Another year, another batch of games I've played. Since I'm not a huge IGN sized blog, I generally only have about 20 games I've played for the year. So I try to give each game at least a sentence.
This was an interesting year. I found myself reaching for the Switch less and less as the year went on. The PlayStation 5 went through spurts of abandonment. The Series S got relegated to the basement room. It was the year of the Steam Deck.
So here we are, games 16-6 of 2024.
16. The Ascent (PC): I can't remember who recommended The Ascent to me. It seems like there's some cool stuff in it, but I got stuck and just wasn't in the mood to figure it out. Maybe I'll return to it and give it another chance.
15. Star Craft 2 (PC): I accidentally opened the Battlenet and saw Star Craft 2 was still installed. I just clicked, "Next Mission" for the hell of it and several hours later, I was back in.
14. Fallout 4 (Steam Deck/PC): I never finished Fallout 4. I got to a late mission where you are about to infiltrate The Institute and I didn't have the materials to build the power grid needed to power the teleporter. And frankly, I hated the building aspect of this game. So I picked it back up with the DLC and finished the game. Once I got over that hump, loved it.
13. Pixel Noir (PC): I kickstarted a retro RPG set in a Noir years ago. The project was essentially abandoned until a poor soul picked it up and decided to finish it. It's interesting. It's got some of that 90s weirdness to it. I can't decide if it's actually a good game though.
12. 007 Goldeneye (Xbox Series S): I finally played the remaster of Goldeneye that everyone had been asking for forever. I never had an N64, so my experience with this game was all in the multiplayer. Playing the missions, largely for the first time ever, was a blast. A throwback to a simpler time. A time where aiming down the sites was not a precise thing. The downfall is game design from that time. There are objectives that are so obtuse (set this remote device on the server... what's the server look like? There's 10 computers in this room) that I don't know how you beat this game without a guide.
11. Super Mario Wonder (Switch): Super Mario Wonder could move up the list. I played 4 player, for about 4 hours, and I had a blast. The ideas in this game are so much fun that I hope Nintendo just let's this team go wild early in the Switch 2 lifecycle.
10. Doom (1993) (Steam Deck)
This year, I had the thought of, "What if I installed Doom on my new Steam Deck and bring it on vacation with me?" Now mind you, I've already brought Doom via the Switch on vacation with me. This is literally nothing new, but to justify it to my brain, here we are.
And guess what, Doom still slaps. The level design is fun, even with the backtracking you're generally opening up so many new passages or teleporting in enemies that you don't have much time to just sit and think.
9. Hogwarts Legacy (Steam Deck)
Hogwarts Legacy was fun. The various spells made combat interesting. Different categories of spells would break down barriers for various enemies. So you would have to think very quickly in a battle and be on your toes. (Sometimes this was frustrating as aiming could get hard when surrounded)
My biggest complaints are that they took a page out of the Ubisoft playbook and had little tick marks all over the map of collectables, puzzles, combat arenas, etc. This got tedious. Especially once at the end of the game and being so close to having 100% of everything, my completionist heart just wouldn't let me walk away.
The other complaint is that I naturally had almost every achievement at the end of the game. I spent some time finishing up some. Then there's one achievement that requires you getting into each of the houses common rooms. The only way to do this is to start a new game, play 2 hours, and choose a new house to be in. No thank you.
8. Kitsune Tails (Steam Deck)
But it does have a big boot you can get into.
It has coins, spikes, tough jumps, sliding down hills. It has checkpoints mid-level. And of course, it does have frustrating swimming levels.
But it's fantastic. It feels like some Mario 3B game that came out in an alternate universe. Sort of like the Japanese Mario 2 vs the American Mario 2.
7. Final Fantasy VI
For the first 20 hours, I was having a blast. I thought the quality of life changes were fantastic. Turning off random encounters or auto-battling, both great additions. Being able to run in the overworld, fantastic.
And then I remembered the worst part of old JRPGs. The grind is real. I got to the end where you fight like half a dozen bosses on your way to fight four end bosses in a row. Each run is a solid 30-45 minutes and each time I would get to the final boss, who would unceremoniously kill my group as he was getting close to death with Ultima.
I then spent about 6 hours leveling up and learning Ultima in the Dinosaur forest. Just re-running the same battle over and over again, slowly learning the spell that I am told is absolutely needed to beat that final boss.
6. Cyberpunk (Steam Deck)
Cyberpunk had me intrigued. Much more of a universe I'm interested in. And then it released with a billion bugs. I took a breath and waited.
Then I got a Steam Deck and I thought, "Let's check out this Cyberpunk game." I fell in love with it. I got about 20 hours in and was so entrenched that I ended up buying the DLC. I didn't want my journey to end (even though I still had a solid 60 hours of standard gameplay left).
I loved Keanu Reaves character and how he was woven into the story. I loved all of the relationships your character had in the world before the plot device sends you where it does. I love that the world felt lived in.
Really, the only thing holding the game back were the detective mode segments where you would have to play, rewind video, change camera angles and look for evidence. So often, it wasn't all that clear on what the objective is.
Great game. I liked the ending, it was the perfect amount of sappiness leaving some things open to interpretation.
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