What have been your favorite games this year?

[evil_ash_xero]

Supposedly, this is a phenomenal year for gaming. I'm not going to dispute that, I will just acknowledge that my tastes are obviously very different
than the mainstream. So, I'm quite underwhelmed with a lot of these big games. New Zelda bores me. I don't care much about Western games, so Starfield (which looks really dull)
doesn't appeal to me. I don't know what to make of Baldur's Gate, but where it leans almost to being a porn game turns me off a lot. It's also quite "woke", and if anyone knows me... I'm not
bonkers about that.

What games have you guys gotten and liked this year?

I've only gotten two "new" games. That would be Armored Core VI and Blasphemous II. I had a really good time with both. I have some issues with them, but they gave me
a shot in the arm. I hadn't really enjoyed anything new, since Elden Ring. And despite it's issues, was quite a doozy. Much better than any "masterpieces" I've seen come out this year.

I was interested in Pikmin 4, but I hear it has no difficulty, which isn't too surprising from modern Nintendo. Also, I have the first three, and I like them.... but I've only finished each of them
one time. They don't pull me back in.

Let me know your loves and hates, guys.

[BryanM]

I've played Bustin' 2.1, Bunny Survivor, and Dragon Quest Monsters "2": Magical and Mysterious Keys this year. I'm leaning toward Bustin....

Kalikan is pretty good, but is only halfway finished.

Baldur's Gate 3 is pretty illustrative of how burned out on AAA tripe everyone is. The first time any of'em played a turn-based game in their lives.. like how you have to scream at people "READ ANOTHER BOOK" when Harry Potter comes up, they could have played a different game that is more than cosmetically different from Call of Duty/Grand Theft Auto/Assassin's Creed at any time in the rest of their lives.

But I guess they didn't receive permission from their perceived social group to do so, until now. Gotta stick with the tribe you know.

Mario Wonder does make me wish I had a Switch, though.

[BryanM]

And fuck me when the day has come where a game where you can kick a squirrel against a tree and it explodes in gore as "woke", whatever the fuck that means. (It means "cuck" or whatever the slur before it meant. Which is simply "literally everyone outside of my tiny in-group.")

Fuck me indeed.

"Porn game", pft. Pffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffft.

[To Far Away Times]

Baldur's Gate 3 by a mile.

Maybe the best RPG I've ever played. It feels really fresh to have in depth D&D mechanics at this level of production value.

[BIL]

I don't play many new games, lately; I'm usually chipping away at my arcade backlog, between the odd Fromsoft/Capcom marquee. Exponentially moreso in recent years, with Hamster and M2 on a near decade-long win streak.

Then there's my third favourite type: oldschool action from the last half-decade that came highly recommended by trusted peeps, which I put off because I knew they'd be good (I'm more likely to play a game promptly if I'm worried it might suck ) Enjoyed several excellent examples earlier this year, namely Huntdown, Tanuki Justice, Gunvolt 3, Luminous Avenger iX 2, and Cuphead. Also finally gave Steel Assault a proper go, via its long-awaited PS4 release. All superb and recommended.

From 2023, I've enjoyed Shinobi non Grata a great deal. It needs patching (on PS4), some minor bugs that dint the effect, but if you like Ninja Spirit and Alien Soldier, this is an impressively close bridging of their respective chaos and boss-o-rama. A very good game just short of its inspirations' brilliance.

Was GrimGuardians this year? I can't quite recall. It's very good, putting some interesting and much-needed oldschool spins on the dog-tired SOTNesque format. I've meant to go back to it, cleared out Veteran handily and unlocked Legend, which was sporting some real venom.

[Sumez]

I don't think I've played a single game that came out this year.
My favourite "new" games I've played this year have been Baba is You, Tanuki Justice, Cuphead. And Crash Bandicoot 1 I guess?

If so many great games have come out this year, I'm looking forward to eventually getting around to them. Most of them don't really sound my cup of tea though - but I'd love to try Pizza Tower if they decide to port it.

[cfx]

I'll just list everything from this year that I've bought since it's not much:

• Atelier Ryza 3
• Grim/Gal Guardians
• Vengeful Guardian: Moonrider
• LOOPERS (visual novel)

I have Fate/Samurai Remnant on its way too as soon as Playasia gets and ships it.
Everything else I got is either a new release of older games such as Ray'z Arcade Chronology, Ghost Trick, or Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon Chronicles, or releases from previous years.

I couldn't possibly have less interest in most of what is supposedly why this is such a great year for gaming, any of the usual so-called AAA games, Baldur's Gate, Zelda, Diablo, anything open world, Starfield, etc.

Looks like BIL and I are on pretty much the same page with Grim Guardians, and I have Gunvolt 3 coming in a pending order. I want to get Steel Assault but am waiting to see if it might get a physical release; otherwise I'll get digital when it's on sale.

[Steven]

I actually really like D Life, the weird indescribable thing made by the dude who made Slap Fight MD.

The only other "new" game from this year that I have gotten is R-Type Final 3 Evolved, which is just a port of an old game with a new set of stages, so D Life might win by default.

[Sumez]

Looks like BIL and I are on pretty much the same page with Grim Guardians, and I have Gunvolt 3 coming in a pending order. I want to get Steel Assault but am waiting to see if it might get a physical release; otherwise I'll get digital when it's on sale.

The preorder window for the Steel Assault physical closed half a year ago :\
LRG just shipped mine, which is actually a new speed record for them.

[cfx]

That's ok. I don't buy from LRG at all so was thinking more of a UK, Asian, or Japanese release. If LRG ends up being the only physical option, I'm fine with buying digital, but I'll also wait until it's on sale as I see no reason to pay full price for digital when there's generally no chance of it becoming unavailable in the near term, and I don't view digital as having the same worth as physical. That also gives more time to see if any other physical version is announced.

[Sumez]

Oh for sure. I loved the demo for Steel Assault so much it's one game where I shelled out for the digital right away. The only other game I've done that with was GNGR, and given a physical still doesn't exist for that it was probably a smart move. Still paid more than I think a non-physical release is worth though

[BryanM]

Oh yeah, Diablo 4 came out this year. Haha, what a riot >_<

As the world's top #14 Diablo grognard fanboy, it's sad what they've done with the franchise. They remake the same game over and over again, they sell the box, then they expect people to keep giving them money even though the game is absolutely dead and they're not adding any content to it. So they eventually discontinue their "support", toss the current game into the garbage can, and then make the next box. Rinse and repeat.

And I mean it is bad, fam. Pokemon keeps selling the same game over and over? At least they bother to mix up the monster list a little each time. And are made by people who actually like the games, despite how burnt out on them they are. You know?

Blizzard fanboys are the kings of battered wife syndrome: "I played it for 200 hours and hated every minute of it!" "I swear if you guys rip on me thirteen or fourteen more times, I'm outta here." As Asmon always says, these games are for normies that saw an ad for it while watching a sports game, played it for 3 or 4 hours, had a great time, and moved on with their lives.

Blizzard Entertainment is amazing these days; it's consistently provided dozens of hours of entertainment every year all for $0. Just a wonderful burning trash can of garbage.

[TransatlanticFoe]

Huh, turns out the only thing I played that's not a port or re-release in some way is Octopath Traveler II. Which I had a fantastic time with so it's all good. Nailed all the issues I had with the first game, and at least made the optional superboss non-story this time around (while also making it offensively difficult ).

I think Super Mario Wonder is the only new upcoming game I'll probably get. Oh and I started Starfield but I might not go back to it until they add maps in. I find it hard to believe in the future we'd have space travel but at the expense of Google Maps. And not even having a simple paper map.

[it290]

Armored Core 6, Lies of P, and RE4Remake for me. All phenomenal.

[XoPachi]

Pizza Tower, Hi Fi Rush, PseudoRegalia, and Gravity Circuit. Sonic and Mario are for sure also going to be up there too. I can't wait for those. October in general is about to be fucking wild.
There was also a lot of fantastic legacy support all around this year too with DoDonPachi topping things off in December. But Mega Man got another stellar collection. System Shock got a really faithful remake. Metroid Prime out of nowhere with the best looking Switch release for a generous $40. Dead Space shockingly not ruined by EA among others.
I still need to get BombRush CyberFunk.

This year was honestly crazy. Everyone was eatin.

New Zelda bores me. I don't care much about Western games, so Starfield (which looks really dull)

Yes and half yes.

I forgot Tears was even a thing when typing my post initially. Good initial impression and then the disappointment hit. Again.
And there's no way I'm buying StarField. That looks and sounds more boring than Zelda. And if I'm not mistaken, it requires a quantum giga computer to run it past 50 for a game that's uglier and less dense than CyberPunk. I think we make some utterly stellar games, but boy, do we make the most boring ones too.

[evil_ash_xero]

I was really hoping they would have added proper dungeons to TotK, but no. People were really thinking it was, due to an image or two.

If they did that, and got rid of weapon durability, I would be far more inclined to play those. Maybe they'll learn some things from Elden Ring. You can have
an open world AND dungeons, guys.

I have Hi-Fi Rush, but I haven't played a lot of it yet. Not sure how I feel about it.

[Lander]

Looking at the year's release list, candidates include Armored Core 6, and... Armored Core 6. So that, I guess - finally, out of touch with my own hobby

Halls of Torment was a bit of mindless fun, but it's an early access trendchase 'em up, so proper judgement will have to wait for the full release. Though I'm still fairly confident calling it better than Diablo 4

Shame The Legend of Nuts and Bolts didn't fix BotW's problems. Wildly popular as it may be, seeing them hard-commit to we couldn't possibly make a new franchise for open world is a shame.

[BryanM]

Genshin Impact also weirdly didn't have real dungeons. Just mostly corridors with guys to beat up or very simple puzzles.

Nor do the Dragon Quest Monsters Joker games that only I have any interest in (next version releases in December) have complex dungeons, either. Not even by Dragon Quest standards.

On one hand I think it's a matter of focus, effort put there isn't going elsewhere. And dungeons with realistic scaling tend to make backtracking as you try to figure out what you're supposed to do in which order... much longer and more miserable than in the zoomy toy scaling of a Link to the Past or Awakening.

(I'm still traumatized by how long it took to push a block in Ocarina of Time. So sloooow.)

we couldn't possibly make a new franchise for open world is a shame.

It makes me sad that's how we humans are. Familiarity is a heuristic for understanding; we don't like strange unknown things.

The most brutal example has to be Wizards of the Coast. In the early days they thought they would make all kinds of different card games. But in the end, every dollar put into Magic the Gathering had a better return. So they do nothing but Magic now.

All these games that tried to be a bit new: Wonderful 101, Tokyo Mirage Sessions, Dragalia Lost... all probably would have done better if they were branded different. Nintendo 101, Persona Illusion Sessions, Dragon Quest Lost... creativity rarely pays off.

Also due to talking about Nintendo, I'm reminded of how Fatal Frame is a dead franchise now.

Guess there's not enough room in the sky for everyone.

[evil_ash_xero]

Looking at the year's release list, candidates include Armored Core 6, and... Armored Core 6. So that, I guess - finally, out of touch with my own hobby

I'd recommend Blasphemous 2, if you're into Metroidvanias. It's really strong. If you played the first one and thought it was janky, this one absolutely is not.

[-Fish-]

In order:

STG:

1. Ganablade (Steam)
2. Kaikan (Steam)
3. Cotton Rock n' Roll (Steam)
4. Nanoforce (Steam)
5. Nevultra (Steam)
6. Eigengrau (Steam)


FPS/TPS:

1. Quake 2 *Re-release* (Steam)
2. Ion Fury: Aftershock *DLC* (Steam)
3. Herald of Havoc (Steam)
4. Resident Evil 4 (Steam)
5. Dread Templar (Steam)


Platformer:

1. Pizza Tower (Steam)
2. Kalevania (Steam)


Beat 'em up:

1. The Ninja Saviors (Steam)
2. Double Dragon Gaiden (Steam)


Roguelite:

1. Ed-0 Zombie Uprising (Steam)
2. Red Tether (Steam)
3. Voidigo (Steam)
4. Doomsday Hunters (Steam)
5. Mr. Sun's Hatbox (Steam)


Traditional Roguelike:

1. Moonring (Steam) **Free!!

[Sumez]

If you played the first one and thought it was janky, this one absolutely is not.

What if I played the first one and thought the gameplay was good, but at the same time it was such a by-the-numbers indie metroidvania that nothing outside of the impressive artwork stood out to me?
Blasphemous really is the textbook example of a good game that does everything right yet still fails to emit any sort of real appeal to me due to the sheer saturation of this type of game out there.

[evil_ash_xero]

If you played the first one and thought it was janky, this one absolutely is not.

What if I played the first one and thought the gameplay was good, but at the same time it was such a by-the-numbers indie metroidvania that nothing outside of the impressive artwork stood out to me?
Blasphemous really is the textbook example of a good game that does everything right yet still fails to emit any sort of real appeal to me due to the sheer saturation of this type of game out there.

I think it's a good bit better than the first one. It is very Metroidvania, though.
There are probably a million Metroidvania's out there. However, I only play the ones that catch my attention.
So, I'm not burnt out to that degree.

[Lander]

Blashphemous does seem appealing on a thematic level, with the whole Xtreme Catholocism vibe.
Though to partially echo Sumez, in recent years I've noticed my quality bar for metroidvanias has gotten borderline unreasonable, even though I quite enjoy the genre.

For example, I'm consistently irked by the disconnect between foreground and background that seems to show up in every 2D game. Even if the art for each plane is itself good, it comes off as uncanny to be traversing free-standing scaffolds in front of a big parallax vista or repeating interior.

Occupational hazard of massive maps, I suppose, but it seems like everyone has the ambition to make SotN, but ends up landing somewhere amidst the memory-constrained DS titles without the ludicrous Konami budget of their source material.

[XoPachi]

Well this is certainly going up on my favorites for this year I imagine. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2575 ... n_Kidz_64/

Also, pretty great overview of Blasphemous 2 if anyone's interested.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjOdL9ECAss

[Stevens]

When I just want to zone the fuck out - Dave the Diver.

Game is wonderful.

[-Fish-]

Blasphemous and Blasphemous 2 though very beautiful in both the visual and audio dept unfortunately are not challenging gameplay wise. Their 2d hack n' slash gameplay is a cakewalk as enemies scattered throughout the landscape pose no real threat. Exploration is of course 'fun' but again that's all you really get along with the beautiful sights and sounds. Another prime example why all devs need to implement difficulty levels in their games. Easy, Medium, Hard, Very Hard still need to be a thing.

If you do want to play a challenging metroidvania try Souldiers. So challenging in fact the devs almost nerfed it into oblivion after casual players left harsh Steam reviews. Still poses a decent challenge in its current state on the highest difficulty level though. The best bet is to get it on GoG though. Not only is it on sale right now but the GoG release will allow you to roll back updates and play the original version before the game was castrated.

[Stevens]

Re: Blasphemous

I can't get into 2d souls. The Last Faith looks sick though.

[XoPachi]

I feel like gauging this genre purely on how punishing it is in combat is missing much of the point of the design for these games. The most revered search action titles are not difficult by any means from a survival perspective. And if they are, that's almost never why they're lauded.
It might be important for some, but I think how these games decide to craft the interconnectivity of their world design and pace their tool upgrade centric progression is the driving force of their success. You couldn't ask for an easier search action title than SotN but it's half of what spearheaded the sub genre's moniker. Super Metroid is generally still seen as the peak of it, if not, at least top 3 and that game is similarly piss easy.

If the exploration succeeds in being engaging and fun, that right there is mission accomplished. That's the primary objective of the genre. You don't really need to brutalize players to achieve that.

[Volteccer_Jack]

Supposedly, this is a phenomenal year for gaming.

2022 was definitely better, most of the games I thought of from this year turned out to be from last year when I checked release dates

But the good games this year have been:
Lies of P
TotK
Shinobi non Grata
Assassin's Creed Mirage (best AssCreed game in nearly a decade)
FE Engage (mileage may vary)
Wo Long (again, mileage may vary)

I think how these games decide to craft the interconnectivity of their world design and pace their tool upgrade centric progression is the driving force of their success

I agree, that's why I think Blasphemous is a trash game. Maybe the sequel is better but I kinda doubt it, the first game convinced me that the developers are incompetent at everything except art.

[ryu]

I have so far played a total of 13 different games this year. Of those, only three actually came out this year and of those three one was just a collection of older games with minor additions. So that leaves just Blasphemous II and F-Zero 99 for me to consider. If we ignore that F-Zero 99 is based on a game from the '90s lol.

So, uhm, Blasphemous II it is (so far). But I'm reasonably confident this would have come out on top for me even if I had played more games from this year. Got to say I hate how modern games have become timesinks with lots of content that's just there to pad playtime.

I still got Armored Core VI, Grim Guardians and the upcoming Mario and Sonic games on my radar for this year, but I'm not sure when I'll have the resources to play them.

If you played the first one and thought it was janky, this one absolutely is not.

I think it still is, even if to a lesser extend. I still got stunlocked to death here and there. But there are definitely more ways of approaching situations to avoid these kind of scenarios now, and I kind of have to admit that I was making the game harder for myself than it had to be by playing in the most vanilla way possible (sticking to the sword and barely using magic).