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Tom_omb

Lists and doodles for nobody since 2013 (2018's GoTY is a blog)

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2022 Game Journal

I wasn't sure if I'd keep doing this for another year, but I'm in the habit now so I may as well.

As the year begins I'm still playing Inscryption and I have a six months of Gamepass cards ready to claim as soon as I'm ready. I picked it up Boxing Week along with a card for Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury. This way I won't feel so obligated to milk as much as I can from a month of Gamepass and enjoy playing what I want.

Some of the 2021 games I still plan to play are Unpacking, Kena: Bridge of Spirits, Resident Evil VIllage, and Hitman 3 (with the previous two). I haven't forgotten about Disco Elysium, Ghost of Tsushima, and Immortals Fenyx Rising from my wish list last year. Feeling pretty overwhelmed with my game backlog.

List items

  • January 5 - March 4 (Last score shared on Twitter)

    The sensation everyone's playing, so I am too. A simple word game that's equal parts satisfying as it is frustrating. I play it every night on the bus coming home from work. Sharing it on Twitter is an essential part of the game loop, although I have nobody to see it and I bury them in one thread.

    https://twitter.com/Tom_omb/status/1480821236808650753

    It's amazing how these distinctive coloured boxes have captured the mainstream zeitgeist. Even my mom had heard of it. Yet, I'm surprised I can't get her to play it.

    A link would be nice, when initially trying to find it I played a Boggle game from the Google Play store with the same name. Even now I have to manually put links in my tweets so I can find the browser game the next day.

  • (BOWSER'S FURY)

    January 2 - 30

    This little Mario game is a fantastic little appetizer to hold me over until the next full 3D Mario. I didn't think setting a new 3D Mario in an open world is necessarily a game changer on its own, but it adds enough new things to do to feel like a fresh evolution of the Mario Franchise. Early on I could get disorientated, unsure what island I was on, in this world where the areas aren't so thematically distinctive as they typically are in Mario games. Opening the map, fast traveling, or hitching a ride on Nessie, Mario's sea creature mount.

    The biggest new addition is a giant Bowser kaiju that shows up from time to time to make things tough for you. While he could be slightly annoying at times, I found I was never very far from a shine for it to matter too much. Every shine collected sends him back to his dormant state. There are certain blocks that require a fire blast from Bowser to reveal the shine hidden within, so I'd be sure to keep in mind where the closest ones were.

  • January 30 - February 3

    Like the best horror, Resident Evil Village is goofy fun and dripping with creepy atmosphere. It's at its best when exploring the incredibly well rendered environments.

  • February 4 - 6

    I'm not the tidiest person in the world, but I enjoy organizing my things. It's keeping things organized that's hard. In Unpacking I don't need to worry about that, each chapter is literally a snapshot in time. Simply opening boxes of someone's stuff each move over 20 years can intimately tell the story of their life. From the tiniest details (the toys and books she keeps) to the most important moments, (relationships and career milestones).

    She is approximately my age, so it plays the nostalgia strings very well. I never had a Troll Doll or Tamagotchi, but they are icons that were very much a part of my childhood. Trying to decipher what GameCube Game or DVD on each box was a fun challenge. Yet, the connection goes deeper than nostalgia.

    This game had me reflecting on my homes, past and present, the things I've held onto and where I've kept them. Even the differences are revealing. I found myself comparing the tiniest details of my world to this woman's.

    It wasn't comfortable handling another person's most intimate things. The game wasn't always kind to the places I wanted to place some items. Stuffed animals go on the bed and the coffee grinder goes on the counter! Boy she has a lot of shoes and a couple items I didn't even recognize.

    Unpacking is a delight. A tight well made little package that doesn't wear out its welcome are like a splash of cool water on my face after playing a lengthy AAA game.

  • (ECHOES OF THE EYE)

    February 8 - 20

  • February 19

    I played Halo infinite a bit with a friend. We played Halo 1 and 2 together co-op, so I thought we could try some split screen vs. That was fun for a while, but when we joined an online match we were completely lost. Both of us have spent more time playing Perfect Dark the last 20 years than modern online shooters, so there's a bit of a learning curve we weren't up to tackle.

    The news that split screen co-op has been canceled is a bit of a bummer, but we still have Halo 3. He did buy an Xbox Series S, but we haven't played anything online together yet.

  • February 21

    For such a short experience, Gorogoa is really impressive. It's able to build upon approachably simple mechanics and create unique, complex puzzles by the later stages of the game. The music and story book art are quite beautiful too.

    This game peaked my interest when Vinny added it to his game of the year list in 2017. After sitting on a Wishlist for so long I'm glad I gave it a chance. Don't sleep on Gorogoa, it can be finished in a single sitting, so there's no excuse.

  • (THE HITMAN TRILOGY on Game Pass)

    February 22 -

  • March 7 - May 7

  • May 9

    Townscraper is a very elegant little tool/toy for building little island towns. Colour is the only menu based modifier, placement and context decides what form is built. The list of 10 achievements give you clues as to what you can discover by playing around. Like stacking blocks to build a spire or enclose a space to build a park. They are fun to discover, but a couple are quite challenging to guess.

    Unfortunately, beyond that there isn't a game here at all. With such a neat mechanic, I wish Townscraper would give me an excuse to continue to play around with it beyond one session.

  • May 15 - June 4

    Tunic is an ambitious game with a fascinating world design and shockingly deep meta layer of puzzle design. It's a game I respect in many ways, but I didn't have a lot of fun playing it.

    It's a game full of hidden secrect paths, something I'm always out on the hunt for, but straying from the main path lead me to an unsatisfying dead end time after time. Throughout my playthrough I was constantly retreading the same paths trying to decipher the big puzzles on my own, but ultimately resorted to looking up many answers to find they were too obtuse for me to ever figure out.

    The combat tries to invoke Dark Souls, but it's not as deep or deliberate in design. Enemy encounters quickly became overwhelming often and I felt like I didn't have the tools to deal with them. I turned on "No Fail Mode" fairly early on. This was an improvement, but the knockback from annoying harmless enemies contributed to the overall tedium of playing this game.

    All that aside, this game is speckled with flashes of brilliance. Saying any more would ruin it.

  • June 5 - 12

    Lake is a charming, but shallow experience. Delivering packages daily to a small town was a simple, yet satisfying gameplay hook and an excuse to talk to the people in town. There is some interesting interactions with the people, but they are brief. I wish they were slightly better fleshed out.

  • June 12 - July 17

  • July 17 - August 3

    Like power washing in real life, blasting something clean is a super satisfying experience. The problem is when you do it for a long time it just becomes a chore. That's exactly how it feels to play this game, yet I was hooked. It was relaxing to just put on a podcast and get washing. Larger levels could take hours to complete, I don't even want to know the time I put into this game. The objects and spaces I was assigned to clean ranged from the familiar to the absurd.

    It seemed endless the number of levels this game has. I wanted to reach the ones teased in the achievements list, but it kept on feeding more. At the end I could only be saved by my Game Pass subscription expiring.

  • August 6 - 12

    I was looking forward to playing Ghost of Tsushima and spent a long time waiting for a sale. I got my chance to try it with the PS sub.

    It's a gorgeous game and immersing myself into Japan's history is always appealing, but I didn't enjoy much else about this game. I lost patience for the combat, I felt underpowered and overwhelmed early in the game and stealth didn't feel practical. After a few hours I was finished with this game.

    I struggled with my choice to let go, the aesthetics were compelling me to stay. The authenticity of stripping naked to take a dip in the hot springs or chasing animals to discover secrets intrigued me. However, they were little more then collectables on a map. The only activity that was mechanically satisfying, if only slightly, was the rudimentary platforming required to reach abandoned shrines.

    Overall Ghost of Ghost of Tsushima is a shallow open world game akin to Assassin's Creed. I wanted to love this game, but I feel like I got everything I needed with my short play time.

  • August 6

    With no real interest in playing a fighting game right now I downloaded Soulcalibur VI exclusively to play with the character creator. I had my fun making a character, for a couple hours and likely won't play any more.

    Patterns and tattoo image projection make this one of the coolest character creators I've tried in recent years,. Although the models themselves aren't as high fidelity as something like Elden RIng.

  • August 3 - 6

    Available at launch, this was the game that got me to try out PlayStation game subscription meant to compete with Game Pass.

    Stray lets you play as a cat! What more do you need? Solid mechanics and an immersive world full of things to discover? Well, Stray nails the latter, but only in one area. A decrepit robot city full of quests and secrets. The majority of the game is disappointingly linear. Still, it's enjoyable throughout if not particularly innovative.

    Mechanically it's not your typical platformer with nuanced jumping. As a trade off for the great cat animation jumps are predefined. I wasn't bothered by the decision if it makes me feel more cat like. Add knocking over paint cans, walking on keyboards and rubbing against legs you've got yourself a grand time.

  • July 8

    When my friend came over and we had a good time playing through a sizable chunk of the campaign. While I'm not the biggest fan of the side scrolling beat em up genre, this game does enough to keep the gameplay fresh, but not too complex. Most of all I'm here for a glorious tribute to the Ninja Turtles of my childhood.

    Unfortunately my Game Pass expired before we could return to finish it up.

  • August 13 - 14

    Concrete Genie's excels at creative expression with a unique system that anybody can use and still feel like they are making art.  As an artist it feels a little restrictive, but I still enjoyed assembling compositions using their preset interactive objects.  Painting on walls was more satisfying than designing genies.  I felt I was fighting with the tools and was underwhelmed with the characters I made, but it improved slightly later in the game.

  • August 15 - September 12

    I haven't played and Assassin's Creed since Origins. I've been afraid to because I did everything there was to do, pre DLC, in that game. While I enjoyed it at the time, so it wasn't completely a waste of time, but the scope and lack of variety in these games makes me not want to get sucked in so hard again.

    As is always the case, I get drawn to the open exploration, the story is not my priority. I wasn't really engaging with the combat, the story was padded out with river raids and base upgrading. After playing like this for a few days I was getting a little weary.

    I decided to dip into the history mode, "The Discovery Tour." I was pleasantly surprised to see how it has evolved since Origins. Now it is a simplified campaign where you play as multiple people and find text boxes with history facts. It's pretty bare bones, if it was fleshed out a bit into more of a game, this is the Assasin's Creed experience I want. The real draw of this series is always been historical tourism for me.

  • September 17

    The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is gorgeous for an 8 year old game. It's just the right palette cleanser after playing a huge open world game. An engaging supernatural mystery that can be completed thoroughly in a single day. This is a game I was intrigued by ever since it came out, but for whatever reason I was dissuaded from playing it. Perhaps a bad review. I'm glad I reevaluated that position and finally gave it a chance.

  • September 18 - October 3

    The Messenger doesn't reinvent the wheel, but it's a fun little platformer with a great sense of humor. I found it sat at just the right challenge to keep me engaged. I was just about done with it, when the time jumps, the graphics change and the challenge is stepped up. I stopped playing there and was satisfied with my time with it.

  • October 29 - December 4

    As a fan of old LucasArts adventure games like Grim Fandango and The Curse of Monkey Island I was excited to learn the creators of Monkey Island were returning to the franchise despite not playing much of the originals.

    Unfortunately this game was heavily front loaded with references to those first two games that I only half remembered, if at all. Once the game gets going it looses most of that baggage and focuses on the adventure at hand. A delightfully funny romp. While enjoyable it doesn't live up to my fondest memories of these games, as nothing could.

    I could nitpick about the hint system mostly just telling me what I know, or the lack of funny lines for incorrect item interactions. The ending confused the hell out of me and I'm not sure if I played the game wrong or if I just don't get the reference.

  • November 12 -

    I decided to try out the N64 games on the Switch Online. I was going on a trip with a friend, and I thought they added Goldeneye at the time. I figure, since I'm subscribed to this service I might as well try the additions to New Horizons. I haven't touched AC after quitting cold turkey two years ago.

    My town is a mess, continuing there is an off putting idea. My obessive collecting habits are sure to take over. Fortunately to enjoy the new stuff I don't have to spend time on my island at all!

    It's a sandbox laser focused on the most fun aspect of animal crossing. I simply get to design vacation homes for clients with loose theme. New and tools and items are drip fed as I play. There's a feeling of progression that is often surprising. I never expected to design the island's school! It's all the creativity of Animal Crossing in bite-sized chunks without the baggage.

  • December 4 - 7

    I finally got this on sale, for still for too much money. When it came out I was a defender of Skyward Sword, but this time I feel how long and drawn out the beginning is. Just as I was surely nearing the first dungeon I fell off.

    The controls feel very stiff and awkward, even just moving and jumping. The primary reason I wanted to try this version of the game was to see how it felt without motion controls. I never figured out how to attack with them turned off.

    I was otherwise occupied this December and didn't play much. All in all my time with Skyward Sword was brief and disorientating, but I have unfinished business with this game. I don't know when I'll be playing again, but at least I'm better positioned to enjoy it, nearing the doorstep of the first dungeon.

  • December 25-29

    I got a PS5 for Christmas! Astro's Playroom, like the VR incarnation, is chalk full of personality and hidden Easter eggs. The adorable animated robots playing out scenes from PlayStation games or hanging around the hub on giant collectable PlayStation hardware was a joy.

    I didn't think the PlayStation nostalgia would do much for me as a Nintendo kid, but I have been playing PlayStation for 15 years or so and following the industry for 25. Even if I've barely touched a PlayStation 1, I still know the games and hardware.

    This is a solid Mario type platformer with tight controls and novel environments. Three robot suits mix up the gameplay, but don't play quite as well. The best being a climbing monkey that was a little sluggish to control, but the sound design and controller feedback made me feel like a gymnast navigating the bars.

    I was the most excited to play this game because of the new features of PS5's controller. To feel the tension of pulling the lever of a slot machine on the trigger is pretty cool and unlike anything I've felt it games. I wonder how (or if) it'll be utilized as well in future games.

  • December 29 -

  • January 7 -
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