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CCGOTY2018WTFBBQ: What were your favorite games in 2018?

Farted by FLOUNDERMAN_CLOCK, January 08, 2019, 04:03:05 PM

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FLOUNDERMAN_CLOCK

It doesnt need to be something actually released last year. Neither of mine were (just the versions I played). Dark Souls Remastered and the switch port of Kero Blaster.




Dark Souls was so damn good I was willing to start over when a power surge killed my save halfway through. The dark yet beautiful fantasy atmosphere, the story and worldbuilding you have to hunt down to find, the hard but deep and fair gameplay (minus the platforming), and the interconnected almost metroid-y world all come together into something truly unique. I almost want a ps3 just for demons souls. but so far Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3 have sated my hunger for more dark souls, even if they didnt quite capture me as much. Though I'm no where near done with DS3. Bloodborne was some incredible stuff but I feel the story could be just slightly more involved and used more NPCs to talk to. Dark Souls 1 struck a good balance with that. Bloodborne felt more like a series of levels with cool lore. do remember before you buy though, that the remastered version has a strangely worse and less atmospheric lighting system (though not ruinously so) but is also 60fps instead of 30 and doesnt lag like the old game apparently did in places like blighttown. Pick what you value more if you pick up the original or the remaster.



Kero Blaster is by the dude who made Cave Story, and apparently it was similar to it early in development. I bet some people would have wanted that instead of a linear platformer shooter. I sure would have enjoyed that, but I'm glad he went with something new. It's one of the most viscerally satisfying jump and shoot games I've ever played. It just FEELS good. Every weapon is fun and every upgrade changes the behavior of said weapon instead of just adding strength (thought it still does). each weapon is necessary and tactically useful throughout the game too. and when you unlock hard mode it's actually an entirely new story set after the first mode with new color pallettes enemies and platform placement for every level and boss. I love when games do shit like that. Reminds me of Kirby Dreamland 1 when all the enemies changed designs on hard mode. while understated the story and world had me curious. But you gotta dig for it and analyze it a bit to know whats going on. It isn't anything deep either, it's mainly about dealing with current and pent up anxiety as far as I can tell. apparently that anxiety turns into the monsters you fight? But it isn't bad or shallow either, it's very charming in fact. Being a bit esoteric works out for it like with dark souls, but it could have been a little more straightforward. Cave Story got it better in that sense. the pixel art is charming as all hell too, just like Cave Story and Ikachan before it.



The best thing truly released in 2018 that I actually got around to on time was Super Smashio Brothers Ultimatum because they finally put in King K Rool. He's fucking good too, not only is that crown throw thing tactically useful AND hilarious, the fat bastard has a combination reflector/counter. eat shit everyone from Fire Emblem and Starfox my boy has the golden gut. complete with invulnerability during his smash attacks what the fuck is that. that said Starfox got Wolf back, and he's got his "oh you're good but i'm better" line too. oh and spirits mode was fun too. I was hoping for more bombastic brawl-style cutscenes but god damn that world map was a fun concept and incredibly well fleshed out.

PhantomCatClock

did you know "dark souls" is one of the few multi-word doublepalindromes in the world? if you backwards it twice, it's the same as reading it forwards

RobClock

The best thing released in 2018 was the pre-order bonus preview levels for ION MAIDEN
[u2]KtQs3sDEEa4[/u2]

The caveat to this statement is DUSK which dropped in December, but I only just got it this past week and have yet to play it so I will report back after I complete that. The buzz has been overwhelmingly positive so I’m more than a little excited.

Slurpee

I had to check but yes indeed Into the Breach came out last year
from the makers of FTL, it's a tactical rpg with perfect information (the only one I've ever seen) meaning as you direct your dudes around, the game tells you in no uncertain terms what the enemy is going to do, how much damage they can do, how much damage your dudes can do, where the enemies will be after you use an attack that moves them, what order the attacks will go in, etc. etc. and there's no time limit which means anything that goes wrong is exactly 100% your own fucking fault and that's great
also it's Pacific Rim


I'm also going to plug RABBIT GAME one more time. I've previously written about it here:
Quote from: Slurpee on September 08, 2018, 02:10:14 AM
ok so real talk I actually love indie games probably too much, and I'm going to go off-off-broadway with my first recommendation: wet gamin's spectacularly odd RABBIT GAME, a food chain simulator cum existential nightmare. you take on a myriad of shifting roles (usually from being devoured by whatever you'll play as next) through an endless cycle of life and death through the many inhabitants of a strange, disjointed forest, crudely depicted with hastily scrawled bitmaps floating in what turns out to be a bewilderingly large and labyrinthian 3-dimensional collage. (screenshots unfortunately do not do it justice.) your journey, navigated by wiggling your mouse to progress the camera on rails and clicking on things (or carefully avoiding them to see what lies beyond), is narrated in something approaching poetic free verse which is, at turns, simple and childlike, endearingly goofy, irreverent, callously sardonic, or viscerally unsettling

it runs free in your browser, and I highly recommend it for anyone looking for some truly outside the box shit. this is video games as jodorowski by way of harmony korine. it's raw, and inaccessible, and sweeping in scope, and completely unapologetic, and I thought about it for days after I played it (at least play until you meet the moles. if you're not intrigued after that, fie)
and have nothing new to say, really, except that rabbit game should be hanging in a museum


uh
is that it? hm.
I played Resident Evil 7 to death, but the second half of me playing that was more like conquering a mountain than enjoying a hike
I replayed Bastion, Undertale, and New Vegas, but nobody wants to hear about that
I liked Night in the Woods, Oxenfree, The Magic Circle, Quadrilateral Cowboy, We Know the Devil, and a lot of Kitty Horrorshow's output, but I don't know if any of the passed the bar for goty, they were all just... very good in distinct and enjoyable but non-earth-shattering ways

oh, Sherlock Holmes Crimes & Punishments was shockingly good, and I assume the only reason nobody cares is because it's a Sherlock Holmes game and anybody can just make those if they want to. but if you'd like to really feel like a detective, I have never seen it done better in a video game

I was really digging Crossing Souls. 3/4 top down 80's-pastiche action rpg where you play as a gang of Goonies-esque child stereotypes that just unpretentiously embraces the fantasy of kids going on adventures (like, the nerdy kid straight up invented and uses a laser gun). so basically my dream game... until a bit of casual, subtextual homophobia toward the end of the demo pretty much murdered my buzz. :/ but if you're into the same kind of shit but not as sensitive to that sort of thing, this one kind of flew under the radar

the "still great but it's been great for so long I can't even remember if I gave it goty already" award goes to Kentucky Route Zero,
the "this is only a demo and I need to calm down" award goes to Deltarune,
the "I wish I played this because it's probably great" award goes to Return of the Obra Dinn,
the "I can't believe I still enjoy wasting time on this" award goes to Don't Starve and Broforce
the "I only have room for one open world game at a time and this one got in line four years ahead of Spider-Man and Red Dead" award goes to Shadow of Mordor
and the "I swear to god playing this used to be fun why am I so miserable" award goes to Overwatch, the first time the award has gone to anything other than TF2 or a WWE game, congratulations Blizzard

RobClock

I had seen Sherlock Holmes Crime and Punishments was out but I kind of left that series alone after Testament because the developers had clearly started taking some heavy influence from more recent adaptations of the character (Read: Moffat’s) which soured my interest. But a glowing recommendation may well be enough to get me to watch a YouTube lets play give it a shot.

Slurpee

Quote from: RobClock on January 09, 2019, 05:09:24 PM
I had seen Sherlock Holmes Crime and Punishments was out but I kind of left that series alone after Testament because the developers had clearly started taking some heavy influence from more recent adaptations of the character (Read: Moffat’s) which soured my interest. But a glowing recommendation may well be enough to get me to watch a YouTube lets play give it a shot.
it might be a little Moffaty jahu
the game starts out with Sherlock firing a pistol blindfolded because he's so eccentric!!
and Sherlock reading a person at a glance is played out as highlighting details in slow-motion close-ups with floating words

but idk I only watched one episode of the BBC Sherlock, and, of the stories, I've only read A Study in Scarlet and A Scandal in Bohemia, so I'm not exactly an expert

it's the game design that got me
rather than leading you by the nose, or making the mysteries trivial, the mysteries are quite complex, and it won't even tell you if you've got it right until after you've committed to a theory, but everything else about the game sort of augments your own real cognitive faculties. it won't do the thinking for you, but it gives you ways to clearly map out your thoughts and see what possibilities you've already been over, which ones you haven't considered, and what still needs to be looked into. it's a delight.
a lot of games have made me feel like I'm better at, for example, murder, than I really am(, probably), but this is the only time a game has made me feel like I'm better than I really at figuring shit out

FLOUNDERMAN_CLOCK

damn that sounds interesting. only time I've been drawn to a detective game since deadly premonition (still need to play that). that said I dont really know many detective games lol.

Quote from: RobClock on January 08, 2019, 06:45:58 PM
The best thing released in 2018 was the pre-order bonus preview levels for ION MAIDEN
[u2]KtQs3sDEEa4[/u2]

The caveat to this statement is DUSK which dropped in December, but I only just got it this past week and have yet to play it so I will report back after I complete that. The buzz has been overwhelmingly positive so I’m more than a little excited.

the gameplay I've seen has me interested at the very least. I haven't watched any videos of ion maiden but I love the aesthetic in the screenshots you've posted of it before. I hope someone does a systemshocklike in that sort of style.

VCRClock

Quote from: Slurpee on January 09, 2019, 04:21:48 PM
Quote from: Slurpee on September 08, 2018, 02:10:14 AM
(at least play until you meet the moles. if you're not intrigued after that, fie)

the moles are big fuck off elitists, is what they are :mad:

I apparently found 30 of a possible 29 paths, is that normal?
<Marlin Clock> This thread seems proof positive that divisiveness at any level is usually bad for the Clock Crew.
<PhantomCatClock> are we talking about the same clock crew

Slurpee

Quote from: VCRClock on January 13, 2019, 01:22:32 AM
the moles are big fuck off elitists, is what they are :mad:
:D

Quote from: VCRClock on January 13, 2019, 01:22:32 AM
I apparently found 30 of a possible 29 paths, is that normal?
yeah I think that's a way of fucking with completionists or warding off incurious players

iirc there's closer to 37 or 38? somewhere in there

GraphicsClock

-Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon
-Smash Bros. Ultimate

Probably the only 2 new games I bought, I bought some older stuff too on Steam and at game swaps.

JambaClock


FLOUNDERMAN_CLOCK

Quote from: TreeClock on June 19, 2019, 06:45:51 PM
-Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon
-Smash Bros. Ultimate

Probably the only 2 new games I bought, I bought some older stuff too on Steam and at game swaps.
we already have a treeclock. for over a decade actually. he's kinda infamous here for stealing a bunch of money. 

GreyClock

Quote from: FLOUNDERMAN_CLOCK on June 20, 2019, 12:00:09 PM
Quote from: TreeClock on June 19, 2019, 06:45:51 PM
-Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon
-Smash Bros. Ultimate

Probably the only 2 new games I bought, I bought some older stuff too on Steam and at game swaps.
we already have a treeclock. for over a decade actually. he's kinda infamous here for stealing a bunch of money.
NO IT'S THE REAL ONE

PAY US BITCH

NintendrCkolc

#13