What Games Are You Playing?

My Playstation one, I split time between PS5 and PC though.

Not shown here is that I also played all of the Life is Strange games, played couch co-op with a friend which was fun, we'd just swap control back and forth, they're all just fairly short so not shown here :)

God of War: Ragnarok was a big one for me loved that game, need to do the new DLC for it at some point. FF16 and Spiderman 2 were both very good.

Yakuza LAD wasn't really my thing unfortunately, I mainly completed it because I started it. Death End RE:Quest looked interesting but wasn't my fav either.

Not sure if I can do the same thing for the PC stuff, I play things on Steam or Game Pass, so would need to check if either does anything like this. I imagine I spent a lot more time on PC games.

Edit - Steam Replay exists but it's only for 2022 so far. 2023 should be along soon.

On Game Pass looks like my main ones this year were Starfield (meh), Lies of P (awesome!), Wo Long (enjoyed this a lot).

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Steam one is out if anyone else has one to post. My activity is split across Steam, Game Pass, PS5 so each one doesn't have loads on, but I apparently played 12 games this year.

BG3 was clearly the main one, but I put quite a bit of time into Lords of the Fallen and Cyberpunk as well.

The Steam winter sale starts at 18:00 today, I'm going to pick up Elden Ring for sure, if not on sale on Steam, CD Keys have it for £23 which I thought was a decent price anyway.

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Don't play PC as much these days, mostly only with friends which is reflected here. Two FF games still managed to get on there though, I see a trend this year :p

I do want to get back to FF14 though, still fairly early in-game considering all the expansions there are now but thoroughly enjoying it for my first MMO.

Ever Crisis is decent for a mobile game, I'm interested in the story more than the gacha and gameplay for sure though, especially The First Soldier as that is brand new content for me. Pretty sure the game will eventually get Before Crisis as well which I've wanted to play for so long.

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Steam is my main gaming hub, but doesn't account for the past few months playing Cyberpunk (I have it on GOG) so not completely "accurate" so to speak. My PS4 hours were laughable for the year (I think less than 60 hours over 3 games lmao)
I recently purchased a steam deck though so I'm expecting even more games to be played over the upcoming year. It's time to really start cutting into that backlog right? (lol I am totally buying some more games during the steam sale. I need at least Yakuza 7 and maybe some more JRPGs)
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I don't rly need to look cuz I'm quite sure pretty much all I played this year was spider solitaire cards and a bit of the (very good) gay college dating sim Coming Out On Top 😅

(I deleted the spider solitaire cards app a few weeks ago cuz I was addicted again XP )
 
And for PSN. Of these five HL was the least enjoyable to beat, and dragged a lot.

Those Witcher 3 hours though! :D

HL really missed a trick, it was far too linear a story, exploring Hogwarts was pretty cool, but the stuff beyond it simply wasn't that interesting. I paid £30 or so for it and thought it was alright for that much, but I just beelined the main story bits and skipped a lot of the side stuff.

Compared with something like Witcher 3 where the side stuff was really good, and I did as much of the content as I could...
 
I recently got the Castlevania Advance Collection on the PSN sale just gone and I’ve got to say I’m really liking it so far, I vastly prefer the metroidvania Castlevania games compared to the linear ones so it’s great that there are three of them in this collection alongside a linear one for good measure.
 
Right, I got Elden Ring finally!

First run I'm going to start as whatever the prisoner/condemned is, I already know that I need to add flawless widescreen fixes for ultrawide and potentially unlocking framerate a bit, not bothered about online play so will just play offline.

Meanwhile I still need to finish off Octopath 2, AC: Valhalla, and FF7 remake part 1, so will be busy hopping between games. Probably closest to finishing Octopath 2 so will try and complete that alongside playing the others.
 
Yup looking forward to getting my teeth into this one, especially after I played a couple of other souls like games recently, Lies of P and Lords of the Fallen, got me fired up to get into Elden Ring now :)
 
Final Fantasy VII (Switch)

I finally played and beat the original Final Fantasy VII, just in time for Rebirth. Like many, many, many people have said over the years, a fantastic game and a classic for a reason. I do wish I had started with the original for my FF7 journey but I really went the reverse, starting with Advent Children years back when I was younger, then playing Remake, then Crisis Core and now the original. Because of the games age though, I've known about the majority of the big twists in the game for years (as does everyone really) so that wasn't a big deal but would had made the experience with the future entries somewhat different but regardless I've enjoyed them all a lot and can't wait for Rebirth even more now.

I plan to re-watch Advent Children prior to Rebirth as well which I plan to pick up the 4K of soon enough to finally understand what is going on more now. I do also own Dirge of Cerberus on PS2, I just don't have a working PS2 atm so may emulate it for the time being.

Overall though, that's another FF done and completed. I didn't go for a 100% playthrough this time round but I did the majority of things in-game regardless. When I do I'll likely re-buy it digitally on PS5 for the trophy support.
 
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Well this is kind of fun. Baldur's Gate III is self-explanatory, it's the best CRPG and probably just hands down the best game I've played since Baldur's Gate II. It's telling I think that 3/5 of my most played games are Bethesda RPGs, yet Starfield does not appear at all (and I even think Fallout 4 is a pretty terrible RPG given that the player character has basically no agency, but it's at least a fun world to get lost in and build robots and make soup while wishing the bombs would drop for real). I wrote up part of a scathing diatribe about Starfield but never posted it, because Jim Sterling did what seemingly all the other reviewers didn't and properly laid into it with everything I wanted to say and more, so it felt a bit redundant after reading that. I find Starfield to be an empty, lifeless, humourless, tedious slog which empties me of hope for TES VI because it's clear anyone with creative or interesting ideas has long since departed Bethesda. That goes for game-play but especially for world-building, Starfield's world and characters are so painfully "generic sci-fi" that if it hadn't been in development for 6 years I'd suspect it had been written entirely by ChatGPT. If the dozens of reviewers that gave it glowing reviews on release weren't actually bribed, I'll have some of whatever they're smoking that made it seem good.
 
Nearing the end of the year, there is a pretty decent line up of stuff coming in 2024, and probably more that I am unaware of.

Time to list some titles that are coming which I am definitely interested in playing.

What are the rest of you lot excited about for 2024 releases?

My list, in no particular order (PC or PS5 only here):

1) Persona 3 Reload - I've played Persona 4 and Persona 5, but not 3. This is coming out on Game Pass as well so I can play it without needing to buy the thing, works for me as I'll be spending a lot on other titles here.


2) FF7 Rebirth - 2nd part of the FF7 remake trilogy.


3) Frostpunk 2 - Frostpunk was one of my fav strategy games of the last few years.


4) Dragons Dogma 2 - I haven't played the first one, but the trailer for this looked pretty damn good.


5) Rise of the Ronin - Just saw this today but looks a bit like Ghost of Tsushima, with a bit more combat focus.


6) Elden Ring DLC - I've not even finished my 1st run of Elden Ring yet and there is already more coming with a DLC. Based on my time spent with the game so far, this will basically be an auto-purchase.

7) Black Myth Wukong - This looks pretty good but I have some reservations about how good it will be vs how good the trailers make it look.

8) Unicorn Overlord - Probably the most different this on this list, think it looks interesting!

Can't do more than 5 pieces of media so only the top 5 have trailers :p
 
Catching up on things other people played years ago, short version.

Sonic Mania is a great looking, great sounding recreation of the classic Mega Drive-era Sonic games. The level design is just kind of fine though. I think it would have been better if they’d gone back to the original game’s structure of having three acts for each stage instead of just two. The levels speak of everyone coming up with cool ideas and the designers slavishly trying to cram them all in, to the point where I felt like I was spending so much time just messing around and gawking at things that I rarely got through a level in much under the ten minute time limit. The special stages are also a new kind of hell. I’m not getting those chaos emeralds any time soon, that’s for sure.

River City Girls is a loving reimagining of the cult 8-bit brawler which again, looks and sounds great, but the combat just feels a bit... clumsy? I like the RPG-lite elements of the game and the presentation is absolutely perfect (well, maybe not the Greek-chorus style songs you occasionally get in the background, they’re a little bit meh) but the core gameplay feels repetitive after about an hour or so, especially compared to something like Streets of Rage, which I find so much more satisfying.

Speaking of which, being in a brawler mood, I also picked up the DLC pack for Streets of Rage 4. The lack of any new levels for the main game is disappointing, but Estel my beloved the range of new characters are a welcome addition and the endless survival mode is more fun than I was expecting. Definitely worth the £3 or so I paid for it.
 
So I finished up Cyberpunk 2077 & Phantom Liberty last month (fantastic experience yet again; got instantly hooked. One day I'll do another playthrough of this brilliant game) and Tiny Tina's Wonderlands with my friend (we're just achievement hunting now). I've also just finished up Tales of Zestiria (not as good as Tales of Berseria. I couldn't put Berseria down, whereas Zestiria was a bit of a slog to get through).
I got myself a couple of fishing games in the steam sale; Dave the Diver and Dredge (I love fishing mini games in general) So I've been playing Dave the Diver for now and really been enjoying that.
I'm also going into the New Year with the aim of tackling Elden Ring. A buddy got it for me for xmas despite me being absolutely awful at the souls games, but he has faith I can do it so I'm gonna give it a real go (and die a lot)

I finished 25 games this year. I'm hoping with the recent acquisition of a steam deck, I can get through more (especially the indie games). Slowly slowly chipping away at that horrendous backlog.
 
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