Board 8 > Para's Top 50 games from 2020-2021

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Hi! Yes, I know, it's like halfway through 2022. Let me explain.

So, about two years ago I did a Top 100 list for games from the decade 2010-2019. It was mostly a list I wanted to write for my satisfaction - I love writing lists, and ranking my favorite games is probably one of the most fun things to do, so cataloguing my favorite games from that decade just seemed like the natural thing to do. I always worry about putting a list like that out into the world comes across as egotistical - oh, here are the favorite games of some random asshole, you should really care about that - but it turned out people were really interested in the project, so that's kind of encouraged me to want to do more writing projects like this. I've been working myself up to doing a companion list of top 100 games from 2009 and earlier, especially since I didn't contribute a list to that big project of people doing games lists before, but I've been sitting on it for a couple of years - I'll probably get to it soon.

MEANWHILE, time marches on, and it is now the year 2022. Which means we're partway into the latest decade. So, here's the thing. I played a lot of games from 2021 that I really liked, so I kind of wanted to do a goty list. But I only had about 10, maybe 15 games to write about, and I wasn't really feeling really satisfied with it - I felt like there were so many games that I was passing up on playing, just out of laziness, or being cheap, or whatever. I decided first to combine it with 2020, since there were a few games from that year I didn't talk about that felt like they deserved discussion, and that brought me up to 20-25 games or so. But then I decided to just buckle down, buy some new games, and actually clear out most of my backlog.

And it got kinda out of hand! I ended up with about 50 games good enough for a list. I ended up not just playing games that I had but I went out discovering new games, too - all throughout 2022 I've just been playing tons of games. Some of these games I played in 2020 or 2021 but a lot of them have been catchup work in 2022. 2021 was a really good year for games, and 2020 had a few good ones too, so I'm excited to talk about them.

So, I hope you'll indulge me one more time. I've been working on just making the list itself for six months and I've been thinking way too much about it. Getting it out there is gonna be a huge load off. Thanks for reading and sharing my obsessive list-making burden with me.

About me:

Uh, you know me. Well, if you're on Discord you know me because I'm the one who spams Zelda randomizer stuff. I made a Mega Man music list that one time too (I promise this list will go faster).

I do not own a PS5 or an Xbox series whatever. I'm strictly a PC and Switch gamer these days, at least as far as gaming in the 20's is concerned (RIP 3DS). All of the games on my list are available on either PC or Switch. Sorry if that upsets you, but it's okay, there's only like five exclusives on either of these consoles so it's kinda whatever.

I am really cheap and rarely play games if they cost more than 30 dollars. I'm pretty good for knowing about weird, obscure indie gems, and I am basically not tapped into mainstream gaming culture at all.

STUFF THAT I TEND TO LIKE WHICH WILL PROBABLY BE ON THE LIST:

- Games with cute characters and colorful, fun worlds. I'm a big softy. I like my games warm and fuzzy. If it can make me cry that's worth double points!

- Anything with really bright colors and stylized visuals.

- Games that are replayable over and over again, such as roguelikes. I love to waste time playing games while also wasting time watching youtube videos - it's basically my favorite hobby.

- Anything that reminds me of something I played in the 90's. I am trapped in the 90's, both emotionally, and in terms of my gaming tastes.

- Games with novel or interesting stories.

- Games with novel strategic game mechanics that I can sink my teeth into.

- Games with really good soundtracks. Good music keeps me coming back.

- Games that are challenging, but not overly so. "Easy to learn, difficult to master" is my preference.

- Platformers, puzzle games, rhythm games, any sort of strategy/RPG things tend to be my primary genres, but I'm pretty eclectic and will play almost anything.

STUFF I TEND TO AVOID WHICH IS LESS LIKELY TO BE ON THE LIST (but exceptions do exist):

- "AAA" games. I hate using this term, but it's a pretty good shorthand. I've been sort of alienated from mainstream gaming culture since the mid-00's or so, and nowadays I tend not to play 59.99 MSRP stuff put out by the major publishers, especially the western ones. I tend to prefer 'abstract' games over 'realistic' ones, shorter and more intimate games over huge worlds with a grand scale, and games that are more personal and stylized over ones designed by a large committee.

- 3D action games. Kinda goes hand in hand with AAA, since this is an ascendant genre right now. Whether it's the faster character action games like DMC or GoW, or the slower, more deliberate ones like the Soulsbornes, I just don't really get into these at all - don't know why. I'll give them a try on occasion but it's not what I seek out.

- Games with really bleak and dark settings. Exceptions exist, but I usually tend to bounce off of these - I like to escape into worlds that are nice and pleasant, not shitty and depressing. There's definitely a place in the medium for this sort of thing but it's just not for me.

- Similarly, I tend to avoid games that are visually dark - I find them hard to 'read'.

- Anything really grindy, like MMORPGs, or that have a lot of gacha or FOMO mechanics. I'm just really trying to cut these out of my diet as a general rule because I think they're bad for my mental health, and I'm not sure I ever enjoyed them much anyway. I'll make room for like, maybe one online RPG in my life at a time but that's it.

Here was the top 25 of my 2010-2019 list, for an idea:

1. Crypt of the NecroDancer
2. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
3. Undertale
4. The Witness
5. SpyParty
6. CrossCode
7. Mega Man 10
8. Darkest Dungeon
9. FTL: Faster Than Light
10. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Spirit of Justice
11. Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
12. Night in the Woods
13. Rhythm Heaven Fever
14. Slay The Spire
15. Baba Is You
16. Virtue's Last Reward
17. The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds
18. Super Mario Maker
19. Jackbox Party Packs 1-6
20. Cadence of Hyrule
21. Portal 2
22. Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling
23. Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony
24. Miles Edgeworth: Ace Attorney Investigations 2 - Prosecutor's Path
25. Mass Effect 2

This is a pretty good idea of what I'm about - indies with the occasional Nintendo game peppered in. Expect more of the same. I'm predictable. That said, my list does run the gamut of different genres and levels of obscurity.

Sorry if that upsets you

I AM OUTRAGED

(Not really!)

Tagging this. Should be a fun read!

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Hey you want to read more explainer posts right

WHAT COUNTS AS A 2020-2021 GAME?

Glad you asked!

I'm using a pretty liberal criteria here for what a game from 2020-2021 is. Basically, the criteria is "anything that I think belongs on the list."

- Basically, if it's a new game that was released in my region for the first time in 2020-2021, it counts. I am going by north american release dates here, not their original release date!

- DLC, mods, hacks, fangames, etc. can all count as "games" if I think they're substantial enough to belong on the list. My criteria is totally arbitrary - it's all about whether or not I feel like it. I think that my choices of what to include will make perfect sense though.

- Games that either enter OR leave early access can be on the list if I want them to be. Games that were in early access before 2020 are still eligible. Games that are still in early access are also still eligible. (I fortunately don't have any weird examples of talking about an early access game in my previous list that went final the past two years, so there wasn't really any borderline stuff to judge.)

- Games from years prior to 2020 can be eligible if there's some sort of unusual circumstance that makes them new news for some reason.

- I would have probably considered very late 2019 games to be eligible, but Bug Fables was the latest 2019 game I played and I managed to sneak that one in on the previous list, so this didn't come into play. (It feels weird that Bug Fables is a 2019 game.)

The only important thing is that does have to be new news. These are all 2020-2021 games by my estimation, not just stuff that I played in 2020-2021.

For the most part, none of the games on this list actually present an eligibility problem, but there were a few that necessitated me writing this disclaimer.

Stats!

Games by genre:

I'm sorting these by the genres that are most important to me in 2022.

13 - Roguelikey things, because everything's a roguelike now
7 - Nintendo games that I'm obligated to play due to a blood oath I personally gave to Shigeru Miyamoto
6 - Puzzle games I probably won't finish
6 - Shit that's only fun because you play it with friends
5 - Action/platformers that might or might not be metroidvanias, and everyone will argue about whether or not they are one
3 - Games about time loops, because everything's a time loop now (not including roguelikes that are also time loops)
3 - Games with too much fucking reading because reading is a game now, visual novels won
3 - Artsy indie games designed to make you cry, because that's the only way to feel anything anymore
3 - Garbage I only played specifically because it was in the Ukraine itchio bundle that everyone bought
1 - Normal, respectable AAA titles that a non-hipster would buy, but I'm a hipster, so I only bought one of them

I actually did manage to pack all 50 of these games into these fake genre boxes with very little overlap which is hilarious. (Like, there really are specifically three Ukraine bundle games on the list, and none of them fit into any of the other genre categories. It's incredible.)

Games by year:

32 - 2021
18 - 2020

Uh, I think. I might have miscounted. 2021 was a really good year - I'm absolutely astounded by how many great games I played from 2021. 2020 was a bit of a slower year - maybe it was the pandemic, I don't know. The list is top heavy for 2021 but there are still a few good 2020 gems in here that I'm glad I can write about.

Oh by the way I lied, this list has 52 games.

First up! Two honorable mentions that I didn't put on the list. The first isn't on the list because I can't play it anymore. The second isn't on the list because I couldn't decide where to rank it, because it's a continuation of a game on my decade list.

HONORABLE MENTION #1: Super Mario Bros. 35

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/6/6/AAA-H0AADWce.jpg

In earlier drafts of this list, back before I was fully satisfied with the number of games I had on it, I included SMB35. I didn't see why not. It was definitely one of my favorite gaming experiences from 2020-2021 - quite specifically so, in the end - so putting it on the list made sense. But I couldn't go through with it, and I axed it from the list to make room for other games. All 50 of the games on my list share one thing in common - you can play them. Right now! They are all games that I would recommend, and that you should play if they interest you. I couldn't bring myself to trot out a corpse and prop it up as if it were alive. Super Mario Bros 35 is dead. In place of a ranking, I will deliver a eulogy.

Super Mario Bros 35 is - *was* - a game released by Nintendo for SMB1's 35th anniversary that refashioned the game as a 35-player battle royale. The original Super Mario Bros, if you haven't heard, is a pretty good game. I certainly think so, at least. I happen to think it remains an excellent game to this day, but that's another writeup for another list. Suffice to say that it's one of my favorite games of all time.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/6/7/AAA-H0AADWcf.jpg

Playing the game involved racing through a series of levels picked by the other players of the game, trying not to die or run out of time, and being the last one to not die or run out of time. The levels were more or less exactly how they are in the original, but the game played quite a bit differently; every enemy you kill sends it to another players' game, where it appears at the next available opportunity, creating more obstacles for your opponents to avoid. To make it still possible to win even when the screen is completely filled with Bowsers, you can spend 20 coins to hit a roulette and get a powerup - a mushroom, flower, star, or a pow block that kills every enemy on screen. The timer would keep ticking down through each level, but defeating enemies and getting powerups increase the time, so the pressure is on to keep moving to be the last one standing.

The first thing I learned from playing SMB35 is that people really suck at SMB1. It wasn't uncommon at the start of the game for about a quarter of players to randomly lose somewhere in 1-1, a famously pretty unchallenging level - to be fair, this usually involved a few more goombas than usual, but players wouldn't fare much better getting to 1-2 with its slightly trickier level arrangement and first piranha plant appearances, and god forbid if they get to 1-3 with all of its pits. The herd thins out pretty quick. If I didn't make a stupid mistake early I usually top 5'ed every game.

The second thing I learned from playing SMB35 is that SMB35 was a completely broken and absurd game. You had to play through 1-1 and 1-2 in sequence quite a few times to really get deep into the run where there's only a few players left, but that's when stuff started to get really fun. Once you get to 4-1, you can kill a Lakitu and send it to others, and because this game was completely busted and ridiculous, this would inevitably result in a chain reaction that would cause everybody's game to have 30+ Lakitus flooding the screen at basically all times, at which the only hope you have is to mash the item button and hope for stars or pow blocks, and god help you if you don't have the coins to afford it because you're probably dead. At this point, the game ceases to be Super Mario Bros and instead becomes a sort of perpetual torture device that continually stretches the limits of how far the players can go, all while the timer ticks downward faster and faster.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/6/8/AAA-H0AADWcg.jpg

There was something kind of beautiful about it to me. It was Super Mario Bros, the game I remembered, but it was also something completely insane and different that didn't resemble it in any way. This is the same sort of reason I love to play randomizers - taking the old and making it new again, giving me a reason to see aspects of a game I hadn't noticed before. Even though I've played SMB1 quite a lot, there's definitely aspects of the game I hadn't noticed before. Coins don't matter that much in SMB1, but they're essential in SMB35, so learning where 10 coin blocks are is suddenly something you have to learn. I often don't think about how many powerups there are in SMB1, so the realization that 8-1 contains NONE AT ALL was quite a shock, and became something I had to adjust for. Every different level brought something new to the game, based on the elements it provided. Levels like 4-1 and 8-2 introduced Lakitus into the game. Levels like 3-1 or 8-3, Hammer Bros. Any -4 level would put Bowsers in. Levels like 6-3 could trip up the players by forcing them through a gauntlet of difficult jumps without any coins or enemies to keep their timer up. Underwater levels like 2-2 and 7-2, as well as an optional segment in 5-2 that I had long completely forgotten about until playing this game, put Bloopers and Cheep Cheeps into the mix which can both be deadly in land stages. Some levels had many powerups, others none at all. The list of pros and cons for each level is lengthy, lengthy enough that I actually did a ranking of the intrigue factor of every level in the game. This was the skeleton of SMB1, yes, lovingly recreated just as it was in 1985, but its beating heart, its animating essence, was something entirely different, and doing this writeup still makes me think about all those little elements of the game that I was so interested in at the time.

That heart, sadly, no longer beats. I knew of course that someday the game would have to be taken down, as Nintendo won't host the servers for it forever, but it's baffling to me that they saw fit to only provide this game as a service for a year. They could still run it to provide extra value for their online service, but instead they pulled the plug at some point in 2021. Now it only exists in memory, a few Youtubers recording their runs of it to at least preserve the game in some fashion, but it can no longer be played. I still have the game downloaded onto my Switch and I can't bring myself to delete it and free up room, even though it's inoperable. I don't even know if you can go in and play the practice mode or see your stats.

I'm pretty bummed out about it. Super Mario Bros 35 was sort of a broken mess of a game, but I really did enjoy its antics, even if every game eventually did eventually dissolve into unplayable madness. I think a few adjustments could make the game even better, and I sort of had hope that maybe this would be a test run for a better version of the game someday, but it seems that this was just something Nintendo developed to be a fun little event that would only last for a little while. But, who knows? Maybe Nintendo will bring it back for the 40th anniversary. Or maybe someone will figure out how to reverse engineer the game and make a playable bootleg of it. I can only hope, because I'd love to get just one more Lakitu party going, for old time's sake.

The old time being 2020, to be clear, not 1985. Yeah, I know, it's a little ridiculous for the first game on my list to be a reimagining of a game from 1985. It won't be the last time something like this happens.

HONORABLE MENTION #2: CrossCode: A New Home

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/9/0/AAA-H0AADWc2.jpg

To be clear, here, I do consider something like a lengthy DLC campaign to be a perfectly valid entry to the list, so that's not why I've kept CrossCode's long-awaited conclusion off the list. The real reason I kept it off the list is, uh, I haven't beaten it yet. But I still really want to talk about it, because it is one of my favorite gaming experiences from the past two years, and because I will absolutely never pass up the opportunity to shill CrossCode, one of my favorite games of the past decade.

CrossCode is an action RPG that borrows a little bit of DNA from various mid-90's RPGs - Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, Phantasy Star, it's a love letter to all of these and many more. When I played the demo some time ago, the game promised a lot, and to my surprise, it ended up delivering. Despite being an indie game with a seemingly pretty small team, it's one of the most content-packed RPGs you'll ever play - it took me something like 50 hours to beat, and while some of that was some grinding and sidequests that were more or less necessary to get equipment good enough to win, it's also just jam packed with content, with an enormous world and tons of enemy variety and a lot of surprisingly hard puzzles. It's gorgeous to look at, it has a great soundtrack, and the game mechanics are extremely fun to use. It's a huge, sprawling game to the point of being overwhelming - CrossCode is a lot.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/9/1/AAA-H0AADWc3.jpg

It was, apparently, a lot for the developers too, as the original game from 2018 ends on something of a cliffhanger. There is a final boss and a resolution to the story's climax, but there are some loose threads left at the end, and even a big gate you can get to that straight up says that the rest of the game isn't finished yet and you'll have to come back when they finish the DLC. It was more or less still a complete game experience, but still a little bit deflating - there was still more story here to see, and I knew I was gonna have to wait for a little bit to see it. On the bright side, the promise of more CrossCode in the future was exciting.

In 2021, the wait was over, and the DLC campaign, A New Home, came out, which ties up all the loose ends and puts in place all the missing content in the game, making it truly and fully complete. I picked it up right away, played it for a bit, and then... bounced off of it for a while, actually. I wasn't kidding when I said CrossCode is a lot. The combat system is very involved, and the world is complex to navigate, and coming back to all of it after two years of waiting was too difficult. It's one thing when you start the game new and you can slowly learn the mechanics and ease into it, but it's another to come back to a fully tricked out character with 20+ different special moves to remember and having to fight endgame enemies with it, all while being in a world that you've almost fully explored before but now barely remember. I got kind of lost in the overworld's major new area looking for where I had to go and eventually put the game aside. I'd come back to it, I figured, but ultimately it took me wanting to write this list to actually make me get around to picking it up again - almost a year later.

I've been picking it up again now and slowly playing through it, but slowly is the operative word. They added a lot of content to the game here, and as I'm working through it I also find myself getting sidetracked by sidequests I didn't finish in the original game and hunting for items that I left behind in order to get good endgame equipment and... yeah, I just kind of end up sucked up into it all over again, and I don't want to rush it. I was really ready to start publishing this list by now and I want to continue playing the endgame content in this game at my own pace. So here we are.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/9/2/AAA-H0AADWc4.jpg

What I have played through so far, I've enjoyed greatly. I think what made me most interested in talking about A New Home was the idea of having a DLC campaign for an RPG like this in the first place. It's interesting, because this really is an *epilogue* to the game. I'm pretty sure there is going to be a climactic confrontation at the end of this - I'm starting to see where it's going - but for the most part, it's all falling action. Characters reuniting, plot threads being tied up, and a little peek into the continued adventures of this cast of characters. I can't think of a lot of RPGs that have a coda like this - usually, you go kill the last bad guy and save the world, and that's ironically where the game's world and your involvement in it stops, seeing the ending where everyone lives happily ever after but never getting to actually experience that world for yourself. CrossCode ultimately has you resolving the climax of the plot 80% in, and the rest is the afterparty. It's really kind of cozy, just getting to chill with these characters for a while longer after the main plot is settled and seeing how their lives are going and having a few more fun adventures for the road. There's still a couple dramatic plot reveals and huge boss fights to settle, but for the most part, it's relaxing and enjoying the fruits of your labor in the rest of the game. It's nice! I kinda wish more games were able to do this, but I guess once evil threats are vanquished in other games there's not a lot to do anymore. CrossCode takes place in a fictional MMORPG, so there's always things to go fight.

CrossCode, as an entire experience, would probably rank #3 on the overall list, which made ranking it really hard. Because I was going back and doing all these sidequests, the postgame campaign got all tangled up with the base game from 2018 for me, and it's hard to know how I should judge the game just based on this last portion of it. And, like I said, I didn't feel like rushing to the end of the game just so I could pass a proper judgment on it. So this is what I'm doing instead - banishing it to the honorable mentions section, saying my piece about it here, and strongly recommending you check out this game if you haven't yet, especially now that it's complete.

Up next, #50 for real this time: The only Zelda game on my list! Can you guess which one it is? (You'll have a day to think about it, because I have to sleep and start writing about games for real tomorrow)

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Age of Calamity

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Wow, I thought I played a lot of games the last two years, but I'm definitely not on that level (I have 38 total in 2021 and 19 from 2020). I played more long AAA games though, so that affected my numbers a bit, heh.

I ended up just Youtubing A New Home, but it seemed alright. More Lea is always nice, it was just the puzzles that held CC back for me.

Age of Calamity vs. Skyward Sword HD, truly a battle of Zelda titans.

Yeah I'm honestly using this topic to read up on indies I may have missed out on haha. I have not played nearly 50 games from the past two years so I'm sure there's a ton of stuff I'm going to be unfamiliar with here.

The Breath of the Wild 2 teaser

I ended up liking Super Mario 35 a lot too, even though, yes, it was fairly broken. It's really the only game of its type I've been able to really get into. Practice doesn't work anymore. I think stats did but it's been awhile since I checked so I don't know if it still does. And yes, it was hilarious how many people would fall early. Though it makes some sense in that less skilled players would play far more games on average in the same amount of time than skilled players, since they die pretty quickly.

Oh yeah I should play Crosscode's DLC, I really like the game but I finished it over a year ago so I fear I'll have the same problem as you getting back into it.

Oh, wait

I forgot that before I get into the list proper I was going to do this list:

GAMES FROM 2020-2021 THAT I DIDN'T PLAY BUT WISH I DID (OR FEEL LIKE I SHOULD APOLOGIZE FOR)

I tried to play pretty much everything I wanted to play but some things still slipped through the cracks, either because they were out of my budget, or I ran out of time, or I'm waiting for a better time to play them. This is a very non-exhaustive list, partially because I want to preserve the mystery of what IS on the list, and partially because I don't want to list every game I didn't play.

Life is Strange: True Colors

If it's even half as good as people have said then it would probably be on the list, so just assume that it's on the list somewhere. Normally I play the LIS games with Dels but we haven't gotten to LIS2 yet, let alone this. I'm content to sit on this and wait but it does mean it doesn't get a spot on this list.

Darkest Dungeon 2

I don't really have a sensible excuse for why I didn't play this - I'm perfectly aware that 'oh, it's only on the Epic store and I don't have an account' is kind of a dumb excuse at this point. I've heard sort of mixed things about DD2 that imply that it's maybe not as good as the first? But DD was one of my darling games of the last decade so I should play this at some point. I'm not sure if this is in early access or not, if it is I can always review it later.

Rogue Legacy 2

Similar situation to the above except it's on Steam - I heard mixed things about it during its early access phase, decided to sleep on it because Rogue Legacy wasn't one of my favorite games of the last decade although I did enjoy it well enough, but now it sounds like it's pretty good actually? It came out of early access in 2022, so it could be on a 2022 GOTY list instead.

Ori and the Will of the Wisps

I still haven't played the first one, for completely stupid reasons, so I didn't get around to playing the second one either. There's almost no doubt that I'd really like this game so it's stupid that I haven't played it.

Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury

Okay, look, this one isn't even my fault. I live in a Nintendo household with a 13-year-old brother, so we own all the latest Nintendo games, but this one got lost somewhere and we don't know where it is and I've never even gotten a chance to play it. Those damn Switch cartridges are small so it probably got hopelessly lost in a couch cushion somewhere. This one isn't a big deal - I already talked about SM3DW in the previous decade list, and I'm sure Bowser's Fury is fun but do you really need my take on a Mario game? It's a Mario game, of course it's good.

Kentucky Route Zero

This game has been coming out since 2013 but its final episode was in like 2020 or whatever so it would have been eligible. I keep hearing about how great it is but I still know literally nothing about it. At some point maybe I'll be in the mood to see what this one's all about.

Toem

If I took one more chance on a random cute little indie that looks like its up my alley, I would have selected Toem, which looks like a lovely little photography adventure that can be completed in a few hours. I didn't get around to it, but I might next time a sale goes up.

It Takes Two

Something by the director of Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is automatically worth my attention, and this looks like a fun little game, although I AM aware of THAT SCENE, and THAT SCENE makes me suspicious of this entire game at the same time. I'd play it if I had someone to play with, assuming they can stomach THE SCENE. I am fascinatined by the fact that this won best game at The Game Awards, but didn't even scratch Polygon's top 50. Maybe it was THE SCENE.

Wonder Boy: Asha in Monster World

If you've ever seen my avatar on Discord and you recognize where it's from you know I'm a big fan of Monster World IV, so I was pretty excited for the fact that there was a remake of it coming, as any acknowledgement that this game ever even existed felt like a pretty big deal. Early trailers made the game look absolutely terrible though, and the final version still didn't look as charming as the Wonder Boy III remake, so I skipped it, especially at the price point they were asking.

Mad Rat Dead

I'm mostly listing this as an apology to Ermine, who probably thinks I'm making a huge mistake not playing this game, but I just didn't get around to it, sorry! It looks like some kinda neat rhythm game thing but I never saw it on sale at a price point I wanted to take a chance on. The fact that it's only on consoles and not on PC hurts - I do most of my gaming on PC.

World of Horror

This weird retro horror RPG thing looks really cool, but I have no idea if it's for me or not - it kind of runs into that problem of bleak, scary worlds that I was talking about where I don't get very invested in them. But I've heard good things! I'll probably take a flier on it at some point.

Subnautica: Below Zero

I have started playing the original Subnautica and I really like it, but it'll take some time for me to play through it all and get to its sequel.

Escape Simulator

Looks fun - I'm a big fan of escape rooms. I need people to play it with. I'm bad at rallying people to play games with me.

Operation: Tango

Similar problem to above - cool looking game that involves coordinating with another person to solve tasks, but I need to rally someone to play it with me. It sounded like the game was really short for its price tag which is disappointing.

Tales of Arise

I haven't actually played a Tales game in a while, but I really liked Symphonia and Abyss so I wonder if I should be paying more attention to this series. Was Arise good? I don't know if I have the patience for another long RPG right now.

Silicon Dreams

I didn't play this, but I'm listing it here because I feel like someone probably should? Looks like a Papers Please-esque kind of thing where you have to interview androids under the watchful eye of an authoritarian robot dictator, deciding if they should be decommissioned or not while avoiding such a fate yourself. I think it might be pretty cool, but I wasn't in the mood for dystopia by the time I discovered this one.

One Hand Clapping

This is a game where you control your character with the pitch of your voice. I am absolutely fascinated by what this must play like, but I chickened out of giving it a try.

Beast Breaker

Normally I'd be all over any neat strategy game with really cute animal characters like this one, but not being on the Steam store proved one small barrier of entry that made me too lazy to pick this one up. It's on my list of stuff to look at in the future. Someone else should play this and tell me if it's good, because it's obscure.

Tell Me Why

It was literally free. I have it in my Steam library. I didn't play it. lol.

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart
Spider-Man: Miles Morales
Returnal

Oh, of course, yeah. Yeah, no problem, if you want to hear my opinions on these games all you need to do is donate to my buy-me-a-PS5 fund.

Half-Life: Alyx

...And my buy-me-a-VR-headset fund. This game looks cool as hell but yeah I don't have a VR headset.

Genshin Impact

NO. okay we're done here

Also, a brief list of popular games from 2020-2021 that I didn't play because I have no interest in them

Resident Evil Village
Final Fantasy 7 Remake
The Last of Us Part 2
Ghost of Tsushima
Cyberpunk 2077
Yakuza: Like a Dragon
Nioh 2
Hitman 3
Doom Eternal
Forza Horizon 5
Halo Infinite

Maybe I'm wrong about at least one of these games! Maybe even multiple. I am not firmly, ideologically opposed to these games - I just don't think I'd really enjoy any of them, and it'd be costly to play them. So this cross-section of games should give you a pretty good idea of what I DIDN'T put on this list. Like, to give you an idea, I'm your one friend who HASN'T played Elden Ring, out of a lack of desire to (though I probably will eventually just to try it).

Okay onto the list

I also have not played Elden Ring even though I have a PS5 lol

Hard to say whether you'd like Returnal or not. It checks a lot of the boxes both in terms of things you like and things you dislike.

Looking forward to the list!

I also have not played Elden Ring

And also probably most of the games on your list

#50: The Legend of Doom

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/0/4/7/AAA-H0AADWnH.jpg

Ha ha! You've all fallen for my trap! You assumed that there were only two possible Zelda games that were on the list, but you have underestimated me and my love of weird hacks! I always wanted to put this one at #50, because it's a tone setter. The tone is "I play a lot of weird random garbage and I don't want you to take this list all that seriously." Also, like I said, hacks are fair game. (I didn't get around to playing that Pokemon Radical Red hack but it sounds cool)

The Legend of Doom is a mod for Doom II that lovingly recreates the original The Legend of Zelda in, well, Doom. It's a crossover I never knew I wanted or needed, that really should not work, and yet, somehow it does. Yes, I realize we're three games into this list and two of these games are basically just ports of games from the 80's.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/0/4/8/AAA-H0AADWnI.jpg

This is literally The Legend of Zelda but in the Doom engine. It is Zelda 1 as you remember it - the overworld and dungeons are the same, enemies are in their usual places and work the way they normally do, etc. There's a few changes here or there (bombable walls are visible now which is nice) but this is basically just Zelda 1 - if you've beaten Zelda 1 before, then you know how to beat this. But it's a FPS now. So like, yeah, hitting things with a melee weapon in a FPS is a little wonky, but just keep your hearts at full and you'll have sword beams, it's fine. You'll get used to it.

This is another example of me really enjoying a game because it takes an old, beloved classic and puts a weird twist on it. Seeing Zelda 1 from a fresh perspective is really fun; the cramped corridors in dungeons suddenly feel a lot more claustrophobic, and the dungeon layouts a lot more confusing, when you're right in the thick of them like this, and the game plays a lot differently when you run around at Doom speeds instead of Zelda 1 speeds and don't have to wait for screen transitions anymore. I think it would be a lot of fun to learn how to speedrun this - you can basically speedrun it in the same way you would normally speedrun Zelda 1, but zooming around at high speed.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/0/4/9/AAA-H0AADWnJ.jpg

I dunno, I just love silly stuff like this. It makes me happy to know I'm not the only one who still carries a torch for a game from 1987 like Zelda 1 that's largely fallen out of favor compared to its contemporaries in LttP and OoT (you say OoT isn't a contemporary but Zelda 1 was as old when OoT came out as Skyward Sword is now). Weird remakes of old games is a favorite genre of mine. Next I wanna see someone reimagine Zelda 1 as a rhythm game, though I guess Cadence of Hyrule already did that.

Next: A romantic game.

ha, hadn't seen this before. looks cool.

Paratroopa1 posted...

Ori and the Will of the Wisps
Bowser's Fury
It Takes Two

Damn, these are like my top 2 games of 2021 and my top game of 2020. Shame you haven't gotten around to them.

Not 100% sure what THAT SCENE is, but if it's what I think it is, it's hilarious. It Takes Two is a master of making incredibly serious seeming scenes that are actually incredibly funny. Played it with tazzy, and we laughed our asses off at almost every cutscene. Good times.

Tag

STUFF THAT I TEND TO LIKE WHICH WILL PROBABLY BE ON THE LIST:

...

STUFF I TEND TO AVOID WHICH IS LESS LIKELY TO BE ON THE LIST

After reading that, I look forward to seeing what shows up on this list.

Tales of Arise
I haven't actually played a Tales game in a while, but I really liked Symphonia and Abyss so I wonder if I should be paying more attention to this series. Was Arise good? I don't know if I have the patience for another long RPG right now.

Giant fan of Tales here - I loved Arise but it was hit-or-miss for a good portion of fans. If you liked those two, I'd say there's a good chance you'll like others in the series for sure, but I'd probably point you to Berseria before I'd recommend Arise if you're on the fence about committing to a bulky JRPG. Berseria is almost universally regarded as one of the better entries in the franchise.

tag - i've also mostly played indie games the last 2 years, maybe even some of the same ones!

gonna guess Haven.

Well I might have to try that zelda doom game

#49: Dorfromantik

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/3/9/AAA-H0AADWrr.jpg

Did you know I used to be the president of my college's board game club? It's true! I really miss having a regular board gaming group - it's been hard to get any of the core members of that gang back together since Covid. We played a lot of stuff but our focus was on euro games - you know, the kind of game that's themed off of like a pastoral village in Europe where you have to place workers and collect wood and stone and use them to build stuff that give you slightly more efficient wood and stone production. You know, like Settlers of Catan. Well, not that, because that's like the most entry-level euro game and we've all graduated onto bigger and better things like 15 years ago. What's another game where you place hexagonal tiles? Eclipse? Not really the idyllic countryside vibe I'm going for, but sure, whatever. Point is, I like games with a rustic european vibe and a hexagonal tile grid. I'm talking about Dorfromantik. Dorfromantik is the game I'm trying to get to here.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/4/0/AAA-H0AADWrs.jpg

Dorfromantik is a solitaire tile-placing game where you place tiles on a hexagonal grid that create a cute little countryside diorama, connecting them together until you run out of tiles. To earn more tiles, you have to complete objectives where you create villages, or forests, or connected railroads, etc of a certain size. You try to get the highest score you can. And... that's it! Eventually you run out of tiles, you look at the cute little landscape you've made, and that's the whole game.

I'm a little torn on this. On the one hand, I've become accustomed, in modern times, to games having a lot of mechanics. Dorfromantik is not a game with a lot of mechanics. It's not a roguelike. There aren't abilities to gain or items to play or anything to unlock. It's as simple as it gets. But on the other hand, maybe that simplicity is its biggest asset? There's something very zen-like about it. It's a game that's really easy to just boot up for 15-30 minutes to relax and play a few rounds in. Nothing too hard to think about, no difficult rules to grasp, just a relaxing game about placing hexagonal tiles. It's very comforting. The comforting vibe is due in large part to the game's stellar presentation - the game just exudes cozy vibes. The simple, bold diorama look of the tiles makes them very satisfying to arrange and look at.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/4/1/AAA-H0AADWrt.jpg

I said this game is simple, but for some reason, I really, really suck at Dorfromantik. I recently had a round of this game where I thought I did pretty well - I placed my tiles in a way that made sense! I completed as many objectives as I possibly could! I made like, almost 9000 points! - and I was like, not even in the top 100,000 on the leaderboard. The top 100,000! I can't believe there's even 100,000 people who play this game! This makes me think that in my few hours of play I've missed something crucial here - maybe there's something a little deeper to the game that I'm not understanding, some fundamental flaw in my play I'm not realizing. Maybe this game ACTUALLY DOES have game mechanics, and I'm just not seeing them.

At the same time, this game doesn't quite have that addictive quality to it that makes me want to play it over and over until I'm seeing hexagonal tiles everywhere like a eurogame-inspired Tetris. I boot it up every now and then for a few rounds, but most rounds do play mostly the same. It's Solitaire, really. My grandfather can amuse himself for hours playing Solitaire, but I like something with a bit more meat to it. But the mystery of my apparently low scores in Dorfromantik is kind of tickling at the back of my brain and makes me want to go back to it. I think this game's still in early access, so there's still plenty of time yet for me to master this apparently simple tile placement game.

Next up: Birds feature prominently in this game where you ride a skateboard.

Of your list of games youre not interested in, I would guess the one youre most likely to be wrong about disliking is Hitman 3, assuming you also havent played the previous two. If you have then never mind, its mostly just more of what those did

Paratroopa1 posted...

Next up: Birds feature prominently in this game where you ride a skateboard.

Either SkateBIRD or you want us to think it's SkateBIRD.

I think I have Dorfromantik from some bundle. Definitely not my kind of game, but those screenshots look very very appealing.

WazzupGenius00 posted...

Of your list of games youre not interested in, I would guess the one youre most likely to be wrong about disliking is Hitman 3, assuming you also havent played the previous two. If you have then never mind, its mostly just more of what those did

I am willing to give them a chance - is there a good starting point to the series?

HITMAN 2016 is a fantastic point to jump in on. The story in Hitman games never matter, the entire point of playing them (to 99% of people) is to just suss out how to kill some people and then.... kill some people.

Tag. Always interested in overlooked indies

I've played the first two Hitman games in the last year (just finished Hitman 2 the other day, in fact), and they're pretty fun. I'm consistently impressed with the number of different ways you can tackle a single mission.

Dorfromantik is probably more mechanically rich than two similar cozy, idyllic games i like to potter about in: Islanders (or adjacency bonus: the game) and Townscaper (which is barely a game).

i should check it out some day.

If you have Game Pass all three of the current Hitman trilogy are on there, except for DLC levels

Pffff. Game pass

I played Dorfromantik when it was part of the Black Lives Matter bundle on itch.io and was just a demo. I snap-bought it when it had a proper release. Haven't played it a ton, but I've certainly played it some. Decent game for killing some time.

#48: Webbed

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/2/2/AAA-H0AADW36.jpg

I have, throughout my entire life, had a deep love-hate relationship with bugs. On the one hand, I like to envision myself a kind, gentle soul, one who sees all forms of life as equally deserving of respect and dignity, who treats a lowly ant or caterpillar as one would any other sort of living being, and who sees beauty in all others. On the other hand, AAAAAH BUGS. I am terrified shitless of bugs. I don't know where it began. I don't have any specific childhood trauma that I can think of. One time I thought a fly was in my room but it just turned out to be the mattress making a weird noise. One time one of my friends got stung by a bee and she cried. That's about it! But my brain just shuts down and throws a temper tantrum whenever there's like any kind of bug within like five feet of my person. Unless it's a butterfly, which my brain thinks are birds. No I won't be taking questions.

I've tried to offset this a little bit by trying to try to sympathize with bugs more on a personal level. For quite a while I adopted Vi from Bug Fables as my Discord avatar (with the les-bee-an pride flag behind her) and basically made bees my identity. Did it help with my fear of bees? A little! Similarly, I played a moth character in our weekly Starfinder campaign for about a year, and it's helped me calm down a little when moths get in the house. Instead of being forced to leave the room when this flappy little fucker gets in my space (moths are NOT birds), I can just go "oh, it's a little Kwibii!" (Kwibii was the name of my moth character. She both predated and outlived the TV service, Quibi.) Clearly, the next frontier to conquer is spiders.

Spiders are a little different. Bees, at least the nice ones we have here, mostly stay outside and keep to themselves, and moths are so helpless, nonthreatening, and easily manipulated that you can't help but pity them. But spiders are shaped like DANGER. They're weird little black lumps with tentacles that just randomly appear on the wall sometimes and I have to feel anxious about them all day. They appear inside the house a lot, from god knows where - cracks in the floor? Do they come out of the pipes? I don't even want to think about it. I hate it. It doesn't matter how much you tell me that spiders are harmless, or that they eat other bugs. My logical brain knows that. My emotional brain is not taking logical brain's calls. They MIGHT be dangerous, it thinks, and that is a perfectly valid reason to have a panic attack.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/2/3/AAA-H0AADW37.jpg

Does Webbed help with that? Well, I don't know. This game features a spider that looks more like... a jumping spider, kinda? They're tiny and have tiny little eyes. I think that kind of makes them more relatable? Most spiders just look like weird little alien automotons. And they don't shoot webs or have LASER EYES. Would that make spiders scarier? I don't know.

Webbed is a platformer, and definitely not a Metroidvania although it does have that vibe with its open world - you start with all your abilities so I'm pretty sure it does not meet the Berlin interpretation for a Metroidvania. You are a spider out to rescue your shiny spider boyfriend after he's kidnapped by a giant bird. You can use your webs like a grappling hook, Spider-Man style, to swing yourself around ceilings like Bionic Commando, or you can create bridges by affixing your webs to two points and walking over it like a bridge. And also you have laser eyes, but it's mostly for knocking objects around and breaking webs you've already set, although they do make a satisfying pew-pew noise. You use these abilities to navigate the world, helping other bug friends with their problems to rally them to go fight a giant bird. Class solidarity, I guess!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/2/4/AAA-H0AADW38.jpg

The freedom of movement in this game is absolutely amazing - swinging from everything never stops feeling incredible, and being able to place bridges wherever you want is immensely satisfying. Despite these powers, the levels are mostly kind - there are no enemies to fight, the game instead focused on navigating the world and moving objects around to solve physics puzzles, since you can affix objects to your webs as well. It's a very gentle world, with cute bug friends and not a lot of conflict, and I do appreciate that, but I also can't help but feel a little letdown that there aren't more opportunites to use your webs in creative ways - I'd love to see some honest to god platforming here. Like, yeah, there's plenty of spikes to avoid and a few tricky traps in the ant area, but it'd be really interesting to have to use your web-bridges and web-slinging to more effective use in actually avoiding danger.

Nontheless, it's a very cute and entertaining game that doesn't overstay its welcome, only lasting about 3 hours or so, maybe a bit longer if you look for everything, and I'd probably revisit it just because of how fun the character is to play. Did I mention it's cute? You have a dedicated dance button that makes you wave your little arms, and other bugs will dance back at you! That's marvelous. I think that literally every game on this list should have a dedicated button for dancing, even the ones where that doesn't make any sense.

Next up: I didn't have a funny bait-and-switch gag for this one so I'll change tacks and deliver an actual fact about the next game: The literal highest achievement possible in this game is to become a billionaire, purchase a guillotine, and then kill yourself with it.

Ive played a ton of Luck Be A Landlord so Im pretty certain thats next.

I havent played anything on this list yet but I did play Crosscode, partially due to your high recommendation. Great game. I love a lot about that game, but I was surprised how charming I found the cast. I cant really talk about A New Home because Im still in the middle of Crosscode (just got all 4 powers).

Paratroopa1 posted...

Also, a brief list of popular games from 2020-2021 that I didn't play because I have no interest in them

Resident Evil Village
Final Fantasy 7 Remake
The Last of Us Part 2
Ghost of Tsushima
Cyberpunk 2077
Yakuza: Like a Dragon
Nioh 2
Hitman 3
Doom Eternal
Forza Horizon 5
Halo Infinite

It is really weird for me to see a Yakuza title within a bunch of other AAA games. I guess it fits the bill now, though

Never heard of Webbed before but it looks cool. Also funny writeup.

Paratroopa1 posted...

The literal highest achievement possible in this game is to become a billionaire, purchase a guillotine, and then kill yourself with it.

damn didn't know they made a game about elon musk

Paratroopa1 posted...

Pffff. Game pass

Not sure if serious, but for your preferred type of game its chock full

I'd never get a regular gamepass subscription but the constant $1 for 3 month deals are nice.

#47: Luck be a Landlord

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/6/3/3/AAA-H0AADW_5.jpg

I'm assuming that most people play games to like, I don't know, have interesting, new experiences? To explore amazing new worlds? To have fun? No, god no, not me. No. You think I play games to have fun? Are you simple? Do you even know me? I hope that writing this list will disabuse you of any notion that my relationship with video games is healthy in any way. 90% of my video game playing is for one reason, and one reason only - to watch the numbers go up and feel my brain have a Pavlovian reaction to seeing the numbers go up and release the good brain juices. And when I want to get really fucked up on the numbers-go-up brain-juices, I find some absurd, slapdash roguelite on Steam and I give it a whirl for 1 or 500 hours. So here's Luck be a Landlord, one of my various fixes.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/6/3/4/AAA-H0AADW_6.jpg

Luck be a Landlord, as all roguelites must nowadays, has a pretty cool premise - it's a slot machine! Your rent is due, and your only way to make money is to pull the slot machine. After every spin, you tally up the money you make, and then you can add one new symbol to your slot machine and spin again and hopefully you can pay your rent on time. Every time you pay rent, you get new items that make your symbols stronger, and the rent goes up for next time. Rinse, repeat.

This doesn't work like a typical slot machine where you need to actually line things up, otherwise it'd be pretty challenging. Instead, it's a 5x5 grid that symbols get randomly thrown onto, and (almost) every symbol that shows up automatically gives you a little money, and then bonus money based on different factors - adjacency bonuses with other symbols, or a bonus based on being paired with other like symbols on the board, etc. Some symbols destroy other symbols for big payouts, while other symbols create new symbols themselves that give even bigger payouts.

For a really simple game with a really simple premise, Luck be a Landlord has, I think, a pretty impressive strategic ecosystem - things start out relatively simple but as you get rare and legendary symbols on your slots, things start to get pretty complicated pretty quickly - your Dwarf symbols destroy any Beer symbols that it's adjacent to and create money, and then you have a Bartender symbol who's creating Beer symbols from time to time, but then also you have a Dove symbol who PREVENTS symbols from being destroyed and gets a bonus, all while you have spinning arrows that randomly point at a line and gives a multiplier and... there's a lot of moving parts with a lot of really strange different symbols. Babies who break open pinatas to make candy. Cultists who summon eldritch monsters that eat things. Hooligans who smash pots and create angry ghosts. And just in case you aren't sure what Luck be a Landlord's stance on actual landlords is - one of the symbols is the Billionaire, a symbol that gives NO money but has a huge payout if you destroy it, and there's an item called the guillotine which automatically kills Billionaires. Suffice to say, this is the most anti-capitalist slot machine game I've ever played.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/6/3/5/AAA-H0AADW_7.jpg

A normal game has you playing up until like 1000 or 5000 gold or something like that, I can't remember exactly how much, at which point you win and you get a Slay-the-Spire style ascension up to a harder mode with more penalties. But there's also an endless mode in which you can keep playing forever with constantly increasing rent. And that's where you can break the game. There's special items called Essences that you unlock at some point which function like items but have a sort of thematically reverse effect - it's complicated - but the Guillotine Essence's reverse effect is that it kills YOU if you have 1,000,000,000 gold. Which, to be clear, is... a lot. Symbols tend to have a standard payout of anywhere between 1-5 gold, maybe a little more if they get a good bonus... big payouts on destroyed symbols can be anywhere from 10-200 depending. But you can start stacking multipliers from items and various symbol effects pretty high. I figured out that a build with enough suits symbols - Hearts, Diamonds, Clubs, and Spades - could make a killing with enough items giving them multipliers on top of their natural adjacency bonuses with each other, and combined with some golden arrows giving them another 3x and some powerful nearby symbols like high-value diamonds and wildcards, you can start generating enough money that it can't display it in a single number and has to start tacking an 'e' at the end like a calculator. That's when you know shit's getting real in one of these games, when the 'e' comes out. It took a few hours, but I did end up putting together the 1,000,000,000 money, and yeah, the game ends there, and you get awarded a special guillotine victory in the stats. So yeah endless mode kind of owns.

I do feel like after conquering endless mode so thoroughly, I've sort of done all there is to do in this game. There's quite a few different possible builds you can play on your slot machine, so there's quite a bit of variety in possible ways to approach the game, but there's something about roguelikes with endless modes like this where once you've seen how degenerate things can get it's hard to go back to normal with the same sort of perspective. The thrill is gone once I've gone through most of the craziest possibilities, and it doesn't provide the same rush anymore. But, it remains a fun, quirky little roguelite in my rotation that I might return to, since it's still in early access and might get some new features. Never know when I might need another hit.

Next up: I got nothing for this one. Most of the games up to this point have been some degree of semi-obscure; this game is a contender for least obscure game on my list.

ChaosTonyV4 posted...

Not sure if serious, but for your preferred type of game its chock full

All kidding aside, I have been seriously tempted by game pass in the past and I might consider it in the future. The main reason I HAVEN'T done it is that I balk at getting into a monthly subscription kind of deal if I'm not 100% sure I intend to use it right away - in the past monthly subscriptions have been a big source of stress for me. I have SO MANY games in my Steam backlog right now that it doesn't feel like a good idea to get into it right now - even if I might have been able to play a lot of games through it that would have saved me money in the long run. If that is the case, then the worst I did was more directly support developers by buying copies (although I know, yes, Steam cuts) so I'm not too aggrieved by it. I think in the future I might consider getting into it though, now that I've taken a big chunk out of my backlog as it is, and because it might allow me to consider giving some games a try that I wouldn't otherwise normally give the time of day.

sounds like you should play antimatter dimensions

"i have never seen so many numbers go so up" - steiner

Paratroopa1 posted...

Next up: I got nothing for this one. Most of the games up to this point have been some degree of semi-obscure; this game is a contender for least obscure game on my list.

Hmm... Pokemon Legends Arceus is my random guess.