hugthebed2

That's a really good question.. the most objective measure would probably be the state of the game itself, which would be briefly after the Pyromania update I'd say. Casual matchmaking worked like a charm, comp matchmaking was still kind of alive, and I have to give it to Valve that, although it sucks they abandoned TF2 after pyromania, at least they left it in the most balanced state it has ever been in, mostly because of the flamethrower and airblast overhauls. 
 
Subjectively speaking I have several ''eras'' of TF2 that I look back on very fondly, mostly because of the people I played with more than the balance of the game itself. The #1 without a doubt that way was very early on, when I played TF2 with a bunch of high school friends. We'd have LAN parties and play all night surviving on kitkats and pizza, it's the super stereotypical 'good old days' but it sure as hell was the best. I'm still in contact with most of them and after everyone dispersed to college we still occasionally played TF2 together. By now, only one of them still sometimes plays TF2, but we still play other things together, so considering we're all boring 30 year olds now I really lucked out with that gang.
 
I also played 6v6 for a while which I still highly recommend everyone to try, it's basically an entirely different game from pub TF2 but it's just so fun. I've played on several teams but the team I played on the longest really was a gang of guys I all liked, and it was a blast to play with them. I have this very vivid memory of playing scout vs soldier MGE on granary last while all hanging in mumble and someone from the team strutting on his guitar, it was the absolute best. The team eventually hit some drama and team members got replaced, and not much later I stopped because I had to focus on university.
 
Then there was when mann vs machine dropped, and cmndr hosted a server on which we could all do the missions together. That was short lived but it was a really cool way to experience that gamemode, especially considering how toxic the MvM community is if you've ever tried to play a game with randoms. So that definitely deserves a shoutout.
 
To round it out, as cheesy as it is, current TF2 on Uncletopia is just... kind of everything I want from the game? I like the ruleset, there's skilled players, and from where I live there are like 20 servers that I can access. It's a shame the servers were born out of the bot crisis, and I haven't really connected much with many of the players on Uncletopia, but I can say for sure that if it wasn't for those servers I would have dropped TF2 by now.

Solly just has really good secondaries, and the Buff Banner can't really keep up. The other banners, shotty and gunboats are all items I equip when I am playing 'optimally', but the buff banner always feels like I'm gimping myself. It should have some kind of passive like the other two banners.
 
I definitely have a bunch of controversial balance ideas, the biggest one being that I think airblast shouldn't be able to push players around at all whilst projectile reflects can stay as they are. Soldier needs a proper heel and there is a lot of interesting counterplay against a reflect happy Pyro, but getting your entire Uber stuffed, or being pushed off a cliff, or getting stuck in a corner by someone holding mouse 2 with the most generous hitbox in the game is not good gameplay.
 
For buffs, there's just such a massive inventory of useless items in TF2 it's kind of hard to start on it. The question is also whether you want them to be really viable or just fun to play; for example the Force a Nature can be fun to use, but if you were to try and turn it into a true sidegrade to the Scattergun, it would have to become obnoxious as hell. On the other hand you have stuff like the Sun on a Stick that just serve no purpose whatsoever.
 
I think the weapons most in dire need for a buff are all the Pyromania pyro unlocks, which just all either fell barely short (Dragon's Fury being able to be reflected and missing an airblast makes you killbind) or just turned out kind of garbage (all the other ones). It's depressing the second banana was actually the most truly viable unlock with TF2's last real update.
 
For a rework it would probably be Spy in its entirety, I really dislike how the 'meta' Spy has turned into Kunai and Dead Ringer abuse. It's quite funny how that combo can give Spy the highest effective health and movement speed in the game and still leave him the weakest class. In my opinion the big issue with Spy is that even if you get a reasonable amount of kills with him, you're still not applying as much pressure as a Soldier/Demo/Heavy shooting down a hallway. Getting kills doesn't mean much in TF2 if you're not gaining ground with it so in 12v12, an invisible spy is just a player down. If Spy was able to provide pressure like the other classes and then go invisible to try to make a play on a flank, he'd feel a lot less absent
 
 
Maybe like 20 or so, I played that kind of maps more when I played TF2 with a group of friends. I actually have some footage recorded of us having a few nostalgic games of prophunt and mario_kart from 2 years ago that I never edited because I forgot editing costs time and effort
 
 
-Brass Beast: should be more extreme, make it unable to move at all and make it deal even more damage. I also rarely play heavy
-Classic: is an awful sniper rifle which means it's still pretty dang good, being able to instagib someone from anywhere
-Thermal Thruster: it's pretty clear valve was scared of bombing pyros because they made this way too restrictive, I wish this was just better because it is quite fun.

According to Steam, I purchased the Orange Box on April 1st, 2009, meaning I played TF2 for approximately an hour every single day since then. There's definitely been times in the past where I played it waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much to get to that number; nowadays I don't have time to game that often anymore and it's just my comfort game.
 
Anyways I thought that was a good reason to start a subspuf thread, see how y'all are doing, and maybe talk about TF2 a bit

It really is a far cry from the days of being taught in school "be careful what you post online - it's there forever!".
 
There's many solo amateur websites over the years I've seen that just don't exist anymore, and their pages were not put on the web archive. There's also so many youtube videos I adored lost to channels being deleted or intentional privating. I should really youtube-dl more than I do.

One of my favorite things to think about with stuff like gambling (unboxing crates or IRL) is that both players and the corporations will only share the big wins, thus making it seem like people win often.
 
But like, unusuals in TF2 are 1 in 150 (wiki said 1/100 for many many years). Strange knifes in CS:GO are 1 in 1500. CS2 and TF2 don't even announce to people what you unbox unless you're in a server doing the unboxxing (though valve did take the "advertise big wins" with the golden frying pan).
 
I kinda wish it was a rule for forums and stuff to say how many attempts it took to get their epic heirlooms or australium drop to help dissuade people from wasting money. But as is, people will unbox an unusual and go OMG MY FIRST UNUSUAL and post a phone picture of their screen. Which is fine, it's exciting being lucky! But many times people will reveal "yeah I'd unbox once per paycheck".

I think I've mentioned once that I accidentally complimented a novice/indie music maker back in my CS:GO days when I complimented the person's music on their Tumblr page (they were like "i made that ty so much").
 
But another similar story is that when they first added the emotes to steam, I saw and joined the "emote art" steam group where people were making art with emotes on their profiles. I saw this thread (https://steamcommunity.com/groups/emoticonart/discussions/0/666827974867330650/) and I had to get those guncraft emotes for myself.
 
I've had this Mario on my page since the week it was posted, 2013

 
I know a lotta people here were victim to my "hey can I send u a Link" and then I'd post an Emote-Link (from legend of zelda) afterward.
 
Anyways, come 2019 I find a thread of some person making a bunch of fixes for L4D2 maps using pretty advanced techniques with the hope that one day Valve will add them to the game (https://steamcommunity.com/app/550/discussions/1/1651043320659915818/?tscn=1598588468). 2020 hits and The Last Stand update gets announced for L4D2 and I was like "wow those map changes listed on the announcement video... I bet I know who did those!"
So I added him after making a post.

 
It was then that he complimented my Mario ascii art on my profile... then we both realized that he had made that same pixel art 7 years earlier. A shame he didn't know I did L4D2 mapping stuff cuz I would've been on the community update team and had my name on the update page/in the game (and I would've been able to work on the update - damn!)...
 
At least I'm on that same community update team now, but even we must abide by Valve time. Most of the map-related bullet points on this update: https://steamcommunity.com/games/L4D2/announcements/detail/3646280012042428637?snr=2___ were done by me!!!

Hopefully we get a new community update, at some point.

I think I've mentioned once that I accidentally complimented a novice/indie music maker back in my CS:GO days when I complimented the person's music on their Tumblr page (they were like "i made that ty so much").
 
But another similar story is that when they first added the emotes to steam, I saw and joined the "emote art" steam group where people were making art with emotes on their profiles. I saw this thread (https://steamcommunity.com/groups/emoticonart/discussions/0/666827974867330650/) and I had to get those guncraft emotes for myself.
 
I've had this Mario on my page since the week it was posted, 2013

 
I know a lotta people here were victim to my "hey can I send u a Link" and then I'd post an Emote-Link (from legend of zelda) afterward.
 
Anyways, come 2019 I find a thread of some person making a bunch of fixes for L4D2 maps using pretty advanced techniques with the hope that one day Valve will add them to the game (https://steamcommunity.com/app/550/discussions/1/1651043320659915818/?tscn=1598588468). 2020 hits and The Last Stand update gets announced for L4D2 and I was like "wow those map changes listed on the announcement video... I bet I know who did those!"
So I added him after making a post.

 
It was then that he complimented my Mario ascii art on my profile... then we both realized that he had made that same pixel art 7 years earlier. A shame he didn't know I did L4D2 mapping stuff cuz I would've been on the community update team and had my name on the update page/in the game (and I would've been able to work on the update - damn!)...
 
At least I'm on that same community update team now, but even we must abide by Valve time. Most of the map-related bullet points on this update: https://steamcommunity.com/games/L4D2/announcements/detail/3646280012042428637?snr=2___ were done by me!!!

Hopefully we get a new community update, at some point.

I think I've mentioned once that I accidentally complimented a novice/indie music maker back in my CS:GO days when I complimented the person's music on their Tumblr page (they were like "i made that ty so much").
 
But another similar story is that when they first added the emotes to steam, I saw and joined the "emote art" steam group where people were making art with emotes on their profiles. I saw this thread (https://steamcommunity.com/groups/emoticonart/discussions/0/666827974867330650/) and I had to get those guncraft emotes for myself.
 
I've had this Mario on my page since the week it was posted, 2013

 
I know a lotta people here were victim to my "hey can I send u a Link" and then I'd post an Emote-Link (from legend of zelda) afterward.
 
Anyways, come 2019 I find a thread of some person making a bunch of fixes for L4D2 maps using pretty advanced techniques with the hope that one day Valve will add them to the game (https://steamcommunity.com/app/550/discussions/1/1651043320659915818/?tscn=1598588468). 2020 hits and The Last Stand update gets announced for L4D2 and I was like "wow those map changes listed on the announcement video... I bet I know who did those!"
So I added him after making a post.

 
It was then that he complimented my Mario ascii art on my profile... then we both realized that he had made that same pixel art 7 years earlier. A shame he didn't know I did L4D2 mapping stuff cuz I would've been on the community update team and had my name on the update page/in the game (and I would've been able to work on the update - damn!)...
 
At least I'm on that same community update team now, but even we must abide by Valve time. Most of the map-related bullet points on this update: https://steamcommunity.com/games/L4D2/announcements/detail/3646280012042428637?snr=2___ were done by me!!!

Hopefully we get a new community update, at some point.

I think I've mentioned once that I accidentally complimented a novice/indie music maker back in my CS:GO days when I complimented the person's music on their Tumblr page (they were like "i made that ty so much").
 
But another similar story is that when they first added the emotes to steam, I saw and joined the "emote art" steam group where people were making art with emotes on their profiles. I saw this thread (https://steamcommunity.com/groups/emoticonart/discussions/0/666827974867330650/) and I had to get those guncraft emotes for myself.
 
I've had this Mario on my page since the week it was posted, 2013

 
I know a lotta people here were victim to my "hey can I send u a Link" and then I'd post an Emote-Link (from legend of zelda) afterward.
 
Anyways, come 2019 I find a thread of some person making a bunch of fixes for L4D2 maps using pretty advanced techniques with the hope that one day Valve will add them to the game (https://steamcommunity.com/app/550/discussions/1/1651043320659915818/?tscn=1598588468). 2020 hits and The Last Stand update gets announced for L4D2 and I was like "wow those map changes listed on the announcement video... I bet I know who did those!"
So I added him after making a post.

 
It was then that he complimented my Mario ascii art on my profile... then we both realized that he had made that same pixel art 7 years earlier. A shame he didn't know I did L4D2 mapping stuff cuz I would've been on the community update team and had my name on the update page/in the game (and I would've been able to work on the update - damn!)...
 
At least I'm on that same community update team now, but even we must abide by Valve time. Most of the map-related bullet points on this update: https://steamcommunity.com/games/L4D2/announcements/detail/3646280012042428637?snr=2___ were done by me!!!

Hopefully we get a new community update, at some point.

I played a lotta games this year in part due to having a very high paying job for the first time in my life. Hope I can find another one lol.
 
In no particular order, games I remember playing and liking:
 
Remnant 2: Was amazing up until that last level. Earth is such a fucking slog, and the devs putting the unlock for a class (a popular class I really wanted to play) behind layers of obfuscation they later admitted the ONLY way to figure out was via data mining left a bad taste in my mouth. I've cooled down a bit but these two things mar an otherwise incredible experience, and whenever I play again I'll be using a save editor to unlock Archon because I'm not going through some dev trolling bullshit that requires at minimum two whole playthroughs to unlock even once you DO datamine that shit just to play the class I wanted to from the start of playthrough 1.
 
Battlebit: Very fun Battlefield-alike, I should really play more of it.
 
Warhammer 40k: Darktide: This technically came out December of last year but...eh. It wasn't really a game until October of this year. it still feels very limited and repetitive compared to Vermintide 2 (especially with Chaos Wastes in the mix) but the core gameplay loop is VERY strong. This is a game that is like a 6.5/10 now but could be better if they continue to improve, like all of Fatshark's games.
 
Baldur's Gate 3: Deserved all the hype. I am not in the slightest a fan of 5th Edition but this game is very good at taking the good and throwing away the bad. Gameplay-wise it's smoother than any CRPG ever made, it looks nice, and has enough changes form tabletop to make the game actually feel fun. Narratively, Resist path Dark Urge is one of the best stories I've played in gaming, especially with a certain romance. Remember: You can do this. Shadowheart believes in you.
 
The Finals: Easily the best new competitive FPS I've played in the past decade. Put in like 30 hours just in the open beta and it left me smacking my lips and scratching my arm for more in the month between then and actual release. 3v3v3 combat in fully destructible arenas never gets old. If they could figure out how to rebalance the game to keep it from becoming stagnant and do something about the cheaters, this could be an all-time legend of a game. As-is I fear it will be abandoned by a playerbase frustrated by rampant cheating (in ranked) and overtuned controller aim assist and dropped by the publisher.
 
Ghostwire: Tokyo: i think this game came out in 2021 but I got it from a Humble Bundle this year so eh. It's a middle of the road 7/10 game. Good enough but not good ENOUGH for me to finish it.
 
Hammerwatch II: A flawed but interesting sequel to the original Hammerwatch, which everybody and their grandmother was confused about and derided because it is not a sequel to the Roguelike spinoff Heroes of Hammerwatch, which is the game people...actually played. Hammerwatch is one of my favorite indie games of all time, very fond memories of it. Hammerwatch II is both more...and less. The open world concept is interesting, but leads to there just being a liiiitle too much walking in between each interesting thing. Probably could have stood to be a middle ground between Hammerwatch's extremely linear campaign and this, but I really appreciate the gumption in releasing a  2D isometric open world Gauntlet-alike in the year of our lord 2023.
 
Last Epoch: After the vast disappointment of Diablo 4 (which is all I will say about it here), this game was a breath of fresh air. Fun gameplay, looks nice for an indie ARPG, and tons of customization. it's all any game in this genre really needs. Big ups to the devs for releasing an unarmed build in an ARPG that doesn't suck cock. Any other time I've seen the "get these big bonuses if you have no weapon equipped" style fo ability in an ARPG it's been...suboptimal to say the least, but the Hand of Judgment fell upon my foes like the wrath of god and it felt GOOD.
 
Lethal Company: Extremely fun title I wish I had gotten to play more than one session of before it became impossible to assemble the crew again. Don't get all the hate. Yes it's popular, no that doesn't mean it's bad.
 
Lords of the Fallen: This game started off well and then fell off hard, but I have to give the devs credit for listening to players about what was annoying to them, and then listening to the counter-arguments of "hardcore" players who love the game as-is and finding a compromise that seems to work fro everybody. Moving all the annoying bullshit with extra-tenacious enemy mobs and such to New Game+ (where the hardcore players will be anyway) was a great choice. Enough changes like that to the good but flawed core gameplay loop and I might revisit this review next year.
 
Resident Evil 4 (Remake): RE4 is the one game in the franchise I have never been able to play. I couldn't buy my own games when I had a Gamecube or Playstation 2, and any time I tried to boot the fucker up on PC it had unplayable slowdowns apparent even from the first cutscene. RE4make follows the trend of taking an already amazing and beloved game (see: RE2, the de facto best of the series IMO) and making it look prettier and control less like ass, which is really all that was needed. I get the gripes about plot changes and "de-gonzofying" the game but...eh. It still has plenty of charm even without some of the goofiest bits. I loved playing this, with the actual only gripe I have being that Ada's voice actress SUCKS (and Wesker's is boring).
 
Starfield: My expectations were relatively low, but I expected it to be about as fun as Fallout 4. I.e. really good on a first playthrough but shows its flaws mostly on subsequent runs. Boy was I wrong. Bethesda has never released a more vapid and uninteresting game in terms of both narrative and gameplay. The nail in the coffin was the GOD DAMN LOADING SCREENS. So many, so close together, so LONG that I dropped the game fairly quickly.
 
Hogwarts Legacy: The last game I played on my old computer. It was fun enough, but my computer apparently couldn't handle the water physics around the lake where I saved at so any time I loaded it would just freeze lol. I didn't find it interesting enough to continue playing on my new computer, but it wasn't awful.
 
Warhammer 40k: Rogue Trader: I did not expect much of this game. Not because I don't like Owlcat's CRPGs (I backed both of their other games on Kickstarter because I love Pathfinder) but because I'm not a huge 40k fan. But I'm surrounded by them and when they picked it up and started raving about it, I got it too. Is it as smooth and polished as Baldur's Gate 3? Hell no. Do I somehow still like it better? Yeah, though that may be recency bias as I'm still in the middle of it. It just feels really good to play, I think in large part because of how many options you have in combat. Somehow with only 4 starting classes it manages to feel more customizable and interesting than anything 5e's 12(?) can manage. And the sheer melodrama in the writing *mwah*. Beautiful.
 
Alan Wake 2: I was not a huge fan of the original Alan Wake, but I do like Remedy's other games, in particular Control. Alan Wake 2 fixes a lot of my issues with Alan Wake 1, largely by limiting the amount of time you have to actually be exposed to Alan Wake. Frankly, Saga Anderson is an INFINITELY better protagonist than Alan Wake is, and I had a blast playing as her. I haven't quite finished the game as of this review; I just got the message I was entering the point of no return endgame when I was sideswiped by how much I got sucked into Rogue Trader, but it was a good game overall. Good but...not necessarily fun. The narrative bits are great, exploring and solving puzzle sin the usual survival horro gameplay loop also great, the combat...it's Alan Wake 1 again. And Alan Wake 1's combat sucked ass. I get that it's a survival horror, and they're supposed to be clunky and have bad combat but god dammit this game's fights are annoying. Thankfully mandatory ones are relatively few and far between and otherwise you can employ the standard survival horror strat of just boogieing out any time a monster shows up. But for all that, in terms of narrative and just VIBES this game is the best game on this list by a wide margin, really rivaled only by the aforementioned Resist Durge at its best moments.
 
I think that's everything. Top spot is a toss-up between BG3 and Rogue Trader, which I would not have expected going into this year. I am not a huge CRPG guy. Honorable mentions to Alan Wake 2 which had easily the highest highs of any game on this list (shoutouts to the obligatory Remedy musical section, Herald of Darkness was fire, almost as good as Take Control)...but that gameplay man and Resident Evil 4 which was awesome but as a remake of an already awesome game gets bumped down the list a bit.
 
Best multiplayer game goes to The Finals and it's not even close.

I kind of forgot one big part of this year in gaming for me and it was Final Fantasy 14 Online. Which I kind of started years ago but my friends dropped and then I spent on and off playing it but kinda got all my progress this last year. This is important because if I'm adding best girl and best boys (since Huff did it) they're all coming from this game. I'll split it up into expansions though I dunno how important it will be to really bother.
 
 
And then the best boy/girl mainly so I can just gush about some characters I like from the game:
 
 
Overall FFXIV is a weird game and I am not really in it for any of the hardcore MMO stuff like raiding, though I like levelling jobs and learning new roles and stuff. I don't really know if I would recommend it just for the story either because it takes a really long time to get to the interesting parts, but once you're there it's pretty cool. It's kind of just hitting a decent blend of everything to keep me on the hook, more or less.

new games i played/finished this year (in no particular order)
 
 
anyways 70% of my playtime this year was tf2 l4d2 smite and yugioh sooooo ya business as usual

new games i played/finished this year (in no particular order)
 
 
anyways 70% of my playtime this year was tf2 l4d2 smite and yugioh sooooo ya business as usual

This year is probably about right even though I really feel like I didn't play anything. Honestly I kinda want to make this years' resolution to be more active and try new things on the games front.

 
 
I also give an honorable mention to TF2 because the latter half of the year I fell back in love with the Huntsman and fucking hell that weapon is so much fun to use.

Here we go:
 

Shut up! (sick backflip) HA HA HA HA H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H- BITCH!
 
From the stuff I played (not released) in the year, in no particular order of goods and bads:
 
 
Backlog (AKA games I should be playing instead of cycling through the same 3):
 

Hey! STOP playing videogames. I’ve had enough of your STUPID videogames. Aren’t you a little O-O-OLD to be playing videogames-
 
This is mostly to piss Huff off because he hasn’t finished everything yet, but I also heard there were rumblings that there were “no good games this year”. Also another friend of mine said I needed to get this posted to keep old school internet forums alive. Little half-baked in some parts but I might add a lil to it.
https://www.backloggd.com/u/Silentology/
 
------
Honorable Mentions:
 
Top 10:
 
The Rest:
 
Backlog/Frontlog for 2024
 
 

Happy New Year subspuffers! I wish y'all a nice 2024

I came across a old copy of Battlestar Galactica (the new one) and watched the end of season 3.

In retrospect this show was pretty damned lame and embodied the "mystery box" style of storytelling even more than stuff like Lost.  The show absolutely relies on leading the audience along with mysterious mysteries which the writers obviously hadn't thought of.  But more annoyingly when some of their revelations caused obvious contradictions, rather than exploring what these revelations would actually mean, they just doubled down on their solutions.  One of the most obvious examples of this is
 
 
What's more annoying is that even when it is pointed out that some of their choices don't make sense, the creators are still doubling down on their choices.  The most glaring example of this comes with
 
 
I had to put most of this in spoilers since I've spoiled some of the biggest reveals in the show.  But honestly if the show were good it would survive being spoiled in this way.  You cannot watch the show again without being annoyed at how obviously forced later story moves were, and how little they make sense overall.  The show really drags them out too.  When they reveal four of the cylons at the end of season 3 they drag it on for several minutes before they finally say that they are cylons (though none of the characters are really clear on how they came to that conclusion.)  It's obviously designed to increase the hype of initial viewings since that particular reveal is so far out of left field that you probably guessed something else was going on.  But when you rewatch it it's just annoying; you know what's coming and there's nothing interesting about having it dragged out.  It's like watching a jumpscare heavy horror movie when you know where all the jumpscares are, but they take too long to get there while not doing anything interesting.
 
I don't mind shows being written as they go, or the writers changing their minds as they write the show.  Probably 95% of what happens in the third season of Twin Peaks was never even dreamed of during the first season, and a lot of it would have seemed contradictory to what they were doing back then.  But none of it actually contradicts the first season, because David Lynch takes his work seriously.  He doesn't view the show as a mystery box that he should be praised for crafting, where the point is to be amazed at the plot twists.  He views it more like a dream that he is having and is figuring out at the same time that the audience is.  Thus Twin Peaks is heightened on every rewatch, (same thing with his movies) while you really can only watch something like Battlestar Galactica once.

This video is a more accurate representation of Legacy of Kain than anything I could possibly say about it.
 
 

I have a confession to make:
 
I was Zecora the whole time.  Big Macintosh too.

Everyone needs an automobile, even those with many tails. This was the largest auto I could afford. Should I therefore be made the target of fun?

https://twitter.com/mollyyncy1/status/1732382047581446282/photo/1

I recently picked up a pretty little CRT for cheap. Thing's in great shape and had a good owner. So I took it upon myself to replay OOT. This was my 3rd time playing it, though my 1st time in about 15 years. You know that bell curve meme? Yeah, that's basically how I feel about the game. Throughout life you go from "OOT IS ONE OF THE GREATEST GAMES EVER!" to "OOT is overrated!" to "OOT is one of the greatest games ever.
 
There's just so much to find in this game. This was my 3rd playthrough and I was still finding secrets and areas I had literally never seen before -- partly because since then I had gotten a rumble pak, which the Stone of Agony utilizes to indicate nearby hidden grottoes. Some of these grottoes you literally will not find without it because there's no way you'd know they were there otherwise, and honestly I kind of like that, hidden secrets that are where you'd least expect them, in the middle of nowhere, right under your feet. There's also a whole secret multi-room segment of the Fire Temple I discovered, which I had never seen before in my life and most other people probably haven't either.
 
OOT just has so much shit in it. The good type. Shit that exists purely for you to discover, for the joy and sake of discovering; items that exist purely because they are fun and cool. There's an entire sidequest you can do where you unlock a bunch of masks that you can wear for neat extra dialogue, the grand prize of which being a mask that lets you talk to Gossip Stones, revealing hidden secrets and world lore to you -- and you even get a few bonus masks for completing it. You can get mobile explosive Bombchus to use, you can acquire optional spells for combat or utility, you can get hidden elemental arrows, you can dive deeper with a Golden Scale, you can buy a fuckhuge sword that breaks, you can acquire a PERMANENT version of said fuckhuge sword -- even one of the very first items you get, Deku Nuts, are optional for you to use. Every consumable item in the game even has two capacity upgrades for you to find as well, some of which I had never discovered until this playthrough. As you ever going to need that many Deku Sticks? No, but it's cool that you can now! I feel like this is something that's seriously lacking later games -- just cool, entirely optional, unique items for you to find. Instead, so many items in later installments are just a lock for a key, and have no use or reason outside of that one specific thing.
 
OOT-specific section ends here, for additional dialogue concerning the series as a whole, click below:
 
TL;DR: OOT is one of the greatest games ever it's true.

This is the guy who graciously gave me an interview when I visited valve for SPUF. Nice of them to do that since I just strolled in like a dipshit instead of actually trying to set a visit up.