Category Archives: Features

Game of the Year 2024 – Top 10

With all of the other lists behind us, we find ourselves here at the top ten games of 2024. In a year jam-packed with critically acclaimed games, I kind of found myself struggling to find games that resonated with me for large chunks of the year. For example, this was kind of a huge year for JRPGs, which is a genre of game I don’t really enjoy that much. So a lot of the biggest titles from this year are notably absent from this list.

But with that little caveat out of the way, I present to you the top ten games that I played this year.

10 – House Flipper 2

House Flipper 2 is a great example of not messing with success. Built with the same ethos in mind as its predecessor, House Flipper 2 puts a bunch of properties that are in varying states of disrepair in front of you, and tasks you with fixing them up. It’s a simple premise that sounds unremarkable because it is, but I find these kinds of games really calming. Games like this are a great way to occupy my hands while I watch TV or listen to a podcast, and House Flipper 2 is among the best in the biz in that regard.

9 – TCG Card Shop Simulator

Piggy-backing on what I said about House Flipper 2, TCG Card Shop Simulator was a real surprise for me in terms of games I would enjoy. After a miserable few years working in retail, I would never have thought playing a game about running a shop would click with me in the way TCG Card Shop Simulator has. Hell, I don’t even like card games, but selling booster packs to the same 7 ugly character models is actually kind of fun. It also helps that this game presents an idealized version of the world where no one is toxic and shitty. Some people do come in with stink lines around them though, so that is realistic.

It’s unfinished. It’s janky as hell. It’s one of my favorite experiences from this year, and I’m really excited to see this one evolve over time.

8 – Dungeons of Hinterberg

I think the best word to describe Dungeons of Hinterberg would be ‘uneven’. It’s a game that has some pretty glaring mechanical flaws, but makes up for them with clever puzzles and charming characters. I said it back in July, but had this solely been a puzzle game with a heavy focus on social interactions, and not have any combat in it whatsoever, I would have enjoyed it much more. Still, it’s one of the best games I’ve played this year.

7 – Thank Goodness You’re Here

Thank Goodness You’re Here is more of an interactive cartoon than a video game. It’s delightfully weird and hilarious, but you don’t really do anything besides walk around and hit the interact button on people and objects. The story and jokes are the only things that Thank Goodness You’re Here can really hang its hat on, and if they aren’t your jam then there’s nothing here for you. Luckily, I found this game hilarious and thoroughly enjoyed it from beginning to end.

6 – Minishoot’ Adventures

I wasn’t expecting a mashup of top-down Zelda games and shoot-em-ups to be such a compelling combination, but y’all, do not sleep on the terribly named Minishoot’ Adventures. With tons of exploration, navigation-based puzzles, and some pretty excellent shooter mechanics, Minishoot’ Adventures is the video game equivalent of discovering that chocolate and peanut butter go great together.

5 – Animal Well

I’ve already spoken about how much I loved Animal Well, both earlier in the year and earlier this week, so it shouldn’t be a surprise to see it on the top 10. I can’t think of many games I’ve ever played that were as shrouded in mystery as this one is. Every screen — every pixel of this game is deliberately placed to feed into a broader puzzle. Layer by layer you start to peel back this digital onion until you find that at the center, you still have no idea what’s happening.

I mean that in the best way too. I think Animal Well being an enigma is its greatest strength and not a shortcoming. It’s also a really good puzzle-platformer at its core, but what that platformer is in service of is what’s so amazing about Animal Well. It’s opaque and obtuse, but playing Animal Well for the first time was an unforgettable experience.

4 – Chants of Sennaar

Speaking of unforgettable experiences, Chants of Sennaar is one that I won’t ever forget for multiple reasons. Both Animal Well and Chants of Sennaar occupy a similar place of being wonderful “multiplayer” games that my partner and I enjoyed. But we both agree that Chants of Sennaar was the better experience from top to bottom. While it did technically come out last year, we only played it for the first time in 2024.

But for those few days it took us to blitz through the entirety of Chants of Sennaar, it was the only thing we could talk about. I never knew that the act of translating languages could be so engaging, but it is. I really hope another game like this is in development somewhere, because it’s a concept that’s so good that it shouldn’t be limited to one game ever.

3 – The Rise of the Golden Idol

At the end of this block of puzzle-game excellence is The Rise of the Golden Idol, one of the best puzzlers I’ve ever played. It’s a game that’s solely about observing your environment and making logical conclusions based of the information gathered in that, and previous levels.

It boasts remarkably engaging story whose twists and turns are even more impressive because you yourself are uncovering them. Understanding the motives of characters and what their mere presence in a scene implies are some of the most rewarding feelings of puzzle solving I experienced this year, and possibly ever.

2 – Astro Bot

Astro Bot is an incredible 3D platformer that’s either packed with nostalgic delights or filthy with advertisements, depending on who you are. I can understand the viewpoint of the latter, but I err on the side of the former in this regard. Astro Bot is a tremendously fun and positive experience that celebrates the long and storied history of the PlayStation brand.

But it’s more than just a nostalgia trip — it’s a really good platformer at its core that is constantly throwing new things at you, both in terms of mechanics and level design. Divorced from the PlayStation branding, Astro Bot would certainly lose a lot of its charm, but the core gameplay is solid enough that it could support just about any theme you throw at it. It’s truly remarkable and a must have for any PlayStation 5 owner.

1 – Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

There might be a bit of recency bias going on here, but I really do think that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle would have been my favorite game this year regardless of when it came out.

Holy cow, this game came out of nowhere for me and blew me away. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle takes the best parts of immersive-sim games, like Dishonored, and mushes it together with the excellent active stealth you’d see in the modern Hitman games to make something truly amazing.

Every aspect of this game shouldn’t have worked as well as it did, but it came together so perfectly. A large part of it has to be thanks to the phenomenal Harrison Ford impression that Troy Baker does, which once again, was a pretty dicey proposition on paper. But he disappears into the role and truly embodies the role, making it feel like I’m watching a long lost Indiana Jones movie. Which by the way, this is probably the best Indy story since Raiders of the Lost Ark.

But everyone is doing an excellent job portraying their roles in this game. The lead villain, Emmerich Voss, is perfectly portrayed as this slimy, miserable Nazi with the most punch-able face you’ve ever seen. Regardless of which character you’re talking about, everyone is putting in an excellent performance, all of which help to elevate this game.

And what of the game itself? That’s really good too! Machine Games is unsurprisingly adept at making the act punching fascists in the face feel as good as you’d imagine. The sound work is incredible, really emphasizing each hit with a heavy ‘thunk’ noise. Between solid melee combat and the versatility of Indy’s whip, whether it be used as a grappling hook or a cool way to choke fascists out, you have a surprising amount of variety in how you approach each encounter.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle isn’t a perfect game, but it was the best thing that I played this year.

So that’s it. That was the Game of the Year. I hope you enjoyed it. Consider subscribing to The Bonus World so you can get an email updating you whenever we publish something new.

I’ll be taking some time off, but I’ll catch you all at the end of January. Happy New Year, everybody.

Game of the Year 2024 – Most Disappointing

Leave a reply

Today’s category is tricky because I think people tend to conflate the concept of being disappointing with being bad, and that’s not what this list is about. There are bad elements in these games, some of which are more subjective than others, but none of these games are bad.

These are the games I played this year that I felt were uninspired and under-delivered.

Honorable Mention – Dragon’s Dogma II

I knew there was a strong possibility that Dragon’s Dogma II and I wouldn’t get along as swimmingly as I had hoped before it released, but I wanted to give it a fair shake anyway. I really tried to like this game, but it’s just too hardcore of an experience for me. That isn’t to say that it’s a bad game. Plenty of people love their video games to be both punishing and obtuse, and Dragon’s Dogma II is the epitome of both. I was disappointed with Dragon’s Dogma II, but it was a long shot to begin with.

The Plucky Squire

I wrote a whole thing about The Plucky Squire back in September about how utterly infuriating this whole game was. It was glitchy mess that constantly interrupted your progression to slowly pan around the map towards your obvious objectives or force you to listen as characters exposited at you for a while. As a game, it genuinely had no faith in the person playing it as evidenced by its over-tutorialization and hand holding.

Despite all of my issues with the game, I still powered through and made it to the final boss fight. It was there that The Plucky Squire fell apart in the middle of said final boss fight and crashed. Since then, I have not been able to load my game back up and finish it. I could simply restart the entire chapter of the game and be done with it, but my experience so far has left a terrible taste in my mouth. I don’t think I’ll be returning to this one.

Star Wars: Outlaws

Star Wars: Outlaws isn’t a bad game — it’s just a boring one. In my 8 or so hours playing it, I had already begun to feel like I had identified the game’s loop and decided I already had my fill. It didn’t help that the game itself just didn’t play great. There were multiple instances of my character mantling something or using a ladder when I didn’t want them to, which isn’t great for when you’re trying to avoid being seen by the only Storm Troopers in the galaxy who can actually hit a target. Mechanically, Star Wars: Outlaws is uninspired and repetitive even when it’s working well.

But even if it was more mechanically interesting, the story (from what I experienced) was just this boilerplate Star Wars narrative that wasn’t engaging at all. I didn’t hate the main character, but I didn’t feel any affinity for them either. The main story line is a real confusing one too, focusing on your character building up a team to execute a big heist. That on its own is whatever, but when every mission feels like an underwhelming heist as is, you eventually lose confidence in the game’s ability to make that big finale compelling.

While the game has been patched a lot since I last played it, I think there are core issues with it that can’t simply be patched out. From the jump Star Wars: Outlaws feels like its doing its best Star Wars impression while offering nothing particularly new or interesting. Maybe it gets better after fifteen hours or something, but I just don’t care enough to return to it. Star Wars: Outlaws is underwhelming but fine.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard

I felt so strongly about this wet fart of a game that I wrote a damn article about it — that’s how much of an impression it left. To summarize my feelings about Dragon Age: The Veilguard, I first need to contextualize some things: First, I am not, nor have I ever been a fan of Dragon Age as a series. I’ve never hated it or anything, I’ve just never felt anything about this franchise. Secondly, I’ve played the Mass Effect series, and for the most part am a fan of it. I consider those games to (mostly) be pretty well written and compelling.

While Dragon Age: The Veilguard has some decent story lines and a couple of compelling characters, I think from top-to-bottom, that game is devoid of any soul. It is the paint-by-numbers version of an RPG. Nothing you do or say matters because you will be the hero, and nothing is going to derail that inevitability. Dialogue options feel less like making choices, and more like picking the tone of a predetermined line. The combat is flashy but gets incredibly repetitive after you fight the same recycled enemies throughout duration of the game, and even the few boss fights you encounter don’t do much to keep things fresh.

I didn’t even have particularly high hopes for Dragon Age: The Veilguard. I knew these weren’t games I had ever enjoyed, but the combat looked fun enough for me to try getting onboard. For the first few hours I was really enjoying my time with the game. I liked the characters I had met and was curious about their lives. The world seemed cool even if the lore was a little dense and hard to follow as someone without any background with the franchise. But I was really ready to engage with this game as a whole, but it just consistently showed me how paper-thin of an experience it was.

There were rarely gray areas in the narrative. Dragon Age made it very clear that it wasn’t interested in challenging anyone with divisive storytelling, ensuring that just about every conflict would eventually be wrapped up nicely and neatly with a little bow on top. There are moments when the writing is genuinely compelling, but rarely does The Veilguard have the confidence in both itself and the player to let these moments breathe. By and large, most stories seem to wrap up a bit too nicely, usually allowing everyone to get the closure they desired.

But at the end of the day, I still beat the damn thing because it was fun to play. The gameplay loop was decent, the set-pieces were nice, and the environments were cool to wander in, even if there was rarely a reason to poke around for secrets. I feel like some people will really enjoy their time with this game, while others, like myself, will just be completely underwhelmed by it.

That’s day three of Game of the Year behind us. Come back tomorrow for the final top ten list of games. Consider subscribing to The Bonus World so you can get an email updating you whenever we publish something new.

Game of the Year 2024 – Better Together

1 Reply

I still find myself romanticizing those long, all-night gaming sessions my friends and I would have when we were younger, despite knowing that by 9:30 in the evening I’m ready for bed. Paired with the absolute nightmare of scheduling anything with anyone as adults doesn’t leave the door open for a lot of memorable online gaming sessions anymore. But that doesn’t mean that I’ve completely abandoned the concept of multiplayer gaming.

Multiplayer games have, for the most part, been redefined in my household. My partner is my main multiplayer buddy now, which has opened the door for me to introduce them to all sorts of new gaming experiences they’ve never had. Between traditional multiplayer games and games we’ve turned into a multiplayer experience, here are some titles that we’ve enjoyed playing together this year… for the most part.

Honorable Mention – WarioWare: Move It!

My partner has a large soft spot for minigames whether they’re consciously aware of it or not. So introducing them to the mysterious world of microgames was kind of a revelation for them. We had an absolute blast with WarioWare: Move It! and its rapid fire motion-based microgames, blitzing our way through the entirety of the game in a handful of play sessions.

It’s a fun game to play together because of how absurdly it makes you behave. It also is a game that reminded me just how inaccurate the Switch’s motion controls are, but that was part of the fun for us.

Super Mario Party Jamboree

This fucking game. Look, my partner loves Mario Party, so we’ve played a lot of Super Mario Party Jamboree. In the context of being a Mario Party game, this is probably the best one I’ve ever played, but that’s not a terribly high bar to clear.

Jamboree is kind of a return to the Mario Party games I remember playing on the Nintendo 64, solely because of how demoralizingly brutal it can be. You’ve got all the star-stealing bullshitery of the past series entries in here, but it’s coupled with the titular Jamboree mechanic which can really blow games out of whack. You have the ability to snag up an NPC on the board, who will follow you around and benefit you with their unique power, such as adding to your dice rolls or getting you cheaper prices at the shops, for example. But more importantly, they double whatever event space you land on.

With your buddy there, you can buy 2 items at a shop, you can buy 2 stars at a time, landing on blue or red spaces doubles the amount of coins given and taken away, and you even have to suffer Bowser’s bullshit twice should you land on his spot. It also allows you to visit the ghost twice, meaning you get multiple chances at stealing things from other players. The Jamboree buddy has the ability to completely break games, launch a player into a commanding lead while burying another in an inescapable pit. So it’s the perfect mechanic for this series.

It’s a nice looking game and the minigames are of a better quality than I remember them ever being, but once again, not a high bar. Jamboree, like every other entry I’ve played, has a nasty habit of piling on certain players while endlessly rewarding others. Sometimes the random stuff works in your favor, and sometimes it doesn’t. But in spite of all of that, my partner and I have a great time when playing these games together. Super Mario Party Jamboree has been responsible for a lot of laughs in my home, and that alone earns it a spot on this list.

Animal Well

I had only played Animal Well for about a half hour before my partner saw its hauntingly beautiful art style and decided to ride shotgun for the whole experience. We managed to turn this mysterious puzzle-platformer into a cooperative experience, with me manning the controls and them managing the notes and tackling the more esoteric puzzle solving.

It was so nice to have a co-pilot in this experience because their presence made it so that I could focus more on the runs and jumps I had to nail, and less on the stuff hidden in the background and periphery of each screen. Animal Well is dense with information if you’re actively scanning for that kind of stuff, and my partner is just better at catching those things than I am.

Sure, there were discrepancies between their level of participation versus mine, but Animal Well is enough of a gorgeous enigma that they didn’t seem too bothered with the idea of having to watch me wander around the map and find a fucking egg or something. It was a wonderful adventure we got to embark on together, even if there were a lot of points where we were just wandering aimlessly in the hopes something new would reveal itself.

Chants of Sennaar

Chants of Sennaar is a puzzle game that sees your character traversing a massive city-sized tower that’s comprised of different cultures with different values, priorities, and most importantly, different languages. Ascending to the top of the city requires you to pass through the various levels, where you’ll need to learn the languages within in order to find any success.

I pulled that description from a Spotlight article I wrote back in May of this year. I don’t want to sound too hyperbolic here, but Chants of Sennaar might be the best multiplayer experience I’ve ever had, and it isn’t even close.

Armed with a notebook and a controller, my partner and I set off to decode some languages. A few hours later and we were having full on discussions about the intentions and viewpoints of cultures and how those things would influence their language with one another and with other tribes. But we had to talk about those things because they were super important to succeeding in the game.

The overarching story in Chants of Sennaar involves a prophecy that each culture in the game seems to interpret and value very differently. Those cultural differences manifested themselves through their languages, wherein a culture might have a deep lexicon for words about the arts and entertainment whereas the next one might not have as many because they value science instead. Applying a decoded language to the prophecy would reveal why one culture interpreted it in a way that was so different from how another, and understand their outlooks on life. We began to understand how their societies were fundamentally different through their linguistic differences.

I cannot say enough nice things about Chants of Sennaar and I hope they make a sequel or just another game exactly like this. My only wish is that they cut out every single one of the bad stealth sections that did nothing but kill the momentum. Chants of Sennaar is the best multiplayer experience my partner and I have had this year, and possibly ever. We still talk about this game and wish we could experience for the first time again.

That’s day two of Game of the Year done and dusted. There won’t be a new list until Thursday because I want to enjoy the holiday. Happy holidays everyone. Also, maybe consider subscribing to The Bonus World so you can get an email updating you whenever we publish something new.

Game of the Year 2024 – Golden Oldies

Leave a reply

I can think of no better way to kick off The Bonus World’s Game of the Year extravaganza than by talking about games that explicitly did not release this calendar year. I’ve played a lot of stuff this year and not all of it came out in 2024, let alone this century, so I’d like to highlight some of them here.

Aside from the Honorable Mention below, this list is in no particular order. All of these games are excellent, and some of them will even get their due elsewhere.

Honorable Mention – Chants of Sennaar

I am 100% certain that you will be hearing me talk about Chants of Sennaar in some other list this year, so I won’t harp on it too much right now. This is an incredible puzzle game focused on decoding and translating languages. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever played and I cannot recommend it enough.

The Case of the Golden Idol

2024 was the year that I truly fell in love with puzzle-solving games, and The Case of the Golden Idol is one of the main reasons why. It is a game about deductive reasoning that requires you to really take in your environment, identifying who and what is in each scene along with the context of those elements.

What really clicked with me in hindsight is how The Case of the Golden Idol was both presented and played. It’s a unique spin on traditional point-and-click adventure games that I described in more detail back in the October Spotlight:

It isn’t clear who or what you play as in The Case of the Golden Idol, but you inhabit some sort of third party spectator who arrives at the moment of, or shortly after a grizzly murder has taken place. Through a point-and-click interface, you explore each heinous tableau, rooting around pockets, cupboards, and trashcans for pieces of information that can steer you towards identifying who people are, who was present, and what motives existed. At the end of each level you input your assumptions into a Mad-Libs-styled notepad, filling out the story with its key figures, items and whatever other relevant information is needed.

I don’t want to spoil anything because the story is kind of the whole game, so you’ll have to forgive the vague platitudes. But trust me when I say that The Case of the Golden Idol is a remarkable puzzler in the same vein as another beloved deduction-based game, The Return of the Obra Din. Maybe keep a notebook handy though, you’ll probably need it.

Super Mario World

It only took me three decades, but on some idle Tuesday in March I finally whipped Bowser’s ass on my own instead of relying on my older sister to do it for me. I genuinely forgot how much of this game we would skip on a regular basis, usually opting for the Star Road route directly to Bowser’s soon-to-be graveside. I think I put it quite eloquently when I said:

I stomped all of his children’s collective asses and then stomped his too. It was the first time I had ever personally beaten Super Mario World, and it was absolutely worth the 3 or 4 hours it took. Playing it on the Switch was a nice bonus too because I was able to make use of save states and the rewind feature a few times. Put an asterisk next to my accomplishment if you need to, but I could not care less. I beat Super Mario World and killed Bowser and his whole family. I am a hero.

Mamma-mia, this game is a masterpiece.

Baldur’s Gate 3

They said it couldn’t be done. They said there was no way he could find a way to give Baldur’s Gate 3 some sort of award a year after it was released. Not only did this absolute gem of a game win last year’s GOTY (spoilers I guess?), but apparently I honored it back in 2020 when it was still in early access. Who knew?

But that’s how fantastic this game is. I still think about it fondly, months after finally uninstalling it, freeing up the 6 petabytes worth of data it occupied. I’ve said my piece about this game over and over again, and I’ve also lauded it as the game that finally made me like CRPGs, which in retrospect isn’t really true.

Since being swept up in its splendor and eventually moving on, I’ve tried other games of its ilk. I think I’ve come to the realization that I still don’t like this genre of game. I don’t have the patience for any of these games. I don’t want to drink the right potions, or spec out my characters to make a cohesive team composition, or attempt to set up some wild chain reaction of events I know isn’t going to work because I planned it. I just don’t enjoy that stuff.

But in Baldur’s Gate 3 and only in Baldur’s Gate 3, I fucking love doing that stuff. I see people creaming their jeans over Path of Exile, Pillars of Eternity and the Divinity games, and I’m real happy for them, but I just want to play this game with these characters, and this story with its writing, and not engage with this genre in any other form until its inevitable sequel.

Whether it’s a lack of patience or general lack of brain power, I do not enjoy these kinds of games — EXCEPT for Baldur’s Gate 3, which is one of the best video games of all time.

That’s day one of Game of the Year in the books. Come back tomorrow for another list of games. Consider subscribing to The Bonus World so you can get an email updating you whenever we publish something new.

An Introduction to Game of the Year 2024

Leave a reply

Tis the season to once again rank video games. 2024 has been a weird year for me personally, but for The Bonus World, it represented a pivot point and total reassessment of how this project fit into my life. It’s been transformative, honestly, allowing me to focus my energy on monthly updates via the Spotlight features rather than push content for the sake of content. Which in turn allowed me the freedom to let my thoughts marinate a bit more instead of worrying so much about arbitrary, self-imposed deadlines for everything.

Self reflection is great and all, but that’s not what we’re here for. We’re here to talk about how The Bonus World is handling Game of the Year in 2024. I’m going to be publishing superlative lists, (think best multiplayer, etc.) for a few days, ultimately leading up to a final top 10 list. I’ve always preferred this “all-in” format but found it hard to commit to because of how much more work it turns out to be, but that’s not an issue at the moment, so here we are!

This stuff is going to hit in the last week of December, so while you’re waiting for the end of the month to see how 2024 shook out, why not check out last year’s list? You can also get a taste of how this will go by checking out the multiple installments we did for 2020, including both my top 10 and bottom 5 lists. You can also peruse our new, monthly feature, The Spotlight, to maybe glean how 2024’s GOTY will shake out.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard is Nothing but Empty Calories

2 Replies

Dragon Age: The Veilguard is such a weird game to talk about primarily because of how unremarkable it is. Sure, it’s got some good looking graphics and a decently fun combat system, but by any other metric it feels so creatively bankrupt that you’re ultimately left with something that feels like the phrase, “playing it safe,” was made into a video game.

To be clear, I have no skin in the game with the Dragon Age series. I’ve never enjoyed the way those games played in the past, and the lore always felt impenetrable to a degree that was off-putting. I understand that a lot of people would disagree with me on those points, hence the fact that Dragon Age: The Veilguard is the fourth entry in the series.

Smartly, Dragon Age: The Veilguard includes a glossary of terms for newcomers to utilize when NPCs prattle on about the Chantry, Venatori and other words that I had no prior knowledge of. Despite referencing that glossary a lot, I was still barely able to keep up when characters were talking about the state of the world. The one thing I do know about the story, however, is what the main quest-line is about. That’s because every other conversation with one of your party members involves someone summarizing it or restating your objectives.

While annoying, it’s kind of necessary considering there’s a lot of game here and very little of it has to do with the main quest. A great deal of the missions feel like padding as you go from city to city, completing mindless quests to boost your faction reputation enough that said faction will help you at the end of the game — I assume. None of the side quests are very interesting and ultimately require you do the same two things: find an object to interact with and then kill some enemies.

Along those lines, it never really feels like any of my conversational choices are making a difference. Outside of a handful of heavily telegraphed “big” choices I had to make, there hasn’t been a lot of decision making or role-playing in this action-RPG. The main character, Rook, doesn’t really have to many opportunities to be anything other than the hero of the story. In Dragon Age: The Veilguard, conversational choices boil down to how earnest you’re being as opposed to taking any moral stand or making any decisions. I don’t think you can be a bad guy in this game let alone make any actual choices that will change how the story plays out, but I haven’t beat it yet so maybe I’m wrong.

Choice seems like an illusion in The Veilguard, largely because it feels like the outcome of any given conversation is predetermined regardless of what you actually choose to say. You can be stern, snarky, or sincere, but you’ll never say ‘yes’ or ‘no’. There’s no ambiguity or question about the results of what you’ll say, just how it’s delivered. Even romance boils down to you just picking the flirty option over and over on the person you want to do sex with at every possible moment, and it’ll eventually happen.

Everything about Dragon Age: The Veilguard feels a little too clean. Sometimes your party members will have a scene depicting a minor conflict with one-another, but it’s always immediately resolved by the end of the very same scene. For instance, one party member was vehemently against the whole concept of necromancy, which they and necromancer on our team were arguing about. Despite making it clear that reanimating dead bodies was despicable and immoral, once Rook picked the right conversation choice, the two characters squashed their beef and were able to see the value in the other’s opinion. Dragon Age: The Veilguard makes sure to tie a neat little bow on all of these interactions in a way that would make any HR representative swoon.

That isn’t to say that there isn’t something for people looking for good stories to latch onto, because some of your allies do have some interesting stuff going on. But the way The Veilguard handles the concept of you, as both a leader and a player attending to your companions, is so frustratingly stupid. In Bioware games of yore, you’d chat with your teammates and get to know them over time. They’d eventually give you a quest or two that would shed some light on their backstory and better humanize them or whatever. Do enough of that and then maybe you’d kiss them or keep them from dying through the power of your friendship.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard will have these moments after you complete a big story mission where everyone on your team will stop to tell you that they need to take care of their personal business, hammering home the idea that your team won’t be up for the final conflict with all of these ‘distractions’. It’s basically the game’s way of telling you that new side missions have been unlocked and you’re going to want to do them or else your final mission isn’t going to go well. Every time this happens it’s a total momentum and immersion killer, as Dragon Age: The Veilguard makes sure to remind you that you’re playing a game and new companion missions have been unlocked.

I know that this all paints a pretty bleak picture of the game, but I actually don’t mind the moment-to-moment gameplay that much. The new combat system is fun and satisfying even if it barely evolves over time. There’s a big skill tree to navigate, with each class boasting 3 unique specializations for you to spec into, although not being able to change my character class is annoying. But even having gone sword and board had its upsides — namely the fact that I could Captain America-style ricochet my shield off of enemies and punch it back like a yo-yo over and over. You can also pause time and have your teammates focus fire or use specific attacks that might combo together, but I rarely ever needed to make use of that on the default difficulty.

Additionally, I think the world is pretty and most of the levels are interesting enough to poke around in, even if there’s rarely a good reward for doing so. Usually you’re just picking up crafting and upgrade materials or some piece of gear that you probably don’t need. Aside from that and the occasional piece of written lore that might trigger a side quest, there isn’t a ton of reason to leave the critical path outside of your own curiosity. At some point I stopped caring about money because I didn’t need to buy anything, and that’s a direct result of just finding better stuff in the world so easily that spending money on any of it seems ridiculous.

To that end, as someone who isn’t big on the loot grind in other games, Dragon Age: The Veilguard does something I appreciated, which was automatically upgrading my armor and weapons I had in my inventory when I found duplicates of them out in the world. It also allows you to level up your weapons and armor as you go, so you don’t really have to worry about new stuff if you’ve found something that works for you.

What’s really disappointing is how singularly focused this game is. There is no room for you do anything outside of progress the main story and kiss a party member. There are no diversions, no distractions, no role-playing in this role-playing game at all. There’s barely any puzzles in the world, and the ones that do exist are so alarmingly simple that you’re left wondering why they’re even included at all. There is one path to take, and you will walk it.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard is a game that’s sanded off all the rough edges and provides little to no resistance to the player, instead opting for a more streamlined approach that feels less like an RPG, and more like a traditional action game. It’s not a bad game, rather, it’s a bland one. It’s a game that really feels like its been made by a company who needed a win so badly that it didn’t dare to take any chances on anything. It’s as if every decision about its content was made after extensive focus group reviews. Dragon Age: The Veilguard plays it safe, and in doing so manages to alienate long time fans of the series, along with newcomers who are looking for a good action-RPG. It’s pure filler, and some folks might be more okay with it than others.

The Best of the Summer Game Fest

Leave a reply

It may look like E3, it may sound like E3, and it might be following the exact same path as E3, but the Summer Game Fest is definitely not E3 — yet. Regardless of how I feel about the industry and how it treats its employees and consumers alike, I am still very excited for the products it produces.

Without further preamble, here’s a big unordered list of the things I saw that looked cool. Keep in mind that I didn’t manage to watch all of the shows and see all of the announcements, so there are certainly things that could be on this list but just aren’t.

UFO 50

“The story of UFO 50 is that the games were all created in the 80’s by a fictional company that was obscure but ahead of its time.” That’s the official pitch for UFO 50 and it sounds absolutely amazing. While it may have barely missed its initial launch window of 2018, I’m absolutely thrilled to see a sign of life from this game, let alone a release date for September 18th of this year.

Star Wars Outlaws

There are a lot of valid criticisms you could levy at Ubisoft, particularly in how formulaic their open-world games seem to be. But even so, I’m genuinely excited to get my hands on Star Wars Outlaws and engage with its inevitable open-world bloat, dressed up in a Star Wars costume. The vibe of Star Wars is strong in this gameplay demo, but whether the story and gameplay manage to land the metaphorical ship is something I’ll have to find out when it releases on August 30th, this year.

Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind

Releasing later this year, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind looks absolutely phenomenal. Admittedly, I haven’t been a Power Rangers fan since I was a wee-lad, but everything about this trailer is igniting nostalgic synapses that had been laying dormant for over 30 years. I’m a sucker for a good beat-em-up and Rita’s Rewind seems to be going above and beyond genre expectations with some cool mode-7 inspired gameplay twists.

Cairn

Cairn might be the first game to ever have a mountain kick your ass, but it certainly looks like one of the toughest. Knowing nothing about mountain climbing aside from it’s done by people with an allergic reaction to safety, I can confidently say that Cairn looks to be a realistic depiction of both the act of climbing and the emotional toll it can take. The resource management aspect of the game is giving me some pause, but I’m still very interested in playing Cairn, regardless.

Wanderstop

Wanderstop looks very cool for what it is, but I’m left wondering how you make a game out it. Sure, you’ve got the tea house management angle that’s obviously there to lull you into a false sense of routine, but once the self-doubt starts kicking in, what does the game actually look like? I’m suspecting there might be a massive genre twist in this one, but I could be wrong. Either way, I’m excited to check it out whenever it releases.

Unknown 9: Awakening

It’s been a while since a game reminded me of Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy, a ridiculously fun game with a hilariously stupid name, but here’ comes’s a new stupidly named game that might scratch that itch — it’s Unknown 9: Awakening! Dumb names aside, this game looks pretty cool. The main mechanic seems to be about possessing enemies and having them take each other out, which is always my preferred “stealth” option when playing games, so a whole game about that has to be good, right? It comes out this year, so I’ll find out more then.

Eternal Strands

Someone described Eternal Strands to me as Shadow of the Colossus and Breath of the Wild smashed into one game. While that’s a super lofty claim to make, should Eternal Strands even be marginally as good as either of those games, it’ll be an overwhelming success to me. I’m skeptical, but I really do want this to be good.

In Sink

I don’t know why I put games like In Sink on any sort of list, whether it be article or wish, because I never have anyone to play the dang things with. But I’m imagining a world where I do have a good co-op partner, and we are both loving this game and its asymmetrical puzzle solving. Also in this imagined world I have huge muscles and like, a million dollars. There’s a demo out now, but a full release is expected later this year.

Skate

I just want to play a new Skate game already. Imitators like Session and Skater XL tried to fill the void in its absence, but fumbled the execution so hard with their overly complicated control schemes. While I’m genuinely terrified of the EA-controlled free-to-play model this entry is adopting, I know it was probably the only way a new Skate game would get green-lit. Regardless, I want to play this very badly, and I can’t believe there still isn’t a release window.

South of Midnight

If nothing else, South of Midnight looks very cool. Aside from aesthetic appeal, I truly have no idea how this one is going to shake out, but I’m more than willing to give it a spin when it launches on Game Pass.

Perfect Dark

I really hope this trailer isn’t all smoke and mirrors because the new Perfect Dark looks absolutely incredible. An immersive-sim with all the Perfect Dark gadgets and future tech seems like a perfect pair, but I’ll reserve my boundless praise for whenever I actually do get to play it.

Mixtape

I have no idea how Mixtape will play or what it’ll be about, but it’s trailer is giving off all the right vibes. I think I might be a few years removed from the prime demographic for this game, but I’m still going to play it anyway because it looks cool and has a pretty dope soundtrack.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

From Uncharted to Tomb Raider, games have been chomping Indiana Jones’s flavor for years to mostly positive results. So maybe it’s finally time for the progenitor of archaeologic adventures to come out with a game that’ll live up to and make good on the mystique of Indiana Jones. I really hope that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is good, because this trailer looks like a lot of fun. And if nothing else, at least I’ll get to punch a Nazi in the face.

Fable

Please be good.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard

Okay, so this particular trailer isn’t particularly good, but the gameplay demo that came out a day later was much better. I don’t have any love for the Dragon Age series, but I’m willing to take the plunge with The Veilguard after pouring a full week’s worth of time in Baldur’s Gate 3. Maybe I’m an RPG guy now. Or maybe I’m excited because this game looks like it’ll cater more to my action-oriented gameplay sensibilities way more than its predecessors did. Either way, I want to try this video game.

The Incredible Enigma of Animal Well

3 Replies

Aside from basking in its stellar visuals and vibes, my first hour or so with Animal Well was fairly unremarkable by modern search-action game standards. Without any real guidance on what to do, I defaulted to mindlessly exploring the vast map for anything that seemed interesting, whether it be a tool, ability, or some arcane puzzle to solve. That initial impression led me to believe that this would be little more than a very pretty, otherwise unremarkable puzzle-platformer game. My next 20 hours, however, were a completely different story.

Animal Well tosses you right into the action, giving little motivation beyond setting four waypoints on its vast and initially blank map to navigate to. It was that meandering exploration that was both so entrancing and off-putting all at once, which is kind of the whole thing with Animal Well. You don’t realize it in the early hours of the game, but Animal Well wants you to poke and prod at every square inch of every screen you step into, because often times that curiosity is rewarded with something.

Sometimes you stumble across a new path forward, and sometimes it’s just a piece of another mystery you haven’t even considered yet. For instance, the main “collectible” in Animal Well are eggs. Usually there’s a small puzzle or platforming challenge required before you can actually collect them, but you can probably snag half of them without really thinking too hard about it. They’re all visually distinct but don’t appear to do much else at first blush, and I assumed they were little more than a tongue-in-cheek reference to the concept of Easter-eggs. No spoilers, but you should get those eggs — trust me.

Even when you’re unclear as to what you’ve just accomplished, you still experience that coveted “aha!” moment you get from good puzzle games. You feel like an absolute genius when you figure something out because there are a lot of, “this shouldn’t work,” moments, where you feel like you’re exploiting the mechanics of the game to get ahead. Animal Well rewards and expects out-of-the-box thinking from you in conjunction with pixel-perfect platforming. It can be a difficult and demoralizing experience at times, but the dopamine hit when you finally crack a puzzle wide open or chain your abilities in just the right way so you can get to an undiscovered screen, is unparalleled.

One could look at Animal Well as a mysterious game that doesn’t hold your hand, allowing you to experiment with your ever-expanding toolkit to uncover its many, many layers of secrets for yourself. Whereas another person could see Animal Well as a meandering experience that’s far too vague and ambiguous for its own good. Both are valid, but my experience has wildly oscillated between these views several times during my playthrough. The only consistent emotion I felt while playing Animal Well was discomfort.

Animal Well is unsettling. The soft glow of neon colored lights, the stark and slick creature designs, the ambient and dreadful music that ominously thumps in the background, all congeals into a game that’s just as beautiful as it is horrifying. I felt on edge every time I’d enter an undiscovered area, just terrified of whatever gorgeous nightmare might be on the other side. Just existing in the world of Animal Well plays into a foreboding sense of dread, which was a big obstacle for me as someone who does not enjoy any kind of horror-based media.

I also think Animal Well is a bit more punishing than it needs to be. There aren’t enough save rooms which makes dying way more tedious than I was expecting. Certainly there were times when the tension derived from my fear of having to hike back to whatever screen I was currently on, added to the experience, but overall I wouldn’t have hated it had Animal Well been a tad more generous with saving and checkpoints. Having to hike back to a tough platforming challenge through several empty rooms isn’t fun, it just kind of feels like padding.

It’s also a game that seems to revel in not giving you any information, whether it be context, lore, or even just a story you can follow. In most search-action games, Animal Well included, getting a new tool or ability usually means that you can access a new part of the map. But for better or worse, Animal Well doesn’t indicate what’s currently available to you with any new acquisition, leading to a lot of wandering about while incessantly spamming a new tool on every inch of the world I could touch.

That’s kind of the point of Animal Well, though. I’ve “beaten” the game, and I have no idea what the hell anything I’ve done or encountered meant. Not a single thing was ever explained to me, which I usually hate in games, but it really works in Animal Well. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a game that hooked me so thoroughly without ever offering any clarification or shred of exposition. It was little more than curiosity that pulled me through the vast majority of Animal Well — that and my partner, of course.

As it turns out, Animal Well is one of the best cooperative experiences I think we’ve ever had. This single-player game turned out to be the perfect fit for us and how we like to approach games. I helmed the controller, performing all of the tight maneuvers like a real gamer might do, and they were my first mate, helping me navigate the sprawling map, note-taking, deciphering clues, and providing emotional support for when things would get a bit too overwhelming for me. We enjoyed this dynamic so much, that I’m currently brainstorming the next game of this ilk we can dive into.

I think there’s a version of Animal Well that I would enjoy a bit more had it been less aggressively obtuse, but as is, it’s a phenomenal game. From its platforming to its inscrutable nature, you have to be onboard with all of Animal Well, otherwise you’d likely miss out on most of what makes it so special. For what it is though, Animal Well is one of the best gaming experiences I’ve had in quite some time, and I can’t wait to see what the community uncovers as it continues to scour every inch of this game.

The Songs We Sang

1 Reply

Have you ever had that moment when you went back and revisited something you really enjoyed when you were younger, only to come away with a feeling of despondent ambivalence? Like, I remember thinking Street Sharks action figures looked so cool despite how objectively horrifying the commercial was and — okay this is a bad example because these toys are still rad as hell, but not everything from my past holds up that well, even when they weren’t things as trivial as buff shark action figures. I had this moment recently with a band that for a long time, was a very big part of my identity.

I want to tell you about Brand New.

Brand New was my favorite band in high school and the majority of my twenties. They were this ever evolving band that came out of Long Island, that in my mind, represented the pinnacle of the early 2000’s pop-punk scene. But it wasn’t just their first album, Your Favorite Weapon, a loud and brash pop-punk album with thoughtful lyrics and head bop-able melodies that made me a long time fan, it was that as I grew up their music grew up with me.

By the time their second album, Deja Entendu came out, they sounded like a vastly different band than they did before. It was a more effects and reverb driven album with lyrics that read like poetry and was a much darker and more earnest experience from top to bottom. Deja Entendu was an evolution that was emblematic of the band’s willingness and ability to change, whether it be out of artistic expression or just boredom with something they’ve already done.

That trajectory of stylistic and tonal evolution would kind of be their thing from album to album. That transformation was also aided by the fact that album releases were few and far enough between one another that I was a very different version of myself by the time a new record hit. It made it feel like every album was tailor made for me and my growth as a person, marking checkpoints in my life.

Over the past few years my relationship with Brand New and their lead singer, Jesse Lacey in particular, went from complicated to non-existent. Specifically the allegations about his grooming of underage women when he was younger, (a claim that he all but confirmed when he issued an apology for it) complicated things. You can read about it if you want to, but needless to say it was a real slap in the face for someone who at one point idolized this man’s ability to make music.

I’m not here to re-litigate that whole mess. What happened was gross and clearly the actions of a young man who bought into his own hype and took advantage of people where he could. People grow and people change, and I hope that this 40+ year old man isn’t the same person he was in his mid-twenties, but I don’t know him, nor do I care anymore. The worst part of all of this isn’t that he killed his own band with his actions, it’s that an actual human being has to live with the consequences the selfish things he did. In my mind this is settled law. Jesse Lacey sucks and did something horrible to someone. While he ruined a band that I loved, he actually did damage to another person out there, and that’s unforgivable to me.

It had been years since I actually listened to any of their songs, let alone sit through an entire album. I more or less purged them from my music rotation which was a difficult adjustment at first, but it eventually stuck. The errant song would pop on on Spotify from time to time, but rarely would I let it finish. It felt weird to listen to anything written by Lacey, not only because of what he did, but because of how much of an impact he had on my life.

I didn’t personally know the guy or anything, but I was so heavily influenced by Brand New and Lacey that I attribute them with the reason I ever learned how to play the guitar in the first place. They were the architects of my musical tastes and styles. They were my road-dogs whenever I went driving anywhere, whether it be an interstate trip or a quick jaunt to the supermarket. They meant so much to me at one point in my life, but now they can’t even get airtime on my personal radio stations.

Recently I was in a funk one night when one of their songs came on and it hit just right, leading me down a rabbit hole of binging these albums straight through without stopping. I had this musical relapse and for better and worse, I felt like I did when I was in high school — back when I could block out all the noise in my life with this music that “spoke to me.” But now as a thirty-something year old, with all the context and time that I could muster, their music rang hollow, doing little more than provide background noise.

I think that for the last few years my mentality had been pretty defeatist in the sense that I’d lament the fact that I ever was such a fan in the first place. I was upset that I’d ever had this feeling of hero worship that ultimately blew up in my face. It was that old saying of, “don’t meet your heroes,” come to life, despite never actually meeting any of them. But listening to these songs again I realized that while my relationship with their music will never be the same, I can’t ignore the fact that they did mean a lot to me at one point. It was this weird moment where I had to come to terms with everything that happened and just accepted Brand New‘s latest role in my life: They were important once and influenced me a lot, and now they aren’t and don’t matter.

It was actually kind of nice to re-listen to their final album, Science Fiction, because this far removed from its release and the general concept of being a fan of theirs, it turns out that I don’t think it’s a very good album. A younger version of myself is screaming at me for ever considering this “wildly erroneous” take, but it’s just not that good. It has a few decent tracks, but overall it feels like the last desperate gasp of a band who was ready to call it quits anyway. Science Fiction, along with the album before it, Daisy, (which I do think is a good album) had a real nasty tendency to insert a bunch of non-music bullshit into every single one of their tracks, making casual listening an absolute chore.

For instance, Daisy opens with a grainy, old-timey gospel song that halfway through explodes into a mess of screeching wails and sickly guitar riffs. Meanwhile, Science Fiction opens with a recording of someone describing their dream, although the song that it fades into is pretty good. I understand these are supposed to be thematic mood setters, but they only ever hit once if ever at all, and I am well past the point of being mesmerized by that stuff. It all feels so pompous and self important. I can appreciate the artistry and talent of a song just fine without having to skip the first minute-and-a-half of scratchy audio that’s been inserted because it’s “deep” or whatever.

That’s not just a Brand New thing, that was a huge trend for indie rock albums of that era that was always terrible. It feels like they don’t want you to be able to just listen to a song and move on, but I guess it is kind of a moot point to complain about albums that came out so long ago. Ultimately these are the kinds of things that I failed to notice, (or willingly overlooked) as a once staunch defender of this band that really standout now.

I’ve never really spoken about any of this to anyone, probably because I was really the only person I knew who was that into Brand New. And sure, this isn’t important or world changing stuff, but it feels nice to actually articulate my feelings about all of this considering I don’t think my recent thoughts about the band or the singer went beyond, “fuck that guy.” Let me be clear, “fuck that guy” is still in full effect, but I can’t try to undo the impact his band had on me as a young man. I am grateful for their musical influence but can never reclaim my joy of listening to them again.

Game of the Year 2023

3 Replies

I could argue that 2023 has been one of the best years for video games ever and I don’t know that I’d get too much push back for that. 2023 was jam-packed with games that would take top marks had they been released any other year, but somehow they all got smushed into one, very overwhelming year.

To set the stage a little bit, I played and enjoyed a lot of games this year, and tons of them aren’t on my hodgepodge of a list, primarily because I didn’t want to make this list a top 30 or whatever it might pan out to be. I also had a lot of positive experiences with games that I really didn’t have more to say about them other than, “I liked them.” Games like Sea of Stars, Super Mario Wonder, Super Mario RPG, Stray, and plenty of others just didn’t make the list because I don’t really have much more to say about them than, “they’re good!”

With that said, let’s just dive in.

Honorable Mentions

Animal Crossing: New Leaf

What better way to start off a Game of the Year list than with a decade old video game for a long abandoned platform? This year, in an attempt to find more games my partner and I could enjoy together, we both found ourselves getting hopelessly addicted to Animal Crossing: New Leaf for the Nintendo 3DS.

Our addiction and obsession stems, not only from being long-time fans of the series, but also because the latest entry in the series, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, played a key role in our burgeoning relationship back during the early part of the pandemic. It helped us stay together during a time when people were forced to be apart, and going back to play New Leaf together has really reinforced how special this series is to us. It also helps that Animal Crossing: New Leaf is arguably the best entry in the series, jam-packed with content that, despite our ravenous rate of play, we’ve only scratched the surface of.

Disney Illusion Island

Another game that my partner and I bulldozed our way through, Disney Illusion Island was a fantastic platformer that was easy for both of us to enjoy. It was interesting and varied enough for my seasoned gaming sensibilities, yet accessible and welcoming for my my partner to enjoy. Beautiful art and the decision to not have any combat in Disney Illusion Island, also really helped grease the wheels. Having to only focus on navigating the world without the headache of some random enemy try to ice us, really made for a more enjoyable cooperative experience that wasn’t subject to the normal difficulty spikes one might find in other Metroidvanias.

While the game was a little too long and simplistic for my taste, it was an excellent way to spend some time with my partner, and that alone earns it a spot on this list.

Assassin’s Creed Mirage

As someone who never really got into the newer style of Assassin’s Creed games, Assassin’s Creed Mirage was a refreshing return to form for the series that I found very mechanically satisfying, even if the story and setting weren’t my favorite. For the first time in well over a decade, I had a lot of fun playing an Assassin’s Creed game.

Narrowing the scope of these games feels like a necessary change to the bloat and grandeur that’s invaded the more recent entries, both in terms of mechanics and concept. I like just being an assassin and having to focus solely on doing a good job at that, which is the majority of what this game gave me. If Assassin’s Creed Mirage is the foundation for the direction of the series going forward, then I’m onboard for whatever is next.

Lil’ Gator Game

Lil’ Gator Game is an earnest and relaxing take on the recent Zelda formula, that I was absolutely taken with this year. You play as the titular “lil’ gator,” who conscripts every person who lives on their home island, to play along and effectively be NPCs in the adventure game they’ve concocted. As the gator, you go on a DIY, Breath of the Wild-styled adventure across the island, slaying cardboard cutouts of enemies and solving puzzles, all in an effort to get your older sister to stop working on her college coursework, so she can play with you like she used to.

It’s a very sweet and very fun examination of responsibilities and growing up, while also being incredibly low impact and not demanding. I really enjoyed Lil’ Gator Game on just about every level, and I think it’s worth checking out.

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2

Two Spider-Men and a Venom? That’s right folks, for the price of one video game, you can play as two Spider-Men and one whole Venom. That’s just the excellent value you can expect from Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, the very good sequel to two very good games.

Realistically though, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is a really good sequel that takes what you loved about its predecessors, shaves down some of the rough edges, and sprinkles on more of what people liked about those earlier entries in the series. They even brought back those bad stealth segments where you play as Mary Jane, except this time they gave her a stun gun that’s more effective than either of the Spider-Men you play as.

While I found the enemy variety, move sets, expanded world and story pacing to be greatly improved over Marvel’s Spider-Man, there were some really lame bits of storytelling and uninspired mission design on display. There’s also the fact that the good, Spider-Man-based stealth, has been minimized both in terms of opportunities for it and its effectiveness. It sucks because I really enjoyed the stealth mechanics and focus of the previous entries, and now it feels like you can only get away with so much before combat is foisted upon you.

The overwhelming sentiment I was left with once I rolled credits on Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 was an excited curiosity to see what Marvel’s Spider-Man 3 was going to be about, because despite my criticisms, I still am very invested in seeing this story continue or resolve.

Runner Up

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is a phenomenal game, just like its direct predecessor that came out over six years ago. It is the successor to one of the most groundbreaking open world games of all time, and if not for the next game on this list, it probably would have been my game of the year. But despite all the well deserved praise, it’s a very iterative experience that didn’t deviate too far from the winning formula that Breath of the Wild established.

I truly loved The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and all most its new mechanics, some of which really changed the way I approached combat and puzzles, and some of which could be completely ignored if you just didn’t want to deal with it. Fusing objects together to make ridiculous weapons was great fun, even if it was a bit tedious and a way to backdoor crafting into the game. Ascending through ceilings and being able to reverse the flow of time really changed how I approached platforming and navigating the environment, even if I kept forgetting I had access to them.

But then you have the absurdly named Ultrahand ability, which allows you to build all sorts of vehicles that can help you, quite literally, fly across Hyrule faster than any pathetic horse could ever hope to. It’s an amazing feature in its execution, but it’s a total bummer for people like myself who have no interest in engaging with building things in games. I just don’t have the patience to sit and finely engineer the perfect flying machine that won’t flip over the second I board it, when I could just walk to my next location. And even if I did want to engage with that system, I’d have to spend ages grinding away to build up enough battery capacity to run these things for more than 30 seconds. It’s this entirely optional system that’s been added, that’s responsible for a good portion of what’s new about Tears of the Kingdom, and it’s just something I had no desire to engage with.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is a great example of taking what worked, and giving the player more of it. “Not enough dungeons? We added a bunch more. Not enough boss fights? Here you go! Not enough korok seeds? How’s about we triple the amount then?” Hell, they even added a bunch of floating islands above Hyrule, as well as an underground area that’s just as big as the mainland, just to see how much they could strain the CPU of a Nintendo Switch. Granted, the floating islands are cool, albeit fairly empty and more limited in number than I’d like. Meanwhile the underground area is just one large grayscale nightmare zone that isn’t fun to explore and filled with things that want to kill you.

I don’t mean to harp on The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, because I really did enjoy it quite a great deal. But just about every positive aspect of it is something that I got out of Breath of the Wild, six years ago. Sure the sky islands are cool, sure the traversal options are fun, and sure, the story is much better than the one in Breath of the Wild. I’m not denying that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is an excellent game that is worthy adoration, but it does sometimes feel like the “director’s cut” version of a movie I’ve already seen before.

Game of the Year

Baldur’s Gate 3

Defying all reason or logic, Baldur’s Gate 3, a tactical role-playing game, is my game of the year in a year that was filled with some of the most laudable games of all time. A genre of game that I absolutely do not enjoy, didn’t just win the top spot on this year’s list, it’s forever cemented as one of my favorite games of all time.

Initially, I bounced off of Baldur’s Gate 3 when it first was available in early access, opting to spend more time with it once it fully released rather than battle against constant progress-wiping updates that were to be expected in its preview state. When it finally did release fully back in August, it did so to a deluge of fanfare that left me excited to get my hands on it in a, “eventually I’ll have time, but not right now,” kind of way. I put it off until this October, where I proceeded to pour about 100 hours into a game I thought I’d just like.

And despite how I felt about it in 2020, where I thought my familiarity with D&D mechanics would be the thing pulling me through the game, it turned out that the combat was my least favorite part of the whole thing. The story, the setting, the characters — most of the characters, they were the things that kept me coming back with ravenous desire. They were the things that made me restart the game 4 times until I “got it right.” While I don’t think there’s actually any choices you can make that will force a fail-state in the game, which I should point out, is an incredible feat of game design and execution, I still didn’t want to chance it and accidentally doom the future of my campaign.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is not a game without its faults, to be sure; the path finding is a joke, performance is spotty, the camera hates indoor spaces despite how many of them there are, quest tracking was iffy at best, and there were some sections of the game that I did not find to be fun at all. There are sections that I’m dreading having to do again in an inevitable second playthrough, but those low points are incapable of outweighing the towering highs of Baldur’s Gate 3.

Baldur’s Gate 3 was easily the best and most addicting game I played this year. It wasn’t just because of excellent world building and punchy combat, but its writing, acting and narrative that all worked in tandem to deliver some truly emotionally impactful moments. Very few games have ever moved me, and I did not expect Baldur’s Gate 3 to be the latest addition to that list.

Baldur’s Gate 3 was an adventure I got to go on with this group of ragtag NPCs that, for the most part, I grew to genuinely care about and get invested in. But most importantly, it’s a game that adapted to me and actually accounted for the things I did and chose. I wasn’t just playing a game, I was writing my own story, and the game was going along with me. Baldur’s Gate 3 gave me the most personalized and unique gaming experience of the year — hell, the most unique gaming experience of my life, and that alone makes it worthy of calling it my Game of the Year.

Thanks for taking the time to read this list, I really appreciate it. The Bonus World, if nothing else, will return in 2024 to make another one of these lists. Hopefully more stuff is posted as well, but at the very least, another Game of the Year list is scheduled.

Regardless, I hope your holiday season was as stress free as possible, and your new year is better than the last. Have a good one, everybody.