72k words written about video games this year, mostly about games I played for the first time. Roughly 125 games in total. That’s an ungodly number of words. Same as last year I’m doing my best to read all of them now that the year is done. It’s interesting to watch myself get better at writing notes as the year goes on.

My criteria for the top 10 are that it merely needs to be something I either played for the first time this year or experienced in a meaningfully novel way, and that it will inform the way I think about games going forwards. This ordering is chronological starting with games I played earliest in the year, with no ordinal ranking implied or intended.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengance – What a beautiful and perfect game. Endlessly sad I bounced off it the first time years ago, but glad to play it through alongside a buddy who was my light in the darkness. Need to replay it again and actually listen to the codecs, then replay it again again and skip every cutscene while just blasting through it. I’m a decade late to loving this game but no less fervent in my admiration.

Hi-Fi Rush – This is the game that made spectacle fighters click for me. I played it while on a break from Revengeance and it was the only reason I was able to beat Jetstream Sam first try and keep my cool parrying when on a pixel of HP. 808 is best girl. I do wish they’d cut the 2D parts but variety is the spice of life. Endlessly riding the high of an aesthetic that they admittedly cribbed wholesale, this is the sort of exuberant and gleeful game that Bomb Rush Cyberfunk tried and failed to be.

Asterigos: Curse of the Stars – This game is far from perfect, but it’s strange in a way I appreciate deeply. It’s one of the only games I’ve seen actually look at the society outlined in Plato’s Republic, and explores it through the lens of a magic curse where everyone is immortal but needs to eat magic dust to avoid decaying into that very same magic dust. Slaves become literal cattle, traditions of the living become the shackles of the dead, and the city caught in a death spiral is forced to choose again and again what it will fight to preserve. Whether any of that is handled with any grace at all is a crapshoot, the player character is the worst part of the setting, and the good ending is worse for all parties. At least Vulcane is cute.

Bloodborne – I do not like FromSoft’s Soulsborne games. I don’t like their design ethos, I think the map layouts are pedestrian, and I find the entire community surrounding them repugnant. This is the closest any of them has been to being good, because it’s the only game after Dark Souls that seems to understand Dark Souls. They take many of the same tools and same ideas, but alter their perspective and cadence in meaningful ways. The starting area is bullshit to teach you combat is a trap. The shield is terrible and calls you a coward because stagnation is death. All but one of the cool weapons are in the DLC because life under capitalism is misery. The man with the monster schnoz is Giuseppe.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom – Zelda, despite its 30 years of history, has never had a proper sequel that tried to iterate on the story, mechanics, and themes of a prior game. There were games in conversation with each other like Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask, or thematic through-lines like Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass, but never a straight up sequel. That should’ve remained the case. I played this game for 200 hours but it slid straight off my brain. It is in my top 10 not out for quality, meaningful iterations on BotW, or any of its mechanics as many of those are rote. It’s in this list because Mineru rules and should’ve been your companion from the first second.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – MercurySteam is an odd company because they keep being given the opportunity to make metroidvanias but have both a complete dismissal and perfect understanding of the genre. Lords of Shadow realizes that Castlevania has always had very linear areas you only ever traverse once, dotted with teleporters to hop around for backtracking. It just straight up replaces that with a level select screen. It has always had an emphasis on combat and spectacle over exploration. It turns the grid map into a god of war level with Shadow of the Colossus bosses. This game is bewildering and beautiful because it shows what ‘dude with a sword’ adventure games used to be before Dark Souls, and it’s simultaneously a complete rejection of Castlevania while also being a love letter written in blood.

Clash: Artifacts of Chaos – This is the game that Dad of War was trying to be. The combat is weighty and satisfying. The world is blissfully strange and hostile, not in the way a starving wolf is hostile but in the way a person in the bodega aisle who wishes to get the can that you’ve been standing in front of for two minutes is hostile. The characters feel real in a way few games manage, with stakes that are simultaneously cataclysmic and heartbreakingly mundane. The map design is dense, interconnected, and rewards exploration without punishing refusal to scrape over every corner. A beautiful game, in part because it embraces ugliness.

Psuedoregalia – I wishlisted this game when it first came onto steam because of the movement, bought it because of the goat thighs, and fell in love because of the movement. Once you understand it and have your tools, moving in Psuedoregalia feels like everyone remembers Mario 64 feeling if they haven’t played it recently enough to recall the camera. Fast, fluid, a perfect length that gives you time to master and experiment with your tools without overstaying its welcome. Excited to see what the dev does next.

Ghost of Tsushima – It’s nice to remember that Ubisoft sandboxes can still be satisfying if combat feels good and the world looks nice. It’s Shadow of Mordor but the characters and voice acting don’t suck, and that’s enough for me. I have my gripes with the game, the bones of Infamous jut from its body like the compound fractures of a plummeted fledgling, but goddamn does it feel good to boast to a group of mongols, slice three of them asunder with as many strokes, then draw your bow to headshot the last.

Shadow Man Remastered – I do not know why this game is not mentioned in every conversation about 3D metroidvanias. The level design is incredible, dense with mystery and interconnected paths with such complexity that you start the game with the full world map of how each zone interconnects but can still easily explore for hours. The dungeons are some of the best I’ve seen outside a Zelda game, clearly building upon their key item but still remaining open and traversable. The tank controls take getting used to, it’s definitely made in the late 90s with some of the blaxploitation voodoo stuff, and someone not used to navigating in complex environments without a map could get cripplingly lost, but it’s a masterpiece of design that I fell in love with almost immediately. And hey, diversity win; the shirtless black man using his voodoo powers to bring about an eternal eclipse so he can use his dark magic in the world of the living is the good guy for once.

Honorable mentions to:
CrossCode – Replayed but played the DLC for the first time. Still love Lea. Still hate the platforming.
Vane – Beautiful atmosphere, terrible puzzles.
Astral Chain – ACAB, but goddamn do I love being Beyblade cop.


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