Wow you played way more games than I did! I need to stop chasing completions.
Sorry Oxenfree was a miss for you, Eleima.
I hope to start Pyre this month and have it on next year's list.
Eleima, when is the last time we can change our list? I saw your note about Pillars 1 and finally got a chance to play Battletech. I would be happy to swap out games.
From the OP:
Polls are closing on Saturday, January 5th, 2019, 9am GMT+1 (that's 3am EST, Jan 4th midnight PST).
A bit more than 24 hours to go!
I love that visual novels in GWJ have gone from dirty word to GOTY contenders and voted games. I love the odd dating sim here and there, as well, and I don't mind playing a good otome game from time to time. I hope more of the podcast crew play them and find something to enjoy, or else invite someone with insights into a dating sim game they like on the show.
If you liked Nier's story and could do with one minus the combat, check out some dating sims or visual novels.
Wound up with a top 8, rather than a top 10. Also just realised I've only actually finished 5 of those 8. Hmm.
1) Subnautica
2) Total War: Warhammer II
3) Battletech
4) Return of the Obra Dinn
5) Night in the Woods
6) Donut County
7) Far: Lone Sails
8) Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice
I've changed my Top Ten - please see original post but I've swapped Battletech for Pillars of Eternity 1.
A bit more than 24 hours to go!
I wanna be sedated.
Aristophan wrote:A bit more than 24 hours to go!
I wanna be sedated.
And now I have that song stuck in my head
1) Destiny 2: Forsaken (xbox one, pc) - It's really all I play and pretty much all I played all year long. I main on xbox with 2 characters at max power level and the third one will probably be there this week. I also play on PC too. 4 characters across 2 platforms is a big time commitment. My kids joke it's my second job but I can't stop playing.
2) God of War (ps4) - I've played every version (including the psp versions) and this one does NOT disappoint.
3) Forza 7 (xbox one, pc) - Got into this a bit since I picked up a civic si and discovered the joys of driving again. Bought it digital so tried it on the pc and dug up my old Logitech MOMO racing wheel and shockingly it still worked after installing some ancient logitech drivers from their website. Good times racing around nurburgring in a civic type r (the car I really wanted but wife said it looked too rediculously boy racer).
4) Shenmue 1 & 2 remaster (xbox one) - So many fond memories of this game back on dreamcast. Not sure how well it holds up today but it was all nostalgia for me.
5) Celeste (switch) - I'm too old for these brutally hard platformers but enjoyed it up until I got stuck.
6) Ghost Recon Wildlands (ps4) - Been playing this weekly with a set group of guys and it's a blast 4 player co-op.
Things I own but don't play because of Destiny 2:
- RDR2 - Beautiful but so many systems and tedious busy work I lost interest somewhere in chapter 2. Loved the first one but the this one I guess it takes longer for the story to get going. Maybe I just wasn't in the right mood but I'll probably get back to it at sometime and just focus on the main story.
- Spiderman: haven't booted it.
- Farcry 5: haven't booted it.
- Shadow of the Tomb Raider: haven't booted it. Loved the first 2.
looking forward to:
- Anthem
- The Division 2: I finished and got into end game on all 3 platforms (xbox one, ps4, pc) for the first one so yeah I'm a big fan.
most disappointed:
- Warframe (switch): barely tried it on all the other platforms in the past but decided to see if this could be the Destiny fix I was looking for in a portable form factor. It is NOT Destiny. I played all the way to opening up the first social area. I hated the movement, shooting, melee combat, level design (every mission was so generic, boring, the same uninspired design it almost looked procedurally generated).
1) Cross Code - Secret of Mana crossed with zelda, only harder and better
2) Hollow Knight - Haven't finished yet, the game isn't always clear on where to go
3) SuperHot VR - not saying the meme thing but you know what this is
4) 20XX - The Megaman X Roguelite I always wanted
5) A Robot Named Fight - The Metroid Roguelite that is much more metroid than dead cells, but doesn't look as nice, but plays more fair
6) A Hat in Time - the fact that I spend enough time to beat this in a week shows that the game is doing something right.
7) Dead Cells - I enjoy the progression, hated the RNG and the final boss, and that the game lies to you, even with that though, it is everyone's favorite castledroid
8) Mr Shifty - Nightcrawler the game, crossed with hotline miami, simple and enjoyable
9) Cultist Simulator - description pending do to wait timer, sanity lost, try again
10) Streets of Fury - Guardian Heroes, crossed with Streets of Rage, but somehow, looking worse but still fun
HM)Shrouded in Sanity (Freebirth) - somehow played a free game for 3+ hours that is supposedly a pared down Bloodborn with pixel graphics, so kinda a demake, felt it deserved a mention
Dishonorable mentions
1) Carnival Games VR - because the game no longer works on any vr headset and the devs don't want to fix it
2) Fallout 76 adjustments and Bethesda - enough said
1. Picross S2
2. Magic Arena
3. Hollow Knight
4. surviv.io
5. Tetris Effect
6. Donut County
7. Overcooked 2
8. West of Loathing
9. Gorogoa
10. Fidel Dungeon Rescue
1. Picross S2
MY PICROSS SIBLING!
I've procrastinated so it's just the list
1. Assassin's Creed Odyssey
2. Dead Cells
3. Vampyr
4. Hollow Knight
5. God of War
6. Forza Horizon 4
7. Marvel's Spider-Man
8. Donut County
9. Ashen
10. Monster Hunter: World
arogan wrote:4) Shenmue 1 & 2 remaster (xbox one)
You can't place two games on one spot. As it is, I've only taken Shenmue 1 into account. Let me know if you want to do it differently.
Good night, folks. Good work. Sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning
I say disqualify the whole list. That'll teach 'em to try to pull a fast one.
It's what the Dread Pirate Roberts would do.
Alright folks! With 141 goodjers for 450 games, and less than twelve hours on the clock, we've got a good thing going here!
I'm a lot more invested it seeing the results than I'd expected to be! Can't wait to see the countdown!
I wish I had time to do one of the well-formatted lists I see above, but alas, alack. Here's a bare-bones version and a few vaguely unnecessary hyphenates.
1. Into the Breach
2. Slay the Spire
3. Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy
4. Battletech
5. The Alchemist Code (Mobile)
6. Deadcells
7. Tower of Time
8. Battlefield V
So it's a list of 8.
Current take aways I need to play when I can fit them in are Obra Dinn, Slay to Spire and Donut County looks like a short bit of fun.
Don't k ow why I've resisted Slay the Spire for so long, I've been hankering for some form of card based adventure for a while...
...jumping in at the last second, even though I realized that I hardly played any new games in 2018. The two games I've played the most (Elite Dangerous and CK2) were not new for me. Another that I was going to include (Subnautica) I actually didn't play for the first time until just after Jan 1, so it had to be removed.
I bought a couple of expansions to both Stellaris and CK2 this year, but I don't think that those count.
Given all that:
1. Star Traders: Frontiers
2. Heat Signature
3. Offworld Trading Company
4. Bioshock 2 (really!)
5. House of the Dying Sun
I'm totally going to have to take back that thing I said about this community never voting something like Slay the Spire as its GOTY.
no! no more lists! ties are awesome!
1) Cross Code - Secret of Mana crossed with zelda, only harder and better
OK, I think I've seen Cross Code pop up a few times in this thread, and I vaguely remember it being discussed in the Indie or JRPG thread awhile back. I may have to put it back on my radar.
Boy oh boy did December get away from me. And November. And... well, let's just say I'm grateful for the deadline extension.
Just the list, for the ever-lovely Eleima:
- Celeste
- What Remains of Edith Finch
- Monster Hunter World
- Dead Cells
- Slay the Spire
- Overcooked 2
- Darkest Dungeon
- Burly Men at Sea
- Graveyard Keeper
- A Dark Room
And now, for my opinions:
10. A Dark Room (PC/Browser)
>Light fire
From that simple beginning, this browser game tells an interesting story through the events that happen in your village and what you find when you venture beyond the woods. The app version apparently continues the story, but I haven't given it a shot yet. I felt responsible for the nameless people who have moved into my village. I couldn't afford the medicine. I'm sorry.
9. Graveyard Keeper (PC)
A flawed take on the Stardew Valley genre. I'm not convinced it should be out of Early Access yet, but it has some interesting systems. I still put in a bunch of time improving my graveyard and farming vegetables and wine grapes. Look things up in a wiki, especially alchemy recipes, because one major flaw of the game is that it doesn't respect your time. The addition of a warpstone kept me from getting too discouraged from running back and forth between town, but the difficulty of moving large amounts of material between places got really tiring. Still, it filled a need for that relaxing crafting cycle and easy dopamine hits in a rough part of a long year.
8. Burly Men at Sea (PS4)
A fanciful storybook journey that I plucked from my PS+ freebies one sick day. The music and sound effects, largely vocal, are amusing, and following the bearded brothers through their various adventures is relaxing and entertaining. I think it was designed for touch interfaces, so a few interactions weren't immediately obvious with a PS4 controller, but I'm going to keep dipping back in to discover the various possible storylines.
7. Darkest Dungeon
Brutally difficult, but rewarding to figure out the mechanics. I love the art style and the way attacks are animated, along with the narration that really immerses you in the world (and is fun to quote around the house). The portability of the Switch is an asset for this, though the controls are nonideal and take some real getting used to. The emergent storylines are what really make the game for me, though I may be too attached to all my characters. The stress mechanic is interesting and it definitely contributes to the stress I feel when playing it! I'm probably only halfway through a campaign, but it's one I'll keep coming back to.
6. Overcooked 2 (Switch)
Delightful, frenetic, and absurd. Mr. Dragon and I love cooking together and work well in the kitchen, so it follows that we would also love this digital rendition of it. The game is really at its best when everything is chaotic and we're shouting and the whole kitchen is on fire and we dissolve into laughter as someone hucks an ingredient off the stage. It's still very satisfying to get totally in sync and three star levels. I'm excited to break it out whenever we've got people over to get to four players for pure chaos.
5. Slay the Spire (PC)
This deck-builder won me over as an easy game to pick up and play a few rounds of (and then a few more and a few more and...). I made the mistake of installing it on my work laptop for flights and it's very hard not to start playing it during boring meetings. I don't usually go for CCG type games due to the pressure of learning the meta, but the roguelike mechanics and the fact that it's single player mitigate the need to have an ideal build. The three characters all play differently, and multiple builds are valid for each. I'm excited to get some more time with it since they've added a lot of content.
4. Dead Cells (Switch)
A roguelike action game that actually made my Honorable Mentions last year on the strength of watching Mr. Dragon play it in Early Access. The combat looked so smooth that I had to give it a shot, and it flows really nicely. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed and played the game, even beating the final boss not once but twice. It's grown a lot since Early Access, and I'm excited to try the promised new content drop in the future.
3. Monster Hunter World (PS4)
As with many, this was my first time with the series. A friend had me download the beta, and I was utterly lost but somehow still had fun. Some Polygon videos and forum chatter convinced me to give it a proper go, and Mr. Dragon and I liked it enough to buy a second copy and PS4 so we could play together. We logged many hours playing with friends, and I really dug the prepare - hunt - fight - craft loop. While I don't love going to outside videos for stronger tutorials, I do enjoy the variety of weapons and strategies.
2. What Remains of Edith Finch (PS4)
This is a clever interactive fiction game about family, loss, and memory. I sat down to play a couple chapters, but finished the whole game instead. Poignant, funny, odd, and deeply moving. Changes up mechanics and art styles a few times in really inventive ways - as others have mentioned, the cannery level is an excellent example. This is one I'll be unpacking for a while.
1. Celeste (Switch)
A touching game about depression, anxiety, and completing improbable tasks. I'm not good at technical, challenging platformers. No, that's not right. I didn't have the necessary skills when I started, but I did when I finally saw the summit. Playing Celeste made me better at platformers and maybe even a better person; it really encouraged a growth mindset in approaching each new challenge. I feel like I could write an essay on this game... The soundtrack is also incredible, and I've enjoyed watching Mr. Dragon complete the harder challenges (all the B- and C-sides!).
Honorable Mentions:
16 Ways to Kill a Vampire at McDonald's (PC/Browser): Interactive fiction game, great characterization for how minimal it is. Neat puzzles to take out the vampire in increasingly convoluted ways. Gotta love a snarky heroine that has to rely on cunning and guile rather than facing her foe head-on.
Stories: Paths of Destinies (PS4): PS+ Freebie. I picked this up when I was home sick, and it was fine for that. An ambitious game with a branching story and several Bastion-like elements, it wound up working too hard for laughs and interspersing the narrator too many times. I like what they did with replaying through the story to unlock key truths, then use those to find the right path through. However, it loses some punch when key elements are entirely out of the player's control.
Divinity: Original Sin (PS4): Playing this co-op, we put several hours in then wandered off to other things. Will probably come back around to it when we feel like diving back in. Or maybe we'll just go play more Monster Hunter.
I started my list making process thinking it'd be tough to find 10 new games I actually liked, but ended up pleasantly surprised and with some hard decisions to make. Half of them even came out in 2018, so not a bad year!
1. The Lord of the Rings Online
2. Six Ages
3. Into the Breach
4. XCOM 2 + War of the Chosen
5. Assassin's Creed Odyssey
6. Aggressors: Ancient Rome
7. Slay the Spire
8. Total War: Warhammer
9. Dominions 5
10. The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth
Honorable Mentions
Armageddon Empires - played for the first time in many years and it's still seriously great!
Everspace
Starsector
Thanks for organizing, Eleima!
lol gunner what?
=) you remain the best, man.
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