I’ve been writing these lists for a while now, and I always try to sum up how i’m feeling about the game industry at that particular moment in time.

In 2023 I wrote about the industry writ large essentially being a dumpster fire, and basically all of the bad stuff from 2023 got exponentially worse. 2024 was actually the year where I looked at my wife and said “if our children come to us and say they want to make a career in videogaming, it is our duty as their parents to steer them away from that”.

I don’t wanna do that, for the record. It’s a bleak business, but I wanna be positive. Let’s talk about something nice, something pleasant, something awesome — 2024 was the single greatest year the Japanese Role Playing Game ever had.

That’s a big statement considering this is a genre that peaked about 25 years ago, but on top of the four JRPG’s that made my list, we got three exceptional from-the-ground-up remakes in the form of Persona 3: Reload, Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, and Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake. We also got a version of Shin Megami Tensei V actually worth playing with SMTV: Vengeance getting that exceptional title off the Switch. Indies bring it with this genre every year, and Bloomtown was a very difficult cut from my list. Hell, we got a new Mana game of all things, and it’s also actually good, which is pretty rare for that franchise.

Were there years with better JRPG’s? Sure, but I cannot recall a year so absolutely loaded with gems from this genre, and it’s truly shocking to see in 2024. Many fans of the genre are worried about keeping momentum going, but honestly I think we all just need to take a step back and appreciate how wonderful this year was for a type of game that was extremely formulative to me loving videogames in the first place.

So with the preamble out of the way, let’s hand out some awards!

2024’s “I ****** Up Last Year’s List” Award: Lies of P

I usually give this award to a game from last year that I didn’t get around to and which also wasn’t up for list consideration. I usually feel pretty good about my lists even after a couple of years, but I very clearly did Lies of P dirty.

I must atone.

When I wrote last year’s list, I had bought Lies of P the week before and was maybe like a third of the way through it. I really was digging what I had played and figured I’d go ahead and slide it into the tenth spot.

What I didn’t know at the time is that Lies of P would continue to get better and better and better as it went along, and it’s become possibly my favorite entry in the entire genre. I liked it so much that I beat it twice (very rare for me) and actually went back to finally play Demon’s Souls, Bloodborne, and the entire Dark Souls trilogy. It made the Soulsborne genre go from something I liked on occasion to being a borderline obsession.

I deeply regret last year’s entry on this game focusing so much on Lies of P being “borderline plagiarism”. It isn’t. It stands on its own merits, and can hang with the best of Miyazaki and his team at FROM can produce. If I was re-seeding last year, I don’t see a world in which it’s lower than three, and I might even go higher. I truly cannot wait to play it again when the DLC releases now that it is also PS5 Pro Enhanced.

What a game.

2024’s “I Probably ****** Up This Year’s List” Award: Nine Sols

Speaking of exceptional Souls games, Nine Sols shot to the top of my “must check out” list after my previously mentioned Souls excursion. Everyone I’ve talked to said the same thing — it’s 2D Sekiro with amazing art and a fantastic score, which sounds like a winning combination to me. Unfortunately it was stuck on PC for most of the year, and when it finally arrived on GamePass in the busy holiday stretch, it fell through the cracks. I’m quite certain that I will love the heck out of it whenever it gets pulled from the backlog abyss.

Remaster of the Year: Horizon: Zero Dawn Remastered

I was not expecting to, in the middle of the holiday rush, spend two weeks devouring an eight-year-old game. Horizon: Zero Dawn is a title that has sat near the top of my backlog shame pile for many moons, but I finally got around to it and with HZD Remastered being such a exceptional showpiece for the PS5 Pro. While I wouldn’t call it a full-on remake, it’s also significantly above an average remaster in terms of improved visual fidelity and numerous improvements in overall presentation. In-game dialogue cinematics between characters have improved significantly with far more expressive character models and animations. While the gameplay itself didn’t see much upgrading, it turns out hunting robot dinosaurs is still very fun nearly eight years later.

Also noteworthy about this release is that it has achieved a very weird and very telling feat — It’s the only game that’s a killer app launch title for both the PS5 Pro and the PS4 Pro. Poetic, I suppose.

2025’s Story of the Year: How many more studios will be sacrificed at the altar of Live Services?

2024 continued the horrific trend from 2023 of everyone getting fired, and from my vantage point it sure seemed like a lot of the people who got fired were making “live service” titles — constantly evolving games with weekly content updates require both extensive post launch support and a large, captive fanbase. Without both, the game dies, and without the fans it really dies.

This is now “the normal” for the AAA game industry. The ghouls running the show are essentially turning the business into Silicon Valley Unicorn Hunt-style investing. Make ten multiplayer shooters with season passes and purchasable cosmetics, nine of them will fail miserably, but the hope is that the tenth will save the whole company and make it worthwhile. Now that only works if you get to the tenth, and until that point, this system will make the lives of developers absolutely miserable. How many people toiling on abject failures like Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League, Foamstars, XDefiant, and a litany of others saw this coming? I could not imagine the soul crushing atmosphere that must have existed at these studios that spend years making games they probably knew were going to flop.

Or maybe these studios were plagued with “toxic positivity”, which leads us to our final award…

Turd of the Year: Concord

I tried to not give this to Concord. I thought about giving it to the director of Black Myth: Wukong for being a world class dingus, but that would’ve gotten very mean very quickly, and I didn’t wanna end up on any list for the CCP. I didn’t play Concord (why would you?) and I had significantly more experience with other industry dumpster fires this year. I beat Suicide Squad Kills The Justice League, for the record.

But you know what the difference is? One can still play Suicide Squad. It didn’t get Thanos’d into the ether after a month.

In the history of this entire medium, there has never been a game released so emblematic of the problems facing an entire industry at the moment of its release than Concord. Apparantly the people at Sony were so impressed with the character art Firewalk Studios spent two years making that Sony spent four HUNDRED million dollars and three more years making a mediocre Overwatch competitor with characters and dialogue so blatantly inspired by the immensely tired Marvel Cinematic Universe that Kevin Feige should consider a lawsuit. It was bland, uninteresting, weirdly focused on characters nobody cared about, and its player base was so embarrassing that it got scrubbed from the Earth even before the accompanying Concord-themed Secret Level episode aired. What a fun time capsule that is!

There’s an argument to be made that this is the single most expensive failure in the history of art. That is a ludicrous statement, but here I am making it. In a year filled with catastrophic decisions, bad/traumatizing management, and some very disappointing games, The Turd Of The Year can only be Concord.

ALL THOSE OTHER 2024 WRAPUP LISTS? TOSS ‘EM. HERE IS THE LIST

Honorable Mention: Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree

I think this placement shows what I thought of the whole Erdtree nomination controversy at The Game Awards.

Let it be known that in a year of kick-ass videogames, the absolute best time I had playing videogames this year was Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, which as far as I’m concerned is basically the best bit of DLC ever created. It’s as long as most FROM Souls games, and maintains that same extremely high bar of quality while making huge additions to The Lands Between. Promised Consort Radahn is the greatest challenge they’ve ever come up with in any of these titles, and no game this year even touched the high I got from defeating him after seven or so hours of trying. Shadow of the Erdtree takes one of the greatest games of all time and somehow makes it significantly better.

With that said, no, it shouldn’t qualify for Game of the Year. On top of not being a standalone game, it’s hardly standalone to Elden Ring itself. Like if Erdtree was an option from the main menu, MAYBE I’d consider it, but Shadow of the Erdtree requires players to play 50 hours of another videogame and beat one of the toughest optional bosses in said game to even access it. It directly carries over progress and information from a game that, frankly, already won enough GOTY awards, so I feel no need to include it in 2024’s results.

But I did really, really like it.

10. Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth

Another year, another appearance on this list from the great people at Ryu Ga Gotoku Studios. I keep waiting for The World’s Best Game Developer to make a slip-up, and it just doesn’t wanna happen. Infinite Wealth had the danger of being juuuuuuuuuust one too many games taking place on the streets of Japan, so mixing it up with the very cool setting of Hawaii allowed the team to squeeze even more juice out of this Yakuza fruit.

In a series defined by an abnormally large amount of side-quests and things to do, Infinite Wealth turns this up to an absurd degree with multiple optional endeavors taking over a dozen hours each. Sujimon and Dondoku Island could be their own games, and I nearly enjoyed them as much as a main story that continues this series’s amazing ability to make me care about the weirdest, dumbest people in absolutely absurd scenarios. It doesn’t quite stick the landing in the ways I was hoping, but that’s a small hiccup in a overall excellent yarn. While this wacky series continues to march unabashed towards yet even more entries, I continue to be excited for them all.

Bring on the pirates.

9. UFO 50

It took me a little time to warm up to UFO 50. The first couple of times I fired it up, I thought it was very neat and a surprisingly fleshed out gag making fun of the now infamous Action-52. It takes a little while for the game to really open up to what it is, and the metastory of this very odd fictional game developer is drip-fed to the player very slowly while exploring the 50 games on hand. They’re presented in “chronological” order by release date from UFO Soft from 1982-1989, and the most amazing thing to me about UFO 50 is seeing the real-world development acumen necessary to portray a fictional developer growing through the years. The real developers at Mossmouth clearly spent a lot of time thinking about how games changed during the decade of the 80’s, and incorporating that into their compilation of titles is maybe the most impressive thing I saw any videogame do this year.

But it’s not one videogame, it’s fifty!

All this talk of homage and meta would be absolutely meaningless if UFO 50 had an Action-52 level of quality, but there are some legitimate 8-bit bangers on here. Starting with Barbuta was… a choice, but that choice makes a lot more sense as one sees the design ethos and complexity expand with each title. It wasn’t until I got to Mooncat where I realized there’s something really special going on here, and starting each new title is it’s own fun little experience. It’s not the best game of the year, but it’s certainly the best value of 2024, and one of the more memorable experiences I had all year. I have a feeling that, decades from now, I don’t know how much I’m going to want to fire up most of the other games on this list, but I’ll always be down to play some Bushido Ball.

8. Silent Hill 2

I’m still equal parts gobsmacked and pleased that the remake of Silent Hill 2 absolutely deserves to make this list. It is, without question, the most shocked I’ve been to greatly enjoy a videogame in a long time. Literally everything a game could have had going against it, this one did. I trust Konami about as far as I can throw it, they’re remaking one of the most important and beloved videogames of all time, and the people at developer Bloober Team frankly had never shown the emotional maturity necessary to handle the extremely dark subject matter of this legendary horror game.

And wouldn’t you know it? They knocked it out of the park. Silent Hill 2 is an exceptional remake that treats the original with the respect it deserves while also smartly expanding on it without desecrating a truly sacred text. It’s terrifying, it’s beautiful, the audio in general is exemplary, and it is an abject success no matter how one slices it. Sometimes it can do the body & mind good to go into a situation with deep (and deserved) cynicism only to have all wildest expectations blown away, and I couldn’t be more elated that it happened here.

7. Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth

The AAA scene is in a rough patch right now. After fifteen years of saying “we have to do something about ballooning budgets, lengthy development times, and a shrinking audience!” all while basically letting all of those problems get even worse, we are very much at a tipping point where I’m starting to wonder if these games are even going to continue to exist. There is no project that exemplifies these issues while also showing the potential of what these games can be quite like the Final Fantasy VII Remake Project…Trilogy…Thing. It’s looking like it’s gonna take Square-Enix twenty years, three games, and $750 million to remake a JRPG where the characters had toasters for hands. We’re all very lucky Final Fantasy XIV has given this company seemingly unlimited money to create such insane vanity projects.

Luckily, Rebirth succeeds in a lot of ways where Remake (thanks Square for continuing to name their products in confusing ways) did not. While Remake recreated Midgar to an amazing scale, it was still only one part in what I knew was a much larger story. Rebirth is essentially the story of The Rest Of Disc One, and while that doesn’t sound impressive, a lot happens in the rest of disc one with a ton of variety and locales, each of which is rendered to a captivating degree in Rebirth. This is a lavish, opulent product that is honoring one of the more beloved titles in gaming history in ways I continue to become more on board with as the trilogy continues. With excellent dialogue among a very likable cast, some outstanding renditions of classic songs, and some rather unexpected diversions in the overarching scenario, one really gets the feeling the team involved with this game are starting to step out of the looming shadow of having to remake Final Fantasy VII while making this project into their own.

For those who still enjoy AAA bombast, this might be the most bombastic of them all, and that is an achievement worth noting. I just hope finishing this trilogy doesn’t sink the entire damn company.

6. Thank Goodness You’re Here!

This has been said by many gaming pundits before me, but humor is a pretty difficult nut to crack in this medium. Thank Goodness You’re Here! Reminded me of classic Lucasarts adventure games not just because all players really do in this game is smack stuff with their hand, but it also captures the exceptional pace at which those games delivered the yuks. Thank Goodness You’re Here! is not only funny, it is consistently funny throughout its entire three-ish hour run time. Gags are aplenty and constantly are thrust at the player in numerous hilarious ways.

It also successfully captures the urban decay of Northern England coal mining towns in a way that rises above the silliness that gushes out of this game. The two person team at Coal Supper saw this first hand growing up, and have done a great job thoughts about the human toll of Neoliberialism while also being side-splittingly hilarious. I don’t want to list any specific gags (like that poor bastard with the chimney) because this is an experience best when going in as cold as possible, so anyone here needing a few good chuckles would do well to check this one out.

5. Indiana Jones and The Great Circle

It is very rare for a licensed title to nail its source material this well, not only in presentation but also in gameplay. Indiana Jones and The Great Circle does a fantastic job of making the player constantly do Indiana Jones shit. Raiding tombs, punching Nazis, working around booby traps, and making the attractive woman tagging along swoon. It tells a great story in this universe, and the entire game is anchored by the best performance of Troy Baker’s career, who does a fantastic job of walking a very fine line between doing an excellent Harrison Ford impression while also sprinkling his own mannerisms in as well. He’s joined by an outstanding cast, including a truly exceptional performance from Marios Gavrilis who is clearly having a ball playing main villain Emmerich Voss.

Placing this game fifth is apt, because the first half of this game would’ve been first while the second half would’ve been tenth. Up through exploring a Nazi battleship (that’s not a spoiler for Indiana Jones), I was absolutely convinced this was my Game of the Year. Unfortunately, there’s a pretty precipitous drop in quality over the last couple of areas, I liked the hand-to-hand combat less and less after every boss fight, and it also seemed significantly buggier the further I got in. I also found the ending slightly underwhelming for reasons I won’t spoil here. Because of all this, it stumbled down the list a bit, but it’s definitely not going to spoil the fun for anyone down to step into the shoes of the worlds most famous archeologist.

4. Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown

Ohh how the failure of this game eats at my soul.

They finally did it. Ubisoft made an interesting, refreshing title while also reviving a long dormant franchise. They did the thing the internet yelled at them to do for years, and then nobody bought it. While it had a decently long sales tail and ended up selling about 1.3 million units as of this writing, that wasn’t enough to save the development team at Ubisoft Montpellier getting split up to go make more side-quests in Far Cry that nobody wants to play. This is profoundly disappointing for a litany of reasons, least of all being how many people missed out on a truly incredible title.

As I said in my review, The Lost Crown is not the most original game, and the metroidvania genre has been absolutely done to death over the past decade or so, but it is just a good ol’ time hopping around as main protagonist Sargon in an expertly crafted, expansive map with a strong focus on platforming. It tells a good story, has top notch art design, and it is beautiful to see in motion, particularly for those with 120hz displays. It’s got some new features patched in since launch, and the Mask of Darkness DLC expansion is both very good while also providing an exceptional value at a whopping five bucks, so I hope these past couple of paragraphs can convince some to give 2024’s most overlooked title another chance.

3. Unicorn Overlord

Vanillaware is a developer I’m always happy to see pop up with a new game whenever they come out of their hole, and Unicorn Overlord is their finest work yet. They’ve consistently made games that were beautiful to look at but with gameplay that was serviceable enough to keep one engaged while they oogled at the art design and sprite work. This is the first time they’ve made a game where their core mechanics match their art, and that made for a truly engaging experience I was not expecting from design steeped in mobile game foundations.

Battles are not controlled directly, but rather battalions are formed and sent in to do combat on the players orders. Unicorn Overlord does a fantastic job of slowly drip feeding mechanics to the player and not overwhelming them at the start, so when the game does build up to a huge scale with tons of decisions to be made in each encounter, I never felt overwhelmed. It’s a shame this game is locked to consoles due to the head of the company having the same fears of PC piracy that developers had in 2005. I feel this game could’ve really found an audience there, but anyone with a box capable of playing Unicorn Overlord very much should.

2. Stellar Blade

I hate what the internet did to this game.

It is profoundly disappointing to me that nearly every time I said to my gamer peeps how much I adored Stellar Blade, their first question was either asking how horny I was or if liking it was somehow me protesting the Woke Mind Virus. If the truly revolting discourse around this title (none of which was fanned by the team at developer Shift Up) kept readers from partaking in the game itself, that is equal parts disappointing and understandable. I’m really not sure why the internet chose this particular hot videogame chick with absurd dimensions to be the cornerstone of arguments over “What We’ve Lost” while idiots decry attempts to make women in videogames look… y’know like a real lady. It’s sick, very weird, and it is a crying shame Stellar Blade got involved in this nonsense because it’s a hell of a videogame.

While i’m sticking with Lies of P for “The best Non-FROM Souls game”, Stellar Blade is a clear #2 in my eyes for its ability to take the principles of the Souls genre and add the complexity of combat found in character action games like Devil May Cry. While the whole ethos of this game borrows extensively from Nier: Automata to the point where they made some Nier DLC to go along with it, the combat, level design, and over world design all ensure it doesn’t sit in another game’s shadow. Last year I shouted out South Korea for making a mark in the AAA games industry with Lies of P, and I’m very excited to see this trend continuing here.

If those reading this are only going to play one 2024 PS5 console exclusive soulslike that the internet got very weird over, definitely make it Stellar Blade. I legitimately have zero clue how anyone could think Black Myth: Wukong is a better game.

1 Metaphor: ReFantazio

Well if one is wondering why it took until February to get this list published, this is the reason. I put about five hours into this game on Series X then dropped it when I got a little distracted by my new PS5 Pro and decided to spend the busy holiday rush playing old Sony exclusives I never got around to finishing. Once I finally got around to playing it around Christmas time, I could not play anything else until it was completed around 75 hours later.

Metaphor: ReFantazio is the best Role Playing Game the nation of Japan has produced this century. Studio Zero has been honing their craft for the past couple decades in the Persona titles, and Metaphor is what happens when a master craftsman is at the top of their game refining their work to an impeccable sheen. I can’t think of many games I’ve spent so much time in that were so polished, so expertly paced, and so respectful of the players time & attention. I can’t remember the last 80 hour game I played that basically had zero lull in the middle of it. I legitimately have no notes. I don’t know how Studio Zero could have possibly made a better JRPG. It somehow “Made Me Feel Like A Kid Again” playing PS1 JRPGs without pandering to nostalgia. It proudly wears the ethos of the past while blazing its own trail forward.

In every single regard, Metaphor: ReFantazio is extraordinary. Its story of uniting a divided people in times of racial and ethnic strife is not only extremely topical, but handled with such care and dignity that I am legitimately shocked that a monoculture such as Japan was able to produce it. The music is incredible, the art is incredible, the overworld design is incredible, hell even the menus are the best they’ve ever made, and that’s saying something considering these are the people that make Persona. It has all the stylish sensibilities of that franchise while remaining very much it’s own thing, which is a very difficult line to walk.

I circle back to my opening statement where I expressed the jubilation I had with the JRPG resurgence. It was a great year in the moment, but it was also a scene dominated by plenty of remakes or remasters. Metaphor: ReFantazio was the game that convinced me that the future of this genre is bright. It made me hopeful for a industry I am very worried about structurally. “Hope even in darkness” is a core theme of Metaphor: ReFantazio, and it represents that in the real world as well. It is not the most original, nor the most innovative, but it is the best game of 2024, it is the best built game of 2024, and it is the one I will forever remember.

The rest of the games on this list I merely recommend you play. I implore you to play Metaphor: ReFantazio.

***

The post Jarrod’s 2024 Top Ten Games of the Year and Other Meaningless Awards appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

As editor of GameCritics.com and the host of the So Videogames Podcast – and also as a person who just generally loves videogames – I strive to sample as much of the industry as I can.

What’s the new hotness? What’s the current design trend? What’s everyone talking about?

I’m also always on the lookout for hidden gems or indies that fly under the radar, so it basically means that I try a ton of titles every year!

For anyone who’s curious what 12 months of plays looks like for me, here it is in the exact order that I played them. There are no notes (except if I rolled credits – that’s mentioned in bold) but you can hear my thoughts on nearly everything on the podcast.

Also, if you’re curious what my top 10 were after playing all of these, you can catch me counting them down on SVG episode 420.

Total Played: 256

Total Finished: 22

1 — Lies of P, XBX — FINISHED

2 — Marvel Puzzle Quest, Android

3 — Marvel Snap, Android

4 — Rough Justice ’84, PS5

5 — War Hospital, PS5

6 — Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, PS5

7 — Vampire Saviors (DLC), XBX

8 — There is No Light, PS5

9 — Prince of Persia: the Lost Crown, PS5

10 — Frostpunk: The Last Autumn, XBX – FINISHED

11 — LEGO Fortnite, PS5

12 — Cobalt Core, Switch

13 — The Cub, PS5

14 — Bahnsen Knights, XBX — FINISHED

15 — Lil Guardsman, Switch

16 — Rising Lords, XBX

17 — Highwater, Android

18 — Turret Rampage, Switch

19 — Mortal Kombat 1, PS5 – FINISHED

20 – Super Box Delivery, PS5

21 — The Czech Run, PS5

22 — Steampunk Voyage, PS5

23 — Frog Detective, PS5

24 — Roadwarden, PC

25 — Dark Light, PS5

26 — Helldivers 2, PS5

27 — The Office: Somehow We Manage, Android

28 — Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden, PS5

29 — Birth, Switch

30 — The Nom, Switch

31 — Beauties Unveiled, Switch

32 — The Pale Beyond, PC

33 — Ultros, PS5

34 — Outcast: A New Beginning (demo), PS5

35 — Captain Velvet Meteor: The Jump+ Dimensions, XBX

36 — Smalland, PS5

37 — Balatro, PS5

38 — Hawked, PS5

39 — Warhammer 40,000: Warpforge, Android

40 — Sanabi, Switch

41 — Suika Game, Switch

42 — Unicorn Overlord (demo), Switch

43 — Classified: France ’44, PS5 – FINISHED

44 — Pepper Grinder (demo), Switch

45 — Pocket Card Jockey: Ride On!, Switch

46 — King Arthur: Knight’s Tale, XBX

47 — Yohane: The Parhelion (demo), Switch

48 — Trash Punk, Switch

49 — Penny’s Big Breakaway, PS5

50 — Regency Solitaire, Switch

51 — Welcome to Paradize, PS5

52 — Abriss: Build to Destroy, PS5

53 — Tamarak Trail, PS5

54 — Tron: RUN/r, PS5

55 — Torn Away, PS5

56 — Space Extractor, Switch

57 — Fortnite, PS5

58 — Outcast: A New Beginning, PS5

59 — Stolen Realm, XBX

60 — The Tales of Bayun, Switch

61 — Highwater, PS5

62 — Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate: Daemonhunters, PS5 – FINISHED

63 — Passing By: A Tailwind Adventure, Switch

64 — Unables, PS5

65 — Dungeon Drafters, Switch

66 — Empty Shell, Switch

67 — Sand Land (demo), PS5

68 — Stellar Blade (demo), PS5

69 — Alone in the Dark: Grace (demo), PS5

70 — OTXO, PS5

71 — Gord, PS5

72 — A Void Hope, Switch

73 — Warhammer 40,000: Tacticus, Android

74 — Storyblocks: The King, Switch

75 — 20 Minutes Till Dawn, Switch

76 — Stacklands, Switch

77 — Broken Roads, PS5

78 — Spaceland, Switch – FINISHED

79 — Hero’s Hour, Switch

80 — Pepper Grinder, Switch

81 — The Kindeman Remedy, PS5

82 — Death Trick: Double Blind, Switch

83 — Stitch, Switch

84 — Reigns: Beyond, Switch

85 — Hellstuck: Rage With Your Friends, Switch

86 — Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector, XBX — FINISHED

87 — Traumatorium, Switch

88 — No Umbrellas Allowed, Switch

89 — Into the Breach, Switch — FINISHED

90 — Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles, PS5

91 — Ruff Ghanor, XBX

92 — Another Crab’s Treasure, XBX

93 — Sand Land, PS5

94 — Library of Ruina, PS5

95 — Surmount, Switch

96 — Sucker for Love 2: Date to Die For, PC

97 — Warhammer 40,000: Freeblade, Android

98 — Outer Terror, PS5

99 — The Foretold: Exordium, PC

100 — The Foretold: Westmark Legacy, PC

101 — Warhammer 40,000: Horus Heresy Legions, Android

102 — Insurmountable, XBX

103 — Warhammer 40,000: Space Wolf, Switch (delisted)

104 — The Land Beneath Us, PS5

105 — Gordian Quest, PS5

106 — Indika, PS5

107 — Rise of the Ronin, PS5

108 — Flaskoman, PS5

109 — Slay the Princess, PC

110 — Bad North, Switch

111 — Crown Wars: the Black Prince, PS5

112 — Soul Link, Switch

113 — 1000xResist, Switch

114 — Savage Age, Switch

115 — Capes, PS5 – FINISHED

116 — Warhammer 40,000: Gladius, PC

117 — Hauntii, XBX

118 — Dig or Die: Console Edition, XBX

119 — Warhammer Quest, PS5

120 — Nuclear Blaze, PS5 — FINISHED

121 — Brawlhalla, PS5

122 — V Rising, PS5

123 — Alone in the Dark, PS5

124 — Glyphs of Gitzan, Switch

125 — Paper Trail, PS5

126 — Moonstone Island, Switch

127 — Wartales, XBX

128 — Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, XBX

129 — Frogue, Switch

130 — Space Crew: Legendary Edition, Switch

131 — Rusted Moss, XBX

132 — ArcRunner, XBX

133 — Fireside, Switch

134 — Racine, Switch

135 — The First Descendant, PS5

136 — Bomber Crew, Switch – FINISHED

137 – Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, PS5 (DEMO)

138 — The Riftbreaker, PS5

139 — Loretta, Switch

140 — Mouse & Crane, Switch

141 — Robin Hood: Sherwood Builders, XBX

142 — Summoning Solitaire, PC

143 — DROS, Switch

144 — Princess Maker 2: Regeneration, Switch

145 — Prune & Milo, Switch

146 — Darkest Dungeon II, PS5

147 — SteamWorld Heist 2, PS5

148 — Tavern Talk, Switch

149 — Conscript, PS5

150 — Flock, PS5

151 — Stardew Valley, Switch

152 — Bomber Crew: USAF (DLC), Switch

153 — Dungeons of Hinterberg, XBX – FINISHED

154 — TimeMelters, PS5

155 — Flintlock: Siege of Dawn, XBX

156 — Mudrunner: Expeditions, PS5

157 — Deathbound (demo), PS5

158 — Arranger, Switch

159 — Picross S3, Switch

160 — Punch Club 2: Fast Forward

161 — The Lullaby of Life, XBX

162 — Aero the Acro-Bat, PS5

163 — Mists of Noyah, PS5

164 — Grow Up, PS5

165 — Thank Goodness You’re Here, PS5

166 — Deathbound, PS5 – FINISHED

167 — Mars 2120, PS5

168 — Arco, Switch

169 — Overboss, PS5

170 — Kiborg Arena (demo), PS5

171 — Phantom Spark, XBX

172 — Neo Harbor Rescue Squad (demo), PS5

173 — Star Wars: Outlaws, PS5

174 — Kamikaze Lassplanes, PC

175 — Helldivers, PS5

176 — Vampire Therapist, PC

177 — Verne: the Shape of Fantasy, Switch

178 — No-One Has to Die, PC – FINISHED

179 — Star Trucker, XBX

180 — Peglin, Switch

191 — Space Marine II, PS5

192 — Caravan SandWitch, PS5 — FINISHED

193 — Evotinction, PS5

194 — Akimbot, PS5

195 — Keylocker, XBX

196 — Project Tower (demo), PS5

197 — Melobot: A Last Song, PS5

198 — Astrea: Six-Sided Oracles, Switch

199 — Last War, Android

200 — Mark of the Deep (demo), PS5

201 — Die Again (demo), PS5

202 — Closer the Distance, PS5

203 — Metaphor: ReFantazio (demo), PS5

204 — The Plucky Squire, XBX

205 — Metro Quester: Osaka, XBX

206 — Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, XBX – FINISHED

207 — Bloodless, Switch

208 — Necro Story, Switch

209 — Besiege, XBX

210 — Nano Apostle, Switch

211 — Neva, XBX

212 — Europa, Switch – FINISHED

213 — Shogun Showdown, Switch

214 — Faith: The Unholy Trinity, Switch

215 — The Night is Grey, PC

216 — Metaphor: ReFantazio, XBX

217 — Stilt Fella, PS5

218 — Wildermyth, PS5

219 — Rogue Sentry, PS5

220 — Metal Slug Tactics, PS5

221 — Kong: Survivor Instinct, PS5

222 — 63 Days, PS5

223 — Slavicpunk: Oldtimer, PS5

224 — Kill Knight, PS5

225 — Empire of the Ants, PS5

226 – Slime 3K: Rise Against Despot, PS5

227 — Hardcoded, PC

228 — Redacted, PS5

229 — Fear the Spotlight, PS5

230 — Ved, PS5

231 — Athenian Rhapsody (demo), Switch

232 — Dungeons of Dreadrock: the Dead King’s Secret, Switch

233 — Loco Motive, Switch

234 — Wild Bastards, PS5 – FINISHED

235 — Miniatures, Switch

236 — Keeper’s Toll, Switch – FINISHED

237 — Mindcop, PS5

238 — Infinity Nikki, PS5

239 — Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, XBX

240 — The Thaumaturge, PS5

241 — Void Bastards, PS5

242 — Mythwrecked: Ambrosia Island, XBX

243 — Doorkickers, Switch

244 — Hades, Switch – FINISHED

245 — Dungeon Limbus, Switch

246 — Defend the Rook, Switch

247 — Exorder, Switch

248 — Shadow Tactics: Aiko’s Choice, PS5 – FINISHED

249 — Universe For Sale, Switch

250 — Flint: Treasure of Oblivion, PS5

251- Beyond Galaxyland, PS5

252 — Venture to the Vile, PS5

253 — Pine: A Story of Loss, Switch

254 — Between Horizons, PS5

255 — Songs of Silence, XBX

256 — Unicorn Overlord, XBX

The post Every Game I Played In 2024 appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

In this gargantuan year-end episode, Brad closes out 2024 with returning co-host Carlos Rodela!

The two discuss their biggest disappointments, the games that got away and their honorable mentions before listing their individual top 10s.

As a special treat, they close out the show with a slew of listener picks!

You can also hear the show on iTunes and Spotify!

Please send feedback and mailbag questions to SoVideogamesPODCAST (at) gmail (dot) com, or post them in the comments section below. Thanks!

The post So Videogames Episode 420: GOTY appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

This is it, folks!

The So Videogames 2023 look-back, retrospective and wrapup!

Carlos and Brad take the next two and a half hours to talk about the year’s disappointments, honorable mentions, games they didn’t get to, and of course, their top ten titles of 2023!

After they run through the lists, they close out the show with an avalanche of listener picks and pans!

Come join us as we close out the year past and welcome the year to come!!

You can also hear the show on iTunes and Spotify!

Please send feedback and mailbag questions to SoVideogamesPODCAST (at) gmail (dot) com, or post them in the comments section below. Thanks!

The post SVG 369: GOTY! Top 10 of 2023! appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

Welcome to my 2022 list of games that I loved.

2022 has been another wild ride but I probably will give it the credit of being a little less cataclysmic than last year. Is this because I left Twitter? Maybe.  

Welcome to my 2022 list of games that I loved. 2022 has been another wild ride but I probably will give it the credit of being a little less cataclysmic than last year. Is this because I left Twitter? Maybe.

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Some supplemental awards first.

‘Oh, thank my stars co-op arrived’ award:

§ Halo Infinite

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  ‘Please stop releasing your games in December’ 2021 awards:

§ The Gunk

§ Tunnel of Doom

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‘You are a compelling game, but my word, your politics suck’ award:

§ Police Simulator: Patrol officers

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10. As Dusk Falls XBO, XSX/S

As Dusk Falls is pitched as having meaningful stories and heartfelt performances brought to life by motion comics. The game follows multiple people across different threads involving a heist gone wrong, telling the story from the robbers’ and victims’ perspective. As Dusk Falls’ other big pitch is that it can be played online with up to 8 friends, and each time a choice must be made each player places a vote with the ability to override all votes. As all my friends are complete misfits, this means that instead of anything being accomplished, characters in As Dusk Falls will spend most of their time doing the worst things. To its credit, the game does a great job of keeping things on track. I am pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to laugh this much, but As Dusk Falls certainly brings it when played with chaotic pals.

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9. Broken Pieces PC, XBO, XSX/S, PS4/5

Broken Pieces is pretty great. A 3D adventure with a focus on puzzling and some minor combat. Set in a remote French Village that seems to exist in a post-event world where it’s not entirely clear what that event was. The localization is all over the place and adds to the unnerving nature of the game. Broken Pieces’s peers are Deadly Premonition and Syberia. If either of those names make your ears prick up, then you have to try this game.

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8. The Quarry PC, XBO, XSX/S, PS4/5 Review here

Supermassive consistently release titles that hit my top ten. Never in the top 5, but I still look forward to playing them. The Quarry is no exception. Larger and a bit longer than its Dark Pictures compatriots, it starts slower but ends up being rewarding by leaning into a goofier horror story. One of the things I’m enjoying is that the writing team started to become aware of its own tropes and then learning how to subvert them. For example, they’ve loved giving the players a ‘Drew Barrymore’ character for the tutorial – someone that shows up briefly to get murdered or sidelined. Not this time, and it’s great to see the writing being experimental and finding new ways to spin the story. However, it’s the multiplayer that keeps things entertaining as the hot-seat means that I could not predict the story twists.

Below is a heavily spoilered example:

Later in the story, after The Quarry had set up two characters and framed them as the protagonists, things turn to a pitched battle with a murderous family, everything slowed down for a second and required one of my friends to make a pivotal shot… And he missed. Both the protagonists die. The story continued without them.

What a great game.

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7. Tunic – PC, XBO, PS4/5, XSX/S, Switch

I was unimpressed by Tunic’s demo, outside of the very nice, squidgy pastel-colored models that made everything look like it was made out of opaque jelly sweets. What I played of the demo felt like someone was just retreading Legend of Zelda. That’s not to say the full game of Tunic surprised me and didn’t ape Link’s adventures, but it’s doing so much more. The element of ‘aha!’ when a level circles around on itself made me appreciate how clever each layout was, and the unlocking of each piece of the in-game instruction manual leading to even more ‘aha!’ moments is inspired. Then, when I realized what the liner notes meant… Well, it was the first time I fully appreciated what made Fez so appealing to players. Finally, when I hit a pretty nasty bug right at the end that meant that the final boss was much harder than it needed to be, Tunic just didn’t give a shit that I made myself invincible and beat the boss without trying. The journey and the exploration was more important.

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6. Windjammers 2 – PC, PS4/5, XBO, XSX/S, Switch, Stadia Review here

Windjammers is a unique game in many ways, I played it in the arcades back in the ’90s and then again on emulators in the 2000s. The back and forth of throwing a disc in a sort of air hockey/Frisbee hybrid is so simple, but the tactics and mind games that emerge contain so much depth. All I had craved for the last couple of decades was a decent port on my preferred console, but DotEmu (a company that is very much on a roll after Streets of Rage 4) went one better. Not only did they manage to make Windjammers 2 bigger with more varied abilities, trickshots and techniques, but also better. Although the skill ceiling is higher, it doesn’t detract from the crazy amount of simple fun able to be had. It also helps that the online multiplayer is rock-solid too.

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5. Pick Pack Pup – PlayDate

Not only does this entry give me an opportunity to brag about getting a PlayDate earlier this year, it is also a way to celebrate my favourite entry of the first season of curated games. Pick Pack Pup manages to find a new spin on the ‘match three’ genre with the character having to connect items first to package them, then they dispatch the packages, the more dispatched at the same time, the better the bonus. The game finds new ways to change up the format as the story progresses with different objectives, and the challenge modes add extra incentive to return. The story itself is a criticism of Amazon (and capitalism at large). Entertainingly, the protagonist steals a rocket and goes to Mars. For me, the most charming part of Pick Pack Pup was that it was a compulsive 3-4 hour game, perfect for a plane or car journey, and it fit perfectly into the PlayDate’s weekly offering. For those who get a chance to try the diminutive crank handheld, make a beeline for this one.

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4. Elden Ring PC – PS4/5, XBO, XSX/S Review here

I mean, I am sure it isn’t much of a shock that Elden Ring is on this list. It’s a phenomenal achievement by From Software to pack so much into this game and still make it feel like it had a personality. It is also by far the most accessible in the franchise, with a ton of neat elements that made it so I could finally talk to some of my friends about the experience. There is something in there, though, that weirdly rubs me the wrong way – like, I am resentful that the game is basically Assassin’s Creed, only with its excel spreadsheet checklist of side missions hidden from the player. When I realized that I was ticking off a series of boxes (during a fire giant fight) it soured a game I think I otherwise might have considered perfect. Still, I have high hopes that From Software will go from strength to strength after Elden Ring’s performance and that leaves me with hope that I’ll finally get another Armored Core game. Never mind, Armored Core VI got announced this a great end of year for me. Get me a mech!

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3. Gunfire: Reborn Switch – PC, PS4, XBO, XSX/S, Android, iOS

With one of the most forgettable names ever (frequently referred to as ‘Ghostmaster: Remix’ or ‘Gunblast: Remaster’ in this household) Gunfire: Reborn is a fantastic co-op, first-person shooter with roguelite elements. Each run allows the player to pick a class, accrue levelling-up points, better weapons, and scrolls that can buff/debuff, and the developer seems to delight in allowing the player to create utterly broken builds that allow players to go on rampages. The four player co-op elements (once players are higher level) allows for people to see the great range of different builds like the dual-wielding dog and the glass-canon bunny rabbit, while mixing and matching different styles. It’s on Game Pass right now, and even if you don’t have friends you should be playing it.

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2. Roguebook Switch – PC, Mac, XBO, XSX/S, PS4/5, Stadia Review here

“A top ten and I only have one roguelite on here” I saym as I realize I haven’t written about Roguebook. Every year I find a game that hits me like meth — hitting me with wide-eyed nights of hours slipping by in some sort of fugue state as I play ‘one more game’.  What Roguebook improves for the Darkest-Slay-the-Monster-Train-Dungeon formula is that it lets the player feel like they have more agency in their path towards the bosses, and there feels like there’s an ability to course-correct a half-failing run with the two hero system. The most roguelite addicted have complained that there is not enough variation in deck discovery, but that wasn’t something that bothered me as I climbed through the ranks while unlocking more cards. Charming, and a fantastic entry point for people curious about deckbuilding roguelites.

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1. Severed Steel – Switch, PC, XBO, XSX/S, PS4/5

I booted up Severed Steel before writing this to check if I was really going to make it my game of the year and got into a new game+ playthrough. Played in first-person, perspective this is a game that muses on what it would be like if Max Payne was just an endless stream of slow-motion violence set to a propulsive beat. Every level requires jumping, sliding, wall running and shooting — it’s like Cliff Bleszinski made good on his comment about how worried he was we hadn’t seen the gunplay in Mirror’s Edge and then built a game that had flawless gunplay/parkour. It’s just a cacophony of good times.

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Most Disappointing of the year: Plague Tale: Requiem

I am still enjoying Plague Tale, and I will likely finish it, but the disappointment I feel is that it seems that the developers and I have very different ideas of what we wanted from this game. Plague Tale: Innocence was a surprise – a gorgeous title on a budget that squeezed just enough gameplay into its cutscene heavy adventure that kept me engrossed. This first entry offered up a range of tools for stealthing and killing, but rarely had big enough areas to explore the possibilities with them.

What I had hoped for the sequel was that Requiem would build on this solid foundation and provide more open areas to fully realize the promising stealthy/fighting dichotomy. Instead, Requiem is about a lot of walking and talking and ‘push forward to win the game’ setpieces. These are impressive, they just indicate that, given a bigger budget, there will be even fewer interesting things to do in the next game and more emphasis on bombast. I hope that is not the case, because I love the world.

The post AJ’s Top 10 of 2022 appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

I thought this was a garbage year for new releases until… ::checks watch:: …like a month ago.

It actually wasn’t a bad year, but up until December, 2022 seemed like a year defined by my GOTY pick and not much else. Upon further reflection, many of the games on my list were peppered throughout the year, but a solid seven or eight of my picks either didn’t come out until very late in the year or, in the case of my #2 choice, I wasn’t even aware of until mid-December. This is partially why this list is so late, as I needed a January of actually playing these games to decipher my own awards.

2022 was also a year in which I played less videogames than maybe any year since I was eight. I’ve officially hit my mid 30s, got married, my career is in full swing, and a quickly-developing poker habit means a lot of Sunday afternoons that would’ve been spent playing the latest and greatest game is now spent at a local card room playing low stakes tournaments. I still love games and will be first in line for many in 2023, but I’m starting to think that the days of “gaming” being a defining part of my life are numbered. My mother would be so proud.

With that said, I still played a fair bit (especially lately), and I’ve still got the ability to write lists, so here is the only guide you’ll need to know what was worth playing in 2022.

The “I Just Felt Like Giving This Game An Award” Award: MyVegas Slots

Ok so here’s the thing: This game is trash. Its UI is awful, it takes forever to get into the actual game, its microtransaction scheme is borderline predatory (which makes sense given it’s a game about playing slot machines), the art sucks, and it essentially preps any child who plays it towards being a gambling addict. It’s one of the few games ever made where I legitimately believe the Earth would be a better place if it didn’t exist.

So why on God’s Green Earth am I giving a terrible game released over nine years ago one of my incredibly prestigious awards? Well, frankly, it saved me hundreds of dollars this year.

I ended up going on vacation to Las Vegas twice this year. I DO NOT recommend this, but I got married there this past summer, and then my wife & I went there for Christmas this year as well due to my mother retiring to Lake Havasu, Arizona, and Vegas is the closest major airport to her.

For both trips, I used MyVegas to collect various coupons on our trip, as on top of collecting chips, the game also has another currency based entirely on length of play that can unlock various rewards to use on The Strip. So for about a month beforehand each trip, I would have this awful game running on a spare phone in the background grinding BOGO Buffet coupons and discounted show tickets. It got my best man a free room at Excalibur on his way out of town, and overall I probably used about $400 worth of MyVegas Rewards on both trips. I even got a match play that I won, so it got me $50 cash as well. Considering this is the only videogame in history to actually give me tangible, cash based rewards due to play, I felt it earned a spot on my year-end wrap-up.

With that said, if you’re never ever planning on going to Vegas (good plan), please never play this exploitative dreck.

2023’s Story of the Year: Who Gets Bought Next?

Corporate consolidation is one of the more nightmarish things happening on Planet Earth currently, and 2022 was a year where the videogame industry got hit hard by this sickness. Microsoft spent tens of billions of dollars purchasing both Bethesda Software and Activision, then Sony got scared and overpaid for Bungie… just because, I guess? NetEase decided to waste a bunch of money on Quantic Dream, and secret-CCP-Tentacle-Monster Tencent continued acquiring studios (Sumo Digital) while also owning like 10% of every company you enjoy the work of.

Also have you heard of Embracer Group? The Swedish corporation went on an absolute tear by essentially buying the backlog of multiple companies, including purchasing all of Square-Enix’s Western studios and IP for a shockingly low amount.

Speaking of Square-Enix, they were the catalyst for this award, as I don’t see them being an independent company come 2024. Considering they are tripling down on NFT’s a year after the world realized they were a sick joke brainstormed by Philistines, I expect the Final Fantasy studio to be a Sony subsidiary by year-end. Electronic Arts I could see being acquired as well. The boards of public companies are essentially incentivized by stock subsidies to cash out and sell to the highest bidder to line their own pockets even if the company is doing well, and I see no reason why this won’t continue. Less choice is always bad for the consumer, and despite various ten-year Call of Duty promises thrown about by Microsoft, there is no planet where any of this can be spun as a good thing.

2022’s “Ehh…I’ll Play It Later” Award: TIE between God of War: Ragnarok & Horizon: Forbidden West

These two games essentially take the same space in my head. Both are sequels to games I enjoyed, both are big-budget triple-A games by prestige developers, both are Playstation exclusives, and both serve very well as “Next-Gen Showpieces” for people lucky enough to have a PS5. The problem is that both God of War: Ragnarok and Horizon: Forbidden West essentially did the same thing — take the first game, slightly pretty it up, and make it bigger-er. “Longer” is not a feature I value highly in gaming, and that’s essentially the biggest innovation for each of these titles.

I recognize the immense quality of each along with the massive amount of work that went into each title, but neither of these games made me particularly excited to actually play them. I finished Horizon: Zero Dawn for the first time in the lead-up to Forbidden West’s release, and it took literally a half hour of playing the newest entry in the franchise for me to realize that this was not the game I wanted to play at the time, and I still haven’t touched it since. I hadn’t played God of War (2018) since…well, since 2018, and it still felt way too similar to me upon release. Could either of these games have made my list if I played them in their entirety? Sure. Again, there’s a lot of good in these two titles. With that said, I really don’t have a lot of drive to do so, which is, when you think about it, pretty damning.

Turd of the Year: Sonic Origins

You know it’s a weird year when the 3D Sonic game was a pleasant surprise while the 2D effort was an embarrassing letdown. Considering it’s been the other way around for two decades, I was shocked to see Sonic Origins be so profoundly disappointing. Leading this years pack in the “How did you f**k this up?” category, Sonic Origins took the seemingly simple task of enhancing Sonic 1-3, Sonic CD, and Sonic & Knuckles, then proceeded to inject nearly 30-year-old titles with a variety of new bugs and some downright awful input lag. Also, if developer Headcannon is to be believed (I’m inclined to believe them due to their exceptional work on Sonic Mania), the final product is actively worse than the gold copy they turned in to Sega.

On top of that, Sonic Origins has officially taken the title of “dumbest special edition ever” from a multitude of Ubisoft games with the downright insulting “Digital Deluxe Edition”, which charged players an extra $5 for things like a letterboxed background, the ability to control the camera in the main menu, and a music player. I don’t know which is more befuddling — Sega having the audacity to put such “features” behind a paywall (for a game that was already questionably priced at $39.99) , or that Sega thought people would be down to pay extra for such an odd assortment of bonuses. Considering remasters of old classics have been around since Super Mario All-Stars, Sega continuing to do their mascot dirty is as shocking as it is unsurprising, which is a pretty amazing feat to pull off in its own right.

Ohh and they changed Sonic 3’s music because Michael Jackson’s weird family is running out of his money and threatened to sue. When you remake a game and the final product makes me happy I have the original (now de-listed) releases on Steam, you f****d up.

NOW… THE ONE TRUE LIST THAT IS CLEARLY BETTER THAN ALL OTHER LISTS

Honorable Mention: Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII REUNION

While my list has an assortment of major nostalgia trips and a half-remake/half-sequel… thing, I’m happy to see that I, without trying, made a list that doesn’t feature a single straight-up remaster or remake. Again, maybe 2022 was better than I thought?

With that said, remakes & remasters still exist, and the best one this year modernized the only Final Fantasy VII Extended Universe thing I ever liked. The PSP advertised itself as the first handheld to offer “true” console gaming on the go, and despite the system’s limitations, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII got closer to that promise than maybe any other game released for Sony’s first portable gaming device. It featured (at the time) mind-blowing graphics, an entertaining Action RPG combat system, exceptional music, and a main protagonist that was infinitely more enjoyable to play as compared to Cloud Strife.

REUNION takes that original game and puts a next-gen-ish sheen on it. While it uses the assets from the FFVII Remake, it doesn’t quite reach those heights graphically. However, it’s a monumental jump from the PSP release. It also features smart enhancements to the combat that make it a little more fast-paced, and it’s a profound improvement over a release that really should not have been trapped on the PSP for the past fifteen years. Considering it’s importance to the new FFVII canon, this remaster both makes sense and is expertly crafted, which are the two things one really looks for when judging a remaster.

10. Sonic Frontiers

So, again, who knew that Sonic Team and their latest attempt at making Sonic in 3D would be the shining beacon for the blue hedgehog in 2022? I certainly didn’t believe it after early trailers didn’t even get me on board with another “Sonic Cycle”. Here’s the thing — while it being 10th on the list kinda makes this obvious, Sonic Frontiers is definitely the worst game here (…okay it’s not as bad as MyVegas Slots).

It maintains a lot of the problems 3D Sonic has had for literal decades like problematic camera controls, awkward enemy targeting, bugs galore, wonky physics, and a baffling story that seems perfectly tailored to the Pixiv crowd. Sonic coming to a complete stop when landing from a jump is one of the more daft design decisions I’ve run into in a long time. The pop-in is the worst I’ve seen in a videogame since Days Gone, and the way pipes just kinda appear in the sky makes the game occasionally look like something out of an alpha build. The Super Sonic sections, while they are massive in scale and offer some truly inspiring metalcore, are broken messes of failed motion that nobody could ever reasonably call fun.

All of these things are true, but Sonic Team may have actually solved the “What the hell should Sonic the Hedgehog even be in 3D?” question after all these years.

Breath of the Wild was obviously a huge inspiration as Sonic runs through massive islands sparsely populated with little nibbles of content that slowly pad stats and open new areas to explore. I’ve never enjoyed using Sonic more in a 3D space, and that’s due to the sprawling open-world design eliminating many of the cheap deaths from simply not being able to see obstacles or react accordingly to them (cheap deaths still very much exist). Now while I enjoyed my time with this game immensely, it really only rises to the title of “successful proof-of-concept”. Sonic Frontiers is a deeply problematic title, but within it one can see amazing potential, and I’ve never been more optimistic about the future of Sonic in the third dimension. Here’s hoping their next entry will produce less fan “art”.

9. Bayonetta 3

Is it weird calling the 9th best game of the year sorta disappointing? We finally get a sequel to the best game of 2014 and the 2nd best game of 2009, so needless to say my expectations were rather high, but frankly, there’s a lot in this game that I do not like.

The performance is rather terrible, which causes serious problems in a complex character action game. If one wanted a poster child for “Hey maybe the Switch is a bit long in the tooth”, Bayonetta 3 is it. Also, for a series that’s famous for its over-the-top nature, here’s actually too much going on in some scenes, as the game has a need to show off how epic everything is by panning the camera out at the expense of gameplay. The addition of giant Kaiju monsters to help out in combat looks cool, but how frequently they are used takes away from the core mechanics. Considering Bayonetta as a franchise has been known as one giant fever-dream of a party, this newest addition with multiple apocalypses just seems a bit dour compared to its predecessors.

Lastly, I’m kinda with a lot of internet people who say that the romance featured in the game is both nonsensical and antithetical to who I’m pretty sure Cereza is. In other words, this is a problematic title.

But here’s the thing — middling Bayonetta is still better than 95% of all videogames ever produced, and Platinum Games still has some of the better combat mechanics conceived by man to fall back on. When Bayonetta 3 focuses on delivering the manic combat the series is famous for, it excels, and many of the trimmings longtime fans want are here. The art is preposterous, the music is sensational, and there were few experiences so sublime this year as when Bayonetta 3 clicks. I also really liked using the new character Viola, although her addition isn’t quite as impactful as, say, Nero was in Devil May Cry. It’s a great game with quirks that keep it from hitting the delirious highs of the previous games, but that’s enough for a new Bayonetta to crack the list.

8. Xenoblade Chronicles 3

Xenogears was one of my absolute favorites as a teenager. The game was peak anime melodrama in a time where I was into that sort of thing, but above all else, I loved Xenogears because it was, and remains, totally f***ing bonkers. There are multiple scenes of characters murdering everyone they know, it hammers players over the head with themes in a way that makes Hideo Kojima look subtle, and disc 2 is essentially a multi-hour interrogation cutscene followed by fighting God. It’s a mess, but it’s a gloriously entertaining mess that stuck with me way longer than any other JRPG made by Monolith Soft with the word “Xeno” in it. The Xenosaga series was… good but never really reached that peak level of silly championed by the first game. The first Xenoblade game is an absolute classic with numerous gameplay innovations that JRPG’s now are barely getting on board with, but outside of a few hints here and there, it didn’t really strike me as a Xeno game, whatever that means. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 was literally the moment in my life where I said “hmm…maybe I’m actually not into anime anymore?”.

Now, while it still doesn’t reach the wild heights of Xenogears (probably for the best, honestly), Xenoblade Chronicles 3 was the first time I believed I was playing a true successor to the ol’ OG. Child soldiers dying over and over again in endless wars so they can power demonic robots is the kind of ridiculous concept I’ve wanted from this series for years, but Xenoblade Chronicles 3 actually tells a great story with this idea thanks to the absolutely stellar main cast. This is one of the more enjoyable group of superfriends I’ve played in a JRPG in a long time, which is good considering the staggering length of this title. Expect a 60 hour playthrough at the absolute minimum, and thankfully the inventive combat makes it engaging for the player the entire way. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is absolutely worth the time investment for anyone into anime that goes on-and-on about the nature of existence.

7. Neon White

“Style over substance” is a bit of an overused term at this point, but in the case of Neon White, it’s actually the opposite, as the “Style” part of Neon White is its worst aspect. Unfortunately, the visual novel aspect of the game features a putrid story with some of the most grating characters I’ve encountered in a while, and the ethereal aesthetic wasn’t my cup of tea. At least the music somewhat slaps, and the game makes it pretty easy to skip through the nonsense.

Now the substance of Neon White is what gets it on the list. Once you get past the bad art and borderline tasteless writing, there is an immensely satisfying puzzle-platformer underneath with perfectly tuned controls and exceptional level design.

There are very few feelings better this year than absolutely nailing a level while bouncing around it like a ninja, and there are few feelings more infuriating than finding out that baller run was actually four seconds off the Platinum award time. Racking my brain around how to shave off those crucial seconds led to high levels of gratification. This is about the last thing I expected the Donut County developers to make, but I’m sure glad they did.

6. The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe

So a bit ago I said this list didn’t feature any remasters, and I stand by that when it comes to The Stanley Parable 2, which (…Spoilers?) is the actual title of The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe once players progress beyond a certain point. Ultra Deluxe is a dramatically expanded rendition of 2013’s funniest game — so much so, that I think it’s somewhat of a disservice to label it a a simple remaster. The original game had 19 endings, Ultra Deluxe has a whopping 42. There are hours’ worth of new dialogue from the GOAT-contending narrator along with large swaths of new areas to explore.

Furthermore, there’s a whole lot of new, hilarious introspection from writers Davey Wredan & William Pugh, who have essentially made most of the new content center around what the hell it was like to make a massively successful indie darling and the daunting task of following it up. These are themes touched on in their previous work since the original Stanley Parable, but they take it to hysterical heights here. Ultra deluxe takes what was a neat little thing with the original title and transforms it into a complete work that absolutely shines in 2023.

Did I mention it’s really goddamn funny?

5. Return To Monkey Island

The point-and-click adventure genre has had various “comebacks” over the years with the now-defunct Telltale Games kicking it off in 2004. How ironic that they then practically killed off any other modern interpretations when The Walking Dead unfortunately morphed an entire genre into “Dialogue from Bioware Games: The Game” before things got worse with titles like Gone Home sprinkling item collecting into walking around and damn near removed puzzles from the Adventure equation altogether. Weird low budget adventure games from small European studios kept the genre on life support, but this wasn’t exactly a vibrant genre in 2022.

Thankfully, Ron Gilbert is back and… he’s pretty much doing what he did in 1990 — and that’s A-OK in my book. Take away the exceptional art, voicework, and modern trimmings, and this is essentially a SCUMM game with dastardly puzzles as obtuse as they were 30 years ago. They require a fair bit of moon logic, and if you’re not up for that, they’ve put in a mode with simplified puzzles for those who just want to enjoy the absolutely stellar writing. With that said, this decidedly old-school experience was a delight from the get-go due to both its ardent convictions of genre conventions and the reverence it has for the source material. Sure, it kinda ignores the past three Monkey Island games because Ron Gilbert is a stubborn old man, but if that’s what it takes to get him to make another LucasArts adventure genre, that’s a trade i’m willing to make. This is an absolute must-play for anyone who grew up making literal mountains out of molehills.

4. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge

The moment the game started with a Mike Patton rendition of the classic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme was when I knew Shredder’s Revenge was gonna be special. Tribute Games clearly loves themselves some early ’90s TMNT games, and this is one of the best nostalgia trips i’ve played in a long time. The sprite work on display here is wildly expressive while also maintaining an old-school aesthetic that I appreciated. They also did a great job with the combat, as it keeps things simple while adding a layer of depth that’s attainable to novice players. It’s not super long, but it’s longer than most games of this ilk, and there are plenty of reasons to go back.

All of that is great, but this game makes the list due to the special memories I have playing it with my wife. She’s not much of a gamer, but she had some experience with arcade beat-’em-ups as a kid and I thought this would be a good attempt at an evening of couch co-op. This was correct thinking on my part, as we had an absolute blast playing through the entire game, and she ended up being the one who demanded we continued on from where we left off the next day. This is her Game of the Year and she’s my better half, so that definitely played a part in this game being so high on this list.

3. Marvel’s Midnight Suns

For a game that I was super excited for because I thought it was going to be “XCOM with Spider-Man”, I was actually surprisingly delighted to see that it isn’t that. I wasn’t expecting a 60-hour RPG/Dating-simulator with the breadth of dialogue options found in an old-school Bioware RPG. It also doesn’t have the same sense of dread that permeates an entire XCOM run, as it’s probably for the best that a mainstream Marvel product for the masses isn’t set up to ruin 20 hours of work with one bad mistake. While I was hesitant hearing Midnight Suns was card-based in its combat, it actually became one of the strengths, as building decks allows for high versatility in all characters while allowing me to tailor my superheroes based on the situation.

Midnight Suns is built around a Marvel Comics run from the 90s, and the team at Firaxis did a great job of capturing that feel. These are great interpretations of the characters, and I appreciate that they didn’t try to ape the current vibe of the MCU. Yes the characters are quippy, but that was the style of the decade as well in the comics, so it’s appropriate. This is a fabulous comic book game made by a bunch of dorks who used their undeniable talents to deliver a deep, intricate, surprising, and meaty experience. This is the only game on this list that I paid $70 for, and it was worth every penny.

2. Vampire Survivors

So, as previously alluded to in my MyVegas rant, I kinda hate slot machines. Poker is both cheaper and more stimulating, and I’ve never really understood the appeal of dumping money into a machine and… just kinda hoping for the best? Poncle, the stage-name for the developer behind the most out-of-left-field GOTY contender I can remember, used to develop slot machines, and that shows with Vampire Survivors. He was able to take the audiovisual stimulation of a slot machine and inject it into a rather unassuming roguelike to crystalize the most potent digital crack-cocaine I’ve experienced in a long time.

Vampire Survivors‘ greatest strength is how it’s able to take the sensibilities of exploitative, microtransaction-based shovelware and craft a legitimate experience out of it. It has all the trappings of a game I should find offensively terrible, but a $5 game with weird Castlevania knock-off art has no business being this engaging and interesting, especially once players progress to a certain point and, well, things get weird. This miserable pile of secrets is something I adored peeling apart one collectable at a time, and discovering all the game has to offer on my own without asking the internet was immensely gratifying. It’s not quite Game of the Year, but it’s the best value of the year by a country mile, and I’ll happily pay for every bit of DLC that Poncle wants to drip out.

This game is a sickness infecting my brain, and I’m down for it.

1. Elden Ring

That’s right, I’m going chalk. Everyone else’s Game of the Year is my Game of the Year for the same reasons everyone else will list. Elden Ring is the culmination of nearly fifteen years worth of ideas and gameplay innovations smelted into a defining achievement for an entire genre. This is not just the best Souls Game ever made. Elden Ring is the Souls Game. If someone out there somehow didn’t know what a Souls Game was and they asked me to pick one for them, without any hesitation whatsoever, without any worry on if they’d “miss something” by not starting with the original games, I would hand them Elden Ring and tell them to go nuts. It’s so good that it makes other games in the soulsverse (is that what we’re going with?) practically obsolete. I tried to go back and play the Demons Souls remake and Dark Souls Remastered after finishing FROM Software’s newest release, and while my 90-ish hours with Elden Ring definitely prepared me to better perform while playing their older titles, the smart gameplay enhancements and truly unparalleled scope of Elden Ring make their previous efforts seem like quaint, yet important relics that allowed their masterpiece to flourish.

Ocarina Of Time is a game that people often reference as having a huge, impactful “moment” when they get out of the starting village and see the huge open world that Link had to explore. It was transcendent for so many people, but that feeling did not even compare to the feeling I had after spending 20 hours running through what I thought was the entire map, only to realize how much I hadn’t even discovered yet. This is the best open world environment ever put in a videogame, full stop. Every single inch of this absolutely massive map feels as meticulously designed as the intricate dungeons it houses, and it’s pretty rare for me to play a game for literal days with a feeling that I’ve barely scratched the surface. While I still think I may personally like Sekiro more due to its aesthetics and combat, I find Elden Ring infinitely more impressive.

An extra congratulations goes to Hidetaka Miyazaki, who has transformed what was a pretty middling studio (anyone remember Enchanted Arms?) into one of the preeminent developers on Planet Earth, churning out hit after hit after hit. He’s in the upper echelons of gaming visionaries now. Miyamoto, Kojima, Garriot, Meier, Schafer, Carmack, whomever else I’m forgetting, and now Miyazaki. Thankfully, he doesn’t seem to have the same desire for a cult of personality around him the way that some of those aforementioned names do, and I think this bodes well for both his future and the future of FROM Software. Their runaway success as a formerly-smallish independent studio goes against the grain of everything this industry stands for currently, and I can’t wait to be there with every subsequent release.

Elden Ring is not the Game of the Year. It’s the Game of Our Time.

The post Jarrod’s Top Ten Of 2022 And Other Meaningless Awards appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

2022 is now in the rear view mirror, and overall I’d say it was a good year — in terms of videogames, if little else.

Interestingly, the rising popularity of the So Videogames Podcast has meant that I had less time to deep-dive on games and less time to write full reviews, so despite playing a ton of titles over the last twelve months, there were still a large number that I just didn’t have the chance to properly evaluate…

I did manage to settle on a top 10, though, and I’m pretty happy where I ended up!

GAMES I WANTED TO FULLY CONSIDER FOR TOP 10 BUT JUST DIDN’T MANAGE TO

Weird West playing it now, it’s awesome.

Neurodeck

The Last Friend

Road 96 intriguing, but I didn’t have time for the multiple playthroughs needed.

Live a Live

Pentiment

Ghostwire Tokyo

Lil’ Gator

Inscryption everyone tells me I’m going to love this.

Arcade Paradise

Lost in Play

Gerda: A Flame in Winter loved what I saw but didn’t finish it due to time constraints.

Foretales this was genius, but the early copy I had was bugged.

Beacon Pines

BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENTS

Silt I loved the look of this one, the art was fab. The gameplay featuring body-swapping with various fish didn’t hold the same appeal, though.

Vampire: the Masquerade – Swansong I looooooved The Council from the same developers, so I had high hopes for what they’d do with such a storied license. Unfortunately they went too heavy on obtuse puzzles and levels that felt like they dragged on forever.

Cult of the Lamb A great premise and awesome visuals, but it wasn’t deep enough in combat and couldn’t keep things fresh enough during each run of its roguelike structure.

Cursed to Golf This supernaturally-themed golf game had me on board from day one… until I played it. The vertical nature of each course and a focus on tricks while also dealing with a limited camera view sucked the fun out pretty fast.

Deathverse: Let it Die I loved the original Let it Die and was more than ready to jump back into its twisted, nihilistic universe, but changing up the original structure and putting sole focus on PvP ain’t it. I love the style and the world and basically everything about this game, except the gameplay. If the devs go back to PvE(vP) I’ll be a happy guy. Unfortunately, the devs just announced that the game will be suspended in July 2023 due to various concerns, so it’s unclear if they’ll get the chance to pivot back to their strengths.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Ravenous Devils No real complaints here, this was on my top 10 for most of the year — it’s an idiosyncratic pick, but one I really enjoyed.

Rogue Lords Same as above. This was on my list for most of the year but it just got edged out in December.

Anno Mutationem These devs get so much right and it has style for miles. The campaign went on a little too long and it lost me after the middle, but I’m guessing there are a lot of folks out there that would adore this one if they gave it a shot.

Anvil: Vault Breakers I’m not a fan of early access, and although this one launched as “done” I couldn’t help but feel like they were still shaking things out. I loved the action and the roguelike elements really worked for me, though.

Nobody Saves the World Another one of those less-is-more-situations. I loved my time with this one but the campaign just went on too long. If it had been punchier, it would have been on my top 10 for sure.

Like No Other: The Legend of the Twin Books I loved this reinterpretation of classic point-and-click formula, it’s literally brilliant. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much of a story, which is a major omission in the genre. With a better script, an easy top 10 pick.

Yars: Recharged A creative re-imagining of an Atari classic. Absolutely worth a look for Atari or arcade fans. It came dangerously close to being in my top 10.

BEST GAME NOT FROM 2022

Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector One of the best 40K games out there. A great use of the license, a great campaign, and solid tactics, along with upgrade paths and unit variety to keep it fresh. Didn’t have time to play it in 2021, but it’s absolutely worth the time whenever a 40K fan can get to it.

MY TOP 10 OF 2022

10> Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration An interactive retrospective worthy of being in the Smithsonian. The bar for retro collections has now been raised AF.

9> Marvel Snap Snappy play, simple to understand, and a clever design that ensures no two matches ever play out the same.

8> Card Shark I can honestly say I’ve never been taught to cheat at cards in a videogame before. This series of minigames nestled amidst the French Revolution was fiercely fresh.

7> RPG Time: The Legend of Wright A labor of love that captures the spark and imagination of being a do-it-yourselfer kid in junior high.

6> Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope A smoothly-polished franchise update that fixed my issues with the previous entry and delivered tons of turn-based strategic shenanigans.

5> Sucker for Love: First Date A horny visual novel +puzzle mechanics + Lovecraftian ladies? Yes, please!

4> Grime: Colors of Rot This updated 2D soulslike/metroidvania offers new twists on familiar gameplay, and a ton of style.

3> Vampire Survivors Could not put it down until I had 100%’d it.

2> Elden Ring The next logical step forward for Souls, and a much-needed one. It set a new standard for open-world games and brought back the customization and flexibility From specializes in.

1> Citizen Sleeper A triumphant blending of Visual Novel, RPG, dice-rolling and Sci-Fi elements that come together to deliver the most compelling thing I played all year — and I enjoyed being in its world so much, I kept on playing even after I had gotten every ending and finished every task.

*

The post Brad’s Top 10 Of 2022 appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

In this episode, Carlos & Brad forego the usual format and instead dive into an EPIC three-hour review of 2022 — the disappointments, the games they didn’t have time for, the honorable mentions, and of course, their top ten of the year. The episode ends with picks & pans from our listeners for a varied wrapup!

You can also hear the show on iTunes and Spotify!

Please send feedback and mailbag questions to SoVideogamesPODCAST (at) gmail (dot) com, or post them in the comments section below. Thanks!

The post So Videogames Ep. 317: GOTY 2022 appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

2021 has been an odd and difficult year, but it was superb for gaming. With the announcement of the Game Awards nominees, I realized I played more great games this year than perhaps any other year in my life.

After finishing my first year of reviewing, I thought it would be fun to share my top ten of 2021, along with some honorable and dishonorable mentions.

This list was INCREDIBLY difficult for me — every title that made the list was truly fantastic and it felt like splitting hairs trying to number them. Thank you to all the wonderful developers for making this a gaming year to remember.

One more note: I played quite a few ports and games that didn’t come out in 2021 that were absolutely phenomenal — special shout-outs to Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle and Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom. Even though I loved them, I’m not going to include them on this list. There’s only one remaster/port on my top 10 that did enough to qualify it as a totally new game for 2021.

With that out of the way, let’s get to it!

Honorable Mentions

Everhood

This is for sure the weirdest game I played this year. In a sense, Everhood could be the rhythm-based cousin of Undertale. Set in a strange world where a little doll named Red fights demons, vending machines, and psychedelic knights, the plot is one of a kind. I had no idea where this game was going for most of the adventure, but the eventual payoff realizing the originally unseen gravity of my choices was unexpectedly gripping.

Death’s Door

Death’s Door feels like the modern-day top-down 2D Zelda yet to be released. With its stellar atmosphere, combat and worldbuilding, Death’s Door is a triumph that combines the best of 2D dungeon crawlers and infuses it with a smart upgrade system and punishing (yet stellar) gameplay. It’s a standout debut indie from developers Acid Nerve in a year crowded with phenomenal debuts.

Kena Bridge of Spirits

This indie caught the eye of many a gamer with its outstanding Pixar–like graphics, but visual prowess aside, this is a phenomenal debut game from Ember Lab. Playing akin to a cross between Legend of Zelda and Horizon Zero Dawn, Kena will fight her way through a plethora of powerful enemies and collect countless adorable creatures known as Rot to upgrade her abilities. Though a bit linear, that didn’t stop me from wanting to explore every inch of the landscape, and I am so excited for whatever Ember Lab has up its sleeve next. 

Dishonorable Mentions

Mario Golf Super Rush

I have extremely fond memories of playing Mario Golf on the Gamecube, so when a new title was announced for Switch, my friends and I were ecstatic. However, due to limited mechanics, a lackluster single player mode, and an overall lack of polish, Mario Golf Super Rush fails to create sustainable and meaningful gameplay. The new ‘speed golf’ mode is a welcome addition, but playing 18 holes quickly grows repetitive. (And don’t look too closely into Donkey Kong’s eyes on the character select screen — he looks unwell.)

Dragonborne

I have a lot of nostalgia for the Game Boy, one of my first gaming consoles. Dragonborne seeks to create a modern-day Game Boy title, and I suppose they succeeded. However, most Game Boy games don’t hold up in 2021, and Dragonborne is vindictive evidence of that. Though it does boast charming 8-bit graphics, it also revolves around a combat system that is un-engaging , one-dimensional, and ultimately, not necessary for progression. You’re better off playing Pokémon Red / Blue (with its bevy of glitches!) than Dragonborne. 

Kinda Honorable, Kinda Dishonorable

Effie

Effie would be an adorable and engaging bite-size 3D platformer… if it actually worked. Level design, platforming, and exploration is all a blast, but an abysmal framerate and a plethora of glitches on the Switch version make it immensely frustrating. Hopefully these issues will get patched because underneath its technical problems, Effie has a solid gameplay foundation with potential to be a lovely experience. 

Pokémon Brilliant Diamond / Shining Pearl

I hate that I loved Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl. Why? Because from an objective standpoint, they are probably the weakest Pokémon games I’ve ever played. These titles are faithful remakes of the Nintendo DS’s Pokemon Diamond and Pearl, which are generally well revered within the Pokémon community. However, that faithfulness to game mechanics and graphical design, are also negatives. Though the character models look great during battle, the overworld cartoon-like character models look… honestly, bad up close. Many of the animations are lazy, and small quality of life improvements from Sword/Shield that could have been implemented are absent. But damn it, the Pokémon formula is so solid that I had a blast collecting and battling the pocket monsters, and could look past the fact the characters had blocky nubs for noses. 

And now, my official Top 10 of 2021…

10. Mario Party Superstars

Kicking off this top 10 list is the Mario Party game fans have been wanting for years — Mario Party Superstars. It’s a resurrection of the classic MP N64 boards coupled with some of the best minigames in the franchise’s history. Gone are the silly car shenanigans and motion control gimmicks, this is Mario Party at its purest form and it’s a freaking blast. With a fantastic combination of strategy, skill, and rage-inducing luck, there are few other titles I would whip out to play on game night.

9. Blue Fire

This punishing indie platformer had been on my radar since its debut trailer, and it did not disappoint. Drawing graphical and gameplay inspiration from The Legend of Zelda and difficult platforming akin to a 3D version of Celeste, Blue Fire was everything I wanted in an action-adventure. Equipped with interesting dungeons, exciting exploration, empowering ability upgrades, imposing bosses, and fantastic environments, this was a phenomenal debut title for the young developers at ROBI Studios.

8. Tales of Arise

I had dabbled in a few Tales titles in the past, but none gripped me in the way Tales of Arise did. Gone are the childlike graphics, now replaced with a stunning art style employing the Unreal Engine, and though the combat still exists within the confides of a circle, it focuses more on real time combat and chaining combos together, rather than the grid system and party positioning in previous titles. The story starts strong and continues to grow as the plot swells to its climax, and there is so much to do. For anyone that’s ever dreamed about a Dragon Quest with action-adventure combat, this is it.

7. Psychonauts 2

After 16 years of wondering if the original Psychonauts would ever get a sequel, Psychonauts 2 burst onto the scene. With incredible world and character design that looks straight out of a Tim Burton film, the stellar platforming, abilities, and level design mean that Psychonauts 2 is an immersive, engaging experience. Not only that, but every aspect of plot and gameplay is perfectly woven into the central concept of mental health and the inner workings of the mind, making this a perfect title for gamers of all ages.

6. Persona 5 Strikers

Being the direct sequel to Persona 5 — perhaps my favorite game of all time — Persona 5 Strikers had a lot to live up to, but Atlus and Koei Tecmo hit it out of the park. A lot of people, myself included, originally thought Strikers would simply be another cash-grab spinoff throwing the Phantom Thieves into musou-style combat, but we couldn’t have been more wrong.  This is a full-fledged action-RPG sequel carefully transplanting the best mechanics of Persona 5 into a new style of combat and exploration, along with a satisfying and thought-provoking plot to boot. Jumping from rooftop to rooftop and stealthily ambushing countless enemies with an all-out attack while listening to Strikers’s hype-inducing tunes is the most badass I’ve ever felt playing a videogame.

5. It Takes Two

A fully co-op story-driven game is a rarity in 2021, which is a shame because It Takes Two proves what a powerful, enjoyable, and potent experience it can be. Telling the tale of a dysfunctional couple turned into ragdolls, two players will work together to solve puzzles and platform their way to becoming human again, ultimately salvaging the couple’s marriage. It looks incredible and is just as fantastic to play. Every chapter also introduces new gameplay mechanics for the duo, each one feeling just as fresh and inventive as the previous. My best friend and I had a blast teaming up with militaristic squirrels to defeat a colony of bees, fighting vicious household appliances, and discovering what made the couple’s marriage so magical before it began to implode. If it weren’t for a somewhat lackluster ending and a very upsetting scene involving a stuffed elephant, this could have easily been my game of the year.

4. Before Your Eyes

Few, if any, games have ever moved me in the way Before Your Eyes did. A gut-wrenching tale depicting the life of a young piano prodigy where the player advances the action by blinking, this is a journey everyone should experience. Never has a gameplay mechanic been cathartically married to the medium and story more beautifully than the blinking in Before Your Eyes — it makes for the kind of unique and unforgettable moments only an interactive artform can create. Play. This. Game. It’s only an hour and a half, you won’t regret it.

3. Nier Replicant Ver 1.22474487139

I fell in love with Nier Automata’s existential story and psychology when it came out in 2017, but I knew nothing about Automata’s prequel Nier Replicant, a spinoff of the Drakengard series. This remaster/remake does just enough to make it feel like an entirely new game, and though it does carry over some tropes from the PS3 era of action adventure RPGs, the plot is one of the most memorable I’ve ever experienced. Director Yoko Taro isn’t afraid to ask uncomfortable questions through a masterful story that requires multiple playthroughs to grasp. And when I realized what the enemies I had been mercilessly slaughtering represented halfway through my second playthrough, I was floored. And. That. SOUNDTRACK. I feel like this game fell through the cracks because it’s considered a “remake/remaster,” but it is so much more than that, and should not be ignored. 

2. Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart

Having not played a Ratchet and Clank title since the PS2 era, Rift Apart served as my re-introduction into the series, and was the first title I played on the PS5. And wow, what an immersive experience it was! Perhaps the best-looking and -sounding game I’ve ever encountered, Rift Apart is a joy to dive into. With finely-tuned combat and exploration, fantastic weapon variety, and an upgrade system that encourages experimentation, every second of gameplay felt marvelous. Though some thought the plot was cookie-cutter (which I somewhat agree with) Rift Apart more than makes up for this with incredible character design and dialogue. From the main cast to one-off characters never to be seen again, everyone feels like they’re from a first rate Pixar film, and I was laughing out loud at every turn. Not only is Rift Apart one of the most enjoyable and approachable games I’ve ever played, but it’s also a phenomenal experience. If you have a PS5, this one’s a no brainer. 

1. Shin Megami Tensei V

Being the Persona 5 fanboy I am, I was excited to give the remaster of Shin Megami III Nocturne a go earlier this year. I enjoyed the experience enough, but was distracted by the lack of improvements from the original PS2 version. Because of this slight letdown my expectations for Shin Megami Tensei V were lowered, but I blinked and found myself fifty hours deep, completing my first playthrough, and having no intention of putting it down. Shin Megami Tensei V has one of the most addictive combat systems and reward loops I have ever experienced — its turn-based combat requires careful planning and execution for every battle, and enemies can easily one-shot the party even on normal difficulty if the player isn’t prepared. But, this sort of challenge encourages the highest level of experimentation — with more than 200 demons to recruit, fuse, and fight with, the possibilities are endless. The design and presentation of this post-apocalyptic world are stunning, and Atlus delivers one of the best-looking games on Switch. The story also constantly challenges players’ morals, and when all is taken into account, Shin Megami Tensei V is one of the most engaging, complex, and rewarding games I’ve ever had the pleasure to compulsively play.

That does it for my list! I would love to know in the comments what some of your favorites from this year were!

The post Alex Prakken’s Top 10 Of 2021 appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

2021 was a year that broke our brains just a little bit. You don’t need me to tell you that, and I’ve already spoken about this elsewhere anyway. I finished fewer games this year than any other year in recent memory. As a critic, I’ve generally believed that I should at least make a valiant effort to complete a game before judging it — the more of a work you’ve seen, the more informed your reaction to it will be.

This year, though, sanity won out, and I found it unusually easy to dismiss stuff that wasn’t grabbing me. Even the games that I did like often still offered friction, usually thanks to random mood swings. Very little stood out in 2021, which made it difficult to fill a list of ten. So this year — and hopefully only this year — I’m waiving my usual rule that I need to have completed a game for it to qualify for my list. If I enjoyed a game and I’m confident enough that it won’t suddenly soil all of my good will toward it in the eleventh hour, it’s eligible.

Late arrivals that I need more time with:

Chorus (PS5)

Exo One (XSS)

Inscryption (PC)

Praey for the Gods (PC)

I recognize that these are good, but they just didn’t grab me:

Chicory: A Colorful Tale (PC)

Death’s Door (PC/Switch)

The Forgotten City (PS5)

Sable (XSS)

Wildermyth (PC)

Honorable mentions:

– Hitman 3 (PC). This was easily the weakest of the trilogy for me, with the level design not quite hitting the same consistency that it did in the previous two. But even a middling Hitman is a delight compared to most of what’s out there.

– Knockout City (Switch). Creating a new multiplayer IP that’s both easy to understand and wholly unique is tricky, but this one pulls it off. It didn’t have the longest legs but I had a blast with it over the summer.

– Metroid Dread (Switch). A terrific side-scrolling action game, but merely an okay Metroid. The former is more important, though, and after the series has been on hiatus for so long, it’s just a relief to see it working on some level.

– Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart (PS5). I have very little experience with this series and only played this because it came with my PS5 bundle. Having said that, it’s good! A bit too safe and ordinary to land on my top ten, but Insomniac is one of the most consistent AAA developers in the business.

– Skul: The Hero Slayer (PC). Feels a lot like Hades in terms of both structure and the distribution of variables, albeit without that game’s groundbreaking approach to continuous narrative. One of the best roguelikes of 2021, especially for genre fans who like to tune out the story as they play.

The Top Ten:

10. Unpacking (XSS)

This here is a calming puzzle game with an uplifting hidden narrative about the things we choose to retain in our lives. I will admit that I’m attaching some personal bias to Unpacking, as it’s one of the few videogames this year that my girlfriend and I bonded over. She’s still relatively new to the medium, having bought a Switch in 2020 primarily due to quarantine boredom but not having used it for much outside of Animal Crossing. I believe this was her first official brush with the “activities that are tedious in real-life but make for weirdly hypnotic videogames” genre. I can’t wait to introduce her to House Flipper.

9. Shattered: Tale of the Forgotten King (PC)

As mentioned, this was a year in which I actually completed so few games that I had to waive my usual rule about a title only qualifying for my top ten if I’d seen the whole thing. As such, anything that nevertheless did hold my attention until the credits rolled deserves special consideration. A great soulslike is both intimidating and enticing in equal measure, and while developers have no trouble grasping the former, they frequently struggle with the latter. After a relatively mundane first couple of hours, there came a moment in Shattered when understood the game’s true scope and felt a sense of wonder similar to what I felt looking around the skyboxes of Firelink Shrine for the first time. It’s an overambitious, janky thing, but then that’s just part of the Souls charm, isn’t it?

8. Eldest Souls (Switch)

Our editor-in-chief Brad Gallaway hates this thing. When I told him it was getting good reviews, he said, “I don’t believe for one second that people actually like that game, they’re just afraid to say it’s too hard.” Naturally, I adore it — but then I am a weirdo. I tweeted that it was a boss rush game in which my death count had me averaging fifty tries per boss. I stated this with the intent of communicating that I was enjoying myself. But naturally, people took this to be a bad thing, because that’s what a normal person would do. A normal person does not enjoy repeatedly bashing their head against a brick wall and smirking every time the crack gets just a little wider. I’m the guy who likes pain. No coffin please, Eldest Souls — just wet, wet mud.

7. Before Your Eyes (PC)

One of the most conceptually interesting releases this year, Before Your Eyes is a narrative adventure controlled entirely by blinking. Seriously — you hook up a webcam and advance the story by closing your eyes when prompted. It sounds gimmicky, and I know this sounds like a cop-out, but trust me when I say that developer GoodbyeWorld Games uses this mechanic to tell a story that simply wouldn’t have had the same impact otherwise. I also say this as somebody who, unfortunately, had to constantly pause and re-calibrate the sensor, likely due to both the position of my computer and the light reflecting off my glasses. It was worth it, because beneath the technical annoyances I found a beautiful requiem on the value of life told in a manner that no other medium could. This is interactive storytelling working on a level I’ve never seen before and will likely never see again.

6. Loop Hero (PC/Switch)

When it released on PC earlier this year, Loop Hero was dangerously addictive. When it was ported to Switch not too long ago, as my friend McGarnical put it on Twitter, it should have come with a surgeon general’s warning. The genius of Loop Hero is that it distills one of gaming’s basest pleasures — getting a steady stream of new loot — into something nearly involuntary. It almost feels like we have as much control over our hero’s adversaries as we do over the hero himself, merrily setting up barriers for him to push through. There’s no growth without struggle, after all — yet is there ultimately any growth at all, or does Loop Hero trap us in an endless cycle, promising a conclusion that it will never provide and keeping us distracted with a steady stream of treats in the meantime? I don’t know and I don’t care. I just know that Loop Hero transfixes me every time I boot it up.

5. Griftlands (Switch)

One of the coolest roguelikes in quite some time is also one of the worst-tutorialized — especially on Switch, where navigating an interface that was clearly designed for a mouse and keyboard feels like learning a new language. But players who push themselves over that initial hump will be rewarded not just with a super crunchy and flexible deckbuilder, but also with an ambitious experiment in interactive storytelling. “Moral choices” became cliché a couple of generations ago, and they’re so mundane at this point that we barely even register them, but they’re a natural fit for a roguelike where there are actual reasons to act in self-interest because hours of work can be undone in a second. The way that necessity funneled me down uniquely dark corridors throughout every single Griftlands run had me thinking that the roguelike genre has only just scratched the surface of what it’s capable of.

4. Returnal (PS5)

Here’s one for my very specific and weird taste — not just a roguelike, but the git gud kind. With very little in the way of permanent upgrades, there’s no safety net in Returnal — no guarantee that the player’s time investment will ever amount to anything if they don’t learn the enemy attack patterns and find a play style that suits them. The visual design and ambience strongly reminded me of Metroid Prime, and I was particularly impressed with how some of the more sprawling biomes (particularly the second and third) were able to maintain a sense of place even amid the procedural generation. The plot eventually indulges in one of my least-favorite tropes, but it’s also kept vague enough that you can largely just ignore the implications of what the story is actually about and just enjoy the protagonist’s downward spiral as a sort of tone piece. This is the first AAA roguelike that I’m aware of, and that alone makes it worth a look. That it looks and plays as good as it does only sweetens the deal.

3. Halo Infinite (XSS)

In a year when we were all craving comfort food, no list of 2021’s greatest successes would be complete without mentioning the glorious return of Halo. I’m still working on the campaign (which had the audacity to release the day after Endwalker), but while I’m generally against the open-worldification of every major franchise, enormous outdoor play spaces have always been Halo‘s forte and they flourish here. And in any case, Infinite already secured its spot weeks prior when the multiplayer dropped, feeling so familiar and natural at this point that we can all practically slide into a trance while playing. This one just barely inches out Returnal purely for the fact that Infinite has Chief fall into a coma and literally sleep through all of the stupid nonsense teased in Halo 5‘s ending.

2. Deathloop (PS5)

This year I’ve become what I hate, as my top four games of 2021 are all AAA releases. Notably, they’re all entries that march to the beat of their own drum, using bigger budgets to either expand their own niches or explore new territory altogether. Deathloop feels like both of those things at once — a natural progression and crown jewel for Arkane Studios (low-key one of the best developers for years running, further perfecting their near-monopoly on the immersive sim genre here) and simultaneously something completely unique, both in terms of flow and vibe. There have been other time loop games, and there have possibly been better time loop games, but none have so perfectly captured the measured confidence of Bill Murray successfully executing a robbery in Groundhog Day just by knowing exactly when the bag of money appears and when the people around it are all looking away. No one does lived-in environments like Arkane, and the slow, simple process of getting to know Blackreef — and using that knowledge to devious effect — was one of 2021’s purest joys.

1. Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker (PC)

In isolation, I don’t know if I could actually claim that Endwalker was the single best new release that I played all year. It’s an expansion to FFXIV and comes saddled with all of the flaws inherent to it. But Endwalker doesn’t exist in isolation, and taken with the understanding that anyone who can even access this campaign is obviously okay with said flaws (or else they wouldn’t have spent hundreds of hours with the damn game to begin with) it’s not only FFXIV‘s best expansion to date, but a triumphant conclusion to what must now surely be the greatest comeback story in the history of the industry. The fact that we can now take a step back and view this enterprise as something resembling a whole — however long it’ll continue trucking along after this — means there’s no greater time to celebrate FFXIV as the monumental achievement that it is. Yoshi-P and his team (with special marks to main scenario writer Natsuko Ishikawa) have done a remarkable job of making this all feel like a carefully-laid plan, and when you consider the mess that they were handed, that’s a stunning feat.

Thank you for reading, and I hope that 2022 treats us all just a little better.

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