I’m back for my (probably) last post about my game of the year (GOTY). I say probably because we all know I have the tendency to go off the rails. I have every intention of making this the last post, but who knows what I might think of along the way?
Here’s an interesting thing about my memory since my medical crisis. It’s completely gone. Well, not completely, but it’s a fraction of what it used to be. Before my medical crisis, I had an excellent memory. Now, it’s completely gone. Or rather, it’s very spotty. When I first got out of the hospital, I had such a hard time with names. Granted, I was high as a kite so that probably had more to do with it.
Now, I can remember names. But dates? No. Things that were planned? No. Before my medical crisis, I had no issues remembering which days I had Taiji private lessons, for example. Now, if I’m doing something engrossing before the time, I have to put a sticky on my monitor to remind me. I’ll be real. It’s just if I’m playing a game at the time, and it’s only fairly recently. I have a hunch it’s more to do with me not bothering to remember than me actually forgetting.
I took a quick look at my Steam library, and there are a few games that I had fun with, but nothing really memorable. Many of them are based around cat restaurants, which was a big theme for me this year.
I will say that as is my wont, I mostly play three or four big (big meaning games that truly engross me) games and a half-dozen smaller ones intermittently. I have a few cozy games I play late at night when I just want to relax and unwind.
Here’s the way I do my GOTY. As everyone knows, I am a huge FromSoft fan. Basically, I split things up between From games and non-From games. The latter includes mostly indie games, mostly cozy games, and mostly quirky games that others may or may not have heard of. I have my list of top FromSoft games of all time and a list of my top five favorite non-FromSoft games.
A quick recap of my lists.
My favorite FromSoft games of all time
6. Sekiro
5. Bloodborne
4. Dark Souls
3. Dark Souls II
We need to talk here. I have gotten so much shit over this part of my list because I place Sekiro at the bottom. No matter how many carefully I phrase it, people get mad. Most people think either Sekiro and/or Bloodborne is the best FromSoft game with Dark Souls (OG) in the mix as well.
It dosen’t matter how many times I say that this is my list of my favorite From games, people get indignant. Well, they can stay mad. I don’t care. Sekiro is the most rigid of the games and if you can’t deflect, you’re SOL. There’s no leveling up element, no Fashion Souls, and only one weapon. The story is the simplest of them all, and while I did like the ending quite a lot (it was obviously a set-up for a sequel that never happened–not going to get into that now), I felt there was a lack of layers that FromSoft games are known for.
I am not saying and have never said that Sekiro is a bad game; it’s just not a game for me. I have consistently given it a 9, which is better than so many other games. I get so tired of people thinking that anything short of a 10 might as well be a 0.
Back to my list. The other reason I stop here is because I have a hard time ranking Dark Souls III and Elden Ring. I flip-flop back and forth between the two. Obviously, before Elden Ring, Dark Souls III was my undisputed favorite of the From games. Now, I have them essesntially tied. I went back and played Dark Souls III a few months ago, and it’s still a fantastic game. That said, I think I would put my ranking like this, but just barely:
2. Dark Souls III
1. Elden Ring
We are talking about the slightest hair separating the two. I might as well put them as co-winners at number one, but for the sake of ranking them each separately, this is where I would finally fall.
My other list of my top five non-From games goes like this. In the reverse of the first list, I’m going to start with one and go down to five. Here we go. Just because I can.
1. Night in the Woods (Infinite Fall)
2. Spiritfarer (Thunder Lotus Games)
3. Hades (Supergiant Games)
4. Cozy Grove (Spry Fox)
5. Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!! (David Galindo/Vertigo Games)
They are all indie games, and the first four have to do with dying and other heavy themes. The last is a cooking sim game that really came out of nowhere and while the original was probably the freshest take in the three (er, four, but that’s…complicated) games, the second is my absolute favorite because I can decorate my restaurants.
The tihng about my non-From list is that each of these games is very different from the others. They have similarities, yes, but each is distinctive in its own right.
When I try out an indie game, I never know what to expect. Some fall short of what I want from a game, yes, but all of them have heart. I rarely feel as if the developer is in it for the money or coasting on their laurels. It’s the epitome of reaching for the sun and falling hard rather than coasting along a few inches off the ground.
I would rather have a game fail spectacularly than be bland and boringly ok. All five of the games I listed above evoked something in me. Pain, anger, regret, happiness, joy, amusement, sadness, irritation, and much more.
It’s funny because in three of the games, the characters are animals. And I related to them more than I do to most human characters. The main character of Night in the Woods is a black cat named Mae. She’s in her early twenties, and she just dropped out of college because of her struggles with mental health. There’s a nod to Dark Souls in the game, and if you do everything rig9ht, you can find out that Mae is bisexual. That came as a such a welcomed surprise to me, and it made me love her even more.
She’s awkward, has an explosive temper, and has a very low self-esteem. She was me in black cat form, and I could not love her any more if she were an actual human being. I ached for her. When she was fumbling around her ex at a party, I felt so much for her. For a long time, my avatar on Facebook was a picture of her looking in the mirror and saying, “This is hopeless.”
I have never felt so seen as I have while playing this game. Mae’s fractious relationship with her mother felt so familiar as did her loneliness and feelings of just wanting to disappear. I played the game three times and got more out of each playthrough. I would like to play it again to get the last bits I missed. It has a special place in my heart, and I doubt it will be dislodged from the top spot on my non-From games list.
I’ve done it again. I’ve rambled my way to the end of the post without actually giving out the award (and I changed the title of the post). Looks like there will be one more post in this series!