Back on the other website, there used to be a sub called r/12in12 where people would try to beat 12, 24, 36+ games per year. I never really set myself any specific target like that, but the end of year reviews were always fun to read/write. Considering that I don’t think a single game I beat came out this year, I think this is the right community to ask this.

What games did you beat this year? What did you think of them?

For me:

January:

Nothing!

February:

Spider-Man: Miles Morales 7/10

When I first played Spider-Man on a PS4, I didn’t like it. The 30fps cap made the swinging feel clunky and nothing about the rest of the game made up for it. The PC release finally comes around and at last I get the hype, the web swinging is so good. The combat is very Arkham and it’s fine, the story is fine, but the web swinging is just so good. Spider-Man Miles Morales is just more of that.

The Zachtronics Solitaire Collection ?/10

This game is responsible for Steam thinking that Solitaire is one of my favorite genres of games. There are multiple versions of the game here, most of them are fine but Fortune’s Foundation is probably my new favorite version of Solitaire. I don’t know what I’d rate this out of 10, but I got 90 hours of entertainment for my $10.

March:

Split / Second 8/10

The PC port sucks, you have to use a fan patch to remove the 30fps cap, the controller support is terrible, but there’s nothing else like it. It’s a fantastic arcade racer with a super unique premise. The rest of the industry seeing this and Blur bombing financially is probably why racing games are so goddamn anemic now which is such a shame.

April:

Rakuen 7/10

I’ve never really gotten into any RPG Maker games like this, but it had great reviews and I needed something battery-friendly to play on my Steam Deck. Rakuen was pretty darn good, the characters are well written and the environments outside of the hospital are pretty. The story is a little predictable, but I think that’s fine what it wanted to tell.

May:

Hotshot Racing 6/10

What’s here is fun, but there’s almost nothing here. I beat the entire campaign in about an hour. The AI rubber-banding was a bit annoying at times. Also re-reading the Steam page, apparently it has always-online DRM? The fuck?

June:

Universal Paperclips ?/10

I was in the mood for a clicker game. I tried Cookie Clicker first but the pacing is just so slow. Universal Paperclips is a clicker game that can be completed in a reasonable amount of time, and it scratched the itch I was looking for.

July:

Wilmot’s Warehouse 8/10

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Ai4NZnjOdUE/maxresdefault.jpg

Super Meat Boy 5/10

I’ve forced myself to start this game so many times over the years, I finally completed it and I just don’t like it. Way too janky/buggy for a simple 2D platformer. I beat the final level 3 times and couldn’t figure out what to do at the end, only for it to turn out that the final cutscene wasn’t activating because my frame rate was too high. Ugh. It just made me want to play N++ again.

Ape Out 9/10

Ahhh it’s so good. The soundtrack and sound effects and visuals, it’s just perfect. A little on the short side (only took 1:40 to beat), but it’s pretty replayable.

Neodash 7/10

It’s basically Distance but worse. Distance is one of my favorite games of all time and is firmly a 10/10, so that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Any levels that rely on the mid-air controls bring down the experience a bit, but luckily there aren’t a ton of those.

August:

CrossCode 10/10

A top-down RPG with a ~50-hour story? I should hate this, but everything clicked into just the right place. The puzzles are fun (maybe a little too long), the combat is great, the characters are great, the story is great, I did not expect to love this game as much as I did.

Sayonara Wild Hearts 6/10

It’s basically a 1-hour music video. It’s very pretty and the songs are good, but the gameplay just kind of… exists.

Mad Max 6/10

It’s a beautiful looking game and the vehicle combat is fun, but everything else is pure mid-2010s generic open world game, complete with Arkham combat.

Riptide GP2 6/10

It’s fine, but there’s absolutely no reason to play this over Riptide GP Renegade unless you’re really board and looking for a grindy podcast game like I was. Renegade is just this but better in every way. It is a bummer that there are so few boat (or boat-adjacent) racing games coming out these days.

WRC Powerslide 4/10

It’s insanely repetitive and the driving physics are really floaty. The power-ups are awful but luckily they can be turned off in settings. The damage model is actually really good though, which is bizarre for a top-down racer. This got delisted from Steam years ago, if I didn’t already own it, I would not go out of my way to play it.

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter 7/10

It’s a fun little walking simulator mystery game, I don’t remember much of the actual story right now lol. I played the remastered version which was very pretty though.

Quantum Conundrum 7/10

It’s a 6/10 puzzle game brought up by a full point because of John de Lancie’s character.

September:

Hotline Miami 8/10

I know it’s technically kind of a mess, but like everyone else I really loved it anyway. The soundtrack is excellent and clearing rooms is super satisfying. Raycevick’s video really makes me want to play OXTO next.

PowerWash Simulator 8/10

The perfect podcast game.

October:

Cassette Beasts 8/10

The Pokemon games have always sounded interesting to me, but I’ve just never been able to get into any of them as an adult. Cassette Beasts finally scratched that itch for me, and this works way better as a concept than the Pokemon games do for me. As a bonus, the story is surprisingly good as well. Also it’s made in Godot!

Sonic Generations 5/10

I don’t like the Sonic games, but I’ve always heard this is one of the good ones so I decided to play it. A couple of the levels were fun, but most were just frustrating and/or buggy. For a character who’s entire thing is going fast, the levels sure like constantly slowing you down with obstacles that cannot be seen coming.

The Witness 6/10

90% of the levels in this game are good and clever, where finding the solution is fun and satisfying. The remaining 10% includes puzzles where the entire screen is flashing to make it hard to look at, puzzles where the answer still makes no sense even after googling it, and puzzles that cannot be solved unless you solve a different puzzle first with no indication of where that’s the case. The story is also nonsense but luckily it’s easily ignored. This video was so cathartic after finishing the game.

Doom Eternal (& The Ancient Gods) 8/10

“Doom Eternal is a game with so much testosterone dripping from its orifices that it caused me to create a son via mitosis”

November:

Superliminal 8/10

My primary complaint is that it isn’t longer. It took a little over an hour and a half to reach the end, but what’s here is fantastic.

December:

Nothing again, lol

  • Ashtear
    2·
    6 months ago

    I’m usually better about patient gaming, but I sunk a lot of hours into a certain very popular new release this year. The older releases I did finish:

    JRPGs
    • Atelier Rorona. Very chill game, enjoyed it once I got into a groove. I wrote up a more detailed community post on it earlier.
    • Atelier Totori. Simultaneously more funny than Atelier Rorona and more dramatic. Went some places I didn’t think it was going to go. The UI/UX in this was rough, which makes me think I’ve yet to play my favorite in this series.
    • Shin Megami Tensei IV. I really had to fight to get through the first few hours of this one. I may not have if it wasn’t my Discord server’s game of the month. Had a good time with it otherwise, aside from the occasional unwinnable random encounter. Excellent soundtrack.
    • Triangle Strategy. Solid gameplay, though it had fewer RPG elements than I’d like (equipment options in particular). There being a branching story was interesting, as that’s not a common thing in this genre. Not easy on the ears: atrocious English voice acting, forgettable soundtrack.
    • Xenoblade Chronicles 2. If I said I found the gameplay uninteresting, the quest design dated and that I was annoyed by the overall look of the game, one would think I hated it. However, I sunk right into the story and got very attached to Pyra for an overall (surprisingly) positive experience.
    • Xenogears (replay). Still one of my favorite stories in gaming. Desperately needs a re-release with an English script revision.
    The Rest
    • 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim. What you get when you pair a visual novel with exceptional, detailed sprite art. The combat sections are meh and I ran into more than a couple annoying chapters early, but the story has really grown on me since I finished it.
    • ⭐ Hardspace: Shipbreaker. My favorite in this post. Relaxing gameplay and great unconventional storytelling. If the game had a way to import my own music, I might still be playing it.
    • Metroid Dread. Super annoyed by the first couple hours, loved almost all of the rest. I also had a writeup on this one.
    • Night in the Woods. Cute design and dialogue. On the other hand, I’m very uncomfortable with how plausible the story is.
    • Phoenix Wright: Dual Destinies. Not the best Phoenix Wright. This one took me a few years to get through.
    • Unpacking. Surprisingly moving. It’s an interesting way to tell a story, and I did enjoy the game, but I don’t think I’ll be jumping at playing any copycats this might spawn.