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~*D1P's Games of 2022*~


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Metroid Dread 9/10. A really enjoyable, approachable, but still challenging game. I really enjoyed the final boss encounter, which, by the time of beating, felt easy as I’d learned all of the various attacks and was in that wonderful feeling of ‘flow’.

 

I’m not sure what to play next, either pick up a new Switch game, subscribe to PS+ and work my way through something there or finally set up my ‘games attic’ and play something a bit older…

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Finished Kharon's Crypt - Even Death May Die. It's like a horror themed Game Boy Color Zelda game (even defaults to GBC borders) but just the dungeons. Much of it is very good if you like that sort of game but it's often a real pain. Kharon is a spirit so you have to use projectiles to stun enemies and take over their bodies to do most things like fight (you can't hurt enemies but they can hurt you) and open chests. It takes a lot of shots to stun an enemy and they like to move out of line. They also chase you and if there's not much space it can be a pain to get far enough away to get a shot. You have an ability to avoid damage and falling in pits but it uses limited energy. Possessed bodies have their own health, once the body is destroyed you can get another (more enemies will spawn during boss fights and an enemy should drop into the room if you need a body to leave the room). One on one, as long as you have space you can generally easily get a new body without losing any of Kharon's health but it's tricky when 3 are chasing you and you might need to stun all of them just so that you can get 1 body. If the body's almost dead it's often a good idea to either abandon it before switching screens if there an enemy on the next screen you can use or take damage to get rid of it and then turn invincible so that you can get away from the enemy that destroyed your body so that you can stun it and get a new body. Humanoid enemies usually have weapons but the range tends to suck so you tend to get hit a lot while attacking.

 

Unfortunately nobody plays the game so if you get stuck you're on your own. You can buy a map for each floor but there are lots of secret rooms. Everything you need for completion isn't too tough to find, there'll be a crack on the wall to let you know to bomb it, but for many of the secret rooms there won't be. I only had 83% completion and I even went back looking for hidden stuff and didn't find much. There were a couple puzzles I found that were brute force with trial and error and the clues were either vague or non-existent. There were a couple side quests where I couldn't find any clues and the only thing a Google search turned up was a post by the dev mentioning that there were a few side quests. At least the stuff required for progression wasn't too tough. 

 

The thing that annoyed me the most were the bosses especially the last 2. Boss health bars go across the screen so it can be time consuming especially when you're being chased by regular enemies, dodging bullet hell style projectiles and other hazards (the last 2 will drop blocks that imprison you for a while, the boss keeps shooting projectiles at you while you're stuck in the box, you have an item that can get you out if there is a regular enemy outside the box). I tried the last boss a couple times last night and stopped. It technically wasn't a rage quit since I was completely calm. I just didn't want to deal with another annoying boss and I was considering just stopping there (you find story pages, talk to spirits and the final boss talks a bit but the story isn't all the great so there was no really wanting to know what happens). I gave it another go today and was eventually able to defeat the last boss. Naturally there was a second form but other spirits (the ones from the side quests that I did manage to finish so you probably need to finish at least one) show up with health refills when you're low on health so even though the boss was a pain as usual, flying away, shooting projectiles from every direction, turning the screen dark, etc I was able to finish that fight first try. Were it not for that I might have simply quit rather than have to go through the first form of the final boss again.

 

So overall, I'll say it was good but don't play it unless you really like the genre and are either prepared to deal with some bad design or are so good the game ends up being easy for you despite all the above.

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Adding Bright Memory Infinite. It was a really fun 3 hours! It’s a damn good looking and playing game, and I think worth it despite the short length if you get it for $15 or less. Especially if you are a graphics whore like @best3444

 

Its very arcade though, so I’ll be playing more of it here and there again and get more out of it too. They need to make a real full game!

 

Ghostwire

Steel Assault

Spongebob Battle for Bikini Bottom

Star Wars Fallen Jedi

Life is Strange True Colors

Metroid Dread

Metal Slug 2

Capcom Beat Em Up Bundle (played through em all)

Mafia Definitive Edition

Elden Ring

Dying Light 2

Horizon: Forbidden West

Kirby: GOTY Edition

Goblin Sword

Final Fantasy 7 Remake

Oli Oli World

Sonic Colors

Pokemon Legends

Mail Mole

Grapple Dog

Megaman x4

Megaman x7

AC Valhalla (incl  paris and ireland dlc!)

Sifu

Toree 3D

Toree 2

Klonoa 2022 remaster

Klonoa 2 remaster

Sonic Adventure

Sonic Triple Trouble Remake

Saints Row

Splatoon 3

Bright Memory Infinite

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10 minutes ago, best3444 said:

@stepee 6-7/10 game that only lasts 4 hours. It looks good visually and it only cost $10.

 

I'll never play it but I did watch some clips. 

 

Pretty much! It’s a lot of fun, they could definitely make a full fledged game if they sell enough of this to hire a team. It’s all made by one guy mostly!

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hero

 

150+ hours later, I'm finally at the end.

 

It feels like a bigger game than the first two, which were already gargantuan sized JRPGs.  You can chalk that up to the world being as big as ever (including Xenoblade X), and the most fleshed out side content you'd ever expect to find in a game this size.  There's a lot of completely missable cutscenes that feel as important as main story events, which are no slouch either.

 

Performance is solid.  There's less noticeable resolution drops than Torna, which had less resolution drops than XB2.  You'll still see jaggies, some ugly textures, small frame dips, LOD pop-in etc.  But it's perfectly tuned to what the game is trying to be on this hardware.  Even handheld performance is surprisingly great.

 

Story-wise, its main flaw is that ends up being a bit too redundant with its villains, especially if you do the side content.  This is only a minor gripe, considering how the story at large pulls you along.  But it's also a problem not shared by XB1 and XB2.  Still, moments of XB3 hit highs that easily rival series' bests.  Same goes for the music.

 

Combat is also quite fun.  Unfortunately, setting up a good party composition isn't really needed, so all the job options you have might be overkill.  Plus you get 7 party members at a time, which marginalizes your own controlled character’s efforts.  It's by far the easiest Xenoblade game as a result.  I definitely think Torna edges it out in combat, it feels much more skill oriented.

 

Overall, this is another fantastic too-big-to-be-real JRPG from Monolith.  You get much better side content than previous games, at the expense of a slightly less interesting throughline compared to XB1&2 because of the villains.  But it's a hell of a world to spend some time in.
 

9.5/10

 

I'd still recommend going in order through the main series (1, 2, Torna, 3).  But 3 could be considered standalone, much more than 1->2 is.

 

 

2022
Death's Door - 8.5/10

Torna: The Golden Country - 9/10
Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion - 7/10
Mail Mole - 7.5/10

Yooka Laylee and the Impossible Lair - 9/10

What the Golf? - 8/10
Greak: Memories of Azur - 8/10
Psychonauts 2 - 9/10

A Hat in Time: Nyakuza Metro DLC - 7.5/10
The Last Campfire - 7.5/10

The Stanley Parable - 7/10

Call of the Sea - 8/10

Panzer Dragoon Remake - 7.5/10

Star Fox Zero - 8/10

Astro's Playroom - 8/10

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 - 9.5/10

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Inscryption

Until Dawn

Miles Morales
Bloodborne
Mundaun

Castlvania Collection
Elden Ring
Evil Dead
Yakuza Kiwami 2

 

———————————————

 

Splatoon 3

 

Much like Evil Dead, there’s not much to beat here, and while the single player is well done it’s not the reason you’re here.

 

For better or worse, Splatoon is a known factor.  There is nothing here to change the mind of a naysayer or turn a fan away.  It remains incredibly polished and has an incredible grasp on the style and vibe that make the game so appealing.  I’m more than happy to sink a few dozen hours into the new outing.  

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I finished Shadow of the Tomb Raider, it was the Temple of Doom of the latest Tomb Raider games. It wasn’t as good as the first two games, but it was still a pretty good time overall.

 

2022 games

Far Cry 6

Light Fairytale Episode 1

Light Fairytale Episode 2

Raging Justice

Tormented Souls

Eight Dragons

Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance

Warhammer: Chaosbane

Fuse

Antiquia Lost

Shenmue

Alice: Madness Returns

Bloodshore

Darksiders III

Itadaki Smash

Gemini: Heroes Reborn

Zombieland: Double Tap - Road Trip

Ion Fury

Mayhem Brawler

Saints Row

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

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Inscryption

Until Dawn

Miles Morales
Bloodborne
Mundaun

Castlvania Collection
Elden Ring
Evil Dead
Yakuza Kiwami 2

Splatoon 3

 

——————————————

 

Hitman 3

 

Hitman 3 is a hard game to rate because it does the same thing the other Hitmen games do to more or less the same degree so it just doesn’t feel as fresh or novel.  The delight of wrench bludgeoning some poor sap and stealing their clothes has faded over time.  It’s still fun, but I just kind of grin instead of cackle with glee.  
 

It’s also hard to tell if the maps are just not as interesting or if half a decade of practice lets me read the matrix.  I never move on from a map until I get my silent assassin suit only and this time around?  It took far less time then usual.  Even in Hitman 2 I felt like I was pulling some absurd looney tunes nonsense of kiting people with coins and barely slipping through vision cones but this time around I found those open spaces much more easily.  
 

I also found the experiments with form to be kind of dull on their face.  It’s not interesting to go into an area with no idea who your five targets are and have to suss them out from the crowd if most of the people have a nice white circle over their head for to let you know in advance they can see through your disguise when you aren’t even wearing one.  Is this random person at a rave secretly an ICA agent?  Of course he is, he’s suspicious of me immediately for no reason.

 

Still, Hitman is Hitman and wandering through huge maps to find novel ways to off obnoxious wealthy people is never not fun.  Shoving a rich matriarch off of her balcony right after letting her know which of her relatives is planning to murder her and take off with the family fortune is still incredibly satisfying.  47 being a master of disguise while also being unable to speak beyond a monotone remains funny and charming all these years later.  This supposedly wraps a bow on this chapter of the franchise.  I will be interested in seeing where they decide to go from here.  

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On 10/6/2022 at 10:07 AM, Brian said:

Tinykin - 8/10 - it’s a fun Pikmin platformer.  My only two knocks are the minor performance issues on Xbox and the repetitiveness due to the Pikmin abilities being ok. Otherwise a great game. It’s on Game Pass. Play it. 

 

I’ve got to get back to this, I really enjoyed the first world I played through. Since a bunch of stuff is about to come out, I think I’m going to keep my longer backlog games I didn’t get to in the backlog for now and knock out some smaller stuff like this, Kao, Hat in Time.

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4 minutes ago, stepee said:

 

I’ve got to get back to this, I really enjoyed the first world I played through. Since a bunch of stuff is about to come out, I think I’m going to keep my longer backlog games I didn’t get to in the backlog for now and knock out some smaller stuff like this, Kao, Hat in Time.

You can knock it out pretty quick if you try not to 100% the levels. You don’t get much in doing so outside a longer bubble which isn’t necessary to beat the game. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Inscryption

Until Dawn

Miles Morales
Bloodborne
Mundaun

Castlvania Collection
Elden Ring
Evil Dead
Yakuza Kiwami 2

Splatoon 3
Hitman 3

 

——————————————-

 

Resident Evil 3

 

Resident Evil 3 is an extremely faithful remake of the original, because just like the original RE3, this also isn’t as good as RE2.  
 

The problem with all iterations of RE3 is that they mostly abandon the cramped, gothic interiors and replace them with largely forgettable city streets.  Nemesis is Mr. X  going through an edgelord phase, Jill and Carlos are less charming counterparts, the whole thing.  It’s still a gorgeous game, shooting zombies is still entertaining, and there are enough really creepy moments of body horror to make it worth playing through, although I’m glad I didn’t pay full price for it.  Whoever made the animation for Jill getting insects implanted in her though… that person clearly had a fetish they managed to put into the game.  

 

Really though, the true travesty is that the remake removes the Delorean.  0/10 for that alone.  

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2 hours ago, BloodyHell said:

Slay the Spire- damn this game is good. I was shocked with how hooked I got on the game. The strategy between picking cards and choosing paths is incredible. One of my favorite games of this year. 9/10

 

It's crack.  Only rogue-like that hooked me harder was Hades.

 

Check out Dicey Dungeons if you liked it.

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Forgot to add Plagues Tale - glad I finally got around to it, very solid 8/10. Definitely looking forward to adding its sequel to my list soon!

 

I was on my way to beating Blue Fire but a bunch of games and my 4090 hit so I think that might go on hold for this year. About half way through Freedom Planet 2 also but that is too good so i’ll still beat that in a week or two I’m sure despite all the shiny.

 

Ghostwire

Steel Assault

Spongebob Battle for Bikini Bottom

Star Wars Fallen Jedi

Life is Strange True Colors

Metroid Dread

Metal Slug 2

Capcom Beat Em Up Bundle (played through em all)

Mafia Definitive Edition

Elden Ring

Dying Light 2

Horizon: Forbidden West

Kirby: GOTY Edition

Goblin Sword

Final Fantasy 7 Remake

Oli Oli World

Sonic Colors

Pokemon Legends

Mail Mole

Grapple Dog

Megaman x4

Megaman x7

AC Valhalla (incl  paris and ireland dlc!)

Sifu

Toree 3D

Toree 2

Klonoa 2022 remaster

Klonoa 2 remaster

Sonic Adventure

Sonic Triple Trouble Remake

Saints Row

Splatoon 3

Bright Memory Infinite

Plagues Tale: Innocence 

 

 

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EGS_OMNO_StudioInkyfox_S1_2560x1440-7cbd


Journey as made by a single person (composer excluded), envisioned more as a 3D platformer.

 

What makes this game truly special how fun it is to control. Journey, Flower, Abzu ... Omno feels better to play.  It's a hodgepodge of fun movement concepts, including at least one I haven't seen in a game before.  The puzzles aren't hard, but mainly serve as an excuse to do something clever with your powerups.

 

And the visuals are timeless.  I don't generally enjoy a low poly aesthetic, but the way this game plays with bloom, god rays and fog just makes me forget all about it.  The key art above is the visual bar it hits 100% of the time.

 

Overall, amazing game.  I kind of wish it had a double jump, a more intriguing story, or even some combat, but that's about all I can fault it for.  Play it if you get the chance.

 

8.5/10

 

2022
Death's Door - 8.5/10

Torna: The Golden Country - 9/10
Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion - 7/10
Mail Mole - 7.5/10

Yooka Laylee and the Impossible Lair - 9/10

What the Golf? - 8/10
Greak: Memories of Azur - 8/10
Psychonauts 2 - 9/10

A Hat in Time: Nyakuza Metro DLC - 7.5/10
The Last Campfire - 7.5/10

The Stanley Parable - 7/10

Call of the Sea - 8/10

Panzer Dragoon Remake - 7.5/10

Star Fox Zero - 8/10

Astro's Playroom - 8/10

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 - 9.5/10

Omno - 8.5/10

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I finished Asterigos: Curse of the Stars, and it was a great game throughout. It took me 45 hours to complete, and that was pretty much doing everything in it. It felt like a fairly epic adventure with a lot of varied locations that you go to, and cool bosses that you fight. I would recommend it to anyone who likes third person action adventure games and RPGs that have a somewhat cartoonish aesthetic.

 

2022 games

Far Cry 6

Light Fairytale Episode 1

Light Fairytale Episode 2

Raging Justice

Tormented Souls

Eight Dragons

Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance

Warhammer: Chaosbane

Fuse

Antiquia Lost

Shenmue

Alice: Madness Returns

Bloodshore

Darksiders III

Itadaki Smash

Gemini: Heroes Reborn

Zombieland: Double Tap - Road Trip

Ion Fury

Mayhem Brawler

Saints Row

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Asterigos: Curse of the Stars

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1 hour ago, skillzdadirecta said:

How was Raging Justice? I was curious about that one.

It was an ok retro style arcade beat ‘em up for the few bucks that I paid for it. I know that you’re a big fan of the genre like I am, so I think that you would somewhat enjoy it for cheap. However, I can more confidently recommend Mayhem Brawler which is another retro style arcade beat ‘em up that I played this year. I really liked it, and I think that you might too. I also got Final Vendetta somewhat recently as well which looks really good, but I haven’t played it yet.
 

1 hour ago, skillzdadirecta said:

Also man I feel bad because you would REALLY like Gotham Knights.

Yeah, I would really like to be playing it right now. It sucks that I have to wait until I get a PS5 to play it, because that’s not going to be for quite a while from now. Oh well, I have plenty of other games to play and more that I want are still coming.

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Inscryption

Until Dawn

Miles Morales
Bloodborne
Mundaun

Castlvania Collection
Elden Ring
Evil Dead
Yakuza Kiwami 2

Splatoon 3
Hitman 3
Resident Evil 3

 

————————————————

 

The Quarry

 

I enjoyed Until Dawn and have watched Nextlander play through a bunch of the Dark Picture anthology games.  October is a good time for a spooky game or two, and I figured why not?

 

The Quarry either solves the broad stroke problems with Until Dawn or proves that some of that perhaps some of those restrictions were for the best.  Until Dawn really didn’t have a ton of meaningful choices to make for the vast majority of the game and most of them happened at the very back end of the game.  
 

The Quarry manages to take advantage of the fact that people who have been playing games come to expect a supernatural element and it slightly manages to sidestep that with some fun red herrings.  The issue with having more branching possibilities, or at least the appearance of more branching possibilities, is that you can screw yourself seemingly early on.  Maybe the overall story is patchy, and maybe I just cut myself off from huge chunks of exposition?  A character was introduced late in the game that seemed pivotal to the entire background and then was dead literally the next scene they appeared and not from a gameplay failure on my part.  Come he’ll or high water, you were getting most of the plot of Until Dawn if you wanted it or not.  I feel like I’m missing some fairly important details.  
 

In a vacuum this isn’t bad, but it leads to two friction points for me.  I had one character die relatively early on, and what I assume is their story counterpart was basically dead weight the rest of the game.  They basically did nothing, had no plot impact, and just kind of stood around.  That feels true given the nature of their relationship but it also feels pointless to play as them from that point on.  The other problem is that this game feels longer than Until Dawn.  The main game is about two hours longer,  but if I wanted to do a “perfect” run I’d have to start back way earlier and I don’t have clear ideas how to fix some problems.  Characters ended up dead through no obvious choice on my end and I truly don’t know what random choice I made that brought me there.

 

Still, it was exactly what I wanted when I started.  Campy, gory fun with a tongue firmly lodged in the cheek.  If you liked Until Dawn, you’ll like this.  

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Alright, here we go with my 2022 list so far:

 

Gears 5 and the Hivebusters DLC (PC - Game Pass) 

I posted a pretty extensive write-up for Gears of War 4 in the 2019 version of this thread and really nothing has changed since then.  Gear5 is pretty much the same game that I've been playing since 2006, for better or worse, and it remains my one true "gaming guilty pleasure".  The addition of a God of War 2018-like "wide linear" environment which contained some minor "side quests" represented an attempt to add some much-needed variety to the overall structure, but in reality didn't amount to much other than adding some annoyance/boredom with having to use the skiff once its novelty (quickly) wore off. 

 

The main campaign of Gear5 was "fine" (but don't ask me exactly what happened as I can't recall it for the life of me and I still think the Swarm being effectively re-skinned Locusts is still really silly) and the new characters didn't annoy me nearly as much as they did in Ge4rs so I'd have to characterize my overall experience with the game as "inoffensive".  The Hivebusters DLC was actually a lot better than it had any right to be and kinda/sorta returned to the vibe of the first three games in the series, but even that had its drawbacks as in order to see that particular story thread involving Scorpio Squad to the end, you had to read the five-part comics series which was actually released before the  DLC itself!

 

All-in-all, I enjoyed my time with Gear5 and don't regret it one bit.  However, once this particular Swarm narrative arc is wrapped up, I genuinely do hope The Coalition moves on to something else and leaves the Gears series behind for a very, very long time.

 

Norco (PC - Game Pass)

Norco will be my Personal 2022 GotY, without a doubt.  This low-fidelity/pixel art-based point n' click adventure deeply affected me on an emotional level that few works of media have in recent memory.  The game's vision of a weirdly dystopian, climate change-impacted Louisiana rings all-too-relevant for the real world which we (unfortunately) inhabit.  Malevolent artificial intelligence, messianic/apocalyptic religious cults, unmoored capitalism - you name it, this game addresses it with a fantastic combination of dark (but not too dark) humor and world-weary pathos.  From a gameplay perspective, the game largely avoids the usual trap that befalls most point n' click adventures where the puzzle solutions could be so obtuse as to be nonsensical.  The game is definitely vastly more interested in unfolding its narrative and associated themes than stumping  your brain.   There is quite a bit that I could write about Norco, its personal resonance for me, and where it fits into our cultural context, but vastly better writers than I have already examined these topics.  So, instead of reading about Norco, just go right ahead and play Norco, and hopefully you'll be able to get out of it a fraction of what I did!

 

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart (PS5)

After the "heavy" emotional life that was Norco, I decided to lighten things up a bit with the cartoony antics of Ratchet & Clank!  In the interests of full disclosure,  this was my first-ever R&C experience and I gotta say that I really did enjoy it very much!  Now, I wouldn't say that there was anything necessarily "ground-breaking" in what I played as the actual shooting was very competent and effective, the "rift" mechanic was very cool but didn't seem to be anything that couldn't have been executed on last-generation hardware and was somewhat oversold/underused, the weapons variety was pretty good but not quite up to the utterly ludicrous standards of 2003's "Armed and Dangerous"), but the overall experience was truly enjoyable, especially from the perspective that I was actually playing an honest-to-GabeN Pixar film!  The only negative from my time with the game was that it could've benefitted from some content-cutting to tighten things up a bit.  For example, I was genuinely sick and tired of the puzzle sequences involving Clank and the virus shooting sequences involving Glitch long before I reached the final ones.  Other than that, I really have no other quibbles with a game that brought a genuine smile to my face more times than I could count and I'm genuinely looking forward to what Insomniac can cook up next for the series!

 

Devotion (PC)

I honestly cannot think of a game in recent memory that has experienced a more tortuous path to release than this Taiwanese horror game.

 

In February 2019, the game was heavily review bombed on Steam by Chinese players after the discovery of an in-game asset that contained the phrase "Xi Jinping Winnie the Pooh" in Chinese script which led to Red Candle patching out the "offending" asset, but that was not enough: the game's Chinese publishers cut ties with the studio and the game was removed from Steam entirely.  In December 2020, Red Candle and GOG announced that the game would be made available for sale on the GOG Store, only for GOG to backtrack two days later and announce that the game would not be sold as they had received many messages from "gamers" who were opposed to the release.  Needless to say, everyone immediately saw through CDPR's (GOG's parent company) complete and total cowardly bullshit and (correctly) surmised that they had caved into pressure from the Chinese government.  All appeared to have been lost for ever seeing a release of Devotion...until March 2021 when Red Candle announced that they had opened their own digital storefront and that Devotion would finally be made available for sale through there.  And with that, the long and winding saga of my attempts to play Devotion finally came to a happy end! 

 

The best way for me to characterize Devotion is "Taiwanese P.T."  The setting takes place entirely on a couple of floors of an apartment building in Taipei and the player will repeatedly visit the same location in different years of the 1980s and as different characters.  During these visits, the player will examine and interact with various objects which are kinda/sorta essential in order to obtain the full picture of this family's spiralling descent into complete dysfunction and madness as well as solving some minor puzzles, some of which take place over multiple time periods.  While the game definitely leans heavily into Taiwanese culture, the main narrative themes of unfulfilled/thwarted personal ambitions, familial pressure to live up to expectations, and religious fanaticism are sadly all-too-universal.  While the game can be categorized as "psychological horror", I'd say that "psychological thriller" is perhaps a more appropriate description as those elements of the game are more "disturbing" than "horrific".  The only part of the game that I'd say ventures into anything resembling "pure" horror occurs near the end and quite frankly, it was the least interesting part of the entire experience for me and really felt so very "tacked on" that I wouldn't be surprised if the developers felt that they "had" to include to to check a box on a "horror genre trope" checklist.  I do have to mention that the game's overall atmosphere is simply fantastic!  The slow, methodically growing sense of unease and oppression that I experienced is simply unparalleled in any medium with which I've engaged recently.  There is the perpetual foreboding sense that something is there in the room with you, in the shadows, just out of sight of the corner of your eye.  It is for this sense of atmosphere, the exploration of another culture quite different than our own, and the horrifying/heartbreaking unwinding of a family that resembles our own that I can wholeheartedly recommend that you play Devotion.  

 

And you can view it as an opportunity to stick it to Xi "Winnie the Pooh" Jinping!

 

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

SOMA

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53 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

How was Genesis Noir?  Mildly curious about that one.

 

I really don't know how to characterize Genesis Noir other than "odd" and "experimental", especially the last 20% of the game which really deviates significantly from what preceded it.

 

Personally, I do think it's worth your time to check it out, but if the first couple of chapters don't work for you, then I suggest you not bother with the rest.

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21 hours ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

Alright, here we go with my 2022 list so far:

 

Gears 5 and the Hivebusters DLC (PC - Game Pass) 

I posted a pretty extensive write-up for Gears of War 4 in the 2019 version of this thread and really nothing has changed since then.  Gear5 is pretty much the same game that I've been playing since 2006, for better or worse, and it remains my one true "gaming guilty pleasure".  The addition of a God of War 2018-like "wide linear" environment which contained some minor "side quests" represented an attempt to add some much-needed variety to the overall structure, but in reality didn't amount to much other than adding some annoyance/boredom with having to use the skiff once its novelty (quickly) wore off. 

 

The main campaign of Gear5 was "fine" (but don't ask me exactly what happened as I can't recall it for the life of me and I still think the Swarm being effectively re-skinned Locusts is still really silly) and the new characters didn't annoy me nearly as much as they did in Ge4rs so I'd have to characterize my overall experience with the game as "inoffensive".  The Hivebusters DLC was actually a lot better than it had any right to be and kinda/sorta returned to the vibe of the first three games in the series, but even that had its drawbacks as in order to see that particular story thread involving Scorpio Squad to the end, you had to read the five-part comics series which was actually released before the  DLC itself!

 

All-in-all, I enjoyed my time with Gear5 and don't regret it one bit.  However, once this particular Swarm narrative arc is wrapped up, I genuinely do hope The Coalition moves on to something else and leaves the Gears series behind for a very, very long time.

 

Norco (PC - Game Pass)

Norco will be my Personal 2022 GotY, without a doubt.  This low-fidelity/pixel art-based point n' click adventure deeply affected me on an emotional level that few works of media have in recent memory.  The game's vision of a weirdly dystopian, climate change-impacted Louisiana rings all-too-relevant for the real world which we (unfortunately) inhabit.  Rampant artificial intelligence, messianic/apocalyptic religious cults, unmoored capitalism - you name it, this game addresses it with a fantastic combination of dark (but not too dark) humor and world-weary pathos.  From a gameplay perspective, the game largely avoids the usual trap that befalls most point n' click adventures where the puzzle solutions could be so obtuse as to be nonsensical.  The game is definitely vastly more interested in unfolding its narrative and associated themes than stumping  your brain.   There is quite a bit that I could write about Norco, its personal resonance for me, and where it fits into our cultural context, but vastly better writers than I have already examined these topics.  So, instead of reading about Norco, just go right ahead and play Norco, and hopefully you'll be able to get out of it a fraction of what I did!

 

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart (PS5)

After the "heavy" emotional life that was Norco, I decided to lighten things up a bit with the cartoony antics of Ratchet & Clank!  In the interests of full disclosure: this was my first-ever R&C experience and I gotta say that I really did enjoy it very much!  Now, I wouldn't say that there was anything necessarily "ground-breaking" in what I played (the actual shooting was very competent and effective, the "rift" mechanic was very cool but didn't seem to be anything that couldn't have been executed on last-generation hardware and was somewhat oversold/underused, the weapons variety was pretty good but not quite up to the utterly ludicrous standards of 2003's "Armed and Dangerous"), but the overall experience was truly enjoyable, especially from the perspective that I was actually playing an honest-to-Gabe Pixar film!  The only negative from my time with the game was that it could've benefitted from some content-cutting to tighten things up a bit.  For example, I was genuinely sick and tired of the puzzle sequences involving Clank and the virus shooting sequences involving Glitch long before I reached the final ones.  Other than that, I really have no other quibbles with a game that brought a genuine smile to my face more times than I could count.

 

Devotion

Genesis Noir

Trek to Yomi

Four Last Things

The Procession to Calvary

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

SOMA

 

How is Devotion?

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