Back on the other website, there used to be a sub called r/12in12 where people would try to beat 12, 24, 36+ games per year. I never really set myself any specific target like that, but the end of year reviews were always fun to read/write. Considering that I don’t think a single game I beat came out this year, I think this is the right community to ask this.

What games did you beat this year? What did you think of them?

For me:

January:

Nothing!

February:

Spider-Man: Miles Morales 7/10

When I first played Spider-Man on a PS4, I didn’t like it. The 30fps cap made the swinging feel clunky and nothing about the rest of the game made up for it. The PC release finally comes around and at last I get the hype, the web swinging is so good. The combat is very Arkham and it’s fine, the story is fine, but the web swinging is just so good. Spider-Man Miles Morales is just more of that.

The Zachtronics Solitaire Collection ?/10

This game is responsible for Steam thinking that Solitaire is one of my favorite genres of games. There are multiple versions of the game here, most of them are fine but Fortune’s Foundation is probably my new favorite version of Solitaire. I don’t know what I’d rate this out of 10, but I got 90 hours of entertainment for my $10.

March:

Split / Second 8/10

The PC port sucks, you have to use a fan patch to remove the 30fps cap, the controller support is terrible, but there’s nothing else like it. It’s a fantastic arcade racer with a super unique premise. The rest of the industry seeing this and Blur bombing financially is probably why racing games are so goddamn anemic now which is such a shame.

April:

Rakuen 7/10

I’ve never really gotten into any RPG Maker games like this, but it had great reviews and I needed something battery-friendly to play on my Steam Deck. Rakuen was pretty darn good, the characters are well written and the environments outside of the hospital are pretty. The story is a little predictable, but I think that’s fine what it wanted to tell.

May:

Hotshot Racing 6/10

What’s here is fun, but there’s almost nothing here. I beat the entire campaign in about an hour. The AI rubber-banding was a bit annoying at times. Also re-reading the Steam page, apparently it has always-online DRM? The fuck?

June:

Universal Paperclips ?/10

I was in the mood for a clicker game. I tried Cookie Clicker first but the pacing is just so slow. Universal Paperclips is a clicker game that can be completed in a reasonable amount of time, and it scratched the itch I was looking for.

July:

Wilmot’s Warehouse 8/10

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Ai4NZnjOdUE/maxresdefault.jpg

Super Meat Boy 5/10

I’ve forced myself to start this game so many times over the years, I finally completed it and I just don’t like it. Way too janky/buggy for a simple 2D platformer. I beat the final level 3 times and couldn’t figure out what to do at the end, only for it to turn out that the final cutscene wasn’t activating because my frame rate was too high. Ugh. It just made me want to play N++ again.

Ape Out 9/10

Ahhh it’s so good. The soundtrack and sound effects and visuals, it’s just perfect. A little on the short side (only took 1:40 to beat), but it’s pretty replayable.

Neodash 7/10

It’s basically Distance but worse. Distance is one of my favorite games of all time and is firmly a 10/10, so that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Any levels that rely on the mid-air controls bring down the experience a bit, but luckily there aren’t a ton of those.

August:

CrossCode 10/10

A top-down RPG with a ~50-hour story? I should hate this, but everything clicked into just the right place. The puzzles are fun (maybe a little too long), the combat is great, the characters are great, the story is great, I did not expect to love this game as much as I did.

Sayonara Wild Hearts 6/10

It’s basically a 1-hour music video. It’s very pretty and the songs are good, but the gameplay just kind of… exists.

Mad Max 6/10

It’s a beautiful looking game and the vehicle combat is fun, but everything else is pure mid-2010s generic open world game, complete with Arkham combat.

Riptide GP2 6/10

It’s fine, but there’s absolutely no reason to play this over Riptide GP Renegade unless you’re really board and looking for a grindy podcast game like I was. Renegade is just this but better in every way. It is a bummer that there are so few boat (or boat-adjacent) racing games coming out these days.

WRC Powerslide 4/10

It’s insanely repetitive and the driving physics are really floaty. The power-ups are awful but luckily they can be turned off in settings. The damage model is actually really good though, which is bizarre for a top-down racer. This got delisted from Steam years ago, if I didn’t already own it, I would not go out of my way to play it.

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter 7/10

It’s a fun little walking simulator mystery game, I don’t remember much of the actual story right now lol. I played the remastered version which was very pretty though.

Quantum Conundrum 7/10

It’s a 6/10 puzzle game brought up by a full point because of John de Lancie’s character.

September:

Hotline Miami 8/10

I know it’s technically kind of a mess, but like everyone else I really loved it anyway. The soundtrack is excellent and clearing rooms is super satisfying. Raycevick’s video really makes me want to play OXTO next.

PowerWash Simulator 8/10

The perfect podcast game.

October:

Cassette Beasts 8/10

The Pokemon games have always sounded interesting to me, but I’ve just never been able to get into any of them as an adult. Cassette Beasts finally scratched that itch for me, and this works way better as a concept than the Pokemon games do for me. As a bonus, the story is surprisingly good as well. Also it’s made in Godot!

Sonic Generations 5/10

I don’t like the Sonic games, but I’ve always heard this is one of the good ones so I decided to play it. A couple of the levels were fun, but most were just frustrating and/or buggy. For a character who’s entire thing is going fast, the levels sure like constantly slowing you down with obstacles that cannot be seen coming.

The Witness 6/10

90% of the levels in this game are good and clever, where finding the solution is fun and satisfying. The remaining 10% includes puzzles where the entire screen is flashing to make it hard to look at, puzzles where the answer still makes no sense even after googling it, and puzzles that cannot be solved unless you solve a different puzzle first with no indication of where that’s the case. The story is also nonsense but luckily it’s easily ignored. This video was so cathartic after finishing the game.

Doom Eternal (& The Ancient Gods) 8/10

“Doom Eternal is a game with so much testosterone dripping from its orifices that it caused me to create a son via mitosis”

November:

Superliminal 8/10

My primary complaint is that it isn’t longer. It took a little over an hour and a half to reach the end, but what’s here is fantastic.

December:

Nothing again, lol

  • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Huh, I don’t really track this, but Steam kinda does, so I’ll reconstruct it. I’ll give my ratings on a 5 star scale, with 3 being “fun but not special” and 5 being “highlight of the year.”

    January:

    • Golf Club Wasteland - 3 - apparently renamed to Golf Club Nostalgia; pretty cool golfing game

    March:

    • Ori and the Blind Forest - 4 - fun Metroidvanias

    April:

    • Deponia trilogy - 4 - I love point+click adventure games (nostalgia), and this was better than expected

    May:

    • Relicta - 3.5 - the puzzles were all quite good, except a couple at the end
    • Nuts - 4.5 - very interesting gameplay
    • A Juggler’s Tale - 4 - I’m a sucker for these kinds of games
    • Nier: Replicant - 5 - fanatic story, got me pumped to play Automata, which I’m currently playing

    July:

    • Blue Fire - 4 - fun action game, with Metroidvania elements
    • Yakuza Kiwami 2 - 3.5 - not as good as either Yakuza 0 or Yakuza Kiwami, but still lots of fun
    • Raven’s Hike - 3 - fun platformer
    • Klocki - 4 - fun, short puzzle game
    • Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 3.5 - pretty fun, but a big disappointment vs other Zelda games

    August:

    • Perspective - 4 - really cool free tech demo, unfortunately, I don’t think the mechanics would work well as a full game
    • The Bridge - 5 - really cool non-Euclidean puzzle game, very Escher-esque (M.C. Escher is my favorite artist, so I’m a bit biased here)
    • Ittle Dew - 5 - really fun Zelda-like, with lots of great commentary/satire about those kinds of games

    September:

    • Darkside Detective - 4.5 - again, I love point and click games, and this was really funny too
    • Hexlogic - 5 - great puzzle game with an innovative sudoku-esque feel
    • Grand Mountain Adventure - 2.5 - fun, but getting around could be pretty tedious, and I wasn’t a fan of the top down view

    October:

    • Human Resource Machine - 4.5 - fantastic programming puzzle game, would be 5 if the last few puzzles didn’t completely suck to finish (so tedious)
    • Return of the Obra Dinn - 5 - fantastic detective/puzzle game
    • Darkside Detective: A Fumble in the Dark - 4 - great follow-up to the first; nothing new, just more great point+click goodness
    • Zelda: Skyward Sword - 5 - fantastic dungeons, decent story and side content; I bought this and Link’s Awakening instead of Tears of the Kingdom

    November:

    • Instant Farmer - 3.5 - good puzzle game
    • Manifold Garden - 5 - innovative puzzle game
    • Cats in Time - 2 - kids liked it, but it was a finicky hidden object/escape room game

    December:

    • Mirrorama - 3.5 - puzzles were pretty good, but the story was really odd
    • Rob Riches - 3 - fun puzzle game, not too challenging (though getting minimum moves was occasionally tricky)
    • Little Nightmares - 4.5 - great game, weird story, scratched several itches; I didn’t like the DLC flashlight “fighting” sequence, and some puzzles were a little obtuse

    And some bonus in-progress games I hope to finish soon:

    • Nier: Automata - 3.5 so far, but likely going to be 4-4.5 later, I’m still pretty early into it (just finished first major boss fight)
    • Inscryption - 5 - I’m almost done, I’m in Act 3 with two known bosses left
    • Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky - 3.5 - I haven’t touched it since earlier this year, but I really enjoyed it at the time, I just haven’t been motivated to dig back in; got about halfway through I think, maybe a little more
    • CrossCode - 3.5 - enjoying it so far, just haven’t played for a couple weeks; will probably play a bunch over Christmas break; score will probably go up
    • Bendy and the Ink Machine - 3.5 - weird horror game, I think I’m close to finishing, but I’m not sure
    • Red Dead Redemption 2 - 3 - started, but didn’t get far enough for it to grip me; the original was a 5, so I expect good things
    • Ys: Oath of Felghana - 3.5 - pretty fun, but I dropped it because other games seemed more fun; will probably finish soon (about 10-15 hours in)
    • Hollow Knight - 4 - just started (finished first major boss, recently unlocked fast travel), so it may get a better score as I get further
    • limeaide@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      I saw the Golf Club Wasteland name change as well and it caught me off guard lol. I think I enjoyed the “radio” more than the gameplay.

      The voice acting and scripts were all really entertaining.

      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        The ones under the months, yes.

        Some I started in December of last year, but most I started and finished this year. I don’t get a ton of time to play games since I have young kids and a full-time job, but my Steam Deck makes it a lot easier to jump into a game for an hour before bed.

        I didn’t 100% most of them (I don’t care about achievements), but I completed most side content.

        • Darkncoldbard@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Ah ok, cause I was sitting here going… how in the hell is this even possible?? But yeah I constantly get stuck on games cause I want to 100 percent them so I only finished about… none? Close to finishing bannerlord though

          • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            Yeah, I 100%ed something like 4-5 of them, mostly the shorter ones where you get 100% just by rolling credits (or maybe doing one extra thing). I really don’t care about achievements, though I’ll pick some up if they’re not too annoying.

            I consider something “finished” if I complete the main storyline and any side content that interests me. I then mark it as “done” in Steam (I made a category) and will probably never play it again.