by aggrocraig
This year was rough for a lot of big-picture reasons (wild layoffs plaguing the industry as well as, *gestures broadly at everything*) but I had some great times with games this year that are worth calling out.
SOME HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Goodbye Volcano High - A game from last year that I loved this year, a very cute story that I recommend
Marvel Rivals - Fun game, hasn't been out for long enough to really see how well-supported it'll be
Vampire Survivors: Ode to Castlevania - Leaving DLC out of it for ease of making a list, but this might as well be a full-fledged sequel and it rules really hard
Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak - One of the better Trails games, but stay tuned for next year when I talk about Daybreak 2 and also this one I bet
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Talk about a game coming out of nowhere. A tale as old as time in these lists of mine: a game that I checked out because of a groundswell of support from people I follow on Twitter. I bought it not long after it came out but didn’t actually jump into playing it until months later. When I did, the story grabbed me and didn’t let go, to the point where it was pretty much all I wanted to do with my gaming time until I saw it through to the end. There’s not a lot of complex gameplay here, most time is spent exploring areas and talking to people to see the story play out, but the story being told is worth the price of admission and then some. Starting off in medias res with a shocking moment, then rewinding back to see just how such a thing could come to be, 1000xRESIST tells a story about family, trust, faith, destiny, love, and generational trauma that really got to me. The game comes from a clearly-established perspective and it rang true with me despite my background being very different, which I say as a ringing endorsement of the quality of storytelling on display. It uses memory as a framing device to arm itself with a host of possibly-unreliable narrators and dramatic reveals, most often in the form of a creeping realization that things aren’t the way you’d assumed they were. Once cards are on the table, the game is happy to turn the camera around at you and ask you just how you feel about all of this: who is right? What is justice? What is owed and to whom? I feel like it’s an incredible rarity that games don’t present you with “the good choice” and “the bad choice,” but rather lay out differing perspectives and have the choice be what you individually believe in. When I put the controller down at the end of 1000xResist, I felt like I had made those choices, and better yet, the way the game responded to them made me feel like my choices were understood. That’s a one-in-a-million feeling in games, and especially given that I had it at the end of a story that had me on the hook throughout, I can’t recommend this game highly enough. I often find myself doing calls to action in these end-of-year lists, and make no mistake: I want you to play this game. You might not like it as much as I did, but I really hope you give it a shot after reading this.
I didn’t follow the development/promotion of Metaphor too closely; I saw some trailers as part of the various E3-likes of the world but wasn’t really sure what it was going to be beyond “the next thing from some SMT/Persona people.” Would it be something little/lower-effort while a proper new Persona or SMT was cooking? Well, what I got was a game that feels like it takes some of the stuff I loved from their previous games as well as other RPGs and blends it all together in a satisfying way. With a job system a la FF5 and a version of the press turn system from the Shin Megami Tensei games, the mechanics are great all around. The system for unlocking new Archetypes offered just enough guidance by setting up prerequisite jobs to earn later ones, forcing you to bring characters up in multiple complementary jobs and starting the wheels turning on how to make good skill combinations of your own. Even on top of all this, Metaphor’s greatest strength is in its story and characters. I earnestly think that this is my favorite cast of characters in an RPG in many years, with each party member having their own stories well-told through their “follower” ranks (Social Links, for the Persona-brained) as well as playing their own roles in the overall narrative. It’s probably a strong sign that my favorite party member changed multiple times over the course of the game, and at the end I’m not exactly sure who would get that honor. Of course I can’t go into too many details because the person reading this should go play the game and see the story play out, but I was still in the demo for the game when it started dropping some terminology that made it clear something was “up,” and all I wanted was to see how they’d follow through. Given its position here it’s clear that I think they did, and honestly the moment in time in which we’re all currently living gave the whole thing some extra gravity. Outstanding worldbuilding, art style, music, I could go on forever. Metaphor is a real achievement, possibly the finest that this whole multi-series conglomerate of Shin Megami Tensei and its various offshoots has produced.
Like many people, I heard the buzz around Balatro start to build early in the year as people started messing with demos for it, and by the time it was out I was excited to give it a shot. I knew everyone’s effusive praise wasn’t coming out of nowhere, but this game grabbed hold of me in such a way that I have played enough of it to unlock the full collection on two separate platforms. A poker game that isn’t a gambling game, it’s a roguelike about engine-building and making the numbers go up as high as possible. The game starts out simple enough, showing you how to play poker hands and build up points/multiplier to get better scores. Once you get started, though, mechanics layer on top of those basics: jokers that change the rules, card upgrades/transformations to change the layout of your deck itself, and tons of other mechanics allow for a variety of builds. Of course, the game has plenty to throw at you as well, with different “bosses” to deal with which can invalidate your strategy if you’re not careful and flexible. As the required scores get higher and higher, the feeling of building a deck that lets you rack up those big numbers is hard to beat. Balatro is laser-focused on emphasizing that adrenaline rush as much as possible, it does every little thing possible with the way the cards animate, the sound effects as your score is counted, and the satisfying flame effect when you’ve played a single hand that will give you all the points you need at once. I’m aware that this game is prodding at pleasure centers of my brain directly by making numbers get higher, but I can’t complain if it’s this much fun. I really can’t think of a single thing I’d change about Balatro, I just hope that there’s more coming in the future to put more variables into this endlessly-satisfying poker equation.
Yakuza as a series changing its entire genre seven games in is still one of the wildest moves in video game history in my opinion. Changing from an open-world melee action series to turn-based RPGs after so many years, while at the same time switching to a new main character, was unprecedented. So, well, how do you follow that act? It turns out, you take things to a new environment (while still keeping some old haunts in play,) add a bunch of new party members on top of ones you already know, and expand the RPG mechanics in cool new directions. The Hawaii map is incredibly charming; I especially loved playing in Japanese but still hearing the goofy English dialogue from the random people around. The new jobs added into the game fit well in this new locale as well, especially given that you discover them through silly vacation “experiences” from a travel agency in some hilarious scenes. The gameplay in Infinite Wealth is a meaningful upgrade over its predecessor, and the development of the battle system did a ton of heavy lifting in making this game so compelling. I’m a huge fan of “positioning matters” in turn-based RPGs, anything that can make fights feel more active than just picking menu options. Each turn in this game’s battles involves moving your character around the fighting area in ways that’ll modify your attacks: if you’re standing next to a trash can or something, you’ll pick it up and swing it at the nearest enemy, and if there happens to be another enemy behind that one, you’ll knock one into the other for even more bonus damage. Add on special moves which have areas of effect of their own, as well as the fact that random battles kick off wherever you happen to be on the street when dudes run up on you, and each battle takes on a unique flavor and the game stays exciting. Honolulu is full of fun side activities, some of my favorites in recent memory. Sicko Snap and Crazy Eats are both highlights, but I would be remiss to not mention Dondoko Island, which is an honest-to-god entire Animal Crossing game shoved into Infinite Wealth alongside your regular quest. Bonkers. I don’t want to go into too many details of the story, as it’ll be best experienced for yourself, but I found it equal parts exciting, funny, and heart-wrenching. Kazuma Kiryu is effectively video game royalty at this point, and this game lets him step into the spotlight again and execute what feels like a proper torch-pass to Ichiban Kasuga as the series’ new main character. There’s a lot here that I imagine will fall flat for someone who hasn’t played every game in the series, but as someone who has done so, there’s so many memories that the game is happy to drum up and use to its advantage. I took a fair few emotional gut punches over the course of the story, and I think it wrapped up in a perfect way. I’m not sure where the series goes from here (well, other than a silly pirate side-game starting Majima that uses the same map, which is going to rule) but I’m so excited for the adventures of Ichiban and his friends and how far RGG can advance this new gameplay style. With how much Infinite Wealth feels improved over Yakuza 7, the future’s looking bright.
I feel like I’ve been waiting for this game to release for a decade. Turns out it’s only 7 years, but from the day I heard that the creator of Spelunky and a crew of other cool developers were going to make a collection of 50 classic-style games from some developer that never existed, I was sold. Spelunky is a game design master-class, and all I wanted to see was what would come next. Well, many years and one Spelunky sequel later, it’s here and it’s everything I could have hoped it would be. Presented as the collected works of UFO Soft, a fictional video game company, the framing device adds a cool layer of flavor as you see snippets of these developers’ lives in game descriptions: what trends in gaming they followed, what technology had them excited, that sort of thing. Of course, the most important thing has to be the games themselves, and while I don’t expect that every game in the collection is going to be everyone’s cup of tea, I’m damn confident to say that there’s going to be something you find fun in here. The experience of dusting off each individual cartridge and trying the game out based on just a little box image and a blurb never got old, and even for the games that didn’t click with me right away, there was something warm and fuzzy about that old “try it out” era of demo kiosks and game rentals captured here. As a lover of multiplayer nonsense, some immediate standouts were Bushido Ball, Hyper Contender, and Waldorf’s Journey (that walrus deathmatch mode is something else,) but that’s far from all that’s here. The gravity-flipping jump-and-shooting of Vainger could be an indie hit on its own, same for the first person dungeon-crawler-meets-Punchout of Valbrace. These are just some of my personal favorites, but there’s so many more that I still have to dig further into that I’m going to be coming back to UFO 50 for years to come. Worth every day of the wait, that’s for sure.
Animal Well is a tough game to talk about because just about everything that comes to mind that I want to rave about is something that I’d want someone to go experience for themselves. It’s a really special game; one that’s so well-crafted that anything that you can think of to do with the mechanics you have at your disposal will probably work, and on top of that you’ll probably get a reward that shows you the developer had thought of that too. It’s a game of weird mysteries, satisfying discoveries, and some really memorable moments, and the more you dig the more wild stuff you’ll find. It has a pixel-art style but not in a pure throwback kind of way, the very expressive spritework (especially on some of the bigger animals) and the visual effects are all well beyond the classic games it might resemble at first glance. The atmosphere the visuals create is accentuated by some incredible soundwork, which takes a less-is-more approach in general but provides the perfect backdrop to exploration. Animal Well is an incredibly clever game, one whose full complement of secrets we might not ever find. At least, https://haseverythinginanimalwellbeenfoundyet.com/ stopped updating before everything was found, so that’s saying something. If you like 2D platformers and could go for something less actiony, please check this game out. If you have the patience for me being an evasive asshole full of cryptic hints, hit me up as you play it and talk about what you’ve found and what you’re looking for. I’d love to re-live those discoveries all over again.
What a journey that Astro Bot has been on: going from the best reason to own a Playstation VR, to a pack-in tech demo for the PS5’s new features, to being a tentpole game release anchoring Sony’s whole year. There’s really not a lot to say about the game that isn’t clear from a single screenshot or trailer, this is a straightforward 3D platformer, like someone who was making PS1 games in 1996 got pulled forward in time 25-some-odd years and made the same kind of game with way more advanced tech.All the same, it hits where it matters. The levels are well designed, the platforming is fun, and I had a great time the whole way through. It’s gotta be one of the prettiest games I played this year as well, another testament to the idea that games can and should be more colorful. Major points to the soundtrack and overall sound design, the game’s music is great but on top of that the little sounds of robot feet tinking along on different surfaces is always a hit with me. I had this whole thing bouncing around in my head musing about whether Astro Bot, with all its little character cameos, is a cynical cash-grab or a wholesome love letter to the history of Playstation and video games at large, but I came to realize two things. First, it’s pretty definitely both depending on who you ask, and second, it doesn’t matter. It feels likely that this whole thing came to be in the driest boardroom meeting you’ve ever seen, with some guy in a suit saying “yeah sure, give ‘em Devil Dice or some shit, they’ll go nuts.” Regardless, the way that every little cosplaying robot you find is nicely recognizable and there’s some bespoke little animation that they’ll do when you smack them in the hub world makes it clear that the devs at Asobi cared enough to take that time. Seeing all the bots in different character outfits feels kinda like a look into an alternate universe where Funko stuff didn’t suck ass and remove all the soul from everything. It’s a really fun video game and you can find Sol Guiltygear in it. That’s gotta be worth something.
I can’t count the amount of melee-based Metroidvania games I’ve bounced off of in my time. It’s gotten to the point where most of the big names on my gaming pile of shame would fit that category. I know Hollow Knight is great, but I couldn’t get into it; same with Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown from this year and Axiom Verge 2 from a while back. I’m sure there’s more that I can’t call to mind right now, too. Something about those games has always lost me, and for the longest time I explained it to myself saying that I didn’t like my exploration being halted by every enemy combat feeling like a trial rather than some quick jump-and-shootin’. Well, now that I’ve played and loved Nine Sols, I guess that can’t be the reason, as this game puts you in a Sekiro fight with damn near every enemy in the game. At least until you get pretty late-game powerful, regular enemies are a parry and counterattack game, with multiple-tap parry sequences a common occurrence. After parrying a few attacks and building up qi, you can use a sick dash-through explosive talisman attach to finish the job, turning “potential damage” into real damage and making dudes blow the hell up. It’s sick. On top of the combat feeling great, the exploration has everything one could want from a Metroidvania, with upgrades to find all over the place and movement abilities progressing over the course of the game to give good reasons to go back to old areas and find more stuff. The boss fights are varied and interesting, and some of them are real motherfuckers too. The game is visually stunning as well, especially when the beaten-up sci-fi hallways give way to more colorful vistas (the game’s safe “hub” area is straight up beautiful.) To tie it all together, the story is well-told through deft use of flashbacks and good old-fashioned “logs from back before things went really wrong that talk about how things went really wrong,” as well as well-written dialogue between the main character Yi and his various allies and enemies. It touches on the relationship between science and faith, initially poised as a dichotomy in Yi’s perspective, but as the story plays out the interplay between the two becomes central to the lives of the characters and the civilization they’re trying to keep alive. Everyone is trying to reconcile where they’ve come from with where they want to take things, and the varying backgrounds of individual influential families lead to a range of conflicting answers of the best way to move forward. It’s an outstanding story propelled by satisfying action. I got frustrated at a few points along the way, but overall I think Nine Sols is a great success, and I hope it gets the attention it deserves.
There’s really no way I can spend as much time writing about Tetrachroma as I will about the rest of the games on this list, but please don’t take that to mean I think less of it. It’s like Tetris, but with a huge caveat: pieces come in different colors and change colors of parts of your stack when they land. Lines only clear when they’re completed in a single color. This game starts with that basic conceit and takes it to every extent possible. Play with two, three, or four different colors, ratcheting up the complexity each time! Add wild blocks or “negative” blocks that mess things up! Adjust the physics for piece movement and gravity to match different eras of Tetris! If you’re a Tetris sicko, there’s so much to see here in this killer little game. From the maker of Super Amazing Wagon Adventure, a game I played a silly amount of in college, comes the coolest take on Tetris in years. BONUS MID-LIST HONORABLE MENTION - Tetris Forever came out this year and is a sweet historical record of the story of Tetris and also a collection of a bunch of old Tetris games. Check that out too.
I tried Cryptmaster out on a whim because I heard buzz about it being funny, and there’s nowhere near enough funny games around these days. I’m happy to report that those rumblings were dead on, and Cryptmaster is a hilarious and fascinating game. I’d describe it as a mix of first-person dungeon crawling, puzzle/riddle solving, and Typing of the Dead. If that last part comes as a surprise to you, join the club! Every interaction in this game revolves around typing: each of your four characters’ attacks and abilities are activated by typing certain words, you interact with people, chests, and other stuff by typing their names, and so on. The really transcendental detail is the way progression and discovery are handled. Each character has one “active” word that’s showing at the bottom of the screen. Sometimes it’s a white-highlighted word that’ll unlock a new spell, and the rest of the time it has a black background and the word summarizes a tidbit of that character’s backstory. When you discover a word, you either get a quick descriptive popup of what the new ability does or a snippet of story that fleshes out the character. How are the words discovered? By finding letters all over the place. Every enemy you fight has a name which doubles as their life bar, with damage knocking off letters until they’re gone. Once you win, you can take one or more letters from their name and if those letters appear in the words you’re working on, blanks will be filled in. The same will happen if you find chests or skulls strewn about the environment, but each of those has a twist. Whenever you open a chest, the eponymous Cryptmaster appears and looks in the box, vaguely describing what’s in there. From there, you play a few rounds of one-word “twenty questions,” asking him to do things like use, smell, touch, or taste the object in an effort to help you figure out what it is. If you’re right, you get all the letters in the thing’s name. Skulls are more straightforward: they come to life and ask you a riddle, and you’re rewarded with the letters that make up the answer. These riddles and chest puzzles are a fun diversion in themselves, and the extra progression you get serves as a reward for the exploration needed to find them. The game’s visuals are entirely black and white, with an art style that’s weird to look at but I found super endearing. The writing is outstanding top to bottom, building a totally bizarre world that I loved exploring. Explaining individual comedy bits would totally ruin them, but I will say this game got a more genuine belly laugh out of me than any game in years from one particular moment. Great stuff. Cryptmaster is a weird one, and I’ll admit the combat can get a little samey if you don’t force yourself to mix up your approach, but I had a great time playing through it and want more off-the-wall games like this one in the world.
