#I replayed the whole game like a week ago its still a banger

[captainfawful]

 With the year coming to a close, that means it’s time for me to do my “Nobody Cares Awards” thing I like to do! Check under the cut for some hot takes I may or may not have!

Hello, hello! It’s me again! Third year in a row I decided to jot my thoughts down on the years various game. I decided to change things up more from last year, kind of eliminating most of the categories in favor of writing more about the games I enjoyed. I tried to write at least something about every game in the Top 10 this time, even if it’s the bare minimum. Let’s see how it goes!

BEST MUSIC

This entire thing was first created because I wanted to write about how good Death Road To Canada’s soundtrack was. So no matter what changes with my format on this, there will always be a Best Music category. I’ll be honest though, there weren’t a whole lot of games this year with amazing soundtracks. The only real contender for most of the year was Celeste, which OST is very good, and fits perfectly with the games tone and style, but it’s not... The Best music. They aren’t songs I’ll put on loop and listen to multiple times throughout the day. They’re not the hard hitting tracks I would typically put at the top of this category, despite how great the music is. That’s how I felt until about August, when The Messenger came out. Messenger is not a game that will be in my Top 10 by any means, but it’s a pretty good game nonetheless with a couple of really weird twists. But the OST is phenomenal. Easily my number 1 favorite of this year. Just about every track in the game is a total banger. But don’t take it from me, take a listen yourself! A little later in the year I played through Just Shapes & Beats. I have a personal stigma against saying a thing with licensed music should qualify for Best Music, which is why JS&B did not make it into my top 3, but rest assured that it is sitting comfortably in the 4th place spot. Almost immediately after I played JS&B, Deltarune suddenly came out. I don’t think I have to tell you why that’s on here, right? Toby Fox cannot make bad music.

SPECIAL MENTIONS

THE MISSING:J.J. Macfield and the Island of Memories

It’s hard for me to talk about what makes The Missing so special without diving deep into spoilers. There’s a reason it’s in the special mentions, and not the Top 10: And that reason is because the gameplay isn’t great. The Missing is a side-scrolling puzzle game, in the same vein as Limbo or Inside. Unlike those two, however, the puzzles you have to solve are not that hard, and most of the difficulty around it revolves around how slowly and janky the movement is. However, the overall story and twist is what makes this game great. There’s not a whole lot for me to say about the themes this game presents, so if you want to play The Missing, play it. If you don’t want to play it, then maybe take a look at some writings from actual queer women who could talk about its subject matter in a way I never possibly could.

The Quiet Man

The Quiet Man is a terrible game. When I first saw the trailer during Suare Enix's E3 presentation, I was super interested. I've always wanted a game that transitions from FMV to gameplay with as few seams as possible, and The Quiet Man promised that. Not only that, it promised a compelling story told from the perspective of its' deaf protagonist. The way I saw it, this game would either accomplish what it set out to do, or fail miserably. Either way, it was a win/win scenario for me! Little did I know just HOW miserably it would fail.... Oooooh, how miserably it failed... The gameplay is absolute trash, the graphics leave much to be desired which makes the "seamless" transitions from FMV look unconvincing and bad, the story is needlessly complicated despite how generic it is, the acting ranges from decent to awful, and it requires you to play it twice in order to actually understand what's happening. And all of those problems are the LEAST offensive parts of the game. It's racist, misogynistic, somehow ableist against more than just deaf people, semi-incestual, and also kind of pro-abuse??? I mean, it doesn't take a stance to be anti-abuse, and certainly doesn't condemn abuse, so does that make it pro? Maybe? Probably? I have a headache. I've watched this entire 2-4 hour game be played 10 or 11 times, and I still don't understand how this exists. Square-Enix published this. They dropped Hitman and IO Interactive not even one year ago, yet threw money at this horrible abomination of a video game! Oh by the way, you might be wondering why I said you have to play it twice to understand, and that's because the first playthrough doesn't give you any sound. Yup, aside from the intro cutscene and the credits song, the entire games' audio is just muffled ambiance. This includes all of it's cutscenes, of which there are MANY, and they are LONG. Entire MINUTES of dialogue happening at a time that the game just doesn't want you to hear or have subtitles for. The only way to get audio is to beat the game once and replay it. Not only that, but the New Game + with sound and subtitles didn't even get patched in until a week after it's release!!! Who does that!!!!! And the version with audio has some ATROCIOUS writing. Just about every scene has at least one line of dialogue that makes no sense, almost as if the writers were only told about how humans speak, but never actually heard one themselves. I’ve heard a lot of people saying it’s The Room of video games, and I sort of agree. Much like The Room, it’s not the absolute worst of it’s form of media, the game is playable start-to-finish, extremely straight forward so you can’t get lost, no bizarre puzzles to figure out, the FMV cutscenes are at decently produced. Hell, I wouldn’t even say The Quiet Man is the worst game to come out THIS YEAR. Crying Is Not Enough released in June, and boy oh boy is that game a trash fire. But it’s just BAFFLING that this game exists. That’s the perfect word to summarize my feelings on The Quiet Man. Every single thing about it is just, baffling. I need to stop writing about this game. This whole paragraph is probably going to be longer than anything from my Top 10, which feature a few games I ADORE, but no. All my writing energy is going to how terrible this fucking video game is. Don't play The Quiet Man. Or do, fuck if I care. Maybe watch someone else play it, I don't know. I don't know anything anymore.

Ori and the Blind Forest

Back on the topic of good games, I finally got around to playing Ori and the Blind Forest! I played it for a little while after it originally came out around 2015, but it just didn’t stick with me at the time. There wasn’t any real reason why it didn’t stick, I just got bored and stopped playing, which isn’t that uncommon for me to do. But for whatever reason I decided to go back to it super late last year. It may have been the excitement for all the cool looking Metroidvanias slated to release throughout the year, I don’t know. But I played through it, and it’s fantastic! Most Metroidvanias tend to go with around a 60-40 split between platforming and combat. Different games have different splits, sure, but most of them tend to keep those somewhat even. Ori is like an 85-15, greatly favoring tight platforming over fighting enemies. Your main attack automatically locks on to nearest enemies, and boss fights are replaced with autoscrolling or stealth segments. The traversal is also super smooth and fun, making that 85-15 split much more favorable than others in its’ genre. Great controls combined with some amazing visuals and music, Ori is definitely a game I regret not playing earlier.

2019′S COMING IN HOT

Spelunky 2, Wargroove, Indivisible, Hypnospace Outlaw, Ooblets, UFO 50, Kingdom Hearts 3, Overland, Sea of Solitude, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, and  Get in the Car, Loser!. These are all great looking games that are supposed to be coming out in 2019. I remember last December when I last did this, I couldn't think of THAT many games I was really excited for, and despite that I ended up with a pretty damn good list of games for 2018. So who knows what next year will be like?!

And now... The Top 10!

#10: Spider-Man

It’s been a great year for Spider-Man. His best buddy Venom had a pretty good movie, his new video game is good, and he has a new movie that’s fantastic! Yep, it’s been such a good year for Spider-Man in which nothing bad has happened to him or the people who created him.

#9: Megaman 11

2 > 4 > 3 > 8 > 11 > 7 > 5 > 6 > 9 > 10 > 1. Don’t @ me.

#8: Iconoclasts

Iconoclasts has been in development for a very long time. Officially, development for it began in around 2010, but there is a seemingly earlier game by Konjak that shares many similarities. Basically, Iconoclasts began development at least 8 years ago, and it shows, for better or worse. On one hand, the game is gorgeous. Grade A sprite work all around. The characters are interesting and well written with their own morales and arcs, and the story is surprisingly deep and compelling considering the type of game it is. On the other hand, the gameplay feels very outdated now. The combat is super simplistic, the puzzles aren't terribly challenging or rewarding, and the weapon/ability upgrades are very limited. The traversal can be sluggish and boring, which is a red flag for a game where you have to backtrack a decent amount. If Iconoclasts came out 4 or 5 years ago, I feel like it would've been at least a cult classic. But in 2018, it's a decent Metroidvania in a year of great Metroidvanias. Overall, I'm glad Iconoclasts finally came out. I just wish it either came out sooner, or got more updated for modern game design.

#7: Slay the Spire

For all intents and purposes, I shouldn't like Slay the Spire. I always hated card-based RPGs, and always hated RPGs with only one party member. And for the most part, the issues I have with both of those are still very much present in Spire. So why have I sunk 50 hours into it so far? Beats me! If I had to guess, I’d say it’s the similarities it shares to Darkest Dungeon, one of my favorite games, that ultimately drives me to it. Now, you might be asking why Slay the Spire, a game that came out in 2017, and won’t be in 1.0 until probably 2019, is in my top 10 for this year, but Ori & the Blind Forest isn’t? Well, I started Ori last year, and didn’t start Spire until the middle of this year! Also, they’re my awards, and I can do whatever I want!

#6: Just Shapes & Beats

Just Shapes & Beats’ concept is simple: A rhythm bullet hell. Certainly not the first of it’s kind, and not even the first one to use simplistic shapes as the obstacles/characters. But there’s a bit more to it than that. JS&B has some good personality to go with it. It has some fun characters, all of the levels are demonstrative of the areas you’re in on the world map, it even has a couple lightly emotional moments! It’s much more than you’d expect from a game about Just Shapes & Beats. When I was younger and had vague dreams to make games, I always imagined making one that was basically “What if a Windows Visualizer was trying to kill you?” and also be themed around a world and a story, and JS&B is basically that.

#5: Pipe Push Paradise

What happens when you take Pipe Dream, an iconic puzzler which has given inspiration to countless others, and mix it with Stephen's Sausage Roll, arguably one of the greatest puzzle games of all time? You get Pipe Push Paradise, of course! That’s all I really have to say, and all I NEED to say.

#4: Dead Cells

Go play Dead Cells. Really, it’s the closest thing to a perfect Rogue-like (that isn’t Spelunky) out there right now. It’s a game so good, Filip Miucin couldn’t look away from it long enough to write his own review!

#3: Subnautica

If I had the opportunity to become a Fishman and live underwater, I’d probably take it. As long as you take out the jellyfish that can kill you .0001 seconds after stinging you, I have no qualms with open water. In fact, the isolated feeling from it is really relaxing to me. That’s what initially drew me to Subnautica. Survival games are usually hit or miss for me, but the ones I like I really dive deep into (Heh heh), and Subnautica is one of those. Also, I was rewatching the Super Mario Bros. Super Show on Netflix as I played this, so now I’ll have those two permanently linked in my mind from now on.

#2: Into The Breach

I love tactics games, especially Advance Wars. While I do still love others in the genre like Fire Emblem or X-COM, there are some intricacies of the AW series that most of the others don't have. When I first heard about Into The Breach, I thought it would be exactly what I wanted, a true successor to the series I'd been waiting for. And it was not! But it's still pretty damn good. It's not so much a tactics game as it is a puzzle game, described by Waypoint's own Austin Walker as a "tactical dance". You know at the start of each turn where each enemy is going to attack, and it's your job to navigate and attack with your 3 mech units in the exact right way to minimize or even straight up prevent any damage that would befall you or the cities you're protecting. You aren't trying to advance a map during combat, or conquer any enemy bases. You are merely trying to avoid damage for a certain amount of turns and move on to the next level. And it's all super fun! I've let the game sit for 10, 20 minutes while I try and figure out every possible option I have after being backed into a corner, and coming up with the absolute perfect solution and getting through to the other side is super satisfying. The biggest gripe I have with Into The Breach is the same one I had for FTL, the developer's last game, which is I don't think the unlockable mechs/mech teams are as fun as the default ones. I played most of them once or twice and went "Yeah, that's a thing" and migrate back to the first mech team. All in all, Into The Breach is a fantastic game, it just doesn't scratch that Advance Wars itch I've been feeling. Oh well, at least there's still Wargroove!

#1: Celeste

Celeste is a game I got 100% completion in. For those of you who might not know me well enough to know how I play games, that’s something that never happens. I think the last time I purposely got 100% on a game was in Uncharted 2, and even that was only to get a skin for multiplayer. Despite that, it’s been really difficult for me to write up a whole thing about why I love Celeste so much. It’s just a compilation of everything. I love the look of it, both the sprite work and the character portraits. The music, as mentioned before, is fantastic and perfectly fitting for all of the levels themes which deal in different forms of anxiety or self-doubt. The levels are hard, but not too hard. The secrets hidden throughout the game are so satisfying to figure out and find, very reminiscent of Braid. I feel confident in saying that Celeste has cemented itself as one of my favorite games of all time.

Well, that’s all I can handle writing for this year. Thanks to the few of you who skimmed through all this, and extra thanks to the fewer of you who read all of it! I’m not 100% sure if I’ll do this whole shpeel next year or not; maybe if 2019 turns out to be an incredible year for games, and definitely not if I have to move to Twitter in the off-chance Tumblr dies out completely. Hope you all had a fun holiday season, and have a great 2019! 

[zaggitz]

My Top Ten Video Games of 2018

Well, here were are again, my friends. After the non stop roller coaster thrillride of VIDEO GAMES 2017, can 2018 live up to the hype??? I’m gonna go ahead and say no right off the bat, but while every single week wasn’t filled with a new incredible genre defining experience like last year, we still had some genuine certified bangers in the mix, many of which I think will remain important to me as the years go by. It should be noted this is the first year since 2014 where a Trails game hasn’t hit the market, so for the first time ever since I started writing these lists, a Trails game will not reign victorious at the end. Scandalous! Impossible!! Shit year tbh, but we’ll get by.

Outside of games this year is maybe the best year of my entire life?? I got out of a years long slump, started an actual genuine career path, and then somehow managed to fenegle falling in love into the whole mix. These lists have always come from some greater sense of yearning to reach out and communicating how I feel about things I love to anyone who will listen, but right now all I can think of is about how happy and lucky I am for my life to have taken the turns it did this year. 2019 is gonna have to try real hard to break my stride.

If you’d like to read my previous rambly lists, here they are:

2015

2016

2017

Anyway without further ado, here’s ten games that aren’t Trails of Cold Steel 3(WHEN??):

10. Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales

This one is only at the bottom of the list because I didn’t have time to finish it. I loved getting to jump into the world of the witcher again. The world is dark and gritty and the choice are morally grey and the writing is impeccable and gwent is even more fun to play as a main mechanic than it was in the Witcher 3 as a minigame. I can’t wait to dive back into this one come the new year.

9. Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology

One of the most well written and executed time-travel-based JRPGs I’ve ever played. It’s a story about trying to fix mistakes, about different perspectives trying to understand each other instead of fighting over differences.

It’s got an overall theme of realizing how important you can be to the world around you despite seeming insignificant that really resonated with me, an amazing cast of characters and it also just happens?? To be really fun to play??

8. The House in Fata Morgana: A Requiem for Innocence

That I didn’t play the first game the year it came out is a damn crime, this series of gothic tragedies has such special, meaningful and important themes of redemption and sacrifice and finding the people who will survive the world with you no matter what. It tackles mental illness, lgbt topics with an immense amount of respect and tells some of the most heart wrenchingly real and gutting stories, but it all culminates in the most viscerally satisfying way.

This sequel delves into one of the most unspoken parts of the original while also offering promising and hopeful glimpses into the future. It’s absolutely a must play if you in anyway liked the original.

7. Wandersong

Now here’s one that came absolutely out of nowhere. This game just oozes joy out of every pore. You play as a dandy bard who can only interact with the world via music trying to save it from being destroyed. Heavy themes of pacifism and the internal struggle of doing your best when you know for a fact your best won’t be good enough cover this thing like sprinkles on the most delicious and colorful donut.

Another thing I love is how every single chapter of this game plays differently, one will be a pirate adventure where you steer a ship with pirate shanties, the other will be a Majora's Mask still town sim, it goes on like this, and it never once gets boring. This game will make you smile the biggest smile from start to finish.

6. God of War

Remember Kratos?? He’s back, in open world action-RPG form. I sort of grew up with the original GoW trilogy and am of the opinion that they aged about as well as I did(which is fuckin not gracefully, teenager me was a fuckin mess). God of War is out of its edgy teenager phase now, and just barely squeaking out of its holier than thou college student phase into a game that actually has a few things to say, fun characters, an amazing world, and a paternal relationship that is kind of actually a joy to watch unfold despite everyone making fun of the game for it.

This game is like twice, maybe three times as long as the original trilogy which hilariously kind of makes those games feel like a prologue to this one. I suppose the real ironic thing is they kind of are?? They were shallow angry games with nothing to say but their existence created a character that, under the right light, under THIS light, could actually be extremely compelling and fun to watch grow alongside his boy. This series went from one I was glad to see gone to one I can’t wait to get more of.

5. Yakuza 6: The Song of Life/Yakuza Kiwami 2

It’s absolutely insane that Yakuza is popular now. I got into this series 10 years ago and at the time every single new yakuza release was a blessing and a curse; blessed because holy shit they actually put out a new Yakuza game and cursed because oh god it sold like shit and they probably won’t localize the next one why did they localize the zombie spin-off it almost killed the series nooooo don’t localize that give us the samurai games instead.

So anyway, this year I finally finished my journey playing through all 7 mainline Yakuza games. The journey of Kiryu Kazuma has come to an end and I have seen every step he’s taken. Yakuza 6 itself had kind of a really rough new engine that Kiwami 2 ended up refining, and from a gameplay perspective these games are basically the same, for the most part(Kiwami 2 is just better). Neither of these games come close to touching the masterful highs of Yakuza 0 but from a story perspective I think the respect and love this series has for its protagonist is unmatched, and while I was sad to see him go, I will never forget that big good crime boy and his whacky antics.

Ganbare, Kiryu-san...sayonara!!!!

4. The Messenger

This game fucking rules, I really don’t know how to do it justice, I played it on a whim and fell in love with it for the time it took me to beat it in a way that I haven’t done with a game in a long time. The gameplay is fluid and fun, the writing is charming and legit hilarious at times and the soundtrack, oh baby the soundtrack, if this wasn’t a year where Celeste came out this game would win every single award for OST of the year, I would fight anyone who disagreed.

The main gimmick of this game once you reach the halfway point is being able to shift between the 8 bit past and the 16 bit future, and every time you do the music will warp to fit those aesthetics and the game does this so freaking seamlessly, it’s amazing. The final level in particular meshed the music so well with the narrative that I was like fist pumping the whole way through the final sequence of the game.

It rules extremely hard, play it. Yes, you, you reading this right now, play this game so these people will make more for me. Please?

3. La-Mulana 2: The 0th Body, The 9th Spirit

Chalk this one up for game of 2018 I most can’t wait to replay and do a bunch of quick runs of. The original La Mulana is one of my favorite games of all time and this sequel delivers more of all the stuff I love while streamlining a lot of the more obscure and obtuse solutions. The music, the bosses, the world, all of the best things about the first game were all just as on point in this one.

The game evokes a sense of mystery you can only really achieve in a sequel to a game like the original La Mulana by constantly making you question the lore you already knew from the original. This all culminates in a sidequest that for a game as inscrutable as opaque as LM2, I still ended up getting really really emotionally invested in.

I don’t think there will ever be a La Mulana 3, and if that’s the case I’ll be able to leave this series happy, these two games complete each other in such a huge way, and will remain some of my favorites for years to come.

2. Celeste

I swear to god, this game was my Game of the Year for 9 whole months. I have never in my life played a game with this much precision perfect game design. This is maybe the tightest most consistent feeling platformer of all time. It’s like basically perfect on a gameplay level. That it meshes it’s gameplay with it’s themes so well is what truly makes it stand out and transforms it into not only a viscerally satisfying, tough but fair game, but an emotionally resonant masterpiece that will stick with me for years to come.

Celeste is a game about climbing a mountain. Celeste is a game about overcoming depression and anxiety and learning to cope and better yourself. These things are not interchangeable, the challenges you face as a player in this game all tie in perfectly to the main character, Madeline’s struggle to just fight through her self doubt and self loathing. It’s an extremely real tale, despite how fantastical the visuals are. It’s a game about fighting and screaming and clawing at that fucking Mountain to give you a way to have your heart again, and it’s absolutely wonderful.

The game is difficult, but every personal triumph accompanies one in game, and it lets you truly feel the feelings the game is trying to evoke alongside it. This is the kind of game that only comes once or twice a decade. I’d be extremely surprised to see anything hit this level any time soon.

1. Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age

This is the gold standard for all JRPGs now as far as I'm concerned. There are series that go deeper, that go harder, that go all the way in with their music but no game out there exists that is so confidently just the classic all encompassing idea of a JRPG like this one. This game is pure comfort food, it knows exactly what it is and what it is is a fun heartwarming and charming classic JRPG “chosen one gets the cool sword and fights the dark lord” tale and damn it if it hasn’t been a while since we had just a good one of those.

Haha, just kidding.

A third of the way through, this game takes a dramatic shift and flips everything on its head in a way that hasn’t been really seen or executed this well since FF6. Suddenly the comfortable is taken away, the world is scary, bleak, and the themes you missed, that were simmering in the background since the start of the game start to boil over to the surface. The world is darker but the people in it are warmer, they hold themselves together until the day comes, and the game will find ways to make you cry you would never expect from a series this traditional. These themes all culminate in a super satisfying finale that, while not entirely happy, at least leaves the world in a better place than it was before, with it’s people that much closer.

Now what if I just didn’t write any of that and told you why I really love the game.

Credits roll, and the post game, that is to say, the final third of the game, begins. What if the shift never came, how would the world be different? How would these characters acrs resolved? Who would live? Who would die instead? What does this happening mean to the world? What does this new future hold?

In one simple moment, you answer all of those questions, and Dragon Quest XI becomes a prequel to Dragon Quest III (which was a prequel to DQ1 but that’s less important).

All of a sudden this entire series has lore, everything is connected in a way it had never been for 30 years, and it fits so seamlessly and perfectly that it could only have happened in a series like Dragon Quest, which has had the same writer across all 11 games. As a fan who had played all the available english games this was such an insane rewarding moment. I struggle to really compare it to anything else outside of maybe like…

Oh shit.

OH SHIT.

Outside of goddamn Trails.

Ya’ll know what that means right?

That’s right, Trails wins game of the year once again. STILL THE KING BABYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY