I played a lot of games this year, and I’ve never felt compelled to make a post, but here we are today. I’ll be going over a bunch of games I put a few hours in, talk about my experience, and rank them up.
Some context before I dive into the games. I was working fulltime until August, when I lost my job. Most of these games as a result I played while also having a job, meaning that many games needed to really suck me in quickly. If there were moments of disconnect or where it began to get too grindy, I’d go to a fallback game, of which this year there were two. Most games are PC only, but there are some console games in the mix as well.
The S Tiers - The Best of the Best
Phantom Liberty
Phantom Liberty was the game of the year for me. I feel like in general the base game has some great ideas that they abandoned but left in the game nonetheless, mainly the corpo/streetkid thing and the world they tried to make expansive. It actually feels a lot like you played and just got lost in the crowd a lot.
But Phantom Liberty made up for that quite a bit. There’s still the streetkid/corpo issue, but they patched in a fantastic story that also plays REALLY nicely into the end game.
My favorite ending by far is the ending where you end up as just another useless not-special face in the crowd. It feels perfect for V. It’s a very brooding and dark entry, where you are finally cured, but you are now just exactly like the NPCs the world is built with. All this time you try to balance being a hero with being selfish in this newfound story, only to end up as plain as the rest of the world. It’s poetic and amazing. This made me feel so intensely empty, that I realized just how perfect it is.
I have a few negatives, mainly that the core issues weren’t really fixed, and at times the need to wait in game hours kind of dragged on, but other than that, it’s so worth playing, and frankly, ludicrously underpriced. Moreover, it’s what a DLC should be. Extra content that builds on the existing foundation rather than taking it over. It doesn’t get in the way of the existing path. This is what makes this a perfect DLC for me. The base game is filled with unfulfilled promises, but this one is by far the best game I played.
No Man’s Sky
There was a month this year where I exclusively stayed home to play No Man’s Sky. I remember reading about this game and thinking “Wow this was a bitter disappointment”. To the devs’ credit, they patched the game up completely, and now the game feels incredibly cohesive and intricate, and you can EASILY sink hours into it.
You initially start on a random intoxicated planet, and have to craft your way off of it. Initially the game is more of a survival game than a game I could sink my teeth in, but as soon as you get off the planet, boy oh boy does the game welcome you into space. This game does it better than anyone.
It was super quickly that I learned I could discover more planets in the system, haggle with aliens for their items or ships (with no money yet), build a fleet, or any of those things. 30 hours later and I’m so hooked to the game I forget to eat.
The main reason this game isn’t my number one is because at a certain point the game feels like it’s making a hard stop. The devs are constantly adding new content, missions, and more to the game and it’s very clear that the game is worth its weight in gold at the moment, especially since most of it is free updates, however some of the ideas just felt like they didn’t quite do it for me at a certain point. I have my fleet, some sick space ships, a settlement I managed, a planet I called home, and a lot of discovery behind me, but then the game gets repetitive.
I think one element this game is missing is the ability to go on random excursions with players where you can fully interact, or like a “bar” area. The multiplayer hub exists, but I feel like there’s still elements to the multiplayer hub missing.
That being said, the game is absolutely worth a play, and I’m sure that if I find someone who wants to play with me then I’d absolutely play it again.
Once Human
Once Human was the game that took me out of that Valorant loop. As I’m writing this I have 80 hours in the game, and have been nonstop playing it since I started.
There are so many things great about it.
The exploration of the world is relatively free. I would argue that I wish they would’ve let me go into the other areas of the world freely so that I would know what I have to look forward to instead of killing me if I go where I’m not supposed to go yet, but other than that, the breathtaking scenery, awe inspiring mobs, and endless looting centers make the game world feel very full.
I think the story is pretty boring, even though it’s not supposed to be the main focus of the game. But, that being said, I kind of wish it didn’t take 60 hours before the story finally became interesting. The characters are what you’d expect of a MMO, kind of bland and forgettable, but the game is still immersive despite this.
I’d argue the game is more fun with friends, but I had fun playing this solo as well. The fact that you can do bosses with your friends is very fun, even if one is higher or lower level than the others, and makes you feel like you’re never too far behind, and the fact that replaying bosses is a good thing to do for loot is also a great incentive-driver to come back to help the one lagging behind anyway.
The thing that absolutely wins it for me though is the design and gameplay of the bosses. I felt like the “season” I played in’s first boss (Ravenous Hunter) was an incredible pushover, but outside of that, the bosses were challenging, strategic, and fun. That being said, the final boss I fought was a different beast, and absolutely needed a full 4 man party to beat, which was a shame.
I think the fact that this game is free to play is kind of criminal. They definitely are operating on a pay-for-cosmetics business model, and you are absolutely not obligated to buy into that. The look of your character is entirely under your control.
There’s so much to do in this game. Every second of the 80 hours was spent doing something. Every place or Memeric you unlock just adds more stuff to do in the game, more layers of an already deep gameplay experience.
That being said, my two criticisms is that the early game is REALLY easy, midgame is where the challenge seeps in. Mobs that were once pushovers become actually pretty difficult to deal with. All components of the game are important to grow with (materials, tools, ammo type, etc.), which makes investing time into all of that important, but it does feel like the early game is a tad bit too easy. The main issue is that late game your gun ammo takes A LOT of a very rare resource to make use of, which to me feels like a tad unbalanced.
The other criticism I have is the idea of a Season’s Pass. I haven’t seen it in full effect yet, but the first two chapters I did experience. First one actually limited how far you could get in the game, which I found very annoying since every point I unlocked on the map opened up something new and amazing for me. Why are you telling me to stop playing? The second chapter opened it up, which was great. The next 3 chapters look kind of useless, however, and after that, it seems like everything I worked for will disappear: my house, my collected creatures, my collectibles, all gone. They have a system to immortalize all of that, but honestly, this system’s tutorial is REALLY incomplete.
Last bit of criticism, and I feel really privileged saying this, but it feels like the character creator is built to create asian characters only. I’ve always harped on games doing asian character customizations pretty poorly (due to how the meshes work with eyes), but this one actually does foreign pretty mediocrely. It’s a tiny irk, absolutely nothing I feel strongly about at all. I actually found it funny to notice.
To end on a positive, there’s one feature that I LOVE more than anything in this game, and that is the ability to move your base and rebuild it elsewhere. While it’ll obviously not relocate perfectly, it moves all your loot and your structure and the interior to the new location, which means you don’t have to spend so much time moving your stacked and stored loot from A to B before fully deconstructing and reconstructing again. I didn’t actually know this was possible so I can tell you exactly how much time it saves: 5 hours. Moreover, there’s a 10 minute cooldown before you can do it again. This is incredibly nifty as you move from location to location, and I wish other games like Palworld, Enshrouded, Planet Crafter, etc. would implement this too, so I can keep sticking to the good stuff without being punished for immediately building my base in the first location. It’s an absolute gamechanger to a survival genre, and I highly recommend this feature being built into any game.
All in all, I see where they’re going with the game, and I absolutely support it. I bought the expensive battle pass purely because I felt like they deserve it. This should not be a free game. However, now that I’ve fully played one season, I feel like I’ve played this game plenty, and am no longer itching to go back.
Palworld
Palworld changed a lot for me.
I loved Pokemon, and I’ve been craving for the Pokemon devs to do something new. I’ve been becoming increasingly more annoyed at their regressing standard on the game quality whilst refusing to innovate where they absolutely need to. Pokemon Arceus was the closest they got to innovating there, and I still felt like it was missing stuff.
In comes Palworld. Immediately I’m hooked on the premise before it released, and I thought I was one of the few who was into it when I accidentally found it on Steam. However, I had no idea this game would become this big, until I played it.
It has some rough edges for sure. For one, the boss battles felt kind of bland, the bugs were endless, and the game at times felt like it should’ve been PVP or not multiplayer at all. Despite that, the game works both as a solo and as a team experience really well.
Every place I explored I became enamored by what was available to me. Starting my journey anew wasn’t that big of a punishment either since the worlds and realms were amazing.
The homebase felt like one key component Pokemon took away as a feature from a game like Emerald, and felt like it took it into the direction I wanted to. I’ve always fantasized about running my own research facility, with my Pokemon helping out. Palworld got that dream realized, albeit in a slightly darker way. But it felt like the Pals were contributing to a common goal. No Pal felt useless by the time I got to late game.
However, once you did get to the late game, the game abruptly stops. There’s a handful of Pals you need, the boss battles are easy, and the world has nothing really left for you. You need a lot of hours to get to that point, but the game definitely grinds to a firm halt at a certain point. Everything you do after that feels pointless, whether it’s upgrading your base, crafting resources, or whatever.
The one thing I love over this game (and something Arceus introduced) is that you, the player, can interact with the creatures. The gameplay is real-time and not turn based, and you need to use weaponry on the creatures to get them low enough to catch, or to kill and loot.
I MUCH prefer this to Pokemon’s formula. It makes every Pal feel useful to beat, quick to beat, and moreover makes the world fun to explore and engaging. I feel the strength of a new or strong creature, not second hand but first hand.
I will say that there is a very distinct difference in how I feel about the game during my first run through and my second. Second and beyond runthroughs really feel more task/goal oriented, like get these pals and build base here. First run through though was incredibly memorable, discovering brand new creatures (and comparing their looks to pokemons…), catching them, and discovering what they’re useful for, whether as battle companions or people to hold down the fort with, and this kept me going for time and time again, wondering where I can go, what I’ll find and what I can capture and get to know next. I also love how each pal has their own attitude. I feel like this is where Pokemon Arceus missed the mark.
Planet Crafter
I’ve spent a week on this game, and I love it. The only reason I stopped playing was because of Once Human.
There’s one planet, your goal is to get off it. I love how slowly the gameplay leads you to believe that you were sent there on an impossible mission, yet you are pulling it off.
The story creeps up on you and I love that. The planet is incredibly hostile but overtime as you get deeper the planet opens up more to you.
I landed in the valley, and I felt the early game was kind of a struggle to get through. However, similarly in Once Human, every thing I unlocked or invested in opened up a whole realm of experience and layers to this game. I went into this game incredibly blind and I encourage everyone else to do so as well. The Wiki is actually major spoiler territory.
The thing I don’t like about the game though is the balance of materials. It drastically shifts away as you get later into the game, where early on Titanium and Iron are important, later they rather become redundant compared to other alloys.
That being said, the exponential number-go-up gameplay makes me do things, and as I become more mobile and less dependent on immediate access to oxygen, the entire planet opens up to explore and I just get so lost in it. I actually love the easiest mode (not creative), so that I don’t lose my items when I explore, cause I want to go as deep as I can before instantly teleporting home, storing all my loot, and going out again.
The game sucked me in harder than I thought it would, and I fully intend to come back once I’m done with this season of Once Human, along with the DLC. I wish I could talk about this game more, but it’s so worth playing. Anyone who loves survival crafting games absolutely needs to have this in their library.
Enshrouded
Enshrouded is the survival game that best scratches my survival game itch. The recruitment experience was fun and it felt like I was truly building my own village. I wasn’t punished cause I could build a second or third village deeper in the map later on. And I could explore on my own volition as I pleased perfectly fine. The combat was tough but not rude, and as you scale into the later game it does not get stale or easy. The experience remains balanced all the way through.
I heard initially that Enshrouded was not a great multiplayer experience due to some missing features and bugs, but the solo experience felt unrewarding compared to the potential of the multiplayer experience. I believe when I picked up the game the multiplayer got patched.
Eventually, I teamed up with some strangers to try in out myself, and I gotta say it was a smooth run! The servers were managed by one of the people, which is always a bit of a shame when the end user has to end up hosting the servers on their own, but the experience was pretty great. We got really far into the game, and the graphics were phenomenal. The Flames were a great way to get around fast and to group up for objectives, and the ability to adjust the quantity of loot and strength of bosses was amazing.
I played two builds: Mage and Barbarian. By far the Barbarian build is the strongest, and the Mage late game does a lot of work, but early game my god the mage is a useless build. Most of the mobs resist its damage and the damage you do is negligible.
The additional content is great too. The items you can make later on makes the grind rewarding, and the depth you can build villages with are also phenomenal. Creatively-inclined people are catered to as well as the loot grinders or people who like to duel.
I will say this. The game absolutely must be played with others. It’s a great early game experience for solo players but as time goes on it gets really really difficult to make an impact. No matter how souls like you are, dungeons are just too resource intensive or slow to get through on your own.
I have fond memories of it, and the game feels pretty complete for an Early Access one. I barely notice the label compared to the above entries.
Raft
Raft I had played before, but as a solo experience I can definitely say that the game is lackluster. This is a game that definitely is a majorly better game when you play it with friends, and coincidentally, despite not having friends interested in this game during COVID, I did meet someone this year who was.
Raft at first was fun, just building out a cozy little raft while you come across a few islands. When I first played it at a certain point I felt like the game just got stuck. I once accidentally came across the first story-island, but that was still where my experience ended.
Playing it again with friends, at one point we got the mapping together and then the game became goal-oriented. The in-betweens with each island became cozy opportunities to loot, explore, and expand on our base, until the story-based islands, where we’d explore together and enjoy covering every and each corner of the island until we were ready to move on and repeat.
We haven’t finished, but it’s been incredibly fun. This is definitely the way the game was supposed to be played.
It does at times feel like the loot you need doesn’t appear much. At some point wood becomes a scarce resource, and it feels like too many items depend on it, and even at 15 stacks of 20 wood you can run out of wood really quickly. That’s really my only criticism though.
There’s so many angles through which to explore this game. The story is engaging though not too intense, there’s an incredibly amount of creativity through which to build, and the survival element can get very scary at times.
I would absolutely recommend this game with friends. As solo, it’s still a game worth buying and playing, but it won’t be as good.
The A Tiers - Really Great Games
Going Medieval
One of those types of games where I can’t really continue a campaign where I left off is Going Medieval. I have just shy of 200 hours in this game, and which every major update I jump right back into a new campaign to explore what they have.
I have one major gripe with the game: It’s early access, but it feels like a Live Service game. Every time I run a major content patch, my old campaigns get wiped out, and I’m forced to play the new version of the game. It’s fine because that’s what I want to do, but I felt obligated to mention it.
That being said, the reason why the business model irks me is that the game is not selling as much as it should lately nor being marketed for it to become as feature complete as the devs claim it’s going to be. To their credit, they’re truly working hard and delivering on their roadmap, and are EXTREMELY transparent, which I give a lot of credit for. But because of how hard they took off, I worry that the company is going to run out of steam soon. Mainly cause the game has been in Early Access for about 3 years now and doesn’t show signs of fully completing any time soon.
That being said, this is a great sim game. You are fully involved in the tasks of your settlers, and incentivized to grow your society. It does feel currently too constrained to the civilization you’re working on, even though I would love to see it adopt the foreign territory experience like Manor Lords soon (it is on their roadmap, but far far along).
I also feel like some of the mechanics are very much not as intriguing as they should be, so the game feels hit and miss at points. But every time I start up a campaign, I still get sucked in for the rest of the day and night, definitely going to bed later than I should because of it.
Nowadays, I think I’ve played the game so much this year that I should wait a few content patches before I go back. When I last played they added water environments, which were a hit and miss for me in places, but when it comes to being able to raid other settlements, I’m going to be right back, as that is the feature I believe this game is missing.
To me, I feel like the base game should’ve been released with the ability to raid. A few of the content patches should’ve been 5 euro DLC while the other should’ve been integrated into the base game. But I can recommend the game to anyone looking for a sim that’s easy to get into.
Aska
Aska is very similar to Enshrouded or Soulmask (see below), though based in the Viking era. The goal is to recruit and house villagers. Eventually you build your settlements, improve your armor, expand on your resources and arm yourselves, fighting back against various threats, ultimately to kill the large bosses. I’ve not yet reached endgame, but this is also one of those games I feel like I need to play with a friend. The bosses are incredibly challenging due to the stamina being super low and the attacks being rapid. The mobs have moderate difficulty, especially if you haven’t built any tools. The biggest crutch however is your farm. Nothing is more important to protect than your farm.
I’ve had some fun with this. My first runthrough I learned a lot but felt like I got put on the backfoot due to bad decision making. I started a new run and instantly fixed my major mistakes, and prioritized building a campfire early. I plan to try moving straight to the middle of the island next runthrough to see if that makes resource management more doable, as I felt like I ran out of resources by the beach pretty quickly, causing my villagers to have to venture quite far for basic materials.
It’s a fun game that’s good for up to 3 players. The mechanics are pretty nice and you’re incentivized to tackle every part of the game. I will say that the randomness of the mob attacks on your village can make exploration pretty daunting to begin. I survived a blood moon attack once, decided to explore after setting the builders to rebuild the broken areas, and planned an all night exploration round the map, but then that night a bear attacked and I was too far away, causing my farm to be destroyed. It feels as though there’s no logic behind it, just that “it’s time”.
All in all, great experience that I believe would be more fun with friends.
Manor Lords
Manor Lords was a game I was extremely hyped about. It seemed like a beautifully fleshed out sim game that had the playstyles I was craving in a game. And for the first 3 hours it definitely felt like it.
However, the problem with this game is that if you fuck up, you find out much later that you did. You have to go back, and you have to do things differently. Definitely you should always pause the game and set up your first few camps and houses immediately before even thinking of letting the time move.
The tutorials don’t really help as much as they should and definitely needs an improvement. For example, the value of each entity wasn’t made apparent to me, and as such I also didn’t know how to maximize the utility of it. I didn’t learn that civilians who have access to certain resources don’t need to live across from the market, but rather just need to have the resources in their house and at some point have been to the market, as such roads are incredibly important.
I ended up getting outpaced severely by the AI on easy difficulty quite frequently, and I definitely needed to look up game tutorials and stuff in the wiki to get by.
I did manage to figure things out about 12 hours into my playtime though, and when I managed to get it right, the experience changed drastically, from a frustrating but encouraging one, to one where I felt my time learning the game really paid off, and I was having fun. It was still challenging, but I definitely got the hang of the mechanics.
I will say that it’s not a game I’d really pick up to continue where I left off from. Rather, if I’m home sick, I think this is one of the games I’d jump straight to to make my day go by faster and make me forget about the fever. I would say though, this game is a little on the expensive side compared to how many hours I was able to put in, so I’d argue it’s a little less great as it needs to be, but still a solid/good game.
Palia
Palia was one of those games where I thought it was tailor made for me. My favorite part about RuneScape was the Construction skill, building my home base that I could return to after questing about. The whole niche here being that Palia is all about doing things precisely so that your home base expands.
I had the luxury of playing this both in Beta and live. I think the Live added on top of the foundation of the Beta, and I also managed to get a good 100 hours in before it shifted to Steam.
That being said, I do have some core criticisms. When I played it Live, the storyline was woefully incomplete. An average player could finish this in 4 hours. I believe since then they’ve added more stuff, but I still felt that future iterations would only add another 2-4 hours of playtime to the game.
Moreover, it is an MMO, so it got grindy as I got higher level. You definitely start strong, but slowly the game meanders a bit too much.
The paywall here felt nonexistent though. It really does feel like all you need is the free game. Moreover, the in-game mechanics feel designed for attracting people in a positive way. Everyone in the world chat talks about things they find when they explore, incentivizing people to come and get their one pick hit on a rare ore rock before the last person breaks it, that way distributing the loot amongst everyone and everyone celebrating together. It was really exciting to me.
The party cooking also welcome the invitations you have with the people around you. I can’t believe that I’ve actually met some lovely people in the game. It’s a shame you can’t link discords, cause I think that would’ve turned those meetings into friendships that would blossom beyond the game, but I can genuinely recommend it. Normally I get turned off when a game is advertised as Cozy, but this game truly does feel that way.
Which is really it’s strongest negative: the challenge is negligible. It’s not a hard game, and there aren’t really bosses or difficult puzzles. There’s no challenge when you fight anything, and if you die you have to really go out of your way to do so. It’s therefore really safe, and not for everyone, especially these looking for a challenge, so I can’t recommend it to everyone. But for those looking for something more laid back, this is the game for you for sure.
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
Last year I played the crap out of Star Wars The Last Jedi. It was a phenomenal game, whether it was the story, the gameplay, characters, worlds, etc., it was amazing (once the bugs got patched up). So I was equally excited when Star Wars Jedi Survivor came out to continue that experience. Of course, like many PC players, I was eventually blocked out by the game running egregiously bad.
Two years later, and finally the game has been properly patched for performance. So, I finally got to playing, and it felt like in many areas SWJS adds more to The Last Jedi. The first hubworld is amazing, and having a homebase to expand on and work on felt amazing for a base builder lover like me. It made the plant quests more interesting to explore, and building on the restaurant by recruiting new folk was fun.
To be honest though, it feels like a great game in and of itself, like a Tatooine simulator, and kind of made me not want to explore the rest of space. The more I thought about it, the less I liked the recruitment aspect of it. I’d rather have gathered creatures from around my travels and put them into the hub than recruited people within and to the hubworld. Just feels different.
However, the story was not as impactful this time around. It was still good, with great characterization, but I feel like the story arc can only do so much within the confines and rules of the existing Star Wars timeline it plays in.
Hot take here, but in hindsight, I kinda wished that Star Wars The Last Jedi started AFTER the death of Darth Vader and Sidious, because if you look at the world Star Wars was originally based on and the world we live in now, having a second time where peace is obstructed by corruption and greed in the same form is very much a possibility, and could’ve played well by those rules. Moreover, you could do a lot more, and feel more like a Luke Skywalker rather than Obi-Wan in between the end of the prequels and the start of the main trilogy. There would be no bounds to what the story could accomplish or try to capture. Instead, most of it just feels meaningless.
I feel like this is the issue with the Star Wars IP in general, which is why most stories just cannot really be told.
Gameplay wise, this game absolutely nails the feel of being a cool jedi warrior. You have your playstyle, each which works well, but you can most definitely develop your own style. The ability to further customize Cal is also great, and the worlds you explore are as immersive as ever (I’d argue a few more are hit or miss this game around than last one).
I still have some ways to go in the story, but knowing where this ends, I will forever feel like this series is what Star Wars should’ve told AFTER the death of Vader.
B Tier - The Games Worth Buying
Bloons TD 6
I come back to Bloons every once in a while, and this time I came back and discovered Quests. It seems like they really only added 3 or 5 new monkeys to the game, but many many more levels. The issue I began having (mind you, after 100 hours of playtime) was that for most levels I had one or two proven strategies that worked in every mode except for the specialized monkey ones, which I always found relatively easy, so it felt a bit like a solved game to me.
Quests was a game changer though. It gave unique challenges that made the game that much more intriguing to play, whilst also getting to know the new characters deeper. It made the game really fun to play again, feeling like there were new challenges to solve. Now it’s become my morning routine to try and solve one of those puzzles before going on with my day.
I hoped that the game would do something more with the original levels though. I love the bosses, I love the maps, and I love the quests, but I wish the maps had a new mode or two to make me want to play through them again. I don’t think they really need to release a new game, since this one is as good as it gets (yes, the performance dips at a certain point, but that’s like…. hundreds of monkeys placed on the board down the line, and I don’t think a new game fixes that).
Valheim
I’ve been desperate to play this game for ages, mainly because my friends weren’t gamers who’d like a game like Valheim. However, after years of it being installed on my PC and me not playing it, I decided enough was enough. I was right.
The game is absolutely not made for a solo experience. It definitely needs to be played with friends. However, with the understanding that that is the case, Valheim could be phenomenal in that case. It’s easy to get into, starts off challenging already right off the bat, and you can sink your teeth in pretty well.
That is, until you finally travel overseas, and this is where the multiplayer necessity really kicks in. To do things on your own to make this overseas travel good you really need to iron out the kinks on the elements that make a gameplay run-through frustrating, like needing to backtrack across a wide open sea before realizing you need to somehow make your way back too.
That being said, the gameplay is fun. The base building is where I sank my teeth in and it is engaging and divine. Some slightly irky necessities, but I believe it forced me to be creative and build along the lines of certain rules, like having a fire underneath my house.
The boss battles I got to were also fun. I think the deer was easier than I thought, but then The Elder was a step up for me in difficulty. It was challenging, strategic, and forced me to do more than just stand and shoot/fight.
All in all, definitely need more hours to fully rate it, but I’m going to wait until I meet some new friends who want to give this game a shot. So far though, I’m not disappointed with my purchase.
Temtem
I had been wanting to play TemTem for a while, but when I bought it on release, it felt like an incomplete game. The early game was way more grindy than I would have desired, and it had way too linear of a Pokemon feel. The combat was slow, and the early mons were not really terrific. Moreover, I heard that there was a limit to the game, and a lot of content clearly missing. Another example of a game released too early.
Years later, I finally thought I’d pick it up and give it an honest go. I wasn’t excited at first, because I was still in the early game grind. But eventually, once I evolved one of my mons to something much more effective to get me through the midgame, I got hooked.
The story is incredibly weak, and honestly I skim past it quite intensely. I also find many of the mon designs uninspiring and kind of weak. But I got really far in the game, until the plane crashes and I’m stuck on a place I’m honestly not really enjoying much. The fact that we’re forced to move forward instead of having the choice to backtrack I found an odd design choice for a region that has so little to offer yet is so big. I’d rather take the time to switch up my team and raise some other mons in the region.
That being said I still spent a good weekend enjoying my time grinding through the game, as the midgame really became less of a grind-dependent experience. I had a decent time, but these days I’m not really looking to go back.
With the news I’m hearing about the publisher of the game, and the rumors that have been circulating on reddit, I think Temtem’s on its last legs, which begs the question: will they release an offline mode? I find the online quite jarring to be honest, and am personally not really seeing much of a benefit other than the idea of playing remotely with friends, but there’s just not much to do. I’d love to see this game go offline fully, with a DLC to support an online coliseum, but only if the game will intend to cease its existence. Offline though I would still love to see.
Ghostrunner 2
I played Ghostrunner a year or two ago. It felt really fun and didn’t overstay its welcome. The platforming was smooth, the combat exciting, the bossfights tough (a few were easy), and the collectables made for fun collecting. Ghostrunner 2 I’ve just started but might not finish before the end of the year. It’s a game that’s a little longer, they added a hubworld, and fun time-based challenges to flex your mastery of your mechanics. It’s a smooth game in many ways, though I will say that some aspects felt more buggy.
The grappling hook is a nice addition, but it’s the one experience that I feel I have the worst experience with out of all other mechanics. There are times I grapple hook too late and thus my distance is stunted, or I’m able to grapple but there’s a block in the way which causes me to stop in front of it. It’s annoying and creates unnecessary deaths or pauses in smooth runs.
I will also say that the hubworld feels rather unecessary. Here they try to remove you from a sense of lone ranger to being part of a team, which imo doesn’t feel as nice. The hubworld also takes you out of that lone ranger fast paced gameplay. If the hubworld had you needing to parkour to get to areas it’d be a slight improvement.
Also, a gripe with the first boss battle is that you have the ability to grapple to a partner that flies around. Problem is that I don’t know where he is half the time, so when I see the boss charge up his smash attack in phase 2, which I have to grapple out of, I first need to find him, but because he has black armor in a dark area and the grapple icon doesnt appear fast enough, I don’t know where I can grapple to. It’s an annoyance. I’d much rather there be stagnant grappling areas or that he stays in one position.
C Tier - Games Worth Trying
Armored Core VI
I’ll be honest. The first 3 hours I was super engrossed in the game. After that, I kinda felt like I had experienced all there was to it.
This is definitely not as hard as Dark Souls, despite being by FromSoftware, but I feel like the gameplay loop got really repetitive really quickly for me personally.
I don’t really hate this game, nor would I necessarily not recommend it. This is the kind of game that’ll hit right with the fans that like the gameplay loop. Going out on missions, building your mech to prepare for them, and bringing it into weekly/monthly challenges or whatever the loop is would be incredibly amazing for those players.
The honest thing here, simply put, is sadly that player isn’t me. I do think I’ll give this game another shot some other time though, cause I did enjoy the loop for a while, but I don’t think I’ll ever put long hours into this game.
Predecessor
Ooph. I have a lot to say about this game, but I’ll keep it brief.
I loved Paragon when it came out until the devs screwed with it way too much to the point of it failing. My gripe was always that the early game felt too long and pointless, and some characters just felt too overpowered, but the game design was amazing and gameplay was exciting too. It was a mixture of Dota and Smite, but I wished they leaned a bit more into league of legends.
With Predecessor, I feel like this is the company that nailed what Paragon was intended to be. I’ve played a few others like Overprime which eventually failed, but Predecessor is figuring out the art style the best, and trying its best to support the pricing.
However, the core problems remain, and if anything are actually worse. The game early game feels REALLY pointless to do anything. You can fall really far behind, but stalling the game out is really easy to do. That being said, the player base is definitely scarce, meaning that many experience players prefer to quit the game altogether putting the game in a 4v5 stalemate for up to an hour, and there’s no ability to chat in game. This is the game I’d argue needs a voice chat since the map is really big.
The playerbase being scarce is noticable. There’s such a high variance in gameplay experience, where if you’re matched against two people who know how MOBAs work, suddenly the game is difficult to play, since your teammates have no clue. It feels like this is what the Paragon devs were afraid of, the challenge of players getting into the macro of a MOBA.
Predecessor makes the item building a lot easier compared to Paragon, so it’s much easier to get into the game without worrying about the quality of your build. But it does feel like the games are very flipfloppy.
All in all, I feel like Predecessor has taken off where Paragon left off before it became crap, and is definitely making moves in the right direction. I just hope the playerbase sticks around, since this feels like the defacto way to play Predecessor, but so far it looks unlikely.
D Tier - Let Downs
The Finals
I was excited about this game. It felt like the shooter game that was missing from the endless shooting library that exists on Steam these days. Yet, when I played it I actually felt quite disappointed.
In theory, the destruction of your surroundings should make the game ever evolving and never unique, but it felt like the competitive edge was best suited in most game modes with the realm not destroying. The options at your disposal on the loadout you go into game with also feels really limited.
I’m by no means an expert in shooter games. I’ve peaked Gold 3 in Valorant, and peaked Diamond in Apex Legends, but I thought this game would be more interesting than it ended up being.
I’ll give the game this: the community was pretty solid. I think everyone bought into the gameplay as crazy exciting as opposed to heavily strategic, which reduced the potential for toxicity. The amount of blind spots you experience make for a more forgiving death experience as well, even in the game modes where teammates need to revive you.
All in all, I had fun, but I wasn’t getting sucked in.
Soulmask
Where Enshrouded hit the mark, Soulmask missed it. I was extremely hyped for this game.
These days, every time I see Early Access I think that the game is going to be invested in heavily up until a certain point. So it’s a live service, and then abandoned in whatever state they choose.
Soulmask to me felt like a game buried underneath so much hidden potential and it doesn’t quite hit the mark. I was anticipating setting up my own ancient Incan/Mayan tribe, but the instant I realized I had a 3 recruit limit I was turned off by the game immediately.
Furthermore, while the base building is nice, I found myself instantly punished for building a base in the beginning area, only to realize that I need to move it to a newer area later on. The migration process was grueling with wood being so ludicrously heavy, so I could only move bit by bit at a time. It was upon release a punishing game with no real reason to be punishing.
The game starts strong, but quickly transcends into grindy territory. I played this game solo, so I didn’t get a lot of pleasure out of it. That being said, I sternly believe this game would be a different beast if you played it with others. I think that’s where the game could progress further, but the one weekend I played I felt that day one was nice, day two was an unsatisfying struggle.
Given that it’s early access, I’ve made the call to delay my engagement further by a year. It’s definitely not a solo game I’d want to play at the moment, especially with the next game existing.
Valorant
This was one of my fallback games this year. If I didn’t get engrossed by a game, I’d decide for Valorant instead. If I didn’t know what game I wanted to play, or if I wasn’t in the mood to sink into a game, I’d dip to Valorant instead. I know what to expect, I can jump in quick, and I’d likely end up sinking a few hours into it. However, I almost always regret this decision.
For context, I play Cypher, and my playstyle is pretty much just screwing people over instead of clutch gunplay. I pick the Odin and the Judge, hide in or around my cages and trips, and have tricky setups where people won’t expect me. And once they think they figured me out, I’m elsewhere. I really enjoy this playstyle, but the problem is that others don’t.
Valorant’s community firmly believes that once the gunrounds start you NEED to pick the Phantom or the Vandal (Operator is okay on defense). If you don’t, you’re griefing. If I topfrag through my gameplay, then I’m flamed. If I bottom frag because of a bad game, I get blamed for ruining everyone’s game. If I do average, I STILL get the brunt of the blame.
The community in this game really is the killer for me. Voice chat feels essential to play the game with, but the amount of racists, biggots, or straight up toxic people I end up with is insane. There’s also a chronic amount of people who feel that if you had a bad round once or twice that they are obligated to backseat game and coach you. So many players think I need help setting up my trips to help me not get killed after I got run over on site the round before. And if I say “I’m good, thanks” or “can you not?” immediately they begin being toxic for the rest of the game.
The worst thing is that this game is unplayable as a solo. Most games also makes my reports post-game feel unimpactful. They can be full on racist or sexist (and I’m not using those words to be soft. Things they’d say don’t just come across edgy) and if I report them nothing will happen.
Valorant as a game has so much potential to be fun. And I have made some lifelong friends within the community. It truly has the ability to bring extremely high highs, but in unrated game modes (which I exclusively play), it’s most often extremely low lows. It’s a great game, plagued by a rude community, overrun by smurfs in unrated modes making matchmaking a huge issue.
F Tier - Not Great
Hogwarts Legacy
I don’t like this game for a few reasons.
- The gameplay is really good. Like, super fun and exciting. But they’ve added some arbitrary limitations.
- The world is incredibly immersive. At times it feels a little too big and yet empty, and at times it just feels like a long trek for the sake of a long trek.
- The story arcs are really great from a gameplay perspective, but the dialog and the story itself is not only excessively cringe but also really bad at some points.
- Lastly, the characters are so safe and vanilla, even the NPCs, that every new character I get the chance to know feels boring and copy & pasted. There’s one exception: Sebastian. The rest, including the protagonist, are so boring.
The game is amazing in terms of what it could have provided, with astonishing graphics and fun gameplay, but every single thing just misses the mark, with the story and characters falling wide off of the cliff. It was, as Girlfriend Reviews put it best, “Aggressively mediocre”. It played VERY much into the “All people are equal” philosophy, which means no one can be flawed and everyone is excited. I felt like I was playing a dystopic utopia simulator more than a Harry Potter game.
I have 20 hours in it, so I definitely didn’t get far, but honestly, I don’t really care much to go any further. It’s pretty, but that’s about it.
Farlight 84
Clearly a Chinese game, Farlight 84 felt like a Fortnite without building, which made the game very fun. The gameplay loop was great, the normal BR mode made it so that you would face better opponents every time you won, and it made for a game that felt exciting to grind in. I ended up reaching the second highest rank two seasons in a row, with a character and preferred build that suited my playstyle quite nicely. For a while the game felt solved for me.
There were two major flaws when I first played it, one was that it felt like there were three types of players you faced: bots, very noobie players, and very very good players. There was no in between. The other flaw was that there were a handful of good guns as well as a handful of good characters. The strength discrepancy between heroes was way too egregious for me. My preferred hero was noticeably weaker than others, but it fit my playstyle and I managed to set a playstyle that was niche compared to the rest of the player base.
However, the whole game got thrown up on its head at some point. The game removed boost jumps, egregiously nerfed certain characters (including my main and already niche character), and changed up the whole way the game was played. It felt like what once felt more like a Fortnite clone decided instead to switch up and compete directly with Apex Legends.
The default map became a map that felt so much like a rip off of Apex’s Broken Moon. A large, sprawling map with a handful of manufacturing POIs. The game felt unrecognizable. Moreover, it seemed like I was not the only one turned off by the game: players left in droves. Every match I matched up in was directly either bots or ludicrously skilled players, with no in between and no noobs. 90% of my teammates were bots. Also, cheaters were rampant. It felt like the game needed players. It was so bad that one Friday I saw the same players over and over again and again in my matches. At the time, the users seemed to corroborate my sentiment.
It seems that user reviews are turning back around now. From the looks of things they’ve changed the gameplay and this time art direction drastically again. It feels like they’re releasing a different game with every major update, and seems like this time they’ve landed on Pokemon. Don’t think I’ll be going back any time soon, but it was fun while it lasted.
Pokemon Go
Since I became unemployed I’ve gotten really bored. Pokemon Go was a great way to fill in the time here and there. I love the way the game has expanded, from the different type of raids (which thanks to COVID became much more intuitive with the remote pass), and the ways you could battle. I haven’t played since its original release so it has been some time.
For a while I really got in deep. I was also exploring Dynamax, and this is where my criticisms immediately begin.
Whoever is leading the charge on Dynamax is learning nothing from their existing systems, and it is ruining the potential of what it could be. A lot of phone games have mechanics built on the expectation that you limit the players ability to play the game so that they come back again, but the rules within the Dynamax realm is so ludicrously tight that I’m not even incentivized to grind even a little bit.
I am limited with how many times a day I can collect Dynamax points. I’m also limited to 3 battles per day (which is less battles than I would run into on my way TO the grocery store, let alone back). I also have a limited amount of Dynamax points I can collect. And lastly, the boss-level Dynamax pokemon (so far it’s been Falinks and Beldum) are too difficult to do on your own, and you have no way other than grouping up with friends to reliably fight them, and even then they’re still a challenge. Lastly, you are limited in the time you get to engage with Dynamax. I usually ended work at 9pm, meaning I’d go home, eat dinner, take care of house chores, and then go for a night walk. Dynamax is unavailable then.
Dynamax Pokemon feel like Raids, but with the restrictions turned up way too heavily. Now, it’s recommended you fight the Gigantamax starter trio with 10 people!! 10 PEOPLE!! I don’t even have that many real life friends! I will never catch one as a result, and that pains me.
I get the whole point of Pokemon Go is to bring people together to fight Pokemon, but in many countries and places it’s still a bit of an embarrassing experience to be playing Pokemon Go. And the few IRL people I do play it with it’s certainly not enough to do a Gigantamax raid with, let alone a boss-level Dynamax raid.
All of the other mechanics aside, the fact that this experience is so stupidly limiting actually demotivated me from playing the game altogether. The restrictions are so over tuned and I feel like it completely went away from all of the lessons learned from their previous endeavors, as well as the upcharge in players coming into the game during COVID. If they introduce remote passes, then it will become one of those features that you have to pay for to play, which is incredibly egregious and scummy if not a scam in and of themselves. This feature is so evil it’s not even funny.
Apex Legends
I’ve played this game to death and beyond during COVID. Coming back to it though, I can’t say I enjoy it. The game truly feels taken over by cheaters, and the main game mode design choices I really despise. It is cool that they made the P2020 and Mozambique finally useful if not impactful guns to have with the Akimbo, but they are too overtuned.
I will also say that the addition of HP bars initially got me excited for the game. Until I played Mirage and I realized just how shit of an addition it is.
It makes certain characters completely obsolete, and shafts certain strategies entirely. Yes, ratting sucked, but I felt it was an essential part of the game that Seer already made impossible to do well, but now it’s just really not a good strategy. This means the game is more brawly and the strategic elements do not land, which when you combine it with the excessive amount of cheaters and unbalanced matchmaking that’s been plaguing the game lately, along with the excessive amounts of smurfs, makes it incredibly unrewarding to play.
At its current state I think Apex is the worst it’s ever been. Season 11 was forever for me the highlight of my time in Apex, every other season was manageable, but this year it really feels like the game is just unplayable for me.
Conclusion
So that’s it. That’s every game I’ve played. Well, that’s not really true. I played way more. However, I have a few games I want to do a separate deep dive on, and some that are more board games ported to PC like Cluedo. There are some games I touched but didn’t delve into. And some games I’ve played for years, that made it not so special this year. I do intend to make a post talking about them, like GTA 5, The Sims 4, and Horizon Zero Dawn, games I’ve also spent significant amount of hours in but did not want to list here. So let’s get into the Tier list.
All in all, my end thoughts are that this year was both a very great and a very weak year for the games I played. I think the big note I’d put on 2024 is that there were a lot of games I was hyped for that ended up not even being bought cause of the failures they ended up being. I definitely would not recommend the bottom tier games as places where you should invest money or time into, and though there’s a chance that I’ll revisit Soulsmask, everything bellow D tier I think people can avoid.
Off to playing more games in 2025!