The Year of Our Lord MMXXI in Video Games

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Mechanical Ape
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The Year of Our Lord MMXXI in Video Games

Post by Mechanical Ape (?) » Wed Dec 15, 2021 4:01 pm

I guess it's close enough to the end of the year to start this. What did you play this year? Did you like it?

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Wildermyth: This is easily my favorite and most-played game of 2021, which you probably guessed if you noticed I'm LP'ing it right now. Outstanding writing which takes your heroes' personalities and relationships into account, so a scene feels very different depending on your party even if mechanically, the same stuff happens. Wonderful webcomic-style cutscenes tying together overworld adventuring and XCOM-style combat. The worldbuilding and stories are top-notch. Endlessly replayable for me.

Inscryption: Well, I'm just getting started but yeah I'm liking it. No spoilers, please.

The Hex: I figured since I'd played Pony Island and own Inscryption, I should also spend time with another Daniel Mullins title. This is ... what is this? It's a bar for washed-up video game characters, and tonight someone will be murdered. Genre-bending as you play each character in turn. Overloaded with references to everything from Cooking Mama to The Beginner's Guide.

Genesis Noir: What we've got here is an art game with a capital A. The Big Bang as told as a film noir detective story? I can't say I understood it all at the end, but it was an interesting enough ride. Kentucky Route Zero vibes.

The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante: How did this get into my discovery queue? Well, this is a choose your own adventure leading you through the life of a young aristocrat in a kind of fantasy Holy Roman Empire. While his life is not wall-to-wall suffering, he certainly suffers his share of difficulties as we all do. The writing's good and the building of this original setting is neat, but I set it aside after a few chapters and haven't gotten back to it. I guess I just need my dopamine rush.

Fights in Tight Spaces (Prologue): I'm sure I'll get the full game at some point given how fun the demo was. Turn-based deck builder centered around hand-to-hand combat. Positioning is crucial to success as your agent pushes enemies around to set them up for a kick or maneuvers them into a bad guy's bullet. Afterwards you can watch a replay of your fight. Cool.

Gibbous - A Cthulhu Adventure: Point-and-click comedy adventure. I played for about an hour. It was fine, but I also didn't feel compelled to continue past the first sitting. You know, maybe LucasArts style adventure games simply aren't my bag. Maybe I should accept that.

Subnautica: Below Zero: As much as I played the first Subnautica, and as much as this sequel seems just as good, I haven't immersed (ha) myself into it as much as it deserves. It's not you, Below Zero, it's me. Your character this time is not a blank slate, but an actual character with specific motivations, and it's fun that she's a confident adventurer-type and not just a regular joe, which it seems like a lot of survival games go with. Below Zero's innovation is that it takes place at the poles, so when you're above ground you have to worry about freezing, while underwater you have to worry about oxygen, so nowhere feels 100% safe to relax.

Overboard!: Another smartly-written adventure game by Inkle. You're a past-your-prime actress on a cruise ship. You've just murdered your husband. Now you need to get away with it. Travel the ship, talk to the passengers and crew, and build your alibi -- making sure those you might suspect you keep quiet, one way or another. Replay as many times as you need to arrange the perfect crime.

Eco: Social/crafting MMO that's been in gradual development for years but is absolutely playable. The gimmick is that the planet you're on is due to be hit by a meteor in 30 real-life days. During that time the players on the server need to build, research techs and finally industrialize in order to build a laser to blow up the meteor. Cooperation and trade and Minecraft-style building fills in the time. You can be a type A personality doer, or just chill out in a log cabin and farm tomatoes.

Adios: This is an hour-long walking/dialogue simulator elevated by its great writing and dialogue. You're an old farmer who for 15 years have allowed the Mob to use your pigs for corpse disposal. Today is the day you tell them you're done. Today is the last day of your life.

Dorfromantik: A game so chill it nearly put me to sleep several times -- but I mean that in a good way. This is a tile-based game where you build a countryside and try to rack up the highest score by connecting tile edges that match each other. Before long you'll have a pastoral landscape of farms, forests, towns, rivers and railroads. All of this set to a relaxing soundtrack. So peaceful. So pretty. Good game mechanics too.

Broken Age: Another old title that I finally got back to and finished this year. This was Double Fine's wildly successful Kickstarter project. As an adventure game it's ... like a lot of Double Fine products, snappy writing but doesn't quite stick the landing in the second half. Yahtzee's review of Part 2, both good and bad, ended up matching my own reaction pretty closely. The art style is fantastic, the characters are lovable and every combination of "use [item] on [character]" has a different clever response. Which is a too-often overlooked part of any point-and-click adventure game: players will spend 90% of their time trying weird combinations to solve your shitty puzzles; don't punish them with repetitive dialogue too.
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Re: The Year of Our Lord MMXXI in Video Games

Post by DaikatunaRevengeance (?) » Sat Dec 18, 2021 4:03 pm

A number of these are games got for free on steam/epic, but some i bought.

The stuff i liked:

Elite Dangerous - alright game, if a bit shallow. Easy to burnout on it if you play it too much. Graphics and sound are something out of this world. I don't think I've ever encountered a game that makes flying through space feel this immersive.

Rebel Galaxy: Outlaw - same genre as Elite, but more focused and singleplayer oriented. Has an ok story too. It tends to let you skip stuff like docking, jumping and what not. Got some cool ship designs and a hecking good sountrack. I liked it. Much like Elite, don't play it too much or you'll burnout, take it easy. Graphics are more on the stylized side compared to ED, but i like them as well.

The Ramp - skating game, but like super simple. You got a ramp and you skate and do some tricks. No score or anything, just vibe. Scratches the THPS itch for me.

Worms WMD - it's good, took a while to get used to the art style. Only thing i'm still mixed on is the vehicles, buildings and ability to craft weapons, but it can be turned off so not an issue. It's been a while since i played a worms game.

GRIP Combat Racing - this scratches my 90s NFS itch. I don't care if i win, i just drive and see what happens.

Muse Dash - Sorta my first rythm game (i have played rythm heaven on an emulator and cytus 2 on my phone because it was given away at one point, but didn't stick with either as i just had trouble playing them). Good music, simple gameplay that's fun and challenging.

Horizon Chase Turbo - remember those old, really old, racing games that were 2D? The likes of outrun or lotus challenge? yeah, it's basically that but with a smooth low poly 3D aesthetic. It's alright, not something to play constantly, but a good game to play from time to time.

PC Building Simulator - this is surprisngly chill and there's a slight element of wish fulfilment of being able to build an absurd gaming rig you couldn't possibly afford.

The stuff i didn't like:

Train Sim World 2 - this would be a decent sim if it wasn't buggy and stuttery. Switching tracks on freight missions is also a pain and should've been handled better. I like the German ICE train, it go nyooom.

I can't remember anything else i played that's worth mentioning. With free games on places like epic, it's less a question of what i played and more if something about it caught my attention that i stuck with it.
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Re: The Year of Our Lord MMXXI in Video Games

Post by Mechanical Ape (?) » Mon Dec 20, 2021 12:35 am

Would PC Building Simulator serve as a teaching guide to someone who doesn’t know much about PC building, or do you already need to know?
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Re: The Year of Our Lord MMXXI in Video Games

Post by DaikatunaRevengeance (?) » Mon Dec 20, 2021 3:24 am

Mechanical Ape wrote:
Mon Dec 20, 2021 12:35 am
Would PC Building Simulator serve as a teaching guide to someone who doesn’t know much about PC building, or do you already need to know?
It does give explenations what components do what and will show where to put them, if i remember right. It's a bit more video gamey than IRL, but i think it gives you at least a basic feel for how building a PC works.

That said inserting the CPU is simplified and doesn't bring up how it's supposed to be oriented, I think, so I'd recommend learning that from the internet.
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Re: The Year of Our Lord MMXXI in Video Games

Post by SlateSlabrock (?) » Mon Dec 20, 2021 6:30 pm

Pretty short list this year. I mostly went back to my old favorites, and there weren't that many big game launches this year anyway.

Subnautica: Below Zero: It's good, but I think the main stumbling block is that the progression isn't as smooth as the original. There's lots of backtracking in this one, and you don't just Go Deeper™ the further into the game you get. I even missed one of the bases until after I'd finished the game. I like Alan, but I could've done with less griping from Robin. Hopefully, if they do a third game, they can smooth out the progression and themes. Still the best exploration/survival series I've played.

Dyson Sphere Program: Scratches the Factorio-type itch, but I've put it on hold until it gets more finished because I got most of the way done with it, and they broke save files. So... probably a fun game for next year.

Dorfromantik: A puzzle game where you try to build the biggest city you can out of the pieces you draw. Decently fun, simple. I didn't replay it much.

Psychonauts 2: A great sequel to the original. It also looks and plays like the original. Too old-fashioned to really pique people's interest in TYOOL 2021, but I'm glad Double Fine finally made it.

Timberborn: Another management sim game with colonies of post-humanity beaver towns. Cute. Still under development.

Satisfactory: Recently released update 5, so it's time for me to spend another million hours working up to the next few tiers of technology. I wish I had more spare time to build the elaborate super-factories I need.

oh, and

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edit: Forgot to add Hardspace: Shipbreaker, which I tend to binge after an update, but which has the frustrating habit of resetting all progress during story updates. Hopefully they're closing in on finishing the story so that won't be a problem anymore. And they just updated with a new class of ship!

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Re: The Year of Our Lord MMXXI in Video Games

Post by DaikatunaRevengeance (?) » Tue Dec 21, 2021 3:40 pm

I wasn't aware hardspace was still in early access. I thought they were done with it, what with working on homeworld 3.
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Re: The Year of Our Lord MMXXI in Video Games

Post by Aria Genisi (?) » Wed Dec 29, 2021 11:05 pm

hoo boy, I caught up on a lot this year, and I firmly got into a new obsession, so rip me, because I've got a lot to write about. Only problem is that I played so many games and I want to say at least a bit on each of them that it's going to take fuckin forever at this rate. So, I'll split it up into two or three posts to try and get it sorted.

So yeah, the year of our Luigi, 2021, here's what I've played, Part 1:

  • Final Fantasy 14: Stormblood and Shadowbringers - My year started with FF14. Thanks to a friend, I got the full version of FF14 for New Years, right as I was just about done with the first expansion, Heavensward, thanks to the free trial. So, from the start of the year, basically, I went directly into marathoning the main story for both the Stormblood and Shadowbringers expansions. Stormblood's 4.0 MSQ story wasn't quite as endearing on the whole as 3.0's MSQ story was, but I enjoyed it quite a bit, and the dungeons/raids/trials were all SUPER GOOD. Like, the previous content in 2.x and 3.x was all quite fun and engaging, but 4.x was where they hit their groove for the gameplay, and everything was just so damn good. 4.x's story picked up in the patches, which were all quite great, and then Shadowbringers. Hoo boy, Shadowbringers. The gameplay in 5.x has been getting better from 4.x, but that's not all The Shadowbringers expansion to FF14 has to be one of my favorite rpg stories, and it's part of the reason why FF14 is one of my favorite games of the year. The story takes a tangent from the usual fare in ARR/HW/SB, and it lets the existing cast breathe as you go on this new quest in these new lands where you meet new people, and it's just so, so good. The antagonist of this expansion is my absolute favorite in the game. The whole game is just fantastic.
  • Blasphemous - It's a 2D metroidvania with a more deliberate, dark souls inspired gameplay style, as you explore a land with a very Christianity inspired religion and where some sort of divine entity, the Grievous Miracle, has twisted the land and it's people (who were already pretty fucked up because of their obsessions with guilt and punishment), and you, the Penitent One, seek a way to save a world from it's twisted state. It's a really solid 2D, metroidvania game. Pretty challenging at times, but a lot of fun, and the Christianity themeing feels pretty unique for this horrific sort of setting. I still gotta do one more playthrough for the last DLC that came out this month.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition - I got this game for the New 3DS back in the day, and I made good progress, but eventually stopped for a bit and lost my save. So this time, I picked this up last year for the switch, and finally got around to it, and it's quite good. It's a fun RPG with a really damn cool setting, since it takes place on two giant titans. Some quite good music, too.
  • Yoku's Island Express - It's a pinball metroidvania, and it's pretty solid and fun! A quite unique idea, with a cute setting. I like it a lot, though the pinball tables you get into can sometimes feel like they require some annoying precision at times to go down the paths you want, but oh well. It's good.
  • Touhou Luna Nights - Hey, you got Touhou in my metroidvania! This was a fairly short game overall, and a bit more linear compared to other games of this type, but it's quite an enjoyable romp with some fun bosses and a really cool time-stop gimmick that the game loves to play around with. Timespinner, another metroidvania with a time stop gimmick, didn't really explore the idea nearly as much as I would have liked, but this game makes up for it in spades. It adds in projectiles and such that move around when time is stopped, and puts a lot more emphasis on using time stop and related powers for moving around and for combat. Quite good stuff!
  • Okami - Damn, I've been really looking forward to this one, and it's quite a fun romp! Clover Studios (Platinum Games before they became Platinum Games) made a zelda-style game where you control a god in the form of a divine wolf to go run around and help people and save them from this horrible, cursed darkness and the demons that spawn from it in feudal japan. It's a cute game with a neat, stylized art style, and the combat is quite fun, painting various shapes to create different effects to supplement your normal weapons and attacks. I don't feel super strongly about it in this day and age, but it's a quite enjoyable romp.
  • Disco Elysium: The Final Cut - Oh, how I've been looking forward to this one. Ever since I first heard about it, I've been looking forward to playing it, but just wasn't sure about how well it'd run on my garbage old laptop, so I ended up waiting for a console release. And then I got it on PS4, and holy shit I love this game. It's just really fun, funny, interesting and smartly written. I remember a lot of people bringing up the political aspects the writing when talking about the game, and it's ultimately inevitable, considering the story it's trying to tell (and it's extremely good shit, don't get me wrong), but to focus on that too much also just does a bit of a disservice to the rest of the amazing writing at play here in this game, because it's wonderful as you play this absolute fucking disaster of a human being, trying to solve a crime, while also being stuck at rock bottom after destroying themselves in a three day deluge of alcohol before the game started, leaving you, the player, to roleplay as the guy trying to pick up the pieces of his identity and move on. The voice acting added in with The Final Cut patches truly enhance everything and the entire package is just so very good. One of the best games I've played this year.
  • Control - I've heard a lot of good things about this one, so when I got a Gaming Laptop this year (and it came with a free month of Game Pass for PC, this was at the top of my list. Control is just really good! It's a solid third person shooter with a really fascinating and interesting setting. I quite enjoyed it, but I really do need to pick up the DLC for it and finish off all the sidequests.
  • Battletoads 2020 - One of the random games I've been meaning to try via Game Pass, Battletoads 2020. This one was probobly the most middling game I've played this year overall. It's not a bad game at all. It leans a bit more into a cartoony look and feel and for the story, which works pretty well for Battletoads, though I can't help but feel it gets a little bit too close to kinda just dumb bad adult-focused cartoon? I can't really point to any particular thing that makes me feel that way, but it's just an overall vibe that kinda creeps in a little bit and I don't particularly care for it. Also the middle of the game kind of dragged on a bit much for my tastes, and some of the gameplay stages feel a bit shallow for how much you're playing them, but even then, the game isn't too long overall. Still, I have to say, this is probobly the most faithful sequel that Battletoads could have ever asked for. It truly captures the crazy genre-jumping ethos that the original games had, and the general cartoony feel of the series in a more modern age. I'm not sure if I'd recommend buying the game full price or not, but if it's on sale for a pretty low price, or if you've got Game Pass, then Battletoads 2020 is definitely worth a look at the very least. I enjoyed it, but it could be better and i dunno how the rest of y'all might feel about it.
  • Resident Evil 7: Biohazard - Oh boy, this one! I saw a lets play or two of this back when it came out, but now I've finally gotten around to playing this one for myself, and it's great. It's actually quite spooky and tense, and I absolutely love the Bakers as villains, Jack Baker especially. If there's one thing I don't like, it's the spiders on some cabinets and doors that you have to burn off in the dilapidated bug house. I don't like spiders, and while they're more of a creepy swarm that's not too bad to me compared to other RE games with their giant realistic spiders, I'd still rather they not be there at all. The main game itself is great, and then I played the two major DLC campaigns, Not a Hero and End of Zoe. Not a Hero was pretty alright overall. Nothing super outstanding, but a fun romp in the mines to finally get rid of Lucas Baker, who is just such a piece of shit. Meanwhile, End of Zoe was incredible. Playing as Jack Baker's swamp hobo brother, running around the swamp some time after the events of RE7, trying to find a cure for Zoe Baker, and just fucking punching the shit out of the mold zombies, and flinging giant makeshift spears into zombie gators and the like to kill them instantly. This one is such a fun romp, holy shit. It's definitely not scary, but it is just a ton of fun. RE7 is great, and it's one of my favorite RE games, but it's not quite my most favorite RE game.
  • Resident Evil Village - This is my favorite RE Game, hands down. Village isn't quite as scary as RE7 was, but I just loved this one much more, as it feels like a mix of everything that worked for previous RE games, as well as a bunch of classical horror movie monsters on offer mixed with newer ideas. It's not quite as spooky as RE7, except for house benevento, but I think that's fine. The villains here are just such good characters, and are all quite enjoyable, and just....it's so good. I always really liked RE4, and this feels like the closest this series actually got to a proper successor to RE4. 5 and 6 went way too much in the action-y direction, which can be quite fun, but I feel that RE4 had a much better balance, despite how action-focused it is compared to previous RE games before it. It has that action, sure, but it also has moments of horror and tension, as well as a fun level of schlock to it, and just, I feel that Village is the one that finally lives up to that legacy, but also is just a really damn good game besides that. This is my favorite Resident Evil game, and one of my favorite games of the year.
  • Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order - This was one game that kinda bounced past my radar back when it released, thanks to the absolute disaster that was the monetization of EA's Battlefront 2 with all those lootbox gatchas. It was just such a damn mess at the time, that when they announced a new Star Wars game, and that Respawn, the developers of the Titanfall games, would be developing it, it didn't really register as anything other than EA just gonna continue to be shit and that Respawn's days might be numbered as EA had them make a star wars game for them to fill some sort of quota or whatever the fuck. Then the game came out, and it actually was genuinely pretty good??? Some time later, I finally played it via Game Pass, and it's quite great, and doesn't have any lootbox fuckery or whatever the hell. It's basically kinda like, a metroidvania-y dark souls-inspired hack n slash action adventure with sort of Uncharted/Tomb Raider esque platforming? It's quite fun and enjoyable, I liked it quite a bit.
  • Star Wars Squadrons - I've always wanted to play those X-Wing and Tie Fighter games back in the day, but I missed my chance then, and never went back to them. Squadrons is basically just a return to those sorts of games, and the single player campaign is quite an enjoyable time! It's not super long, and I sometimes extremely suck at it and feel like the enemies are just way too deadly, but i still had a quite fun time regardless. It honestly makes me want to check out the old games and give them a shot if I can.
  • Titanfall 2 - Okay so, this is probably one of the best AAA FPS games in years. I fucking loved Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal, but here comes Titanfall 2, and it's fucking incredible. You have a ton of movement options, a cool mech to pilot, and just a bunch of intensely creative level ideas that just make for an incredible experience. It's pretty short in general, making me wish that it lasted longer, but at the same time, I'm glad it didn't? I'd rather they just absolutely nail it here with such great levels that are just so much fun to play like they did than have to drag it out for too long and not as good. I haven't messed with the multiplayer at all because i generally don't care too much about multiplayer for the most part, but the single player campaign on it's own is easily worth playing this game for. It's really fucking good!
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Re: The Year of Our Lord MMXXI in Video Games

Post by Aria Genisi (?) » Thu Dec 30, 2021 9:09 pm

What I played in the Year of Our Luigi, 2021, Part 2:
  • Kingdom Hearts Union X - This one's a bit different, it's a mobile game! And it's a mobile game that technically isn't available anymore. Kingdom Hearts Union Cross (X), formerly Kingdom Hearts Chi Unleashed, was a mobile phone updated version of a japan exclusive multiplayer-ish browser(?) game. This game lasted a good couple of years, until finally shutting down on June 29th, 2021. It was a game that I quite liked, but also was a bit frustrated at and sometimes hated. The gatcha was quite awful, for example. You had to pull for Medals, which were special attacks and that was your bread and butter for doing moves in this game, and you had to manage how much gauge you would have and have to build your deck accordingly. The actual gameplay itself was fairly braindead and easy to manage as it was all turn based with each action you did according to each slot you had available on your keyblade. More about preparation than execution, really. But as preparation was more important, not only did you need the good new fancy Medals, you needed *copies* to fuse into the original medal, so that you could roll for random bonus traits for that medal. And if you wanted to actually do literally any appreciable damage to The Harder/Hardest Content, you needed specific traits that reduced the defense of ground/air enemies when calculating how much damage the medals did. Add in just some pretty steady power creep in general, and the gatcha could get quite frustrating when trying to find a way to do harder content for actually good rewards. The game did get better about such things as time went on. It wasn't anywhere near perfect, but it made sensible choices as it got closer to the end of it's lifespan, like Trait Medals, which were just dummy copies of certain high end medals that you just feed into the appropriate medals to roll for traits, and these Trait Medals were generally pretty easy to get copies of compared to just trying to get normal copies of the medals you needed traits for. Also, at one point, they started letting you just straight up buy traits using munny, a generally useless ingame currency that you got way too much more than you really ever needed. But yeah, the gatcha was generally just quite crap in general (though they did eventually add improvements as time went on), and the main story quests, while cute and fun, had a LOT of filler for the longest time, usually when the older KH Chi story content was involved. The PvP stuff sucked, and the high score contest events started my hatred of such things in gatchas, but even then.....despite my frequent criticisms of the game, I still enjoyed my time with it. Despite my frustrations with higher end content and how much power creep you actually needed to clear it, I still viewed it as a generally chill experience all the same. The game is shut down, but they at least updated the app so that it's now a cutscene archive, so that despite the game being no more, people interested in the story of Kingdom Hearts could at least still experience the story and not be shit out of luck on that end. I actually kinda miss it, even though it's probably for the best that it's shut down because of all the issues I've had with it. So long, KHUX, and thanks for all the fish.
  • Kero Blaster - Hey, it's that Studio Pixel guy who made Cave Story! He made a new game, and I finally played it in 2021! And it's quite good! A fun and charming little action platformer, where you play as a cute frog doing his job to clean a bunch of places of pesky monsters that have been infesting a bunch of places and causing problems. I beat the game once, but I haven't finished the harder second loop style arrange mode that you unlock afterwards, that has it's own story. I enjoyed it, but I just kinda got distracted by all the games. Oops. I'll get back to it in 2022, hopefully.
  • Call of Juarez: Gunslinger - Yo, this is a really damn cool game. A bit of a shorter, lower-budget FPS game, the game is a western themed game that's framed as the various stories being told by this old, grizzled bounty hunter of the old west to a bunch of folks hanging out in a bar one afternoon. It's a pretty fun shooter in it's own right, but the game shines as it plays around with how the story is being told. It's being actively narrated, and the gameplay is effectively just the mind's eye imagining of how these events must have unfolded as it's being told, complete with interruptions and tangents and what have you. Example:
    You're playing a level where you're hunting down your bounties in a swamp, and one of the bar patrons is nodding off, so the narrator then says like "suddenly I was attacked by indians on all sides" to catch the patron's attention again, while you're suddenly fighting a bunch of native americans that showed up out of nowhere and where it makes no sense in the story. The patron wakes up, interested, and another asks if that really happened as the gameplay pauses. The narrator says "no, it was fake, I just wanted to make sure he was paying attention" and then drops the entire thing to continue with his original story, with the native americans you were fighting vanishing completely as the gameplay unpauses once again, and you continue with the level.
    It does fun stuff like that, and I really enjoy it. The game is a bit on the shorter side, but it's a bit more arcadey in general, going for higher scores and it's a bunch of fun, so I'm good with that sort of thing. I definitely recommend checking this game out!
  • Ori and the Blind Forest - Mmm, this one. Ori's a really neat game and it's got a nice look to it, but man, I just was frustrated a bunch when playing this game. It's checkpoint system is a part of it, where if gives you, the player, control of setting checkpoints, which is interesting, but ultimately not that great, as you need to be on point with checkpoints in between save points, and it can be a fair bit frustrating to deal with if you're less cavalier with using checkpoints. The game definitely feels like it's got it's heart in the right place, and it's still pretty fun and pretty good overall.....except for the snow ruins dungeon area. God, this place sucks ass. If there's exactly one place that I hate, it's the snow ruins dungeon, because the gravity gimmick feels way wonkier than it should be and just is a huge pain in the ass to sort out. That area is just quite bad, it genuinely soured my experience with a game that I still was otherwise enjoying despite it's wonkiness in places.
  • Ducktales Remastered - I've technically played this game before, but I don't remember if I beat it? I don't remember for certain, so I just decided to replay it anyways. This is a damn good remake of the original Ducktales game for the NES. I definitely prefer the newer Ducktales cartoon, but I still have nostalgia for the classic cartoon, and this game really feels like a last hurrah for the original series and it's characters. It's not super in depth or complex, but it really feels like a part of that old show, recreating it in-game with the 2.5D art style and bringing back old voice actors one last time. It's a great remake, with some fantastic music and quite fun new content.
  • Unavowed - I didn't really play many point and clicks this year, but this one has definitely been on my list, and it kicks ass. Basically, the story is that one day at work in New York City, you get a chance encounter that leads you to become possessed by a demon. Flash forward quite some time later, and you are being exorcized of the demon possessing you at the site of a mass murder by the Unavowed, an organization of people who solve supernatural crimes and issues, outside of the view of the mundane world. The demon that possessed you wrecked a lot of havoc in the city, and your old life is in tatters. Your only option is to join the Unavowed, and do what you can, trying to solve problems that crop up, involving the supernatural. It's quite a really fun and interesting setup, as you come across these problems and try to figure out what's going on and how to address them, and you can bring two different characters to follow you to solve this case, opening up different options you can take to try and get to the bottom of things. Ultimately, you get to the heart of the problem, and you're given a choice on what you should do to resolve it, and it's all quite a bit up in the air. There's no "good" or "evil" option, just, you have at least two options to take to try and solve the issue, and both of them have their pros and cons, their own consequences to taking that option, and so it's up to you to decide on which you think is best. And the game really doesn't condemn you for your choices, either. There's no easy way to resolve these issues. It's quite good stuff. Basically all of the problems you come across seem to tie in with the demon that possessed you, and it gets you closer to understanding what happened and what it's all leading up to. Damn, really good game, I definitely recommend it.
  • Dark Souls Remastered - This one was fun to finally play through from beginning to end. Everyone knows Dark Souls, and I've owned Dark Souls 1 before, but I've never actually played it all the way through. But now I have! It's quite a fun time. I still enjoy Bloodborne way more, but DS1 is definitely quite a good time, even though it's got plenty of wonky shit going on with some bosses and areas, and some things not done super well. I enjoyed this one, it's good stuff.
  • Neo: The World Ends With You - I loved TWEWY, having played the Solo Remix port on my iphone a good while back, and now it's back with a full sequel, and I loved it. A problem with having a sequel to a unique, beloved game like TWEWY is that it's definitely quite hard to try to live up to the original. Oftentimes, the sequel feels like it retreads old ground too much, or just can't match the quality of the original. I'm quite happy to say that NEO TWEWY absolutely lives up to the original game. The battle system is excellent, creating a really fun single screen team battle that's fast and frenetic, but also quite fun to play. The story and characters are excellent, with Nagi and Shoka being my absolute favorite new characters. The soundtrack is fantastic, the game looks great, and just, man. I love this game. I had a blast taking this new cast through the new Reaper's Game in Shibuya.
  • Blaster Master Zero 3 - Ah, the Blaster Master Zero series. The original one was just a remake of the original NES game, retreading old ground with new enhanced content as well as a completely redone story based on a mix of both Blaster Master's plot where you're a kid chasing after a frog but then also finding a tank and using it to fight mutants underground along the way, as well as the original JP plot where it's kind of a sci-fi story on another planet fighting an evil emperor or something I guess? idr. BMZ1 was quite good, but it felt a bit stifled by the fact that it was a remake of the original. The sequel, BMZ2, was excellent, as it then had a chance to just go off and do whatever, and it works quite well, with this last one, BMZ3, being the best in my opinion. The game is a bit spicier in it's difficulty compared to previous games, especially in the true ending route, but it's definitely a welcome change in my opinion, considering that the previous two games tend to err a bit more on the easier side at times. It's not *super* difficult, but it's definitely going to put up a bit more of a fight than the previous games. It's a damn fun time, and I absolutely recommend the whole trilogy.
  • Minit - This is a cute little adventure game where you're stuck with a cursed sword that kills you after a short time limit, forcing you to restart at the place where you last rested. However, you make progress over multiple runs, learning important information, unlocking new paths, finding new items to use, all working towards finding a way towards removing the curse you've been inflicted with. Not much to say, it's a fairly short game, but a quite enjoyable one.
  • Axiom Verge 2 - Axiom Verge 1 was an interesting metroidvania, where I quite enjoyed my time for the most part, but some parts of it were definitely quite a bit wonky, like with the Secret Worlds and some password secrets, and then the bosses, while I enjoyed them, were a fair bit messy, ending with a genuine hot mess of a final boss. I still liked the game in the end, but it had some issues. Axiom Verge 2 is entirely different, as not so much a direct sequel, and more just another tale in this multiverse that the series takes place in (though it is connected with the first game), with an entirely different protagonist, on a different world, and a whole different gameplay style! The original game was a bit more closer to Metroid in the look and feel of the world, as well as the structure of the game in general, as you explore to find upgrades and fight bosses in each area, while 2 is much more of an exploration focused game, where instead of bosses, you have some optional larger enemies that you can fight for item completion if you wanted, or you can ignore them entirely. Also you don't have the corruption gun, but instead you hack into things and you can command them to do different things, and instead of a single gun with different projectile types you can find to expand your arsenal, you get melee weapons and a boomerang as your main weapons. Additionally, the game has The Breach, which is basically like a back side of the world map, where everything is a bit more chiptune-y and lo-res, and you can use it to get through different areas to reach areas you previously couldn't, or just to make progress beyond some barriers that might have been impossible to get past in the overworld. It's a pretty interesting game, and better than the first game, I feel.
  • Psychonauts 2 - Ah, Psychonauts. I haven't played the original in *years* but it was absolutely a game I quite enjoyed a lot back in the day. It was funny and pretty smartly written at the time, with really fun levels. I beat the release on steam, back after the infamous Meat Circus was patched, toning down the difficulty. It was a good game. Not a perfect game, but I enjoyed it a bunch and was looking forward to seeing this game come out. Cue August of this year, and Psychonauts 2 came out and it was also released on Game Pass on the same day it came out, so I immediately jumped on that. Psychonauts 2 is great! It's bigger and better than the original! It's a ton of fun, and the levels just feel so, creative and the game is so well written. It's a beautiful game, and it's all genuinely empathetic to peoples' mental health and the issues that come from that. I kinda just played it and beat the game and that was that for me, but I had a wonderful time playing it. Definitely recommend checking it out, especially if you played the first game.
  • DUSK - If you like retro FPS games, you absolutely owe it to yourself to at least check this game out. God, Dusk is SO fucking good!

    Okay, so, Dusk is a retro-styled FPS game that takes aesthetic cues from sort of a mix of Blood and Redneck Rampage but made in the Quake engine, and the gameplay takes cues from classic FPS games, but it's much more than just trying to emulate the sort of style of those older games (even though it does so quite well). Episode 1 is largely pretty standard as far as these things go, with nothing *too* crazy. Then Episode 2 starts throwing in some really interesting and unique levels in there, as well as wild new enemies, and it continues into Episode 3, getting even more creative and unique, and just so damn fun, all the way to the end. And when the game wants to, it can actually get quite creepy, atmospheric, and intense in some levels. Like, genuinely effective horror in some levels. The game can kinda bounce between action and horror from level to level and it does it quite well. I kinda just want to talk about Dusk, but I feel like I'd be doing a disservice to it by just blabbing on and on about it. It's incredible and I'm so glad I finally played it, to the point where it's actually one of my favorite games that I played this year. Please, play it! It's extremely good, and it just got a Switch port released in October!
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Re: The Year of Our Lord MMXXI in Video Games

Post by Orange Fluffy Sheep (?) » Fri Dec 31, 2021 12:51 pm

what even are video game

heres some i played

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind - Foreverially n'wah, permanently fetcherized, full matze head with saltrice lips and marshmerrow tongue and small kwama egg nose, sujama running through permanent dreugh wax veins to permanent guar hide organs, netch leather mummified leaving only bald 3rd dark elf male head and boots of blinding speed visible

then a cliff racer shows up 10/10 a masterpiece

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion there's like the weird compromise between morrowind's too much number and skyrim's not enough number that would be a fun sword guy adventure if every mechanical change made weren't the wrong one, then if you mod the shit out of it, you can kinda grasp that egg of enjoying slapping around the weird potato people and breaking the in-game economy because you made sandwiches, but I don't know if it's worth the effort unless this middle ground between morrowind and skyrim is exactly what makes you horny

Fallout 4 weird how elder scrolls abandoned attributes while fallout abandoned skills, huh? I liked the looty shooty fairly well and freeform construction of little towns is a lot of fun too, shame there's exactly one good quest (it's the silver shroud)

Stardew Valley I've always wondered what it would be like to be a person who is productive and can go to sleep and feel refreshed

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire the turn based mode is something I comprehend far far better than real time with pauses so I could finally get into this game, also because my character could be a kung fu bear who fights against colonialism

Legend of Mana remaster the encounter toggle alone made this already really good game into a very good game. it's still very good looking and the redone music actually... improves some of these songs??? they didn't fuck it up????????

Monster Rancher 1+2DX I never knew how much I wanted an updated version of monster rancher 2 with fast-forward, auto-saves, the ability to use enemy boss monsters, and a few bug fixes but here it is. it even came with mr1 for some reason

Persona 5 Royal I finally got to it and I finally understand why every game journalist is obsessed with this thing and the occasional objectification of women and serial statutory couldn't really drag it down

Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth god I love monster collection rpgs and this one is really good

Siralim Ultimate I am not playing this monster collection rpg because yarma will not let me, it will consume me
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Re: The Year of Our Lord MMXXI in Video Games

Post by Mechanical Ape (?) » Fri Dec 31, 2021 1:36 pm

Not just Stardew Valley, 2021 seemed like a breakout year for chore simulators in general: Unpacking, Powerwash Simulator et al. Someone more sociological than me could probably explain why. Covid fatigue, surely at least part of it. But also like OFS said, maybe our fantasies are becoming more mundane because we just want to feel like we’re doing something that matters.

:allears: “Productivity. What would that be like?”

Is it a Kids Today thing? A late stage capitalism thing? Are video games just better at providing the Skinner box dopamine hit that literally anything can trigger it?
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Re: The Year of Our Lord MMXXI in Video Games

Post by DaikatunaRevengeance (?) » Fri Dec 31, 2021 1:51 pm

I can't speak for unpacking as i've never seen gameplay, but i've seen powerwash simulator and my feeling on why it's liked is because a) powerwashers are cool b) watching dirty stuff get clean and shiny is satisfying

Your tractors in FS19 also get dirty and i liked to periodically clean them with a powerwasher and leave them looking nice and spiffy until they're needed again.
Last edited by DaikatunaRevengeance on Fri Dec 31, 2021 1:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Year of Our Lord MMXXI in Video Games

Post by Mechanical Ape (?) » Fri Dec 31, 2021 1:53 pm

Now obviously Stardew Valley abstracts away most of the unpleasant tedium of farming. Real livestock care involves more than petting them every day. There’s poop involved and a surprising amount of castrations. But you know what? Someone could write a Sheep Castration Simulator and I bet a lot of people would play and enjoy it.
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Re: The Year of Our Lord MMXXI in Video Games

Post by Orange Fluffy Sheep (?) » Fri Dec 31, 2021 3:33 pm

Mechanical Ape wrote:
Fri Dec 31, 2021 1:53 pm
Sheep Castration Simulator
:qaugh:
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Re: The Year of Our Lord MMXXI in Video Games

Post by DaikatunaRevengeance (?) » Fri Dec 31, 2021 4:28 pm

it has to be done
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Re: The Year of Our Lord MMXXI in Video Games

Post by Mechanical Ape (?) » Fri Dec 31, 2021 4:57 pm

Listen there are no bad ideas, just ideas that haven’t been implemented well yet
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Re: The Year of Our Lord MMXXI in Video Games

Post by Aria Genisi (?) » Fri Dec 31, 2021 8:01 pm

What I played in the Year of Our Luigi, 2021, Part 3 - The Last Part:
  • Make a Good 48 Hour Mega Man Level - Hey, it's another one of the level contest mega man games! And this one's a bit different, because I actually submitted a level to this one! Yeah! You can actually go download this right now, and you can go to Tier 8, and find my level that I made back in 2018, Ancient Ziggurat! It's pretty rad to have participated in a level design contest like this, and I got 36th place! But there's also 106 other contest entries featured in this game, as well as original content and a story to tie the whole game together. Even putting aside my own personal interest in this thing, it's a pretty cool fangame! These Make A Good Mega Man Level contest games have always been pretty fun, seeing the sorts of ideas that people create. They're obviously always a bit of a mixed bag, but it's kind of the fun of it, isn't it? This contest in particular was a bit more "vanilla", as well, given that everyone who participated in the contest, when they signed up, they then used a discord bot that would assign them a set of enemies and level gimmicks, and then had 48 hours to create a level in Game Maker featuring those assets. We were free to use whatever tilesets and music we wanted, as well as change graphics for enemies and bosses and adjust their spawn parameters, but we couldn't actually create fully custom enemies, bosses, or other such level assets. It was a fun contest to create a level for, as well as see what sorts of ideas other people came up with with such stipulations back in 2018, and then have everything presented as just, a fully realized and complete game. It's good stuff!
  • Deltarune Chapter 2 - Toby Fox does it again. This time, with more folks working on it along with him! Deltarune Ch2, the free chapter follow up to the original free Ch1 that got released a few years ago, and this rules. It's so fucking funny, fun, and heartwarming. It's just, so damn funny and good. I love all of the new characters, I love the romance brewing between Noelle and Susie, Queen is one of the funniest characters I've ever seen, and Birdley sucks so much. They're all great. The whole of Chapter 2 is just bigger and better than what Chapter 1 offered, and if you weren't super impressed by the original chapter 1, I implore you to check out Deltarune Chapter 2 and give that a shot to get a better idea of what the rest of Deltarune may have to offer when it's fully completed. It's just so good.
  • Yakuza: Like A Dragon - Yakuza 7 is the latest Yakuza game, and they switched things to a new protagonist, a new cast of characters, and a new gameplay style! Instead of being a beat-em-up game, this is an RPG! And the in-game justification as to why is because the protagonist, Ichiban Kasuga, is a fucking huge Dragon Quest nerd, and with his overactive imagination, envisions all of his fights as if he's a hero in an RPG like Dragon Quest. No, really, that's exactly what he says. It's great. Ichi himself is fantastic. The previous protagonist, Kiryu, was a bit more stoic and serious, while Ichi is much more outgoing and can be a bit more of a goofball sometimes. Kiryu goes it alone for the most part, while Ichi joins up with a party of friends and allies. Both are great and I can't wait to see more of Ichi in future games. That said, for this game, I've really liked it a lot. The story caught me off guard, as it's really quite sympathetic towards people such as the homeless and sex workers. People who are stuck at the bottom rungs of society, who are usually hated at worst, and usually regarded with indifference at best, when all they're trying to do is to live, but they don't have many options to begin with. A major player in the story is the organization called Bleach Japan, whose stated goal is to "wipe away the grey areas in society", and they end up protesting and harassing sex workers and such, because they see such people and places that they work as dragging down society and making things worse. And then you have Ichiban, who ends up standing in their way because 1) he's trying to drag himself out of rock bottom, and some of the places that Bleach Japan targets are the only sources of any sort of employment he's been able to get, and more importantly, 2) he was born in a soapland in Kamurocho. His mother left him there after he was born, never to be seen again, and he ended up being raised by the soapland owner and the women who worked there. He's keenly aware of the reality of these sorts of places and the people who work there and how they're just people, trying to get by in life, usually in the only ways they can. The examination of just, the struggles of people stuck at the bottom, and how society tends to routinely reject them and sometimes even try to drive them away was just something that I was quite pleasantly surprised to see in a big budget game such as this. I still feel there's room for improvement in the story, and while the gameplay is good, it falls a bit flat in some areas, requiring some grinding to get past some bosses that act as brick walls. It's still a great game despite it's flaws, and I'm excited to see a Yakuza 8 come out to try and build off of what worked here and try to fix what didn't.
  • Metroid Dread - METROIDS'S BACK BABY ITS GOOD AGAIN AWOOO (WOLF HOWL)

    Good lord, Dread is so fucking good. I've been a fan of Metroid since Super, and I love the series dearly. After Other M stank up the place, the Metroid series lied dormant for a good long while. We did get Metroid: Samus Returns, and the announcement of Metroid Prime 4, but with MP4 still being stuck in development, we've all been kind chomping at the bit for a good new Metroid game. Samus Returns was good, but it could be better. And boy fucking howdy, MercurySteam fucking delivered with Metroid Dread. The game just controls so damn good. It's genuinely just so fun to just run around and explore, as well as fight enemies and bosses. If I had to compare it to anything, this feels like a true successor to Metroid Fusion, where builds on some of those ideas, while making it less railroad-y than that game ever was. Like, the game is very good at silently guiding you towards your next destination, or keeping you locked in a certain amount of space to keep you from getting too lost, while you try to find the means to make progress. And yet, at the same time, if you know what you're doing, there's a surprising amount of sequence breaking to be had and shortcuts to be found. And unlike Fusion, while you do run into navigation rooms and you talk with Adam to get a general idea of your next objective, it's not quite as frequent and overbearing as Fusion. Again, the game is quite good at guiding you where you need to go, but it's also quite willing to just, let the player get lost for a bit and go exploring every corner of the map they can until they find the way forward, whether it's a path they've yet to take, or a blocked path that they might have overlooked or what have you. And the game is actually pretty damn challenging at times! Both the EMMIs and the bosses provide a sizeable challenge to the player, but are fun to deal with, and despite their difficulty, the game is very good about providing checkpoints for the player, so that they can quickly retry without losing too much time trying to get back from their last save point. It's all quite fantastic, with the final boss in particular being perhaps my favorite boss in the entire damn series. I love this game so much.
  • Unsighted - One of the games I played via Game Pass, Unsighted was a game that sounded pretty good from the little that I saw of it, but ended up blowing me away once I got my hands on it. It's a sort of zelda/metroidvania-like where you play a sentient robot in this one ravaged city in the future. The humans locked away the meteor that gave you and all the other robots sentience with this gigantic tower they built over it with in the center of the city. Since then, there hasn't been any humans around the city, and every robot has been running low on the life-giving energy of the meteor, and when they run out, they become unsighted, where they die and become a mindless husk of their former self, attacking everyone else on instinct. In gameplay terms, you and every other NPC in the game is on a timer that runs off of the ingame clock. If they run out of time, they become unsighted, and they are forever lost. The same works for you. You can die and lose a little bit of time and money and have to respawn at your last save point or back at the starting village, but if *you* run out of time, that's game over. However, you can find Meteor Dust all throughout the city. You can either use it on yourself to gain more time, or give it to other characters to give them more time. The stuff is rare, however, and you can also use it to create additional syringes to heal yourself with, so you need to choose carefully on which is more important to you. And as you play through the game, if you end up taking a while to complete things and go exploring, it's quite possible to run out of meteor dust or have NPCs just run out of time and become unsighted, eventually leading to you a more sad ending if that's the case. But....there lie's the rub. This game's world is just widely interconnected all over the place, with all sorts of shortcuts to be had, and with a lot of progression items that can be built on their own or circumvented with other items that achieve similar results to be used to get past certain obstacles. The first time you play, you might not get a good ending, but the game is built with replayability and NG+ in mind, so you can replay the game with various tools and knowledge from your previous runs and try to go about doing things faster or more efficiently, utilizing shortcuts and paths you might not have taken before to try and reach a different result. Sadly, I've only played the game once thanks to game pass, but I extremely want to pick up the game again on Steam and play it again. This is one of my favorite games of the year, and I extremely recommend checking it out!
  • Ori and the Will of the Wisps - Ori and the Blind Forest may have underwhelmed me a bit with how some parts of it really sucked, but it didn't stop me from wanting to play this game to see what they did with the sequel, and boy howdy, it is just so much better. Blind Forest was cool and all, but Will of the Wisps is just out and out a much better game, building on what worked with the original, and made it unique, while also going back and fixing a lot of what didn't. Combat is effectively cribbed off of Hollow Knight (which fair, if you're going to take ideas from something, take from the best, am i right?), navigating the world is a lot of fun, there's no particularly bad areas either, and everything is handled much better in this game. The boss fights (which is something that the original lacked) are quite fun! This isn't one of my top favorites of the year, but I had a really good time with this one. It's definitely worth checking out.
  • AI: The Somnium Files - hey it's that newer game written by the guy who wrote all the zero escape games (999, Virtue's Last Reward, Zero Time Dilemma)! And this one's pretty cool! It's kind of a police procedural/murder mystery type story, where you play as Date, a detective who works for a special squad that uses sci-fi technology to examine the dreams of suspects and witnesses to help them solve crimes. You've got Aiba, an AI eyeball that works as one of your eyeballs working as your partner, and your goal is to solve this latest gruesome case of the death of the wife of your old friend, whose daughter has discovered the body. It's a fun mystery story that goes off in different directions depending on how you handle the dream segments, unlocking different leads to work off of depending on what you find. It's all quite good stuff. The story is quite fun, giving me some pretty good Snatcher vibes with the relationship between the detective, Date, and his partner, Aiba. The only thing that kinda bugs me is that it's kind of a point that Date's kind of horny to the point of comedy, where he can do some crazy fast actions if he's told that there's a porno mag where he needs to go. It's not *awful*, but it kinda bugs me. Still, fun game, good story.
  • Resident Evil 2 Remake - Resident Evil 2 is a game that I've got a lot of fondness towards. It's the only classic RE game that I've played, but I adore it. G (the mutated form of William Birkin) is the best monster design in the classic games, imo, and it just was quite good. Problem is, RE Spiders. I've never liked them, and they've only gotten Worse ever since the original RE1 Remake made them big, detailed, and hairy. And the Racoon City sewers has the giant spiders in them. Which pretty much killed a lot of interest in replaying the original these days. Luckily, RE 2 Remake removed the spiders entirely! And replaced them with G typed monsters lurking in the depths of this actually quite spacious sewer area. So, there was nothing stopping me from playing this actually quite excellent remake. Damn, this game is good. It's surprising on how, while the gameplay has been changed, with a refined control scheme based on RE4 (and from RE games that came after it) and a third person camera, the game still feels so much like the original game. Zombies are quite dangerous, as are every other monster, the rooms are claustraphobic, and ammo can feel a bit tight at times. All the changes in the remake feel like they could have been that way in the original game, and then Mr X is a nightmare. He keeps coming at you, and is extremely dangerous, and it's actually quite stress inducing to hear him stomping around the police station, looking for you. Also my boy, G, is bigger and nastier than ever in HD. He's just so fucking ugly and disgusting, with his flesh mutating and undulating, he's great. All of his different forms get more horrifying and nasty with each fight, it's so good. I ended up playing Leon for the first run, and then Claire for the second run and I had a fantastic time with this game. Village might be my favorite RE game, but this is easily my second favorite.
  • Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker - This is it. This is my favorite game of the year. I've only started playing Final Fantasy 14 last year at the end of October 2020 with the free trial, and I fell in love with it. ARR was a bit padded out at times, but it still got it's hooks into me. HW was incredible, SB was great, and ShB cemented my love for the game. The whole game has been constantly growing since it's rebirth, and it's reflected in the story. You start from humble beginnings as a novice adventurer, and you grow into this seasoned pro who's saved the world from all sorts of threats, gaining all sorts of allies and making friends all over. On all your adventures, you get to know the Scions of the Seventh Dawn and work with them to help them in their quest to help protect the world from the mysterious Ascians and various other threats from the world. Across four games worth of content, you journey across the various lands and many mysteries of the world open up to you. You learn more about your allies, their wants and fears, what makes them tick. You stuggle against a multitude of villains, and you learn what makes them tick. Some of them have always been the monsters that they appear to be. Others have greater depths, as you learn of what drove them to villainy, and sometimes, you wish that fate dealt them a kinder hand, that they didn't end up walking down this path to becoming the monster that they are when you finally square off against them. All these journeys, all across all these expansions, across all these years, all building up to this.

    Endwalker is the finale to the story of FFXIV up to this point. The struggle over the fate of the planet, started from humble beginnings, to now trying to prevent an impending apocalypse. Tales of loss and fire and faith. There's a lot riding on Endwalker's shoulders, all the buildup from all these years, and it absolutely delivers in the end. And just....I'm kinda finding it hard to put into words how much I love this game without just blubbering into spoilers. It's so much fun, the soundtrack is incredible, and just, the story here in Endwalker, but especially the main story as a whole, it's incredible. It's my absolute favorite RPG story in years, of just how it pulls off this really damn good story, but because this is an MMO, it plants you firmly in the main character slot. The Warrior of Light can be anyone, but most importantly, it's *you*. *You* build yourself up from humble beginnings, *you* go and save the world from these dangerous threats, *you* are the one to befriend and make allies with all these characters. You're the one who stuck with this game and this story, this world, and these characters. And it works. It's a wonderful game that, while it's a lot to have to get into, with 5 whole games worth of content (including Endwalker), it's been well worth the time and effort I've spent here, to me at least.

    Endwalker is the end of this story, but it's not the end of FFXIV. The patch content will lead into the beginning of a new ongoing storyline, and there's still raids and such to be had in the wake of the ending of Endwalker. I'm looking very much forward to the new content, especially since the first four EW raids have been quite good. Still, if they decided to end major releases with the release of Endwalker, I would have been extremely satisfied and still would have declared FFXIV as one of my favorite games of all time. It's just so good. I love this game. And I don't see myself stopping anytime soon. My subscription will run out sometime in January, sure, but I'll be back.
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    Stand tall my friends, our journey will never end.
Last edited by Aria Genisi on Fri Dec 31, 2021 8:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Aria Genisi
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Now THIS is 2021!
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Re: The Year of Our Lord MMXXI in Video Games

Post by Aria Genisi (?) » Fri Dec 31, 2021 8:08 pm

that list was way too fucking long, but here's my top 10 for the year of our luigi 2021:

1) Final Fantasy 14 Endwalker
2) Disco Elysium
3) Unsighted
4) Metroid Dread
5) Dusk
6) Resident Evil Village
7) Resident Evil 2 Remake
8) Psychonauts 2
9) Blasphemous
10) NEO: The World Ends With You

All of them are extremely fucking good, I heartily recommend all of them! Hope y'all have a happy new year.
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Pocket
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Re: The Year of Our Lord MMXXI in Video Games

Post by Pocket (?) » Tue Jan 04, 2022 2:38 pm

Aria Genisi wrote:
Wed Dec 29, 2021 11:05 pm
I haven't messed with the multiplayer at all because i generally don't care too much about multiplayer for the most part,
There isn't really a multiplayer to play anymore; hackers have some kind of permanent DDOS going on, just like with the first game, and once again EA refuses to do anything about it because the game is more than zero years old.
Every jumbled pile of person has a thinking part that wonders what the part that isn't thinking isn't thinking of...

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Re: The Year of Our Lord MMXXI in Video Games

Post by DaikatunaRevengeance (?) » Thu Jan 06, 2022 4:43 pm

there's an attempt at customs servers by the players, at least
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;) ❤️ :twasnothin: ❤️ :fancyhat:

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