Well, Paste Magazine is once again the first publication I have encountered with a best-of list for the year. Interesting list, with a lot of indies, and particularly narrative indies taking slots. And because I’m petty and like to see expensive AAA games get snubbed, there is no God of War on the list! (Elden Ring and Horizon FW are the AAAs that get recognition.)
NOTE: This is intended as a thread for publications’ best-of lists. Feel free to share your reactions, including your own lists, but keep in mind there will (I assume) be a Quarterlies thread later for sharing your favorites and tallying Qt3’s communal picks!
I have purchased one of the games on that list(Xenoblade Chronicles 3) and played two others(TMNT, and Marvel Snap). There sure are a lot of games these days! I’d like to give two of those top 5 a try one of these days too, I find myself waiting on a lot of games to go on sale before I buy them.
That is a top 5 that gets my attention, considering I’ve actually played and liked 4 of them. I hope NORCO gets attention from folks who play adventure games, it’s really great.
I fell out of Norco about halfway through, but there was a lot there to like!
Yeah, Rock, a lot of Game Pass games on the list. Don’t know if it applies to critics (who I believe have access to every game on Steam, right?), but I’m sure it has helped to give a lot of more obscure indies some exposure.
Just want to clarify: This is intended as a thread for publications’ best-of lists. Feel free to share your reactions, including your own lists, but keep in mind there will (I assume) be a Quarterlies thread later for sharing your favorites and tallying Qt3’s communal picks!
I assume in Paste’s case, the reason is that they found four other games to be better! Their write-up also gives some criticisms (maybe too big, slog at the end). I have to assume another reason–but who knows how big of one–is the desire to not be TOO predictable.
Don’t worry, DoubleG, it’ll win the Quarterlies handily.
Yeah I saw that list earlier and, as usual, so much I haven’t played that I really want to!
Great to see Wordle in there. That kept me, my partner and a bunch of (non-gamer) friends chatting and laughing for a couple of months at least which is more than can be said about anything else on the list!
Sooo I played a mere five of these games, two of which will most likely be in my Quarterlies.
Only played one game on Paste’s list! Elden Ring. And surprised it was #5 on that list, I was thinking it would be no lower than #3 on most “best of” lists.
Own another four from that list, but crap, I’m still trying to get to the backlog games from a few years ago!
And boy am I out of touch with Indie games. I don’t recognize nearly half of the names on this list.
Immortality making the top 5 there really warms my heart.
While I was playing it, I kept thinking “This is like someone made a game based exclusively on my interest in weird and wild show business history, and made it just for me.” I’m so glad that it connected so hard with other folks, too.
I think Elden Ring overstayed its welcome. It was a great game with tight combat and interesting mechanics. The open world environments were well presented. But I wasn’t ever emotionally engaged and at a certain point the game started to exhaust me. I probably over relied on guides but didn’t feel like I would ever finish it if I didn’t. I thought the level design of Dark Souls was far better and the multi-player mechanics of Dark Souls 2 better.
