of the most talented composers working in gaming, so I felt comfortable getting this. At the very least, I would have the soundtracks to play whenever I wanted.
I put over 50 hours into it before completing all of the quests. Square created a compelling formula mixing rhythm and RPG elements that kept me coming back for just one more song. Experimenting with different party combinations, fine-tuning skill loadouts, and aiming for perfect chains on each song never got old.
While I'm not a huge fan of the Chibi art style, I see why they decided on it. The conceit is that you're watching the events play out in a theater, so presenting it using whimsical art makes sense. I would have loved to see an option for original sprites, or some pixel art version, but it's understandable why they couldn't or wouldn't put in the considerable amount of work that would require.
It's worth mentioning what a staggering number of tracks are here. the base game has hundreds, and the DLC add hundreds more from games across Square-Enix's library. Some of them are remixes or extended mixes of existing tracks, but there are very few duds. Square-Enix composers know what they're doing.
I still drop in from time to time to try a few of my favorite tracks, curate some playlists, or reminisce about some of my favorite moments from some of my favorite games.
Super Mario Odyssey
I waited a very long time to start this, and I wish I had done it sooner. It gave me some of the most enjoyment I've had this year. Every world had moments that brought smiles, chuckles, or outright laughter. It's pure Nintendo: highly polished, full of personality, and fun, fun, fun. Cappy is a brilliant thing to build the game around. Capturing your opponents and using them to get around never gets old, and is full of genuine surprises.
It's also remarkable how much design philosophy it shares with the newest Zelda games. While the worlds aren't as large and open as Hyrule, they have something new to see around nearly every corner. You're rewarded for your exploration and experimentation with more Power Moons or purple coins, as well as some of the most interesting and challenging puzzles in the game. You don't have the same kind of freedom to solve those puzzles as you do in Zelda, but that's doesn't matter. It's usually clear what you have to do. The difficulty is in the execution.
The game's overall difficulty isn't that high until the post-game, and that contains some fiendish challenges. I collected about 550 moons in total and made it to the darker side of the moon before dying about 20 times and putting it down. It's a ridiculous test of skill and I'll probably come back to it eventually, but for now I can set it aside and say without hesitation that it's one of the best games on the platform.
Steamworld Heist
I had started this a long time ago, gotten to a point where I simply couldn't figure out how to beat the Red Queen, and dropped it. I came back to it, lowered the difficulty, and finished it in two days. I'm glad I did, because the Steamworld games are immaculate.
Heist takes place decades (centuries?) after the events of Steamworld Dig 2, and there are plenty of callbacks and easter eggs in it. It has a cast of delightful characters who get into absurd situations and escape by the skin of their teeth. Like every Steamworld game, it's filled to the brim with personality, heart, and most importantly, fun.
As you move through the universe, raiding ships and research facilities, the levels are mostly procedurally generated. Rogue-likes are my favorite genre, and I'm always excited to see someone do something different with it. It works here, for the most part. You can replay missions for more experience and loot, and randomizing the ships adds some surprises to keep that from getting too boring or rote. However, there are several plot-critical missions that are bespoke, and the differences are stark. The hand-crafted levels are just more interesting than the random ones. There are set pieces and carefully designed levels that take advantage of the game's mechanics, and just serve to highlight how directionless the random levels are. I hate to say it, but the game would probably have been much better if every level was handmade.
That doesn't mean it's boring or bad. It's excellent, and a tribute to the Steamworld developers' skill. They keep expanding the universe into new genres, doing something unique with the formula each time. They're on my list of "must-buy" devs, and they haven't disappointed me yet.
Carrion
A pretty short but immensely entertaining exploration game where you are the monster trying to escape the facility where you are imprisoned. It's very clearly inspired by The Thing and it does a masterful job of capturing the body-horror vibe of it. It's impressive how it feels simultaneously great and horrifying to move around the world as a deadly mass of flesh and tentacles. There's an unnatural fluidity to every action that's disturbing and inhuman.
Every extra power you gain reinforces that feeling. Turning into a mass of worms to slip through grates underwater, extending a pseudopod to assimilate an unsuspecting human, and charging through doors in an explosive fury all feel great to perform even as they are repulsive to witness.
It's a short but memorable game, filled with clever puzzles and memorable set-pieces. The flashbacks to the origin of the outbreak, where you play as a member of the team that explores the initial aftermath, are very well done. There's very little explicit storytelling, leaving you to piece together the puzzle.
There's nothing really like it out there, and I'm glad that there's a publisher like Devolver out there taking chances on weird ideas.
Akane
You've got a gun, a katana, and a death wish. You're trapped in an arena with hordes of Yakuza and you know you're not going to make it out alive. The only question is how many of them you're going to take with you.
Akane is brutally difficult: take one hit, and you're dead. You can slash, you can shoot, and you can dodge. Kill enough Yakuza quickly enough to build up your combo meter and you can unleash a couple of classic Samurai movie "kill them all before they know they're dead" moves. It's tough to get a feel for the rhythms of combat, but once you do it feels incredible. Every action is smooth, every hit has a satisfying impact, every perfectly timed dodge feels exhilirating.
The whole package is undenyably stylish and graceful. The music is pulse-poundingly good (if only there was more of it!) and the art style drips with neon-infused cyberpunk vibes. There may be only one stage, but the whole package is a treat for the eyes and ears.
I don't know if it's actually possible to "beat" this game, since it seems to be endless. You fight waves of enemies in an arena, and every 100 enemies is a boss that gets progressively tougher each time you meet him. There's a cut-scene that wraps up the story if you can get past 500 enemies, and there are plenty of challenges that unlock different weapons and perks to give it some longevity.
It's brutal, exhilirating, white-knuckle fun that's well worth investing the time in to get good.
Roguebook
Roguebook has an incredible pedigree. It's developed by the Richard Garfield, the man who helped create Magic: The Gathering, and Abrakam, the developers of Faeria.
For some reason, it regularly goes on sale for 90% off on the Switch eshop. I'm generally wary of games that do this, but I took a chance based on the developers and I'm glad I did. It's a run-based deckbuilder in the vein of Slay the Spire and its imitators/inspirations. It has several things going for it that make it well worth your time.
You control two characters out of an eventual four choices. Each one is wildly different from the others and has enough variety in their decks to create many viable builds. They can synergize with each other in surprising ways, as well.
Characters are either in the front, where they are the target of the vast majority of attacks, or in the back. Cards can switch the characters' placement, and using those intelligently is the key to surviving. Some cards can only be used in front or back, or have additional effects or reduced cost if used in a particular position. Some characters are stronger in different positions, as well. Knowing when each one needs to be in which position, and how to play your cards to put them there, is the difference between a quick victory and a humiliating defeat.
It also distinguishes itself from others in the genre by its exploration. There's a direct path to each chapter's boss, and you can reveal unkown parts of the map using your paintbrush and ink. You have a limited supply of each, and gain more by defeating enemies. The more of the map you reveal, the more chances you have of uncovering useful relics or cards. You have to carefully consider where you use your ink to maximize this while minimizing the damage you take from each fight.
There are only three chapters, but the difficulty ramps up considerably in each one. Despite that, it wasn't particularly difficult for me to get my first victory. The new run+ gives you a number of "epilogues," challenges that increase both risk and rewards. The narrator hints that the book might let you go if you complete enough of these. I've completed a few already and each one changes the calculus in dramatic ways, forcing you to rethink your strategies and try new ones.
The main criticism I have of this is that your success is more dependent on luck than it should be. Explore the wrong areas and you've wasted your ink and any chances to get something useful. Multiple characters means multiple decks to manage. You get a lot of chances to draft cards, but you might only be able to build one deck that's sufficiently powerful enough to carry you through the brutal third act.
It's not perfect, but it's a damn good one of these if you're a fan of the genre.
Log in to comment