Glad to see a review from the Doom expert himself here. I've had a real roller coaster of an experience with the game, and four stars feels about right (I'm one level from the end now). I really do admire what they went for and want to say they shouldn't just return to what they did with the first Doom, but it'd be silly to dismiss a lot of smart criticism regarding the game by just saying "git gud." It's just a little too micro-management heavy in the end and just wears you out by about 2/3 through the game.
Also, I couldn't agree more with others saying the Marauders are where the game just kind of totally fell apart for me. I get what they were going for with them, but they forgot to actually make them fun to fight in the process. Whereas almost every fight rewards you for your ingenuity, the Marauders are just obnoxious fights repeating the same kiting pattern and hoping you stay within this magical distance where he'll give you a quarter of a second to actually attack, and then you need to repeat it 4-5 times to actually kill him, and god forbid you run out of double shotgun ammo. They really should patch the game to make the distancing more forgiving and add about half a second to the window where they're vulnerable.
@ironham: You mean the game with a User Score of 5.1 on Metacritic? I haven't played it, so I have no personal opinion on it, but to act like there is some set hive-mind opinion of that game is pretty laughable. I can't recall a game that has an almost split down the middle amount of like and hate as Death Stranding in recent memory. And please don't bring up Keighley's "hey did you know I'm friends with Kojima" awards where the almost universally praised and one of the best reviewed games of the year, Three Houses, got one nomination versus Death Stranding's 9 was it? Now if you want to talk out of touch, there you go.
Fun story: Ghost Stories was the last fansub I ever worked on in college with my friends' group. After that, most of us started doing contract subtitling until we found stable jobs out of college.
... I don't know if in any way our talking up Ghost Stories in conversation with other ADV staff got them interested in it. That dub sure is an interesting bit of anime lore though.
Great list. Pyre is sadly one of the backlog games I had to give up this year (right now I'm finishing the last hour of Hellblade before wrapping up my list). I'll be getting to it soon this month though.
"It's their list," as usual, but I'm a little disappointed a site that often was one of the few that held games' feet to the fire for being plagued by bugs, performance issues, and some of the most prevalent cheating in an online game in recent memory would give PUBG its overall award. I understand having fun with a game, but at the end of the day it feels like the same people who have knocked so many games over the years like Fallout 4, Mortal Kombat 9, Far Cry 3 lost a little something in my eyes in excusing all the issues that game has.
Man, folks sure are salty about PUBG. I suppose if fit, finish and polish is super important to you, I can understand it. But I had a hell of a lot of fun with that game this year, jank and all. Also, cool to see Dream Daddy on the list. Not really my thing but it seems like a cool thing that deserved the recognition. One of the creators did an interview on Tone Control and she seemed like a great person.
It's not salt tbh. It's the fact that the game rushing to 1.0 status just so it could claim some awards when it's been plagued by so many issues was a dirty and transparent move, and if Bluehole was EA, I expect a lot more people would be up in arms about it.
Great list. I think I've purchased more gaming soundtracks this year than any previous one, which speaks to how quality of a year it was for gaming music. There is certainly a parallel as you alluded to between games you'd nominate for Best Styyyyyyyle this year and games in this same category, most notably Cuphead and Persona 5. It also speaks to the great diversity of music featured in this list as well.
I'm pretty sure "Rivers in the Desert" btw is my most listened to song this year even outside of gaming.
It's kind of weird, as gags like that about homosexuality and cross-dressing are fairly common-place in anime. I wouldn't try to excuse it by Western standards, but I don't know if I'd be that offended by it. So we've had this weird progression from the 90s to today where anime went from seemingly progressive with shows like Sailor Moon to now featuring common gags that get called out.
As for the rest, I mean, Persona 3 and 4 were worse in terms of someone oggling girls. I mean at least 5 didn't have a scene of attempting to peep on your teammates in the onsen.
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