Moot_Geeza wrote:

If the Switch version gets tidied up I think I'll give it a go. Blasphemous has also been described as Soulslike so I'm pretty sure I like the genre. Or I might just play Salt & Sanctuary, which is one of the ten games on my EShop watch list that refuse to budge in price ever. Should've played it on Vita really, was cheap a few times.

Salt & Sanctuary is ace, dont listen to the naysayers

Moot_Geeza wrote:

If the Switch version gets tidied up I think I'll give it a go. Blasphemous has also been described as Soulslike so I'm pretty sure I like the genre. Or I might just play Salt & Sanctuary, which is one of the ten games on my EShop watch list that refuse to budge in price ever. Should've played it on Vita really, was cheap a few times.

Important question. Have you actually played a souls?

Man, give dark souls a bash.

(I'd suggest bloodbourne too, but I've not played it because ps4 and because I'm a wuss who is scared of a souls template without shields.)

I watched a mate play one briefly on PS3 (iirc) and he was explaining it to me while plodding about. Not for me, to put it mildly. I doubt I'd hate them as much now as I would have then, but it's pretty much definitely not a genre that would suit me. Bloodborne and Sekiro are the ones that appeal the most, but not enough to actually give them a go (even when I had the former on PS+).

Edit: when I said 'pretty sure I like the genre' up there I meant in 2D form (Vigil/Blasphemous/Salt&Sanctuary).

I really need to try death stranding, guessing it's a kind of marmite game

Animal crossing might make my worst game of the year.

AndCallMeCharlie wrote:

No Yakuza Reg?

Will be in the top 10 - I've edited it to add it to the almost rans. I've not managed to see it through and as it is particularly narrative didnt feel confident putting it on yet, particularly with the rumblings around chapter 12.

I'm really enjoying it - a hell of a lot - but the top 5 have been more impactful experiences than just the game mechanics.

A rejig for me, Gears pushes Paper Mario off the mentions:

1. Huntdown
2. MO: Astray
3. Streets of Rage 4
4. Kentucky Route Zero
5. Gears Tactics

----

6. What the Golf?
7. Ori & the Will o' the Wisps
8. Spiritfarer
9. Journey to the Savage Planet
10. DOOM Eternal

It's good, a solid 7.5

JonB wrote:

I never get the praise Yoku's receives. I found it quite a poorly designed game.

Monster Boy has some strong sections but overall it's off the pace of the best.

Agree with both of these statements. Yokus was tedious after an hour or so and Monster Boy was just okay. I think a lot of these platformers get a little too much praise around here. I found Ori 2 in particular to be very average. Very pretty, but incredibly whimsical and shallow.

Maybe. But I love metroidvanias? Shrug. Neither game are really anything like a metroid game I suppose, despite being pidgeon holed as such. Monster Boy did have some lovely old school vibes but it was fairly unforgiving.

Trying to keep it brief but I would like to chip in so here we go.

5. Monster Hunter World: Iceborne
An expansion in my top 5, it's not even a real game! Had a great time playing this with friends. New monsters aren't hugely inspired this time around, but the big unique beasts at the end are more experimental than they've been for a while, and the option to fight a very angry Brachydios and an even angrier Rajang really pushed the systems to their limits - which was good as Iceborne's clutch claw added a lot of new ways to play. Hard to feel like I gave it a comprehensive go with just Gunlance and Hammer, but the game is a joy and the new endgame made spending evenings pottering around hunting monsters seamless. The new mechanical options available are really well concieved and give me hope that the next Big MH title will be a little less easy going.

4. MO: Astray
This one can get in as a gimme cos it technically came out this year on Switch, also no fucker played it last year. Has like 4 critical reviews, a travesty. It's just a very well made game from a brand new studio with no priors. Works together the tenacity and quick restarts of a puzzle platformer into its plot very well - a game about tenacity and overcoming your smallness in a world bigger, nastier and more violent than you can ever be. The spectacle it achieves via pixel art puts a lot of AAA games to shame, with the final few acts and bosses being a far cry from its humble beginnings, and it manages to feel like more of a journey than a lot of 80 hour games. Humble and efficient, it's a crime it isn't more well known. Feels like this years Zero Ranger.

3. DOOM Eternal
This is only number 3 because the next two games formed a big part of my social wellbeing for the latter half of the year, so maybe consider all three of them joint in acclaim if that makes the gushing I am about to do feel like it makes more sense. I really enjoyed DOOM 2016, consider it a real 9/10 blockbuster FPS with some amazing purity of vision and a real feeling of power and viciousness undercut by the difficulty and feeling of being on the knife edge of vulnerability and power fantasy. 

It absolutely amazes me then that Eternal manages to take that formula, push it aside and say "hey, what if we took another go at that?" rather than being a straight extension of 2016, it feels like an alternate approach. Your verb set is massively expanded - dashing, double jumping, quickfire grenades, flame belches, chainsaw kills, glory kills, blood punches, and an array of weapons that feel more vital than 2016s despite being roughly the same. The tightrope you walk between being alive and dead is utterly intoxicating, every single second feels like it could be your last - it's like playing chess with a buzzsaw a millimetre from your jugular.  Not everyone is going to like it, but juggling ammo, cooldowns and all your abilities feels like nothing else. 

The way you combo between abilities is immense, swinging around demons with your super shotgun as you freeze a gaggle of fodder with your grenade before blowing them up with a rocket as you dash into a glory kill and flame blech another demon to gather a think skin of armour as you double jump over a melee attack to snipe a weakspot in mid air... it's just impossible to sum up the breakneck pace of the combat in words. Having gone back to 2016 after finishing Eternal on Ultra Violence again this week, I have found it lacking. Not being able to dash or double jump now feels like a glaring omission, enemy encounters feel thin and two dimensional, and there's no challenge there as compelling as Eternal's slayer gates: the one where it chucks you up against a Tyrant about four levels prior to their campaign inclusion is a real yikes moment. 

I initially felt the ammo choke in Eternal was its weakest point, but I know think it is its strongest: it forces you to engage with every aspect of your arsenal at all times. I rarely feel so switched on in games, engaged by every single button press, but Eternal's demanding mechanics make it a one of a kind experience.

Also the Marauder is fine, stop being bad at game.

2. Spelunky 2
I never really got on with Spelunky, it felt way to punishing and not as organic an experience as a lot of other roguleikes at the time. I bounced of it hard. When 2 came out, I started enjoying watching people play it on Youtube, so I went back to the OG, got my Olmec win, then decided to try Spleunky 2. I fell in love with it in a major way, primarily because I spent a lot of time streaming it to other people via Discord as they were also streaming it to me. It's a comically stupid game, where any wrong move can spell death, and even intimate knowledge of its systems can end up with you being absolutely bamboozled by some weird convergence of systems in a way you didn't foresee. Either that, or you were one pixel off on a jump and you're a fucking moron and the game has let you know by taking you from 23 health to dead in one second.

As a social game, it's incredible due to the wealth of secrets and minutiae it hides within its rather slim handful of stages, but also for the minute to minute sharing of events that it enables. There's a lot of fun to have routing through the game, even though it ideally needs a balance pass to make Temple even worth it at this point. If Doom Eternal is Doom 2016 by way of an alternate path, then Spelunky 2 is a meaningful extension of a game people already thought was perfect, with an almost impossible end game challenge to boot, one that I can't imagine I'll ever conquer. Music also absolutely slaps.

1. Hades
Hades is a game that plays itself. Of course what I mean by this is that it is a game where dying unveils more of the story, and progress through its world is a set of incremental steps that elevate even the most action-game challenged of us to demigodhood through wonderfully thought out mechanics, a great accessibility option via Godmode, and a brilliant usage of Death as a a Reason To Play in a roguelike. I don't need to go on about its story (tight, emotive), its wealth of voice acting (sprawling, tender), it's unrelenting music (classical, obliterating), and its art style (vivid, erotic), because countless others have.

Mechanically, it is a refinement of the ideas Supergiant has been working on since Bastion. This time, the flab of the beginners is gone, and only the lean meat remains. Weapons feel meaningfully different, with unlockable aspects that change their focus effortlessly. The Boons system is clear and concise unlike the bloated pool of mechanics that often fill up other roguelike games, but it never feels shallow. Encounters are well considered, and enemy variety is slim but meaningfully implemented. It's a curated experience, for those that maybe balk at the random nature of roguelikes, and as such it lends itself far more to mastery than many other in the genre. It rewards that mastery with a near limitless (for the average player) difficulty scaling in the form of Heat, its opt in "punish me" system of caveats and by-the-ways that go great lengths to temper its slow power ramp over time. I've written all of this far better elsewhere, but it's worth raising again.

Like Spelunky 2, I found a lot of comfort in running through this game alongside others, and like Doom Eternal I enjoyed pushing myself to my limits with its complexities, even chasing speed running times at one point - its got incredible depths for those willing to mine for them, and it always feels so incredibly good, with the perfect frame count of hit stun and kinetic reaction that makes smashing enemies into walls and deflecting their blows feels exactly as it should: godlike. Playing the game on and off through Early Access did little to dampen its impact, as Supergiant have just kept escalating the experience with each update, and they signed of the 1.0 release with a wonderful final story chapter and gorgeous epilogue that dovetails brilliantly with the humour and humanity that makes up the core of the game.

This is my list, even though more of the best games I've played this year are from last year.

1. The Last of Us: Part II - as an overall experience, I enjoyed it from start to finish. Haters gonna hate, but I enjoyed the parts playing Abby and the story progressed in unexpected ways, even to the point of saying fuck a couple of times at those set pieces. The combat and stealth bits were fine, but overall I enjoyed it as the toppest of what Naughty Dog can do.

2. Animal Crossing: New Horizons - this was all that I was playing at one point. Some great moments of turnip triumphs, building mazes, being amazed by ingenuity of some players on here. The mad rush when someone dropped a Twitter code and everyone killed the island. The continual dying from tarantulas and god awful creepiness of the Easter celebration made for a uniquely Nintendo experience. Even though it then fell off a cliff when most people went away from it, it's still a great departure from the usual games we play.

3. Astro's Playroom - it's the most next-gen of the next-gen games and gives a genuine, if short-lived, reason to own a PS5. The controller and controls in this game are amazing and, as has been said many times, this is a game you expect Nintendo to make. There is so much charm and character in the game world, with lovely nostalgic nods to classic PlayStation titles. News that Astro will return is genuinely exciting.

4. Half Life: Alyx - Completely forgot about this, as I think I only scratched the surface of the game. But as an experience in VR this is clearly at the top. The panic of reloading while face huggers are jumping at you is genuinely scary. I really should go back to this.

5. Demon's Souls - I don't recall much of the original version. Well I didn't until I started playing this beautiful reimagining. It is stunning to look at in places, with a density to the world that shows what the PS5 can do. I will return and hopefully finish it, once last years Death Stranding is out of the way.

6. Spirit Fairer - What a great feel good game. Keeping busy with little tasks has never been such fun.

I think that's it. Everything else I've played this year has been released in previous years, with the exception of Slay The Spire on iOS, but there are only so many times I can try and sneak that one in.

Someone here bought I Am Dead. Crayon, Uncle or Charlie maybe. Looks good.

Moot_Geeza wrote:

Someone here bought I Am Dead. Crayon, Uncle or Charlie maybe. Looks good.

That was me and it is.............
............Fine.   Which it turns out is kinda disappointing cos that game should have been perfect for me.