Rageys 2018: The Rage Quitter Year End Wrap Up

So much like last year I played an awful lot more than I wrote, but for the most part I will be trying to stick to games that I actually gave reviews unless it otherwise made a serious impression on me. So without further ado please enjoy.....

The 2018 Rageys
Sponsored by the Hayward family. Kinda. They keep giving me twitch bits when I tell them not to.
But after 7 years, I can sorta say I have a sponsor!

12: The "Yakuza Ishin is Never Getting Localized" award for "Game I wish I got to play" goes to....

Octopath Traveler

For the second year in a row, A game from the Nintendo Switch appears on my list under "game I wish I got to play". Nintendo is starting to sell me, but its not there just yet. I have a 7 game line before I buy a console and until I hit it, I don't buy one. But when I do, this one is going to be one of the first ports to call.

A JRPG featuring the artist from the Bravely Default series, A spiritual successor the Saga Frontier series with multiple characters, storylines, done in HD pixel art? Sign me the fuck up. This is pretty much everything I ask for in a game. And I am sure the "on the go" feature would be nice if I ever went anywhere. Put this on my list if I ever get a switch.

------------------------------

11: The "Friends and Family "Ironically" Posting Racist Memes" garbage award for "Biggest Disappointment" goes to.....

Bravely Second: End Layer

I could go easy here and name Nights of Azure 2: Bride of the New Moon here, but I expected that one to be bad. But this was a game that I was legitimately excited to get to. After pretty much buying a console specifically to play the first one, I thought I was going to devour the sequel. But while I will say that this game, its soundtrack, and characters were all still great? I couldn't help but feel underwhelmed.

This game came out in 2016, I started playing it and got a chunk into it. But then I kinda put it down. I had no real desire to go back to it. Something was missing. It despite liking it, it didn't have the same magic as before. I had to actually force myself to finish it when I was between games. Had to force myself to play something I was excited to play. That wins it Biggest Disappointment. 

------------------------------

10. The "LOVE actually stood for Level of Violence" award for "Biggest Surprise" goes to.....

DeltaRune: Chapter 1

OH MY GOD. MORE UNDERTALE. Toby Fox, you mad genius. For those who don't know what I'm talking about: The Undertale twitter started tweeting in character about the DeltaRune and if you followed the link, you got a "survey" that forces you to essentially make a character, and then it pulls a switcheroo and trashes all of it and then dumps you in to fully fleshed out but more so PLAYABLE chapter of what seems to be something connected to Undertale.

It's a separate world, but all the characters are familiar. The mechanics I knew were in place, but it played differently. Has a whole new soundtrack, but so many callbacks to what I've heard before. This is only chapter one, and I couldn't be more amped for what is to come.  It can't come fast enough. This literally appeared out of nowhere in a matter of days. This is how you sell your upcoming project. This did more for me than any trailer could. Sorry Evil Within 2, this is my biggest surprise of the year.

------------------------------

9. The "SonicFox vs GO1 Grand Finals" award for "Most hyped game" this year goes to.....

Dragon Ball FighterZ

Again, another year where I can't use this award's original "Overhyped" moniker, because when it's the first year for a brand new fighting game, and you not only make it into the EVO Championship top 9 but get more people in your tournament than STREET FIGHTER by a significant margin? Holy crap can you say you are backing the hype.

I was pretty much amped to get my hands on Dragon Ball FighterZ since the first showing of it at E3 and it fuckin' delivered on all fronts. Produced by Arc Systems Works as probably the only good true 2D Dragon Ball Fighting game, designed similarly to Guilty Gear Xrd but blending mechanics from Marvel Vs Capcom with easy to learn auto combos and fast paces frenetic combat with over the top super moves, its pretty hard to not to feel bad ass when playing this game. I stopped watching Dragon Ball Z almost 20 years ago and I literally couldn't wait to get my hands on this. Apparently. a lot of people couldn't. Easily one of the most hyped games of this year.

------------------------------

8. The "Fortnite Dancing" award for "Flash in the Pan" game of the year.

The Evil Within 2

This award may be my "flash in the pan", but in reality this year it is more of a "most improved" award. If you remember my review of the first The Evil Within game, you will remember that I was very excited and incredibly let down with the product I was given. I had no intention to play this one. But it went on sale, I had nothing else to play, and heard it was better than the first. Sure. Whatever. I'll bite. 

And inside of a few plays? I was enjoying the combat that was once a massive headache, I was experiencing what felt like my first open world horror game that seemed to work very well, and after a few missions I actually found myself completely riveted by the story. So many of my complaints in the first game were addressed, fixed, or removed outright. Everything about The Evil Within 2 was just better than the first. I outright said its a great game. Not ok, not good, great. Honestly if I get a lull in my releases I might play it again I liked it that much. That deserves at least a little recognition. 

------------------------------

7. The "Surprised its not EA, Ubisoft or Bioware" award for "Worst Value" goes to....

Persona 3/5 Dancing Star/Moon Night

No question here. I bitched about this when Persona 4: Dancing All Night came out, and apparently the fans caved and paid more, because Atlus has learned fucking nothing. Two new games, 25 tracks of remixes, some of them appear up to 3 times, and FIVE FUCKING season passes totalling over 85 dollars? But on top of this all of it, ALL OF IT was ready day one. Atlus, I love these games and want to see some HD remakes now, but seriously? Go fuck yourselves, you money grubbing pricks.

This is completely fucking unacceptable. Just sell the games for 100 a piece so I can buy the actual full version. But don't give me this fucking horseshit that I can choose to buy it or not. Game devs are, and have been deliberately witholding content to wring out more money. I bitched about this 10 years ago, I bitch about it now. Gamers have given up too much ground ground on this battle so now its just an accepted norm. DLC has to fucking stop.

------------------------------

6. The "Twitch Prime giving me 100 free games" award for "Best Value" goes to....

Darkest Dungeon: The Crimson Court / Color of Madness DLC.

If you read my review, I was unkind to this game. If you read my Ragey for that year, I was also unkind to this game... But sometime from then? Something clicked. I got in a zone where I understood everything about this game, the complaints I had about it fell away, and suddenly game that was hard and no fun to play became a challenging obsession that I had to continue.

But then I gave the DLCs I had been ignoring a chance. And let me tell you, I have now plunked down a ludicrous 400+ hours to this game thanks to the two DLC updates. It's slowly become one of my favorites to play. I burn whole days starting new quests, trying new comps, trying to beat Stygian mode, and the new Endless Harvest mode. And so help, me now I am fuckin' around with mods which will make me play it all over again from the start.

Considering in total I paid maybe less than 30 bucks for all of it with steam discounts? Without a doubt this game has to win Best Value. I haven't stretched a dollar for a game like I have with Darkest Dungeon in a long, long time. 

------------------------------

5. The "I don't listen to actual bands anymore" Award for best Original Soundtrack goes to....

A Hat In Time

This game is so fucking cute I can't stand it. It was one I had on my radar for a while so when it went on sale I jumped at the chance for it. This game has some fantastic sound design to it and an OST from Pascal Michael Stiefel. All of the characters are cartoony in their personalities but are well translated in their spoken lines. All of them are unique to each other and hilarious.

The music in the levels starts with a base theme that you get from the first level, but as you keep replaying them to get more collectibles to proceed, the music makes subtle changes to suit the scenario. For example, when you explore "Deadbird Studio" you have a theme, but when you sneak in after hours, the theme gets stealthy and quieter without losing its initial melody.

But then it also throws a curve ball from out of nowhere by having some particularly great boss fight themes ranging from rock, to metal, to techno/electronica, and sometimes all in the same song. There were some games that had very good soundtracks this year, but A Hat in Time's is the one I listened to the most. 

--------------------

4. The "Disaronno  Sour" Good Consistency Award goes to....

Atelier Lydie & Suelle:
The Alchemists and the Mysterious Painting

It would be easy to just slap Yakuza 6 or Valkyria Chronicles 4 here and just call it a day, but the rub here is that on pretty much a yearly basis, Gust continue to pump out games in the Atelier series, its newest installment being Atelier Lydie & Suelle. I for the most part stopped writing about them because while I love these games, they do get a bit samey and constantly writing essentially the same review with a few minor changes each time isn't really going to get clicks. I only reneged on Atelier Sophie and the Mysterious Book because it was the first new Atelier game on the PS4.

But the fact is, I really like this franchise (another one I didn't at first). But they have some pretty good folksy soundtracks, they scratch my JRPG itch, they let me sink into that mind numbing catharsis of item creation mini games, but probably most to its credit is that it has consistent storytelling. What I love is they release them in sets of 3 so when a new one comes out the characters from the previous game may not be the main role, but you get to see them a bit older, wiser, and stronger than they were before.

In this one's case, it allowed me to see a conclusion to a story arc that basically started in Atelier Sophie (two whole games ago) as a sidequest to the main story. I appreciate storytelling like that, and it made me happy to see it. Games like this will never be massively successful, but for the niche audience like me? They are doing just fine.

--------------------

3. The "7-8-1 Season" Honorable mention goes to....

God of War

I knew this would be the critics game of the year. Anyone who talked to me during the summer knew this was going to be my prediction. Because Legend of Zelda: Link naps on the couch or Super Mario Files His Tax Returns didn't release this year, most critics queue'd the prize to the next linage game in the remake/sequel God of War 2018. Because god forbid some new and original property get some limelight. It always comes back to lineage games.

Now let me say that this by no means a bad game. Kratos actually showed development as a character for once, it had a well executed story, the change in setting was much needed and excellent, and it was pretty damn fun to play. The problem is it went to the trouble to try to re-invent its combat system, then halfway through the game goes right back to the old one. The other issue I had was once I had finished it, that's it. I was done with it. I've not once thought about tossing it back in, and while many game critics have started rating games like movies? This one has not, and replayablity is an important factor to me. God of War was a great game, but it wasn't my favorite this year.

------------------------------

2. The "Any Cream or Jelly filled Donut" award for "Worst of the Year" goes to.....

Soma

Nights of Azure 2 dodges a bullet here. You know what I'm getting fucking sick of? Walking simulators. Now game devs just have the throw in a jump scare here and there in there tech demo and they can release it as a game. I started this trend recently of saving October to play more horror games on my stream. This was a freebie and I heard good things about it so I gave it a shot.

One? The game is objectively not scary. Two? The games pace couldn't be any slower than it already is. If it was, I wouldn't be playing a game at all. Three? As with most walking simulators, there is no fucking threat. Oh sure, they may be monsters or a big bad. But you get a jump scare or in this case some scrambly screen (The equivalent of a soft but firm slap on the ass), and then dropped back at your last checkpoint. Snore.

But worst of all? Bad, unintuitive fucking level design. For 40 plus minutes I walked around an empty ocean floor. No threats to avoid, no fish to see, no collectibles to pick up, no secrets to find. Just empty, desolate, quiet oceanscape. It made a slow paced and not scary game even more insufferable because it arbitrarily made me put down my key (and forget about it) before I could pick it back up, stalling my progress. I thought Soma was trash and I have no intention of picking it back up. At least Dreadout was scary and fun for a little before the bad design ruined it. Soma didn't even have that.

------------------------------

1. The "Biagio's Plain Fry-Cake Donut {Because it's the God-Tier}" Award for "Best game of the year" goes to...

A Hat in Time

You are reading that right, for the first time in this blog's history we have a game that is the first Double-winner.  It was really hard to pick a GOTY this time around because I played a lot of games, and a lot of them were very, very good. So I had to simplify things. If I take out any game that was just DLC pack or any game that I've already played before, Then what games really stood out in my mind? More so than that, what game did have the most genuine fun playing?

With no offense to Yakuza 6: Song of Life or God of War which were both great in their own right, there really was one game that really had me grinning ear to ear. A Hat in Time let me know that I'm not as over the classic 3D Mario genre as I thought it was. A love letter to games like Super Mario 64, A Hat in Time featured a cute as hell heroine, fun characters that are hilariously voice acted, A soundtrack that was fitting, charming, exciting, and rock as fuck all at once. Lots of replayablity to it. They just gave away a DLC update for free for the first days of it release. They added a multiplayer option to the game. Even flipped a story trope I hate and made me love it.

 A Hat in Time just basically did everything right. I played this game in its entirety on stream and it was pretty much impossible to jump to a point in the stream and not see me smiling while I played this. It was fantastic. I need to smash a timepiece to go back and play it again from the start. Absolutely my game of the year for 2018.

------------------------------

Might be starting to fizzle out on the writing, but we'll keep plugging away on this for as long as I have the energy for it. Thanks for reading. -- CannonMan ┌∩┐(◣_◢)┌∩┐