12/26/2021, jeff
i played a lot of games this year, 71 in total. using a scoring method that i carried over from an old project, i ranked all of them from my most favorite to my least favorite. feel free to peruse the list at your leisure, and if you'd like to read more about how i scored each game, you can read a bit about it below the list.
the list - click titles for details
loved every second of this game. i understand everyone’s experiences are different, but it is incredibly rare for a piece of media to so closely relate to my journey with depression. i could match every turn to an inflection point in my life, all the way up to a year or so ago. if i had played this game fifteen years ago, i wonder how different the journey would have been. that by itself would be incredible, but celeste is also just fun as hell to play. amazing game, one for the history books.
this game is scaled perfectly. you've got an entire solar system to explore that never feels too big, and a central mystery that never seems to run out of threads for you to follow. of all the games on this list, i think this is the one i wish i had spent more time with. i'll flatter myself by saying that i'm pretty sure i was on the cusp of figuring everything out, but truthfully, i was probably just peeling back the first layer. play this one, and give it a little time. you won't be sorry.
best mmo of all time, hands down. nothing even comes close. character creation and customization is the tops. enemy design is flawless. city layout, fantastic. the resurrection of a game that was killed nearly ten years ago is a gift from gamer heaven. i hit max level this year, something i was never able to achieve during the game's official run because i was a child. paragon city feels more like a home than any other game world i've explored. let me know if you want to play sometime, i'm always looking for a reason to hop back in.
long, long, ago, i watched a dunkey video where he described this game as a video game adaptation of gone home. now that i've finally played it, that's still probably the best description that i've heard. there's been a lot of discussion as the walking simulator has come to prominence, but in my opinion, this is how you do it. changing the texture of player movement as the perspective shifts, weaving repetitive motion into gameplay, keeping explorable areas small and dense - these are the things the game does well. story's fine. worth playing.
i've put off writing this blurb for so long. i just don't know what to say about this game. let's start here: it's fucking good as hell. the game drops you in medias res in an unfathomable situation where things keep happening all at once, punctuated by brief, tense conversations or long sequences of unbearable quiet. i'm not trying to be coy or vague with this description, it's just that if i get into any more detail i'll need to write like 500 words. paratopic is a wild ride well worth taking.
i don't know how this game entered my life. maybe it was a gift from my parents, or maybe i bought it on a whim, but either way, it completely changed my life. the story is a hopeless mishmash of standard fantasy tropes, but it looks and sounds amazing, and the class system is spectacularly designed. i'm typically not a fan of huge, sprawling rpgs, especially these days, but golden sun barely misses a beat. it does suffer from some misogynistic and orientalist writing (localization?), and turn-based combat puts me to sleep, but overall? brilliant.
the 90s-era demake style has been around for a few years now, but i think this is the first game i've played with that aesthetic. the developer uses the style to great effect, creating a world that is transient and chillingly beautiful. the game has a simple objective: find something you can use to fertilize a tree that will grow into a new world. you can use almost anything, but whatever you choose ends up changing the character of the world that is created. the world is tight, but dense with familiar adventure-game-style interactions. hard to forget.
the difference between when you start this game and when you finish is so large as to be unbelievable. it starts with you, the player, fussing around and figuring out how the movement system works, and ends with the character attaining enough inventory space and powerups to become completely and intentionally overpowered. meeting people and solving their problems serves as the key to this snowball effect, and as the main puzzle mechanic in the game. it's a delightful, vibrant space to explore, full of heart and mystery. the endgame is very interesting as well!
one of the all-timers. used to play on gamecube all the time, now i've got it on the switch. outside of the main story, which i played probably three or four times, i had fun with separate ways, as well as trying to climb the leaderboards. since playing in 2005, i've developed such a fondness for complete bonehead protagonists, and fuck me if leon kennedy isn't all the way up there. the way the game and its community treats ashley is actually worse than i remember, which is hard to believe, but overall the game is a masterpiece.
back in the day, i was one of the dark souls bible-thumpers, a real dickhead. today, i am simply a dark souls enjoyer. this is the best one in the series, and i had a blast getting back into the swing of things on the switch. i played through the game a few times, did some pvp, thought about doing some speedruns or challenge runs. beat kalameet for the first time. i don't know. this game fucking rules. has there ever been a better-designed game world? look up the map viewer. it's a work of art.
the story of the creation of the universe and humanity's development, retold as a 1950s-style noir story. as a trippy, highly-stylized journey through the history of existence, it tells quite an effective story with almost no dialogue. time and space wrap around each other like misguided lovers rushing towards their mutual destruction or something. i'll admit, i had way more fun taking in the striking visuals and jazzy soundtrack than pondering the mysteries of the universe. the finale of this game was an artistic masterpiece the likes of which i don't think i'll ever see again.
growing up as a computer gamer rather than a console gamer meant that the games i played were off the beaten path. instead of banjo-kazooie, i had croc. instead of mario kart, i played lego racers. the upside here is that i was exposed to real-time and turn-based strategy games. my favorite of these is heroes iii, a turn-based strategy game that released in 1999 and has not been matched since. the faction design, the variety of win conditions, the community support - all phenomenal. playing it with my sister was some of the most fun i've had this year.
i keep wanting to compare this game to great expectations. like the 21st-century video game adaptation of great expectations. i realize that this might not be the sexy hook i'm intending it to be, but i just can't shake that idea out of my head. maybe what my brain is trying to tell me is that this is a distinctly american story about growing up and the conflict between what is valuable and what is perceived to be valuable. it's a deeply affecting and touching story. also a story about being gay and doing crimes.
i'm not super hot on hollow knight. on paper, i feel like i should love it. big, moody world to explore, challenging gameplay, a focus on navigation, a cute protagonist. so what's the problem? i think the world is just a little monolithic for how slowly the game is paced. after 20 hours, i've traversed numerous environments, but i still just feel like i'm underground. that's part of the point, i think, but i just get bored. i like the combat loop of sneaking cheeky swipes, and i adore the characters, but i just can't hang with it.
there's never a bad time to replay wario land 3. it was one of my favorites growing up, but it wasn't until i replayed it this time that i realized just how good it is. this time around, i was able to appreciate some of the more unique things about this game, such as the fact that wario can't die, or the golf mini-game. especially striking to me is the way the game will constantly show you paths you are not yet meant to travel, essentially making you a promise to show you eventually.
don't know what to say about this game that hasn't been said already. this year i took the time to drop all the roleplaying gimmicks i like to impose on myself and just get shit done. i got all the dlc armor, a bunch of which is way cooler than i thought. i played around with the amiibo cards a friend gifted me, those were really fun. i'm working on filling out the compendium. uhh...i did a bunch of those korok riddles? the game is fun, what else is there to say?
some of these blurbs are hard to write not because i have nothing to say, but rather i have too much. this is the case with 10 beautiful postcards, which is a game that plays with the form itself as much as the content. borders and boundaries are implied, but not enforced. exploration leads to nonsensical shortcuts, rabbit holes, and knock-knock jokes in equal measure, and all give a sense of progression. perspective and control schemes shift without warning. the sound is atmospheric, but not diegetic (or is it?). it's nuts and you should definitely play it.
right there in the name, this game is just a boss fight. this game has sylvie written all over it, from the character design to the demanding gameplay. like the venerated souls bosses, the key is understanding and reacting to attack patterns. on the one hand, i've had plenty of practice doing that. on the other hand, if this boss was in the souls series, it would be faster and hit harder than any of the bosses in that series. fun, addictive, and easy to jump in again and again. the music slaps as well.
i never had the chance to play street fighter. i was born too late to engage with the arcade era, then grew into a person unable to handle that environment in the 21st century. so what did i find upon exploring this collection? i didn't miss much. third strike was the only game in the collection i really gelled with. the art style is fantastic, and the pace is lightning-quick. i'll never be good enough to be competitive, but landing a combo in that game is so satisfying. exploring the lore was really fun too.
ever heard of it? i pick this game up every once in a while to see what's going on. what do i find? not much, honestly. even so, it's a blast hunting for a perfect iv sentret or hatching eggs. it even affords me the chance to engage with pokemon in a way that is not having them take part in a society-sanctioned blood sport, which is rare. my big problem? too many rhetorical questions! nah, no one i know still plays the game, and i definitely feel like something's missing doing the whole thing as a solo experience.
what interests me most about video games is how broadly they're defined. their interactive elements set them apart from other media, but this often leads to blurry lines between themselves and books, movies, or music. adios plays like a movie, with the narrative taking center stage as the two main characters engage in a subtle, yet deadly tug-of-war. it's a very delicate balance that willingly sacrifices player agency to tell a really beautiful story. as you play the game, it might seem like an easy thing to do, but i promise you it is not.
i did not play this game for very long. in fact, i only played the first level over and over again. as i unlocked more items, i kept thinking to myself, 'oh, i've gotta go back and try this next'. i was so enthralled with how deeply i could interact with the world of a pokemon game, that i sacrificed any attempt at progress! crazy, but this is how i'd prefer to interact with the world of pokemon. you mash this shit up with breath of the wild and i would never have to play another video game again.
i've only played the advance games, but monster rancher has always stood out as a shining example of what the digital pet genre can be. the gameplay is a smattering of a few different systems that fold into each other in such a simple and elegant way. nothing takes so long that it gets boring, and the game strikes a good balance between structured and emergent narrative. like pokemon, i wish that the incumbent gameplay hook wasn't combat, but here we are anyway. i'll just have to deal with it.
writing this blurb has got me hard-pressed, because i feel like i have to level this iron-clad defense to justify liking this game, but i can't. it's the best rhythm game i've ever played dressed up in anime girl gacha clothing. the rhythm inputs are really well-designed, the teambuilding aspect is great, and the two-thumb scheme is perfect for mobile. you unlock songs and rewards through a visual novel mode, which is best skipped through. anyway, not a game i would typically recommend, but if you can withstand the sheer anime power that it radiates, it's really good.
as i remember it, the late 2010s were when we first started getting avalanched by "soulslikes", games inspired by (or lazily compared to) the souls series. nioh, lords of the fallen, hollow knight, on and on. during this time, i heard about the surge, which was described as a science fiction dark souls with robots and shit. this sounded awesome, but i never played it. now i've run out of room in this blurb, so i'll just say this game is way, way better than i expected, and, like most soulslikes, deserves to stand apart from dark souls.
i hopped on the blaseball bandwagon during the expansion era. exploring the community-driven lore behind the teams was super fun, and was easily the best part of my experience with the game. devising the best way to earn coins was also a high point for me. in the end, i think not being able to engage in the community (because of how i am, not necessarily because of how the community is) caused me to fall off. very cool concept, though, and very interested to see what it may inspire in the future.
surrogate explores what happens to digital pets once their owners have moved on. take in the melancholic space as a little guy for as long as it can survive in the desolate environment. aside from being a nostalgia guilt trip, surrogate also inspires some deeper thinking about how we value and interact with digital analogues, especially pets. as a kid who grew up with neopets and pokemon, not to mention fantasy pet adoption sites, i've got a lot to unpack on that front, but i definitely recommend playing through this one if any of those things resonate with you.
a very cutesy visual novel about a trans woman going to the hot springs with friends. the player is offered choices that often boil down to whether they feel comfortable outing themselves or not. what i really like (apart from the art style, which is adorable) is the degree to which the game seems to be offering solidarity towards trans people while also providing insight into that experience to cis people. insecurity and uncertainty take center stage as haru navigates the hot springs, but she also confidently answers questions about being trans when speaking with her friend that night.
i've been repeatedly drawn to the yakuza series for its absurdity. the boneheaded protagonists, the off-the-walls side quests, the emergent narrative aspects. there's an entire real estate sim hidden in this game! unfortunately, i can never hang with it because the combat is so boring and tedious. it also suffers from an unfair treatment of women, along with other marginalized groups. from what i've seen, this isn't uncommon in japanese games (see on this list: resident evil 4), but man, it fucking sucks so bad. might be a better experience to watch someone else play instead.
another classic from my childhood days. you play as a submarine operator who has to do a ton of arithmetic while retrieving satellite capsules detailing a mysterious extraterrestrial event. for a game that's all water levels, it's really really good. the art is fantastic, the levels are well-designed, and the math is now simple enough for the whole thing to be a pretty relaxing experience. the contextualization of the math problems they have you do is great. you've got to balance oxygen levels, estimate travel time, assess study area size, and so on. an oldie but a goodie.
played through the blue lions this time around. i also spent a lot of time making sure i could recruit everyone, so that was fun. relative to the other fire emblem games i've played (sacred stones, path of radiance), this one feels really easy, but like lots of rpgs, there are plenty of ways to make it harder artificially. i had a lot of fun trying to build characters off-meta, like having geek boy ignatz train to be a heavy armor unit, or coercing meathead raphael into learning magic. good tactical rpg, and i like the school stuff too.
a very sweet eulogy for a pair of the developer's cats. games have had a sort of inverted art history when it comes to their commodification and recognition as an art form, where they were introduced as the former and have had to claw their way to the latter. this game is an outlet, an expression of emotion, and it is an achievement of games as art. much more so than any multi-million dollar so-called narrative masterpiece released by an army of underpaid developers. just my two cents, anyway.
cute little bitsy eulogy for the arecibo radio telescope. traveling through the message that was being continuously broadcast from the telescope, the narrator breaks down each portion. it's a fun exercise in understanding what was important to a community of scientists back in the day, and what might be included in such a message today. i really enjoy bitsy for the variety of experiences it can create within the constraints of the engine, and this is a perfect example. from arecibo plays like a short journal entry, and is intimate, enjoyable, and educational.
maybe i'm not playing a ton of games aimed at kids these days, but i just don't see experiences that let you explore a storybook-style space the way the manhole does. biggest takeaway for me was that it was a great foray into the world of emergent storytelling. it shifts and folds in on itself in a way that allows players to see all the spaces and characters, but all in vastly different contexts. it changes the player's story in a way that most games these days aren't able to, even when that's the hook.
i guess, for me, 2021 was the year of the sylviegame. and this game, toocbskarmc™, seems like a good introduction. play as a cute character, navigate a similarly cute environment, and slowly power up your character by collecting cute upgrades. all this cuteness is spread liberally over devilishly difficult gameplay, puzzles that misdirect you, and situations necessitating near-frame-perfect inputs. it's a juxtaposition that runs throughout all of sylvie's games (or all the ones i've played, anyway). if there's one thing you take away from this list, i hope it's that you ought to spend some time playing sylvie's games.
absolutely mind-bending puzzle game. the interface is styled after a calculator, but you quickly realize the operators act on the forms of the numbers themselves rather than their mathematical evaluation. matching the given shape using the tools at your disposal is relatively simple at first, but i only made it to the fifth puzzle before i could feel my brain starting to sizzle. pretty cool idea though, and well-made. as far as i know, there are ten of these puzzles total, but with how tough they got, that's just the right size. a triumph in scoping.
the recollection of a dream in bitsy. plays like a short story, or maybe an entry in a dream journal. the scenery and soundscape are very evocative, to say nothing of the writing. i'm very thankful for it because it strikes me as a game that was created for the sake of creation. no budget, no market research, no target audience went into this, just 'whoa that dream was wild i gotta write that down'. i dunno. the more i think about it the more i think i'm just projecting my own ideals. it struck me something profound anyway.
look, i don't know shit about fuck when it comes to being good at fighting games, but i do know that slapping the shit out of the game's surprising number of gargantuan beefcakes with a pair of nunchucks is one of the most satisfying things a game has let me do in recent memory. story? never played it. characters? who are they? literally all i did was play the arcade mode for hours and hours, and it was some of the most fun i had this year. was it the best fighting game i played? nah. but still. nunchucks.
an interesting exploration of what happens after the events of riven, or, more generally, after the end of the world. the space is fragmented, disjointed, but it doesn't seem to bother the nominal anime girls. as previous residents of riven, they talk about what life was like before the fissure, and they opine on the nature of the world and their relationship to it. the most interesting aspect to me is the relative apathy with which the anime girls treat their situation. there's something impactful about shrugging at the end of the world, i guess. music's a bop.
a melancholic visual novel about relationships and self-worth from a trans point of view. there's a lot here about trying to find yourself in someone else, especially as someone not comfortable in their own body. it's a complete and compelling story, but, like with any media with deep-running themes and symbolism, i'm never sure whether i've missed some of the forest for the trees. that being said, the game is exceptionally well-written, and the atmosphere drummed up by the art and the narrative is incredible. definitely worth a look, especially if interactive fiction is your thing.
back in the day, i played earthsiege ii, a mech game by sierra. i have very fond memories of playing that game, but i never played another mech game until this one. it's fine. in my opinion, a game like this would benefit from a strong, contrasting art style, but it goes the photorealism route instead, which makes distinguishing enemies difficult, despite the helpfully unique silhouettes. the writing sucks, but you don't play a game like this for the structured narrative. mostly i was tickled by how much has changed since earthsiege ii, and how much hasn't.
i'm such a sucker for bethesda rpgs. between fallout and the elder scrolls, i've probably put in thousands of hours. this was one of the first games i booted up when i got game pass, and i just went bananas. i tore my way through post-war boston, exploding everything in sight with a fucking snowball cannon, roleplaying a bitter ex-academic with a powerful sweet tooth and a drinking problem. had quite a bit of fun, but there's not a lot of substance to this one. if i believed in guilty pleasures, bethesda rpg junk food would definitely be one of them.
i feel like i've talked a lot about games as spaces, and that perhaps the descriptive umbrella of "games" is defined too broadly. the museum of mechanics exemplifies this: it's a small museum that exists in a digital space, hosting an exhibit on lockpicking minigames spanning decades. you can play all the minigames and read about their context within their game. i had a great time browsing the museum, and it has definitely sparked some ideas about what games can be. it's also a great example of why i need to change up my ranking methodology.
still the best pokemon generation out there. there's something special about hoenn that will stick with me forever. the pokemon are imaginative, the environments are beautiful, and the secret base mechanic is so fun! when i played ruby as a kid, i played as a boy. now i'm playing as a girl in emerald, and maybe it's a difference between ruby and emerald, but brendan is a fucking douchebag! i dread running into either of them, but in may's case, it's because she's strong as hell. in brendan's case it's because i have to listen to him talk.
a fun little counter game where you buy copies of the captain forever trilogy. after a quick introduction, the game leaves you to your own devices. if you aren't careful, you can back yourself into a corner in terms of managing your resources. if you're very short-sighted, like me, you'll forget that trillions come after billions, not millions. you'll even have to dismantle your entire operation and start again. you'll have a rough time. even still, after finishing the game the first time, i was compelled to go again to see how quickly i could hit a trillion copies.
i think this is the first sylvie game i played. it is very short, very cute, and was a great first dose of big sylvie energy. it was also partly responsible for a number of epiphanies i had on the nature of games, play, and digital expression. this makes the game sound like a big deal, and it is, but in truth i've been trying to keep these blurbs close to 100 words each, and so in pursuit of that arbitrary goal, i am padding this one just a bit.
a little bitsy game that tries to get you back in touch with feelings or emotions that you've dismissed, for one reason or another. instead of trying to capture the emotion with a vague description meant to resonate with anyone, the developer pulls on specific examples, assumedly from their childhood. the result is surprisingly effective: though i haven't experienced loneliness as an only child, i certainly know what loneliness feels like, and that anchor helps bring up that emotion for...review, for lack of a better word. it's an interesting experience.
short visual novel with a few different endings based on the choices you make. the story follows three girls at a weirdo christian summer camp. they don't really fit in there, and a lot of the story revolves around their relationships with each other as well as the various antagonistic forces in their lives. the game was surprisingly spooky, building tension all the way up to the conclusion. there's a solid amount of filling in the blanks that the game leaves up to the player, which i gobble right up. i love that shit. don't tell me anything.
a group of my friends still haunt this game like the god damn flying dutchman, and i swear to god they play like real pirates. one earned a million in-game dollars playing poker, then tried to buy entire crews of other players before blowing it all at the poker table again. the mini-games are fun, but i think for whatever reason my laptop was not up to the challenge of online play. i suffered a ton of slowdowns while playing some of the puzzles. had a great time playing with everyone though.
when this game released, i got caught up in the mad dash to "beat" the game. that took a few weeks, and after a major renovation project, i realized that the place didn't really feel like home to me. so i erased my save data and started over, with the intent of going slow and enjoying island life. the benefit of this was that i had a lot more fun just doing whatever i wanted in shorter play sessions. the downside was i lost my best buddy lyman. anyway, my recommendation is to just play slow.
played this game a while back, and dropped it after a hundred attempts at abobo. picked it back up when i got game pass and finished it. it's fine. the art and animation is great, and the soundtrack is rad. something i have not been able to get out of my mind was how good the voice actors were. i don't think the game was written particularly well, but the voice actors routinely acted above the writing, which is something i don't think i've experienced before. it was really neat.
cool little lcd-style game i played for a bit. i definitely subscribe to the idea that imposing limitations or constraints on a project is a paradoxical way to let your creativity fluorish, and building something in the lcd style is a great example of this. the entire game has to fit on one screen, without any of the elements overlapping or conflicting with one another. the game needs to be simple and intuitive while also trying to tell a complete story. it's tough! wobble jump is a very cool idea, and a fun game.
i love so much about this game, but i just couldn't bring myself to stick with it beyond the second chapter. the art direction is amazing, and the gritty cop caricatures are top cheese, but instead of leaning into this to produce a thrilling survival-horror game, the team decided to grind the pace to a halt by incorporating rpg elements and hide-in-the-cupboard gameplay. look, i don't give a fuck if my gun reloads in 2.18 or 1.97 seconds, and i don't want to have to cower in a locker every five minutes. this is prime 'watch it instead' territory.
a great indie horror game. the developer was able to make point-and-click gameplay intense, which deserves huge props. there's some great rotoscoped animation work as well. exploring salazar house is creepy and unsettling, as it should be, and each of the several endings is more disturbing than the last. because i've been uncharacteristically efficient with this blurb, i'll put this here: if horror games are committing to the helpless player character, can we figure out an alternative mechanic to hiding in a cupboard and peeking out? this game even did it well! i'm just kinda tired of it.
moon star pairs photographs of coastal england with little snippets of poetry. it stands apart as a game that is quiet and asks very little of the player. i love this, but i must admit i had a hard time shutting my brain off. i spent a lot of time making a mental map of the area in my head to get to places that i hadn't been before. that being said, the game has a way of lulling you into the space with an atmosphere that is very freya campbell, and for that it is quite good.
i didn't expect to fall into this game so hard. i put over 200 hours into this game alone this year, which is shocking. i finished the pokedex, caught a bunch of shiny pokemon, trained up a couple competitive teams, and i still have way more to do. i think the thing that really pulled me in is, ironically, the thing i like least about it. placing a smaller emphasis on early game emergent narrative to pay it off in the late game is a bold move, and i think it just barely works here.
subtitle: to kiss a bunch of cute girls in her belly. pretty much what it says on the box. there's maybe something to say about vore, comfort, and relationships, but i'm not at all qualified to speak on any of that. instead, i am struck by what a unique concept this is, and how the combination of platforms like itch and software like bitsy offer a window into hearts and minds of so many wonderful, creative people that video games typically erase. i'm so grateful for these tools, it's like the creative cambrian explosion up in this bitch.
i played this game at the behest of a couple friends. i think it looks great, and the systems in place lead to some of the best emergent gameplay i've ever seen, but i couldn't hang with it. i started in the harbor town, and as soon as i left the city walls to the wide open emptiness of another introductory field zone, the weight of 'i've got to do all this again' proved to be too much. my favorite part of this game is listening to people talk about it and scrolling through shitposts on twitter.
cute little physics game where you traverse a deeper and deeper cave to penetrate a dragon deeper and deeper. what i liked about this game is that as the sword gets longer, it also gets heavier. it gets hard to swing around willy-nilly in tight places, but it also is slower to maneuver and quicker to pick up momentum. it's a great addition to a mechanic that could easily have been one-dimensional. the game is silly, suggestive, engaging - everything a game like this should be. good way to kill an hour or so.
very interesting and well-made adventure game with a really weak sense of humor. it sets a tone at the first puzzle, when you knock over an amputee as he willingly gives up his crutches for the sake of “democracy”. from there, the game makes jokes out of torture, female protagonists, human trafficking, child molestation, and so on and so forth. i try not to take things too seriously, especially video games, but this was just beyond the pale. aside from that, playing through the backdrop of renaissance paintings is very clever and a real treat.
this year was pokemon's 25th anniversary. to celebrate, i was going to play through every generation all the way up through to today. well, that didn't work out the way i had hoped, but i still ended up playing 5/8 generations, which is pretty good. though i've really fallen hard for the most recent installment, there is something you can't beat about the original, back when it was a simple rpg focused on the player's journey to become champion rather than a towering epic where the fate of the world rests in the player's hands. lots of words! no room!
dragged this game out of the depths for a little bit. when i played back in...2014? 2016? i had a ton of fun bopping around doing world completion stuff. that's still the main appeal of the game for me, which is unfortunate since i've already seen most of what this game has to offer. it's a lot, and it's cool as hell, but i can't slog through the same level 1-20 zones again. i'm too old for that, and my attention span is too short. if you've never played, though, there's a huge, beautiful world to explore.
it's impossible for me to play through this game more than once, not because there's only one duck shepard or anything like that, but because it's just too slow-paced. it would take me thirty hours to see something i haven't seen before, and i just don't have that kind of patience anymore. i picked this up again when the buzz for the legendary edition was swirling around, and just barely made it off the citadel before giving up on it. great game to play through once, but i just couldn't stay invested.
cute game made for a gameboy jam. it's a short little story about being an adult in the 21st century. there are some great ideas in here about what gameplay can be and should be, and how to translate real-world errands into a game, where they often take on an abstracted form. i don't really end up wandering into the jam games environment too often, but i'm glad i did in this instance. it's clear a lot of thought and care went into this game, which is hard to do under a time constraint.
the fire emblem gacha game. that's the pitch. want to play fire emblem? do that. want to write your own fire emblem crossover fan-fiction with your favorite characters using gameplay? play this. the puzzles are simple, there's plenty of game modes to play (the rhythm game is pretty good), but earning the orbs to pull characters with feels like a chore nonetheless. i know that's the point, and that they want you to buy them, but as someone who doesn't pay for gacha games, it just led me to fall off instead. don't really miss it.
a submission to a bitsy jam about virtual pets, and our relationship with them. this game raises a lot of the same questions as surrogate, also on this list (and from the same jam). power on approaches themes of digital value, abandonment, and purpose by simulating the experience of playing on the old lcd devices, and by encouraging the player to play through the loop repeatedly. it's an interesting approach, and is a good demonstration of the methods that simple games use to inspire thought. you do have to be willing to engage with it on that level though.
same as fallout 4, i picked this one up when i got game pass, and damn, i could not stand it. i can't really understand why. this is by far my favorite fallout game, but doing the whole opening sequence of goodsprings, primm, nipton, all over again was just...i couldn't hang with it. it struck me just how hemmed-in the first several hours of the game is. a few years ago, i would have thought this was a good thing, but i wonder if the softer boundaries of breath of the wild changed this for me.
been taking a front-end course on udemy, and the instructor off-handedly mentioned 2048, addictive tile-sliding game that was very popular several years ago. immediately, i fucked right off away from the course and began playing. i played for hours, formulating strategies through trial and error. because i was playing at the dereliction of my other responsibilities, it was not a very enjoyable experience at all. wouldn't (or couldn't) stop, though. anyway, i think i got a strategy figured out. won a couple times. for the sake of my productivity, please don't mention this game while i'm in earshot.
bounced off this game after the first gym. it shocked me, because i loved it so much as a kid. i think what did me in was playing without the quality of life improvements from recent games. hidden machines? the worst. it didn't bother me as a kid, but now that i've had a taste of the non-hm life? i'm not sure i can go back. why didn't this bother me in pokemon yellow? a fair question that i have a lot of thoughts about. they won't fit within the arbitrary limit of this blurb, however.
same as pokemon gold, without the nostalgia trip that would help me power through it. i might pick up the remake at some point, because there were a lot of things i liked in the first few hours of the game, but i dunno. i think getting your starter by stealing it is hilarious. i think team galactic is fucking bizarre. i think drifloon is cute, i think chingling is super cute. i think i'd have loved this game if i had owned a ds back in the day. what could have been...
sorry. i know this game is supposed to be super good, but i couldn't hack it on the xbox. fumbling with the controls, i couldn't stay in stealth to save my life, and that just wasn't going to fly for how i like to play these games. i recognize this is a failure of me and my rating system more than an indictment of the game itself. love the characters, love the world, love the conceit. i will definitely give this another try if i ever manage to rig up a gaming pc again.
phew! okay, that's the list. let me quick go through the scoring system. as you probably saw, each game was scored from 1 to 5 in six different categories. each of these categories are then weighted and averaged to reach the final score. the six categories are:
something i decided to do this year that was a little different was to re-weight the categories at the end of the year, to reflect any changes in disposition from the start of the year to the end of the year. the new weights are averaged with the old ones to get a final weight. here are the changes:
i'm definitely going to switch this system up for next year. for a long time, i've been squeezing all my new opinions and viewpoints into these six categories, and it's just not gonna work anymore. i refuse to be hamstrung by my proclivity for assonant pairs!!