My favorite game of the year was Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader. Owlcat finally got it right with the ship battles as the “mini-game” and their TTRPG bona-fides really shined with this. Great writing, cool characters, nice voice acting. The choices, while not necessarily true “choices matter” ™, allow for some great RP moments. The battle system is a little chunky at times since so many characters need to recast buffs most turns and so that gets a little repetitive, especially when you get stuck doing some of the “random” encounters while bouncing around in your space ship.

But, small details aside, it’s a long, text heavy, rewarding CRPG. With BioWare’s corpse jacked by EA, Owlcat has really become my go to for CRPGs. I honestly like it more than BG3.

Hmm what did I play this year. A lot of unfinished games. A lot of gamepass. This year was a story of “my partner is away for the weekend, I will play 20 hours over the next two days and then never have a chance to finish the game” lol.

Early in the year I played a bunch of Deliverance: Kingdom Come, but dropped off. Definitely want to come back to it. I played lots of persona 5 (I think that was this year…) and Like a Dragon: Ishin, but they both left game pass before I could finish them 😔 there was one week where I played a LOT of vampire survivors.

I’m not sure if it was this year or last but emulated a bunch of random shit, got decently far in Pokémon heart gold before my laptop died. And I beat Metroid zero mission!! (Extremely rare glimmer_twin finished game). Then on my new laptop I played like 5 seasons of football manager 2024. Also got addicted to Stellaris for the first time.

Right at the start of the year I was trying to get some use out of my switch so I finished Mario Odyssey and played some random indie stuff I don’t remember.

There was also a whole bunch of random stuff on gamepass I dabbled in. Banjo kazooie, more indie stuff. Lately I played a fair bit of crash bandicoot remaster over a couple of days and did like 5 runs on frostpunk before getting annoyed that I lost with thirty seconds left in the big storm.

And most recently I reinstalled CKIII. May god have mercy on my soul.

Balatro was pretty fun, wondering what the creator is gonna do next after the game, assuming they dont just retire of off Balatro.

Other than that I don’t really have much, all the AAA games I legally obtained were just mediocre, like Cities Skylines 2, just being too car brained and entirely Usian city design focused. Maybe I’ll try out that Soviet city builder but it seems a little too complicated for me

Might pick up Hades 2 sometime next year if it has a 1.0 release, as it stands I don’t want to play games unfinished as I have a hatred of beta testing games in steam “early-access” wasting my time

Been watching my partner play Metaphor: ReFantazio and it’s basically a better version of the Persona games without the forced romance or weird shit that persona games do. It looks like it took all the best elements of those games and improved upon them. The story is pretty good so far 20 hours in. Gameplay is typical persona/jrpg gameplay but I like the choice of either enganging an enemy and transitioning to a turn-based fight, or just wacking it with your sword and keep it moving if you’re stronger than the enemy. More rpgs need this.

I was recently playing Watch Dogs 2, since it was on gamepass and I thought I’d give it a shot. I think the story is pretty cool 3-5 hours in but I also put it down about a week ago and have no desire to pick it back up. The gameplay wasn’t really doing it for me. Just kinda felt like a clunkier GTA game with some sci-fi elements. The characters seemed interesting, though.

Honestly, been looking for a game to really scratch that itch and I haven’t found one I really enjoy in a minute. I need to buy a mini pc to play Baldur’s Gate 3. Oh, and I’m looking forward to Date Everything because I love goofy shit.

Trying out the new Indiana Jones game, honestly really gets the tone right, also gonna try out some indie games as well (Coven and Caravan Sandwitch)

Working on Dragon Warrior (Quest) I via a romhack that re-translates the game to be closer to the Japanese and also changes the sprites to be closer to the JP release too. Also Final Fantasy I via a another re-translation that closer to JP and removes some of the censorship like the church cross being removed. So funny how uppity Nintendo was about Western releases of JP games to not offend Sunday School moms when looking at the eshop today and there’s fucking hentai games now.

Caves of Qud. I’ve made it the furthest I’ve ever gone so far with my future-seeing buff chef. Using precognition I was able to force favorable mutations and rng cooking effects, and explore safely through spacetime vortexes, and now he’s a veritable God with such low cooldown on abilities that the cooldown on precognition is less than the active duration, meaning there is never a moment he can be killed without rewinding time and trying again.

deleted by creator

This year I have continued my on-again off-again love affair with From the Depths.

Mechabellum, FaB on Talishar, and Helldivers. I need to get back into PoE 2, I hit the sand king guy from act 2 right as I got busy and as the illuminate came out, so kinda bounced off him. I can beat it, just need to sit down and make it happen

Still playing Cyberpunk 2077 here. Been playing it for about three weeks now. I’m blown away by how much better this game is now, when you compare it to the complete dogshit it was when it came out. Loving the plot. Phantom Liberty has some insane action set pieces that are more exciting than most Hollywood films these days. From complete failure to probably one of my top 10 RPGs of all time, I say that’s quite the comeback.

Next one on the list is the new Indiana Jones. Looking forward to that one!

deleted by creator

I injured my hand kinda bad a few weeks ago so now I have to put down the Fromsoft games and pick up something slower for the next month or so

I found a little indie plane game called nuclear option and its basically ace combat but like a little more “sim”-ish and its great to fuck around with nukes and stuff online

Top game of the year for me was Stepmania, no contest. Super fun to play with the family, fantastic cardio workout, sick tunes if you skip all the J-pop songs.

Half Life Alyx has been remarkable, amazing VR game. Unlike most games where you just press a button to reload your firearm you actually have to physically grab a new magazine from your backpack, unload your pistol and put the new magazine in. I once dropped the magazine on the ground when a head crab was coming towards me and I just about had a panic attack.

I also recently tried learning how to play Victoria3. So far I haven’t been able to figure out how to play more than 2 hours without crashing my economy, but I found a YouTube channel that has twenty or so 40+ minute long “beginner tutorials” so I’ll learn eventually 🙃