Top 100 Games of the Year
A new ranked list of the best games I play this year. Because I broke the other one by going over 100 somehow. Thankfully I'm still using science to make these decisions.
List items
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A fun, colourful and beautiful JRPG that was... much longer than I expected. But its epic length ends up being well warranted. Characters and enemies have awesome designs by Akira Toriyama of Dragon Ball fame. I honestly get a lot of enjoyment in seeing elements that remind me of certain characters and designs from DBZ. Of course, I think they're appealing even without that type of appreciation. Unfortunately the environments in general don't look as good, because this re-release is based on the Switch version. But that's okay because it's a good time, even if it seems very traditional for a JRPG. It helped that I haven't played one of those in a while. But really it just does all those traditional JRPG things extremely well with a high degree of polish and charm. It being so fun and colourful was a breath of fresh air for me, as someone who gravitates towards realistic and gritty games. Finally, for all the criticism the original soundtrack received, this orchestral version is fantastic, even if the overworld music is repetitive. Every time I loaded up the game I had to listen to the entire title screen music track for how awesome it is, and the rest follows in that path.
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It's an incredible open world fps zombie parkour survival game... any more terms needed? This is from 2015 but it holds up extremely well, other than some odd performance bottlenecks on PC. They were still supporting it up until this year, crazily enough. As many have said, the story can be a bit meh but it's just such a well realized city, and the parkour and combat mechanics are so fun that just running around the city is a good time. Even the DLC is fantastic, moving to a rural area with a great buggy to drive.
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This is very similar to the first one - an elegant wargame that distills the challenges of weather, supply and sharp timetables into an accessible framework, while straddling the line between puzzle and simulation. It also improves on almost every aspect of the first one, with more depth, a better difficulty curve, and more cool alternate history scenarios. I spent 80 hours going through the campaign and took the trouble of getting a gold medal in every scenario, and I loved doing it.
For anyone new to the wargame genre I might recommend trying the first one, though, since that one's a bit less complicated. I found this one could get a bit cumbersome because they introduce different command posts for different national armies, which might be a bit too much for a first timer. But as it is, it's a great ramp up from the first one.
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A AAA third-person shooter take on the roguelite genre. Was unsure about whether I'd enjoy yet another from this genre right now, but it went on sale and I really wanted a nice PS5 exclusive. Thankfully enough is fresh here to make the genre tropes enjoyable. Kinda reminds me of Nier Automata with its third person shooter bullet hell gameplay. Does a good job building a very strange universe and doling out interesting loot and upgrades to draw you into another run.
On the other hand, the articles criticizing the game for lacking a save and quit feature are absolutely right. A good run can easily take 3 or 4 hours if you go far. And even if you can get shortcuts, obviously you want to scour each floor to get enough powerups to handle the later levels. Apparently you can put your console in rest mode as a workaround, but I never tried it as I didn't really trust it, and I usually give myself a lot of time to get through a run. Even if I have the time it can really drag, though. I already had this game hard crash my PS5 so I'm not that positive on using rest mode with it. It looks like they eventually added save and quit after I beat the game, so now is a great time to jump in.
Even when the marathon sessions dragged, I still felt compelled to give it another run each time because it's still a great game. Every run I made some good progress somehow, whether reaching a new level, getting crucial upgrades, beating a boss, getting a new weapon, learning something strange about the story and on and on.
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I saw some criticism about this being a mediocre open world game, but I think it's great so far. Surprisingly good story and characters elevate this over Dying Light for me right now.
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A top down shooter with a pretty high difficulty curve, I really loved this game for about 30 hours, so it was well worth the admission. It was that type of addiction where I could scarcely stop thinking about how awesome it was when I wasn't playing it. You play as one soldier in an army and gradually develop more tactical decisions as you level up, but death comes quickly. Fast respawns help you get the hang of it, and the AI on both sides really help make battles fun and get you to make interesting tactical decisions.
Yet I really expected to keep loving it longer, especially with two WW2 campaigns. Unfortunately my interest fell steeply when my attempt at the WW2 Pacific campaign ran into some pretty frustrating balance issues. And every campaign playthrough happens on the same maps, with some variation in spawns, but not enough to get me playing through fully another time. Maybe I'll return, but I thought this game would have a longer runway for me.
It feels like a similar issue with Brigador, where the game's core combat and mechanics are really amazing and addictive, yet the lack of more maps and modes, or some sort of interesting variations, make the game wear out faster than it could. Obviously 30 hours of fun is great value, but with some more good content I could see myself enjoying so much more time with it. Perhaps I will attempt some of the WW2 content again sometime.
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A cyberpunk ARPG dual-stick shooter that distinguishes itself with fantastic style and worldbuilding. Graphically, walking through the cities is a real Bladerunner-esque treat. The world definitely borrows much from established cyberpunk and sci-fi but puts enough of a twist that it's genuinely fascinating to learn about this bizarre alien techno dystopia, whether through lore text dumps or even through random conversations by strangers on the street. For me, this is what truly set it apart.
Then the action part is good too. It has a cover system that always feels a bit awkward, since you're not really sticking to cover per se. But the guns feel and sound great which goes some way to making it more fun. You end up unlocking some pretty crazy weapons that help in this regard. I wish it took a bit more from Diablo et al and used procedural loot, whereas you really just find one type of weapon and upgrade its damage. A lot of unlockable abilities also weren't too interesting. I would say the action is more than competent, but doesn't really reach the heights of a Diablo 2 or 3.
But that's ok because the world pushes this over the edge to make it a great experience.
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This basically perfected what Duke Nukem achieved with the Build Engine and it was a joy to play. Love the concept of making a modern game in a super old engine, and this shows how well it can work.
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It's just a stupid digital hockey card trading app, and yet it single handedly got me back into watching hockey. During the playoffs it was practically the only "game" I was playing. The daily fantasy contests use cards and ended up being a fun way to learn about each team and follow the games, especially in the playoffs. And while I thought digital cards were a pretty dumb concept verging on a scam, I found that it actually has a lot of advantages over physical cards in terms of the aforementioned contests, free to cheap entry prices (especially compared to current highly inflated physical card prices), new daily cards and weekly sets and having lots of people to trade with at all times. Also, apparently these can hold some value on ebay if you really want to sell them, though I'm not doing it for that. It also wouldn't be long term considering these aren't NFTs (yet...) and live as long as the app. But really, I just enjoy collecting cards and finishing sets. It's not like I would get anything of lasting value if I spent the same minimal budget on physical cards, that's for sure. The daily missions, collecting and trading ending up having an appeal kind of like an idle game, or at least what idle games seem to be since I don't play those. But it's just the satisfaction of continual accumulation.
All in all it's kind of surprisingly enjoyable and I appreciate it for getting me back into an old hobby.
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A great, elegant wargame-ish puzzle game. Not too fiddly, and they actually make dealing with supply issues fun, and critical.
Didn't entirely "beat" the campaign because it has a weird system where "victory" actually ends the game because it wasn't a good enough victory... so why call it victory? I would replay the missions to get them perfect but Unity of Command 2 looks like such a cool sequel I'd rather move onto that. Perhaps I'll return to this one, and the expansions, after that. But really, I think the campaign system could be different - instead of requiring perfect replays (where you can play for half an hour and barely miss out on capturing that last city due to a bad die roll), have the degree of victory influence the next mission(s). (And it turns out the next game basically does that.)
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Fun fps "metroidvania" with lots of puzzles. I put that in quotes because I don't know if this really qualifies, but whatever, it a 1st person exploration/ puzzle game with some areas gated by abilities. It's got some light combat but it's only barely serviceable and not really the draw. The exploration and puzzle elements are good to great. It's very impressive that basically one person made it. It all takes place in a literal sandbox so it's got that cool Levelord-style charm and doesn't take itself too seriously. Sometimes to a fault, but whatever. There's lots of good value here in terms of a money to time ratio, if you care about that. DLC is alright too.
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Never played through the whole thing before, but the gameplay and level design holds very up well, much like Doom. Actually, the Build Engine was so impressive to me in comparison to Doom and its ilk that I decided to play all the other big games made with it. I like the straightforward old school shooting and fake 3d environments (pre-Quake), but also the Build graphics were good enough that they could design recognizable urban environments and not just the weird abstract environments of Doom et al. Anyway, this release also includes a nifty feature that allows rewinding time after death. It also has new levels, including one at a weed dispensary, because of course it does.
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Played the remaster since it's on gamepass. I think the cops and robbers focus is fantastic and adds a slight mario kart feel to the proceedings without getting too ridiculous. Spike strips and EMPs flying around can really cause some great chaos. I wish more racing games leaned into this kind of silliness.
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Pretty much the same old forza horizon, but horizon is great. An absolute steal on gamepass. Disappointed with how many bugs were in at release, though.
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Remastered version was great, albeit flawed. The story and environments are the standout, while the combat moves between competent to shoddy. I definitely had quite a few deaths that were down to sluggish animations cancelling out inputs, or the dreaded dodge on the same button as run. Eventually I realized they want you to approach encounters in a certain way, with the way they just spawn enemies in around you while making your camera and controls sluggish. But I certainly couldn't consider playing this again on a higher difficulty for how painful that would be, despite the fact that I considered it just because I enjoyed the campaign and world so much. Glad I played it so I can look forward to Alan Wake 2, or at least some more integration with a certain other universe.
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I got a good 10 hours out of it playing the campaign and some procedural freelance missions. The tank controls get some getting used, to but its fun stomping around trying out different weapons and laying waste to entire cities. Cool style and lore too. The campaign has a great variety of mechs, city layouts and objectives, so that was the real draw here.
Unfortunately the randomly generated missions need some work to make them more interesting and varied. As it is they have the same objectives, many of them optional and being more tedious than interesting. It relies more on the player wanting to try different mechs and weapons, but I don't think the missions themselves are interesting enough. They end up feeling like a slog. I hope the follow up Brigador Killers gets some of this right next time.
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I returned to this after having been away for a while, probably a few years. I found it too demanding and not fun enough before. However I was having so much fun playing rally stages in Forza Horizon 5 that I decided to return to this and just not take it too seriously. When I played before I had turned off all the assists as people recommend, but I found that too punishing. This time I turned them all on and I had a good time. Then once the AI got too fast I realized some of the assists just hold you back. Traction control is a bad idea when you need to slip and slide in this game. And automatics are bad around corners. So I found myself playing manual with no traction control in a game I didn't wanna get to serious with. But it's now wicked fun once I got the hang of it. Driving a Group B car for this first time was incredibly satisfying after playing with older and lesser cars. Manual shifting also isn't too bad in a rally car as there aren't many gears, and it becomes clear pretty quick which gear to take certain corners with. All in all it's a fantastic, pure rally sim, and I definitely want to check out the second one now.
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On the second playthrough right now and while it is cool, it just hasn't grabbed me as much as I thought it would, from what I remember about those GotY discussions. Philosophically I thought this was supposed to be interesting and so far, not that much. It's all pretty obvious, with some neat little touches for sure. But I was never enamored with the core gameplay or the anime stylings, which didn't help things. A disappointment for me, but I might be weird.
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It's just pure fun that sparks joy in my inner 5 year old. The cars are cool and they look great. The racing is over the top with boosting and drifting on twisty, turny, loopy tracks. Going through the campaign was a blast.
After the campaign there are definitely some issues with holding my attention. I want to collect all the cars but you make so few coins in multiplayer, and you mainly get cars through blind boxes. Multiplayer is decent, but user tracks can be hit or miss, and AFK racers just collecting coins at the starting line is stilla problem. I'm usually not huge on multiplayer though, so I need the extra draw of better rewards. Hoping for some updates that make the search for cars more fun.
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Excellent build engine game. After the first few levels it makes me think that this is what John Romero wanted to make when he described an "expert fps." Instead he made... Daikatana. This one is hard, and it means you can't really play fast and loose like much of Doom or Duke Nukem - at least on the normal "lightly broiled" difficulty. You have to peek around corners and shoot quickly to avoid getting chewed up by enemies. At first I thought the difficulty was a bit ridiculous, but you can adapt. It helps that you can quick save at any time, of course. But once I figured out what the game wanted from me it got more doable. The level design and weapons are a lot of fun. It's also got a cool world filled with crazy cultists screaming latin while throwing dynamite at you. It's a great original setting and I think it's right behind Duke Nukem as the second best build engine game.
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I bought this game really just to support the developers who had to pull it off game stores for insulting the Chinese president. It turns out it's a great little horror game. I'd call it a walking simulator with some light puzzles, but even as someone who isn't very into those, I really enjoyed it. It's got an interesting 80's Taiwan setting and some really powerful themes about family and religion, to keep it vague. I probably wouldn't have paid full price for it normally, but I think the developers deserved it for getting the short end of the stick.
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Soviet Quake. The first episode was released in Early Access and it's great. Fantastic bleak atmosphere with good shooting and level design. Only took about 3 hours on normal, plus some endless mode. It is $20 so you'll have to wait to get full purchase value, but what's here is great. I'm not even really nostalgic for Quake, yet I still love Hrot's aesthetic and feel.
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I liked the intro, and the game is better than 2 so far, but I started to realize the limitations of a linear cinematic style with serviceable combat. At least when trying to play through them all in a row. It probably helps to play these when they release because cutting edge visuals are going to be a big part of its appeal. Playing them without the same visual sheen really makes me appreciate the way Tomb Raider built on these games and put some more interesting open world gameplay in there.
I generally found that it was better to play these linear games for maybe 2 hours max because otherwise the formula starts to feel stale. You know, kinda like a movie running time, because that's what this wants to be.
I'm also mystified as to what they wanted to achieve with the difficulty level of this series. Some combat arenas end up being pretty annoying. Either there's some jank with cover, or it feels like the game wants me to play a section exactly the right way - go to this cover, find this weapon and take out these spawning enemies or be overwhelmed since you can die surprisingly quickly. This trial and error feels stupid in a game trying to be a movie - ideally you would rarely ever die but only come close, because dying takes you out of the flow. But they clearly weren't afraid of that, instead wanting to give you a decent challenge on normal. It's possible that they wanted to extend the playtime since a run with less deaths might be much shorter. I'm not saying don't make me die, but it just seemed tuned higher than it ought to be, or some encounters seemed poorly designed. I'm sure many would just say "get gud" though, which I think misses the point.
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Nathan Drake bundle. This was a great step up from the first game, and only two years later. I seem to remember that being the consensus opinion at the time as well. The gun combat has improved dramatically over the first game, as well as the cool set piece areas. Even graphically parts of it still look pretty, and I assume the remaster didn't improve much. I can see why this was so beloved. If I'm impressed with it right now, I'm sure it knocked everyone's socks off in 2009 (and I vaguely remember the Giantbomb crew saying as much).
Despite this I grew a bit tired by the end of it, and it felt more front-loaded with the best set-piece battles and escape sequences.
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Diablo 2 with a new coat of paint, and that's about it. Which is maybe all it really could be, since it's such a classic that you couldn't really change much without upsetting the diehards. Played for a bit and enjoyed the graphical overhaul but fell off it. If I know something about diablo 2, it's that I will return and play more at some point. It is inevitable.
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This is a great remaster/remake, especially since it's been a while so I've forgotten many parts of half-life.
That is, it was great until a terrible bug which makes it impossible to complete a later chapter if you ever use a quick save in it. Something apparently that was in there in the beta. That's pretty amateurish and unforgiveable. I now have to use a console command to restart the entire chapter, and make sure I don't use a quick save. I suppose if I feel like going through that rigmarole, I'll finish it.
Regardless, everything up to that point was great so I'll still put it up there.
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Played it for probably 70 or 80 hours and seems like I only finished half the damn thing. Yes I did take my time with it at the beginning, but only because I didn't realize how long it was. This was somehow my first Assassin's Creed game and it was pretty fun for my time with it, but it is so goddamn bloated. As I've heard from others, if you really cut down the game world and meaningless collectibles you'd have a great game in here. As it is, it's expecting me to spend a Witcher 3 amount of time in a much duller world. The RPG combat is pretty lifeless as well. Don't think I will ever finish this one or check out the other Assassin's RPG-style games - I've probably had my fill for life.
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This seems like an admirable attempt to create a zombie survival game that you can play forever, or at least a long time. I enjoyed going through the first campaign map, but started to lose interest in the second. The procedural stuff is fun until it wears out, the graphics are so-so along with the combat. There are a ton of systems going on and yet on the standard difficulty I wondered why a lot of them were there when I didn't really need to engage with them at all. I suppose playing on a higher difficulty would require more mastery, or even interest in those systems, but I just don't feel pushed to keep going. Some of the systems just end up being kind of annoying anyway. Dealing with inventories of a bunch of survivors can get tiresome. There's just a lack of polish despite being polished in comparison to the first game. However I wonder whether I can be interested in a survival game without much direction. It seems destined to get stale for me, as I prefer to finish a game, meaning some sort of story or objective, and move on to the next thing after.
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Tried playing the free GOG classic version first, but without some modern features it's pretty rough. And I wanted to give the "big 4" Build Engine games a fair shake, so I picked up the redux version. It's not quite as good as some other source ports but shadow warrior doesn't have much good engine support.
Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised. I would probably place it at number 3 under Blood, but it is waaaaay better than Redneck Rampage. It's got some good, even great, level design and the weapons are actually pretty satisfying to use, like the rapid fire shotgun and grenade launcher. Occasionally I needed a guide to find the way forward, but not too much. I give 90's shooters a bit more leeway with that. Yeah some of the humour doesn't hold up well today, but I found myself having a genuine laugh here and there. In my opinion, build engine should have a big 3 with this being a respectable bronze medalist, and just pretend the other one doesn't exist.
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Funnily enough I think the biggest thing I took from Nier: Automata was that I need to play some schmups. Some enthusiasts recommended this as a good gateway game, and they were absolutely right. It turns out this is the most enjoyment I would get out of the shmups I played, as it's a highly polished game that sort of bridges the gap between japanese and euroshmups.
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A great metroidvania like the first one. I'm not a big a fan of the weird techno-Sumerian syle in this one compared to the first game, but it's unique and the worldbuilding and art are still great. I didn't even realize it was made by one guy which is incredible. I think that fact shows, however, in a bit of lack of polish in the level design. I got pretty stuck and had to use a guide to find an obscure area to advance the game. It's got some cool multi-world mechanics, but the other worlds never seemed very interesting. I got around 80% of items but didn't feel pushed to find the rest at the end. And since I didn't get 100% I suspect I didn't get a full ending, but what I did get was disappointing given such a large build-up in understanding the world. I also don't think the focus on melee combat worked very well, and it made for some awkward enemy and boss encounters that devolved into running at something and smashing the X button. This was an instant purchase for me and unfortunately it didn't quite live up to my own hype, but it's still a great game that's worth your time.
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Super cool and elegant run-based platformer. It makes me want a pair of gun shoes.
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I mean it's pretty good but it says something that this is below the original shadow warrior. Definitely reminds of the Doom reboots in some ways, in that it is a lot of arena combat rooms that get locked down, and you have a wide and very specialized arsenal. The shooting just doesn't feel that great, though, which is my main problem with it. The melee combat is expanded and when you figure it out and get a nice combo it can feel satisfying, but at other times rather clumsy. It is still good, but it just doesn't have the flow and satisfaction of those old games, or the Doom reboot, for that matter. It also has a bunch of story stuff that can be hard to follow and is rather extraneous, but some of the characters and quips tend to make up for that.
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Such a classic. I was on on a WW2 kick earlier this year and playing this was surprisingly fun again, especially with a mouse and keyboard after playing it on xbox for so long. It lead to me trying to go back and play all the CoD singleplayer campaigns I missed, since I'm rarely into multiplayer.
The funny thing is I actually think I prefer this old school game design with less forced cutscenes and more... shooting. The later CoD campaigns are less replayable to me because I have to slog through tons of scripted events when I kinda just want a fun gameplay experience. Some of them are decent fun the first time, but I like CoD 2's grounding in real-ish events as opposed to the ridiculous bombast, and perhaps questionable politics, from the later games.
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Ok I now understand the appeal of idle games. I had my laptop basically running 24/7 for a week or two because of this. It's a fun, silly thing, and I haven't "prestiged" in it or tried some weird things, so I might try that before entirely moving on. But after a couple weeks and getting to almost the final building, which is still ridiculously far away, I've put it down for a good bit.
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Apparently this game is very polarizing, but I enjoyed it. Frustrating at points, and while the ending has received criticism I thought it was good, if a bit confusing at first. I liked the overhead adventure game concepts and trying to figure out all the interactions going on in one small space. It definitely helps that I played it on gamepass, though.
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Well this was rather disappointing. It adds some interesting ideas onto the first game, like a lifebar and more roguelike abilities, and then it doesn't really do a lot with them. Then it just kind of ends. It's pretty damn easy, especially if you played the first game, and I suppose especially if you're on kb+m. Difficulty never ramps up that much. I thought it would be more run based, but the roguelike aspect does not extend to your progress through the simple map. Gone are the interesting challenges, combing through levels for secrets, and so on. Some challenges are embedded on map squares, but it seems like an afterthought that hasn't been updated.
The "story" beats are cryptic as ever, and some of them are rather cool, but it doesn't amount to much. Apparently the "true ending" requires a weird requirement which I don't feel like fulfilling, so guess I won't see it. All in all, an extremely underwhelming outing that showed a way forward for superhot but absolutely failed to capitalize. No wonder I barely heard anything about it.
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Decent, looks pretty good, but it's still based on a ps2 game. It might be sacrilege, but not a fan of many of the weapons. They're wacky but not particularly fun to shoot. It's ok because I feel bad about this.
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Apparently this is like the Doom roguelike with a fresh coat of paint. I'm into the shooting and cover mechanics. Feels like a pretty fun update on old school roguelikes without the ASCII art. Didn't see a ton of variety in enemies and worlds. Normal seemed fairly easy since I got very far on the first few runs, which removed some of the mystery that roguelikes are often good at. But couldn't quite beat the final boss on the 3rd or 4th run. It's got some slapping metal tunes and your player says some hilariously dumb shit, so that's entertaining.
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This was a good campaign, and I'm surprised it's considered weak. Also surprised that I heard bad things about the ending, as in politically how it was messed up, which I didn't really see within the game's logic. From the crop of modern CoD campaigns, it's probably up there for me.
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Great minimalist racer. I've always thought rally racing was cool and I've enjoyed a few realistic games, but they're usually pretty stressful having to pay attention to pace notes and such. This one is nice and chill, as the camera angle allows you to see turns ahead, and the normal difficulty is easy enough for me that there isn't much pressure. Your mileage might vary if you're not used to rally racing, since the handling model can be tricky even with the default assists. Yet if you figure it out it's pretty satisfying to find nice, sweeping racing lines between curves and that perfect drift around a corner.
And of course I had to buy this a couple weeks before it hit gamepass. I sometimes see games get a quick sale before hitting gamepass to get a last squeeze of revenue and I wonder if they got me with it.
Made it to Group B but haven't played in a few weeks. Just lots of other cool stuff to play.
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Itch bundle. Fantastic adventure game that is cute, funny, and disturbing all at once. The puzzles so far are also very well balanced and haven't required a guide, so that's a plus for someone who doesn't engage with the genre very often.
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This was a great way to relax between exams. Short, creepy puzzle platformer, sort of like a 3D Limbo. It was a great 4 hours but I got this either for free or in some bundle, so normally a bit pricey for its length.
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Itch bundle. Nice little homage to Zelda II. Of course, I don't think I ever played much of Zelda II. But this seems like a short and forgiving version of that. No combat to worry about, frequent checkpoints and plenty of direction on where to go. I even like the super thick CRT filter - you can see the screen reflect in your fake television! This is probably the only time I will ever keep something like that on, because it's all about feeling those retro vibes with none of the Nintendo-hard game design.
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Fun spy tactics game the first time I played through beginner. Started a second on the experienced difficulty and it's significantly harder, but not in a fun way for me, honestly. Big difference is that enemies move between rooms more, which makes sense but also just felt like it made everything take way longer. Didn't end up playing another time.
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Good silly fun. I needed to know why Jeff thought the numbers thing was cool compared to the later games, and I see his point.
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Specifically playing a standalone mod, Ashes 2063. It's sick. Makes the doom engine look more like the build engine, and reminds of Ion Fury. Fantastic shooting and level design, and surprisingly good hub levels and npcs, if you can believe it. Gives me a bit of half life feel in how you progress with your motorcycle. Looking forward to the second episode.
Also playin good ol doom 2, bad levels and all. Then I tried some mods, finally settling on just playing through classic levels with the beautiful doom mod to make vanilla gameplay prettier. Really makes things more enjoyable.
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Just played this on gamepass one night as a quick action fix, and it's good but there's so much like it these days.
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I somehow enjoyed this more than Dusk even though I figured I wouldn't like the fantasy style as much. I was never big on Hexen. But the environments end up looking pretty cool, especially near the end. It's not too hard on normal so I actually had some fun just blasting through levels pretty quickly. But there's something about this and Dusk that I don't like that much compared to something like HROT or Ion Fury. It's just somewhat uninspired in some respects, mainly the level design.
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Surprisingly good roguelike shooter for the first few hours, considering how derivative it is. The gameplay is extremely fast and there is no need to navigate long dungeon maps and backtrack, it simply lets you choose which rooms to go to directly and beams you back with your choice of new ability. The fact that it cuts out some of the more tedious aspects of a game like Ziggurat is the appeal here. It's enemy encounters don't tend to swarm you like that game either. I also really like it visually with the pixelized shader over top. I thought it was weird at first but adds a distinct look, since otherwise the graphics would probably look pretty boring. Unfortunately it was already starting to feel a bit flat after a few hours. New maps are fun, but it also wants you to "combine" different maps together, which just seems to mean mashing some old levels and enemies together. That gets boring, but that's why gamepass is so great. I will take a surprisingly good few hours for a "free" game, which is basically a couple good nights of fun.
It ended up feeling a tad short, even though it took me about 6 and a half hours. It's definitely pretty easy, especially on mouse and keyboard. That allows you to really blast through levels, and I didn't need to try all the level combinations to beat the game. I think I only died to one boss once from a weird pattern, and it even has an integrated death save mechanic. I think the difficulty could definitely be tuned upward, but it was still a fun experience.
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This is sort of the perfect gamepass game. A nifty, short puzzle game that I would not want to pay much for, but I'm glad I got to experience it. I don't know how they were able to program some of these strange perspective based puzzles, but it was very unique.
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It's incredible how well this has aged. I end up playing this at least once a year. When I just want the absolute most basic, fast paced and mindless shooter to play through I go for this. And I mean all that in a good way. There's something to be said for the purity of the experience.
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Good old-school shooter fun, but started losing interest in some of the later levels. I find the level design and shooting just okay.
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I don't play a lot of narrative focused walk-sim type games, which this basically is one, but I was in the right headspace for this. It's got a little bit of stealth but it actively discourages you from using its rather cool gun, which is a shame. So far though I've enjoyed unraveling the mystery. Basically makes me think of the investigation parts of Condemned: Criminal Origins (without the awesome melee combat), which is pretty on rails as a gameplay experience but is at least cool in a narrative game. Generally I think it looks great graphically, which makes me interested in this studio's Chernobylite. I can see how they may have scanned some places in, as they really capture the grimy derelict building look.
Ended up falling off this once I started Returnal because that was much more compelling. I think this story just wasn't very interesting to me and I disliked the way it gave you a cool gun while complaining when you actually used it. I would still like to check out what they did with Chernobylite as a perennial STALKER fan, but hopefully it's a bit better than this.
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A cute Paper Mario-like with bugs that just didn't fully grab me, for whatever reason. Maybe the graphics feel a bit too indie for me, I don't know. It's like I WANTED to like it more but I just found myself growing bored after a little while.
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Good co-op shooter that is basically Left 4 Dead 3, but I don't really have people to play it with and playing with randoms can really suck.
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Finally picked this up after seeing so many cool youtube videos about it. Just messed around with it for a bit, tried some scenarios, and seems like it'll be a fun toy to play with now and then. It definitely feels like that more than a complete game at this point. It's been in early access for quite a while and don't see that changing any time soon. Performance could be better, but I guess that's what you get for realistically simulating car body physics. While the crashes of course look good, the driving model is also interesting in how unforgiving it is. Even small dents on your car body can mess up a wheel and your driving line in the right place.
Looking forward to trying more weird scenarios and generally learning about all the crazy options going on here.
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I got this on sale for around $2.50 and it was decent value for 90 minutes of fun. Didn't realize it but it's the same people who did Sludge Life, and I love the lo-fi aesthetic in their games. I also like the idea of little combat arenas where you just jump off the roof and deploy a parachute when you're done. I wish there were more than 20 levels but what can you do.
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This is the game where the story somehow got a bit too ridiculous for me, even by CoD standards. It was still fun. Tried replaying on Hardened difficulty but it gets so bogged down in letting scripted events play out. And those annoying RTS type missions, which seemed like some sort of multiplayer mode shoe-in. Except I think it's only in the single-player somehow. Weird choice.
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It's a goddamn nightmare. It's not the best game but I guess that's the point? It's mostly about existing in some sort of garbage dystopia, because apparently we're not close enough already. I give it a lot of points for style and humour and evoking a very cursed 90's game feel, and some of the gameplay seemed on a good path, but the levels got a bit more linear and deadly and not fun... which again, maybe that's part of the statement. Still needs to be a fun game at some point.
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Just some good top down shooter fun. Survival mode ended up being less fun than I expected from what Jeff said, since everything seems to spawn too fast before long, filling the screen. The campaign missions have better gradual spawns so they were great.
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An adrenaline-fueled acid trip of an fps. I only wish it took me longer than an hour to beat it, but at $3 it was worth it. You can always go for a highscore on the leaderboard if you're into that.
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Popped this back on my PS5 and it seems to run better than it did at release, but it's still not very remarkable. For some reason the control feels like total ass in certain cars but it also feels like the controller is partially an issue. If I play again I might try turning down the haptic feedback for this game because the throttle control ends up feeling extremely imprecise as a result of it. It also doesn't help that the Dualshock thumbstick placement feels awkward to me after years of Forza. Besides that the game is pretty unremarkable.
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Playing this in the Nathan Drake collection since I never had a Playstation console before. Apparently it's been remastered but it's still pretty rough. The shooting gameplay hasn't aged very well and it is oddly difficult and even unfair at times. But the game is about 15 years old so what are you gonna do! Probably doesn't help that I've played stuff like the newer Tomb Raiders which heavily borrowed from these games with an added modern polish. Anyway, It'll be interesting to play through the series and see how it improved and even set the benchmark for this style of game.
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Itch bundle. A cute little game. It has puzzle boxes which are fairly simple and are more just about having fun poking and prodding them, not difficulty. Occasionally there was a puzzle that ground things to a halt, either because it was unclear or from overthinking it. But for the most part it's well designed.
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I specifically played a romhack called Fire Red: Rocket Edition that recently hit final release. It's pretty great if you have nostalgia for the first pokemon games. Steal pokemon and play for team rocket while unravelling the edgelordy backstory to a series of children's games. It's got some lamer moments but the fan service is too fun and hilarious for me to mind. Balanced fairly well so far too, without needing much grinding.
Unfortunatly I fell off it because I'm a bit bored of the same old pokemon, gameplay and region of Fire Red. Even a pretty interesting take wasn't enough I guess.
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Was fine to play on xbox gamepass, but it's pretty much the same game they've been making for years. Hopefully the next gen release is a good re-haul, but I'm not holding my breath.
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Played this for a few hours and it was decent, but just fell off it. If you can tune out of the dialogue and such it's fine.
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Played a few missions of this and it was fun enough, but fell off it. Maybe space pew pew just isn't my thing. Would still like to return at some point.
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Part of an itch bundle. A short fps metroidvania with cool vibes and music. It's a got a decent story too. Worth checking out for cheap, as it's about an hour long.
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My quest to get into Souls games continues. And continues to fail. Had fun until I hit a difficult boss, got annoyed and put it down. It looked and felt great in the time I played it, but I get too annoyed with the loop. I think Bloodborne is the only possible saviour of this series for me, but perhaps like Mr. Navarro this series is just not made for me.
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A nice, cheap hour-long diversion that goes to charity, what's not to like?
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Continuing to play this from last year, nice casual OCD simulator.
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Continuing from last year. Just something to chill out and play some tunes with.
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Itch bundle. Cute little where's waldo type game where everything makes funny noises. Nice chill puzzler.
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It's okay... but I really wanted to like it more. I wanted get into some turn based wargame type stuff, especially in WW2, and this seemed like a nice gateway. Unfortunately it definitely feels like a mobile game, and while the tactics are decent, the execution seems a bit sloppy. I like the idea of fire and suppression being important, but the implementation here is rather odd and opaque. Some of things I read in the manual were just straight up wrong or misstated, which is important when little is explained the game. I can understand why they might leave some stuff under the hood for a casual game, but actually it's not very much fun when strange things happen in-game that botch a mission and I don't know why. Unfortunately the sequel seems very similar, so I went ahead and played Unity of Command instead, which turned out to be just what I was looking for (and has a great manual to boot).
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For me it's much more enjoyable than quake 1 now. Better level design. But who's idea was it to leave out the music? And I can't mod it into the gamepass version. Dropped the ball.
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This re-release is fine, but I just don't enjoy quake as much as doom. Chunky early 3d graphics don't look great with more fidelity to me.
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On gamepass through EA Play. It's 20 years old, but as a straightforward shooter it's a fun time capsule.
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Cute and relaxing. Unpack and organize your room in this OCD simulator. Another perfect gamepass game that I definitely wouldn't spend $20 on, but as something to play at the end of the day it's decent. Only played one sitting though, just not enough going on.
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Remember Ziggurat? This is more Ziggurat. I bought this in a moment of weakness and refunded it after I realized it wasn't going to do much for me.
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Played some levels, it's alright but meh.
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Figured I'd try this since it was free on Epic and wondered if Myst could redeem itself. I actually liked the first few hours and the world building and thought they had done well, but I hit a dead end where I exhausted my leads. I found like 10 new areas and solved a bunch of puzzles only to lead to 10 dead ends and more questions than answers. And running around the place trying to figure it out wasn't fun after some point. Then I put it down and found myself thinking about it away from the game... and had a eureka moment, which was great. Some of my favourite puzzle games have done the same thing, requiring time away to ruminate on things. However, I soon got stuck again and I never got inspiration to solve it that time. I guess I could use a guide at some point but I dislike using guides for puzzle games more than other genres because the puzzle is the whole point! If I start using a guide I start to wonder why I'm playing the thing to begin with - I'm not really interested in just a narrative. So that's why I haven't returned.
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Sometimes fun to play for a quick little turn based tactics game.
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Yes it's an old walking sim horror game, of which many have been made since then. But I've barely played any of those so I figured I'd try it out one of the progenitors of the genre. I actually liked it quite a bit for a while. Excellent sense of foreboding, and the anxiety mechanics are interesting. But it becomes flat after a while, especially with some of the ridiculously cryptic puzzles that practically require a guide. Those pissed me off so much I ended up rage quitting before the end in protest. But I wouldn't mind seeing what these developers did later, or maybe some other games heavily inspired by them. When I'm in a horror mood.
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This is where I realized I just might not be into hardcore shmups. This is supposed to be a really good beginner bullet hell game but I'm not really into it, even though I did decently on my first run. It's just not my bag... baby.
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Itch bundle. Seems like a hidden gem. It's called an "anti-coin collection" game, though it's more of a puzzle game where you strategically avoid or collect coins to break through or keep boxes in your way. Excellent pixel art and music. Seemed like good casual platforming, but ultimately didn't do enough to compel me to return after my first sitting.
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Itch bundle - cool chill puzzler, but lost interest when things got a bit harder. It's that weird thing where you can finish a bunch of puzzles without really understanding all the systems, and then it gets hard and you're like... wait how does this work.
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Not too bad for 1984, but please don't make me hit the button to fire every time.
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It's an Amnesia copy and paste recently released on gamepass for some reason. It's alright for what it is but I didn't even finish Amnesia so I'm not doing this one.
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Cool shmup/asteroids type game but it feels a bit rough playing it now. Kinda like a really good newgrounds flash game.
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