A variation of my old list but a little more vague.
I won't list stuff I've finished long ago but am now replaying, like the first two Oddworld games, or stuff I played last year that I kept playing. I will however post stuff that I spend a lot of time playing during the year, regardless of if it's a new or an old game.
Still, consider it a Game of the Year candidate list.
Maybe 50 hours into this, finishing every minute thing, haven't put a lot of time into it lately but am hoping I'll be able to finish it by the end of the year.
A pretty fun and challenging skill-based platformer. It looks really good and sounds pretty good, unfortunately some of its controls, especially when you are trying to do some wall or roof running, can be a little frustrating. I've put a good chunk of hours into it but am starting to feel done with it.
Puzzle platformer, looks and sounds really good. With the work put into the animations, and with there even being some voice in there it feels kinda off that it isn't an action-platformer. Also it's short, with not a lot of levels, and every level is timed to encourage speed runs. Kinda fun but nothing special.
Started playing it a little bit. from what I've previously heard it looks like an improvement of the base game, however you can still tell what era it is from, from looking at the level design and animations.
As a game it does a few interesting and novel things, like mixing first and third person, but also has enough control and camera issues to be frustrating. The world and story setup however is proving more than enough to keep me going, at least for now.
Boy was it disappointing to learn at the end of it all that I had actually spent my time with, not one or two, but a total of eight different people. All without noticing all the switches. Or maybe I just ran past them at the very beginning and then actually stuck together with someone. What a mystery. Either way it was a nice experience in the same vein as Flower, just without a majority of the frustration the controls of that game caused.
Not Finished yet. It's pretty cool, though the combat can feel clunky, and even if that's by design I'm not sure that it was just any good of an idea to have it that way to begin with.
But yeah, it's super unique and pretty engaging, I'd be a shame if I didn't finish it. Started over after I lost my save and am halfway through...again.
Controls. Sometimes they suck, sometimes they work just fine. The scope of the game was really beyond what I had imagined though, both in the lenght of the game and in its story. Speaking of story, it's pretty out there and frankly takes a detour from what is supposed to be the main plot a few too many times for my liking, but with that said, it also has a good share of awesome moments, likeable characters and some decent laughs. I consider it overall a success, the only question that now remains is where does it go from here?
It had been a while since I played the first game. This one had some worthwhile content in its single player but most of it felt like filler. I was ok with that, for the most part, and had fun mashing my way through the game unlocking all the characters. It's pretty and it's pretty shallow, but not so shallow that you can't have fun with it. To its credit they've added a few systems and otherwise balanced the characters since I played the series last, but it still felt like this was the real first "cash in" of this particular series. Nevertheless I do hope that the sure to be sequel goes out of its way to add a bunch of lesser characters, now that the majority of the important roster is there.
Short but pretty game. Fight bosses in open arenas with a lot of cannon fodder enemies around. Pick any of the 5 bosses in any order you want, then Mega Man their powers. It gets kind of hard as I've yet to finish it on Normal difficulty, and it also has a weird Continue system, but for the price I think there's a lot to it. Also, again, very pretty.
Well made for what it is, kinda easy in co-op, at least the first 2 difficulties. Story is dumb, villains are dumber, otherwise good varied fun.
The levels are a great throwback to many earlier Sonics and it's mostly a better game than those that came before it, yet some of the usual issues with shallow mechanics added to lenghten the game as well as unruly controls are still there.
Spent over 90 hours on this! Initially has a lot of promise, but running through the world when overleveled can get very tedious. The combat still managed to entertain me throughout though. The world felt a lot smaller than I thought it would, which was disappointing, and the few dungeons felt small as well, but at least they all looked unique and were well designed (Everfall being the exception). Character customization was great and so were the bosses that you didn't run into too often (like the chimaera and cyclops). Could really see myself playing another one of these.
Janky and sort of weird, but with a couple of cool mechanics. Really unfortunate that you can't rocket something while standing on it. Could see myself going back to it another time just to play around a little bit
Played enough of this that I need to put it in somewhere, even if it's a 2010 game. Story is understandable and the characters are characters, but both of those things are a bit of a mess. Battle system took a while to get going but it's good.
I do like this game but am a bit bothered by some of its design choices such as delegating the tapping and the notes you are supposed to follow to different screens. In something like Ouendan you were always aware of where you were tapping because you were always looking where you tapped. In Theatrhythm it is easier to get too off center which can make following a green line or having enough room to swipe in the different directions difficult. Multiple rows can also be confusing, though you could argue that this was intended. You could also argue that using the upper 3D screen for the presentation over the bottom touch screen, as well as keeping four lines for the sake of the four party characters, is choosing presentation over playability which isn't ideal. Either way it's a pretty fun game.
Kinda fun Arkanoid style game with a retro aesthetic and a few neat mechanical twists, references some stuff but does so pretty subtly. Good to kill a few hours.
A good, slick RPG that you could easily lose a TON of time to, as I experienced first hand. A little buggy in parts but mostly fine. Far from done with it, but I'll have to come back to it in waves I think.
The PC version of Dark Souls is still pretty Dark Souls, which means I'll easily spend additional tens of hours on it. The new content was really well paced as well, and had a lot of good stuff.
Kind of cool game, but also really middling. It's not pulling at me to play it, yet I can enjoy doing so. I can see myself going back to it every so often to kill some time or to do some co-op with a friend of mine.
Got stuck in one part, very frustrating. Couldn't quite puzzle all the parts together at the end. It was a little too much of a non-game for me to enjoy it, it seems.
I've only ended up playing a single round of this so far but it is fun, will have to get back to it at some point, perhaps then I will also play it on a more casual difficulty. It's neat, light strategic, fun.
The most engaged I've gotten with a co-op game in a while. The main story is pretty hit or miss, with some of the "dramatic moments" falling completely flat, but the characters themselves and the side missions are mostly good. There are exceptions to this too and quite a lot of its humor failed to get any sort of rise out of me, but by the end of going through the game a second time I'd grown to like its style much more than I thought I would.
Overall a very cool game.
After a slow start I really started enjoying it. Going into it with knowledge about types, dual weaknesses and STAB, while thinking more about the stats of my team and trying to give them well-rounded movesets contributed to that I think. A lot of small changes were also welcome, such as unlimited TM's, no constant animation on weather effects, HM's only being required for side stuff, as well as NPC's that you can call upon to explain abilities, type combination weaknesses or give tips on evolving certain Pokemon without having to resort to a guide. Overall it has made the often obscured systems and depth of the game much more apparent. The part where they've also started discussing the relationship between people and pokemon in the games, to the point where they even vaguely acknowledge pokeballs as a device that subdues and represses pokemon is also really facinating. It still has its dull, slow moments and progression, but it's a game that made me feel better about playing it than a Pokemon game has done in quite a while. The animations on the Pokemon also did a lot more for the presentation than I expected.
Controls well enough and has some neat ideas, but the visual gimmick is little else and the level design can be frustrating despite frequent checkpoints. Death comes suddenly and from unexpected directions, and while the game has enough levels there's not enough variety in them. Ended up not enjoing it that much.
A pretty fun puzzle platformer that is a decent lenght, keeps introducing new stuff all the way through and, of course, has a good story...wait.
No really, it's neat and has a lot of character to it, and a lot of characters in it. It was engaging enough to make me finish it in one sitting, at least. Oh, and the music is pretty good too.
A kind of fun game, single player is as lackluster as most other fighting games, but enough for me to want to see it through with every character. Looking forward to eventually playing it with a friend.
A pretty good game, decent length, good level variety,some replayability yet not very engaging for me at this point. That's fine, I guess.
Main complaints: a bit simple, and the gameplay doesn't really change or evolve as you progress, also whatever tech thing is holding the game back from showing ALL of the soldiers on screen at a time is a bummer. Those things aside it is Japanese cheese and crazy all the way, very fun to mash through hundreds of troops and see new characters pretty often. The simple story provides enough background buzz to carry you through the somewhat repetitive missions as well.
Good sense of style, good music and gameplay where you do horrible, horrible things without hesitation or regret, wrapped up in a 'story' of sorts that I'm partially engaged in, partially indifferent about. That'll sum up my 2 day experience with Hotline Miami somewhat adequately. In the end I just walked away, I mean, why not? It was just a game to me too.
Decently fun co-op tower defence game. I feel its biggest weakness is that your weapons don't feel like they have any impact, as in physical impact, and it's hard to see which enemies take damage when you hit them. Otherwise it's pretty fun and seems to have some good variety in how you can play.
