List items
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If you have even a passing interest in games it is hard to have not at least heard of Elden Ring selling an absolutely insane 16 million copies, it is easily FromSoftware’s most successful game and it is hard to believe this is the same company who 15 years ago was releasing absolute shovel-ware like Enchanted Arms and Ninja Blade. Finding their own success bucking the trends of other popular games, daring to be difficult, demanding patience from the player, allowing for failure, not marking quests on your map, and not worrying if you simply don’t find something. FromSoftware has created a vast world that is fun to explore and discover yourself, piecing together yourself what exactly happened to this world at the edge of apocalypse, coming to your own conclusions what exactly everything mean. It has been years (we’ll probably about 5 or so since playing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild) where I found myself absolutely entranced by a game, thinking about it every moment I wasn’t playing, wanting to get home to check out that cave I found last night, exploring more nooks and crannies in castles, wondering what exactly that key I found 20 hours ago was even for. Elden Ring is easily my game of the year and I wish I could forget playing it so I can have that magical first play-through all over again.
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While I may have purchased this game the moment that it was released on the Nintendo Switch early this year, I was not able to actually play it until a couple of weeks ago. I am glad that I was able to get it in under the wire to be able to include it in my list. While I don’t generally enjoy visual novels, 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim had enough twists and turns in the storytelling and a surprisingly exciting strategy game (with great sound design that implied the intense power of the sentinels even though they were still just little icons on a map) kept me from being able to put the game down, rushing through the story during my breaks at work.
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Splatoon 3 took me by surprise this year, after not really getting into the previous entry, maybe it simply caught me at the right time where I needed it. While it may have had many connection problems when it was first released, I spent many commutes on the train to work this year playing turf-war matches with my switch linked to the personal hotspot on my phone. While it may not be as ground-breaking or unique as other games on my personal list, this will be something that I’ll keep ready on my switch to play a few matches or participate in the game’s salmon run mode for the months to come.
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Another game I knew absolutely nothing about until I played it, I picked it up on a whim after watching a trailer for it and being sold on its $20 price tag, what I got was probably one of the most tightly made survival horror games I have ever played. The game wears its influences on its sleeve, including Silent Hill, Resident Evil, and other PlayStation era classic, while also creating its own unique world inspired by Soviet era propaganda, Cold War era number stations, and the 80s style future of the Alien film series. All of these various elements come together in a game that quite simply does everything that it sets out to do perfectly, I wish there were more games that had such a clarity in its vision as Signalis.
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This year’s small indie game that came out of nowhere, Vampire Survivors is a game for people that love to become powerful and destroy hundreds upon thousands of enemies around them. This game is very addicting and hits that part of your brain that just wants to feel completely overpowered in a game, going from barely hurting a bat or two to clearing the entire screen of monsters instantaneously. While this game is simple I found myself draining the battery on my iPhone multiple times playing this game.
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This is a game in a genre I usually do not enjoy, after many failed attempts to get into other tactical strategy games like Final Fantasy Tactics, I believed this was a genre I would never enjoyed. Yet this year I found myself playing and spending 40+ hours playing Triangle Strategy. I found myself going from having absolutely no idea what I was doing to beginning to setup choke points, setting traps for enemies, and expertly preparing ambushes by the end of the campaign. While this game may be too simple for people that have cut their teeth on past strategy games, I found that it was a great introduction for people that may have given games like this a pass.
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While I don’t have a high opinion of the other Pokémon game released this year, Pokémon Legends: Arceus feels like a breath of fresh air to the very formulaic Pokémon games of the past. With Pokémon battles taking a backseat to playing as Charles Darwin like figure, recording the environments and behavior of Pokémon, seeing their moves, watching them evolve, and feeding them various foods. While the game may sometimes feel a little unfinished and slight at times, I am glad game freak is experimenting with the formula, and trying something that feels a little more fresh in a very long running series.
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A cult classic SNES role playing game finally made its way to America this year, and it was nice to get a new game similar to many that I have played as a kid, with a new coat of paint that makes it look more vibrant that ever with Square-Enix’s line of what they’re calling 2D-HD games. What makes Live A Live unique is that instead of a single story that you spend with a single set of characters, you get 7 short stories to play through, each with this own unique mechanics, characters, and gameplay. While it may not reach the heights of other games from that era, it is definitely its own unique experience that I was glad to have played this year.
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I should probably get used to being disappointed in Sonic games, because even with my low expectations going in, SEGA always seems to find ways to reinforce that they have very little interest in their own mascot anymore. Everything about this game just feels like they needed to go a bit further. It is fun to run as sonic around the world, yet there is nothing exciting to do in it. Like previous games my favorite part is replaying levels to get that perfect S-rank run, yet none of them are difficult enough to warrant it, with getting the perfect run my first time through and never touching it again. It sounds like it would be cool to play through classic levels like city escape from Sonic Adventure 2, yet it’s is made using what looks like generic helicopter and tanks they purchased instead of the unique designs of the older game. This really could have been the interesting shakeup this series needed, but instead it just wasn’t.
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It really hurts me to put a Platinum game this low on my list, as for years they have been a company that has made some of my favorite games of all time, including Metal Gear Rising: Revengance, VanQuish, The Wonderful 101, and of course the original Bayonetta, I simply have not been able to even finish this game yet at the time of writing. With more dithering than the background of a SNES game, combat I really can’t wrap my head around despite completing previous entries in the series, weapons that I simply do not enjoy using. It’s a shame that a company that made VanQuish a game that I spent a entire summer playing over and over again over the course of a summer after breaking my body at my terrible lumber mill job, reached the point where I can’t even bring myself to finish Bayonetta 3 for any reason besides obligation.
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As one of my most played games this year I wanted to place Pokémon Scarlet near the top of my list. Sadly I cannot escape all of the issues that’s included in this game. Through frequent crashes, glitches causing my trainer to fall through the world, the game slowing down to a snails pace, and a world that looks like it would be contemporary with the graphics of the GameCube almost two decades ago. I am nothing but disappointed in what came out of a multi-billion dollar franchise, there is zero excuse to release such a popular game in this state, and with selling 10 million copies anyways, this will probably continue with the series.
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