Ravenswatch came out at the end of last year, but it’s an incredibly satisfying multiplayer roguelike. Really scratches that asymmetrical gameplay itch.
Split Fiction is a master class in game design. It creates these awesome storytelling moments that could only be created in this exact way.
UFO 50: holy shit this one came out of nowhere for me. It’s like digging through a retro collection for diamonds in the rough, but there’s more diamond than rough. It has honestly changed the way I approach video games and gaming in general. Also, Party House is so good.
Hades 2 is pretty much exactly what I was hoping it would be. No notes.
I also played Clair Obscur, DK Bananza, Mario Kart World, and Silksong. Those are all good games, but none of them hooked me.
Most of those games are ones I’ve never heard of before, but you’ve really sold me on them, especially Split Fiction and UFO 50
(Mini tangent, but I find it interesting how, in this age of algorithmically driven slip content, I cherish the opportunity to find little snippets of meaningful connection with my fellow humans. Like, I don’t know you, or anything really about your preferences or tastes in games, so what reason is there to put much weight in your recommendations? You’re just a random person on the internet, after all. But no, your recommendations feel meaningful because you’re a person who cared enough about these things to write about them, and matters to me (especially in our current climate))
If I was going to try out Split Fiction and UFO 50, which would you recommend I start with?
After years of trying to get into Sekiro and hitting a wall and just quitting, I finally stuck with it and not only did I finish the game, I also got all the achievements.
Nice! I haven’t attempted Sekiro yet, but it’s high up on my list. I am saving it for when I have the brain space to take a proper crack at the game. I remember that my first exposure to Fromsoft games was in 2017, when I attempted Dark Souls 3 during a Summer where I extremely burnt out due to doing a soul-sucking internship. I bounced off of it so hard, and that taught me that I need to be in the right headspace to play certain games.
Most definitely. I’m currently going through some stuff, so my go-to games end up being puzzle games or something else that can be played in short bursts. Currently played “Is this seat take?”
Expedition 33, The game came out on my birthday. I never had the time to get around to playing it. I just downloaded it on PlayStation for their black Friday sale. I am currently only six hours into the game, but I fully get behind the hype and the enjoyment of this game. It does have a high level of skill when it comes to combat but slowly, but surely I’m getting it down and I am enjoying it so far.
Despite the high skill level required, I actually found that it was quite forgiving for people who were learning. I barely did any parrying until I was well into Act 3, for example. I like the way that the feedback for dodges work — I started trying to parry more when I realised that I was consistently getting perfect dodges, which meant that if I had parried, it would have been successful.
I also like the way the difficulty works in the open world. It reminds me of games like Fallout: New Vegas, where the enemies aren’t scaled to player level, so you can be dumb/brave and wade into encounters that are way beyond your power level. Sometimes that works out surprisingly well, but often you try fighting a difficult enemy and get pwned so thoroughly that you accept that you’ll have to come back later. In Expedition 33 especially, it is super viable to just go and explore elsewhere and come back with more levels, better weapons and better pictos. The beautiful world also means that exploring is fun even without the mechanical perks.
Silksong - I had hyped myself up way too much, yet it still delivered. Absolute masterpiece.
Dispatch - I finally understand why people enjoyed Telltale games so much. The writing is great, the characters are interesting, just all around a great experience.
Lies of P - Overture - I finally finished Lies of P & played Overture a few weeks back, after dropping off the game twice in the last years. Wow, that was great! And honestly more emotional than I’d expected.
I’ve heard so many good things about Lies of P that I think I’ve been avoiding it in a similar way to how I was irrationally reluctant to play Hollow Knight. It’s a bit of a moot point at the moment, because I don’t currently have the brain space to get my teeth into a Soulslike, but when I do, I should resist that silly instinct of mine.
I’ve not heard much of Dispatch, I should check it out
I built a pc tower for the first time since '01 or '02, and the first game i played was Cyberpunk 2077. A lovely game with some genuinley great characters. I really love Judy.
But that doesn’t hold a candle to Deus Ex, which i completed for the first time. What a great title. I must have played the first and part of the second level when it first came out, but the story was new to me.
Also shout out to Drova, a really fun game with tons of nods to the Gothic series. Difficult, but not punishing.
Cruelty Squad was so different. Looks like vaporware created in Duke3d engine, but plays like a modern shooter (kinda).
Cruelty squad lives rent free in my head it is such a weird trip and surprisingly deep in the end. I like this odd “make a high effort to make it look low effort aesthetic”.
If @blomvik hadn’t already sold me on Cruelty Squad, you certainly have now. In terms of vibes, it sounds right up my alley.
And I do love a bonkers community. I find that when I get into a piece of media (whether that be a game, TV series or something else), I really enjoy participating in what I call “fandom tourism”. I enjoy dipping my toe into the community after I’ve engaged with the media itself, and it feels like bonus content. I don’t tend to stick around in any fandoms, so that means that even if a community is bonkers in a bad way (e.g. lots of drama), I even sort of enjoy being able to understand and spectate those dynamics, as a quasi-outsider
I’ve never heard of Drova or Cruelty Squad, so thanks for the recommendations. This thread has given me so many interesting games to check out, thanks for replying
Dispatch - I’ve been having a blast playing this. It’s my first time playing a game thats more of an interactive TV show but I love the writing and the characters.
I’ve been trying to get into a bunch of games this year but I keep losing motivation super quickly. The only other game I’ve managed to finish is Pico Park 2 in coop.
I played mostly Rocket League (again, 10 consecutive wins for time played lol).
But my computer was down done Christmas Eve last year and just got out working again on Halloween. So most of my games this year were solely on the Deck. So the Deck gets an MVP award for being there when I needed it.
That said, the only game I own that doesn’t really work on the Deck is Helldivers 2.
I cannot drop down and play literally anything in 30fps. I already have to deal with the 60Hz screen on the Deck, I cannot use anything less (that hasn’t been literally designed for it- anything that can run at a higher fps should be. 60 is the absolute rock bottom I will tolerate.
Anyway, I also played a lot of Balatro, Slay the Spire, and REPO. Getting it working satisfactorily would have been impossible on some handhelds, but the grip buttons made it just enough to have access to all inventory slots, sprinting and tumbling. Had to use voice activation without an easy way to use push to talk, but that didn’t really bother me.
Tried PEAK, but it doesn’t really grab me personally. I still wanna try it on PC tho now that I have it running again, to give it a fair shake. I feel really off balance trying controllers with games meant to be kb/m. Repo felt awkward but playable. And I liked the choir game design enough anyway. But playing Peak while being awkward didn’t feel as rewarding. But I wanna give it a go with kb/m.
I played some Hades as well. Still haven’t beaten it yet (I’ve only gotten to the Hades fight twice). That game I actually like better on the Deck or on controller better. Which is kinda what I expected, but it definitely belongs on a controller.
I played through It Takes Two, which was beautiful. Haven’t finished Split Fiction yet because my brother keeps being unavailable. I try to tell him to “come be a lesbian with me”. Haven’t quite finished it yet, but there’s no way those 2 don’t hook up, right?
Didn’t play a lot of anything else, haven’t gotten back to work after my last couple years of surgeries so my budget was basically zero.(Supplemented by Steam gifties from real ones) Soon to change this coming year I hope, but given my disability, the depression of being stuck for medical reasons back in a house I had escaped from, the general everything, being poor, and not even having access to my main platform to game on at all, I think I did ok.
If you’ll pardon me I gotta go grind some more Rocket League.
Hmm, definitely Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. Best game I’ve played in years. Loved the first one and waited many years for the second game and well, to not be disappointed was great! Now that the DLC’s are done, I’m about to start a new run. Really curious what they’ve done with the monastery.
You’ve reminded me that I still need to finish that. When I started it, I played it so much that I burnt myself out on it a tad (not in a bad way, just in a way that requires I take a break and play something else for a while). I’m looking forward to getting back to it.
I didn’t play the first game, but I remember seeing a lot of the promo/development stuff about it because my partner at the time was super interested in it. My impression of the first game was that it was ambitious and interesting, but rocky in its implementation, but the second one is a refinement in all the ways you would expect a sequel to be. Certainly I have enjoyed it thus far
Edit: Steam tells me that I have 133.5 hours in this game, bloody hell. In my original post, I mentioned that I expect that the actual data in the Steam year-in-review will differ from what I remember of 2025, and this appears to be a great example of it. It seems like this was one of the games that completely dominated the first half of 2025 for me, and I didn’t even remember it
I loved the first one. I never noticed any rocky parts myself. It could be a bit difficult and it doesn’t hold your hand, but that’s what I loved about it.
I do remember that many people complained about the diffuculty of combat, but most of those issues could be solved by training and learning master strikes asap.
I would really recommend playing it. The story is great, it lets you know more about certain characters and it has some really awesome and funny quests, for example the one where you meet/get to know Godwin.
I can’t take the game awards seriously because they didn’t win anything. That game is an actual masterclass in pretty much everything. I usually hate the term “immersion”, because maybe i was just never really immersed in a video game. KCD2 absolutely did it. I think i played that game for like 20 hours before i even started a main mission. There are so many things to do and to see in this game, i absolutely loved every minute of it. The mission where you got drunk as fuck and went to look for more booze, had me genuinely laughing. When i learned that when you steal the lute for example, it’s not enough that no one sees you stealing it, when the see it’s gone and you were sneaking around there, they still figure it was you. The map and the ui is stunningly beautiful. I never loved listening to NPC’s as much as in this game.
Space Station 14. The absolute best multiplayer experiences I’ve had since the heyday of Planetside 2 (not that the two games are even remotely similar, just thinking broadly about multiplayer enjoyment).
But it’s been a good year for other games too. Silent Hill 2 was excellent. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth was excellent. Monster Hunter Wilds had some damn good looking monsters (but was not excellent).
Space Station 14 sounds interesting. What kind of multiplayer is it? I.e. is it one where the typical experience is to play with randoms via matchmaking, or is it a game best enjoyed with friends?
I have discord server full of nerds who I played games with during COVID (and its aftermath), and this might be a good excuse to see if I can reawaken that server for games
Kinda sorta like if Rimworld was set on a space station, but players control a single pawn, and servers are in the 50, 80, 150+ player count depending on server and time of day. The vibe is pretty similar to Among Us, just vastly, vastly more deep and complex than Among Us.
You join a server, create a character, pick a job ranging from janitor, bartender, musician, botanist, cargo, medical, security, research, and so on, then you join and try to keep the space station running smoothly by focusing on your job and working with other departments.
Or, you can, if you want, get a chance at being an antagonist with various goals ranging from stealing stuff to killing specific people, becoming a zombie and spreading the infection, or even blowing up the whole station with a nuke.
It’s incredibly deep, and it being a highly social game with some degree of roleplay focus, it’s crazy and fun and nothing else out there is quite like it, aside from space station 13 which came before it.
To answer your other questions - no matchmaking at all, you join a specific server and whatever job you end up with is determined by which jobs you have unlocked (by playtime in specific roles), which jobs you’ve set for yourself that you’d like to work, and which other players have also chosen those same jobs. Playing with friends can be challenging if servers are full.
And you absolutely must NOT communicate outside of the game unless the server specifically allows it. That includes Discord, that’s considered “metacomms”, so go in knowing you’ll have to use text chat for everything - it’s how everyone teaches and learns anyways, so it’ll come naturally
I should play more Space Station 14. I use to play quite a bit of 13, and it was quite fun to deep fry everything. I hope more things are added to 14! Otherwise I’ll just have to continue my escapades of “I only know how to make banana bread, botany boss, thanks!”
14 is in a really good state right now, I think! Wizden, being the upstream/vanilla can seem a little sparse compared to, say, the Starlight fork which adds a lot, or the dozens of other forks out there.
I’ve spent probably most of my time as botanist, with cargo/salvage a close second and musician a close third.
Definitely play more, especially if it’s been some time since you last tried it, the development of it is quite active and ongoing. Hell, wizden’s test server has been trying out a complete rework of the medical system, so they’re definitely not afraid to throw some huge changes out there and see how well the community responds to it.
Void Stranger, all of the ways it fucks with you even up to the end made it very memorable. The catharsis of finally getting it, and turning insurmountable challenges into not even a bump in the road was incredible. Place your faith in the void and jump in blind.
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