58. I watched my wife play enough of this that I will now be highly suspicious if she ever gets me a bowl of soup

Took some time to unpack a few thoughts on Expedition 33. Watching what I thought was a "pretty good" game get transformed into A Cultural Object has been disheartening. So I have some thoughts on glitz, glamour, and respectability... transgamerthoughts.com/post/8027631...

Blades of Fire Day One Edition PS5 / XBSX is on sale at VGP! $49.99 / 34.99 USD 👉 tinyurl.com/4ythv56e - Enjoy Free Shipping when you spend $75 / 55 USD

74. Lost Soul Aside Got this at launch and had to drop it for another game, but with the latest patches, it runs a lot better and feels better to play. It's a mid/unpolished game, but the presentation is really pretty and flashy and the music is alright. The bosses are really fun and super-flashy!

57. Lost Soul Aside Not a great game, but also not a bad game. Its very pretty and has a lot of neat spectacle scenes but it doesn't lacks the kind of polish you'd expect from this kind of game which leads to a lot of awkward/janky and low budget moments. Both combat and the bosses were fun though!

Im really interested in the direction AC8 seems to be taking; I dont think the series has gone so big on face to face side character interactions since Electrosphere (which im in the middle of playing!). I like vignettes, but Im glad they have the confidence to try this kind of storytelling again.

Ok I guess I gotta get back on that series playthrough before *that* new deadline hits

I remember doing the deal for Epic Mickey, and Bob Iger shooting laser beams out his eyes at me in the Disney dining room. “Don’t let this video game fuck up Mickey.” Oh well. That’s over.

This is like paying the guys that robbed your house to also burn it down.

🌟 rolling 🌈 rolling 🎶 rolling 🌐

55. Blades of Fire I think this game has a lot of great characters and funny quirky writing. I don't really like this developer's output much so this game came as a genuine surprise. The forging weapons stuff is neat, and the game is gigantic. The postgame is robust and the soundtrack isn't bad.

evergreen

I may have forgotten i even played DD2 this year

Sabrina Carpenter: Braver and more powerful than Nintendo and Microsoft combined.

i am begging game developers and musicians who are not putting your soundtracks on bandcamp/ampwall to just... do that... please... i will not be streaming your music off A Music Service. let me actually give you money.

Love Discord being like "bro you didnt complete any quests this year" yeah man I dont know what those are and I'm working really hard not to have to learn

56. This dang ass Snoopy game that my wife made me do all of her minigames for. Charlie Brown kinda deserves all the bullying he gets after this one.

55. 9 Years of Shadows Took a bit of warming up to this one, but one double jump later I can say this was one of the better search actions I've played this year. Great spritework and colors, neat traversal tools, and I dug the Rayearth-like aesthetic the protagonist has going.

visual novels with barebones gameplay always make me tired... i've come to realize that if a game is 80% vn i would usually rather it just be 100. i don't want to move with the wasd keys man just put the story in the bag

54. The Last of Us Part 2 This OTOH was my first time playing the sequel and jesus its the most vile case of misery porn I've ever seen lobbed at fans of their own game. Sacrificing every bit of goodwill to beat you over the head with the most basic morality cudgel, Druckmann shouldn't have a job.

53. The Last of Us Part 1 Played this for my wife, who "missed" it a decade ago and appreciated having the blind spot in her knowledge filled up. I've always been pretty neutral on this one: pretty alright "zombie" game story, could understand why it got that big even if I didn't quite agree.

(the ironic part is that the one character from this who everyone and their puppy seems to hate is prob the only actually properly developed one and their involvement in the inciting incident feels entirely out of character compared to them in the rest of the game)

My wife just owned me and called me a floof

71. The Last of Us Part 2 (Remastered) "Good LORD, what is happening in there?!" "Bad writing?" "Bad writing? At this time of year? At this time of day? In this part of the country? Localized ENTIRELY within your kitchen?! May I see it?" I wish I didn't. Good lord, what a miserable time.

The modern world is just pro wrestling and a gambling addiction standing on top of a mechanical Turk.

A lot of folks seem to have forgotten sonic 3 the movie during these game of the year awards But I haven't I love sonic 3 the movie.

Blades of Fire shouldve been nominated at the TGAs and im not even kidding you The VA is good, it's just a fun, fun romp.

“You know, fair use is fair use and we need to make sure that we’re not stealing people’s intellectual property and rights but..." No! There is no "but" here! That statement ends with a period, not a "but".

51. Wattam Finally got around to this overlooked keita takashi joint, enjoyed how much it feels like a long overdue sequel to Noby Noby Boy (eating and pooping included) tho does also feel like there were one too many conflicting ideas for what to DO with the concept. What a strange game.

52. Alan Wake 2 Enjoyed this SO much more than the first game. Much prefer the more grounded, overall serious presentation of AW's quirky aesthetic, with Saga's competency being a great contrast to Alan's fuckups. Love the mixed media. Still missed Barry. I'll show you the herald of darkness ♪~

69. Alan Wake 2 Where the hell is Barry I think this game was more interesting than the first. Not everyone was my cup of tea but it's nice to see that it was really creative. Really involved everything including the kitchen sink which... worked? I think? It was fun. Where the hell is Barry

50. Silent Hill f I really wanted to like this. A visual/audio delight that's plagued by game design choices too baffling to ignore, on top of there being too many mediocre combat segments with the same handful of repeated enemy types. Getting to NG++ to "finish" the story felt like a waste of time.

Read the Neowiz IR presentation and Buried Stars writer doin an RPG with them?????

67. Hypnospace Outlaw I think this game took a tiny bit longer than I wanted to cook, but upon reflection, it needed that time to cook so you can understand why it's really cool to look at the pages you may have missed at the end. Fake internet is cooler than modern internet. The Squisherz theme 😍

66. Silent Hill f I hate saying this but this overstays its welcome. It has a great art direction and music. Even after 4 playthrus, the game felt like it needed better resolution. R07's writing style feels better in a VN since it has more wiggle-room to change. Encounter design + combat kinda suck.

I don't fucking WANT to play it my way I want a professional game designer to come up with a fun way for me to play and then I'll do that.

yep. if you don't have enough working games critics (regardless of medium -- podcasting, writing, whatever) then there aren't enough people to play a high enough volume of games for anything approaching true curation. obviously you can never have perfect curation, it's impossible. but it's worse now

still thinking about this article today. so many societal ills are caused by people white-washing what actually happens. it's awful to see games do it too. can't wait for cozy domestic violence simulator or cozy kkk simulator

"Physic" ive really gotta stop trying to write posts in the dead of night

Silent Hill f is two halves: its a really solid physic horror story centered on trauma and emotional abuse that does a lot of things I greatly enjoy in survival horror. Its also a really mediocre action game with like 4 enemy types, way too many forced combat rooms and poorly though out subsystems.

please watch movies and read books and play games and look at art, please view it with your own eyes through a lens you made yourself and not just through video essayists and ending explained videos please im begging you

The way @schalaasha.bsky.social rips the controller off my hands anytime a fox mask cutscene plays in Silent Hill f so she can press the screenshot button as many times as she can

49. Ghost of Yotei Successfully achieved the mission goal of being more Ghost of Tsushima, a game I adored a lot, but also to its own detriment since it leaves Yotei a bit lacking in self-identity. Visually stunning and aesthetically pleasing either way! Lethal mode is just as fun as ever.

48. Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound I dig the blend of linear 2d levels and The Messenger-style combat, but prob not enough to see me complete all of the secret missions and what I assume is a "true" ending. Feels very much like a score attack/perfect run kinda game.

47. Death Stranding 2: On the Beach An improvement over the first game by every measurable metric and one of the best looking games this generation on a technical level. The last 4 chapters are the most Hideo Kojima writing that Hideo Kojima has ever Hideo Kojima'd (wouldn't have it any other way).

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45. Blade Chimera Team Ladybug's (Touhou Luna Nights, Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth) latest! If you've played their catalog this one will feel very familiar, though it has unique quirks to stand on its own. Greatly enjoyed both the stellar 2D art and the fast travel map warping of all things.

46. Meg's Monster Very cute, short RPG that speedruns the plot of Monster's Inc. but in video game form. Glad that it doesn't overstay its welcome.