Great list, especially your write-up on Noita. Maybe someday I'll be able to beat it but more likely I'll put boomeranging buzzsaws on a wand accidentally and just immediately die!
I've just been going through some of the 2020 lists and appreciated you mentioning some VNs that I'm now definitely going to look into only to find that you topped your list with The Silver Case, maybe one of the best games ever? Just nice to see some appreciation for it around here. :) Hope you like 25th Ward too (and how much wilder it gets).
I was interested in this, but that it's not just a single narrative is kind of a bummer. Oh well, I have enough games anyway.
As for Jan wanting to play something like this--it might seem like a weird recommend, but Princess Maker 2 has the same kind of stat-driven gameplay in a very different context. Same kind of windowed UI, maybe a little less reading.
Love seeing someone stream something they're passionate about, especially Abby cause she's so fun, and Sims challenges are always really entertaining. The only problem is it makes me want to play Sims too... :'(
Edit: I just remembered that people do 100 kittens/puppy challenges which also could've been pretty good. I wanted to point it out in case anyone sees this comment and is interested in variants.
This is fun to watch but too removed from the prisoner's dilemma, the stakes of fake money just don't seem that thrilling. Someone make this where if you choose betray, the other user is banned and if you both do, you both are lol.
Nice to see a lot of Shadow Hearts love here. From the New World gets really fun to play but it has the most eh story and characters, the original is my favorite, personally.
The only way I've managed to sell anyone on playing them is by showing my friend how you can use the Eternal Key or whatever it's called to one-shot kill the final boss in Covenant. (Alright and a little bit of explaining how the story of Covenant affects the first game cause it's pretty cool.)
I've heard people love Cold Steel 3 but the anime bs in both of them (though it's not as bad as some games) and total whiff at a war narrative in 2 (this is subjective obviously) has me kind of worried about playing it. Does the story actually build well? It's not just an excuse to get Rean to a new school for waifu purposes, right? No one has actually laid this out clearly for me, but since you mentiond the anime tropes you seem like a person to ask.
(At any rate I know this one practically requires playing the rest of the Trails games so it'll be a while before I get through Sky and Crossbell.)
As someone who's played(/suffered) through most of Cage's games, these are both good refreshers on some of the deeper issues with his writing. I really appreciate deflecting from the usual "but the plot holes" criticisms of Heavy Rain and praising some of the QTE/interaction, because I feel I agree that he very often has something to offer in every game, but just falls into the same damn pitfalls over and over again. I'm looking forward to your coverage of his catalog! (And thanks for the links to other articles as well as your own points on it, film v game discussion is really interesting to me.)
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