TheMightyEthan

I did a thing.

Alright, let's do 5 instead of 10 then.

So I know it's a little early still, but I wanted to try something different this year, so I wanted to get the word out early. What I'd like to do is have everybody DM me their personal top 10 list, and I'll compile an overall list for the forum. The way I would do it is assign points, so if you rank a game #1 it gets 10 points, #2 gets 9, and so on, and total up all the points from everyone to get an overall list. The only rules I would suggest is that all the games have to have released this year, and ask everyone to DM me by December 20. Is anybody interested in doing this? We could obviously all post our own GOTY's too like we have before. Also, is 10 games from this year too many? Would 5 be better? Let me know what you think!

Dead Space Remake I got a month of EA Play Pro for Jedi Survivor, so I decided to try Immortals of Aveum (not good) and this (pretty great). If I didn't already know that they had changed the layouts of the ship a little to make things flow better, I would think this was a 1:1 recreation of the original's levels, and that's pretty emblematic of the whole thing. Basically, it perfectly modernizes everything about the game in such a way that it seems like it's a perfectly faithful recreation, when in fact everything is improved. It's pretty amazing. Also this game is still great.

Immortals of Aveum Goddamn I hated the characters in this game so much. They were trying to be fun and sassy, but I just wanted to punch them in the face. The gameplay was kinda fun, but not enough to put up with these characters. Grade: C

Well, I was able to get it working eventually, so I avoided starting over, and now Star Wars Jedi Survivor properly belongs in this thread instead. This game is pretty good. In some ways, particularly the combat, it's better than the original. However, I think they expanded it too much, the areas are too big, it's just overall too bloated. I started having more fun with it once I stopped exploring every single nook and cranny and just kind of explored stuff as felt natural as I moved through. So I didn't just follow the complete main path, I would go look at little side areas when I saw them on the map, that kind of thing, I just didn't make a point of exploring every single inch. When I made that change it picked up and started feeling better. The combat is also improved over the original, which was pretty good to start with, though it still does the dumb "oh, I suddenly remember how to do something I should have known how to do this whole time" thing, but thankfully not nearly as often. It just feels smoother, you're less restricted at the beginning, and overall just feels better to play. That said, I did think several of the boss fights were badly designed, and ended up bumping it down to story mode for two of them, not because they were "hard", but because they felt unfair. The story would have been better if I hadn't seen the big twist coming literally from the first mission. I actually had almost convinced myself I couldn't be right, because even a Star Wars story couldn't be that obvious. Well, I was right, which completely robbed the big narrative moment of any impact. Also, the PC version is still a mess. I got multiple crashes per play session, which given the way it handles saves is terrible. I had to redo the final boss fight because it crashed in the middle of the end cutscene. It's just bad. Overall, this game is still worth playing if you liked the original, but it's not anything amazing. Grade: B-

Yeah, that's why I said "eventual" release, I don't think it'll be anytime soon. But since Remedy owns the rights, not Epic, the publishing agreement probably has some kind of a time limit on it, even if it's like 10 years or whatever.

I do hold out hope for an eventual Steam release like with Control, because Remedy retains the rights to Alan Wake, it's not owned by Epic, and I can't imagine they would agree to store exclusivity in perpetuity for their own IP.

Star Wars Jedi Survivor The game crashed 2 hours in and broke my save. I'm not starting over. Grade: F-

Jusant This is a cool little game from Dontnod, way different from their other stuff. It's like Ico crossed with Journey. You're a person climbing a giant tower. At its core that's all there is to it, but the climbing mechanics are surprisingly deep, and many of the sections you have to climb function as puzzles. It's surprisingly fun and rewarding, and pretty as all get out. There's also some lore to discover among the ruins of a vanished civilization on the tower, that tell the story of what happened. All in all it's a very charming little game. Grade: A

Spider-Man 2 Surprising no one, this game is great. If you've played the other two it's more of that, just further refined. The story was compelling and well-told. There's not really much more than that to say, it was exactly what I expected. Grade: A+

Forgot to post this, bought it the day I finished Alan Wake 2. Walmart still had the "launch editions" on the shelf too, despite it being two weeks later, so I even got all the preorder content.

Alan Wake 2 This game might be my GOTY, which is insane given the games that have come out this year. It is exactly what I wanted when they announced a sequel to Alan Wake. It captures the ideas of the original, and updates them flawlessly. Gameplay is actually good now, the shift to full-on survival horror works perfectly, the story is incredibly well-done, everything just comes together in a marvelous whole. The game isn't perfect, obviously, but any complaints I have are minor nitpicks, overall they completely nailed it. Grade: A+

It's spelled "REm4ke", smh.

Cocoon This is a little indie puzzler from the main guy behind Inside and Limbo. Everyone's been raving about it. I'd say overall it was pretty good, definitely pretty and with an interesting visual design, but it drags too much. The puzzles never really get all that complicated, and it takes way too long to get even as complicated as they do, so there's a lot of the game where you feel like you're just running along a more or less linear path pushing buttons with no real thought involved. The mechanics were promising, but I don't think the game lived up to their potential. Grade: B-

Cause I've been playing Cyberpunk 2077, and then I have Alan Wake 2 on Friday. Incidentally... Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty I'm slightly torn on this DLC. I definitely don't agree with Rock Paper Shotgun's headline that it's possibly the greatest expansion of all time. Don't get me wrong, Cyberpunk is great, and I did really like the expansion, but it has some flaws that are hard to overlook. The main one being that it doesn't give you much freedom in how to approach missions. In the base game, you can almost always stealth a mission, and there are multiple ways to enter an area, almost like an immersive sim. In Phantom Liberty, though, most encounters are either a scripted "social stealth" encounter, or they funnel you down one narrow corridor, without any alternate routes, that almost forces you into combat. This is true of both the story missions and the side quests. As someone who played primarily stealth, this was pretty frustrating and disappointing. Once you get past that though, it's pretty good in all other respects. The story is bombastic and fun, the characters and performances are great, it completely lives up to the quality of the base game, which is one of my favorite RPGs of all time. So limited approaches aside, I would still recommend it to anyone who liked CP2077. Grade: A-

It's my third-most-hype game of the year after Zelda and Cyberpunk. It also marks the 3rd game I've ever bought on EGS, the other two being Control and Telltale's The Expanse.

I did the Peralez questline this time!

I need to watch Edgerunners.

Starfield Goddamn, this game is good. It's not perfect, but it's really good. I know there's a lot of complaints out there about the procedural generations, and that making exploration less rewarding, etc, but honestly I like it. I'm tired of games that tell you you're in this massive world but you can see how tiny it is. Skyrim, Fallout, The Witcher, The Outer Worlds, hell even Red Dead Redemption 2, they all have a problem with scale, where everything just feels small. Not so Starfield. You actually feel that you're out in the middle of goddamn nowhere, lightyears from proper civilization, and it's great. Sure most of the planets are just lifeless, desolate wastelands, but let me tell you something, that's how real life is too. If the game tells me I'm out on the frontier I want to feel like it, and this is the first game that really accomplishes that imo. Now, I said it's not perfect, and it's not. My biggest gripe is that you don't have a lot of room to define your character's personality. It's the most egregious when it comes to the main quest, where your options range from extremely enthusiastic to mildly enthusiastic, when I really wanted a "who are you to say I have to join you people?" option. I understand why they don't really want to let you actually turn down the main quest, but there's no reason they couldn't have let you say you don't want to do it, and then just be forced to anyway for some reason. "Oh, you don't want to, well too bad, you have to because X." I had decided on a backstory and personality to roleplay, and right off the bat the game wasn't letting me act the way my character would, which was annoying. It's better in the sidequests, because the game actually can let you turn those down, but even there you usually only have "yes", "yes (but snarky)", and "no". There's just really not much nuance to the way they let you act, and I wish there was. Aside from that, even the scale that I praised so much has some limitations. Most major cities are the only thing of note on their entire planet, and there's a hard line where the city stops and wilderness begins. It kind of makes sense in Akila, which has murderous beasties outside the city walls, but not so much in New Atlantis, which I feel like should have a little bit of urban sprawl. It doesn't make sense to have a collection of skyscrapers surrounded by absolutely nothing else. Those are fairly minor complaints in the grand scheme of things though. The major sidequests are mostly great, I really liked the main story (even though I know others aren't so hot on it), the NG+ conceit is pretty freakin awesome (enough that I was on NG+10 and 149 hours played when I finally considered myself done with the game). Sure, it's "just" a Bethesda RPG, but it's one that really takes that style to the next level. Grade: A Telltale's The Expanse This game is also great! I had been playing the episodes as they came out and really enjoying them, but I fell behind because of Starfield. I just caught up on the last two last night and tonight, and they definitely stuck the landing. It has excellent writing, and a compelling though smaller-scale story (compared to the books/show). I don't know how much your actions actually affect the way events play out, but it feels like things are reacting to your choices and to me that's the important part. Sure, you could probably start to see the matrix pretty quick if you went back and made different decisions, but if you approach it as roleplaying as Drummer and just go through once it's very convincing. It also benefits I think from the main character being an established character from the universe, with an established personality, because unlike Starfield it makes sense that your choices of approach would be more limited, you can only do things that Drummer might do. It does suffer a little from the prequel problem of making the world feel smaller (in terms of characters) by bringing characters into things when previously there hadn't been a connection (think "Anakin Skywalker made C-3PO" type stuff), but all of that is pretty tangential to the main stuff happening so it doesn't stand out too bad. I'd definitely recommend this to any fan of The Expanse, or any fan of Telltale games. It's also really really pretty (at least on PC). Grade: A

I really want to try that game but there's just too much to play right now.

Same.

Still going strong in Starfield. 50/50 shot whether I get it wrapped up before Cyberpunk Phantom Liberty comes out next week.

Went on sale for the lowest price it's hit yet, so I picked it up. Hopefully I can sneak it in between Starfield and Cyberpunk.