noboners

@bigsocrates: no, I ended up just gifting them to friends for Christmas. So it wasn't too bad in the end.

I noticed an error in your list @bigsocrates, so I made one of my own. Perhaps you can look it over and fix the obvious mistakes in your own with this superior OFFICIAL list of the best games we played in the club:

Did not play:

Metal Hellsinger - I like FPSes just fine, but the idea of having to be in sync with the music was not something my brain could handle.

Raji: An Ancient Epic - I really wanted to play this, and still hope to (I never uninstalled it).

As Dusk Falls - Could not get past the art style despite this style of game very much being up my alley.

Telling Lies - I started this prior and just knew it wasn't for me.

Midnight Fight Express - Was chosen right when I started my new job.

Norco - Need to play this but hadn't been in the right headspace.

Citizen Sleeper - See above reason.

Quick ranks (I did not finish a lot of these games, but still feel like I can speak on them some):

15.) Exo One - One of the most boring games I have ever played. I fell asleep with the controller in my hand at one point.

14.) Scorn - Gross? Boring? Squelch.

13.) Procession to Cavalry - I thought this game was going to be an appetizer to Pentiment and it ended up being a completely different meal that I was just not ready to enjoy.

12.) Superliminal - It was fine. I sometimes couldn't figure out how to progress. As far as making things big and small, it was better than Marquette.

11.) Infernax - I enjoyed this but played it with the Contra code and feel like I got a very different experience that I wouldn't had enjoyed if I didn't have a gun.

10.) The Pedestrian - Solid game that has me pretty excited to see what the studio does next.

9.) Signs of the Sojourner - I enjoyed this a lot. I have a hard time talking to people, and the card "game" provided is really kind of how it feels to talk to people for me. It just clicked, but I did not see it through to completion. If I had, it probably would be higher.

8.) Trek to Yomi - This felt like one of the first games of the club that had a decent discussion, so that bumped it up, even if the gameplay was pretty one note.

7.) Gorogoa - I love this game. I think the art is beautiful and was lucky enough to never get stuck.

6.) Record of Lodoss War-Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth - This was the surprise of the UUGPGC for me. Friend of the site, Michael Higham had played one of the other games on stream a while back and it seemed cool, but I just wasn't aware how cool it was. Just a perfect bite-sized metroidvania.

5.) Paradise Killer - This game kicked ass. Killer soundtrack, killer look. I was definitely hoping it would receive a complete VO patch a la Disco Elysium though.

4.) Inside - I played this outside of the UUGPGC, but it is just such a solid experience. I do think it still suffers from the occasional instance where traps are unavoidable if you didn't already know they were coming, but the checkpoint system allowed me to never be upset by a sudden death.

3.) Pentiment - Still only on Act 1 but I can tell this game is for me.

2.) TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge - Played this through in one sitting with some buddies over one night. My girlfriend had never really played a beat em up outside of the Simpsons & X-Men arcade games, but she loved this one. And my other friend was a die hard TMNT fan, so he would point out all the easter eggs and give us backstory to the bosses. That night was definitely one of my favorite gaming moments of 2022.

1.) Unpacking - I have played through this on Xbox, PS5 & Switch now. I own the limited run games of the switch version. I just think it tells it's story perfectly. I am a sucker for the sounds as well. I've spent hours just moving objects onto different materials to hear the variation. Nowadays, I just turn off the setting that forces objects to be in certain areas and see what kind of relaxed chaos I can get up to.

@bigsocrates: I am doing most of the voices! There are a couple of characters that my friends jump in and voice, giving me the time to relax for a second. But so far, in Act 1, I'm doing voices for all the adults except Sister Illuminata & Til, and my partner is doing the voices for the children. I do have a naturally very deep voice, so it's been a bit difficult differentiating so many characters. But the majority of the nuns sound either like Mrs. Doubtfire, Broomhilde from Robin Hood: Men in Tights or a very exaggerated Monty Python character.

Part of the reason our playthrough has taken so long is that I end up workshopping the voices with my friends, so we discuss the characters in great detail while trying to decide how they should sound. Which is why it has taken us 4.5 hours just to get to the murder in act 1. Andreas had more of an accent at the start, until I decided to just do my normal voice for him.

@infantpipoc: Yeah, I really only pre-order games I know I am going to play, and plan on playing right at the release time (which is usually 9pm on the west coast of the US). The Bayonetta 3 preorder was just such a strange mishap. Like I said, I really don't even remember preordering the Gamestop copy, nor could I find a pre-order e-mail confirmation or anything. And I haven't even stepped foot in a GameStop in probably 6 years.

I don't really have too many grievances about the formatting. I definitely fell off in the back half of the club, but a new job took priority for a bit. I'm hoping to get back into a routine for next year.

I'm still playing through Pentiment, but I stream it out to some friends and have been doing the VO for it all, so it's taking a lot longer than expected. And I'm on mobile so I don't feel like typing out a ranked list for what I participated in, but I would like to come back and do that later.

The only thing I wouldn't mind, is if anyone wanted to be friends on XBL. I think seeing someone else playing the game in the club, might push me to further complete my playthrough? Could just be me,

but just in case, my gamertag is threedaysago#603 (dunno when they added #numbers since those definitely weren't there when I made my account...).

1. Tinykin (or Tinkyin if you'd prefer)- grubb and company further sold me on this during GOTY

2. Signalis- people who like this seem to REALLY like this.

I ended up with 3 copies of Bayonetta 3. Didn't realize I had pre-ordered it on Amazon in 2018 when they still offered 20% off preorders. But I also forgot (and still don't remember doing it) that I pre-ordered it off GameStop at some point last year. Bought a digital copy of it so I could play on launch day.

But that's not really what you were asking. I semi-recently bought Scarlet Nexus for full price on pc the day before it was added to PC gamepass. And there are a number of games I bought discounted without realizing they were on gamepass (recently eastward and chained echoes).

Okay upon further research, he started posting on his Instagram screens from early streams in 2020. So he's been at it for a while. But it seems like his viewers count has ballooned out of the tens range into the hundreds more recently.

@funkyverb: I don't have too many answers to your questions since I was only just introduced to his streams via giant bomb. But based on his twitch, it looks like he uploaded his first channel trailer 6 months ago but that already has footage from his streams so it must have been earlier than that.

So, I think I enjoyed this demo? Seems I might be in the minority, but I found the combat pretty fun once I got used to the controls. I agree with @therealturk that the UI is atrocious, and the tutorial only half explains most of the mechanics, but those are both things I can look past when I am actually sitting down and playing the game.

I think this game will end up being something I play, and even like, but I won't be buying it at launch for pretty much the same reasons everyone else wrote.