I finally picked up Exanima after years of being put off by the early access, but damn what a unique and engaging experience. Reminds me of the first time I played Oblivion or Demon’s/Dark Souls.
It’s a game where your own experience as a player is your greatest asset. I highly recommend it for anyone into slow dungeon crawling and looking for a challenge unlike anything else.
Sekiro. It ruined other souls like for me. Even DS. Combat felt like dancing, QoL are very good, even better than Lies of P that people kept praising about QoL.
I’m surprised I don’t see Alan Wake 2 as its own entry in the list so far.
I don’t like horror games, and I didn’t care that much for the first game, or even necessarily Control, but Alan Wake 2 was really impressive. Showcased the power of the format of video games for cinematic narrative in a way that raised the bar even higher than it’d been before, similar to how BG3 and TotK raised the bar in player choice and open ended game design.
I’m honestly just waiting for it to go on sale (<$25 cause I’m stingy and my backlog is huuuge) for Xbox. Looking at sales numbers it’ll probably be soon Z
The first time I felt like I spent most of my time in cutscenes and figuring out what to do. The second time I just plowed through the main story and enjoyed the ride.
Quake I, now remastered. I reinstall it frequently and it was one of the first games I tried on Linux, and it works flawlessly even though it came from a Microsoft-owned Bethesda-published Id. There’s something hypnotyzing in how responsive it feels so I don’t get bored nor with originar, nor with pretty new levels. Even boomer shooters don’t scratch it just like this game does.
Talos Principle 1 + Gehenna (Had it for years in my library collecting dust), finished it to 100% and am currently playing Talos Principle 2. These games are absolute gems and not even expensive for what you get, too. The people at Croteam are genuine masters of their craft.
Days Gone, since it just released on gog and I wanted to give a triple a title another shot. It turned out to be pretty good, fun driving and gameplay, and the hordes were terrifying.
Also I was amazed how well this game was running, 4k 144hz butter smooth on a 4070. Kudos to the developers!
Well Tears of the Kingdom ate up about 4 months of the year for me. Bomb Rush Cyberfunk was a game I had been waiting 20 years to play. So that was really nice. I just wish there was more of it to be honest haha.
Resident evil 4 remake and Bloodborne were my next favorites.
Vampire Survivors completely drew me in this year.
A couple of years ago, I was having dreams of designing train lines in Cities Skylines. A couple of days ago I was having a dream of weapon combos in Vampire Survivors. That's how you spot a good and influential game.
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