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Animal Well is also my game of the year.
No other game was more interesting and exciting when you found something new. Or solved a puzzle.
While on the surface it’s a simple Metroid style game, once you start noticing things it becomes so intriguing. I have a document on my iPad full of handwritten notes and maps. It felt so novel to return to a feeling of the late 80s where paper maps and notes were king.
While there were a lot of great games last year, I put so much more brainpower into Animal Well, and it felt so good to do so.
The moment you stop having a sub for something like FF14 (which has no in your face upsell garbage in-game), you turn in to something like LotR: Online (which when I played that briefly was FILLED with windows trying to get you to buy gold or other nonsense).
You pay a sub so the servers stay online. So the writers/coders/management get paid. In the case of FF14, so the game can continue being great.
For FFXIV, specifically, if you are looking to add some friends I’d say start by hanging out one of the three starting cities (Gridania, Limsa, Ul’Dah) near the Aetherytes. Often people are just hanging and chatting some there. Limsa, on my server at least, seems to just be filled with people all the time hanging out. And you may even see some open calls for people to join Free Companies (Guilds). Those people are actively looking for new blood, so you could start up a discussion with them and see if their group is something you’d like to join. By doing so you may be able to get several friends pretty quick that way. Just remember that you owe nothing to those folks, and if the free company vibe doesn’t feel right once you get in, then bounce.
But commenting on someone’s look is fine, too! People work hard to collect or craft certain pieces of gear and dye them to make their character the way they want so if you notice something cool chances are they will be happy to talk about it.
There was one time last year during a Live Letter (this is a live streamed event the producers of the game do a few times a year) I went to Limsa and said to anyone who could hear it that I’d be “over by [a specific bench] to discuss the Live Letter” and lots of people I didn’t know gathered around and we all had a fun chat about the event as it streamed.
Or even if you have questions, say them out loud in a crowded space and chances are someone will help. FF14 is notorious for people NOT being trash, so most often you’ll find helpers before finding jerks.
And I promise that you can’t out-weirdo the weirdos that run around pretty much any game, so try to not worry about that.
It seems like to me some of their games simply just need another two months in the oven.
There were lots of little bugs in Star Wars Outlaws, but I found that game to be really fun, and largely pretty solid. But then they dropped updates a month out or so that fixed a lot of those little bugs. I wonder if they had just had that extra month to polish it up if it’d have gotten slammed as hard. People may still have wanted different things storywise or whatever, but on a technical level just one extra month could have helped.
I happen to have a friend who works at Firaxis and worked on Midnight Suns. I am really happy for him/the team that game came out as well as it did.
The overworld running could certainly be better, but overall that game is super good. I really like the turn from Xcom of a somewhat fake 97% to hit (where your character right next to an alien will still miss) to simply having everything hit but it’s restricted by the skills you have at hand in that moment. I’d be more excited about a Midnight Suns 2 than Civ VII, honestly.
If the 100 hours is all good content, then great!
But if a lot of that is padding, then not great.
I think I hit hour 37 or so of Metaphor today - I’ve been absolutely devouring it this week. And none of those hours have felt bad. I fully expect to get up towards 100 hours in this game (since I have 120 hours in Persona 5 Royal), but I also am pretty confident there’s not going to be much bullshit along the way. And I’m down for that.
This game got me good. The atmosphere and way it drips out puzzle after puzzle is so rewarding. I drew maps. I wrote down a litany of notes on my iPad to keep track of. I tried to solve everything I could on my own until I just couldn’t any more. It felt like playing games as a kid where you had to have paper handy and wrote down passcodes.
Pouring over every inch of the map was so fun, and while I do think there will be copy cats to this game pop up in the next year, I don’t think anyone will be able to capture the magic of this again. It’s like its own singular entity that no one else has ever done. Not in this way.
For that, it’s my game of the year. Astro Bot is my second, since it’s a technically near perfect game. But it’s also simply peak platformer. Animal Well is novel. It’s just built different.
Astro Bot (PS5)
Since my personal GOTY is already taken (Animal Well), let’s just add a lot of peoples’ here — it’s also my second favorite game of the year.
Do you like 3D platforming? Why not try the best platformer since Mario Odyssey‽ Help save your friend bots with a dozen or so hours of the purest platforming fun in…a long time, honestly. People have really hyped this game, and they really aren’t wrong. It’s pure fun the entire time. Everything is beautiful and interesting. No notes, really. Good job Team Asobi.
I have this feeling that once it starts going on more sales and more people play it the general consensus will be that’s it’s a pretty solid game. I also imagine like a lot of these games there will be a patch in the next month that fixes a litany of issues.
You’re right it’s kind of interesting that the factions don’t really add a lot of meaningful gameplay mechanics, but oh well. At first I was like, “I’m not working with the Pykes AT ALL because I know what happens in your spice mines.” But you end up just being friends with all of them as needed (to get their rewards).
Just having this big coat of Star Wars paint over this otherwise fairly standard action/shooter/open world game really does make it more fun, though. I still have a bit to go in the story, but I’m just basting around cleaning up side quests right now because it’s fun to do.
A few years ago I think I’d agree, but I feel like at this point it’s a super lazy naming scheme, to be honest.
Don’t have a good name? Just slap “-fall” on the end of some noun.