GOTY 2019 (Halfway Point)

[Blue Jam]

You ought to give Vampyr a look if you haven't already.

Also on Game Pass, cheers Biggy!

While you're here, did you ever complete Quantum Break?

[bgmnts]

Prey/Deus Ex style gameplay? Lost me there.

[biggytitbo]

Also on Game Pass, cheers Biggy!

While you're here, did you ever complete Quantum Break?

No! I got stuck on a boss aswell, which I think ws also Aidan Gillen nearish the end of the game. I was quite enjoying it up to that point too, but that particularly boss battle wasn't so much difficult as just annoying.

[Blue Jam]

No! I got stuck on a boss aswell, which I think ws also Aidan Gillen nearish the end of the game. I was quite enjoying it up to that point too, but that particularly boss battle wasn't so much difficult as just annoying.

"BETTER NOT, JACK..."

Prey/Deus Ex style gameplay? Lost me there.

...like all those "cookie-cutter" games Bosto hates? Sounds right up my street...

Bosto, do you like Vampyr?

[biggytitbo]

A GOTY contender for me is a real old one - LA Noire, finally got round to playing the remaster on PS4. Its a real slow burner but once that game gets its hooks into you it is really immersive and gripping, and the acting and plot are like the opposite of Vampyr in terms of quality, really stellar stuff in video game terms.


Resident Evil 2 as well, as long as it is in the Police Station is consistently brilliant.

[The Boston Crab]

Bosto, do you like Vampyr?

Not tried it yet but I downloaded it off Game Pass. I've heard it's got some really interesting, flawed ideas and it's a bit janky, both of which appeal.

A big part of my lack of interest in the Dishonored/Prey/Deus Ex/Bioshock/Alien Isolation kind of thing is that I don't really like first person games very much. I struggle to get invested in them when I can't see the character, even though I know that first person is supposed to be immersive with the silent protagonist and all (often). Boring more general point, I very rarely find the silent protagonist thing immersive, almost ever. The big exceptions for me would be Metroid Prime and HL2, but I played them over a decade ago, and it's still very hard for anything else to follow in their wake, either in terms of gameplay or immersion. The only other exceptions would be pure walking sims like Firewatch and Edith Finch. Not sure why I find them more interesting than Dishonored et al but I think it's the relative lack of gameplay which allows me to get invested.

Aside from the story-driven stuff, I've also never taken to FPS at all. I play a bit of Battlefield and Destiny but without any commitment. They're games for a quick blast rather than something to grind away at for hours. I just don't buzz off that kind of thing at all, and I'm pretty shit at them, as well. I was never one for Doom or Quake back in the day and despite buying the 2016 Doom on three formats (always for fuck all in sales), I've never got past the second area. I find it hard to control and stiff. I'm too conscious that I'm just moving a camera around. Anyway, that's another reason why I don't have any interest in the genre you and biggy really enjoy. I know I'm missing out but I don't enjoy the combat or find them immersive enough to get into the story.

[Zetetic]

A big part of my lack of interest in the Dishonored/Prey/Deus Ex/Bioshock/Alien Isolation kind of thing... Boring more general point, I very rarely find the silent protagonist thing immersive, almost ever. ... The only other exceptions would be pure walking sims like Firewatch and Edith Finch.

I don't think any of these have silent protagonists, incidentally.

This would possibly improve some of them, come to think of it. Arguably the worst story-parts of Dishonored are how dull the main-game-series protoganists are when they open their mouths.

[Zetetic]

I suspect in a lot of those cases, the first-person perspective isn't meant to be "immersive" in that it's really meant to encourage self-other merging or whatever. What it is meant to do is limit player awareness in a particular way (arguably to an unrealistic extent).

Alien Isolation and other horror-ish games, maybe.

[The Boston Crab]

OK they're just fuckin shit then

[bgmnts]

Nah they're all ace.

Although the idea of immersion in video games is stupid.

[The Boston Crab]

That's the stupidest thing I've read in a decade

[bgmnts]

Nah there's fuck all immersive bout a video game.

[The Boston Crab]

Get a imaginations buddy

[bgmnts]

Don't need one, I can just play video games. Ha!

[biggytitbo]

Nah there's fuck all immersive bout a video game.

All good video games are immersive, even a super primate speccy game with monochrome graphics. Once you adjust to the world it creates you're in.

[Dex Sawash]

Went to buy Halfway Point but they were sold out :(


EDIT- should've read thread, first fucking reply

My nomination is "Halfway Point" from GOTY.

[biggytitbo]

Just started Metro Exodus,  it has a good leg up in the GotY stakes considering its two predecessors are two of my favourite games ever made because they're fucking world class.

I'm playing Metro Last Light redux right now and it's really good, not sure why it's taken me so long to get round to it. It's a bit like a more depressing Half Life 2, perfect.

[H-O-W-L]

I'll run through a bunch of games I've enjoyed and hated this year alongside what actually came out, since I'm an arse and I like typing.

I think for me RE2R has basically been my Game of the Year but that's mostly because fuck all that's come out has interested me really, and I think it's a deeply flawed game that's just about executed well enough.

My "Howl is a cheating bitch" Game of the Year award goes to Hitman 2. It came out in November last year and the content updates have only made it better and better. I've put a solid 150+ hours into it despite already putting 80+ into Hitman 2016. Hitman 2 + Legacy Pack + Expansion Pass are a big expenditure but I've more than gotten my money's worth and there's still another map and more content to come. Very fucking tidy game indeed, and probably the best Hitman game overall barring Contracts.

My "Dogshit Bourbon" award for best piece of shit wrapped up in promise goes to Mordhau for being a catastrophic load of arse and biscuits that failed to maintain player interest or refine itself after a rocky but promising start. The first patch was horseshit, and the first "content update" released one of the worst maps in gaming history and forced it into the server rotation meaning you have a 1 in 4 chance to have your night utterly ruined if you dare to play it. Despite a satisfying combat system when you're not playing against cheesy arseholes, the way it's ended up being is a total crock of shit that I wish I could refund.

The "You Tried" award goes to Rage 2. I don't know if I need to write a paragraph about it. Incredibly mediocre and poorly ported. The video game equivalent of greasy spoon plastic-pot mayonnaise. Yeah, it'll lube up your sandwich, but you're not going to miss it.

The "Gold Dust Custard Cream" award for best surprise wrapped up in a seemingly shit wrapper goes to The Forest, which came out of Early Access last year and I started playing in January. I still pop into my save every now and then. I thought it was your standard shitty "minecraft but prettier and therefore worse" game but it turned out to be a wonderfully horrific game with a brutal yet beautiful setting, generous amounts of jank, and incredibly well-done atmosphere. The fact it's the one pre-made map means the devs had the time to slowly refine each area and add in detail and nuance. Its thrilling Predator-like gameplay where you slowly turn from the hunted into the hunter and back again in rolling waves based on the AI aggression is really something, and it fulfils that savage jungle-predator mentality in my cavewoman brain, along with scratching the itch that Far Cry 3 advertised itself as scratching without even managing to so much as blow warm air toward. A real treat of a game.

"Most Looked-Forward-To-Game" also known as the "Gird Yourself For Tears" award goes to Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines 2, a game that has careened back and forth between promising and damning with every single bit of info that's released about it. I could also give it an additional award of "2019 Pendulum of the Year" for just how fucking inconsistent all its pre-release coverage has been. I'm at the stage where I want to clap hands on it purely just to see if it's shit or not.

"Worst Fleecing Cunts" award goes straight to Bethesda because the MTX shit in Rage 2, an entirely singleplayer game, disgusted me so badly I almost refunded it. In the end I refunded it anyway because the Vulkan renderer hates my GPU. Still cunts.

And the "Die Already Cunt" award goes to Grand Theft Auto V. I'm so sick of seeing that game top sales charts because the multiplayer is such a horrid, insipid, money-grubbing little shitpit designed for just the worst sorts of people.

[Thursday]

God yeah, fuck GTA 5 at this point. Game aimed at cunts by cunts. Surely everyone in the world must have 2 copies on every single console at this point. I sort of get how it happens, anyone who buys a console ends up getting "That GTA game", but still. It doesn't really seem to make sense anymore.

[The Boston Crab]

My ongoing list:


Sekiro
Rolling Gunner


Both in the OP.


Cuphead


Took a good couple of years and a Switch port for this to click but it's one of my favourite games of the year. The artwork and music aren't actually my kind of thing, I find that era both aurally and visually quite ugly and garish and obnoxious but combined with the intense, unforgiving gameplay, they actually work perfectly. It's a game that relies less on skill than rote memorisation and incremental execution to grind your way through each boss but I enjoyed that rhythm and structure, for some reason. Maybe playing a lot of bullet hell shmups conditioned me to that kind of challenge and sense of gradual progression. It's a strange one because when you're done with a level, it becomes almost inane, there's no reason to ever replay it. I'd say that's the only downside to the game.


Dodonpachi DaiOuJou

The most satisfying game I've played this year, though I've spent most of my time restarting stage one. This was the first bullet hell game I ever played, at Arcade Club in Bury, and the first shmup to completely grip me. It blew my mind. Many of the forty-eight or fifty shmups I since bought on the Switch and PS4 were attempts to chase that initial high and find something to compete. Eventually, I just bought a 360 and an arcade stick and got the entire Cave output and everything changed. I put a lot of time into a range of games, including this, but it was only another recent visit to Arcade Club which got me inspired and I decided to finally learn to play 'properly', to learn to chain and to play for score. After absolutely hammering it, I managed to chain the whole of stage one, something I'd say is the hardest thing I've ever done in any game. My combo wasn't too far off WR score (for that stage) and it's something I actually feel proud of! I nearly drop the chain probably a dozen times but the execution is basically the best I can do and I manage to keep it going from the first enemy to the last, delaying shots just long enough before shooting the next to the keep the combo going. I've attempted it so many times I can play the course in my mind and feel the inputs in my fingers.


https://youtu.be/DLofNBww9ZY


It's one of the best games ever made.