I‘ve sorted my library by release date, and there are five games which have released this year in it that aren‘t just remastered or early access which finally hit 1.0. Of those five I‘ve played three. Also of those five, three are indie games.
Monster Hunter Wilds
Poorly received across „enthusiasts“ as too easy of a MH game. I personally liked it a lot. The wounds mechanic is fun, focus mode is good but too much, performance is absolutely horrendous. One of the things I’ve always hated with MH are those stiff ass animations that made you miss combos by a cm, focus mode helps with that but now you can just 180 during a swing which is overkill IMO. I miss tracking monsters - which made me feel more like I‘m actually hunting game - as well as wallbanging them. The current mounting feels less interesting overall. 150 hrs played and they were a lot of fun with friends.
PEAK
Probably my GOTY (cause I didn‘t play much from this year anyway, see above lol). There‘s only one thing that bums me out: The game should have DLSS/FSR cause it‘s really heavy God knows why and the internal upscaler is meh. Otherwise, the most fun I had in a multiplayer game in a long time. Did ascension 7, unlocked all the stuff, gobble up every update, great fun with friends (also if solo but less so). 110 hrs, amazing game for less than ten bucks. Fuck those sencient tornados.
Mario Kart World
Idk, as the successor to MK8 it‘s kinda mid in comparisson. The feeling of speed, the racing flow, they‘re kinda missing. Lots of uninteresting filler tracks. Idk why this had to be an open world game. Some of its soul died for that. I got gold on all the cups but haven‘t touched it since. Pro tip: If you have trouble at max diff, stop drifting. The game ups the difficulty (read: rubberbanding) PER DRIFT, and it stacks up across the whole cup!
I think I have that same keyboard, altho mine doesn‘t have the huge Cherry logo. Was a third the price of the Logitech I had before and is about 3 times better lol
They‘ve been so successful with singleplayer stuff but would somehow rather burn billions failing live services than sticking with them. They could‘ve put that money into several offline experiences and made at least SOME money but yeah, rather lose MOUNTAINS of money, I guess.
I have successfully (?) played (sometimes semi-suffered, cough, Sekiro) through a buncha popular hard games and have a way less „strong“ opinion on this but also think that an „easy mode“ as an accessibility feature is a good thing.
If, for example, a parent wants to connect with their child and also experience that game they‘re playing, it‘s really no big deal to me if they could turn on easy mode in, say, Sekiro to stand a chance. Not like it‘d impact my own experience at all, and I don‘t feel the need to force them to go through my own experience either. In Celeste, for instance, you can literally fly through the whole game if it makes you happy, and yet I still grabbed all strawberries the normal way and don‘t care if others did as well or just flew to them.
It‘s less of a demand from me and more of a „if you can you should definitely include it,“ though. Obviously doesn‘t work for full on competitive multiplayer titles or something similar though.
Not even sure how much of this addresses your remark specifically, but my feelings on this felt best placed below yours lol
Far Cry games at least until 4. I like mindlessly collecting 300 map markers sometimes. Funny enough, I don‘t like 5 cause there doesn‘t seem to be a collectibles map that lets me just move up and down the map collecting everything lol
I don‘t get why they’d cheap out on artists, a couple people drawing illustrations is surely not gonna balloon development cost - and arguably one of the easiest places to spot when it‘s AI slop. It‘s as if they think there must be gen AI stuff in the game somewhere or the game‘s worse or something.
Horizon: Zero Dawn. I have yet to finish it but apart from robot dinosaurs, it feels so generically open world… Admitedly, a very pretty-looking open world. Can‘t really get into the story so far either since it takes itself so seriously while I‘m having a hard time not thinking too much about how ridiculous its world is. So apart from sight-seeing, there hasn‘t been much in this game for me thus far.
Edit: This comment section is a treasure trove of hot takes, so many of my beloved games mentioned making me go „What the fuck…,“ I love it
Idk if someone from Bethesda said this or if it was just a Youtuber regarding the stupid ways to level up in Oblivion (like jumping around for hours), but: If that‘s how people enjoy playing the game, then let them. And I agree with this.
Regarding abuse of game mechanics and not just bugs/glitches… I can only think of some Dark Souls bosses that can be baited into killing themselves by fall damage. For some it‘s clearly intentional (Iron Guard thing in Dark Souls 1), for some arguable (Dark Souls 2 the guy in the sunken area), and some clearly rather unintended (first real boss in Dark Souls 1 for example, it‘s really hard to do and when it happens the dude drops like a rocket lol)