Re: Phoenix Springs impressions
I’m someone who’s pretty agnostic and neutral when it comes to video game writing as long as it’s not distractingly bad, but I love point and click adventures and visual novels mostly because of the contemplative mood and graphic design. And this game was off the charts as far as that goes!
I thought it was really immersive and frictionless. It felt like meditating while watching a cool movie late at night.
Woah this looks awesome. Probably is goty yeah
I’ve become so bad at finishing games as I near 30. I should really fix that. So far I have started the following 2024 games but am nowhere near finishing them.
I have 100% finished and platinumed Astro Bot. So unless I finish another 2024 game before December 31st I guess Astro Bot wins for me by default. Having said that, I can guarantee that if I finish P3R before the end of the year I will not like it more than Astro Bot.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 is incredibly my thing. I just don’t have the hardware at this time to play it in its full glory. Metaphor will probably be one of my favourite RPGs but I haven’t had time to sink my teeth into it. I like Animal Well so far, I’ve just been playing other things.
It is not a 2024 game but I have been replaying GTA IV on my Steam Deck both docked to my TV and handheld like normal. Man, GTA IV is such a good game. I always liked it more than V but this recent playthrough has solidified my opinion. I have also been replaying Elden Ring and guys, gals, and n-pals it is still one of the best video games I have ever played.
Edit: tense
The game I spent the most time with this year and definitely enjoyed the most was UFO 50, but calling it GOTY feels like underselling it. It’s 50 dang games. It’s something bigger than that. I spent like 80 hours with it this year and I feel like I barely scratched the surface. Calling it the game of the year feels like calling the entire back catalog of Sunsoft or a Neo Geo Pocket Color rom fullset game of the year.
Therefore my GOTY is Crow Country. Took me like 4 hours to beat but I’m still thinking about it weeks later. It’s an immaculate slice of video game. It’s got incredible aesthetics and a little sci-fi narrative under the hood that I found really endearingly weird and freaky. I loved it.
The other stuff I spent time with this year was, like, Natsu-Mon, which I think is great but doesn’t quite match the earlier Boku no Natsuyasumi titles. I really enjoyed it, I just think it’s a bit more slight in comparison. I played Mouthwashing and I thought the narrative and presentation was really well done, but every time it stops that to do video game things for a little bit it gets super tedious. Rise of the Golden Idol I loved, but Case is superior for its setting and grander narrative scope in my estimation. Animal Well is actually everything you could ever hope it’d be and more. Wonderful game. Oh, I also loved Dragons Dogma 2 but I kinda forgot it came out this year.
I’m currently playing through Romancing SaGa 2 (the remake, ~8 hours in now) and I think this is a strong contender as well. Maybe it falls off hard in the back half or something, but so far I’ve been really floored by the scope and ambition of it as a modern game, not even really considering that the original is 30 years old. It’s seriously incredible.
Stuff I haven’t played but suspect would rate highly for me: Metaphor, SMTVV, 1000xResist, Kunitsu-Gami, P3R, Penny’s Big Breakaway, Unicorn Overlord (PC pls), Judero. Probably a bunch others that I’m forgetting. It’s the year of AAs and indies for me.
So many heaters this year, barely finished any of em but I like a lot of what I played, and I’m sure I’ll be back to play a lot of them for some time to come.
So dang good. Playing through this gave my brain the same sci-fi fueled dopamine hit that 13 Sentinels did, it feels so catharitic to see sci-fi’s true power of looking at humanity through another lens utilized so well in video games (vs being more of a set dressing thing). I love how much of a direct message the game has too, especially in the epilogue section.
Also i def thought the game was over at the ch 5 mark and left my glowing steam review before realizing I was missing over half the achievements and thinking something was up lol (it did feel off seeing the logo all bloody, but I didn’t register the first menu option being different)
Haven’t even cracked all these bad boys yet but it rocks. It’s already been said but it really does feel just like when I first discovered emulation and would check out libraries for console’s I’d never touched, except every game is a banger (or at least I could imagine someone it’d be a banger for). Porgy was the first one I booted because it looked like NES Mega Man eyeballs and I spent at least 3 hours playing it before even opening another game. I think one part they really got right was the “cruel but fair” difficulty curves. So many of the games will almost make you fail immediately but once it clicks you realize it’s actually you who are bad lol. There are def some that I will accept never even being competent at, but I’m sure they do it for some sicko.
Ok I love this game, still haven’t finished it though. I’ve clocked at least 40ish hours, and am on the last continent, and honestly am kinda getting rocked by the difficulty at this point now that some of my less well composed squads are getting tested. Either all my levels are too low or I just am not big-braining my team comp enough, either way, I’m sure I’ll close this one out over a flight or two in the future. Super enjoyable combat that makes me never want to play Fire Emblem again. Beautiful art/animations (though cmon bro maybe just like 2% less horny so I can play this during the holidays around relatives without getting looks because I have a witch in my party). Overworld stuff (especially mining mini-game) was satisfying (love those fireworks), though I’m not sure how much I enjoyed setting my 100th person to guard a village. It had everything I was expecting from a Vanillaware experience, and all their twist on the strategy genre kicks ass IMO. Can’t wait for the next game from them.
Dude I’m not even at the animal crossing island yet and I’ve already dropped a cool 30 some hours. Not even in a rush to finish but it’s like knowing I have a comfort food on dial when I need it. I can just go chill with Ichiban and Kiryu and ride some segways in hawaii. It took me like 2 years to slowly play through the last Ichiban yakuza, and I’m looking forward to the long haul with this one.
I thought i was gonna be a hater and just not play this but I already pay for Apple Arcade (they got me when Pocket Card Jockey was exclusive) so I tried it on my phone and yeah I’m a believer it’s a good game that I had to put a screen time lock on.
got it on game pass this past week it’s pretty cool but wow you die a lot and wow my CPU is horting, will wait for more patches but it’s fun an interesting, if maybe too cruel? sooooo pretty
another game pass sampling by me, I got stuck on the second major boss, tried to grind to make it easier, still hit a skill issue wall, then quit. Still it’s so rad actually, the art/vibe is dope (they did not need to go that hard on particle effects and realistic food scans), and the tower defense game play is pretty satisfying (once you get the bounds of what really happens when you screw up). I wish I didn’t suck so hard so I could see more lol maybe later
I stopped myself from buying this just because there’s so many other things I’ve got on deck I want to sink my teeth into right now, but I did just about max out the time I could spend on the free demo, and I feel comforted knowing that I’ll reeeeeeaaaally like smokin this one when I have the time for it. The glimpses of the systems in the demo make me feel like I have a good idea of what they’ve changed from the persona mold, and I’m pretty excited to see the breadth of it.
cool idea, don’t think it will make me enjoy mobas or competitive fps, will be interesting to see what happens with it. one day i will find a game that i enjoy that will also be able to tear my discord buddies away from league
I like it, would rather play it than the PS2 version, and will likely end up finishing my play-through, though it’s hard to want to when Metaphor is right there waiting…
second person I’ve seen mention this, $5 is hard to argue with too, will def check it out. Tetris heads eating this year with this and Tetris Forever (plus all the truly incredible shit in the classic tetris scene rn).
EDIT: ok threw an hour and a half at it, this is a good tetris. vibes are so nice, quick retry, and the color mechanic is just enough of a twist that it doesn’t completely fry my brain or feel like too much on top of tetris, thanks again for the rec!
Slightly off topic but on the Tetris variants discussion there’s also a little game called Chess ‘n’ Blocks that’s gone under the radar:
It’s free and has multiplayer. It’s simultaneous blitz chess and tetris.
i’m sitting on 1000xresist and will play it soon
but even in a fairly stacked year, nothing’s touched infinite wealth for me yet - easily one of the best yakuzas out, and there’s a lot of them
Not to be the iconoclast among iconoclasts here, but 1000xRESIST did absolutely nothing for me. The meanest thing I could say about it is that even though I knew going in that it was more of a visual novel than anything else, I still wished that it tried to pretend less that it wasn’t basically a visual novel and had less annoying “gameplay” segments. The exploration is at about the level of going down the wrong fork in the path of a NES era Dragon Quest cave, and stuff where you have to find the right little spot to teleport to or whatever in a dreamscape with a giant piano and you gotta hold the button down or fall into the abyss and start over… Completely tedious.
I can’t lie, the suspense about the premise and setting and unraveling the mystery of what’s going on right really compel me either. I’m usually kind of turned off by writing that at least to me feels too conspicuously like This Is All A Metaphor For X and, idk, I bounced off of it pretty quickly to be fair but 1000xRESIST to me felt a little ostentatious about metaphor and symbolism, less interested in the kinds of things that interest me with regards to science fiction.
I also wasn’t really a fan of the sort of stream of consciousness style narrative delivery, characters say things that insinuate meaning or establish a mood or atmosphere or feel like they’re putting a pin in something or evoking a sense of poignancy or jerk the reader around with a sudden change in tone, but … it doesn’t maintain my interest in the freaking concrete narrative itself. I did like the moment to moment writing in the translation, anyhow.
Anyway, I’m not a hater, it’s clearly a pretty unique and striking kinda game. It just did not appeal to me at all.
Sounds like you just don’t like allegory.
We should do this thread again in a year because I have 18 games from this year that I want to play and I’ll probably play some of them.
Really enjoyed Pepper Grinder, Animal Well, Dragon’s Dogma, Balatro, UFO50, and Metaphor this year.
I bought the Elden Ring DLC, then never played it…
This game looks cool as heck! I’ll definitely check this out.
i’ll have you know @Gaagaagiins once professed his love of allegory to me while we stood nearing a dark flowing river eating apples that mysteriously turned to ashes in our mouths
1000thPlaceontheGotylist
kidding aside I didnt think the writing in 1000xResist was too hot, which was an issue because there’s a lot of it. The pathos the game was trying to get across was to me undermined by how elaborate/convoluted the plot and setting were just the basic premise of it + all the made up words and world rules. I understand that other people are more sympathetic that sort of thing while it’s anaphylactic to me but different strokes. I will say that the developers obviously took a big swing and accomplished what they set out to do so good going, that’s more than most of the rats in this world can say
Yeah, probably not. At least, I’m perhaps just very picky about what kinds of allegory I’m interested in and what kinds I’m not.
I find myself saying 'i wish this were a visual novel’s more and more. But truth be told I probably wouldn’t bother checking it out of it were
Would agree that the floating around, fling yourself to a little dot in 3d space bits feel kinda unneeded like they just wanted more “game-y” bits to break up the other more straight narrative bits. I don’t think the messages during those parts benefit particularly from the format, maybe it would’ve been more interesting if there were different paths players could take through the space and different vignettes/different order as a result.
I think this is probably for the best, although I’m going to explore a lot of games from previous years, too.
As for the 1000xResist and visual novel: I feel like the more it’d have strayed into that direction it’d lose the cinematic approach and the playfulness with the spaces in which you’re in.