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I'm pretty sure Obra Dinn would've been high on this list if I had actually gotten around to playing it.
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Edit: Dang, I just realized I forgot to include Dead Cells, which probably would have been number 4 or 5 for me.
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Same with games I've played a few minutes of but don't have a well informed opinion about.
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Off by one error, whoops!
Open again and tomorrow to catch anyone that couldn't today.
My favorite game just happened. Dropped out the ship onto a drop ship which I didn't know you voyld do. So did 5 other squads
We died quickly it was hilarious and brutal
I didn't get hung up on most of the ranking, and there was a bunch of stuff I'm sure I would like but I didn't get around to playing yet (Celeste, Valkyria Chronicles especially). But man deciding between Obra Dinn and God of War was a challenge.
Similarly God of War really didn't gel with me, I've been playing it since just after Xmas and I'm probably just about half way through? It's a real slog! Picking up a bit now and I'll finish it, but it's certainly not in my top ten.
Transference probably would have placed higher but I've only had chance to pay twenty minutes!
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Thoughts in spoilers
Seems cool, but just really not my type of game so I've only played like 20 minutes of it.
10. Guacamelee 2
Boy did I pick wrong when it came to the 2018's Metroid-a-palooza. The game itself is fine, but it feels mostly like the last game. The new story deals with multiple dimensions, and there's a lot of humor derived from that, but I don't think anything really made me laugh. Also, a Canadian company making a game inspired by Mexican culture and folklore where stuff like the badguy trying to find magic guacamole feels a little to much like they're using it as a prop to tell jokes rather than be genuinely respectful of another culture. Combined with a secret area that seemingly exists for no other reason than for the developers to grouse about the people who complained about the meme posters from the first game, and it really just drags the whole presentation down.
9. Mothergunship
I was initially very excited for this game, having stumbled across it in a Steam queue. It's a FPS roguelite where you're finding gun parts as you go through levels and use them to build all sorts of crazy and wild weapons. I had a lot of fun with it initially, but the levels quickly began feeling samey and then the difficulty rose to the point where I had trouble proceeding, and you actually LOSE any weapon parts you have equipped when you die, so those deaths can be costly. I finally had to just give up and it really soured my impression on the game.
8. Hidden my Game by Mom 3
It's another one of these, but they're quite fun and didn't really have anything dragging the experience down from what I remember.
7. Q.U.B.E.2
I love these first person chamber-based puzzle games, in the vien of Portal. While I liked this game, most of the puzzles were of the kind where you just have to toggle every available option and the solution becomes very obvious. There's no real challenge here up until the last few puzzles, at which point the game ends just when it's getting good. Still I had fun with it, and the improved story elements over the original release of Q.U.B.E.2 was nice.
6. Minut
This was a neat game, a bit simple (though some of the later puzzles I literally could not figure out on my own). I think I liked Q.U.B.E.2 better, but I feel this was a better game overall because it's trying something new.
5. Dusk
This game is a love letter to not just Quake, but really all of FPS gaming from the 90's and early oughts. Lots of inspirations from Quake, Doom, Blood and many other games. The game itself was fun, for being a FPS throwback - a linear romp through a succession of levels that I really appreciated. A had a great deal of fun with it, though the difficulty spike towards the end kinda sucked. (Thank god for save scumming)
4. Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon
This was an incredible throwback to classic Castlevania games, but with modern sensibilities regarding difficult and lots and lots of different ways to play it. It looks and plays great and I had a great time with it.
3. Donut County
Really neat game that might have been higher had they fleshed out the mechanics more. What IS there is still fun as hell and the story is quite good as well.
2. The Room: Old Sins
I'm a sucker for the Room games: intricate puzzlebox experiences that are just a pleasure to play. I don't feel Old Sins stands out from the previous games, which is why it's not #1, but it's still a very, very good time and the dollhouse motif was a nice way of presenting the puzzle rooms.
1. Return of the Obra Dinn
I almost didn't finish this game. There's some ways the game operates that trips over itself (booting you out of scenes before your ready, rushing you to the next scene before you had time to soak in the details, forcing you to backtrack all over the ship to view scenes you've already found.) coupled with stepping away for a few days and I was so incredibly lost when I tried coming back that I rage quit twice in a row. Thankfully I managed to make progress and get into a great groove to finish the game.
This game looks incredible, it has a great soundtrack, phenomenal sound design and a real "What the fuck happened here" mystery that was fantastic to unravel. Most importantly, it's something incredibly new and I think it deserves some major recognition for that.
I played 73 listed games this year! I could have ranked like 35 of those games as games I liked! 16 through 20 were brutal. Through a combination of my local library, Redbox, and Amazon Gift Cards, I was very fortunate to spend at least a tiny bit of time with many many great games in 2018. (Seriously, libraries are amazing! I can request any game available from every library in the state! For FREE!) If only there was more time!
I somehow missed the nominations thread, but I've had some major life stuff going on. I was even on the verge of messaging Grinch a couple times but then it slipped my mind again and again. I would have noticed that Darkest Dungeon was on the list! (Actually, now that I look at the nom thread, I see that Lawndart caught it.) Also it's wild that 428 Shibuya Scramble originally came out on the Wii like a decade ago but never in the USA until 2018. It's such a weird game.
Anyway, as always, many thanks to:
@Mr_Grinch for getting the nominations and poll organized.
@Infidel for running and hosting the poll.
@mcc for creating and hosting the original polls.
This is, bar none, my favorite tradition of the PA Forums, and even though participation isn't what it used to be, I still love it and I love y'all.
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- Deltarune: Chapter 1 (PC)
- MUSCLE WORLD (PC)
- 10 Mississippi (PC)
- investigate (PC)
- Last Game Of The Year 2018 (PC)
- Rising Dusk (PC)
- Lamplight City (PC)
- Return of the Obra Dinn (PC)
- LONG LIVE THE AXE (PC)
- Flamingo Quest (PC)
- Minit (NS, PC, PS4, XBO)
- Rym 9000 (PC)
- Kleu’s music (PC)
- Ludus Antioch (PC)
- the phone rings (PC)
- BINKY XXI: BINKY GOES INTO THE HAUNTED CASTLE TO SEARCH FOR THEIR BOYFRIEND RUFF (PC)
- Cosmic Top Secret (MOBILE, PC)
- NSFWare (PC)
- Celeste (NS, PC, PS4, XBO)
- Fortnite (MOBILE, NS, PC, PS4, XBO)
Now, a weird aside: death is perhaps the preeminent theme of videogames in general, but I felt it was handled in unusually varied ways in the games I played in 2018. Of the titles that made it onto my list, Return of the Obra Dinn is a great example as the majority of the cast dies, and we meet many of them for the first time via their rotting corpses. Minit bills itself as a game of constant death, Kleu’s music is an absolutely beautiful take on dying, and Ludus Antioch deals with the topic in ways I'd rather not spoil. spacepuppy released an entire series of games about loss and grief in 2018 that I've represented with the phone rings (which I found the most arresting), but all of them are worth experiencing. Of the games that slipped out of my top 20, The Loss Levels oddly pairs arcade-style gameplay with autobiographical vignettes surrounding the death of a loved one, Donkey Kong's Revenge offers up a literal murder simulator, and Dead Wife Game deconstructs death as trite narrative motivation. The Missing: J.J. Macfield and the Island of Memories (which I wish I'd been able to play for more than an hour before the deadline) turns repeated gruesome deaths into a puzzle-solving mechanic, while The Purpose of Water makes a puzzle out of death itself. In conclusion… a good year for death?It's a 2017 game so you couldn't have voted for it anyway! So there!
P.S. thanks so much for taking the time to organise this despite your busy-sounding life! Infidel, thanks for running and reopening the poll! Thanks mcc for building it! And thanks all voters! See you next time…
It's also the only 2018 game I played last year. Most of my playtime was in last-year games like Assassin's Creed Origins or "service" games like Destiny 2 and Elder Scrolls Online.
Posted here for posterity, even though votes have already been tallied.
Also a top 20 list is nutso, so really it's like a top 10 or 11 and then every other game listed is tied for 12th.
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