John and Crystal ease in with news about the bewildering VR remake of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies. Then, we fill out on-mic The 9 Games That Shaped Who I Am, a recent games-listing trend that asks us not merely to consider what games are good, but to look deep into ourselves and connect who we are to the games we have played.

The 9 games that shaped John are:

The 9 games that shaped Crystal are:

You can support us on our Patreon, and follow us on social media @gamesline.net, John, and Crystal

Also, don’t forget to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, and tell a friend about the show!

If you want to send in questions, send them to our email podcast@gamesline.net!

You can also join our Discord channel at gamesline.chat!

Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real.

Edited by Crystal

The post The Gamesline Podcast Episode 108: The 9 Games That Shaped Who I Am appeared first on Gamesline.

She’s an Icon, She’s a Legend, and She Is the Moment

Confirming leeks leaks, Hatsune Miku officially joins Fortnite as the Festival Season 7 Icon.

The virtual singer will not only arrive to the stage with appropriately themed outfits, instruments, and even more songs, but she will also be joining the game at the same as the arrival of a pair of iconic kaiju for an upcoming Godzilla x Kong collaboration.

Ubisoft’s Unending Issues

Ubisoft announced another delay for Assassin’s Creed Shadows. The game, originally due out November 15, 2024, was initially pushed to February, and is now rescheduled again to release on March 20, 2025.

Ubisoft also stated that they have “appointed leading advisors to review and pursue various transformational strategic and capitalistic options to extract the best value for stakeholders.” This sounds like a good thing a healthy company does (John writes with sarcasm).

Because meanwhile, Indonesian support studio Brandoville Studios, who have been instrumental in Shadows’ development, have been outed by allegations of workplace abuse in a report by People Make Games. The support studio ultimately shuttered in 2024, and an Ubisoft spokesperson otherwise expresses their vague “condem[nation]” of the accounts.

The Los Angeles Wildfires

The ongoing Los Angeles wildfires have destroyed numerous homes and displaced hundreds of thousands of individuals. With LA being a sprawling point of the United States’ entertainment industry, a few celebrity homes and landmarks have been destroyed, and several anticipated events have been postponed.

Located near an evacuation warning zone, Riot Games has closed its Santa Monica office for all but “critical functions”. CEO Dylan Jadeja writes that, “Riot will be ready to stand up for Los Angeles and give back in every way [they] can.”

Dungeons & Dragons web series Critical Role has also postponed broadcast, with many of its performers based in impacted areas. The company has donated to a wildfire recovery fund.

As the path of the fire continues to be actively monitored, neighboring communities also continue to be subjected to smoke and strong winds, as Insomniac Games senior writer Nick Folkman comments.

This is a list of several funds you can donate to that aim to help support the victims of the fires.

For Californian residents, here’s a spreadsheet compiling numerous resources and local community hubs that are offering free necessities and shelter. Sorted by location, some of these spaces are seeking volunteers as well. The sheet is being updated and maintained by the Mutual Aid LA Network and are receptive to feedback.

Medical suppliers like Planet Halo Health are also taking requests for free respirators and face masks for community-based or individual distribution.

Through 211 LA, Airbnb is also providing temporary housing for those displaced.

In other news…

A remake of The House of the Dead 2 has been announced. Due out in Spring, the latest return to the light gun franchise will release on Switch, PlayStation, Xbox, Steam, and GOG.

Splash Damage’s co-op shooter Transformers: Reactivated has been canceled.

Sony has announced Horizon: Zero Dawn and Helldivers films, which means they’re pretty much just remaking Starship Troopers at this point. The second season of HBO’s The Last of Us series is also starting in April.

RetroRemake has announced the “first affordable FPGA gaming console” with the SS One, a device modeled after the PS One. The console will support PS1 games, memory cards, and controllers, and can also do anything the MiSTer can handle. The first run will cost $149, and future runs will be more expensive, but with a promise it will be at or under $220.

FuturLab, developers of PowerWash Simulator, has announced that support for the VR version of the game is going on indefinite hiatus. In the post announcing this, their CEO Kirsty Rigden said that the VR version wasn’t breaking even, and when job openings for the non-VR version became available, the decision was made to move the VR team over to those jobs so they could have job security.

This year’s Evo lineup has seemingly leaked thanks to an accidentally uploaded YouTube thumbnail. The games this year will be Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8, Guilty Gear Strive, Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising, Under Night In-Birth 2, Mortal Kombat 1, Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, and Marvel vs Capcom 2. The thumbnail may have been out of date, so this may not be 100% accurate, but it makes sense.

And finally, bunch more of Switch 2 leaks happened, and Nintendo still hasn’t announced the friggin’ thing. Sources are claiming the console will be announced on the 16th, with a release sometime in May or June.

They did, however, announce that a LEGO Game Boy kit will release in October.

The post The Bulletin: Miku Monday appeared first on Gamesline.

Another week, another podcast. This time John and Lorelai sit down to try to dodge the pollen and talk about the huge dump of news over the last week. John’s been playing PokéRogue, Emerald Rogue, and Final Fantasy XIII while Lorelai has been poking at Hades 2 and Fallout 76 when she’s not obsessively trying to clear Rabbit & Steel‘s hardest difficulty.

In the news, Multiversus is back and getting a lot of new characters, the next Valve game leaked, and GTA6 got a release window. There is a lot of weird stuff happening with the Roll7 closure, Nintendo bought Shiver Entertainment from the Embracer Group, and Kingdom Hearts is coming to Steam. Playstation got some new CEO’s and Dead by Daylight is getting some new stuff while we got a lot of new details about Assassin’s Creed Shadows.

You can support us on our Patreon, and follow us on Twitter @TheGamesline, @JudgementScythe, and @John_Michonski.

Also, don’t forget to rate and review us on iTunes, and tell a friend about the show!

If you want to send in questions send them to our ask box at gamesline.tumblr.com/ask.

You can also join our Discord channel at thegamezone.zone!

Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real.

Edited by Lorelai

The post The Gamesline Podcast Ep. 35: The Allergy Episode appeared first on Gamesline.

Big Updates from Big Devs

The latest Assassin’s Creed game, set in Japan, has been detailed. Titled Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, the game stars a female shinobi named Naoe and Yasuke, the famous black samurai who was a retainer to Oda Nobunaga. Shadows will be available November 15th, 2024.

Dead by Daylight dev Behaviour Interactive lad out a few updates for the game, including their next two collaborations. Coming next is a Dungeons and Dragons expansion, with playable killer Vecna and playable survivors Aestri Yazar and Baermar Uraz (who are one character, just two people. Like the Ice Climbers I guess?). Their next collab was also teased, a Castlevania expansion with Dracula as the killer. The DnD update will launch June 3rd, and more information about Big Drac will drop August 6th.

Behaviour also detailed other projects, including The Casting of Frank Stone, their collaboration with Until Dawn creator Supermassive Games, their shooter Project T, and a new rougue-lite game called What the Fog.

Sony has announced the new CEOs of PlayStation. Herman Hulst, previously the co-founder of Guerrilla Games, and Hideaki Nishino, previously SVP of Platform Experiences, will take their mantles in June. Hulst will be in charge of the Studio Business Group, the part of the company in charge of first-party games and adaptation of the games in other mediums. Nishino’s job will be running the Platform Business Group, with third-party games and hardware on their docket.

Take-Two has confirmed in a recent earnings call that Grand Theft Auto VI, the game that’ll probably shift the entire economy on launch, is due out in the Fall of 2025.

The Industry Continues to Bleed

In the same earnings call that gave GTAVI a release window, Take-Two’s CEO Strauss Zelnick claimed that Roll7 and Intercept Games, two studios that got internal memos informing them of their shuttering, are actually not closed. Take-Two previously put up smoke and mirrors during their closure of 2K Marin, which hasn’t ever been formally confirmed.

Square Enix, after a report stating Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth, Final Fantasy XVI, and Foamstars were disappointments, announced they would be laying off staff in IT, publishing, and their indie game division Square Enix Collective. Those effected will be informed over the next month.

After Tango Gameworks’ announced closure, the team seemed to have enough time to squeeze out a final hurrah. A final update to Hi-Fi Rush has been released to combat a few final bugs, and the Limited Run release of the physical copy is confirmed to still be releasing.

The previously thought cancelled update to Redfall that would allow for offline play will also be released.

On June 10th, the Switch will no longer allow for direct posting of screenshots and videos to Twitter or the use of Twitter to search for friends thanks to the biggest moron on the planet.

The post The Bulletin: Good Behaviour is Killer appeared first on Gamesline.

In the news the team lovingly go over all the new Pokémon info, Chaos;Head Noah being released on Steam, Need For Speed: Unbound, and the Mario Movie. Kojima’s new game is coming and Magic: The Gathering is adding Final Fantasy and Assassin’s Creed cards. Jennifer Hale is also going to be Bayonetta now.

As always, you can support us on our Patreon, and follow us on Twitter @VGChooChoo,  @john_michonski, @FKAsocks and @Mavsplainiamania

Also, don’t forget to rate and review us on iTunes, and tell a friend about the show! If you want to send in questions send them to our ask box at videogamechoochoo.tumblr.com/ask.

You can also join our Discord channel at thegamezone.zone!

Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real.

Subscribe via iTunes, Hipcast, direct download, or listen below!

The post VGCC Episode 414: 6 Times the Nice appeared first on Gamesline.

On the news side, D23 sure was an event that happened and John gets live updates on the Ubisoft conference from this weekend. Games Done Quick look at another online marathon for next year in the wake of Florida’s Anti LGBTQ bills while Twitch’s brain geniuses continue to make the website optimal to its user base by shutting down Host Mode in the weeks to come.

As always, you can support us on our Patreon, and follow us on Twitter @VGChooChoo,  @Mavsplaniamania and @john_michonski

Also, don’t forget to rate and review us on iTunes, and tell a friend about the show! If you want to send in questions send them to our ask box at videogamechoochoo.tumblr.com/ask.

You can also join our Discord channel at thegamezone.zone!

Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real.

Subscribe via iTunes, Hipcast, direct download, or listen below!

The post VGCC Episode 410: Old Dirty Liz Threw It Back Too Hard appeared first on Gamesline.

As always, you can support us on our Patreon, and follow us on Twitter @VGChooChoo, @john_michonski, @solonface, and @erikamiaou.

Also, don’t forget to rate and review us on iTunes, and tell a friend about the show! If you want to send in questions send them to our ask box at videogamechoochoo.tumblr.com/ask.

You can also join our Discord channel at thegamezone.zone!

Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real.

Subscribe via iTunes, hipcast, direct download, or listen below!

The post VGCC Episode 364: Like a Pirate appeared first on Gamesline.

Mario + Rabbids: (John)

The sequel to the surprisingly great Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle has been confirmed, and it’ll take to the stars. Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope, will release in 2022 and sees Mario, Luigi, and Peach teaming up with Rabbid Peach, Rabbid Rosalina, and a new Rabbid with Yu-Gi-Oh! hair. It seems like you’ll be rescuing Rabbid versions of Lumas from Mario Galaxy, and you’re traveling from planet to planet to fight a foe of some sort. If it plays just like the first game and has the same amazing music, Sparks of Hope will be a solid game!

Rocksmith+: (John)

Ubisoft is releasing a new version of Rocksmith, a subscription service that will walk you through all the guitar lessons and real-time feedback you could ever ask for. New additions include Kramer model guitar support, Tab views, and a more expansive library of songs. There will even be video lessons and communities to chat about the songs you’re learning. There will be a free beta period for folks to help Ubisoft work out the kinks, but this seems to be a great way for guitar-hopefuls to learn the basics. Rocksmith Workshop will also be a tool to let users make their own arrangements of songs to upload for others to play.

Riders Republic: (Solon)

Imagine with me a post-capitalist future where you can play SSX with all your friends at the exact same time. Well, we don’t live in that post-capitalist future, instead we live in a hyper-capitalist hell where Ubisoft makes Riders Republic smashing every extreme sport they can think of into one always accessible, mega-consumable, MMO. Did you want to play SSX? Well, everyone on the servers are currently playing RED BULL SPONSORED BMX FEAT. VANS, so sorry… Every year, Ubisoft puts out one of these big multiplayer sports games and they land in a weird middle ground of being way too much and not really what I’m necessarily looking for at the same time. Focus up, Ubi.

Assassin’s Creed DLC: (Solon)

You didn’t finish Assassin’s Creed, or you 100%’d it. There is no in between, and either way, here is more. What kind of more? More more. A smattering of story with Eivor and Odin, and more of all the other stuff too. Now you have the option to wield single-handed swords?? Why would you downgrade from dual-wielding two-handed swords??

Far Cry 6: (Solon)

They got Giancarlo Esposito in here, but it’s just for some DLC, and when he’s not here, it’s really rough. I guess Far Cry fans just love playing as the fascist dictators? I need more Just Cause so badly right now…

Avatar: (John)

For some reason Ubisoft is releasing an Avatar game in 2022. It’s being made by the The Division team, and sure it looks pretty, but god what did we do to deserve this? Yves came out to introduce this too, to make sure we didn’t forget that Ubisoft was getting pretty much constantly called out for workplace transgressions. I just felt kinda bleh about the whole thing at the end there.

Devolver (John)

Devolver was an odd beast, as while the games they did show were pretty cool to see, the presentation was downright aggravating and unfunny. Sure, comedy is subjective, but it was a headache watching this program and having to parse what was an unfunny joke and what was a real thing people could buy. Hey, Shadow Warrior 3 looks tight, Wizard with a Gun was adorable, and Inscryption was dark and badass.

I couldn’t help, however, but be overwhelmed by the bad rather than the good. Another big downer in specific was Demon Throttle.

I really hate this new concept of physical only limited run games. The only people who will buy these games are weirdo collectors who will never actually play the games. Demon Throttle, a game by the folks who made Gato Roboto, will basically not exist at a certain point. I do hope the developers are okay with that! Devolver seems to be, since they made a joke about it on the stream explicitly saying what I just did. How fun!!!!

Gearbox:

Randy Pitchford retire.

The post E3 Day 3 Or 1 Or Whatever – Ubisoft, Devolver, and Gearbox Roundup appeared first on Gamesline.

In the process of Googling to see if there was a way to abandon the mission and come back when I had the proper context, I discovered a fair amount of people had run into this issue as well. After doing some detective work, I concluded I had mistaken the map icon for the shops in the game, which looks very similar to the icon marking the carriage that takes you Franciade, where the DLC takes place. I would assume most players were just trying to restock on some assassin goodies when they made the same mistake as me. Which would also explain my crippling lack of smoke bombs throughout the whole ordeal.

My clumsiness is all my own, of course, I would never characterize myself as being the most “on it” player of any game, but this kind of spacing out was a new low, even for me. Of course, a lot of it can be attributed to the copy-paste approach that Ubisoft has taken to their open worlds ever since they decided to expand them to ridiculous sizes, but I’d name map markers as the main culprit. For the first time I understood the complaint that many people had voiced: saying they allow you to disconnect from the play area and simply follow the shiny indicator all the way to your goal.

A few months prior to this event, whilst exploring Genshin Impact’s Liyue Harbour, I felt a similar disconnect from the city. As I clambered and climbed the beautiful, traditional Chinese influenced architecture, drawing diagonal jumping lines trying to get to Yujing Terrace in order to steal some fish and plants from a gorgeous public plaza, it struck me that I had no blooming clue how to get there “the proper way.”

Not willing to lose my “immersion” as the kids say these days, I decided then and there to learn my way around the city the conventional way. Use the walkways, learn what connected to where, and all-around learn the lay of the land. I did the same with the other city in the game, Mondstadt, and I generally made an effort to relearn which roads lead to wherever I wanted to go, even if I still chose to take the shorter and more ridiculous way there.

My disconnect was easily remedied in Genshin Impact because despite its colossal map size, its key locations are all fairly small and distinctive on account of its fantastical bend. But this is flat out impossible in games like an Assassin’s Creed. Whether it be works of art turned streets like Paris and Florence, or the boring colonial American cities, these are locations that by necessity have to be mostly made up of mundane locales. In between the churches, palaces and gardens, there have to be houses, storage spaces, businesses the player can’t interact with, and many more.

Turn off the map markers in Assassin’s Creed III and no matter how well you know New York, you won’t be able to arrive at a local landmark beyond knowing the cardinal direction you’re supposed to keep running towards until you stumble upon it. Modern cities have evolved beyond the more small-scale locations of Venice and Florence, with important landmarks every few blocks that make a triangulation of your location possible. Of course, if you live in these places, you know the local store and the bus station five streets down after which you’re supposed to keep going south, but within a video game these locations are very easy to miss if they exist at all.

Not to mention that in a virtual space, many of the resources a person would use to find their way about are simply not available. The wind direction, the distinctive shadows, and the burn on your skin that tell you the position of the sun, the very loud workshop you passed 10 minutes ago, the weirdly wet pavement section and that really yappy dog. All these little indicators that make winding, grid-like streets easy to manage in real life are impossible to create on any reasonable budget and time frame for a video game developer. There are 10 dog models in the whole game, 5 puddles, and for all you know the NPCs have 20 lines to populate a city of thousands.

It seems that for the time being, and so long as Assassin’s Creed insists on expanding its scale with every release, map markers are a necessary evil. The only recourse of the player being a robust options menu to allow them to turn any unwanted icons off, and not using the same bloody icon for your DLC missions as you do for the generic shops in the game. However, there are other games that could do with much better signposting that would allow the player to rescind from the map marker entirely that simply do not put the work in. Even when such signposting would feel quite at place within their chosen locations.

Take games like Skyrim or Fallout, built entirely around immersion. They often take pointers from real world signposting for their cities, but these are rarely that useful or even looked at by most players unless they are completely lost. Leading again to the over-reliance on following the trail of objectives without taking in your surroundings.

To try not to split too many hairs: your average street sign is scaled and proportioned on the assumption that a human will be looking at it in their field of vision, and is designed with attention grabbing colours for this exact purpose. It is not designed to be noticed on a screen, many times smaller than your actual field of vision, through a filter that changes the colour and stylized decay on its lettering. If you make your sign hard to read, people won’t try to read them, if they even notice it.

Something as simple as making the signs for important places a little bit bigger than they would usually be, keeping the sightlines a little bit cleaner, and maybe not washing everything with whatever colour Bethesda was obsessed in the months leading up to release, would do wonders for players’ capacity to get around comfortably without any external aide. Do you expect me to believe every blacksmith in Skyrim has the equipment to fashion dragon weapons, but none of them have a bright paint at hand? As it stands, organic traversal in these games is possible, but far from optimal, and defaulting to the optimal way of traversal is a signature habit of humans.

Our very own Rose here at the Chooch said she had an easy time getting around Control due to common references like office signs, and lifts that take you to different floors. And the best game of 2020, 2001’s Gothic, takes a fair amount of care into making major roads in and out of cities only bifurcate at most, making it easy to build a mental map when most locations can easily be referenced to be “to the right/left turn” of some other major and frequented landmark within the canyon the game takes place in.

This is, of course, not to say that map makers are to be done away entirely. Some people have an incredibly poor sense of direction and need all the help they can get. Some people don’t care about slowing down and taking in the atmosphere of your virtual world; I’m sure there’s lots of New Yorkers playing GTA IV and just as many Parisians playing AC: Unity who just want to get up to crazy video game antics and not indulge in digital tourism.

But part of being in a location is also learning to get around the same. Routine is an integral part of familiarity with any place. We all have our four or five routes home depending on where we’re returning from, and it’s a great contributor to the feeling that we truly know the place we live in. When you take away this capacity to orient yourself based on the organic features of the landscape, any building you climb to keep moving in a straight line to the objective is functionally interchangeable to the last, and the world map dissolves into an indistinct urban sprawl dotted by a few recognizable spaces.

And if you’re going to put in the work to make beautiful spaces, you might as well help people appreciate your labour instead of handing them a tool that makes them bypass it at the fastest possible speed.

The post Losing Immersion Amidst Maps and Markers appeared first on Gamesline.

I did not think I would end up liking this game after the beta came out. I played the beta and utterly loathed it, probably because I was trying to play it like an anime fighter. Once I got my head around the fact that it has the pacing of a Street Fighter rather than a Guilty Gear, I actually found myself having a damn good time with the game. New characters came and went and I kept coming back for more grappler action with Ladiva, easily my favorite grappler in fighting games. At least until an update broke the way she worked, making her near unplayable and leaving me scrambling to find a new main before settling on Percival. The game is great, well balanced, and had some interesting ideas with it’s strange single player gatcha beat ‘em up and it’s one button press specials that kept bringing me and my less fighting game inclined friends back for more. If it hadn’t been for the Ladiva breaking balance change, it would have been much higher on my list.

9. Pixel Puzzle Makeout League

I thought for sure this spot would be Murder By Numbers, another great Picross puzzler, but once I played Pixel Puzzle Makeout League, it soared to my top games of 2020. It does a phenomenal job of building images and using the puzzles to tell a story through easily recognizable images as they built out. Its ending is also one of my favorite things this year and worth the time investment to get there. Seriously though, I implore you to ignore the game’s bad title and play through this absolute gem if only to experience some of the wild places it goes.

8. Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Animal Crossing is a series I’ve always tried to connect with and until this one, I failed every time. I thought once again I’d drop it after a week of boredom and go back to Rune Factory or Stardew Valley. Maybe it was the pandemic, or maybe it was being in the right space to enjoy it but this time around I lasted for months. I’m less consistent checking in on my island these days, but for a solid half a year I put in the work and finally found the fun that people have with this series.

7. Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla

I was really skeptical of Valhalla as the PR campaign went on and on about what were my least favorite parts of Assassin’s Creed in the past. Odyssey was great, but going in hard on the combat system was not its strong point. For the first time in the new series style, the moment to moment combat all felt good. I actually enjoyed running into a place, two broadswords in my hands, swinging wildly and cutting everything in my path down. It was a fantastic time with some great writing and incredibly cool moments that I needed after the complete travesty that was Watch Dogs: Legion.

For those of you who haven’t played it yet, here is a suggestion: when you are asked what gender you want to be, let the Animus choose for you. It’s a choice that actively improves the story they are telling and makes the game better as a whole. Do it, I know you want to play as a female Eivor because she’s a hell of a lot more interesting, but that’s the thing, you will. So let the Animus choose for you. I know you have your preference, I know I did, but trust me when I say that it’s an option worth taking

6. Final Fantasy VII: Remake

Final Fantasy VII: Remake did the impossible for me: it made me interested in what’s coming next after the crew leaves Midgar. It’s weird how the changes they made are straight out of the Father’s Day episode of Doctor Who and yet they have me chomping at the bit for more. Everything about FFVII:R worked for me, from the way they adapted the ATB system to the fantastic characterizations and overall writing. Having just started coming into my own in my queerness, the part that scared me the most, because of its poor handling in the original FFVII, ended up feeling empowering. I love this game through and through, and I really need to sit down again soon to finish off that platinum with my good friend Chadley.

5. Sakura Wars

First, Geki! Teikoku Kagekidan is the greatest theme song in video games, don’t argue with me I will fight you. Second, they didn’t fuck up their child character and make it the most uncomfortable thing in the world. That’s a first for the franchise and it’s the first time that I can go “hey, you should play this game” without the MASSIVE caveat that it’s kinda super creepy with children. They combined my two of my favorite things in the world, Sakura Wars and Dynasty Warriors, and I would much rather play a mediocre Dynasty Warriors than a mediocre strategy game. And, uh… let’s maybe not talk about how much time I spent playing the Koi-Koi Wars Hanafuda mini-game.

4. Hades

I didn’t think I’d care for Hades but enough people I care about loved it, so I jumped in and sucked at it. It took me 74 times to get my first clear, and yet I still kept coming back. I wanted more; more juicy writing, more tight gameplay, and more time for my girlfriend to watch the screen and talk about how much she loves Dusa. This is a game we shared: we spent weeks taking turns, succeeding, failing, doing it together. Hades was a real boon this year, something everyone around me could love and enjoy together as we strove for more and more clears, finally seeing credits and jumping right back in. Hades will always hold a special place in my heart and a permanent place on my Switch.

3. Yakuza: Like a Dragon

I’m shocked at how good this game was, as I was so worried by the changes they were making. Would I like this goofy looking new character? Would I be able to get past not having Kiryu and company as my main crew? Would the RPG systems actually work in a game like this? Well, the answer to those questions is it’s probably my favorite RPG since Lost Odyssey and might actually be my favorite Yakuza game. The way the characters interact and naturally grow as friends; the way the minigames and substories fit with Ichiban’s character rather than being a complete contrast to it; . It’s a goofy game with some of my favorite moments this year.

2. Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers Patches 5.2 – 5.4

No game this year took up my time like Final Fantasy XIV. It was a game I’ve jumped in and out of a lot over the years, but this is the first time I’ve fully bought in and once I did, it’s been one of the most important experiences of my life. I created my character Oulan in December, deciding that this would be the year I would finally finish A Realm Reborn and experience Heavensward, which everyone told me was great. 2 weeks later, I found myself through the entire story, hooked with a whole new group of friends and community that’s been incredible. That’s a big part of why this game, while it’s not my Game of the Year, is the most important game I played this year. It’s given me community, from the old longtime internet friends I’ve joined up with, to streaming alongside Solon. It’s been something that’s kept me going through quarantine, and made it feel like I still had something I could do to interact with friends.

It’s that interaction that has made me who I am today. I’d sit in voice chat, and it didn’t matter what my voice sounded like, people called me she. They referred to me by the gender of my character and it felt so right. It’s why I’m Christine and not Chris and I’ve been so much happier with that realization of myself and I don’t know if it would have happened if not for the family I’ve built around myself in the world of Eorzea. Joining up with friends, realizing myself, and seeing them constantly willing to join up and help me out when I’m dealing with colorblindness issues in bosses. ALL HAIL NOVA RIKO AND THE DORITO OF SAFETY! Please Square Enix, I beg you to make properly implemented colorblind filters because what you have is not enough.

Seriously though, I love the family I’ve made through this game; all of my friends are so important to me and I would not give up the time I’ve spent here for the world. It can be frustrating, maddening even, but it’s been the biggest boost for my mental health and it’s made me who I am today. So here is to all of you, my friends, my family, the people who have kept me going over this last year. This isn’t just a celebration of this game, it’s a celebration of all of you.

1. Nioh 2

I didn’t think any game would be capable of taking my attention away from Final Fantasy XIV once I was fully bought in, then along comes Team Ninja. I’ve been joking for a long time now in calling it “Game of the Generation Nioh 2” every single time I talk about it, and I’m not actually sure anymore if it’s a joke or not. Every little addition they make to the game brings me back in, new equipment, new stages, new weapons, and they all continue to keep my attention and give me the same thrill I got the first time I started as I create character after character for each of the weapons. Hundreds of hours in this game and it still continues to be a thrill, whether it’s the new DLC content or the added difficulties, I can’t stop myself from continuing to live in the incredible world Team Ninja has built.

Even after multiple playthroughs I still find the story incredibly compelling and fun: the boss fights still excite me even though I know most of them by the back of my hand, and every single loot drop gives me that serotonin drip of possible improvement to the look of my character. I love everything about this game, and it feels right to me that the game I see as probably my game of the generation came out in the final year of the console cycle. Now get ready for me to start talking about the game of the new generation of consoles when Nioh ½ Remastered comes out in February.

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