this post was submitted on 29 Dec 2024
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I was saving this for the next weekly, so I'll talk about what I'm still playing and my favorite game this year.
Right now, I'm still playing Dragon Age 2.
The more I play it, the more it starts to annoy me and becomes clear why it got way less praise than Origins. You spent the whole game going to the same 6ish locations for the majority of quests, they re-use the same caves over and over, and the main challenge of the game usually involves it spawning more enemies. When you think you've killed them all, here come two more waves of 10. I was impressed by the first boss which was a big rock golem in the Deep Roads that was actually pretty difficult and required a lot of manual party controlBut after that it's just waves and waves of goons, so the most important thing is just running around a corner so that you can line of sight archers and then AoE everything to death when they clump up.
The game also keeps trying to hammer home how bad and dangerous blood mages are but then they contrast that with the Chantry, makes people Tranquil which is essential a magic lobotomy, every time they start to question authority. I somehow forgot about this because it's been like 6 years since I played Origins. One of the party members wants to burn the whole institutions down and kill everyone in it and tbh I'm with them. You have individual mages running around killing people but the Chantry is a government sanctioned institution that enslaves children and lobotomizes them before they've even done anything wrong.
The only other player in this is Tevinter, which is talked about by one of your companions and is a nation ruled by mages. He was enslaved by them. So he's the contrast to "not all mages are bad" and is a good foil to your own character if you play a mage or sympathize them too heavily in a general sense. The Chantry sucks but mages with no unchecked power and an ideology focused on accumulating power leads to the same thing. They just both need to be toppled, templars need to get help for their lyrium addictions, and mages need to go back to living like the elves.
I haven't really beat many games this year, but these are the ones I have finished:
Ratchet & Clank, Clickolding, Pillars of Eternity, The Walking Dead (Arcade), Ballionaire
I've become less interested in games and have read more books this year than prior years instead. In 2023, I had a PS2 phase where I went back to play stuff like Sly Cooper, God of War, and Ratchet & Clank early 2024. I stopped there because I wasn't really enjoying myself and found that some of the games aged less well than others.
I've gotten like 450/500 achievements in Halls of Torment based on another Hexbear user posting about it, so that's probably my top game of the year. It's a very good "bullet heaven" game like Vampire Survivor but has way more interesting classes and progression. You do hit a certain point where you basically can't lose though, especially if you use Shield Maiden block build.
Ballionaire was okay, but very short and very easy. Clickolding was a meme game. The Walking Dead arcade game kind of sucks but I do still like games like that and you get to use a giant crossbow controller in it. Ratchet & Clank aged better than both God of War or Sly Cooper, I think, but still had some sections that were kind of frustrating or required really precise timing. The humor doesn't really hold up. Pillars of Eternity was okay but I'm a noted real-time with pause hater and think it's one of the worst control schemes in video games. I liked the story/writing and the companions, just ignored all the Kickstarter gold name NPCs, and plan to continue into the 2nd game sometime this year.
I've put more hours into Lord of the Rings Online than anything else because it's a very huge comfort game and I've been reading Tolkien stuff alongside it to really get in the mood. I recommend it for anyone really into the setting or who wants a slower-paced MMO that doesn't require grouping for content, daily grinding, and isn't really focused on raiding.
Shield Maiden is so silly lol. Granted I've only done one run as her, but I was excited to try a new character since she wasn't in the game the last time I had played. Then I built up enough block strength that I noticed I could just stand still and realized maybe I don't want to play this character... The idea of being so tanky that nothing can hurt you is kinda fun but in practice it just feels like, if I can put my controller down and let the game play itself for a minute while I sip my drink, then what's the point of playing a game where the whole appeal is dodging swarms of enemies?