2021 is almost over so here's a list of games i played this year and some quick reviews for each one
The Zodiac Trial: 8/10
(Playtime: 30hrs, finished story and some of the extras)
This game is very cool because my friend made it and after this he hired me to help on his next one (see my post higher up in this page). It's also just a genuinely good death game visual novel; sure it's not got the budget of Danganronpa or Zero Escape, and sure it's got a few objective issues here and there, but you play VNs for the writing and this VN has some quality fucking writing. I swear I'm not biased because I know the author, it's actually just really good. I won't go into details because spoilers, but if you are really into death game visual novels you really should play this. And I would love you forever if you did, which I'm sure is a great bonus.
Lair of the Clockwork God: 8.5/10
(Playtime: 8hrs, finished story, did not go back for achievements)
This game is just a massive pisstake in the best kind of way. Maybe it's not your humor and you will hate it, but if it's your humor it's gonna be really funny from start to finish. Very competent puzzles and platform sections snuck into what is essentially a comedy game, too. I had a great time. Honestly for what the game is trying to be there aren't many flaws to even speak of, only reason it doesn't get a 9+ is that it's not trying to be, if that makes any sense.
The Magic Circle: 7.5/10
(Playtime: 3hrs30, finished story, did not go back for achievements)
Somehow this game manages to fulfill the power fantasy of puzzle gamers, which are generally not known for having power fantasies. With the amount of things that you
can do in this game it's a bit of a letdown though, it feels like you could do way more stuff with these mechanics and the game doesn't really explore as much as it could. But it works, it's got a neat coherent narrative, and it makes you go "lmao holy shit I can just do this?" every 10 minutes in a rather unique way. Good videogame.
New Pokémon Snap: 9.5/10
(Playtime: cant be bothered grabbing my switch to check exact number, >200hrs)
This game is just so cool. Every little discovery you make feels great, and this game is packed with basically endless discoveries. I got full diamonds (>4000 points) on the dex and peaked at 9th highest scoring photodex in the world at some point in the weeks after release, I absolutely burned through this. High score hunting didn't keep my attention for too long once I felt like I had "good enough" pictures for all of them, but that's still hundreds of hours of gameplay, so yea, definitely worth it. If the 7 year old pokemon fan inside you is still alive you need to play this game.
Paradise Killer: 9.5/10
(Playtime: 48hrs, finished story, 100%ed, then did a bit of glitch hunting + speedrunning)
Holy hell this game!! Jesus christ the vibes on this are UNREAL it's all demons and blood sacrifice and elder gods and extremely dark content BUT the colors are popping and the characters treat it with such normalcy that you eventually just go along with it too, I like games that give me something new and jfc Paradise Killer is nothing but new. Incredibly unconventional way to set up a murder mystery videogame too, which to be fair is likely to get me to love anything to bits (see also: Return of the Obra Dinn being my #1 favorite game of all time). It's funny, it's pretty, it's interesting, it's challenging, it's coherent from start to finish, it's super fucking original, complete banger
Sensorium: 7/10
(Playtime: 3hrs45, finished story, did not go back for achievements)
I wanted an okay puzzle game with some original ideas, I got an okay puzzle game with original ideas. Some of them work well, some of them less so, but overall it manages to be challenging and entertaining enough the whole way. Definitely don't play this if you've not gone through the Portals, The Talos Principle, The Witness, all the big hitters - but if you have, and you liked them, this will have something for you
Monster Train: 8.5/10
(Playtime: 169hrs, got loads of covenant 25 victories which I suppose counts as 'finishing story', but haven't quite blinged out my entire collection)
Already posted about this game
here.
The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles: 9/10
(Playtime: 71hrs, finished story, did not go back for achievements)
Two games for the price of one, and they're the best Ace Attorney games since the original trilogy, and imo they even have an argument for being better than the original trilogy. Which is high fucking praise if you're unfamiliar with the series. You don't need to know anything about AA to jump into it either, though if you do they made sure to sneak in lots of nods and jokes and little things that just make me love the game even more. The only issue I have with GAA is that it takes quite a lot of setup before it starts delivering, but when it starts delivering this game goes -hard-. Probably places somewhere in the top 20 for my favorite games ever. As with the other plot-based games I'm not really going to talk details to avoid spoilers, but, like, you should play these games if you have even just a passing interest in the genre
Persona 4 Golden: 8.5/10
(Playtime: 83hrs, finished 80% of the story)
As someone who's maybe not exactly a JRPG enthusiast, but at the very least a fan of them, I felt dirty not ever having played any Persona games (and I blame the garbage consoles they're on for it), so I figured now that this got a Steam port I probably should give it a shot. The game really fucking loses me when it goes "ok now select this very specific sequence of dialogue options to go towards the True Ending." and then you clear the dungeon and it goes "haha that wasn't even the true ending. now select this other very specific sequence of dialogue options if you actually want the true ending lmao." and then it does this again like two more times. I completely lost my patience. But then I give it an 8.5 anyway despite not having bothered to see the true ending which says a lot about the quality of what I
did see. I'm completely sold on the game's entire thing, the gameplay is fantastic all around, and well I'm too old to get excited about the horny teenager segments but I don't mind them too much. Will probably find a (totally legal) way to play Persona 5 as soon as I have the free time, I am sold on the franchise for sure.
428 Shibuya Scramble: 8/10
(Playtime: 37hrs, finished story and some of the extras)
This game kicks large amounts of ass. The live action style is definitely not something I'm used to but I definitely dig it. The twists and turns are fun, I think the ending is mighty amounts of stupid and it unfortunately sours the game a bit for me but as a whole I'm absolutely happy to have given this a shot, though I'll concede at some point the ways to make progress became obscure enough that I had to find a walkthrough. I don't mind doing that if I have to, but if you are the kind of player who wants to figure out everything on their own maybe this game can get frustrating on occasion. Even still, the positives largely outweigh the negatives, great game, quite possibly the coolest in this list
edit: just remembered the game is 50€ when it's not on sale. it's not worth 50€, like at all. it found it on sale for 7.50€ and i bought it then, and that was totally fine and worth it, but yea don't pay full price
Superliminal: 5.5/10
(Playtime: 3hrs, finished story, did not bother with secrets)
Biggest disappointment of the year by far for me, this game is just not a challenge in terms of puzzles. The puzzle parts are EXTREMELY watered down, simplistic, and downright easy. I tried to read all the positive reviews to see what the fuss was all about, and it seems like the Superliminal enjoyers are split in two camps: people who crave anything that remotely carries any "acid trip" feel to it and will eat up any random thing you put in front of them as long as they can look at it and go "haha that's wild", and obstinate completionists who have a great time spelunking through every corner to find the abundant number of secrets present. My problem is that neither of those things are puzzles. The game itself even directly gives up on being a puzzle game towards the end and turns into more of a walking simulator where you occasionally have to guess what's going on with whatever weird room you find yourself in. I acknowledge there's something enjoyable in this for some people, but my god is it not for me, despite being marketed as totally for me. If you are anything like me in terms of taste for puzzles, play Antichamber instead of this, the quality of puzzles is way way higher. Or even random super indie shit like Parallax which costs 1/5th of Superliminal and was presumably made with 1/1000th of the budget, the puzzle quality is still way higher
The Divine Deception: I was paid to work on this/10
(Playtime: I was paid to work on this)
I was paid to work on this. Please play it. It's great. At least try the demo and then play the rest if you like it. Pretty please?