Category: General

Both of these are pretty similar things. These were both hugely successful sequels that didn’t necessarily iterate that much on their formula, but had such fantastic foundations that it didn’t matter. These games were going to be good, and I can confirm that. They’re both absolutely worth playing.

Game Ramblings #171 – The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Game Ramblings #174 – Pikmin 4

Game Ramblings #178 – Super Mario Bros Wonder

Nintendo had an extraordinary year, and this isn’t the last you’ll see of them in this list. They had a wide array of fantastic games in a wide array of genres and continue to show that they are just the best in the industry, despite the age and low power of the Switch hardware. That’s to say nothing of other things like their Xenoblade Chronicles 3 DLC, which was also incredible. Tears of the Kingdom took an already great base and threw most of it away, replacing the core conceit with a building mechanic that is baffling in its ability to just work. Pikmin 4 reinvigorated the series with larger scale gameplay and a ton of collection that I just wanted to keep playing. Super Mario Bros Wonder did for 2D Mario what Odyssey did for 3D and proved just how many fun ideas can still be pulled out of the same core gameplay. You could own only a Switch and have come out of this year absolutely pleased.

How’d It Age #3 – Metroid Prime

How’d It Age #7 – Super Mario RPG

How’d It Age #8 – Star Ocean: The Second Story R – DWGames

We were absolutely spoiled this year with remakes of varying complexity. Metroid Prime is a fairly straightforward remake, but did enough to modernize an already great game for a new audience. Super Mario RPG is the type of remake that at first glance feels like a simple visual upgrade, but has a bunch of tweaks to really improve the core experience that I didn’t necessarily expect. Star Ocean 2 brings an interesting mix of old and new to the visuals and keeps the existing fun gameplay to modernize a pretty janky title enough to feel worth playing in a modern context.

Game Ramblings #176 – Sea of Stars

This isn’t a perfect game, but boy is it refreshing. To me it’s probably the new JRPG series of the year and definitely my indie game of the year. It runs a fine line between retro experience and modern gameplay and generally does a wonderful job of it. It combines great combat and a solid story and does it without dragging on. In a year with some really solid JRPG entries it stands out as the one that really hit for me. As far as indies go, this one was far and away the best that I played across the board.

Compared to last year, this year felt predictable to me – but that’s not really a bad thing. The games I expected to be good were good. The games I looked at in previews and went “nah” ended up being duds. The remakes of great past games were still great. To me, that felt like a good thing because it generally felt like teams were living up to their potential. We’re in that point in a console generation where longer development titles are coming out, and having the big titles generally hit means that we’re in for treats through the tail end of the generation as these teams get to their next game.

2023-01-122023-01-12

Year End Ramblings – Things You Should Play From 2022

2022! The count this year was definitely lower for me – 14 ramblings, 6 shelved, and a couple of more retro look backs – but shipping a game does that to you, which brings me to my first one.

Go buy High on Life! Help pay my salary!

With that self-serving nonsense out of the way, what do I think I played that was actually worth the look last year? Unfortunately a couple big names aren’t on the list because frankly I haven’t gotten to them. Crisis Core and God of War: Ragnarok are both games I’d normally expect to recommend, but I just didn’t have the time. I’m getting to that early this year though, so maybe they have a catch up chance next year. There are some things that I think stood out though.

Game Ramblings #154 – Kena: Bridge of Spirits

This was just such a pleasant surprise to me. It’s not without some level of jank, but it gave me a Souls-like combat experience without feeling over the top difficult, and when I hit points where the difficulty was frustrating me it had a slider to turn things down for me to get to areas that I was enjoying more. Little things like that are so important to my ability to enjoy games with the limited time I have, and I applaud them for doing stuff like that. It was backed with great visuals and enjoyable lore to give me a pretty early surprise for the year.

Game Ramblings #156 – Pokemon Legends: Arceus

This is an incredibly janky game. It’s often an incredibly ugly game. The balance often makes no sense to me. However, it’s fun. Having the player focus on catching instead of battling is interesting. Having the player be able to be attacked by Pokemon and be in danger is obvious. Having a relatively open world is a huge change to the meta game of finding Pokemon. This feels like an important step for the Pokemon series as a whole, and while the new entries a couple months ago feel like a step backward intro traditional territory, I’m hoping Arceus is allowing the long term planning for the series to move in new directions.

Game Ramblings #160 – Xenoblade Chronicles 3

This is an easy selection for my game of the year. It’s got a solid story, fun characters, incredibly addictive combat, a neat class system, and spectacularly impressive environments. It’s the culmination of a lot of things that were learned across the previous titles, and feels like it takes the best of each entry to finalize the overall story arc for the series. This is a game that I recommend buying a Switch for.

Game Ramblings #166 – Sonic Frontiers

I expected to absolutely hate this game just based on how inconsistent the 3D Sonic games have been through the years. This also wasn’t helped by coming out of the gate with some really awkward trailers. However, in practice it was hard to put down. It feels like the Mario Odyssey of Sonic games where there’s always something fun to do around every corner. However, that does come with a heaping side of usual Sonic jank. Luckily it wasn’t enough to really put a damper on the experience, and this probably came in as my surprise of the year.

The common thread for me this past year is that I’m becoming increasingly unwilling to deal with annoyances. Between family time and trying to ship a game, I just didn’t have the time to waste on bullshit. That left me with far fewer JRPGs than typical with me saving that time for truly spectacular entries. That had me shelving a higher amount of games than usual, basically once I hit the first sign of boredom with what was in front of me. However, there’s still so much quality stuff being released that I was never without something cool to play. I’m entering 2023 still catching up on some big titles and I’m looking forward to cranking through those to start off the year here.

2021-12-312021-12-23

Year End Ramblings – Things You Should Play From 2021

2020 was a weird year. 2021 wasn’t any better. Luckily, just like last year I played a bunch of cool shit this year. By my count we got through 28 ramblings, 5 shelvings (4 of which were JRPGs….grindy ones really missed hard for me this year), and a big ol ramblings on some early thoughts about UE5. Feel free to dig through the past year’s stuff, but let’s get to the things I think you should really focus in on.

Game Ramblings #126 – Ori and the Will of the Wisps

I shelved this in 2020. In 2021 it was one of my favorite games. Having a game that is completely based in accurate platforming and fast movement be hobbled by poor performance was gutting. Replaying it again on an Xbox Series X was such a wildly different experience that it might as well have been a different game. Play this – as long as it’s on appropriate hardware.

Game Ramblings #131 – Bowser’s Fury

I mean, play this for what it represents – a path to an open world future for Mario, but also play it because it’s just a lot of fun. It’s not that everything hits, because frankly the Bowser fights are boring, but the open world nature of this one just clicked for me. Seeing a general area to go to, being able to walk over to it, then finding a bunch of shines all seamlessly is a great experience. It ends up being a streamlined version of what the Galaxy games did years ago, and if we can get a full 3D Mario in this style I think it may reinvigorate the series in the same way that Odyssey did a few years ago.

Game Ramblings #134 – Yoku’s Island Express

I know this came out in 2018, but I was just getting around to it, so I’m hoping that a few more people have that same accidental path to it. It’s a completely fucking baffling mix of genres – pinball and Metroidvania – but it somehow works. And it works incredibly well. There’s great platforming, great puzzles, and great boss fights. There’s no reason why this should have worked, and I frankly couldn’t tell you why it does work, but it’s a rare PS4 platinum for me, and that’s usually a sign that a game has really caught on something interesting.

Game Ramblings #135 – Fantasian

I don’t play mobile games much anymore, but Mistwalker releasing a high-end JRPG caught my attention. This one feels like a console game in practice while still bringing some unique board-manipulation features to the combat system that work well on a phone screen. In a year where traditional JRPGs burned me on grind, this one really hit. It fought against grind in unique ways while still making large scale fights incredibly fun, so the game had a relatively short play time for a JRPG. It worked well before running out its welcome, and given the games I shelved this year, that was welcome.

Game Ramblings #141 – Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart

Look, I fucking love this series. If you have a PS5, get this. If you don’t have a PS5, put this on the short list of games to get when you do. It’s got great weapons, great visuals, a neat portaling mechanic, and great use of the PS5 controller features. This is entirely a system seller.

Game Ramblings #149 – Metroid Dread

This is probably my game of the year. That’s definitely partly just love for the series, but it really is that good. In terms of core 2D Metroid gameplay, this is the best of the best. It’s got the completely directionless exploration of the old games. It’s got the much better combat of Samus Returns. It’s got some small iterations (ex: pickup suction, hidden item radar) that clean up rough points of older entries. It’s got fun high difficulty in boss fights while also making trash tremendously quick to just run through. It’s basically the peak of what the 2D Metroid games have been in the past, and given how many Metroidvania games I play, that bumped it immediately to the top of my list.

Anyhow, that’s my year. If there was a common thread it’s that JRPGs really disappointed me this year. I don’t know if I’m just getting tired of grinding or if they really aren’t moving the genre forward, but I found myself playing fewer and shelving more of them. Fantasian and Atelier Ryza were bright spots for turn-based ones, and Tales of Arise certainly hit a lot of good places for action-based ones, but by and large I found myself turning away from the experiences this year. Where things really picked up for me were action games in established series – the games above, but also things like Forza Horizon 5 and Monster Hunter Rise) – or indie experiences picking up the slack – things like Manifold Garden or Spiritfarer. There’s definitely a lot out there to play, so even if I’ve left JRPGs behind I’m at least constantly entertained.