i didn't play that many new games this year (she says, then always posts something 5x as long as expected), and it's pretty impossible for me to compare my two favorites of them, which are, of course,
last call bbs and
splatoon 3
i'm really going to miss zachtronics.
last call really showcases everything a really talented team has to offer, and the only reason i find it a little hard to recommend is because the instructions for the bigger games are so spartan, which in the game's context implies that they would've come with manuals you don't have, but are basically designed assuming you're familiar with the general methodology of their games, and people tend to find that a bit frustrating. but the sprite-gunpla-knockoff simulator "steed force hobby studio" is a unique and wonderful experience and the nonogram puzzle "dungeons and diagrams" was a good time too. in a sense it's kind of an indulgent sendoff, but underneath the wistful and nostalgic presentation and writing are barth and burns' fascination with creation and creativity that runs through every game they've worked on together, and this game has many nods to the diversity of people, ideas, and motivations that build the computing world they and i grew up on. plus it led to me beating a few of zach's other games and making good progress on the rest...maybe in a few more years i'll have truly finished all of them. but there's plenty of time for that.
a lot of the big nintendo series are hit or miss for me, and splatoon wasn't much on my radar in the past since i never had a wii u and even the second game was somewhat on its way out by the time i got my switch. but i played the demo splatfest day and had a kind of mixed impression, since the game does ultimately suffer from nintendo's scuffed online implementations. i eventually decided to buy it though, and i'm pretty glad i did, since it's been a fun time in its own right and has gotten me much more into a genre i felt like i'd never be good at and long didn't have that much interest in. i've faintly played some UT2004 with friends, and spent some time in TF2 and overwatch, but this is the first time i've really gone in on consistently trying to learn and improve in a game like this, and the movement and aesthetics really contribute to that interest. aesthetically, there's really a lot of interesting stuff going on: it feels futuristic, retro, and timeless all at once, and its post-apocalyptic stylings are in a sense just the background to a lively and colorful world. if it wasn't this, i still feel like i'd surely find my love for shooting games some day. but i'm glad it's this; the more chill theming, ink mechanics, and weapon selections, especially the bucket-type weapons and this entry's "splatanas" and bows, are all things that really appeal to me
dnf duel hits a weird nexus of almost mainstream fighting game and janked up licensed fighter. it feels unfair and evil but in ways that stuff usually isn't these days, with a huge emphasis on threatening guard breaks and testing the other player's patience before hopefully exploding them in 1-2 hits instead of doing stuff they can't block. it's not the most fun game to watch but there's a certain intensity and appeal to a game where being really cheap doesn't feel too hard to pull off.
star ocean: the divine force was a lot better than i expected, though. as i said in my own thread, i decided i was going to buy it after 5 because i became convinced i would have a fun time even if the game wasn't that good, but in contrast to that game it's not so...modern; the area design and story/game structure feel much more akin to the company's ps2 games, which feels like an appropriate throwback from a team that may well not make another game and really hit their stride in the late 90s and early 2000s. and even though the last few hours of the story show the strain of budget struggles near the end of development, this is also the first tri-ace game since *the first valkyrie profile* where
you can get new antagonists from the main story to join your party in the postgame. is the game *that* good? no. but i had a great time and i'm just glad they haven't lost their scrappy and chaotic spirit
older games i played this year for the first time:
guilty gear strive is pretty fun! i had a weird impression from early footage and watching the game near release, but really sinking a little serious time into it and learning the basic ideas of the system, i'm happy that it's a game that feels so fast and playable. i don't even think it's truly "easier" than xrd, it just feels like a lot of things have more obvious consequences, so it's easier to keep switching up my ideas and what i'm trying to do.
also played more xrd this year than i have in the past, partly due to the promised rollback netcode coming. i've finally accepted myself and i play ky. it feels pretty good
monster hunter generations ultimate sure is...a big monster hunter game, with a lot of the same foibles and excitement as any of them. the 3ds generation is the one i had seen the least of though, and it's kind of stunning to see what they really started doing even with that hardware; the 4/X monsters really step it up in terms of weird transformations and posing over the older games, and do some stuff that's really surprising even after playing rise, like the seltas queen's team attacks, kecha wacha's flying-squirrel moves and face-masking, and nakarkos, which is sort of a junky battle but absolutely phenomenal aesthetically, with the slow reveal of its actual body lurking under the giant bonepile and creepy effects everywhere. plus this was my first exposure to the infamous deviljho (it's great and messed up) and brachydios, which is a monster i find utterly hilarious due to its funny clapping animation and mega man x armor suit
the "arcade archives" releases of
metal black and
tetris: the grand master landed just a couple weeks apart and i've played each of them a fair bit lately as a result. metal black is pretty fascinating not just as a clearly influential and memorable entry in taito's shmup catalog, but a game whose technical ambition and innovations don't quite line up with what was eventually decided as the best way to implement digital images into games...it's got a bit of an outsider art feeling near the end because of that (and the game/art director takatsuna senba did
come out of the animation industry and seems to have had a pretty different idea about games than a lot of his colleagues), but it only amplifies the unsettling weirdness of the game.
tgm is tetris. i dunno. i've never had the biggest interest in tetris generally, even in
puyo puyo tetris i basically wanted to learn puyo, but this has always been a fascinating series to me to watch so of course i had to try it for myself, and i think the arcade pacing creates a really great feeling for the game, with a little time to get situated before the game pushes its first threatening speedups, then relents before beginning the climb to the game's final form. i like that it only takes like 5 minutes to play out a credit for me right now, and in that time i get some easy practice while also being quickly pushed to improve. i dunno if i'll have the patience and fortitude to learn a full 1cc on this game, much less the time-attack focused "grand master" rank, since the second half of the game features "20g" difficulty where the pieces essentially start on top of the stack, making it so you can only slide or roll them "downhill" and necessitating even more advanced strategies. but it's been a cool time
the bugs are a bit of a downer, but they'll probably get fixed soon. i hope.
xenoblade 2 was pretty fun. the only other monolith games i've played were the baten kaitos games, and this definitely has some of the same feel in a strange way (especially the theatrical villains who never manage to actually upstage the protagonists), and i always enjoy playing an rpg where it feels like you get better and better at it over time without it directly featuring some kind of perfect timing element. it's funny thinking about how i only finished it because i found out that morag eventually joins the party, otherwise i would've probably sold it back after i didn't play it for 3 years after doing the intro. mostly though, for as many ups and downs as there are along the way...i can never hate a game where the last few hours are that good. i started playing 1 right after, and was kind of amused by how many things i didn't like about 2
already just weren't in the game and were apparently invented for the sequel, but then got distracted by other stuff. i'll probably finish it early next year, then probably play gears...
