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 donāt 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 didnāt 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 itās 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 Fortuneās Foundation is probably my new favorite version of Solitaire. I donāt know what Iād 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 thereās nothing else like it. Itās 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
Iāve 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 thatās fine what it wanted to tell.
May:
Hotshot Racing 6/10
Whatās here is fun, but thereās 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:
Wilmotās Warehouse 8/10
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Ai4NZnjOdUE/maxresdefault.jpg
Super Meat Boy 5/10
Iāve forced myself to start this game so many times over the years, I finally completed it and I just donāt like it. Way too janky/buggy for a simple 2D platformer. I beat the final level 3 times and couldnāt figure out what to do at the end, only for it to turn out that the final cutscene wasnāt activating because my frame rate was too high. Ugh. It just made me want to play N++ again.
Ape Out 9/10
Ahhh itās so good. The soundtrack and sound effects and visuals, itās just perfect. A little on the short side (only took 1:40 to beat), but itās pretty replayable.
Neodash 7/10
Itās basically Distance but worse. Distance is one of my favorite games of all time and is firmly a 10/10, so thatās not necessarily a bad thing. Any levels that rely on the mid-air controls bring down the experience a bit, but luckily there arenāt 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
Itās basically a 1-hour music video. Itās very pretty and the songs are good, but the gameplay just kind ofā¦ exists.
Mad Max 6/10
Itās 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
Itās fine, but thereās absolutely no reason to play this over Riptide GP Renegade unless youāre 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
Itās 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 didnāt already own it, I would not go out of my way to play it.
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter 7/10
Itās a fun little walking simulator mystery game, I donāt remember much of the actual story right now lol. I played the remastered version which was very pretty though.
Quantum Conundrum 7/10
Itās a 6/10 puzzle game brought up by a full point because of John de Lancieās character.
September:
Hotline Miami 8/10
I know itās technically kind of a mess, but like everyone else I really loved it anyway. The soundtrack is excellent and clearing rooms is super satisfying. Raycevickās 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 Iāve 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 itās made in Godot!
Sonic Generations 5/10
I donāt like the Sonic games, but Iāve 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 whoās 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 thatās the case. The story is also nonsense but luckily itās easily ignored. This video was so cathartic after finishing the game.
Doom Eternal (& The Ancient Gods) 8/10
November:
Superliminal 8/10
My primary complaint is that it isnāt longer. It took a little over an hour and a half to reach the end, but whatās here is fantastic.
December:
Nothing again, lol
Gosh, Iāve realized I donāt finish games lol. Iāve put many hours in Forza Horizon, Factorio, Pokemon, Cities Skylines, and incremental games but here are the ones I actually beat in 2023 so far, although Iām about to beat Pokemon Scarlet so Iāll include that too.
Pokemon Sun (cartridge). (4/10). Why am I rating this so low? Itās my least favorite Pokemon game Iāve played. I finished it this year, but started it in 2018. The game leans way too heavy on the story and not in the gameplay. The game felt like a huge downgrade from OR/AS. It also plays incredibly slow. Not touching Gen 7 again. The battles were nice and intense with enough difficulty to excite me though.
Chip Defense (8/10). You can find it on F-droid, and itās free. Itās a little tower defense game with a theme on CPUs and instructions. It took me a few hours to beat all the levels and it hooked me.
Pokemon White (emulator), limited pokemon center challenge. (9.3/10). I absolutely love Gen 5 and I did a challenge a lot like a Nuzlocke but more interesting and far less stressful. You can only catch the first pokemon on each route, and any non-forced heal would cost 5000*2^(number of prior heals done) poke dollars. That way, I could have a pokemon faint and not have it be the end of my 40 hour playthrough. I actually (unintentionally) lost to Ghetsis at the end but I planned for that and had enough money for one more heal, and then beat him the 2nd time.
Factorio Bobās/Angelās (hardcore Factorio mod). (9.5/10). Do you like Factorio but want 10x more complicated recipes that include lots of byproducts to deal with? Then this mod is for you! It took me 123 hours to launch a rocket, and apparently thatās pretty quick. The base is one huge pile of spaghetti with a 90 lane bus split into three.
PokĆ©mon Scarlet (cartridge). (8/10). I havenāt quite gotten to the credits yet but Iāve beaten the Top Champion so Iām very close. This game is one of the most fun pokemon games imo despite being extremely flawed. The open world is a huge breath of fresh air after the last 4 gens being 4 big lines. The frame drops are not the really annoying thing about this game, itās the cutscenes and long battle animations. (Gen 7 was even worse with this). The exploration isnāt groundbreaking but I love how random encounters were ditched for overworld pokemon (even with the lamentable draw distance), that you could run into and instantly fight without a 10s cutscene playing. Trainers are finally all optional. I donāt play for the story but itās one of the better ones for pokemon games. Having multiple arcs at the same time keeps things interesting for me. The game isnāt the most difficult (probably average+ for pokemon standards) but I made it satisfyingly hard on myself when forcing myself to comply with set mode, no items in battle, and trying to win while underleveled. Also the music is a masterpiece, bravo Giacomo.
Hello fellow nuzlocke player. Have you tried any of the Pokemon ROM hacks? They might give you something new / more exciting to play.
Iāve played a bit of the Pokemon Adventures Red version romhack, but never completed that as it wasnāt particularly interesting. What ROM hacks would you recommend? Iād like a challenge but nothing crazy.