Moby

I'm glad you mention not really liking the HD models, because I always feel like I'm alone in not liking them either! I think it's fair because the designs for the main cast look alright, but they have a Super Smash Bros Brawl thing going on where they're a little too... faux-realistic and it's kind of gross. Like if I picked up crash he'd feel like a wood chip or sandpaper? It really helps how cartoony Crash is supposed to move and look like, especially when he dies. Where I think I deviate from even more is I think the Crash 4 designs (except Tawna) are much better than most every other design they've had.
 
I really like OF and think it's my favorite of the original Half-Life games. Lots of creativity and I hope they bring back Shepherd.
 
Yeah, Hiveswap Act 1 is pretty good even if it's short as hell! I really couldn't care about Act 2 at all, though and idk if it's solely because of the time between acts :( But I have disdain for most of the new Homestuck material so what do I know. This is one of my favorite music tracks in gaming though!
 
Have you beaten it on Furier or are you going through normal? No shade if it's the latter, it's  already a though game. Just if you haven't yet you're in for a treat because it's one of the best hard modes out there! Getting an S rank in Furier is the one achievement I never was able to get...
 
Lol fair enough. I think you have a lot more experience in Metroidvanias which I admitted last year I don't? And I said I have pretty low standards for both this type of gameplay and the racy stuff displayed. Fell right into acceptable to pretty good for me. But yeah I'll defend my statements about the environment art which is pretty nice, and the OST is still one of my favorites in the past years.
 
Not much to say but I still haven't finished these yet even though I've mentioned them in previous posts!! Glad to hear TGAA 2 is one of those games that's mostly one big case. That was the part of Apollo Justice I liked the most so that's good to hear.
 
Are you playing Galaxy on the Wii, an emulator, or the recent switch port? I was thinking about grabbing the latter and I wanna know if it controls well. I heard it's kind of weird when it comes to using the joycons as a pointer? Also is it an ok experience in handheld mode? That's how I prefer to use my switch. I also agree how it's pretty neat that the two games in the duology have such different design philosophies. That's kinda how I feel about the BotW/TotK games too.
 
Woah jesus, woah!!! I don't know man, I like Wind Waker a lot. I've always been pretty patient with games though, and the atmosphere of the Great Sea didn't get old for me. Maybe I just don't hate videogames enough but I think the art, characters, and atmosphere of the game are all very good. Music too! I don't forgive you for dumping on Sunshine though! I'm putting a funny ban notice in your post RIGHT NOW buddy..................
 
We have to do this dance every year where we just play a bunch of the same shit huh? Not sure how much I can comment on.
 
I learned a little bit about the characters and plot while gathering music from Corru.Observer. Still think it's worth going for if I have some details but lack context? I'd like to jam on this with you if it's still worth it.
 
Ok, hijacking this little bit to bitch about something when it comes to Hades 2. Any of you guys who also played it to completion annoyed at the ending more since they changed it? If you're not aware, they rewrote the bit with SPOILERS!!!! Zag being the one to come up with retroactively redeeming Chronos off the cuff and now the siblings come up with it together. Does this not come across as really wishy-washy on the writing team and kind of go against the thin characterization that Melinoe gets anyway? That's something I would have totally expected Zag to come up with and try because he's historically been the only one willing to hear his family out and start discussion, but Mel has been raised from childhood to hate and have the goal of killing Chronos. I don't know, even though I've already talked about how I dislike Mel in comparison to Zag last year it really rubs me the wrong way. Like, they had what, five+ years to figure out how they were going to end the story of this game and they decided to change it after release? I don't know man it really just bugs me to not see them stick to their guns. I thought it was... ok but the flip-flopping aggravates me. Datamining like a year and a half ago revealed that the original plan for the end may have been for Mel to use Hypnos' power to trap Chronos in an endless nightmare of being defeated over and over again and going into that nightmare to keep him none the wiser. I think that's a LOT more in character for her, plays better with the game's roguelike setup, AND it plays into her role as goddess of ghosts and NIGHTMARES more than anything else she does in the game. I mean, with how it is noww we get to interact with him more SPOILERS OVER!!! Also, I've completed a handful of the "questlines" of some of the characters and they're really disappointing compared to the ones in Hades 1. Like, it's just the gods saying "Wow Mel you're cool good job". Where's the equivalent of pranking Orpheus with Dionysus? Where's the same for the Asterius-Theseus friendship fight? Agh, it's all so... boneless. Even the storyline with Dora and Prometheus fell flt and ended with an anticlimactic nothingburger blah. The more I think about the game the more I'm soured on the choices made :/
 
Nah man, like I said in VC I get it. I'm really starting to think that one of my best virtues in games is my high patience and willingness to re-experience things (like I said in the Wind Waker stuff above). If I weren't me, I'd totally have done the same later in my playthrough. But I'm stupid and had to focus real hard in Dare and Curse mode to not die to something stupid and music would distract me. Also I actively dislike the track that plays when you enter the Observatory since it played so often, so don't worry I get you.
 
Yeah no, again I get it. It's not for everyone but I'm glad you appreciate it for what it is! Personally that weird combination is something that increased my enjoyment of the game but it not being your cup of tea is totally understandable.
 
Trust me I play it up on this forum because I know some of you guys still love the game lmao. It's like... I just find the subset who refuse to play other games and poo-poo on any other shooter because they think TF2 is perfect very VERY annoying. Mostly because I think there are more good games coming out now than ever! And I know you're active in the coolest part of the Source communities so hell yeah. But remember I unironically enjoy Overwatch 2 so who am I to speak about still enjoying games. And those maps look cool as hell and DO have great atmospheres. One of the things I loved doing back in the day was finding those weird, "liminal" maps and just walking around them on empty servers, enjoying that patented Source Map Spookiness. Achievement and joke maps were some of the best for this when they got creative and had secrets and stuff! Like that one with Pyro's house! I recently went through Anemoia back in like September or something and it also had a pretty decent Pool/Backrooms aesthetic, even if it had a lot of game design issues and wasn't all that fun. The Arcade sequence in that campaign is probably the strongest part. 
 
Ok talking about L4D2 custom campaigns, I'm gonna interrupt this response to you to talk a little bit about the worst gaming experience I had this year: Sector 74. Played through this in... August to October I think? This is a really aspirational, ambitious campaign with 14 FUCKING CHAPTERS. And it's the worst thing I've played like ever and it's so fucking funny. The first level is just like five rectangular clearings with exits to the next one on opposite corners. Half of the chapters don't have functioning saferooms. A quarter of them are insanely badly made vehicular combat sections. The tooltips have bad grammar and are seemingly written by a 14 year old. The passion and effort put into this campaign are remarkable but it's so bad. I really enjoyed booting this up and showing it to the guys in VC because there was always something new and shitty to enjoy with this campaign.
 
 
 
Uhhhhh, Halibut what was your favorite music track in Antonblast? Because they recently released the remastered OST. Mine are Mysterious Greenhouse and Mad Mall.
 
Raz what's your favorite vessel in StP so far? The Thorn, Witch, and Princess and the Dragon are mine.
 
Corv I've got nothin sorry :(

Alright, uh, lets see my list here... (Huh? No, I wasn't writing my thoughts through the entire year, shut up.)
 
Tried to make a dent on my backlog, even with Humble Choice filling it more and more each month. I tried to finish all I played, but some I decided to stop midway for several reasons.
College wasn't that bad the first semester, so I had time to play stuff, and I only started working in the last two months of the year.
Also decided to pirate some games, either because of lack of money, lack of interest, or lack of wanting to give money to the dev.
Marked pirate games with (P).
 
THE GOOD:
 
THE EHHHH...:
 
THE DOGSHIT:
 
THE ADULT STORE, ONLY CLICK IF YOU ARE ABOVE 18:
 
For my GOTY, I think CrossCode was my favorite, followed by Arum's, BALLxPIT and Tiny Terry's. Deltarune was cool, but its only halfway done. Probably will be my GOTY 2028/2029.
 
And what do I have in store for this next year? Let's say I have a few ideas up my sleeve.
"Like what?"
I'd rather not get into it right now.
"Why not?"
Alright, I don't have any ideas for the future. I got nothing. Happy?
 
 

Alright, uh, lets see my list here... (Huh? No, I wasn't writing my thoughts through the entire year, shut up.)
 
Tried to make a dent on my backlog, even with Humble Choice filling it more and more each month. I tried to finish all I played, but some I decided to stop midway for several reasons.
College wasn't that bad the first semester, so I had time to play stuff, and I only started working in the last two months of the year.
Also decided to pirate some games, either because of lack of money, lack of interest, or lack of wanting to give money to the dev.
Marked pirate games with (P).
 
THE GOOD:
 
THE EHHHH...:
 
THE DOGSHIT:
 
THE ADULT STORE, ONLY CLICK IF YOU ARE ABOVE 18:
 
For my GOTY, I think CrossCode was my favorite, followed by Arum's, BALLxPIT and Tiny Terry's. Deltarune was cool, but its only halfway done. Probably will be my GOTY 2028/2029.
 
And what do I have in store for this next year? Let's say I have a few ideas up my sleeve.
"Like what?"
I'd rather not get into it right now.
"Why not?"
Alright, I don't have any ideas for the future. I got nothing. Happy?
 
 

I WAS going to gush more about Deltarune, but I decided to put it short.
 
But that said:
 

Alright, uh, lets see my list here... (Huh? No, I wasn't writing my thoughts through the entire year, shut up.)
 
Tried to make a dent on my backlog, even with Humble Choice filling it more and more each month. I tried to finish all I played, but some I decided to stop midway for several reasons.
College wasn't that bad the first semester, so I had time to play stuff, and I only started working in the last two months of the year.
Also decided to pirate some games, either because of lack of money, lack of interest, or lack of wanting to give money to the dev.
Marked pirate games with (P).
 
THE GOOD:
 
THE EHHHH...:
 
THE DOGSHIT:
 
THE ADULT STORE, ONLY CLICK IF YOU ARE ABOVE 18:
 
For my GOTY, I think CrossCode was my favorite, followed by Arum's, BALLxPIT and Tiny Terry's. Deltarune was cool, but its only halfway done. Probably will be my GOTY 2028/2029.
 
And what do I have in store for this next year? Let's say I have a few ideas up my sleeve.
"Like what?"
I'd rather not get into it right now.
"Why not?"
Alright, I don't have any ideas for the future. I got nothing. Happy?
 
 

Ok, big year. For other people. Like Silent said above and the rest of you have demonstrated, 2025 was pretty insane for games. I think Clair Obscur was the only videogame released, though maybe. The issue is that I didn't have any time to play any games!!! I got hit with multiple underways and got multiple final middle fingers from the Navy in the form of going underway LITERALLY until my separation date, loads of time spent doing dumbass maintenance, and other stuff. So I just couldn't play many games! I'm hoping that 2026 rectifies that. My backlog is huge. My goals are mostly to play a few PC games I didn't have time for, but also to dive into the GCN and SNES libraries. Maybe some PS2 as well.
 
I can not be poetic during these because I have been so fucking mad over the last few years. But maybe I can dredge up the tiny little wavering bit of optimism and hope I have left and use it to play some fucking VIDEO GAMES.

Backloggd
You don't get my Steam Replay because I just played a lot of Overwatch.
 
Honorable Mentions
 
The Top Ten
 
The Bad
 
Awards
 
Music
 
Backlog/Frontlog
 

The Year That Was Too Good
 
What am I even supposed to say here man. We are talking about a year on par with 2017 and 2019, I have like five GOTYs on my hands, one of which is my new favourite video game of all time, and per my own self enforced rules I have to RANK them. Last year I said, “Oh I'll just do that with Hades 2 when it hits 1.0”. What a FOOL I was. But aren't I excited? Aren't I happy?
 
Video games are going to be good.
Steam Replay
Backloggd
 
I probably wait until Huff posts then reply to some of these. Nice to see someone enjoying Tunic.
---
 
Honorable Mentions:
 
Top 10:
 
The Rest:
 
Extras?
 
Backlog/Frontlog for 2025 (thank you copy paste)

I could reuse his review of Wind Waker on my opinion of Spirit Tracks.
 
Goddamn that game blows. If you cut the entire train thing, it would be a good Zelda game, but NO you gotta drive the train for more 15 minutes to reach anywhere and don't think you can beeline to your destination because tracks are one way, the detour is too far and there is an instant gameover Ganondorf train coming the other way.
 
I only finished it because I enabled cheats to increase train speed and disable damage.

Alright, uh, lets see my list here... (Huh? No, I wasn't writing my thoughts through the entire year, shut up.)
 
Tried to make a dent on my backlog, even with Humble Choice filling it more and more each month. I tried to finish all I played, but some I decided to stop midway for several reasons.
College wasn't that bad the first semester, so I had time to play stuff, and I only started working in the last two months of the year.
Also decided to pirate some games, either because of lack of money, lack of interest, or lack of wanting to give money to the dev.
Marked pirate games with (P).
 
THE GOOD:
 
THE EHHHH...:
 
THE DOGSHIT:
 
THE ADULT STORE, ONLY CLICK IF YOU ARE ABOVE 18:
 
For my GOTY, I think CrossCode was my favorite, followed by Arum's, BALLxPIT and Tiny Terry's. Deltarune was cool, but its only halfway done. Probably will be my GOTY 2028/2029.
 
And what do I have in store for this next year? Let's say I have a few ideas up my sleeve.
"Like what?"
I'd rather not get into it right now.
"Why not?"
Alright, I don't have any ideas for the future. I got nothing. Happy?
 
 

I could reuse his review of Wind Waker on my opinion of Spirit Tracks.
 
Goddamn that game blows. If you cut the entire train thing, it would be a good Zelda game, but NO you gotta drive the train for more 15 minutes to reach anywhere and don't think you can beeline to your destination because tracks are one way, the detour is too far and there is an instant gameover Ganondorf train coming the other way.
 
I only finished it because I enabled cheats to increase train speed and disable damage.

Games I remember playing this year (not including demos):

The Good:
 
The Meh:
 
The Best:
 
The Worst:
 
(THIS USER HAS BEEN SENTENCED TO CLEAN THE ENTIRE ISLAND OF ISLE DELFINO OF HIS VILE HANDIWORK)

Stuff released this year:
 
 
Stuff I played this year but wasnt released this year:
 
My pick for GOTY of all of these would be Stalker: Call of Pripyat. This series of games is just something I wish I knew about earlier and they all hold a special place in my heart despite all their flaws. I plan on doing another playthrough and checking out the really popular conversion/standalone mods for them too.
 
If it's only stuff released this year Deadzone Rogue kind of wins by default, but it's still a fun game that I'll definitely come back to now and then. A lot of my nitpicks with it are minor, and some of the more glaring issues I think are hard for the genre to fix.
 
(Disclaimer: it's highly possible I missed something [actually there's a lot of porn games I didn't put in here and might cover since moby covered several of his own] and might edit this later or reply or something idk)

Dishonorable Mention
 
 
Honorable Mentions
 
 
The Top Ten
 
 
Other games I play a lot but which I played in previous years:
 
 

MY TURN!
 
Donkey Kong Bananza good.
Deltarune ch. 3+4 good.
Battlefield 6 alright, I guess, if you're into FPS's where you don't play as a cartoon character. (Weirdo.)
Deadzone Rouge good.
Shape of Dreams good.
Nightreign good, if you hate yourself.
Silksong PHENOMENAL, if you hate yourself. If not, it's still pretty good.

Alright, uh, lets see my list here... (Huh? No, I wasn't writing my thoughts through the entire year, shut up.)
 
Tried to make a dent on my backlog, even with Humble Choice filling it more and more each month. I tried to finish all I played, but some I decided to stop midway for several reasons.
College wasn't that bad the first semester, so I had time to play stuff, and I only started working in the last two months of the year.
Also decided to pirate some games, either because of lack of money, lack of interest, or lack of wanting to give money to the dev.
Marked pirate games with (P).
 
THE GOOD:
 
THE EHHHH...:
 
THE DOGSHIT:
 
THE ADULT STORE, ONLY CLICK IF YOU ARE ABOVE 18:
 
For my GOTY, I think CrossCode was my favorite, followed by Arum's, BALLxPIT and Tiny Terry's. Deltarune was cool, but its only halfway done. Probably will be my GOTY 2028/2029.
 
And what do I have in store for this next year? Let's say I have a few ideas up my sleeve.
"Like what?"
I'd rather not get into it right now.
"Why not?"
Alright, I don't have any ideas for the future. I got nothing. Happy?
 
 

Alright, uh, lets see my list here... (Huh? No, I wasn't writing my thoughts through the entire year, shut up.)
 
Tried to make a dent on my backlog, even with Humble Choice filling it more and more each month. I tried to finish all I played, but some I decided to stop midway for several reasons.
College wasn't that bad the first semester, so I had time to play stuff, and I only started working in the last two months of the year.
Also decided to pirate some games, either because of lack of money, lack of interest, or lack of wanting to give money to the dev.
Marked pirate games with (P).
 
THE GOOD:
 
THE EHHHH...:
 
THE DOGSHIT:
 
THE ADULT STORE, ONLY CLICK IF YOU ARE ABOVE 18:
 
For my GOTY, I think CrossCode was my favorite, followed by Arum's, BALLxPIT and Tiny Terry's. Deltarune was cool, but its only halfway done. Probably will be my GOTY 2028/2029.
 
And what do I have in store for this next year? Let's say I have a few ideas up my sleeve.
"Like what?"
I'd rather not get into it right now.
"Why not?"
Alright, I don't have any ideas for the future. I got nothing. Happy?
 
 

My 2026 resolution is to create a story/webcomic/game.
 
Also, Hap Nu Yee.

>Be Frankie
>Make silly little game about a pink ball for a 3 day Ludum Dare jam with a cool song
>Fast forward several years
>Make very good survival horror RPG
>Put silly pink ball character in the game as a callback no one will know
>Not satisfied
>Make silly pink ball character into a ballbusting super boss for the highest difficulty setting, hidden in a cryptic part of the game and make it only show if you explore hidden walls and have a basically useless skill
>Remix cool song from Ludum Dare game into an amazing battle theme
 
 
 
What a goddamn gigachad, bloody hell.

I like to see what other people wishlist, sometimes I find games I also would like, sometimes I get a laugh.