What a year! I know that I’ve been a familiar face around here for some time, but this is actually the first year that I’m an official employee of Giant Bomb. I mean … I think. Are co-owners employees? Let’s say yes.
God, I’m a co-owner of Giant Bomb. That still doesn’t feel real at all. It’s been a strange journey, and I have to stop myself from reflecting on it too much before I get emotional. Instead, let me tell you about the digital images and corresponding computerized inputs that I enjoyed the most this year!
10. Absolum
I’ve always loved beat 'em ups, so I’ve really enjoyed this revival that the genre has experienced in recent years. Absolum might represent the best of this new era, smartly mixing perfect beat-em-up game feel and mechanics with just the right amount of Hades-style rougelite progression.
9. Silent Hill f
Someone told me that this game was actually a Sonic Unleashed-like, and boy, the payoff for that weird tease sure was incredible. Silent Hill f has just the right amount of tension and unsettling imagery to make it a standout horror title. I also enjoyed the focus on melee combat, something I was surprised to see others criticize. I thought its slow, methodical pace was a perfect match for this sort of game.
8. LEGO Party!
I’ve always enjoyed Mario Party in spite of itself. It’s nice to have a game in that style that is significantly better designed, faster paced, less random, and less cumbersome. It’s not often that a studio is able to stunt on Nintendo, but that’s exactly what happened here.
7. Dispatch
I was skeptical of Dispatch, as I don’t usually go for these Telltale-style narrative games. But Dispatch hooked me with its story and characters, and the actual dispatching gave me enough of a gameplay hook to help me feel like I wasn’t just watching a TV show.
6. Hades II
The first Hades was so good that I didn’t think a sequel needed much more than, well, more. That’s exactly what Hades II delivered, which I don’t mean to imply made it feel stale. Honestly, this is probably the better game of the two, thanks to the variety added with the two paths (up and down, baby).
5. Two Point Museum
I’ve always enjoyed museums, but it never occurred to me how much a game about designing them could be. Not only is Two Point Museum an enjoyable sim with plenty of room for customization, but its incredible variety makes it one of the best-paced games of its genre. Before you can get tired of working on your natural history museum, you move on to building an aquarium, and then a science museum, and even a supernatural hotel for ghosts. Each offered twists to the core formula, and I couldn’t get enough.
4. Donkey Kong Bananza
Sometimes the best games are the ones that just let you run, jump around, and wreck stuff. I never got tired of doing all of that in Bananza, and I still have that Zebra song stuck in my head. That whole final sequence was incredible, too. This is easily Nintendo’s best effort this year.
3. Blue Prince
We’ve seen a lot of “we’ve turned a genre into a rougelite” efforts before, but I never imagined we’d see something give that treatment to Myst-like adventure games. Somehow Blue Prince does that and doesn’t feel gimmicky. It’s a clever, atmospheric, and rewarding puzzle game that remains my biggest surprise of the year.
2. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
This is the game that showed everyone that turn-based RPGs don’t need to be some niche or retro thing. Turns out that they also don’t need to be over 80 hours long! Clair Obscur gave the world a blueprint for making turn-based RPGs modern and exciting again.
1. Hollow Knight: Silksong
I love Metroidvanias, and Silksong easily sits among the best. Its huge world is filled with secrets, and Hornet’s ever-expanding moveset makes the map a joy to explore. I know it’s a challenging game, but I love learning the patterns and strategies to take down those intricate boss fights. This game took me 40 hours to complete, but those were the 40 fastest hours of my life.