Also early in the year, I picked up Subnautica on Xbox. At the end of the day, it's just a really compelling survival game. It's immediately novel, in that you're underwater, which is a good twist on the typical survival stuff. But what really makes this game stand out is that it's all hand-crafted (no procedural generation here), and it actually has an interesting story thread to follow (while still allowing you to just explore and build a cool base). Some neat twists and surprises await in the deeps.

Subnautica reached final release on Xbox and achievements are now enabled, so I just started another playthrough. The surprises won't be surprises anymore but the game is still a blast. I love how scanning stuff in the world gives you more information about those things while also giving your clues to the story. Everything is so consistent. I also love how the tech tree generally opens up new areas of the game in such a natural way. I also love how a lot fo the creatures in the game seem dangerous at first (probably because they are so alien) but as you learn more about them and how to avoid/deal them they just become a normal part of the world. This is a survival game done right.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/646010/Golem/

Not what I expected.

I gotta say, Highwire really needs to improve their PR and outreach. Especially when there is a game with the same name already released. How are people going to know about it if they don't advertise or update?

I had a lot of fun playing Forza Horizon 4. This is the closest thing we have to a modern Burnout (I guess if you ignore Burnout Paradise Remastered, which hit this year), in that it's just a great driving game that doesn't take itself seriously and focuses on fun and silliness in a way that most driving games don't anymore. The world is your playground, and it's a good one.

We need to play that again soon. Korny is not in charge of the race settings this time. ;) I challenge anyone to come up with a 100PI car that can hang with my P50.

I picked up a PSVR this year. I had a lot of fun in Skyrim VR (that world is ugly as shit up close, but VR adds a whole new amazing feeling to being in that world). Dirt Rally in VR is really something special. It's already the the best feeling racing game in the last five years, and being in VR only makes it better (although, be warned, this one made me feel ill the first few runs until I acclimated). Moss is a neat VR puzzle game, where you control a mouse with a sword. Simplistic combat and neat puzzles, but the art style is gorgeous, and the sense of scale is really something to see. Astrobot Rescue Mission is probably the best real game in VR. It's basically Super Mario 64 in VR, and it really works. The premise of the game is that you control an Astrobot through various levels, and your goal is to find all his friends hidden throughout. The platforming is great thanks to the terrific character control, so the game just feels good on a fundamental level. The real magic is the way VR is utilized. Lots of Astrobots are just out in the open at the end of good platforming sections, but many of them are cleverly hidden along the way, and they really require you to use VR movement to peak around corners and behind things to find them all.

XBox VR needs to come out ASAP. I want Dirt Rally in VR.

God of War is my overall game of the year, I think. This game has it all, and is as close to a perfect video game as I have ever played. It's gorgeous. The story is compelling. The combat is the best I've ever experienced. It's deep and satisfying. Like Horizon: Zero Dawn last year, this game set out to make a AAA open world game with all the extraneous bullshit stripped out of it, and it succeeds in a huge way. The only activity I can think of in the entire game that feels disappointingly tacked on is the hidden Ravens, and even those are sort of compelling in their own way. This game is a masterpiece, and I mean than genuinely. It has the best moment of the year: part of the way through the game, after using the new axe for hours and hours and hours, Kratos goes home and picks up his old Blades of Chaos. It's a dramatic moment, filled with tension, and even not having played the previous God of War games, that moment was near pitch perfect, and the way it changes that game and adds variety and strategy to the rest of the game is just incredible and so well done. I have my issues with the story, but it was compelling all the way through, and the issues are relatively minor. If you have a PS4, play this game.

I'm glad to hear that you got so much out of it, despite being new to the series. That means there's more to it than just a nostalgia trip. I loved it, too, but I've played almost all of the God of War games, and the series has been with me for most of my adult life. Kratos is as familiar to me as any Disney character. So of course I was going to like it as long as they didn't totally screw it up (and they REALLY didn't). What's interesting to me is how the gameplay seems fundamentally different from its predecessors in several ways (like the over-the-shoulder camera, an axe as main weapon rather than swinging blades, etc.), and yet felt completely right to me, from the beginning. I guess it's because a lot of the way you go about things is still the same. Lots of button combo moves, based on the same light/heavy attack system as always, and grabbing/bashing/throwing enemies as a way of changing the battlefield dynamics. They done very good on this one.

I attended my first bungie.org LAN, and I can't wait for the next one. I truly thank those of you that were there--it was the best weekend I had this year. Meeting some of the folks from here was an amazing experience, and an important one. I feel like I know many of you pretty well through our time playing Destiny, and through our posts here on the forum, but meeting in person provides a new perspective and does a lot to provide context and tone to posts here in a way that I didn't expect. Let's do it again soon!

It was really cool to meet you, and everyone else. I'm still willing to host something at my place, maybe next summer. I've learned from the last couple of meetups that these things have gone down in scale a bit as far as the number of concurrent consoles, so I'm a little more confident about the electrical system holding up now.

I guess I should mention a couple myself:

Deep Rock Galactic

I know this one's been mentioned here before, but I'll keep repping it forever because DRG really is one of the best co-op games I've ever experienced, and it keeps getting better with frequent content updates. The short summary is that up to 4 players descend into a procedurally-generated and totally destructible underground cave system. Your objectives vary. You might be gathering minerals, hunting aliens, or repairing machinery. There are 4 very different classes of dwarf to play as, each with their own unique weapon sets, team support equipment, and special traversal methods. You explore the mission space, do whatever you need to do, and try to get out. It's still in early access so it's cheap.

No Man's Sky

I only got this one recently, after it finally went on sale for Black Friday. I KINDA heard a little about it back when it first came out and was really not very well received, but I wasn't paying super close attention then because it wasn't actually available on XBox. Later on after the NEXT update came out, and it became available on XBOX, I started to hear about how much better it had become. I was hearing a lot of things like this:

So I looked into it a little bit and it seemed like my kind of thing. Just a relaxed RPG that you can play slowly and see some cool stuff. Then cheapLEY showed it to me at the KC LAN and I was pretty much sold. Once it went on sale, I went for it, and I don't regret it at all. I will admit that there's occasionally moments where it still feels like a pre-release game. For example, this moment when I fall out of my own freighter, apparently as a result of Dame's and mine having spawned in the same place (which isn't supposed to be possible):

https://xboxdvr.com/gamer/stabbim/video/66172543

https://xboxdvr.com/gamer/stabbim/video/66172542

But even so, the actual experience of looking up from a planet's surface and seeing another planet, then jumping into my ship and flying to that other planet, and landing on it, all without any loading screen or pause, continues to feel amazing. It's not going to be for everyone, you spend a lot of time just looking for things, or mining, or walking. But for a certain set of people, it might be what you've been looking for. Also, thanks to Dame117 for playing so much co-op with me and giving me pointers that I wouldn't have picked up otherwise. I just maxed out my backpack's main inventory thanks to you.

Forza Horizon 4

cheapLEY's right about this one. It's the best game of its type that I know of. It's goofy arcade fun rather than the more sim-like Forza Motorsport approach, but it still has that special Forza ability to communicate the weight and feel of each individual car that makes them all feel special and interesting. And thankfully, as the Horizon series has progressed, they've managed to mostly ditch the overly "bro" presentation of the first one.

Forza Motorsport 7's December update

This isn't technically a new game, but if you have a wheel and pedal set, it might as well be. Forza Motorsport 7's December update completely re-did the force feedback system for wheel users, and it's a BIG deal if you're in that category. I've been saying ever since I got a wheel that Forza was actually better on a controller than it is on a wheel, because they did the force feedback systems on the controllers very well, and not so much on the wheel. The result was that I always felt like a better driver on a controller, just because I could feel what the tires were doing better. On a wheel, I'd often fail to catch a slide that I would have corrected if I'd been using a controller, because I just wasn't getting the feedback to warn me that the rear end was losing grip. However, since this latest update, things have changed dramatically. Right now, I feel as fast using my wheel as I ever have on a controller. I'm finally able to really attack things the way I used to, and it feels great.

BTW, if you're wondering why I kept the wheel, the answer is that there are more driving games than just Forza. Dirt Rally has kind of the opposite problem as Forza used to IMO - frustrating on a controller, but extremely good on a wheel. That's the game I really bought a wheel for.

So, I've decided I'm taking a week off from Destiny, I think. Not because I hate it, but because I love it. I had to fight the urge to fire it up tonight.

It seems like a good time to take a week off. I'm at 650 on my Hunter, so I'm no longer in danger of being "behind." Niobe Labs isn't until the 8th, so there's presumably nothing new next week.

Destiny is so good and fun right now that it's preventing me from playing other things I want to play, such as . . .

Divinity Original Sin II.

I bought this the other night. I loved the first game, despite never finishing it. This sequel seems like more of the same, but better (at least after the five or so hours I've put into it). Unlike the first game, which had a pair of customizable blank slate main characters, this one allows you to choose to play as one of the main party members right out of the gate. Each has a unique back story and questline to follow, which is a great addition. The combat is better than ever, with a strong mix of classic RPG stats and rules, and a very tactical feel (elemental and environmental awareness is critical).

I also desperately still need to finish Red Dead Redemption II, which is what I'm playing tonight.

Seriously, this game is good, if not for everybody. If you decide to check this out, I have some strong advice to help avoid burnout--follow the main story for a good while before you explore too much. I spent way too much time in the first few chapters just dicking around and getting lost in the massive, gorgeous open world. This game is great for that! The problem is, I spent so long doing that, and there's still a 40 hour game behind it, one that will still require tons of traversing that open world and more opportunities for getting lost in it. If you front load that exploration, the game can feel like a slog afterwards. So spread it out!

If you have the patience, this is truly one of the best experiences in gaming, ever. The story it tells is truly masterful, which is not something I say lightly, and not something I would ever expect out of Rockstar. But they have created a great cast of very real feeling characters, and Arthur's story is a truly affecting one. The game is slow and deliberate, and while I understand why that might not be appealing, it is absolutely paid off by the end, and I can't see the story of the game working without that pace.

And just an FYI Celeste one of the year's best platformers will be free for Xbox LIVE Gold members in January. I bought it on Switch, but that travesty of a thing they decided was good enough for a d-pad made it damn near unplayable. I always meant to give it another shot, maybe even buy it on another console, but next month I can finally get back to it.

Cuphead

Came out in 2018 for the Mac. Excellent game, although it suffers a bit from Super Meat Boy syndrome, in the sense that the challenges are bite sized so you are never forced to play well for more than 2 minutes at a time (the exception being a section of the last island, which is where it actually becomes great). Run and Guns like Metal Slug were about getting good and playing your best for 30+ minutes at a time. Jettisoning a Relic from a bygone era, or symptom of our cultural gaming ADD?

Leisure Suit Larry Wet Dreams Don't Dry

Stupid title aside, the game is actually pretty good and up there with Love for Sail. The jabs it takes at the modern digital world of sex and dating aren't really that original, but it's done with its own style that will definitely amuse you if you ever liked this series.

Unavowed

Wrote about it here.

GRIS:

Lol kj. It's pretentious garbage.

Red Strings Club

Aside from some bullshit mini games, it's a rad cyberpunk tale that deals with human sexuality in a surprisingly mature manner, both for a video game and for a piece of dystopia.

Life is Strange 2

It's hard to top Chloe and Max, but so far so good.

Megaman 11

Looks better in motion than the screenshots would suggest. The two 'gears' are essentially redundant, but the game provides a nice level of difficulty if you are a returning fan of the series. It's not easy. If you've never played a magaman game before, just go home and skip it - you have no chance.

Unforeseen Incidents

The art style is hit or miss, but it's a pretty good adventure game in terms of story and mechanics.

Just picked up ACO (on sale for $40 CAD on the Xbox store) and I’m absolutely loving it so far.

It’s a mechanical sequel to AC Origins, so if you played much of that game, you’ll have a basic idea of what to expect.

It starts off much better than Origins did (I thought Origins was downright BAD for the first ~6 hours, but then it begins to find its stride). So far, Odyssey has a better narrative thrust to kick things off, some interesting mechanical layers added on, and the world is jaw-droppingly gorgeous. Oh, and ship combat is back in a big way, including the “board the enemy ship” stuff from AC Black Flag, and it’s just as addictive now as it was then.

Also like Origins, AC Odyssey has a quest-chaining system unlike anything I’ve seen in any other open-world game, and the loop it creates is super compelling. I find the quest systems in most games usually work like a menu at a restaurant. I’ll look at my quest log, pick an activity that I’m in the mood for, complete it, then go back to the log and pick another, and so on. But with these newest AC games, I’m constantly stumbling across new quest items mid-mission, and I often allow myself to be diverted by them (rather than stating focused on the objective I’d started with). So I’ll often pick a quest item to get going, and then 3 hours later I’ll end up completing that mission after encountering and completing a dozen other objectives, all without ever leaving or aborting the mission I first started with. It makes it a difficult game to put down, because there are so few clear-cut breaks in the action.

I’ve heard that the game suffers from a lot of bloat and redundancy in its middle hours, so I’ll see how it goes. But so far, I’m having a great time with it.