What's the best game you played this year (that didn't come out this year)?

Return of Obra Dinn. Such an incredible experience.

I played that just after the birth of my second child and it quickly became one of my absolute favourite games of all time.
Also really unnerving for a game that literally can't rely on jump scares.
I just wish there was a sequel or expansion or so. It's just too short and there isn't much replay value.

Horizon: Zero Dawn.

Captivating storyline combined with interesting fights and beautiful visuals.

The second one, forbidden west, is good too. But I find the world building and architecture of Meridian and the surrounding towns very interesting and very beautiful in many ways. I think I prefer the first one, the mechanics got changed a bit and I don't really like that you can just fly everywhere in the second one.
- Yes, but the second part is yet to be released for pc

Disco Elysium.

I missed it when it came out, but it’s an amazing game. An amazing amazing game.

Me too! I'm playing it right now. I've been surprised how many times it's made me laugh out loud. For such a bleak looking game it can be quite funny at times.
- I was amazed at how good a reflection it is on the nature of investigative police work, and what makes a detective a detective.
  
  It’s not the gun or the badge (you start off without either), it’s not the innate authority (you start off in a humiliating predicament) it’s not being able to call upon the might of the state (your fellow police officers barely bother picking up the phone).
  
  No, what makes a detective - maybe even the best detective on the force - is the willingness to do the work. To observe. To inspect. To interrogate. To pound the pavement day after crappy day. To completely give oneself up to the task of figuring out what the hell happened, and follow the clues wherever they lead.
  
  It’s probably the best cop game ever made.

The normies? What is this, reddit

4chan*

I was almost not going to respond with Outer Wilds, since it feels like I played forever ago. But apparently I only played it in June of this year, so that's my choice. It's one of my favorite games now, if not my favorite game ever.

It's so good, in fact, that it's helping me get over this weird anxiety I have of talking about my hobbies with other people (including my closest friends). Outer Wilds is so good that even though I hate talking about games I like, I still feel the need to recommend it to people. And now that the floodgates are open I feel a bit more comfortable talking about my other favorite games, like Baba is You, which I got another person to play as well, and The Messenger, which I'm playing now and loving it.

So what's your pitch on the Outer Wilds? I know barely anything about it and it's always best to hear these things from someone who knows the game.
- Outer Wilds is one of those games that is better the less you know about it. So I will be a bit vague, bit this would be my pitch:
  
  It's a space archeology game with a very good story, charming characters, and an intriguing mystery. It has fun mechanics, as I enjoy simply flying around in the ship (once I got the hang of it) and some unique puzzle design.
  
  After the tutorial section it is an extremely non-linear experience.
  
  Highly recommend, don't look up any spoilers though!
- Unfortunately, I agree with the other commenter. It's very hard to talk about the game without taking a bit out of the experience.
  
  I will say that it's a space exploration game, where you fly around a tiny (handcrafted!) solar system and explore the various planets. There are a handful of mysteries around this solar system and you eventually figure out how the various clues intersect.
  
  It's also very much a game about information. You never gain upgrades or stats or anything, your character when you start the game is exactly the same as when you finish it. But you learn things about the solar system and your knowledge of this world and it's mysteries increases, directing you on where to go next and what to do. The game also doesn't present you with explicit goals, so at the beginning you can do pretty much everything you want, but there is an ending you will eventually reach by following the clues laid out around the universe (and I seriously recommend that you don't stop before the ending).
  
  It's also a very hard game to replay, as after you know the answer to the mysteries, there's a part of the appeal that is lost. I wish I could forget about it so I could replay it fresh!
If you liked outer wilds I would check out Forgotten City. I just started it, but it has a similar feel. It's more piecing things together through dialouge rather than exploration but has a similar "the whole world is a puzzle" vibe with the a kinda rouge lite experience of needing to use what you learn each cycle to progress further.
- Will check it out! Thank you for the recommendation!
Also "return of the obra dinn " very different type of game but just magic

Probably Hollow Knight.

Saying Crusader Kings III feels like cheating cause I‘ve just been playing it for a long time.

I finally got around to playing the Mass Effect trilogy (the Legendary Edition remasters, anyway). It's excellent.

In 2011, I gave up on ME1 after getting to a very difficult combat encounter that I was not prepared for and having no other saves to go back to. I essentially rage-quit the trilogy for over 10 years, lol.

Still about halfway through ME3 but I am already planning my second playthrough. Truly a God-tier set of games, IMO.

I've been nibbling at these recently (although in my case it's a replay). I'm a little bummed that no one ended up finishing the same-gender romance mod for this version of ME3 but otherwise I've been having a great time with it. I still think ME2 and ME3 are among the best RPGs I've ever played.

The Citadel DLC is still the best DLC I've ever played in any game, by a mile.
- I've been using a mod to romance Jack as FemShep in ME3 and it seems to work fine if that changes anything for you.

Kenshi. Unlimited replayability and modability.

Mass Effect Legendary Edition (the full trilogy)

Tunic. Not that old either (2022), but I guess it's not "this year". The whole game is captivating.

Super Mario Odyssey. It's mostly extremely fun, controls well, with only occasional camera angles and poor checkpointing infuriation lighting its copybook.

Celeste.

To a lesser extent, I liked Hitman 3, Factorio and Plate Up! (fun to play on the TV locally with friends)

Celeste is so good, it instantly became one of my all time favorites when I played last year, I even bought the PC version for playing on the go with a laptop, shame there was never a vita version.
Huge fan of Plate Up!. It ruined Overcooked for me. Also been doing a Factorio playthrough on my Steam Deck and it's made it really accessible for me.

Autonauts, Astroneer, Factorio, Minecraft. All great games with excellent replay value IMO.

I'll share three based on how much I want to play them again soon

The Last of Us Part 2
Kena Bridge of Spirits
Days Gone

Can't believe the hate that days gone gets. Except for the walking cut scenes fuck them

I gave Fallout 4 another try recently, after only playing a few hours of it a couple of years back. I ended up getting sucked into it. So far, I've only used a couple of quality-of-life mods, like a high FPS fix and allowing Dogmeat to be a companion alongside any other companion, which the game had unimplemented code for.

I've tried multiple times to get into this fallout having liked the others from the first but I just hate all that base building crap that it keeps trying to force on you.

Is there a mod to remove all base building quests so I can just ignore that shit?
- I don't know that there's a mod, but the building really can be mostly ignored outside of a small handful of quests. It's mostly optional.
- Try Sim Settlements mod. It doesn't remove the settlements, but it makes it interesting.
  
  Instead of doing everything yourself, you can plop down plots for different purposes and then the sellers build it themselves over time.
  You can also opt for a pre-made town footprint by choosing a settler as mayor.
- Most of the base building quests are completely optional. There is a mod that automates base building, turning it more into something like SimCity. I haven't tried it out, but it's a top mod over on the Nexus site.
I started Fallout New Vegas (with basic modding) with the intent to experience as much if it as possible in one playthrough. It's been a great experience so far, but I really underestimated how much time it would take. The game is huge.
Something about this game gave me awful motion sickness. Tried tweaking some of the config files to no avail as well

Probably 'Talos Principle'. I still haven't finished it though. A tier puzzle game for me. Maybe S tier by the time I finish!

Second one just came out
- 🙀 😸

I just started playing Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and man alive is it good. I've never been a fan of the soulslike genre but apparently all I need to fall in love are the samurai aesthetic and a mother frickin PARRY ability!

Lies of P is amazing get around to it. Parry is a bit more clunky but still amazing.
The worst part about Sekiro is that when you're done with it you feel like you're good at it and you want more but there's nothing else quite like it 😥
- Lords of the fallen can be parry based depending on your build. That said there really is nothing like sekiro
Sekiro is my favourite game. Once you complete it 100% though you’ll struggle to find something to compare, which sorta sucks. I wish there were more games like Sekiro

Now I wanna replay Sekiro

I don't know if it's the best, but the oldest games I've played this year are:

Montezuma's Revenge
Commander Keen
Zelda (NES)

I'm also looking for an old game I had on a 5" floppy back then... a fast-paced vertical scrolling shootemup/bullet hell, possibly with "Goose" in its name...

That and a Space Invaders-like that sounds like Galaxian, but is not Galaxian...
Similar concept, but possibly from the 90s, and your ship had a retractable claw to catch power-ups, and some sort of vertical sidebar in its UI with your score, wave progress, etc.

I don't really think it's your answer, but Galaga is in the neighborhood on name and gameplay.

It's possible a different version than I remember had some type of claw.
The last one sounds like Galactix? Screenshot here.

Now that I think about it, that was probably my introduction to shmups. Either that or Axelay, not sure which I played first.
- YES! That's it.
  Likely one of my first shmups too.
  Thanks a lot, I'll fire it up in dosbox eventually.
  
  B:\GX1.EXE

Grounded, The Forest.

Good on a steam deck.

God of War II
Tekken 1 through Tekken 5 (so far)

I used to play Tekken 1 and Tekken 3 on PS1, so huge nostalgic trip. And I've wanted to play God of War for forever, but never had a PS2, but Steam Deck (and Emudeck) made emulation so easy that I'm catching up.

Probably Mass Effect Legendary Edition

ADACA and Signalis just came out last year so not far behind but they were fun. ADACA is billed as Half-Life meets Halo meets STALKER by reviewers and it’s a fun, light FPS. (although I couldn’t get into the more open Zone Patrol mode)

Signalis though, that oozes atmosphere, an excellent soundtrack, and offered feels in a neat fleshed out world. I enjoyed the gameplay quite a bit, a callback to top-down survival horror from an era I never really played. I really appreciate a lack of jump scares except one enemy’s presence when you enter a room making your screen/radio go haywire but hardly FNAF material which I will only watch.

I’ll have to say Cloud Punk.

A small indie game about a girl starting her courier job in a cyberpunk future.

The game-play is okayish
The graphics try to emulate a voxel look and are functional at best.
The Sound design, music and the full synchronisation make this game exceptional!

The story captured me and together with the audio and visual style kept me playing way into the small hours.

This is a really fun one in my opinion, and I loved the story, characters, and ambiance.

Toem. I heard it was pretty good but I was surprised how cozy it was to play. A great example of Iyashikei in gaming

For me, it's No Mans Sky. I've put a lot of hours into it this year.

Red Dead Redemption 2. I got like 200 hours out of it already and still not done.

I'd say Hitman III (now called World of Assassins) or No Man's Sky. Both are really great values for their price.

I think I'm mostly done with the Hitman franchise for now, but I'll probably come back to NMS next time Starfield has some big update and I need to scratch that exploration itch.

My backlog is so big I figure any game that I've played would qualify.

Ticket to Earth would be mine.

I am working my way through Yakuza 5 though which I'm really enjoying.

Child of light Had it on my radar for some years, then in my Steam library for many more. Finally played it. Really nice vibe and combat system with amazing art direction and narrative.

Rain World is absolutely amazing. I'm hopelessly addicted to it. Highly recommend if you like unique games.

Theme Hospital

Perfect Vermin. It takes only 15 to beat, it's fun, and it has a cool theme/concept/story

Metro Exodus EE

FF7 Remake and Celeste are my favorites so far.

Doom Eternal, Team Fortress 2

Probably Omori, although I haven't gotten to two of four endings just yet. Its vibes naturally resonated with me over time, even at its darkest moments.

It's early access so I don't think it counts, but I played the demo some time ago: Gloomwood

Volcanoids is a fantastic co-op game that I keep going back to. Also just started playing Hardspace: Shipbreaker, interesting so far.

Probably Manifold Garden. I just finished it last week and it was a consistently good experience. Highly recommended.

Gravity Rush.

I have been enjoying on and off Immortal Redneck.

Final Fantasy XIII-2, modded with HD upscaled textures, community fixes, and Reshade. 2K Resolution w/ Improved AA + Color Correction + Motion Blur + Ray Tracing made this game look modern af 😎

And for the best game this year part, the developers really said "so FFXIII was linear? Well how about time is not linear!" Jumping back to old locations surprised me in that I actually wanted to go back to them and do optional content. And beneath the extra ass music (lol), is some of the most down right horrific/sad stuff shown in a FF game. Like the straight up Zombie apocalypse-like C'eith outbreak in the future that Serah even being near causes people to turn, she apologizes to them in battle as the turned enemies try to use remedy on theirselves to no avail. Being the last human alive and having to deal with seeing the last people alive dying off till it's just you on the planet. The cruel fate of some characters and the risks taken storywise and gamewise really surprised me.

Probably Nier: Replicant, though I have some I'm just starting that could possibly beat it:

CrossCode
Alan Wake
Red Dead Redemption II

Honorable mentions to (all great):

Manifold Garden
Human Resource Machine
Ori and the Blind Forest

NieR: Replicant has one of my all-time favorite soundtracks (though I like the version on the original game a touch more).

Bloodborne, Sifu or Hyper Light Drifter.

I don't really want to pick between the three, but I'll go with Sifu, because it's got a little of that super tough, Fromsoftiness built in.

Runs like a dream on my Steamdeck too, and has some genuinely really impressive moments of beauty that I wasn't expecting from a super-hard-beat-people-up-with-a-pipe game.

I opened up Bloodborne again a few weeks ago. Performance isn't good, but it's a lot less miserable than the time I played before that. I definitely like the mechanic of dual mode weapons. The chain-cane is pretty fun to approach enemies with.

I wish it was on PC for steam deck though. I'm not in front of the console as much.
- Same. I ended up playing it on my partner's PS5, and it ran well enough (30FPS be damned). Put that on my Steamdeck though, please.

The King's Field Trilogy on PS1. These games bounced off me hard back in the day, but I got curious about them after reading about their influence on Souls. These were games that were waaaay ahead of their time, and so satisfying now that I have the patience to really appreciate what From Software were trying to create. Also: definitely play the translated version of the first Japanese one.

Inscryption

Xenoblade chronicles X. I finally got a beefy pc that can emulate it with all the graphical upgrades the Wii u can't even fathom, and this game is so much less of a slog now that I'm an adult with a finer appreciation for menus stacked in menus sacked in menus