Dorky trans lady. Occasional vtuber. Quite gay.


Alan Wake 2 Even separate from the quality of the game itself, I'm so glad this thing exists. Remedy is a developer that feels like each game it makes is its last before collapsing in a fireball of misery, and the fact that they got to make a sequel to their Twin Peaks/Stephen King pastiche that also functions as a capper for the studio's work since the original Max Payne is wonderful to me. Helps a lot that the game itself IS GREAT! The promise of 1990s FMV games is still alive so long as Remedy gets to make their shit, and AW2 is a sterling example of that idea. God, I just want to get on a microphone and talk about this game for like an hour, writing isn't enough to contain how electrifying it feels to me.
Misericorde Vol. 1 Misericorde is the first of a planned series of visual novels (kinetic novels? sound novels? idk) exploring a murder mystery set within a 15th-century abbey. I know what you might be thinking--oh darn, I should wait for the rest of it to come out, then! No. Resist the urge to jump in after the thing is over, to delay gratification, to look from afar and make sure the thing is Good in its entirety before you check it out. This game fuckin' rules and even if (god forbid) the overall work remains unfinished it's entirely worth delving into as-is. Gorgeous art, rich prose, delightful character work, I adore this thing. Also the soundtrack is wonderful, it's served as the sonic backdrop for many hours of my work this year.
Mice Tea A lot gets said about games that are "cozy" or "wholesome" but honestly nothing this year invoked those feelings in me like Mice Tea, horny delight that it is. Truly there's some powerful long-running sitcom vibes in this game--a bunch of cute, queer 20somethings in the city who work at either a bookstore or tea shop get into hijinks and kiss each other. If you told me it already had four sequels and a movie adaptation I'd believe you (partially because I desperately want that to be true!) It was lovely spending time with these characters, and that meant that I was rarely bored even when the game's kinky elements were out of its story's focus.

On that note, this game is extremely hot. I practically never talk about what I'm into for reasons that boil down to shame and personal baggage, but I found a lot to like here. Moreover, even the stuff that I'm not particularly into (mind control, for example) is handled in such a characterful way that makes it compelling regardless. Really, just writing about this game here makes me want to run through it again and something tells me it's one of those games that I'll carry with me for a long time to come. Yeah, I spent the most words yet on the furry porn game deal with it.

Destiny 2 This is the year I'm walking away from Destiny 2. For real, I mean it this time. Everything surrounding the layoffs at Bungie was the last straw, sure, but I had already booted up the game for the last time before then. Lightfall was fine, in my estimation--the futuristic city motif was a neat idea at least and Nimbus grew on me as time went on, also it was good to get a bit of closure on Calus. As fine as it was, though, any upside to what's going on with Lightfall or the seasonal stuff this year couldn't rise above that feeling that this whole game is spinning its wheels until The Final Shape happens. For a game that can already feel like a waste of time, the sense that this is all filler...I just can't do it anymore. I'm declaring that my life doesn't have space for this game in it.
Remnant II Walking away from Destiny required something to take its place in a functional sense, luckily Remnant II was there to be largely the same kind of game but less essentially demanding on my time. It's actually somewhat unkind to just discuss this game in comparison to Destiny, because I think there's plenty to like here. I like its setting that's just a bunch of store-brand versions of other things stitched together, I like that the player characters are just a bunch of hedge wizard-ass motherfuckers who take mystical forces and slap them onto hunting rifles or into rings or whatever, I like the focus on esoteric "hidden quests" to get alternate pieces of loot which require you to have conversations with your teammates like "ok you want a sword from this fight right? Alright then we CANNOT shoot the robot." Additionally, all of that is held together by third-person combat that handles both shooting and melee pretty well (or at least well enough) and randomized campaign/level design that at least feels interesting. I've had a good time with Remnant II so far and the potential exists for further good times, which is about all I want from a game of its kind right now.
Street Fighter 6 It's a new Street Fighter! It's good! World Tour mode was fun, and let me make a dragon office lady before I decided to make that my whole vtuber thing. Guile's real good in it, which delights me. I'm going to play more of this, I'm sure.
Cursed Halo Hey, you remember Halo? What if it was instead a Naked Gun-style gag-a-minute nonsense fest? Cursed Halo accomplishes this transformation in a truly impressive fashion, and playing through it with my dear friend Sas is a memory that I'm going to treasure for a long time hence.
Baldur's Gate 3 The best game of the year that I didn't get a third of the way through. Like, I'm 40 hours deep into this thing and still in Act 1. That's either a triumph or an unforgivable failure of pacing and honestly idk which applies here.
Lunacid Most impeccable vibes of the year. Still need to finish the post-early access version of this game, but even unfinished it was a blast.
Slay the Princess/Model Employee These are both visual novels that I've watched other people play but intend to play more of myself (shout outs to Two Queers Play/80% Relatable, best let's players in the game imo and also a vital resource for chumps like me who struggle with reading VNs.) I paired them here because I'm lazy and getting tired of writing but I think they are interesting companions to each other--both are horror stories but also romances in their own way, both are smaller projects made within the production of their developers' flagship titles, both are...I don't know, they're both fuckin' great. What do you want from me?

In any case, I'm sure I'll have more to say about Slay the Princess later, so let me just end with shouting out Model Employee and its developer Nth Circle games. It's a horror story focused around a worker in a massive Amazon-style warehouse with a mountain of medical debt and a permanent direct-to-brain connection to the AI girl that runs it all. It's free, it's horrifying, it's charming, and it's a marvel that it was made in like a month for a game jam. Play it!

Oof. That sure is a lot of words. I'm sleepy. Next year will likely be a lot of stuff that I'm circling back around to, so it's neat to reflect on a bunch of stuff that's relatively shiny and new. In any case, happy new year!


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