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milesluna · 4 months

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My Favorite Games of 2023.

Hi. Hello. Thanks ever so much for clicking on this page. Happy to have you.

First thing's first: I'm a little freak when it comes to video games. I don't feel the need to beat most games I play. From Software is one of my favorite studios in the industry and I've never finished a single one of their games. This means, fortunately, that I get to play a LOT more games than the average bear.

I've written up some blurbs about my top ten favorite games from 2023, but before that here's the list of every game I remember playing this year that left any sort of lasting impact on me (in no particular order):

Dead Space Remake Resident Evil 4 Remake F-Zero 99 Humanity Dredge Metroid Prime Remastered Anemoiaplois Alan Wake 2 Baldur’s Gate 3 LoZ Tears of the Kingdom Counter Strike 2 Hunt Showdown El Paso Elsewhere Jusant Slay the Princess| Remnant II The Finals Street FIghter 6 Lethal Company BattleBit Remastered Don’t Scream Homebody The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog Pizza Tower World of Horror Super Mario Wonder Mr. Sun’s Hatbox Fifa 23 Sea of Stars (Demo) Half-Life (25th Anniversary Update)

And the games I played that were NOT released in 2023:

Unpacking Persona 4 Golden Picross 7 The Order 1886 Shovel Knight Dig Lost Planet: Extreme Condition Spider-Man: Miles Morales Pac-Man Championship Edition DX Project Zomboid Quake LoZ The Minish Cap Drill Dozer Wario Land 4 Pokemon Pinball Resident Evil Revelations Summer of ‘58 Trackmania TwinCop We Were Here Visage Cursed Halo CE Half-Life 2 (I probably play this once per year) Witch Hunt Red Dead Redemption 2 Cyberpunk 2077 Borderlands 3 Brutal Legend Cultic Slay the Spire PUBG Rez Infinite Batman Arkham City Alan Wake Alan Wake: American Nightmare Max Payne LoZ: Majora’s Mask 3DS Metroid Prime Metroid Prime 2 Tunic Everhood Final Fantasy VII Final Fantasy VII Remake GOODBYE WORLD Yakuza: Like a Dragon Critters for Sale Dome Keeper Phasmophobia Hades Nintendo Switch Sports

Now that you understand the kind of freak you're dealing with…

Let's dive into my top ten favorite games from this objectively fucked up year.

10. El Paso Elsewhere Developed by Texas indie studio Strange Scaffold, El Paso Elsewhere is a Max Payne-clone with vampires, an opinionated narrator, and lots and lots of bullet time. As a small studio punching well above their weight class, Strange Scaffold leans into abstract, PlayStation 1 minimalism when it comes to visuals and pairs them with a soundtrack that will make your hands sweat. The vibes are here and they're ready for the end of the world. I'm personally also a big fan of everything this studio stands for.

9. Mr. Sun's Hatbox I want you to imagine Metal Gear Solid V. Now I want you to imagine that game as a 2D, level-based, slapstick platformer you can play with up to three friends. If you think that sounds stupid, you'd be right. And it's beautiful. As you build up a secret army of soldiers with various skills (and disorders), you'll start to develop *favorites*. This game constantly asks if you're willing to send those favorites on a harrowing mission and risk losing them forever… or if you'd rather send an idiot you recently captured who blinks constantly and can't kill anyone without fainting.

8. Dredge Every year I feel like I find one game that falls into the “just one more round” category, and baby… Dredge was it for 2023. As a weary fisherman in strange waters, you'll make the most out of your 12 measly hours of sunlight only for your daily voyages to inevitably pull you into the darkness of night, and night is when things get weird. Rocks emerge from the fog that you swear weren't there before, your equipment malfunctions, and you're pretty sure you just saw something in the water… something big. Despite only containing a small collection of islands, the world of Dredge manages to feel vast - perhaps vast enough to swallow you whole.

7. Resident Evil 4 Remake I was curious to see what sort of changes would be made to the timeless classic and father of modern 3rd person shooters, Resident Evil 4. I wasn't let down. RE4 Remake takes all the things that didn't age well about the original, tossed them out, and replaced them with only good things. And MORE things! It's campy, fun, and better than a game of bingo.

6. Jusant I really feel like this one didn't get the recognition it deserves. Jusant is a rock climbing game that combines the quiet contemplation of Journey with the mechanical specificity of Death Stranding. Unlike Death Standing, though, there is very little story to interrupt your flow. There are plenty of collectible bits to find for those curious to learn more about what happened before the events of the game, but the environmental storytelling does most of the heavy lifting. For me, the joy of the game comes from how it feels. Right trigger controls your right hand grip, and left trigger controls left hand grip. Plan your route, manage your stamina, and climb high above the clouds in search of answers.

5. F-Zero 99 This. Shit. Slaps. I've never been a big F-Zero guy, but this MADE me one. The “battle royale”, 99 player format is the perfect fit for the ruthless, high octane world of the game. Races last about three minutes, and friend, they are the most intense, white-knuckled three minutes of your life. The decision to make your boost meter the same as your health meter started in F-Zero 64 (I believe), and it is so much more HARROWING in this game when another player could side-swipe you mere meters from the finish line and blow you to bits. Sadly it's only playable via Switch Online, but it made me cheer, laugh, and scream enough this year to earn a spot in my top 5.

4. Alan Wake 2 Remedy makes weird games that also manage to exist in the AAA space and for that I will forever love them. Although Alan Wake 2 resembles a 3rd person shooter survival horror, I'd honestly say it's more of a narrative game than anything else. There's sidequests, there's puzzles, there's upgradeable skills, but at the end of the day the characters, world, and story are what kept me playing. If you haven't checked them out recently, you should definitely watch a story recap of the original games before diving into this sequel, but the wild swings for the fences this game takes are well worth that small price of admission. There's a god damn musical number, for Christ's sake.

3. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom I've really got nothing to say about this game that most people don't already know. It's incredible. The fact that Nintendo made a game that redefined an entire genre and then made a SEQUEL to it that ups the ante is remarkable. To be honest, I've only cleared the Rito, Zora, and Goron cities. I got a bit tired of exploring the depths and guiding Koroks to their friends, but I can't deny the sheer level of complexity and polish on display here. I saw someone on TikTok build a functioning Mecha Godzilla in this game. Good God. I've heard that the ending of this game is one of the best in the franchise, and if I'd seen it this year then it may have wound up higher on my list, but for the time being I'll continue picking up this masterpiece from time to time, chipping away at it until the day comes that I can finally smack the tits off thicc Ganondorf.

2. Half-Life (25th Anniversary Update) I know I'm gonna get shit for this, but I don't care. This year was the 25th anniversary of Half-Life and Valve released an update that made playing it (and it's online Death Match) much more accessible. I threw it on my Steam Deck out of curiosity, expecting to play for 20 minutes. I could not put it down. It is unbelievable how modern this game still feels. I simply had so much fun sprinting through the corridors of Black Mesa with a dozen weapons strapped to my back, blasting aliens and military Spec-Op chumps as a 24(?!) year old theoretical physicist.

1. Baldur's Gate III This game is fucked up, man. The sheer amount of writing in this game scares me. We can all talk about how BIG this game is, it deserves it, but the thing BG3 does better than any other role playing game I have ever experienced is actually encourage roleplaying. I've played through Act I four times now, with four different groups of friends, and it has felt fresh every time. I have seen the same events play out in so many different ways that it boggles the mind, but in every one of those play sessions I see players asking themselves “What would my lil guy do here?” rather than "what is the best thing to do here?" The game rewards players constantly for just trying shit and the D&D 5e rule set means playing like the character you said you were from the start leads to frequent Points of Inspiration. Maybe one day I'll see the end of this story (probably not), but I don't have to in order to feel a connection with BG3's world, characters, and most impressively, the characters I made myself.

Honorable Mentions for 2023

5. Dave the Diver 4. Homebody 3. Sea of Stars 2. Humanity 1. Super Mario Wonder

Top 5 Favorites NOT from 2023

5. Metroid Prime 4. Final Fantasy VII Remake 3. Cursed Halo (Halo CE Mod) 2. Red Dead Redemption 2 1. Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (3DS)

Games I didn't have a chance to play from 2023 but still want to when I find more time...

Viewfinder Venba Chants of Sennaar Thirsty Suitors Hi-Fi Rush Moonring Armored Core VI Laika Aged Through Blood Bomb Rush Cyberfunk

OKAY THANKS BYE!

#video games #2023 #GOTY

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andantonius · 1 year

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Hullo, Tumblr! I’m Jon Neimeister, an artist and art director currently working on SMITE by Hi-Rez Studios. :) I like to share art, industry advice, and dumb memes.

#art #splash art #illustration #fantasy #scifi #digital aritst #digital art #smite

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manateddy · 18 days

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Three years ago I made a fan cosmetic for Bomb King from Paladins, I have wanted more food themed skins so I said fuck it and made my own, Candy King!

Then I looked at it and said “Ew, gotta redraw that”, so I did.

Hi Rez Studios….PLEASE MAKE MORE FOOD THEMED SKINS IM BEGGINGGGG!!!

#artists on tumblr #artwork #digital art #digital illustration #drawing #procreate #hollowmanarts #paladins #paladins game #fan skin #fanart

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darkmagenugget · 7 months

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The spirit of the witch in Ashe's Necklace. Every October (And random times throughout the year), she gains enough energy to take over for a while. Ashe can avoid this by not wearing the necklace, but the witch always seems to leave Ashe in a better state than when she started. Nero the Chao takes the form of a cat to act as her familiar. They aren't possessed, he just thinks it's fun.

Hi-Rez version available on my patreon and Ko-fi. I put a lot more work into this one than usual. It was fun. ^-^

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y2klostandfound · 10 months

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Preview - K-Project (aka Rez) on Страна игр #6 (Strana Igr)(Russian video game magazine) (2001-03)

Translation in English:

The ways of game design are inscrutable. Some talents find a successful formula once and spend their whole life working on it, trying to make one more, albeit small, step to perfection. Some try to develop within a single genre. Some are tempted to work with more than one. There are people who never go back to ideas already thought up and implemented once. Not Tetsuya Mitzuguchi, creator of Sega Rally and Space Channel 5, and leader of United Game Artists (formerly Sega RD#9 Shibuya), the most independent, self-imposed and liberated development studio.

It is hard to say what kind of games this man likes to make, for one of the leaders of modern game design looking, by the way, too young. His games are a celebration of style over substance. And at the same time a source of very deep gameplay. Realistic cars and wild Ulala. Competent skid physics and dancing aliens. Perhaps you will not find in the entire industry such a variety of taste, style, visual solutions. Space Channel 5, for all its innovative game structure and fiery 1960s beats, is a classic in every way. The designer's new project is so unique that it's hard to call it a game in the literal sense of the word. Mitzuguchi started to talk about the new project a long time ago, just a few days after the release of Space Channel 5. Mitzuguchi started to talk about the new project a long time ago, just a few days after the release of Space Channel 5. When it became known that the second series of SC5 UGA seemingly is not going to make (which turned out to be not at all true), the interest in the person of Mitzuguzhi increased incredibly again. By the way, even after the disclosure of K-Project details, many analysts believe that the UGA leader has one or even two more secret projects in stock.

Tetsuya Mizuguchi is his own person. Many journalists agree that he is the geekiest person on the Japanese gaming scene.

K-Project is a psychedelic musical shooter that brings together the genres of musical games and ordinary shooters, which, at least in Japan, have the same level of cult status as turn-based strategy and FPS. By combining such iconic genres Mitzuguchi intends to get a result that is completely free from genre frameworks and prejudices of ordinary players. Never mind that ninety percent of modern gamers won't understand this creation and will never even hear about it, but K-Project will be a real work of art.

The essence of the gameplay is extremely simple, although it is almost impossible to figure out how it all works in K-Project. The game is a set of minimalist levels without any plot connection to each other. Each level stands out with its own graphic style. Complex labyrinths, open space, all kinds of aquariums, even a tropical forest - all this has nothing to do with the essence of the game. In general, Mitzuguchi admits that his main idea is to create a game analogue of the famous Disney cartoon project Fantasia. Hence the inconceivable graphic forms, and a strange musical design. And it's strange because you will be creating it yourself. Singing out the traditional Treasure's frame of enemies and rhythmically firing them off, you will create your own melodies, which will be in many ways superimposed on the general musical background of the game. This, they say, is where the fun of the game lurks. Tying everything together in your brain is impossible. Apparently, this is what is called "intuitive gameplay. That is, even a minute before you sit down for the game, you have no idea how to play it, but as soon as you take the joypad in your hands, everything immediately becomes clear. Such a strange thing this K-Project is. However, even with all that, it's no less strange than its creator.

Platform: Dreamcast Genre: musical shooter Publisher: Sega Developer: United Game Artists Designer: Tetsuya Mitzuguchi Number of players: 1 Online: www.sega.co.jp Release date: summer 2001

#Rez

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canmom · 1 month

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asgard's wraff too (immediate impression)

I had a brief go at Asgard's Wrath 2, one of the flagship games of the Quest 2/3, published by Meta themselves through their 'Oculus Studios'. This game is provided free to every Quest 3 owner so I figured I'd give it a shot lol. Though I didn't play for all that long before I got a headache and had to stop. (I think the headset was a bit tight, it's very finicky to get this right even with a better strap, and games that demand more movement tend to be worse for it.)

Asgard's Wrath is not to be confused with Asura's Wrath, the fascinatingly odd QTE-based game featuring animation by Studio 4°C. No, what we have is a first-person action game based on Norse mythology. Actually this new game seems to be broadening the mythological palette a bit, but the prologue/recap segment keeps things Norse.

tbh I wasn't particularly sold, but this game's been getting rave reviews everywhere, so maybe it gets better.

When I booted the game it had to compile some 4500 shaders - kinda odd, every Quest is the same so surely it could come with the shaders precompiled? Nevertheless, once that was done the game could get going. What I found was... kinda awkward, if I'm honest.

Broadly speaking Asgard's Wrath II features thumbstick movement with a directional iframe dash, and you can swing your sword and hit stuff. The opening level sees you fight a giant gryphon-like monster which flies around you and shoots laser beams. Credit where it's due, I think it's about as decent an implementation of this kind of thing as you could hope for... but in that very respect it really starkly shows the limitations of VR for action games.

Standing up and playing this game did not, fundamentally, feel more ~immersive~ than sitting at my desk playing an FPS game. If anything it felt less so. It felt sort of like I was piloting a mech rather than standing there as a Norse goddess. Especially when your character is flung bodily around: you look down and see your character's body near-prone, but your proprioception tells you exactly where your feet are, and it isn't there.

Movement generally feels quite glidy - no doubt too much up-and-down camera movement would be a motion sickness trigger, but also you can feel that you're physically standing on the floor, and somehow that is more noticeable when you're supposed to be walking than when you're supposed to be flying in a game like Rez Infinite. If you try to physically move around, the world sorta slides away from you in a weird way. I honestly think I would have preferred the teleportation based movement used in games like Half Life Alyx.

The whole thing felt like it was constantly calling attention to the difference between my physical body and virtual body.

Still, all that aside...

The game throws you in to a recap of the previous game. You get a little controls tutorial in a mysterious mystical space by disembodied arms belonging to the Norns, then you ride a giant bird through a series of vignettes from the previous game; then you get to wander around a tavern that is supposedly a prison where Loki used to be contained (always up to his tricks), encountering sort of phantasms of almost all the Norse gods telling you off for trusting Loki. Plus a little band playing tunes with a centaur in it, that part was cute.

This story, where a nameless player character is just sort of crowbarred into Norse mythology, feels incredibly 'videogames excuse plot'. From the way the recap was told, it was pretty evidently the kind of game where you're led around through a series of setpieces, while being told that you're powerful and important and a big deal. It's a story that's hard to take seriously in its own right.

I don't love the character designs. They look like a Marvel movie crashed into a truck full of concept art, full of ostentatious armour and huge horns. The way they talk, as well, feels very much like 'I am trying to get this exposition over as efficiently as possible'.

Things picked up a bit when a gryphon shows up and attacks you. The big bird here looks great and movies really well. The mechanics involved a few types of attack pattern to respond to - it's a tutorial boss so nothing too complicated.

The main weak point is the actual act of swing the sword at the big bird when it's down. It felt sort of like I was just waggling at it with a foam sword - there is no way to disguise the fact that you are swinging a small plastic controller which isn't actually hitting anything. But it was also hard to tell how much damage I was doing.

After you beat the gryphon you fall in a lake. Here, you're floating back-first into the gloom, but in practice you're falling horizontally, so again it has that disconnect.

OK, now let's talk about rendering. You knew it was coming x3

A lot of the materials in this game have that sort of smooth, noticeably low-poly look you see on the Quest. The game does try pretty hard with baked lighting and what appeared to be some envmapped specular reflections, and one point in the opening sequence had a dynamic light playing across the hands of the Norns - that was neat. I was also impressed by the rope physics while you're riding the giant bird. Certainly those 4500 shaders are doing some work in here. The main issue is, as with every Quest game, the lack of any dynamic shadows.

The tavern scene seems to be running into some kind of limit with showing skinned meshes, since most characters only appear when you move near to them, and they're all rendered with this Fresnel glow shader that hides any actual lighting information. But the characters rendered more normally generally look good. The animations at least are solid and abundant. Expressive body language is vital in a game.

I'll give it a bit more time at some point, but overall this feels very much like a game that was made as 'flagship action game to prove an AAA-style game is viable in VR', and on that front I feel like I'll take some convincing still - everything so far feels like it would work a lot better on a flat screen. It doesn't really have much identity as a game so far either - its interpretation of Norse mythology is gaudy and not particularly original, and it really feels like it's taking itself way too seriously. I think a dash of humour and weirdness would help tremendously. But maybe the Egyptian and Aztec sections will be more appealing, Norse shit is kinda played out these days.

iunno, are people still interested in reading about these VR adventures? I know most people don't have these platforms so I may as well be discussing the fauna of the moon

#computer games #vr

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haaaaaaaaaaaave-you-met-ted · 1 year

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Paladins - Ying, Egyptian by Yutthaphong Kaewsuk

#Paladins #Fantasy #Art #Ying #Yutthaphong Kaewsuk #Hi-Rez Studios

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buzzardbaited · 2 years

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Buzz are baited and her boyfriend Dallas ✨❤

#HopeLikesThis✨#Simp4Life #@buzzardbaited #followHerInstagram #rogue company #hi-rez studios #dallas rogue company

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starsh0cked · 4 months

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Since you mentioned you tried a new art tool—what software(s) do you typically use to make art? Do you have a favorite drawing program? (I'm always looking out for good art software!)

hi rez!!

i’ve been using clip studio paint for the past few years! i’ve tried out a few different programs in the past, like ibis paint x, but i prefer clip most of all. only issue is that with each major update you have to buy the new version (unless you have the update pass!) :/

#the community assets have gotten me to where i am today #once in a blue moon i find something i adore and go through a phase with it #oh well #ask sh0ck

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miloscat · 4 months

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[Review] Child of Eden (PS3)

The cooler Rez.

After United Game Artists (the studio behind Rez) was dissolved into Sonic Team, Tetsuya Mizuguchi left Sega and founded Q Entertainment. They made other games with his signature flashy light show style, like Lumines and Every Extend, but in 2011 they followed up his original "synaesthetic" game with another rail shooter, Child of Eden. If you ask me it's a more successful expression of Rez's aims, and a more engaging shooter as well.

In addition to Rez's eight-target homing shot (which can now get multiple locks on stronger enemies like Kachi's shot in Sin & Punishment 2), there's a new rapid-fire shot which is specifically for destroying projectiles and damaging certain enemies. A strong use of colour coding helps with gameplay readability, so it's clear when there are hazards to shoot down or targets to lock on to, and responding with the right choice of weapon is satisfying. There's also a score multiplier system that turns CoE into a true rhythm hybrid game, as you're rewarded with a score combo when you get full target locks that are released to the beat of the backing track.

You will want to get good scores as this grants you stars which are necessary to unlock new levels. Again there are only five, plus a unique bonus marathon challenge unlocked after you clear them; I couldn't get more than a third of the way through this but it's a nice extra that hearkens back to Rez's more abstracted visual style. Luckily the unlock stars are cumulative, so you don't have to perfect stages to open up later ones, simply play them through a few times. This felt like a chore at first but I did get into improving my score as I flew through the rich virtual environments.

While the setting is similar to Rez (a cyberspace world vaguely under attack, an avatar character to save) the levels have memorably stronger theming, such as evolution or technology, and the bump in console generation certainly helps to make more fleshed-out and visually impressive worlds and setpieces. I also found the music landed better with more of a pop and vocal tinge, especially given the story.

You see, Child of Eden is something of a tie-in to Mizuguchi's house-pop band Genki Rockets, who needless to say handled the soundtrack. Their virtual frontwoman Lumi, played in their shows and this game by Rei Yasuda, is the central character, an AI recreation of a woman born in the far-future year of 2019. Lumi has a constant presence in the game as a live-action integrated FMV character, appearing on menu screens, in gameplay, and in the intro movie as a white-dress-clad personality-less object of innocence soon imperilled.

I'm not keen on the damsel-in-distress imagery, and I thought the concept would have landed better if she had been rendered in the cool sketchy "Take On Me" rotoscope style as seen in the unlockable music videos (well, you can only watch partial clips of them in the gallery, for some strange reason...). Either way, she provides a central figure to hang the game around which works well enough, especially because the implied player character has reduced presence as the game is presented from the first person perspective.

While I was underwhelmed by Rez, I found Child of Eden genuinely impressive; it actually is what I was hoping that Rez would be. It's a shame that it's now a lot less accessible than Rez. I suppose it's also worth mentioning that just as Rez Infinite has its VR support, Child of Eden is compatible with the flash-in-the-pan 3DTV technology, as well as having optional Playstation Move motion controls, which seems like it would work pretty well (the 360 version instead has Kinect support, which probably doesn't work as well). I still found it plenty immersive without the gimmicks, playing on a 2D telly with a stock Dualshock 3. Good stuff.

#child of eden #rez #q entertainment #review #ps3

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