25,361 community articles
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Back when I reviewed the satirical Lair of the Clockwork God for a GOTY feature last year, I mentioned that no-one was really making the sort of pretty, poignant, largely subtext-driven puzzle-platformers that it was trying to mock. Turns out I forgot about Nomada Studio 's Gris ("Gray," but you knew that) from 2018: every bit the emotional and aesthetically-stunning puzzle-platformer its Indie...
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Time is the hardest thing to come by for many of us that enjoy this hobby. Whether it’s kids, work, other hobbies, or any other myriad of reasons, we’re often forced to be intentional with our limited time. To complicate things there have been numerous releases of remakes, remasters, and re-releases. In 2020 alone, we were bombarded with games like FFVII Remake, Tony Hawk 1+2 Remastered, Pikmin...
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Welcome to the Mega Archive CD, Mega Archive's younger and more reflective brother, as he continues to keep pace with his cartridge sibling in the final months of 1992. That means this entry contains games for November and December which (sigh) also means that we have to contend with the North American Sega CD launch and the dumptruck of FMV madness that accompanied it. I've been putting off th...
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I started playing Bugsnax half out of curiosity and half out of spite. There’d been a fair amount of buzz around the game, including some discussion on the Bombcast, but I wasn’t sure quite what it was and I wanted to see for myself. I also was, and remain, annoyed at Sony for only releasing the PS5 version on PlayStation Plus but I nabbed it there anyway and once I got my PS5 and finished Astr...
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I really wanted a PS5 and was super disappointed when I missed the pre-order window because I am on the East Coast and was asleep. I'd set aside money for it from my tax refund earlier in the year and game consoles are one of the few things that I'm willing to spend a little irresponsibly on because I use them quite a bit at least weekly if not daily. I understand some people like to wait and t...
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Maneater has a killer premise. Pitched as a ShaRkPG, you play a baby shark ( doo doo doo doo doo doo ) cut out of her mother’s stomach by a vicious reality tv shark hunter named Scaly Pete, and marked as the trophy for a future episode. During the course of the game you hunt prey, both finned and two-legged, and build up your shark into a giant powerhouse of the deep to exact revenge on Scaly P...
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Since one of the hardest things for me is remembering the games I played during a year, whether it came out said year or not, I decided to jot down some thoughts about the games I do play this year. Will this or any of the games be on my GOTY list this year? Only time will tell, but at least I'll be able to remember if it was worth adding. Kill la Kill -If is a game based off an anime that I've...
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I mean, at least there were some good games in 2020. But first, some housekeeping: Honorary Awards: Old Game of the Year: Fire Emblem: Three Houses Best Game I Played Like Two-Fifths Of: Kentucky Route Zero Best Game That Lost The Plot: Doom Eternal Best Game I Suck At: Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2 Best "I Don't Know...This Is Fine... " Game: Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout Best Use Of Hatsune Miku...
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Like many nerds, my preferred direction when it comes to stories of the space opera genre tends towards the scientific. I've been watching the new season of The Expanse this past month, and between flights of fancy about glowy blue alien shit the show is often pretty grounded in the realities of space travel and the high-level academic terminology involved. Perihelions, albedos, Lagrange points...
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The Last of Us Part II Call of Duty Warzone Hades Microsoft Flight Simulator Risk of Rain 2 Tetris Effect: Connected Trackmania Spelunky 2 Astro's Playroom Call of Duty: Black Ops- Cold War
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For the past week, I've been enjoying Operencia: The Stolen Sun , a first-person retro dungeon-crawler RPG with turn-based combat encounters (think Might & Magic X Legacy , if anyone remembered that coming out). I say "enjoying," but there's times when the game will throw a curveball at you, producing a standard foe or boss who proves to be a particularly challenging roadblock because of their...
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2020 was a soggy garbage fire that was both wet and hot, but not in an attractive or sexy way that I was hoping for. If the very concept of time can manifest itself into a physical construct, all 366 days from that year (fun fact, it was a leap year because the planet’s orbit deemed that the year needed to be extra longer because we live in a state of constant suffering by our own hubris) shoul...
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Man that was some year, huh? Not only did video games become a solace to hide from the shitshow going on outside in the world, they also gave new a plethora of other world's to explore when my own was locked down. Here's my own GOTY, with a few awards following that of the on-site format too. The "Lockdown" Game Here I'd like to give a special mention to four games in particular that do not act...
clintdriftwood (Premium member)
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So I finished watching the Prequel trilogy today. Yay! Good times. Somewhat. ...OK, so, The Phantom Menace. Let’s dive right in, ok? OK. The acting is really bad. It's been a long time and I don't remember ever noticing how bad the acting is here. This is a cast that should be able to perform far better than they do. Liam Neeson is in this fucking movie! That makes me think the problem wasn’t t...
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After listening to the most recent episode of "The Hot Spot" I decided to take all the Staff Top Ten lists over the years, and turn them into definitive game of the year lists. As much as I appreciate the discussions and deliberations, I always found the idea of having to concede your preferred game choice because you just don't have the energy to argue for it to be a little sad. That got me th...
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Hi Hello and welcome to the true Game of the Year blog; the one that matters. For you see, during my many mythical journeys to escape the real world, I played many a video game that did *not* come out in 2020. In some ways, is this not the true game of the year list, unconcerned with time and space and merely quality? No? Well, in any case, these are games I played a significant amount of durin...
arbitrarywater (Premium member)
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(I'm dedicating this one to my blogbud and fellow CRPG nut @arbitrarywater who gifted me a promising-looking RPG on Steam a few weeks back. This is not that game - I couldn't get that one to work, sadly - but blobbers like this seem up his alley also.) I sometimes worry after writing... one... ten... too many of these blogs, that I have a tendency to repeat myself. If so, you're going to hear f...
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OK, now for the bigger list: after making my top 10 list for 2020 , it's time to rank the rest of the games I played from the year. It's a tradition I've stuck to for a few years now, and it gives me a chance to briefly speak to all the new games I played over the year. It's fun, and hopefully paints a more holistic picture of my gaming year; though I should say that it's a fairly loose ranking...
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Yolanda and I have relaxed into more of a casual TV-watching environment since the lockdown began. I’m not generally big on TV shows as I prefer to either play games or read, but there have been plenty of games and shows that have paired up well for paying half-attention to each of them. (“Podcast games,” I’m told people call them.) If I’m running around with Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla muted wh...
