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#Post#: 12984--------------------------------------------------
The games I played in 2020!
By: AuroraDash Date: December 10, 2020, 10:41 am
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This is a ranking of everything I played for the first time in
2020. I didn't play too many games this year, because I've still
been playing more Celeste than anything else and some games I
wanted to play either didn't come out this year (Silksong...
>_<) or I haven't played yet because I'm waiting for a really
good Steam sale (Ori: WotW, Black Future 88).
Bolded entries were released in 2020 and have a second ranking
which only includes other bolded entries, while italicised
entries were released earlier but I only played them in 2020. If
I only played pre-release versions of a game, it is excluded. If
I end up playing something else in the last three weeks of the
year, I'll edit it in.
Fortunately, I liked most of the games I played, which led to
some good games getting bad rankings.
12/7. Rift Wizard
This game kind of tries to be a traditional turn-based,
grid-based roguelike, but I really didn't enjoy it. It has a lot
of my game design pet peeves, like unnecessarily complicated
character building systems to create false depth and an excess
of long-run resource management encouraging timidness and making
sure you can feel your doom approach from way too far off. It
somehow managed to invent a new one, too: it has this weird
over-reliance on enemies which spawn more enemies. They're
present in every single level and they're the main threats.
Makes fighting the smaller enemies feel like a complete waste of
time. To its credit, it keeps the tactics of the old-school
roguelikes, but unfortunately it loses everything else which
made them great.
11/6. Inmost
I've already complained about this one. It's a boring
metroidvania with a lame story where you always feel
underpowered and everything cool only ever happens in
outrageously long cutscenes. It was really close between this
and Rift Wizard for the bottom spot, but I think this one had a
lot of wasted potential while that one had very little potential
at all. Despite how serious my complaints are, I actually
enjoyed my playthrough regardless: it can be beautiful and
atmospheric at times and has a few genuinely awesome moments.
However, by the end of it I felt like I had wasted my time.
10/5. Neon Abyss
A shiny new platformer-roguelite drawing heavy inspiration from
Binding of Isaac. It's charming and pretty, has a cool cyberpunk
aesthetic and great music. While I had fun with it, it has some
terrible game design flaws which drag it down – some inherited
from Isaac and some new ones. My main complaints are a) it's a
luck-based nightmare, b) usually the best strategy is to sit in
a corner and camp, c) the game doesn't tell you what items do
until you pick them up and there are so many items that even
after 20 hours of play time I don't know what half of them do
and, most damningly, d) the balance is god-awful. One thing I've
noticed is that a lot of the "new-school" roguelikes and
roguelites have substantial "macrogame" systems – as you play
more of the game, it will transform to reveal more of itself.
Neon Abyss' macrogame system is not exactly mind-blowing but it
is probably the biggest and most extensive I've ever seen, which
I guess is a point in its favour. At the end of the day, my most
memorable experience with the game was finally reaching the
game's last "manager" (which is what the game calls its special
superbosses – the regular bosses are instead called the gods of
something really lame, which I thought was cute) and
obliterating her immediately with my outrageously unbalanced
firepower before she even had a chance to attack. Then I put the
game down and didn't really touch it again much.
9/4. Helltaker
I really don't understand the hype behind this one. It's a
simple puzzle game, free and less than an hour long. There's not
really much to complain about but it had very little impact on
me. I liked the music. It was slightly annoying to have to
repeat the whole puzzle if you picked the wrong option at the
end of the level and get a bad ending, but that's not really a
big deal. Final boss was pretty cool. Meh.
8. Among Us
The idea behind it is really clever – take a social logic Mafia
type game and make it real-time. That's really clever. It's got
a cute artstyle, kinda like an 00s-era flash game. My main
complaint is that it's way too fast-paced. Each game is like 3
minutes long, you're constantly running around at top speed,
people drop like flies and by the time you start to get a
picture of what's going on and begin forming your insane
theories, the game's already over. At least with Mindnight's
20-minute games, there was enough time to think and take notes.
Among Us can be great as a party game or as a brief diversion in
between studying or something.
7. What Remains Of Edith Finch
I don't really know how to organise my thoughts here. This isn't
what I'd usually consider playing, it's a sort of visual novel
type thing built around its story – basically, everyone is dead
and you need to explore a creepy house to find out what happened
to them. I've seen the story, which is ridiculously depressing,
get slammed for relying on cheap tricks to get an emotional rise
out of the player, and while it does kind of do that at times I
think it mostly works. Game generally looks and sounds great,
has a lot of trippy visuals and some really cool moments. I had
an issue with the controls where I'd occasionally go through a
door or down a ladder or something and then immediately go back
the other way by mistake, but that might've been because I was
really drunk while I played it. Sometimes I feel like my own
grandmother is slowly ruining everyone's lives with her subtle
pathological influence, but this game made me realise that she's
not bad at all and it could be so much worse.
6. Super Lucky's Tale
Cutest game ever. Really solid 3D platformer, I had no real
problems with it. I wanna cuddle Lucky so bad, he's adorable!!!
I didn't quite get through the whole game, it seems to be quite
long and I got kinda distracted partway through. There's heaps
to do and it just generally makes me feel good. Has the kind of
controls where, if you have mad skills, you can combine moves to
reach further than it appears you can at first. 4 through 6 were
all really close together.
5/3. Spirits Abyss
Another platformer-roguelite! This one draws heavily from
Spelunky instead. It's not as slow-paced as Spelunky, though,
it's more conducive to running through levels guns blazing than
Spelunky is. First thing which jumped out at me was the awesome
chiptune music. I have an issue with the controls – usually,
there is no inertia, and you can change directions instantly,
but when you wall-jump then suddenly hello again Newton! It
feels really awkward and strange. There's a lot of variety in
the level types – there begins with 4 level types which happen
in a fixed order, but later on more get unlocked and I think
there are a total of 10. In addition to those, it has a
fascinating system where, randomly, between the normal levels,
you'll get thrown into little intermediate areas. The game
throws curveballs at you in a way which makes it seem really
mysterious, and that's something I find very compelling.
Sometimes, stuff will just happen and you won't be entirely sure
why. It seems kind of small at first, but there's a great deal
to do here. It's by the same developer as Skelly Selest from
2018 and has a lot in common with that one – the menus look
really similar, everything has a similarly bizarre writing
style, it even has a weird card game tacked on to it just like
that game did – but I think Spirits Abyss is a lot more
impressive.
4/2. Spelunky 2
I dunno if I should put it this high, I just kinda think it
would be blasphemous to imply that Spirits Abyss is a better
follow-up to Spelunky than this one is, given how ambitious it
is, although, I don't know if it is or not. The game is a lot
bigger and shinier with more hidden stuff than the original –
I've reached the final boss (which I really don't like, I think
it's quite badly designed) but apparently I've only seen about
half of the areas in the game. At first I was keenly aware of
all the subtle things that were changed from the original, which
annoyed me, but after that I had a great time. I loved the
re-imaginings of the old areas with new enemies and whatnot, and
the references to some of my old favourite Spelunky mods (like
the repeating laser traps in world 6 referencing Gates of Hell,
and how world 5 was compressed into a single super-long level
which I think references that one mod where you fight Cthulhu).
It's substantially harder and longer than the original Spelunky,
which makes me think it was designed for people who have already
mastered the original – I found it quite a challenge and I never
even got into any of the post-game stuff, at least not yet.
13-year-old me would've loved this more than anything in the
whole world.
3. Axiom Verge
A really bloody good old-school metroidvania, keeping everything
good about the subgenre intact – exploring a mysterious world,
getting new stuff to gain more power and unlock more freedom,
stumbling on crazy stuff, getting kinda lost in a good way –
while losing some of the cliches. I first heard about it in a
YouTube comments section where somebody dared to suggest that it
(along with Hollow Knight, which I found a more reasonable
opinion) was better than Ori. I thought that was a ridiculous
notion at first, but after playing it, while I'm not sure I
agree, it certainly gets close. It strikes a good balance
between being too linear and "where the fuck do I go", and it
makes you work for your cool toys (and they are VERY cool, the
drone gun is brilliant) but it feels so good to finally get
them. The whole game has this cool alien aesthetic. I found the
backtracking a bit tiresome in places, and there's some secret
stuff which you'll very definitely need a walkthrough for, but
those are minor complaints.
2/1. Scourgebringer
The fourth platformer-roguelike in this list, and the king of
them all. While Spirits Abyss was inspired by Spelunky and that
other Abyss game was inspired by Isaac, Scourgebringer is
instead inspired by Monolith, but it builds off its quite
spectacularly. It kind of de-emphasises the platforming in
favour of an outstanding combat system with heaps of depth and
where everything just feels viscerally good and makes my brain
light up with dopamine. It's a bit overwhelming at first, with
four or five different ways to attack and controls which take
some getting used to, but the game's cleverly designed to get
you over the initial hurdle, and to a level where you can make
the most of everything, with minimal pain. It has a combo
mechanic, one of many ideas borrowed from Monolith, except the
game adds a new dimension to it to facilitate learning the
game's mechanics. It divides attacks into three categories, and
rewards the player for using all three categories, which pushes
players to learn how to use all their attacks to their full
potential. The enemies are all designed around the combat
system, and with a few exceptions they all work great. The
balance is also great – while a lot of similar games end up
really luck-based and prone to "snowballing" where you become
either overpowered or underpowered and that kind of sticks for
the whole run, Scourgebringer avoids that by being careful with
how its power upgrades are designed. The only real downsides are
that the music isn't my style and the postgame stuff isn't as
extensive as some other games. Absolutely sick. Favourite game
of 2020.
1. Monolith
Surprise, it's a game I just mentioned! It was really hard to
pick between this and Scourgebringer because they have so much
in common and what's different between them is awesome in
different directions. It's not a platformer and doesn't have a
complex combat system, and in that one regard it's a lot closer
to Nuclear Throne than Scourgebringer – while it doesn't stand
out as much, it's perfectly solid. Instead, it has some of the
coolest bosses and best postgames ever, and has that same
mystery factor that Spirits Abyss has – it seems small at first
then slowly unfolds itself before your eyes as you keep going,
in a way that feels organic. I get the impression that there's a
really interesting story buried under there if only someone
could untangle the pieces. The controls suffer from what I call
"Nuclear Throne syndrome" where it's trying to be a bullet hell
shmup and a twin-stick arena shmup at the same time, and trying
to play one of them with the controls of the other always feels
a little awkward, like you're playing with your hands flipped
around or something. The late game can get a little samey, as
worlds 5 through 7 don't feel sufficiently distinct, which is a
point against it compared to Scourgebringer where the last few
levels are the best part. When, like, a boss mysteriously throws
out an extra form, or a new boss entirely appears unexpectedly,
or something unique and inexplicable happens, it's not something
you forget. I feel like Monolith is slightly better as it stands
because it's bigger and more polished and has more special
memorable moments, whereas Scourgebringer has the stronger
foundation and if it got a cool expansion pack like Monolith has
it'd be likely to surpass it.
#Post#: 13005--------------------------------------------------
Re: The games I played in 2020!
By: AuroraDash Date: December 12, 2020, 5:36 am
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HTML https://i.imgur.com/xpUYOfa.jpeg
Speak of the devil oWo
#Post#: 13006--------------------------------------------------
Re: The games I played in 2020!
By: King (2.0) Date: December 12, 2020, 6:13 am
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[quote author=AuroraDash link=topic=438.msg13005#msg13005
date=1607772964]
HTML https://i.imgur.com/xpUYOfa.jpeg
Speak of the devil oWo
[/quote]
So do you think that game is the worth the price?
#Post#: 13027--------------------------------------------------
Re: The games I played in 2020!
By: AuroraDash Date: December 13, 2020, 4:01 am
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[quote author=King (2.0) link=topic=438.msg13006#msg13006
date=1607775210]
So do you think that game is the worth the price?
[/quote]
I'll let you know once I've played it :3
#Post#: 13028--------------------------------------------------
Re: The games I played in 2020!
By: King (2.0) Date: December 13, 2020, 5:33 am
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[quote author=AuroraDash link=topic=438.msg13027#msg13027
date=1607853686]
I'll let you know once I've played it :3
[/quote]
I asked because I've seen at least 2 games I want to play but
can't because of the extortionate prices. (I saw Paper Mario:
The Thousand Year Door in Cex once and it cost £80. £80 for
Paper frickin Mario. And that's still better than the PS2 Blood
Will Tell costing £100 on Amazon).
#Post#: 13030--------------------------------------------------
Re: The games I played in 2020!
By: IlinaFan01 Date: December 13, 2020, 6:03 am
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...... There's a Spelunky 2?
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