The only one that really sticks out is Starfield. Most other games I played I knew what I was getting into. For some reason Starfield surprised me, probably because it was on Gamepass (so effectively free) and because I trusted Bethesda. Oh well.
Considering the number of great games this year, that’s not too bad.
Maybe it’s just me getting older, but since Skyrim, Bethesda games have failed to capture that magic for me. They’ve been leaning on the creation engine for too long, to the point that so many of the features, not the least of which being the goddamn shouts, are all carbon copies of one another, the base building is literally just a fucking resource sink, the gunplay sucks and the enemies are all bullet sponges unless you dip into late game planets and filch a late game gun, the jobs are 90% basic bitch fetch quests, and the core gameplay loop of “go place --> grab shit --> sell shit” has not evolved since Morrowind.
I stop playing games when they start feeling like a second job, and for me that point in Starfield was about three hours in when I was trying to complete survey data for the homesteading program and I was wandering around this deserted planet, looking for samples of flora and fauna, and I scoot back from my desk as I realize, for 20 minutes, I have done absolutely nothing meaningful or engaging. The closest I’ve come is, I’ve pointed a scanner at a bunch of procedurally generated animals hoping they don’t land a hit on me because they’re too spongy for me to kill, so I can fill a meter, so that when I’m done filling meters I can go back to BDG and tell him this place is suitable for people to live. That’s not fun. It barely qualifies as gameplay, and it is an aggressive waste of time.
Tears of the Kingdom: what else is there to say about this game that hasn’t already been said? It improves on Breath of the Wild in just about every conceivable way. The only real downside to me is that it raises the bar so high for the next new Zelda title that it may not be possible for it to reach that height.
I can’t really think of a game I played that would be considered “bad” this year so I don’t really have a Worst, but just making a post acknowledging that TotK was hands down the best.
That said, I didn’t really play too many new games this year in general, so here is what I did play: Fire Emblem Engage, Persona 5 Royal, Pokemon Ultra Sun, Fire Emblem Echoes, Lunistice, Symphony of War, Super Mario RPG Remake.
If I had to give out a Worst among that list it would probably be Symphony of War because it doesn’t really have the polish of the others, it’s an inexpensive indie title and it shows, but I can’t definitively declare it the Worst because just about all the other games it’s compared to above are from big studios and that’s not fair to it, pretty much an apples-to-oranges comparison.
I got a lot of games with AMD hardware or other give aways, games I normally would not buy anyway. Imo Forspoken, Starfield, Redfall, Dead Island 2, Callisto protocol, AC Mirage and Harry Potter I did not like.
Glad there have been a lot of games I did enjoy recently, Dave the Diver, my time at Sandrock, Thalos Principle 2, Stray. I did like AAA Jedi Survivor although some technical glitches occurred.
The marketing for Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth and The Man Who Erased His Name seem to have worked on me because I decided to start playing Yakuza 0 on my Steam Deck. Sticking to pure easy mode and mainlining the story. It’s got some weird jank to it but I also kinda like it? If it hooks me, maybe I’ll take the plunge on the others. Yakuza: Like A Dragon looked like a lot of fun so I’ll probably stop and smell the roses when I get to that one.
Otherwise, Fights in Tight Spaces is my current non-story focused game I’m making my way through.
Intraveneous. Game got a lot of love and as a huge stealth fan I was really into the idea. Got it and hated every second of it. It’s tedious and punishing even by stealth game standards and the story wasn’t great either. Mechanics were poorly explained and it felt like the keymapping was made by a person who had never played a keyboard game before. ugh. I was really disappointed too because it was marketed as a stealth game that didn’t punish you for failing stealth which is true but the issue is that it’s so damn easy to fail stealth that you might as well just go in guns blazing anyway. It wasn’t like MGSV where both options make sense depending on the circumstance. It was more like “stealth is nigh impossible so we made guns-blazing a fail safe for people who aren’t nuts at this game”
Atomic Heart. Yes I bought this game and I am ashamed of it. No it wasn’t for the robot porn. I thought it looked like an interesting Bioshock / Wolfenstein mashup and both of those are my favorites. Game was just… slow. Combat, stealth, everything felt like you were moving through syrup. The character’s english voice acting is also horrifically cringe. Like, just awful in every sense. Made me hate the MC more than the villains.
Dying Light 2. I loved the first so I was seriously disappointed by this. Main issue was really with the movement. Gave me motion sickness dozens of times with how the camera is set up, and I was expecting something like Mirror’s Edge (Catalyst) but it felt just awfully floaty. The game also did… fuck all… in terms of explaining what you… do? so I just was super confused. Uninstalled after like 10 hours in frustration.
Ghostrunner. Played this in December of 2022 but I wanted to add it in as a hot take. Overall great but the boss fights are pretty terribly designed after the first one and pretty much ruined the game for me. Plus there’s useless parkour sections that added nothing. Surprisingly little time spent being a ninja badass for a cyberpunk ninja badass game.
Not many. The obligatory 50% of all mobile games that I played for 5 minutes and went “I hate this”, obviously. But PC games? Hmmm. Probably “Lost Ember”, I guess. What really puzzles me about this is I played “Spirit of the North” and was utterly in love with it, to the point that it’s in my top 5, and “Lost Ember” is very similar in many respects. I ought to have loved it, and I cannot put my finger on what I didn’t like about it. I just didn’t like it.
I would recommend something just outside your area but with a lot of fun movement mechanics.
WarframeIt’s an online/instanced 3rd person shoot em up but the movement is the best out there. PvE focused but there are PvP elements too. Very good and long progression but it is grindy.
Titanfall 2The campaign is single player but one of the best told stories. The movement is just behind Warframe. The online multiplayer is absolutely epic as you get to take out Titans and also call down your own. However, there is quite a lot of cheaters unfortunately which may spoil your experience.
Closer to your request.
Orcs Must DieFun tower defence with traps and 3rd person action.
Deep Rock GalacticMining space dwarfs and beer. That is all you need to know.
Gunfire RebornRoguelike FPS with lota of characters and abilities. The aim is to kill the final boss and then try to do it faster and faster.
Got more if you want to know more, but that will be a very good start.
Ditch Windows and install Linux and Steam, then add your game to the library as a non-Steam app and use the compatibility tab in the properties menu to force the use of the Proton compatibility layer. You should then be able to run the game through steam as normal. This has worked for me with almost all my old games and will probably work for you too.
Add the setup/installer executable as a non-steam game, run it to do the install, then modify the non-steam game’s settings to point at the installed executable so it can run from the directory where it is installed.
No problem! I’ve used this trick to run non-game Windows apps on the Steam Deck too, though support can vary wildly.
As an alternative, you might also check Lutris, which employs user scripts for installing and running Windows software in Linux. You can even add them to Steam so they’ll work in the Steam Deck’s gaming mode:
If you're looking for a shooter, co-op campaigns for those things dried up a while back, so you're mostly looking at older games. My friends and I are playing Quake and Quake II to scratch that itch, but those old shooters are also very maze-like. If you're open to suggestions beyond shooters, I'd recommend a couple of roguelikes, namely Streets of Rogue and Vagante. Both are very chaotic, sandbox-y, challenging, and scale really well for co-op.
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Aktywne