Showing 1-10 of 29 items
The likely GOTY champ as of this writing. I can't quite stop thinking about it. NORCO lingers like several other games vaguely similar to it also lingered, most or all of those I consider to be some of the best games of the decade, lifetime-ass award material. Fantastic company to keep. š: Game of the Year; Character of the Year (Detective LeBlanc)
One of the only narrative-heavy games giving NORCO a run for its money this year, plus its dice mechanics are somewhat more inventive and interesting than NORCO's light RPG combat. Not an equal comparison, of course, nor was NORCO really focusing on pure gameplay systems to begin with. Forget all that. In either a NORCO or a Citizen Sleeper, it's the storytelling that get me in the door and keeps me there, all other concerns are secondary. Where NORCO succeeded as near-future southern gothic somewhat magical realist sci-fi, Citizen Sleeper hits its far-future deep space sci-fi just as hard, regardless of if you've done these rounds involving matters of artificial intelligence and identity before. Some minor loss of friction and tension relaxing the narrative momentum towards the end of the game is the only thing keeping Citizen Sleeper from fully rising to NORCO's height, but there's enough variation and potential off-ramps and opportunities for divergent paths that by no means will every player share my experience or even see such possibilities as a negative. Not sure I really do either. Difference is difference. š: Most Bittersweet Endings; Best Vending Machine
Coming in right under the wire to challenge NORCO for the best narrative position and *probably* bump Citizen Sleeper down a peg or two. It'll finish high. How high? Could it force a tie? A rerun of the double banger, 1-A and 1-B situations of GOTY lists past, two games leapfrogging each other 'til death takes us? š: Weirdest Little Guys
"Holy shit I got a half hour into Stray before I realized the title was a reference to playing as a stray cat." - Dan Ryckert A lot of people kinda turned on Stray as soon as the GOTY season hit with a particular venom that I found rather sad and unnecessary. Maybe this was due to it getting multiple Game Awards nominations and winning at least one of them, and hey, in fairness I doubt I would've voted for it over Citizen Sleeper either. But the reaction, man, it's rare to see grown adults become so unchill about a cat. It's as if Stray's orange tabby materialized atop their PC towers and vomited salmon puree directly onto their motherboards. Paraphrasing Tim Rogers: Y'know what? I like Stray! It's okay to like that video game! Full disclosure (and a CW for general sadness): I lost my cat of 12-ish years not too long after finishing Stray. It was one of the only times I saw her react to anything I played and I'll always remember that. 2022 was a shitty year, snowballed out from 2021's shitty year, these few moments in those last months ended up meaning a lot. š: Coziest Atmosphere
Side One, Track One of Suikoden mastermind Yoshitaka Murayama getting his band back together. The real deal hits next year in Hundred Heroes, which is the true spiritual successor for which Rising is an appetizer, but I hesitate to use a modifier like "merely" given there's a good deal more going on in this prequel/side project than I expected. I've also seen this referred to as "Sidequest: The Game" in other places (I almost always find descriptions like "x: The Game" to be eye-rollingly reductive and wish folks would find more interesting and less knee-jerky ways to get that thought across) yet Rising is nonetheless equal parts town-builder and dungeon-diver, and sidequesting is a natural part of that arrangement. Maybe that's not what everyone's looking for, which is fine and understandable given the pedigree, but it's a better, tighter version of such a loop than I've seen in a lot of other similar games and a worthwhile preamble to the larger work to come in Hundred Heroes next year. If you're gonna play that, play this. š: Post-Trine Award for Trine-like Games Better Than Trine; Chillest Loop
Tunic didn't quite grab me at 100% the strength that it grabbed everyone else, but it got damn close. A good, solid 95% of the way there, more than enough to inspire me to walk the golden path for a time, only really stopping upon reaching the familiar, slightly depressing realization that I'm just not wired the right way for puzzle games. And these are some dang puzzles, man. A different approach to the combat could've made up that scant 5% deficit. I hesitate to refer to it as a Soulsborne or even a Zelda exactly, despite the obvious aesthetic choices - Tunic obviously exists only because of the latter - yet the bag of tricks here, the core strengths, the intangibles that make Tunic really sing, generally always feel at odds with what the game is asking of you as a battler. It just doesn't need it like this the way something like Hyper Light Drifter might. Every other part about it rounds up to a helluva package, whether you're looking for puzzles or music or art design or just vibes, Tunic is best-in-class across the board, successful enough on those counts that an entire system can be set on god mode and it still finishes in the top ten. š: Best Puzzle Design; 12th Annual Mysterious Fox Award for Best Fox
Much of what Hardspace: Shipbreaker was when it launched into early access and found itself somewhere on my 2020 GOTY list did not exist yet like it does now. Open Shift mode, which I consider crucial due to my fairly severe anxiety around time limits, did not exist. An endless oxygen toggle probably did not exist? The entire story, I'm pretty sure, did not exist. Yet the potential of what Hardspace could be, and the ideas, themes, questioning, and values it could represent, was always visible right from the start. You could feel it in your bones. 1.0 reached all those potentials and found a few more waiting along the way. Hardspace is both a brutally honest portrayal of what the future of work could look like after several centuries of decayed labour power and Mike Rowe "sweat pledge" bullshit, and a strangely zen experience of pulling apart complicated mechanical systems, piece by piece, until only their ghosts remain. š: Shake Hands With Danger Award for Best Worker's Rights Representation
The closest thing I probably have to a AAA GOTY depending on your particular definitions. A wall of text fussing around with my feelings about it will probably have to wait until some other time. I think it looks fine but it's okay if you disagree. š: Best Depiction of Wandering Loner Behaviors; Most Tim Russ
Do not pursue Lu Buleth š: Best Alternate Universe
toot š: Best Game That I'm Almost Entirely Incapable Of Playing
