My GotY for this year is 5 games that I have a pretty firm order on (1-5), 5 games that is basically unordered (6-10) and a bunch of honorable or not so honorable mentions. It was a good year where I actually played a lot of new things together with all the old things I played, helped with finally getting Xbox GamePass on PC. I did get a Xbox Series S with my significant other, but I have barely used it. I think I am mostly done with console gaming. Anyway, the list!
I am a huge fan of Psychonauts, so having the sequel come out was both exhilarating and scary. Was certain it would not live up to the first one, but boy did it surpass it in almost every way! Double Fine still got it, baby! The way they weave between humor and serious tackling mental illness is deft as always. The story is heartfelt and funny, but with an emphasis on heartfelt. I think the melancholy that was hidden more deeply in the first game flows more like a consistent undercurrent in this, and I love it all the more. My only complaint is that I want more. I have 100% your game, I want more!
What can I say about Inscryption? Play it. Just. Play. It. It made me, someone who don't like deck-builders because I think building decks is hard, want to play more deck-builders. The entire game (yes, even after Act 1) is so damn good!
Biggest surprise. I had no expectations, was not going to buy it and thought it would come and go quickly like the Avengers game. Was surprised with all the praise it got and thought "flark it, I'll just try it". I am so glad I did. The gameplay is fine, but clearly the weakest point of the game. But that is also the only thing I can fault it for. The visuals is stunning. So many good locales, and the character work is very good. Some of the best faces I have seen to date. The characters themselves are great. Really good performance from every actor, and they really sell the story. Which is also very good. Who would have thought I would get teary-eyed from a Guardians game? Well, I tear up easily, but still! If you like a good, heartfelt story with some decent action in between you owe it to yourself to play this.
Late entry. I don't have a webcam, but bought the game when I found out I could hook up my cellphone as a webcam. Finally got around doing it 29.12. So just made it this year! And boy, I am glad I did. I had a few hiccups with the tech (my monitor reflected in my glasses, so I had to take them off, still got some blinks when not and vice versa) but the experience and the story more than made up for it. In short it was bittersweet and beautiful. I straight up cried. Which often mean the game is one of those that will stick with me for years.
I am one of those musically inclined people who can't for the life of me learn to play anything. Which made this all the more fun, as I could feel like the guitar virtuoso I wish I could be.
Really good music, fun story and visuals. The gameplay is very simplistic, but that is OK. I am here for the vibes and the spectacle. And it rocked.
Hitman 3 actually came out this year. And boy, did it! A perfect end to the trilogy, with some of the best maps to date. It also gave a good conclusion to the story I think. Having all of the maps and everything from all three games is kind of overwhelming in the best possible way. I even liked the Deadly Sins DLC, some of which changes the game quite dramatically. Wrath for instance almost turns it into a Home Alone situation at the Dartmoor Mansion. Looking forward to what they are doing this year.
Early Access still, but the amount of time my brothers and me spent on this gives it a spot on the list. Such a good game! I am looking forward to what they will add, and am trying my best to not play it more until 1.0 comes out.
Ugly and beautiful, janky and precise. True art for sure. Buy it. Consume it. You'll laugh and you'll get irrationally angry. Grossest soundtrack. It rules.
I loved the first one, and this improved on so much. A few things was different in a worse way I think, but I also think they have been patching it a lot after I stopped playing that might have done something about that. Specifically how traps worked, where I couldn't rely on them stopping Agents as they did in the first game. I actually never beat the first game, so it fits that I have yet to beat a campaign in the new one. But I will go back one day and become a true Evil Genius!
This is one of those games you don't want to spoil for anyone. Time loop, ancient Rome, with a good and insane story. Has some very neat systems to help with the inherent monotony that can set in when doing time loops.
Exo One is maybe the most meditative game on my list this year. I am tempted to just keep it installed so I can go back whenever I want. Rolling, launching and gliding feels so natural after a while. It also has stunning visuals. Best clouds yet?
A deeply flawed first person shooter that had some fun ideas. Something about the gameplay doesn't feel quite right, and there is just a bit too much jank going around so I ended up never beating it. Wish I liked it more, as I have gotten more and more into Warhammer 40k these past years. Give us a game where you actively swap out your weak flesh with machine please. Praise the Omnissiah!
A deeply flawed third person action game. So many of the ideas from the previews seem to have been cut or scaled down, so you have a game with a myriad of almost-there systems. Was hoping for patches that would expand on some of the systems in place, but seems that never happened. Never beat it.
A great little puzzler, that gets hectic really fast.
I really like the old Oddworld games (the only one I have not beaten is Munch's Odyssey), but something came up that made me stop playing this quite abruptly. Been meaning to go back, but other things just grabs my attention.
I fell off this. Hard. Some of it was patches bugging up my controls. Not sure what the rest was. I should have liked this game more than I did, as I love time-loops, stealth and weird powers. And I liked it at first. But I guess something rubbed me the wrong way, as I never got back to it after waiting for a patch that would fix my controls.
I have yet to beat this, as it turns into a real grind, but I had fun with it for the time I played it. I had to play it a bit, as I backed the Kickstarter, but I ended up playing it more than I thought I would initially.
I am not a car person. I can drive and have owned cars because I lived where you had to over then years ago. When I finally sold my car almost two years ago it was a huge relief. I don't like to drive, I barely used it and it only cost me money. Now I don't have to drive and I am saving a lot of money. So I don't like driving games really. But Horizon 5 was just what I needed. You don't need to know anything about cars, there is tons to do and the stakes are just as high as you decide them to be.
NSR is a weird one. Part rocketry sim, part Youtuber sim. And part activist sim? It's very weird. I liked it, though some of the challenges was hard enough that I had to look up how to do stuff, so I think it should have some more tutorials. It also got a bit grindy towards the end. But going from launching what is basically fireworks to launching an honest to God NASA-style rocket was pretty fun.
After Inscryption I was itching to play more card games like it. Sadly, it seems the games that resemble it most are mostly PVP games. I want to play fully solo. But, among all of the other kinds of deck-building card games this was the one that clicked for me this year. I have yet to unlock everything and beat it (though I was very close with one run where I died on the last battle) so this is something I am going to play on and off for a long time I think.
I bought two games after Christmas this year, Kena: Bridge of Spirits and Death's Door. As such, I can't really say much about them. Both seem fun in their own way, but I only have about an hour playtime in each so far. Let's see if they make my 2022 list!
I bought two games after Christmas this year, Kena: Bridge of Spirits and Death's Door. As such, I can't really say much about them. Both seem fun in their own way, but I only have about an hour playtime in each so far. Let's see if they make my 2022 list!
Played it enough to think "this is neat!", but haven't gone back to it. Maybe that says it all? I do intend to play more though, just other things that wins out right now.
This is here because the DLC Echoes of the Eye doesn't have its own database entry for some reason. It also felt wrong to put DLC at number one, but I think it might be the actual number one on this list.
I finally played this through, and it is really good! I did not opt to do any of the DLC, but I 100% the main game. A good "souls-like" metroidvania with cool style. Setting the VO to Spanish helped a lot, as I remember I didn't really like the English VO.
Fun, but the grind it turned into eventually turned me off it. Have been wanting to return to it, but there are so many other games to play.
Didn't grab me fast enough, so it didn't manage to compete with other time sinks. Another game I will come back to later and then love to bits I think.
I want to put this here to highlight how good the "New War" update was. Such a good quest. Warframe is a game that keeps on giving, and I don't think I will every fully stop playing it.
