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[FeastYoEyes]

I'm going to preface by saying these are the games I've played this year:

Devil May Cry 3: Special Edition
Horizon Forbidden West
Elden Ring
Control
Berserk and the Band of the Hawk
Hitman
Hitman 2
Hitman 3
Assassin's Creed
Assassin's Creed II
Final Fantasy XV
The Last of Us Part II
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
Final Fantasy VII Remake
Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age
Resident Evil 2 Remake
CyberPunk 2077

There are a lot of great games in that list. But by far, the most disappointing, underwhelming, and worst game of the year for me is Horizon Forbidden West. I WANTED to love this game, even like the game, but I hated it. The story was hilariously contrived and compounded by so many powerpoint presentations and sleepy conversations, that I stopped caring. The characters were bland, generic, and cliche. And the savior complex Aloy has is a bit insufferable by the end. "But surely the gameplay can save it, its Horizon!" Nope. Coming off of AC Valhalla and Breath of the Wild, I was used to being able to actually traverse open worlds. Horizon flat out doesn't let you go places you feel like you should. You have to follow the yellow hand holds everywhere you go. Its simply terrible game design in 2022. And while the bow and arrow gameplay was the best part, even that got repetitive to me by the end. I went from being hyped leading up to its release, to swearing off the franchise 5 hours in. I finished it in 32 hours and promptly sold back. To me, the game is garbage and was correctly outshined by Elden Ring. In addition, the response by Guerilla devs when they put down Elden Ring made me hate the game more. Even after investing two games into this series, I don't care what happens and I won't be getting the dlc or the third game.

Couldn't agree more. It's crazy they made such interesting concepts ripped out of old school sci fi novels boring. No more tribe politics, PLEASE

 

[Humdinger]

why didn't ppl like it?

1) Too much Ubi-bloat, and 2) they made Aloy unlikeable.

For me, it was the Ubibloat. There was just way too much to do -- all the different side missions (10?), all the different damage and resistance types. Less is more.

 

[Fredrik]

Well my game doesn't have all that thickness, so yours is better than mine.

Being able to test your game on the Deck seems quite cool too, I should check if Game Maker allows for that yet.

Heh well it’s certainly not suitable for a modern audience
To go into detail I’ve hand animated everything on iPad, full screen highres picture for each frame, animated with weight and all the fun little bonus body movements no real dev can do today without having to deal with the pitchfork crowd.

Character Animation Test

youtube.com

The game itself is mostly an evolution of the Unity 2D platformer template, with tons of extra C# scripts but still simple, I mostly see it as an exercise.

Getting it to run on the Steam Deck was an easy thing but the actual file transfer that was needed was awful at least early on when Steam Deck was new, don’t know if it’s easier now.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Trek to Yomi

That game is shit. I downloaded on GP and played it with my niece. We barely did anything in the game, but it played like ass. The game looked like it played much better in their videos.

 

[TintoConCasera]

Heh well it’s certainly not suitable for a modern audience
To go into detail I’ve hand animated everything on iPad, full screen highres picture for each frame, animated with weight and all the fun little bonus body movements no real dev can do today without having to deal with the pitchfork crowd.

Character Animation Test

youtube.com

The game itself is mostly an evolution of the Unity 2D platformer template, with tons of extra C# scripts but still simple, I mostly see it as an exercise.

Getting it to run on the Steam Deck was an easy thing but the actual file transfer that was needed was awful at least early on when Steam Deck was new, don’t know if it’s easier now.

Amazing animation skills my man! Also pretty based, wouldn't mind seeing more MCs like her.

 

[Fredrik]

Amazing animation skills my man! Also pretty based, wouldn't mind seeing more MCs like her.

Thanks, animation is fun!
And yeah, I understand that people want to be represented but it’s interesting that certain body types never get that representation nowdays.

 

[Thief1987]

First one or the sequel ? Personally I loved the first but the sequel was just one of the most boring and cringe game I ever played.

Sequel. I'm also not fond of original game, but sequel is straight up bad. And boringness is also my main complaint.

 

[Kerotan Frog]

Couldn't agree more. It's crazy they made such interesting concepts ripped out of old school sci fi novels boring. No more tribe politics, PLEASE

Thank you! I can't believe I forgot about tribe politics. I probably purged from my memory. Any time they got into their really asinine tribe dynamics, or referred to tech as magic or some other uninformed/primitive descriptor, I couldn't help but roll my eyes. So much of the dialogue was jank filler that it was hard to sit through. Guerilla has a really hard time writing something coherent and poignant.

Conversely, Sony Santa Monica is extremely adept at this. I would classify Horizon and GoW as fairly similar games: cinematic, third person single player with semi open worlds. GoW makes really dense mythology and lore palatable and digestible with expertly directed dialogue and brilliant direction, whereas Horizon just vomits exposition and makes a mess all over themselves while delivering lines as boring as possible. Its staggering how two games released in the same year set out to do similar things, but achieve polar opposite results. Ragnarok earns every story reveal and high moment, and forbidden west put me to sleep no less than 4 times during its cutscenes.

 

[Rocco Schiavone]

Saints garbage. Delayed this trash for 6 months and I never had a game that crashed so many times like this turd.