Status BMO Jan 3, 2024
I’m posting this as a status update because I was a little too verbose for a comment and ran out of characters on the other thread. Ok, let’s do this.
Number of Games Completed:
~56 (sometimes I forget to put games on my completed shelf, especially if I’ve played them in the past, so there’s always a chance this number …
I’m posting this as a status update because I was a little too verbose for a comment and ran out of characters on the other thread. Ok, let’s do this.
Number of Games Completed:
~56 (sometimes I forget to put games on my completed shelf, especially if I’ve played them in the past, so there’s always a chance this number is higher.
Favourite Game Played This Year:
Will anyone be surprised by this answer? Of course it’s Baldur’s Gate 3. I usually don’t have a GOTY, preferring to leave my favourites unranked, but I was enamoured with this game, without question.
Why is it your favourite?
How many reasons can I cite? It made me feel like a kid again; it made me relive the feelings I had when I first played Chrono Trigger, which was a life changing game for me; it reminded me just how much I used to, and clearly still, love turn based combat; it gave me all the things I love from BioWare games solidifying Larian as a new favourite developer; it is Queer and fabulous; it’s funny; it’s emotionally satisfying with characters your can’t help but love; there are almost endless ways to approach every situation and the sheer number of angles that Larian accounted for is staggering; it’s very satisfying to talk your way out of a fight; it’s very satisfying to absolutely own a fight through careful strategy; completing tactician mode which nearly broke me when I made a very stupid decision based on a silly assumption about the final battle and stubbornly refused to go back to a prior save to better prepare myself and instead won by the skin of my teeth; completing honour mode which went a lot smoother than my tactician run because I wasn’t playing the Durge on an evil run and because I was very, very careful.
Least Favourite Game You Played This Year:
Scars Above.
I changed the category title because “shite” felt very loaded, especially when the previous category was “favourite”. None of the games I played were “shite” even if I didn’t enjoy them.
Why it wasn’t your favourite?
It’s not a terrible game, but it is a lacklustre one with drab and generic Unreal 4 visuals lacking real stylistic direction or punch, disappointing combat mechanics with uninspired approach that relies on colour coded weak points that feel very dated, a difficultly scale that ranges from way too easy to still too easy but tedious due to bullet-sponge enemies, a lack of complexity at higher difficulty levels, poor enemy AI, a lack of enjoyable boss fights with novel fighters mechanics, audio de-sync issues especially during cutscenes, a very generic and predictable story, and achievements so easy to earn that it’s hard not to wonder if the game’s devs were hoping to entice that segment of Achievement hunters that look for guaranteed Platinums. That said, I think the devs show promise and I’m not opposed to checking out their next project.
Most Played Game:
Can you guess? Yup, it’s BG3 again! 450 hours on Steam and over 100 hours on PS5, and four play-throughs with a fifth on the go.
Why did you play it so much?
I couldn’t get enough. I put over 130 hours into my first play-through and I couldn’t wait to devour the game all over again, and again, and again with the game only getting better with each play-through. I discovered something new each time I played and I can’t get over the depth of everything from character builds, to combat strategy to dialogue choices. Sure, some of that can be attributed to DnD 5e but Larian did some truly magical things to capture the feeling of a TTRPG complete with a creative DM, and I was feeling it.
Favourite Soundtrack From a Game You Played:
If I include soundtracks from anything I played in 2023, I have to pick Citizen Sleeper. Both that and In Other Waters have solidified Amos Roddy as one of my new favourite game soundtrack composers.
If I’m picking something released in 2023, I have to pick Goodbye Volcano High which just edges BG3 out for the win (I’m sorry Borislav, I still love your songs!)
Why do you like it?
The Citizen Sleeper soundtrack perfectly captures the emptiness of deep space, the cramped industrial corners, alleys and spires of a space station and the spore-filled ethereal space of the mycelial network. Every note encapsulates the themes and atmosphere of one of my absolute favourite games that I played this year.
Goodbye Volcano High has simply been on constant rotation on my phone and I can’t get enough of Dabu’s compositions with Lachlan Watson and Brigette Naggar on vocals.
