Steam started doing Steam Replay a few years ago in which they break down the games you’ve played in the last year. Every pop media website seems to do some kind of wrap up at this time of year, but this is the only one I care about.
It shows how many games I’ve played this year (51!! With 37 of them being new); how many achievements I’ve gotten; which games I’ve played the most, and so much more. It shows which games I’ve played by the month, and it’s pretty neat.
In the Discord I’m in, we vote on awards in different categories. I had to turn in my ballot two days ago, which is a bit frustrating. I was holding out as long as I could because I wanted my Steam Replay to drop so it could prod my memory as to the games I’ve played this year. The shocker is that–well, I’m not going to talk about the shocker here because I’m going to save it for my silly awards later in the week.
I played Elden Ring in every month this last year except January–and in that month, I played Dark Souls II (Scholar of the First Sin) and Dark Souls III. I always have a FromSoft playthrough on the go, sometimes more than once. I will say, though, that because Elden Ring has a dedicated jump button, it’s hard to go back to the earlier games without one. Each of the previous games (except Sekiro) make you use an awkward combination of buttons to jump. To make matters worse, it was a different combination of buttons in each game. Like, left stick forward and B in one and I think holding down B and then quickly pressing B again in another.
I think they went back to left stick forward and B for the third Dark Souls game, but I don’t fully remember.
I mainly play Elden Ring these days, but I do dip back into the older games. Recently, I went back to the OG Dark Souls to get Big Hat Logan’s big hat. I rarely do that quest in that game because it’s so long and convoluted, and it costs a shit-ton of souls. Why did I do it recently? Because I hadn’t done it in a while, and I wanted the big hat. Which, ironically, is not the best big hat in the Souls games. That would be the Sage’s Big Hat in the third Souls game–which is the best piece of armor in any game. Period.
Anyway, I went all-in on the magicks while going for Big Hat Logan’s big hat, which made me realize something about pyro that I had not known before. It scales. I mean, That’s not the thing I didn’t know because of course it scales. What I didn’t know was how much. Normally, I pump up my pyro as high as I can get it and just melt shit. Or rather, do large chunks of damage because I never really feel like I’m melting anything.
In this case, I put the bare minimum into my pyro because I was dumping everything into my magicks. And maybe dex? Did I try to do dex? I might have, but I don’t remember. My pure dex run in Elden Ring has turned into a soft strength, high dex, medium faith, solid arcane build.
I had to kill Seath in order to finish up Big Hat Logan’s quest. I hate the run to Seath, but Seath himself is not bad. He’s weak to fire, and I rarely have difficulty with him. Except. What? My fire was not doing any damage to him? Say what? My other pyro did paltry damage to him? Double what?
I looked it up. If you don’t meet a certain level of damage with your pyro, you don’t do any damage to him. At all. What? I never knew that, and I was not particularly pleased to hear it. I could either farm enough souls in order to level up my pyro glove several times (and I mean several) or I would have to find a different way to kill Seath.
I decided on the latter because I did not want to grind for souls. I went for the two-handed Zwei mixed with the pyros that actually did damage to Seath, and I managed to get it done in two or three tries (this was after five or six tries with pyro). Normally, I can get him in one, but I would take it.
I finished up BHL’s questline and got his big hat. And then I promptly quit out and have not been back.
I forgot I played Witchy Life Story (Sundew Studios) this year (in January). I thought it was last year, which isn’t that far from wrong. It’s the first game I’ve played in which you can expressly choose “any pronouns” as an option. It’s not exactly agender, but it’s as close as I’ve gotten in a game. It’s a short game with a lot of heart, but, ultimately, it’s too slight a game, really. It feels more like an idea for a game than a game itself, but I’m glad I played it.
Another game I had forgotten I played was Love, Ghostie (Janbeh Games). It’s a charming little indie game* in which I, a ghost, try to matchmake the disparate residents of a house I can hover throughout. It’s very much vibes-based, and you can match up any of the residents. I played it through three times i think to 100% it. I got a bit salty towards the end because the last achievement I needed was based on RNG, but I got it in the end.
Most of the residents are cute and charming (mostly anthropomorphic animals), and I really dig the art style. It’s a very short game that does not overstay its welcome. I am glad I played it, and I would recommend it to anyone who likes cozy gentle romance games.
I will hasten to add that it’s more about meeting the quirky characters and getting to know them than the actual romance aspect, which I appreciate.
I want to talk about one more indie game I played this year. One I have very mixed feelings about. It’s Wanderstop (Ivy Road), a game about burnout. It’s done by the developer who made Stanley Parable, which I hated. But the trailer for this game was siiiiick. It seemed very cozy about a warrior (Alta) who couldn’t fight any longer. She passes out in the forest and is taken to a tea shop by a wonderful gentle giant of a man named Boro. He is the best thing about the game, quite frankly, and he’s one of the only reasons I kept with it.
I have to acknowledge that I’m very much an outlier when it comes to this game. So many people found it moving and emotionally impactful, but not me. Part of the reason is because I just did not relate to Alta at all. She was described as a dedicated warrior who was born to fight. There are little snippets of her past in which she has so much disdain for her parents, but it’s outsized for anything revealed about them.
Honestly, she just comes off as a spoiled brat when she’s talking about them. And the developer fell into the trap of thinking just because they told me how passionate Alta was about fighting, I should be impressed by it.
Then, when the story started deepening, I saw something coming that I desperately hoped was not going to happen the way I suspected it would. When it did, I just sighed heavily, and any residual interest I had in the game fled.
Peolpe talked about how grim and real the story was, but I didn’t think it was either. I did like the whimsical aspects, but as I said, that very obvious ‘twist’ pretty much ruined everything for me. Even if I had not seen it coming from a mile away, I think I would have despaired over it.
The mechanics are clunky and just not optimal at all. I hated that I could carry maybe ten things at a time. I really hate limited inventories, especially when they are so tiny. The making of the tea was clumsy and not very intuitive. Nor was it any fun, honestly. People tried to rationalize it by saying it mimicked the theme of burnout, but, no.
In addition, the mystery of the black goo and everyone suffering memory wipes periodically did not have a satisfactory conclusion. Everything kind of fell apart in the third act. The art style is lovely, but that’s the best thing I can say about it.
Still. There was something there. That’s what made it so frustrating. I knew what the core of the game was and what they were trying to do; they just did not succeed in my opinion.
*The lead dev is an Asian American woman and the majority (I think) of the small team are Asian American. Which is rad.