Sahil Games 2024
ranked list of every game i play this year
List items
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hard to not put this at the top with 200hrs+ before the ios version even came out, but I do agree with the criticism that it's more addicting than it is fun. The meta progression early on makes runs pretty samey and the later stake penalties also makes things feel grindy more than fun, but at the end of the day the numbers go up faster and harder than they ever have before and that's what gaming's all about, babey.
Reflecting a bit after trying some other deckbuilders, I think the thing Balatro really nails is simplifying the structure of Slay The Spire & making it more like a traditional point chase by dropping things like enemies & elemental damage & all that, the focus of that game and it's imitators has always been about strategy and synergy and Balatro's design cuts to the heart of that feeling so much more intentionally & cleanly
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It's only been like 12hrs since I beat it but every time I think about it I like it even more, & I expect that feeling to continue to grow.
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Wish there were cheats or accessibility features to be able to content tourist some of the more challenging games (esp since the closest analog - something like a retro handheld or emulation station setup - makes it very easy to use save states, rewind, or infinite credits) but almost every game is doing something very interesting in the design space that makes the whole thing very valuable for aspiring designers. Just incredibly creative and well thought out all around, which is especially crazy for how much is packed in here. Wouldn’t be mad to pay double the base price, there’s just so much in here
Games ranked:
S: Party House, Attactics, Mortol, Waldorf vs
A+: Mooncat,
A: Pilot Quest, Rock on,
A-: Porgy, Pingolf, Devilition
B: Magic Garden, Waldorf 1p, Quibble Race
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Exists in a weird space between the top down, almost arcade-y feel of mgs1 and the full on third person "3D" interactions of later games, which makes a for a bit more of a tedious stealth system (I'm not a huge fan of full on stealth games in general) with some clunkiness around hugging walls and switching to first person aiming leading to a few points of frustration. The stuff I knew about the game before hand made it seem like the internet & meme related stuff would be a much bigger thematic point, but I came away more impressed by the way the game is reckoning with it & the previous games' inherent glorification of military violence throughout its story. I love the implication that there's a second, more exciting game happening in the background with everything that snake's going through & I like the way it uses Raiden as a character to drive home those points but I also just didn't care for his relationship drama much at all (shoutout to emulators with a fast forward function) and on a general tone & vibes level I liked the first game a lot more. Still very glad I played through this game myself after absorbing so much of it second hand over the years.
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Started off really engrossed in the combat, but around 10hrs in when that started to feel a bit grindy (the damage & enemy health tuning is kinda weird in that it discourages really using the full combo system & basic mobs get tedious to fight after about half way through cuz you're just doing the same half of a combo & there are only a few amulets that encourage a different playstyle rather than just min-maxing that basic gameplay) the platforming started to really take off, with the exact right style of complex, fast sequences that require more thinking on the fly and nailing inputs than any sort of precise positioning, just peak maximalist, flow-y traversal that's up there with my favorites like Sands of Time & Hollow Knight. Boss fights are fun, throughout, I love the DBZ flourishes
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Unimpeachably charming and creative. A testament to how good it is that it's this high despite the fact that
1. I'm literally in physical therapy because the dualsense hurts my wrists so much
2. I don't like 3d platformers that much (esp ones without complex movement or combat systmes)
3. The PS5 shilling is really annoying & I kinda actively dislike Sony as a company
Was at its best when my Fiance was interested in it and we were trading back & forth, watching each other play. Kinda lost steam a bit after the midway point because she lost interest, and the difficulty stayed very easy through the main levels.
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worked incredibly well on me considering how much my brain generally chafes against adventure-y puzzle design, and I generally don't care for old timey british stuff either, but I still plowed through the story in just a few days.
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The best video games are the ones where you roll a ball. Really love the time trial structure here but didn't care for the larger levels where deliberate pathing becomes more important than the core movement & unfortunately those seem to become more and more common the deeper into the game you go.
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Fun core mechanic and some really fun level design ideas but held back by basic enemy interactions being a bit unintuitive and a handful of clumsy design/pace decisions. Third world is really fun and all the bosses are pretty good but the first boss is very hard considering you haven't had much of a chance to get fully accustomed to the main systems & the arena they’re in doesn’t allow much room for error or alternative strategies. The grappling hook mechanic was fun once I got the hang of it, but its implementation is a bit clunky - activation range is hard to judge in some cases, it’s hard to tell what the angle and direction of your momentum will be after you reach the grapple point, and it wasnt clear that you’re supposed to press “drill” instead of “jump” to maintain momentum off of a swing, which was hard muscle memory to unlearn for me. Its also weird that cosmetics and extra levels are locked behind hidden collectibles rather than a star rating or points system, which would make more sense for the levels here, which are at their best when you can flow through them instead of stopping to check every alternate path or bare wall for secrets. The shop was also confusing but i never felt the need to engage with it much so I never bothered to figure out what was going on there. This all sounds kinda negative but its still really fun. It’s smooth & breezy & creative & the drill mechanic is just as satisfying as it looked in the trailer & none of the strange choices on the periphery diminish that.
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Like this one so so much more than the prequel. Really love the way it frames a large part of the Norse pantheon as a dysfunctional family dealing with an abusive patriarch and all the small relationships and conflicts that arise from that dynamic. Kratos' development and the game's reflection on his past actually feels earned here, and Atreus works really well as a believably shitty teenager but also is given enough depth and agency to be taken seriously rather than just a dad-game prop. Unfortunately, I think I like the combat even less here than I did in the previous game, since the way it doubles down on rpg systems and cooldown timers pulls away slightly from the only redeeming value of the last game's combat, which was the just raw brutality of the axe and unarmed animation set. I genuinely would have enjoyed the game much more if I could have just skipped all the combat. (I even enjoyed the puzzles in most cases, surprisingly)
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love the aesthetic and general racing sensibility - it's generally realistic with time trials and practice sessions emphasized over just racing, but not nearly as technical as a dedicated circuit racer like Gran Turismo, though the camera or general environmental detail level made it a bit hard to see some upcoming turns
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Synthriders but a bit more active (positive) & requiring a lot more precision (negative). The beatmaps i played were all good but a lot of the note types share basically the same function which is a bit confusing. The base song list is probably my biggest complaint and parsing through a long list of community made custom tracks is very clumsy so I generally lean toward just playing synthriders or pistolwhip or something instead.
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Probably higher on this list based purely on its own but the new mechanics generally make the core of lumines less interesting/intuitive & the music is good but doesnt match the variety or number of standout bangers from the original game.
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Sam lake is that dude. Fun story and writing but the encounter design is very repetitive & rarely interesting mechanically, tho it is fun to see all the looney toons gags throughout.
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Slightly disappointed in the amount of content here given the way I’d heard this referenced as the one true golf rpg for so long, but still impress for a gbc game & theres plenty of worse things than solid golf mechanics + a basic story & progression system
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Love the aesthetic, and the basic car feel is pretty good but maximizing speed and dealing with different terrain and types of turns is a bit unintuitive, and as the races get longer a lot of the challenge devolves into avoiding finicky physics interactions that don’t feel intended but are increasingly built into the circuits, making the game less about nailing a perfect drift or line and more about hoping you hit enough jumps at the right angle or the obstacles fall consistently enough to finish the race without resetting to a checkpoint which usually loses you at least one position. Making the checkpoint system less punishing or shifting the focus to races instead of time trials could have alleviated the issues a bit but ideally the core driving mechanics would be just a bit more intentionally designed.
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Retro racing 2 on ios. Fun little racing thing that does a surprisingly good job of simulating the feeling of wheel to wheel racing, occasionally. The power ups system is a neat way to encourage learning the track without becoming too much about just hitting every shortcut like some arcade racers do. Only real complaint is that I wish it was longer, I beat it in about 2 hours and Id love a simple progression or leader board or some extra layer to add some replayability, but Im a bit wary about how mobile game design would infect the pure arcade fun here.
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Fun to go back to and see how the game attempted to iterate on the routing/management aspects of early RE games and did a pretty good job building that into a dynamic system, but I found there was a bit too much downtime & the combat was never satisfying enough to keep me going past the mid game. Rare instnce where I should have probably played the remake instead
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Mfw bro got off the skateboard 2 minutes in & never got back on…
Loud, Mindless explody fun
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Fun & novel at first but kinda a slog to actually beat.
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I like the setup and the aesthetic (especially when it gets more supernatural or escoteric) but this ultimately ends up feeling too similar to other visual novels that lean on meta narrative about the nature of choice and games and stories that I've played before. Also the way the metaphysics are described to the player makes it hard to keep up with what the actual final choice/boss fight is actually asking. Maybe I just missed the point but it felt like a there were a lot of conflicting, abstract ideas without enough clarity to reject some of them without embracing others unintentionally.
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nice that it has more going on than just spot the difference but there's less novelty here compelling me to finish it, ended up watching a playthrough on youtube after like a dozen resets
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Had high hopes because of the aesthetic and buzz, but the story might as well not exist, the different event types are kinda confusing, and the main dual-stick drift mechanic never clicked
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Get what it's going for & I'm happy for the ppl it works for, but the mental illlness depicted is at a completely different frequency to my own so I just didn't jive with it at all.
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