A Green Mushroom

This running Games of the Year list has been an interesting experiment.  I decided to start this series right as we were shutting down the Geek to Geek podcast as a way to keep creatively broadcasting some gaming thoughts out into the world.  I learned a few things from sticking with it this year. The main thing I learned is... I just don't have as much desire to broadcast my thoughts out in public as I used to when I started this blog or when I started podcasting.  I still love to have in-depth discussions about current games and general geekery, but I feel less and less need to broadcast those thoughts widely.  Honestly, it's been over a decade of blogging and podcasting at this point.  It would be more surprising if my relationship with the media landscape hadn't  changed. Around mid-year I started trying to use Twitter as more of a microblogging platform to do very short quick-hit thoughts about games but didn't get much traction or conversation going ...

Here it is, the final ranked list of every video game I played this year that I found interesting enough to write about! Elden Ring Xenoblade Chronicles 3 FFXIV Endwalker Citizen Sleeper Marvel Snap The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe Pokémon Scarlet and Violet Horizon Forbidden West Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge Pokémon Legends: Arceus Chrono Cross: Radical Dreamers Edition Cult of the Lamb Neon White Halo Infinite Vampire Survivors Gotham Knights Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin Playdate Season 1 Immortality Cyberpunk 2077 Forza Horizon 5 Hot Wheels DLC Triangle Strategy Mario Strikers: Battle League Multiversus Pre-Season Stray LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga Nobody Saves the World Unpacking God of War Ragnarök Kaichu Tinykin Splatoon 3 Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope Shovel Knight Dig Total War: Warhammer 3 Tunic Looking back at the year, there are a few games I would move around in hindsight.  But, part of the fun of doing a list like this and build...

It's interesting when I can see that a game has a lot going for it but fails to connect with me personally.  God of War Ragnarök is extremely polished and has incredible production values.  I can absolutely see why so many people love it so much. But, for me, the game failed to click. The parts I enjoyed were the story and performances.  Unfortunately, the core gameplay mechanics weren't doing it for me.  The traversal puzzles wore out their welcome almost immediately.  They weren't ever hard, they were just annoying.  And the combat left a lot to be desired.  It felt very hack and slash.  I'm wondering if Elden Ring spoiled me and now I just expect more from my action combat systems. There's a ton written about God of War Ragnarok, so I'm not going to go deep here.  You can find tons of reviews of this game around the internet. In my personal Games of the Year list, this one actually lands fairly low down in the bottom fourth of my list: Eld...

Pokémon Scarlet (and Violet by extension) was the rare Pokémon game that hooked me and kept me interested all the way through. I'm not doing a full review, but I do feel the need to call out how much this game struggles on performance.  It chugs along, has tons of bugs, and the frame rate is just brutal.  Although, none of that really detracted from my overall enjoyment.  Your results may vary. The two things that truly let this game get its hooks into me were the open world and the new quality of life feature auto battle feature.  The open world fairly quickly gave me three main story progression paths to go down and complete freedom in the order I wanted to pursue them.  The typical Gyms are here but so is a storyline about Team Star and a completely different storyline about Titan Pokémon. Given the freedom of the open world and the ability to do almost instant auto-battles for experience, I quickly threw on some podcasts and audiobooks while just r...

Marvel Snap is the best digital card game I've ever played on mobile.  In general, it's one of the best digital cards games I've played in years. Their are a few key factors here.  The two biggest of which are the speed of play (fast) and the monetization (cosmetic).  This isn't a trashy mobile pay to win game.  If you want to spend money, you can spend it on cosmetics but you can't spend it on power.  As you "upgrade" cards you're just upgrading how cool they look, you aren't upgrading how good they are against other players.  Which means this game can actually be balanced and fun for everyone. The speed of a single game is also super fast.  Most of my games last 2-5 minutes and that's just about perfect.  You only ever play six turns and then the game is over.  It's enough time to engage your brain and feel like you actually did something mentally stimulating, but short enough that it's not a big deal to lose and you never feel like y...

Gotham Knights is an interesting entry on this list.  As much as any game can be measured objectively... this one isn't great.  It feels like a solid 7 out of 10 type of game and it's hard to argue for it to be rated much higher than that. But, for me, this is one of the 7 out of 10 games that just hit right and kept me interested.  I was craving an open world game and I enjoy the Batman/Gotham setting.  This hit at the right time and was good enough to keep me coming back to play more. It's extremely rough around the edges, doesn't always feel great to play, is full of compromises and odd decisions... but I had fun messing around in it.  Honestly, this is probably higher on my list than it would have been if any other open world game hit around the same time.  The release timing on Gotham Knights was right around the time we typically get Assassin's Creed games which tend to scratch the same itch for me.  Without one of those around this year, my atte...

Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope was an interesting game to play around with.  I made it through the first world and a half before realizing the game wasn't what I was in the mood for.  It has a lot of interesting things going on with it, but ultimately didn't click with me. Which is interesting, because I could also see this game being the game of the year for certain people.  It's trying new and interesting things in the turn based strategy X-COM-like game space.  I loved the move away from a grid and instead having a certain radius distance you can run.  The addition of movement abilities that don't use your two "actions" each turn was super cool too.  It was consistently fun to do a slide dash through a bob-omb, pick it up, throw it at a group of enemies, watch it explode, and then realize I still had my two primary actions left to play around with that turn. In the end, it was the Rabbids and some minor annoyances that turned me away.  The game take...

Shovel Knight Dig is a game I almost didn't add here but, in the end, decided to capture some of my thoughts about it. Shovel Knight Dig is a roguelike take on the core Shovel Knight platformer gameplay.  As much as I still love the core platformer gameplay on display here, the roguelike nature of this one caused it to not land well with me.  I was hoping for some consistent meta progression that would help me make my way deeper into the game at regular intervals.  There is some meta progression but it wasn't consistent enough or interesting enough to keep me hooked. I wish I could see more of the game without feeling like I'm just grinding the same thing over and over.  I know that each run is actually unique, but it all has that typical roguelike feel of "I've basically seen this before" that quickly wore out it's welcome for me. If you are a Shovel Knight fan and a roguelike fan, you will most likely love this game.  For me, it managed to make it on thi...

Splatoon 3 is both good and disappointing at the same time.  At its core, Splatoon 3 is a solid game.  It still has lots of fun with squid kids, octolings, and fresh styles. All the fun from the past Splatoon games is represented here and there are nice quality of life features that are notable improvements as well. But, unfortunately, it doesn't actually do much new.  There's new gear, a new single player campaign, and one new (time gated) mode.  Besides that, it's basically the same game as Splatoon 2. So, although the core gameplay is fun, this one ends up fairly low on my list since it's not really doing anything new: Elden Ring Xenoblade Chronicles 3 FFXIV Endwalker Citizen Sleeper The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe Horizon Forbidden West Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge Pokémon Legends: Arceus Chrono Cross: Radical Dreamers Edition Cult of the Lamb Neon White Halo Infinite Vampire Survivors Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin Playdate Seas...

Kaichu is a cute and lightweight game about Kaiju dating.  You take on the role of a Kaiju looking for love.  The core premise is that Kaijus date through destroying landmarks together. The gameplay quickly shows itself to be a fairly simple game about trying to guess the right answer for compatibility on your dates with other Kaiju.  It's not a complex game... but it's cute, it's cozy, and it has a lot of heart. This one was a quick hit but I had more fun with it than I thought I would.  It ends up near the bottom but... not in a bad way: Elden Ring Xenoblade Chronicles 3 FFXIV Endwalker Citizen Sleeper The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe Horizon Forbidden West Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge Pokémon Legends: Arceus Chrono Cross: Radical Dreamers Edition Cult of the Lamb Neon White Halo Infinite Vampire Survivors Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin Playdate Season 1 Immortality Cyberpunk 2077 Forza Horizon 5 Hot Wheels DLC Triangle Strategy Mari...

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 blew me away in a completely unsuspecting way.  I love a good JRPG but had previously bounced hard off of the first two games in this series.  This one looked like it had some good quality of life improvements and the story hook was more interesting than the previous games, so a few friends were able to convince me to give it a shot. I'm so glad they did.  After about 70 hours and rolling credits, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is currently sitting as my runner up game of the year right behind Elden Ring: Elden Ring Xenoblade Chronicles 3 FFXIV Endwalker Citizen Sleeper The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe Horizon Forbidden West Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge Pokémon Legends: Arceus Chrono Cross: Radical Dreamers Edition Cult of the Lamb Neon White Halo Infinite Vampire Survivors Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin Playdate Season 1 Immortality Cyberpunk 2077 Forza Horizon 5 Hot Wheels DLC Triangle Strategy Mario Strikers: Battle League...

Playdate is a weird one to cover in this list since it's a game system and not a game itself.  But I decided to wrap in all of "Season 1" as an item on this list. If you haven't heard of it, Playdate is an experimental 1-bit handheld game console that came out earlier this year.  They have a cool site that gives the basic rundown so I won't reiterate all of that here. I've had a lot of fun poking around and playing on this console.  I've played a bunch of games I downloaded or bought from itch.io but I've now also completed their full Season 1 content which is why it felt like a good time to add it to the list. Season 1 is a set of 24 games that were included with the purchase of the console.  Each week on "new game day" they deliver the next 2 games to your console.  That must mean I've had this for about 12 weeks.  The games themselves ranged from tiny arcade games, to full on adventure games, to little experimental music generators.  ...

Immortality is a hard one to write about so this may be short.  But, I have to say something about it become it is most definitely interesting. Immortality is an FMV game, but you discover the FMV clips through free association of objects that you click on within any given freeze frame of any scene.  The scenes themselves are clips from a series of made up unreleased movies that all star the same actress. On it's face, the game is about uncovering movie clips and mentally putting them together to see this actress's career.  But, underneath, there's a ton of hidden stuff going on.  There's a whole secondary story that I didn't stumble onto until I had uncovered a large majority of the clips. This one is really strange but is so unique that I needed to acknowledge it in my list.  Personally, I was pulled into the game for one session where I played through the entire thing until I hit credits.  I have a feeling this will be some people's game of the year this...

Tinykin is an interesting game that I almost chose not to write about for this list.  You'll see shortly that it ended up near the bottom of my list.  But the more I thought about it, the more I realized it was doing something interesting that deserves some acknowledgement.  And that was my goal with this running this during the year.  I wanted to highlight my favorite games while also highlighting games that ultimately didn't click with me when I tried them but were doing something noteworthy. Tinykin reimagines what a Pikman style game can be and do.  That's the reason I wanted to give it some acknowledgement.  Pikman doesn't have many games like it and all of the Nintendo Pikman games follow a very similar formula.  You collect Pikman within a level and have to accomplish some collecting objectives within a time limit. Tinykin takes the core idea of Pikman, that idea of gathering a small army of different and useful creatures that follow you around ...

Cult of the Lamb was surprisingly gripping.  It's a cute/horrifying roguelike with town building elements.  There's a lot going on with it and I'm not quite sure if that description does it justice. There are almost two distinct games in Cult of the Lamb, but they each inform the other. One of these two elements is a top-down action roguelike experience with semi-randomly generated maps and levels.  The combat is solid and no one run ever overstays it's welcome. The second main element is a town building (cult building) game that is both cute and disturbing.  Everything is presented in a cutesy aesthetic but it's dealing with real cult-like ideologies and behaviors.  The discrepancy between the two is one of the compelling parts of the game.  In this second piece of the game, you're recruiting followers, getting resources, and building out your town amenities. If Cult of the Lamb had leaned too hard one way or another, I'm not sure I would have liked it as ...

Multiversus is what happens when you take the core gameplay of Smash Bros, give it a slight twist, and then set it in a world of Warner Brothers characters instead of Nintendo characters.  I've been surprised by how much fun I've had with it. I'm calling this my rating of the "pre-season" since I joined when it was in late closed beta and have been playing fairly consistently through open beta too.  The game just went into "season 1" but I actually think I'm going to take that as an opportunity to take a break from it. The core gameplay here is good but could use a little more refining.  I also wish matchmaking was more even since I've had lots of matches where I just get steamrolled and feel like I can do nothing.  But that's kind of a general fighting game thing, not necessarily specific to this game. The part I'm really interested in is seeing how they support this game over time.  If they treat it like a Fortnite style live-service ga...

I always hesitate to put DLC on a list of games of the year but I had a lot of fun with this one so I felt I needed to include it! The Hot Wheels DLC is the first of at least two new DLC areas that is included in the Forza Horizon 5 add on pass.  When Forza Horizon 5 came out last year I tried it because it was on Game Pass and was surprised that I got pulled in enough to play the entire game and do every event.  By the end of my time with it, I was essentially out of things to do. The Hot Wheels DLC not only gives me more to do, it also includes an entire new map with multiple biomes and it's all tied together with gigantic life-sized hot wheels tracks.  It's so incredibly evident how much fun the team was having when making this DLC since they were getting to play around with all the Hot Wheels love from childhood but bring it into a completely new context within this game. I loved my time with it and it has made me even more excited to see what they do with their next ...

Stray was both amazing and a disappointment for me at the same time.  This is a great example of a game being a mixed bag for me. The part that's amazing about Stray is the fidelity of the cat.  The animation, sound, behavior, motion capture, interactions, and everything having to do with being a cat are executed incredibly well.  This is probably the most well realized cat in a video game ever.  Every time I got a chance to just be cat-like I was having a great time. My disappointment comes from the gameplay.  The trailers made me think this was going to be some kind of cyberpunk setting platformer game but instead it's just kind of an adventure game.  There's nothing wrong with adventure games but they're just not my favorite.  In terms of adventure games I've liked over time, this one is high up the list... but the genre just doesn't click with me very much. If you're an adventure game fan that is also a cat lover, I can't recommend this game enough...

Neon White is a first person action platformer with shooting elements.  It's hard to describe, but if you watch a video of some gameplay you can grok it quickly.  Essentially, the game is all about platforming, but it also incorporates FPS elements along the way.  There are items you pick up in the form of cards and they each have two abilities.  One functions as a primary ability with ammo while the other one is a secondary ability based around movement but it requires you to discard the item. Again, a lot going on there, but quick to pick up if you actually play. Neon White was extremely fun... until it wasn't.  Based on the achievement list I took a look at, it seems like I made it to about 60% or 70% completion of the main story before I stalled out.  I didn't hit a brick wall of progression gating with difficulty.  Instead, I hit the point where I was having more stress than fun so I decided I should be done with it. For the right kind of speedrun...

The Geek to Geek podcast had our finale a few weeks ago.  We wrapped it up after about 7 years of episodes.  We covered everything in the episode and I can't do it justice here but it feels like I should acknowledge it on the blog. So, if you want more information, the link to the episode is here . Also, I've embedded it below:

  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge is extremely fun for what it is.  It's a brawler in the old 90s arcade style of beat em up games. Don't get me wrong, it has some modern conveniences and additions as well.  You can mix and match local co-op play, online co-op play, and online matchmaking.  It makes it super easy to get a lot of co-op players on screen quickly.  You can go all the way up to six players instead of just four.  There's a whole story mode with some meta-progression and unlockables.  There are difficulty modes and minor differences in character stats. But all of that is secondary to the fact that this is a TMNT beat em up at its core.  If you liked the old TMNT games in this style (like I do) then you'll probably like this one too. My son and I played through the entire main game the first night we checked it out on Game Pass.  Most of that time was with a full crew of six co-op players.  We had an amazing ti...

  Mario Strikers: Battle League was a mixed bag of a game for me.  The single player experience leaves a lot to be desired but the multiplayer experience was a lot more fun. The single player modes and options are very shallow.  There's not much in terms of progression, direction, or really much to do outside of the core gameplay loop.  It's like the made the gameplay and then forgot to build everything else around it.  There are a few cups you can participate in but, beyond that, not much else.  It honestly reminds me of Mario Kart in that way, except even more shallow. Where the game actually comes to life is the multiplayer.  I've now played this game with two, three, and four players locally and every player we added only added to the fun.  Compared to how lifeless and dull the CPU controlled teammates are in single player modes, having everyone on your team independently controlled by a human player was so much more fun.  We played throu...

Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin has a wild and non-descriptive name that you almost instantly forget as soon as you here it.  Which is kind of fitting for a series with spin offs that are extremely hit or miss. This one is no exception.  In a lot of ways, this game is extremely rough around the edges.  So many things aren't up to modern standards including the graphics, voice acting, story, script, level design, and more.  But, despite all that, there's something here that hooked me and kept me playing until the end. The core of what kept me interested was a combination of the story and the job system.  The story isn't well told but it does function as a true prequel to Final Fantasy I.  There are almost no spin-off games that tie directly into mainline games.  Because I'm so invested in the mainline Final Fantasy games, just knowing that this tied into the very first one of the series had me intrigued. The other piece that held my interest ...

Cyberpunk 2077 finally released the current gen version of the game this year alongside patches that fixed a lot of the bugs and major complaints from early reviews.  I had been waiting for it to hit that point so I grabbed it on sale and ended up liking it enough to play through the whole game. That being said, this game is mostly... fine.  It's a fine game.  It's not amazing but not horrible either. The fidelity of the world they've created is a huge achievement.  Night City feels well realized.  I was impressed by the overall look and feel of the game. But the gameplay wasn't great.  It felt like so many first person western RPGs that I've played before.  If you've ever played an Elder Scrolls or Fallout game, this is very similar.  The combat is serviceable but not actually very fun moment to moment.  There's a lot of side content but ultimately not much reason to engage with it.  The main story is what kept me interested enough to f...

Citizen Sleeper may be my favorite cyberpunk story ever.  I loved this game. Citizen Sleeper is an interactive storytelling game.  It has some visual novel elements, but it also has dice rolling, and also some resource management.  I've never been able to click with actual visual novels because there's not enough interaction for me.  This game hits the sweet spot of having some gameplay mechanics to grapple with to get you to the next story beat while still being primarily about the story. And the story is truly what makes Citizen Sleeper land for me.  I don't have the space here to talk through everything that happens... and I wouldn't want to spoil it anyway.  But, I will say that Citizen Sleeper deals with deep thoughts about what makes a person a person.  It delves into whether you are you mind or your body while also tackling themes of chronic conditions through the cyberpunk lens. I hope this one turns into an indie darling in game of the year di...

  The Stanley Parable is a game I missed out on when it originally came out.  I played something like 10 minutes of it, didn't get what it was trying to do, and set it down. Last week, a newly updated "Ultra Deluxe" version of the game came out on basically all the consoles.  People were finally talking about it more openly instead of being cagey around the core premise and I quickly realized the game is very meta and very much about exploring different choices over and over again in the same game.  I decided to give it another shot and am glad I did. I kind of love this game.  I also now see why it was so hard for people to talk about.  To give any concrete examples from the game is inherently to spoil some of the core fun. But, I can talk a little bit about what this game is.  At it's core, it could be reduced to a "walking simulator" but that doesn't do it justice.  It's also a choose your own adventure... and an examination of what makes a gam...

  Chrono Cross The Radical Dreamers Edition is a remaster of the original PS1 game that just released a few weeks ago.  I played the original Chrono Cross when it first came out so I wanted to dip back into it to see if it held up to my memories. I'm honestly kind of surprised that I stuck with it, finished the whole game, and generally enjoyed the experience.  There's some roughness around the edges and there are a lot of things that wouldn't fly in modern games from a quality of life features perspective, but all of that is because it was a PS1 game and this is just a remaster. They did end up adding a few things that help if you feel like enabling them.  There's a battle boost, a no encounter mode, an autobattle mode, and (my favorite) the speed up mode.  Speed up mode in particular went a long way towards making this game more acceptable through a modern gaming lens.  I basically had the speed up enabled in every battle and every time I was exploring th...

  LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is a game I almost didn't even pick up.  My history with LEGO games has been extremely hit and miss, but I feel like there have been more misses than hits over the years. When this game came out, I heard nothing but good things about it.  Even that didn't convince me until I had a friend play the game and tell me that they had fixed most of my main complaints about past LEGO games.  Namely, the levels are no longer straightforward corridors and the combat has actual mechanics.  The game is still easy but that was never the problem.  Now it has just a little bit more depth and that makes a huge difference. The reason LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is making my list is because I had a fun time playing it with my daughter.  As a single player experience I probably would have bounced off this game after a few play sessions but playing it with one of my kids made all the difference.  The local co-op works g...

Triangle Strategy is a game I'm feeling very mixed about.  I went into it wanting to love and but ran into a bunch of roadblocks along the way. At its core, it is actually a really solid tactics game.  This is one of the best tactical combat and tactical character progression systems that we've gotten from Square Enix in a long time.  Every time I found myself in a battle I was having a great time and truly enjoying the systems at play. Unfortunately, there are so many other things around  the battles that don't work as well.   The biggest of which is the way the story is delivered.  For every 20 minutes of fun tactical combat it feels like there's 40+ minutes of slow story delivery.  Characters talk and you have no direct control or interaction for long periods of time during it.  It's not even like old school RPGs where it's a true cutscene that feels like a reward.  Instead, this is more like taking most of the control away from the p...

I gave Total War: Warhammer 3 a real shot.  I wanted to like it a lot.  And, honestly, there are parts of the game that I did.  This is another one of those games that is doing something interesting but didn't end up clicking with me. I really liked the battles in Total War: Warhammer 3.  I think I've liked the battling in most Total War games that I've tried.  I also thought that they did some interesting things with the factions in this game that were fun to explore on the battlefield. The part that constantly tripped me up was the strategy layer.  All of the things between battles are less interesting than the battling itself.  The strategy level of the gameplay ends up feeling like busy-work in between the fun of the tactics level gameplay.  I shouldn't be surprised since this is the same reason I stalled out when I played Total War: Warhammer 2. I think this is still a really solid strategy and tactics game, it's just not for me.  I'm si...

Kirby and the Forgotten Land was a quick playthrough for me.  It came out on a Friday and I had beaten the game by Saturday night.  But length isn't all that matters in a game.  This actually ended up being an excellently timed palate cleanser of a game for me. Coming off of playing Elden Ring, this was exactly what I needed.  A quick, fun, and easy platformer that kept throwing interesting new twists my way.  I feel like Kirby platformers never reach the heights of Mario platformers but they feel like a close cousin.  I could feel a lot of the design philosophy of Mario Odyssey while I was playing through Kirby and the Forgotten Land. Ultimately, this game was a little too easy for me.  I played on the harder difficulty mode, still cleared every level on the first try, and got almost all the secrets in my first pass through a level as well.  I never felt inspired to swing back through a level I had finished because I had already kind of picked th...

This is the first game that really made me think hard about what to include in this running list.  I've already decided not to include everything, but this made me define things further.  The place I landed is that I want to include anything I play that is either good, interesting, or both. Tunic is an interesting game.  It's a mash up of classic Zelda gameplay, an isometric action game, Fez, and has some Dark Souls DNA in it too.  You get to adventure around this isometric world exploring and defeating enemies while uncovering the core functions of the game. As you explore, you slowly find pieces of the game manual that have some illustrators on them but mostly are covered in symbols that don't (as of me writing this) map to a language we understand.  That's where some of the Fez elements come in.  It feels like a game that wants the community to come together to solve its mysteries.  If you're into that kind of community solving, this game might be f...

I had an interesting journey with Elden Ring.  I almost bounced off the game a number of times in the first four to six hours.  Then, it got it's hooks into me and I kept coming back even though I wasn't sure if I was actually having fun  but I was having an interesting time and that made me continually return.  Sometime between hour 20 and 30 I fell in love with this game and felt that way almost all the way until the end... until the last boss caused massive amounts of frustration. After all that, where did I land?  Well... I think this may end up being my game of the year. The exploration and world building in this game is simply incredible.  I can't even begin to quantify the amount of times I saw something new and novel while exploring the world.  Elden Ring takes the sense of open world exploration wonder that Breath of the Wild gave me... but then ramps it up by constantly rewarding me with new and unique interactions.  Every time I saw som...