This year I set a goal to do more reviews, stream more games and most importantly finish more games. I failed on doing more reviews, which I’m actually annoyed at myself about as I really enjoy doing them. Playing more games on stream is actually hard to judge, I’ve streamed loads, but is it more than normal? I have no idea in all honesty. I can say that I have finished more games on stream and while not a staggering amount for me it is rather impressive. At the time of writing, I have finished 175 games on stream in total. That’s over 7 years of streaming, the thing is 41 of the games were finished this year, which shows that the completion rate of games for my streams this year is higher than normal. Overall I have finished 61 games this year, a lot for me and while there’s a pile of unfinished games I think I’ve done pretty well with my completion rate. Let’s delve into some of the games I have played and finished this year, don’t worry I won’t go into massive amounts of detail, but here’s a snippet of some of the games I played, some are the better games, so are not and also some were released in 2022 and some were released many years before.
Elden Ring:
I went into this with no real expectations. I had only finished Dark Souls before this came out and while I played Dark Souls 3, Bloodborne, Demon’s Souls and Sekiro I fell off them as I wasn’t enjoying them. Even Dark Souls took many years of trying it on and off before I clicked with it. The thing is I really ended up enjoying Elden Ring, it is by far my favourite Fromsoftware title and I ended up having many hours of fun with it.
I found the combat to be better than in previous titles and while I am not the biggest fan of open-world games I really loved ‘The Lands Between’. Exploring the world was an enjoyable experience and with Elden Ring being in the ‘Soul’ territory of having very difficult points in the game you were able to go and explore other areas when you hit a proverbial brick wall. It’s one of my favourite games of the year.
Stray:
I don’t have a lot to say about this because I did a review. I’ll say that I enjoyed it immensely and I’ll pop in the review so you can get my thoughts on it. Here is the article on Stray – https://pedzsgameshack.com/final-verdict-stray/
Sonic Forces:
Ah, the Sonic franchise, a franchise that has great games, namely Sonic 1, 2 3 & Knuckles and then delves into mediocrity at its best and sheers guff at its worst. Sonic Forces falls into the latter category, is it the worst Sonic game? I don’t think it is, there are many issues with it, like the physics are still a little ropey, the camera can be a little off and it doesn’t play as well as earlier instalments, but when you are led to believe that this game is the epitome of an atrocity.
Then you go into the game expecting to want to tear your eyes out, but that wasn’t the case. Yes, it’s not a good game, and yes Sonic can and has been done better, but overall it’s just not as awful as people say. It’s actually OK. It’s weird, you know there are glaring issues, and you know it’s not particularly good, but you still have a little fun.
Journey:
I have had this game for years, and while I did play it for all of 5 minutes in the past I never really gave it a chance. I didn’t really enjoy Flow or Flower and I thought Journey would be the same. I ended up playing this as it was the game picked for episode 2 of the Pedz’ Game Shack Podcast and I ended up thoroughly enjoying it. it’s a game that feels very solitary for some parts of the journey, but then randomly meeting another person who is on the same quest and playing sections of the game together gives a sense of solidarity and seeing where you and your new-found friend go next spurs you on to get to your destination.
Outriders:
I started this game in late 2021, but playing it once a week for about 3 hours meant the game outstayed its welcome, the game isn’t bad, but it’s repetitive and gets boring because of that, but at its core, there’s a good game, it’s a shame it lasted so long and was the same quest over and over. Cumberdanes and I played through this co-operatively and the joke we had was it shouldn’t have been called Outriders, it should have been called Area Clearer. You may ask why?
Well, 95% of the game’s missions involved clearing areas upon areas of guys and when you’d clear the area the majority of the time you’d get more waves of bullet sponge enemies spawn in and then you’d have to clear the area again. It’s disappointing that I felt the game was a drag by the end as I started off enjoying it.
Final Thoughts.
These are just 5 of the games I’ve played. As I said I’ve finished 61 and there’s a varying degree of quality to the games in the list. I started the Year with Paw Patrol and I’m likely finishing the year with High on Life as I am right near the end of that. I’m looking forward to next year’s gaming sessions, I hope to finish around the same amount of games continue doing the podcast and get more reviews done, as I enjoy doing them. It’s been a fun year, but will next year be able to compete? Who knows? The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is due out so it might just be able to compete, only time will tell.