Silent

I played some Next Fest demos (and one completely unrelated one):
 
PARKSIDE: DECAYED SOUL MANIPULATION - Clearly aping Cruelty Squad but without all of the polish (this is where you laugh a bit at that but we all know it's there) that makes it a good game underneath all the clown vomit aesthetics. The mission areas are a little more fleshed out and less abstract but I feel like that is to the detriment of the game since the design isn't quite there and they feel a little mazelike and hard to understand. This could be good on full release but it's currently chock full of jank and not much else. The story bits in the demo also kind of didn't give me a good feeling but that's probably just me being impatient and wanting the demo to just be gameplay. Darkenstein 3D: I thought it'd just be a fun wolfenstein-esque retro shooter but it felt more like someone's unfinished unity project, which to be fair, is probably what it is. Didn't feel good to play and the level design was idiotic. It felt like it was mainly gliding off of the aesthetic (which to be fair is fun, a deranged hobo loose in nazi germany murdering everyone trying to get his dog back is a perfect premise for this type of shooter). I feel like this game probably doesn't have much potential because just movement and shooting feel kinda floaty and not satisfying, and it seems like that's intentional, but who knows. PIGFACE: Parkside was more Deus Ex in the Cruelty Squad formula, and I think Pigface is more Hotline Miami in the Cruelty Squad formula. This one has a similar air of jank but the level design is more respectful of the game's design which mainly just is quickly and brutally taking enemies out without much RPG elements like abilities. It was a very barebones demo but I feel like it has a solid base and I'd be interested in the finished product. Nexus FPV Drone Carnage: Pretty standard FPV drone game, I just picked it up because it made me think of another old FPV VR game I played at a friend's house once. It's not bad, but probably not my actual wheelhouse in terms of game genre. It is incredibly clear with what it is: you are an FPV drone and you enact carnage. You can't call it anything but honest. VOID/BREAKER: Notably the only FPS game that was trying to be relatively modern. Waow a roguelike FPS game where you jump from arena to arena and get gun modifiers so original... The addition of destruction mechanics made me perk up a bit and try it, and I think they're not really super well integrated but serviceable. I found the modification system actually more interesting, where you have a grid inventory and your modifiers take up slots, with some of them only pointing to other slots and enhancing whatever is in the slot. It reminded me a little bit of Noita wand crafting, which is a good thing, though the item pool is pretty thin in the demo. The visuals are a little too "we have these cool glitchy tech effects and we're going to make you see them damn it" and it makes big fights really hard to visually understand, but that might be something fixable in graphics configs. The story is pretty boilerplate but not offensive.  Stellar Blade: I picked it up because it seemed like a game I'd not normally play and I think that's a valid evaluation but the demo did a decent job of giving me a taste of the gameplay. These kinds of hack and slash parry/dodge/estus flask games aren't really my jam but I was sort of clicking with it by the end of the demo so I think either the formula has been refined enough in general for me to get it a little better, or this game in particular is made to be more accessible. Not sure. Either way I was surprised by it. I'd probably play it if I had it, but I'm not super likely to buy it unless it gets absurdly discounted. Okay fine I also played it due to a very tiny curiosity in if people were overreacting to talk about the character designs in it and I think it's about what I expected. I don't mind it, at least. Some neat stuff, some complete shovelware, some in between. I think that's a pretty good next fes demo plunge experience overall. Pigface and Void/Breaker are definitely on my radar.

Got a comm done that I've been thinking of getting for a long time. It's the BBEG of my campaign, THE ASHEN KING, looking out at the island where this happened:
Extremely happy with how it turned out he's so FUCKING cool in this. Artist if anyone is interested; they are criminally unknown right now.

Fellas I feel compelled to share that I became a dad recently
 
My boy is doing great and it has been awesome bar the tummy ache nights where me and my wife get literally 0 hours of sleep

I have done nothing but play demos for three days.
 
VERY GOOD/WISHLISTED:
 
 
 
PRETTY GOOD/WE SHALL SEE:
 
 
Mostly as a way to record my own thoughts somewhere, but I'll be interested to see how these impressions differ from when I get my hands on some of the full games.

That's okay. It's not like I do one thing around here a year...and was working on finishing it today....
 
It's fine. I didn't play that much stuff this year, I remember getting fatigued on it in the summer. I wouldn't say nothing good came out but I'm hopeful there will be some sort of boom of the good shit in 2025. At least Deltarune 3+4 is locked in.
Steam replay
Backloggd
 
------
Honorable Mentions:
 
Top 10:
 
The Rest:
 
Extras?
 
Backlog/Frontlog for 2025 (thank you copy paste)
 

Lol I am so fucking late sholy ssjt, I will necro the topic solely because I promised I'd post (I have some replies to stuff in this thread as well other than noita but I swear I'll work on this after I sleep it's 1am okay please I only feel like writing stuff during the witching hour right before I pass out)
 
The Good
 
 
The Bad
 
 
The Weird
 
The verdict:
 
Bonus best girls:
 

I will preface some percentage of it is just me doing autopilot runs that are really basic, but there's a lot of fun challenge runs (and a few less-than-fun challenges admittedly) that have eaten up a lot of sessions. Stuff like playing without picking up gold, pacifist runs, no hits, all boss kills (this got more complicated due to epilogue 2 though) and stuff like that. A lot of these are just the normal path but with a limitation on them so they can be quick or take a lot of time. A good deal are also doing some mods like Apotheosis which has a ton of extra things and is good for someone like me who's done a ton of the base game and wanted some new stuff.
 
I've done a lot of speedrunning sessions too, I really think this game is fun for casual speedrunning (my PB is only like 4:17 so I'm definitely not putting any records up ever) once you have a good level of mastery over the base game experience since speedrunning drastically changes how you approach things and what is good and what sucks while also taxing your ability to navigate dangerous areas and enemies with low resources.
 
There are a few "quests" that legitimately take like 10+ hours of gameplay for the first time you do them which are mainly the Sun quests and peaceful end/33 orbs or if you're really a psycho trying to get the amulet of yendor (tried to do this and fucked it up and probably won't try again for a while). These are definitely ones that you probably wouldn't really ever complete without a guide honestly, I played through with the community guides from the wiki. Without a guide you'll literally never understand how to place the star child or something fucking stupid will happen like the essence eaters will yeet your waterstone into the stratosphere and it'll despawn or something, or you'll pick up slime blood while getting perks and doom your run.
 
I think a good way to get the most out of the game is picking up a few tricks to kill important bosses "early." There are surprisingly simple cheese strats that let you kill the bridge boss for chances at incredibly high tier wands, for instance, and the Alchemist boss is similarly cheesable. Both of those bosses drop insane resources that can let you just do whatever you want basically. For a while when I was getting consistent at winning I would try my best to put together a wand capable of reaching and killing the alchemist boss by the Snowy Depths and that helped me understand when I could push certain bosses early and when I needed more resources to make it work. There's a lot so I can't really list them all, but the Bridge Boss/Squidward/Connoisseur of Wands is extremely weak to plasma due to duplicating their beams and often killing himself (make sure to have a way to get out of the way or ambrosia), and the Alchemist boss is weak to just a fuckhuge explosion if you can cram them all in a wand and cast it without killing yourself too.
 
I honestly don't really recommend doing something like a 33 orb or sun quest run. Really long runs in noita tend to really hinge on you trying to find an extremely specific combo of rare spells and there's a very huge parallel world grind for that. I spent legit like six hours trying to find a summon wall/platform spell once it fucking sucked ass. You'll also need to plan them out way in advance because if you do something like pick up repulsion field and projectile slower it makes something random as fuck not work like certain world travel wands. Or if you pick up exploding corpses then eating poly mages for immunity becomes almost impossible. Stuff like that.
 
If you want to get a bit more out of it after the main path I would just look into killing all the bosses (not necessarily in the same run but some wand combos can kill a lot of them). You might want to just look into where they are, or into more detailed guides depending on how much you want to discover on your own. Then another thing would just be reaching a parallel world since it requires a few things like infinite digging (likely from killing the alchemist boss) and a way to not die to cursed rock. Then further than that is the moon quests which mainly are just collecting some specific things from off the main path and visiting remote and dangerous areas of the main world like hell and heaven. The sky temple quests are pretty fun too and I fucking love the OST for the Henkeva Temple so much.
 
After that gathering the main worlds' 11 orbs is a run that runs you through a lot of different areas and is kind of at the limit where it starts becoming a pretty long run (this one also probably would need you to look up an orb map though, there are ways to locate them entirely in-game but it's finicky creating guiding powder). If somehow you wanted more after that, then the crazy long ones I've brought up above might be more doable but yeah.
 
Basically I'd just recommend giving a little look into the wiki and learning boss locations (and strats to fight them if you're down to learn it that way), and when you have a strong main path run (good damage, a way to move around quickly like spammy teleport bolts, and a way to dig through anything like black holes; these are the three things you basically always are going to want to find if you plan on going off of the main path) you can consider going up and taking a swing at some of the bosses or exploring the off-path areas like fungal caverns or frozen vault or the pyramid. You can also look at the wiki's achievement pillars list since that has a bunch of challenges like boss kills, special challenge runs, etc. that if you complete show up on your world's pillars for every run afterwards. The pillars are kind of what got me into doing the side stuff honestly
 
If doing that vanilla sounds like a lot of work mods that make things smoother like the health pack drop and anvil of destiny and starting perk and stuff aren't bad (I used them a lot at the start) but I can maintain that barring some fucking insane RNG like a greater chest dropping monster powder in the first level pretty much every run is at least winnable, if not capable of going to the crazy endgame quests. Doing stuff in Noita is kind of all about being very methodical at the start and taking all the little benefits the game's early areas give you and being good at evaluating the risks you're taking and knowing when to cut and run.
 
Sadly a lot of stuff really does need a bit of meta-knowledge to even engage with. The wiki is great for that but I also picked up a lot of knowledge from watching speedrunners and streamers doing challenge runs since they might just pull some random combo out that you've never seen before while doing something unrelated and you can tuck that away until you need it in some run where it seems like you've not got anything good at all

dracula flow describes (most) of our characters
 
them, but updated with new friends
 

 

Behold, 2024 in retrospect! I think as usual I probably could have watched more but hey only so much can catch your eye at once. If you don't care about anything else at least listen to the ED of the year cuz I really really like it.
 
 
And some meandering commentary to explain my category choices:
 
 
Now I need to work on the 2024 games in retrospect oof

Pizza Tower: The Nose Update good. If Shadow of the Erdtree gets to be in the game awards, then I don't see why we can't give accolades to a major free update! And on that note...
Warframe: 1999 VERY good!
Helldivers 2 good.
The Finals good.
Sonic x Shadow Generations good if you wanted Sonic Generations to be just a tad longer, or if you never played the original.
Mario & Luigi: Brothership...oh wait, I still need to finish it. Ending's kinda a drag. The beginning and middle are good, though!
Zelda Echoes of Wisdom fairly good.
Balatro good.
Marvel Rivals reminded me that Overwatch used to be good, and it's even gooder.

My list:
 
IN CONCLUSION:
 

Stuff I played last year:
 
 
 

Ok, I have a free evening. Where the videogames?
 
I played a normal amount of new games this year. I don't think I'll outdo last year for a long, long while, but that's ok since that was a huge outlier year for me. However... there's a little bit of cheating in this list due to games I've already played being released in a new fashion and thus earning a spot in the top ten. It's my list and I make the rules, though!
 
Honorable mentions:
 
 
TOP TEN:
 
 
The not very great...
 
Awards
Favorite Music Tracks:
 
Best girls:
 
Backlog:
 

That's okay. It's not like I do one thing around here a year...and was working on finishing it today....
 
It's fine. I didn't play that much stuff this year, I remember getting fatigued on it in the summer. I wouldn't say nothing good came out but I'm hopeful there will be some sort of boom of the good shit in 2025. At least Deltarune 3+4 is locked in.
Steam replay
Backloggd
 
------
Honorable Mentions:
 
Top 10:
 
The Rest:
 
Extras?
 
Backlog/Frontlog for 2025 (thank you copy paste)
 

That's okay. It's not like I do one thing around here a year...and was working on finishing it today....
 
It's fine. I didn't play that much stuff this year, I remember getting fatigued on it in the summer. I wouldn't say nothing good came out but I'm hopeful there will be some sort of boom of the good shit in 2025. At least Deltarune 3+4 is locked in.
Steam replay
Backloggd
 
------
Honorable Mentions:
 
Top 10:
 
The Rest:
 
Extras?
 
Backlog/Frontlog for 2025 (thank you copy paste)
 

Hope you have a good time, I'm sure it'll be okay. You are making the extremely wise decision of not going in the middle of the summer so it can't be as bad as my trip there

Had a lot of this ready to go, but if I make another thread I will get bullied so I had to wait for someone else to start one.
 
My picks lean more retro than usual, partially because I wanted to make use of the fact that I am now able to run things in the Windows 3.1-Windows 98 pretty smoothly on modern hardware.
 
Newly played but don't qualify:
 
 
Dishonorable Mentions
 
 
Honorable Mentions
 
 
The Top Ten:
 
 
Other stuff I've played quite a lot of, but which wasn't new for me this year:
 

Moby, if you didn't like Superhot, you should try its sequel, mind control delete. I had the exact same experience you had with the first one, which I thought had a really interesting game mechanic and then does almost nothing with it (and the story is stuck up its own ass). The sequel does much more with the core concept.
 
As for my GOTY 2024, it has to be Balatro. I haven't been so addicted to a game in a long time

Fine, I will do it myself.
 
This year I actually ended playing a bigger variety of games than I expected. Even though I started a new college course and spent more time drawing, I still managed to play a lot of stuff.
 
2024's goods:
 
2024's mehs:
 
2024's bads:
 
Top 2024:
 
The ever increasing thanks to Humble Choice "Please stop being a moron and play/finish these already" backlog list:
 

I spent the last three weeks of 2024 sick as a dog so 2025 is at least looking up on that front!
 
I'm also going on a trip to Japan in a few days and I'm absolutely fucking terrified oh god why did I decide to do this I just want to crawl into my bed and miss my flight and just pretend I never organized it

Happy new year ol' subspuffers! I hope 2025 will be great for you all

My Youtube algorithm recommends a lot of dime-a-dozen, "here's a hundred videos of my cat" channels. But how about "here's a hundred videos of me and my cat drifting down a river in a kayak, surrounded by nature"?
 
 
These are great when I need something to calm me down.

I'll have to try and find some time to comment on others but I spent too much time writing so I'll need a break.