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lone-sk · 11 months ago

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Hey, so! I thought it would be fun to do a tier list of all the games I played for the first time this year, and discuss my thoughts on them. Tiers are unordered, thoughts below the cut.

Super Meat Boy -

Just a fun ass time. Excellent platforming, a great difficultly curve, fun level gimmicks, and a solid amount of content. Basically as flawless as a video game can get.

The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth -

I've never played a roguelike where each run felt so unique. All the different shit you can do with ability synergies and items is insane, the skill ceiling for this game is practically infinite. This is what the roguelike genre has the potential to be, and every other roguelike is now worse because they aren't this good.

Dark Souls Remastered -

Yeah, the combat is improved in later entries, but the level and world design here is unmatched. Each segment flows together so seamlessly, combined with the top notch atmosphere and aesthetic for an unforgettable experience.

Psycholonials -

A really exceptional visual novel that talks about the pandemic, the internet, and just kinda what its like being a young adult nowadays. Captures a lot of weird and intense feelings. It makes you feel so emotionally drained after every chapter, and I mean that as a compliment.

Persona 5 Royal -

There are so many interconnected systems in this game, but they're all so balanced and intuitive. The developers thought of everything, and every time you get complacent, they pull another trick out of their sleeves to keep you on edge. Masterclass of pacing. Plus, the visual style is leagues above anything else out right now. The RPG mechanics are even somewhat manageable as well. It just feels good to play, and never really fumbles.

Class of 09 -

A visual novel that is both really funny, and really profound. Kinda similar to MTV's Daria, with a lot more edge. I do appreciate that there is a message - several really - at the core of it's various endings, and it's not just being edgy for the sake of it. The voicework really caries the experience, especially in contrast to the inconsistent artstyle. I get that they want to go for the shitty deviantart anime style, but some of the endcards just look bad.

Class of 09: The Re-Up -

Pretty much a direct improvement in every way. More scenes are hand illustrated now, and the artstyle looks a lot more palatable now. The voice actors are given more challenging scenes, and they absolutely rise to the occasion. There are less endings, and less content overall, but it's higher quality.

Cruelty Squad -

Everyone seems to talk about this games art style, but honestly, I just really liked the gameplay. Lots of high skill movement mechanics, paired with challenging level design, and a dash of immersive sim mechanics make for an engaging experience.

Melty Blood: Type Lumina -

A fighting game that combines the mobility of a platform fighter, with the combos and depth of a traditional fighter. Takes the best of both genres with none of the cons. I only wish the netplay was better.

Shenzhen I/O -

A puzzle game that involves programing and arranging circuits. Fun, but very challenging. Or maybe I'm just dumb.

Pentiment -

Disco Elysium but set in a 15th century European monastery. It's well written, and has cool art, but doesn't really have the memorable, interesting characters of Disco. Plus, it asks the player to learn a lot about medieval history. Like a lot.

Dead Cells -

A fun enough roguelike, but it runs out of steam pretty quickly, faster than you'd expect for this genre. After a while, you run out of good long term progression unlocks, and the difficultly curve really spikes. I got stuck at a point where I could beat through all of the stages easily, but then the end boss would wipe me out really quickly.

Hotline Miami -

Lots of visceral, gory gameplay. The aesthetics and art direction are on point as well, more so than normal for one of these games that was clearly made for a gamejam. The controls do kinda suck though, the lock on mechanic is especially unintuitive. It's almost impossible to play on controller.

Exa Punks -

Another fun programming puzzle game. The gimmick of having little robots you give commands to is fun, and kinda reminds me of those websites that teach coding in similar ways. The only problem is that the objective of levels can be unclear.

Watch Dogs 2 -

I'm surprised a Ubisoft sandbox is this high, but this game really grew on me. The gameplay is mostly similar to the stuff you can do on the hacking skill tree in Cyberpunk 2077, but more fleshed out and intuitive, really fun stuff. The story, too, is surprisingly pretty good. They also push the messaging pretty far, nothing that's proper like, anti-corporation or anything, but it's pretty anti-silicon valley, anti-walled garden tech, stuff like that. Shattered my incredibly low expectations, good job guys.

The Coffin of Andy and Leyley -

Overrated as fuck in my opinion. It starts out strong, but the pacing gets flattened by the end of chapter 2, and it feels like the developers don't know where to go from here. There are so many little bits and pieces of the story, with the cult, the demons, the weird shit to do with blood types - and I don't think there's any way to take these ideas, build on top of the story so far, and have something cohesive, or satisfying. And if you're just here for the incest, it's only in one scene at the end of one of the possible endings, so what the hell was even the point.

Shadows of Doubt -

A procedurally generated detective game, which gets points for letting you do pretty much everything. Like it's an admirable level of detail, you can do shit like break into the phone lines in order to trace someone's call. It just doesn't really click with my brain, I guess. Like it could be tutorialized a bit more, so the player has a better idea of what they can do. Plus after a while, you exhaust all the different cases there can be, and they all get predictable and formulaic. I do hope there are more content updates in the future, this is a great base to build off.

Psychonaughts 2 -

The world and characters in this game are all really good, but the story is really a drag for me. The first game had this goofy, silly vibe to it, but the story here is so overly focused on like, acknowledging how fucked up it is that you can go into people's minds and change their personality like that, which I always thought was kinda the joke of the original. Plus the gameplay is like, just okay, although a lot of the levels are too long, which feels like a weird complaint, but I ended up getting bored a lot.

Pseudoregalia -

Excellent platforming with dogshit level design. Once I left the tutorial stage, I was constantly confused about where I needed to go, and what I needed to do, and even where I was. Just some of the worst game design I've ever fucking seen. Abysmal shit. But, the movement is pretty spectacular, so I did end up finishing it. I hope people find out how to mod level packs in, that would be hype.

Pizza Tower -

I had the same issue with this game that I did with Mario Odyssey. The main character has such a distinct and refined moveset, so why am I spending half of most levels as someone who is not the main character? I don't understand this focus on captures. I still had a lot of fun, but it's frustrating as fuck, when you want to play as the fun character with the deep, high skill ceiling moveset, and the game does not want you to do that for some reason.

TIS-100 -

Another puzzle game for smart people, which is brought down a bit from not really having an art style. I dunno, I get wanting to be minimal and cool, but at least give me background music, come on guys.

FAITH: THE UNHOLY TRINITY -

I do respect the commitment to the Atari 2600 art style, but if anything this just proved why most "retro"style games went for the style of later console games. The gameplay is literally almost nothing, and I have a hard time getting into any story that's told in 90% text logs. The style makes for some effective horror, outside of that I had a hard time getting anything out of this.

ALAN WAKE II -

I feel like the devs did not consider the combat system here. Like the entire point of making combat clunky and resource - dependent is to force the player to pick and choose their battles. It falls apart when you're constantly forcing them to kill enemies. That, and the corkboard puzzle sections don't really require any thinking to solve, you can just brute force them. They aren't very intuitive either, it's such a transparent way to just, progress the plot instantly. I did like the story though, for the most part, and the visual style is pretty fantastic. Lots of eerie, abandoned scenes, I love it.

Hotline Miami 2 -

Whatever improvements to the art style and gameplay are negated by the terrible level design. Lots of wide open spaces, where an enemy off screen will shoot you, and you have to duck out of cover, spraying at them with an SMG that has random spread. Lots of glass, lots of levels that only really have one route, lots of getting killed by random enemies you didn't even notice. Just really frustrating stuff.

Teardown -

The tech used here is really cool, I just wish they used it in a better way. The levels are barely passable, there's no real difficulty curve, or ideas that get expanded upon. It still feels like a tech demo.

Hiveswap Act 1 -

It's a perfectly inoffensive point and click adventure game. The art is well made, I like the story, and I thought Joey and Xefros were cute together. It's just missing something to really bump it any higher. It's short, and the puzzles are all either obtuse as fuck or super easy to solve. I also have a hard time figuring out who this is for. I don't know if Homestuck fans or point-and-click adventure fans would get a lot out of this.

Yakuza 0 -

I had a hard time getting into this one. The main story is just too soap opera for me. So many characters with complicated relationships, so many dramatic declarations and cutscenes. The combat is also just okay. The side content is really great, but it's hard for that to carry the entire experience for me. What a weird game.

Critters for Sale -

It's difficult, because I think there's a lot of cool techniques here that would help push visual novels as a medium forward. Lots of cool visual effects and fun mini games. Being very clear and upfront about how many endings and routes there are. Good menu and UIs. But the stories are just, not very good? Like I can remember maybe one or two individual moments, but most of the game I've totally forgotten about. Except for the Death Grips storyline, what the fuck was that?

Far Cry 3 -

Everyone gasses up the main story on this one, but lets be honest, it kinda sucks. Vaas is great, but who gives a shit about any of Ethan's friends? Or Ethan himself? Plus, the gunplay and exploration were both so generic. They were probably impressive like a decade ago, but now? I can get this same experience in 20 other games, do something interesting with it, or get out.

Not for Broadcast -

A game that really had me, and then really lost me. At first, the gameplay is mostly basic video editing stuff - keeping the camera on the person talking, censoring curse words, stuff like that. Ok, makes sense, it's fun. But they slowly add more gameplay that's just busy work, and the story really goes off the rails, and I couldn't take it seriously anymore. It basically turns into watching Monty Python skits while solving a Rubik's cube.

Gunfire Reborn -

A roguelike fps that just kinda sucks. The "roguelike" elements don't change anything massive about your run, just enemy placement and weapon pick ups. And it runs on like, Borderlands progression, where you're just looking for stuff with the bigger number. The combat feels shitty too. Shitty movement, abilities and guns that don't feel satisfying to use, what a terrible experience. I hate how every FPS makes "difficult" enemies by just adding more HP.

Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch -

Boring as fuck. The story was boring, the combat was boring, the world was generic, I feel like I've played this game twenty fucking times already.

Jedi Fallen Order -

Dark Souls if it sucked. You can always tell if a game was made in Unreal Engine if it has shitty, floaty movement, and for a soulslike, not having precise movement really fucks with the entire experience. There are also too many ranged enemies, which is a problem when your character is melee focused. The levels suck, and the story is shit. Fucking Star Wars fans will buy anything.

Bastion -

It's Hades, but everything is 1% as good. I guess it was interesting to see the roots of certain ideas, but everything is just slower and not fun. Literally no reason to play it now outside of some historical curiosity.

City of Gangsters -

There are so many interesting systems here. You can set up specific routes for your crew to perform at specific times, down to the location, and action, but honestly, it just doesn't scale well. In video games that revolve around storing shit, the complexity ramps up much faster than it does in most games, and if you don't provide the player the tools for handling it, it's just overwhelming. I appreciate the ambition, but this needed like, another half year of dev time, minimum.

Outcore -

I've never played a game that was this self conscious. You can skip pretty much all of the gameplay, although it's not like it offers a lot outside of rip offs of better games. So much could have been done with this concept of a desktop buddy coming to life, but instead, I am presented with a rip off of the Flowey fight from Undertale. Guess it's not plagarism if you frame it as an homage. Get the fuck out of here.

Clone Drone in the Danger Zone -

It needs more. More upgrades, more enemies, more weapons, more arena designs. As it is, it feels like a gamejam game.

Hiveswap Act 2 -

Oh my god the story is so terrible. Imagine thinking that it's a good idea to introduce 30 characters in a 4 hour game. Barely any of them are interesting, either, and even if you do end up liking one, it's not like they can be a significant part of the story, because we've got 29 more of the fuckers to introduce. Plus there's an Ace Attorney segment like halfway through which is really hard to get through if you've never played one of those games. I don't see anyone enjoying this, outside of the really hardcore Homestuck/troll fans, and even then, do you know how much fan fiction for this series exists? And how much of it is really good?

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