I missed the day of summarizing the gaming achievements on Facebook. I generally didn't manage to finish a lot in the past year. There was less time to play, and I understand that this year there will be even less. But traditions are there to be followed, so I'll try to be concise:
My cat Bastet played video games with me
My game of the year is Disney Speedstorm. It's a simple racing game like Mario Kart/ Crash Team Racing but with Disney characters. With the constant change of seasons, and unlocking new characters, quests, and tasks, the game gets you addicted to chasing unique content, and you can't stop playing. Unfortunately, I almost missed the Frozen season, but until then I played daily for 15 minutes to complete all the dailies. It's free-to-play, so anyone can try it 😉 I hope to write an article on it this year.
The award for the Most Beautiful Game this year goes to Hogwarts Legacy. The artists and modelers did an incredible job; I spent the first dozen hours running around with my mouth open, admiring everything. Also, the Tamagotchi-like feature of breeding animals and farming resources deserves special attention for its visual component 🥳
Nostalgia of the year: NFS Unbound. Finally, the old good franchise managed to bring back the feelings that NFS: Underground 1&2 once provided. Beautiful visual effects, a decent storyline, and a lot of Ukrainian music in a AAA-class game are very powerful.
The innovation of the year for me is the game It Takes Two. My friends Togrul and Logan once told me about it, and this year Roxy and I almost completed it. It's a wonderful cooperative game for two, where you have to play in synergy with your partner. In each episode, each new mechanic is the quintessence of cooperation genius in video games. More of such games, please, and it's precisely thanks to such games that I understand that this industry will not die, will not perish.
The misunderstanding of the year: Digimon: NEXT ORDER. I like games with a lot of mathematics and variables, mainly Pokemon & Digimon games. There, each character has their unique abilities, defenses, and bonuses against something, weaknesses and penalties against something else, and you trying to maintain a balance between it all. NEXT ORDER is very poorly made and even feels unfinished, so I will just keep quiet and say that I am incredibly disappointed with what they did. The article on dissatisfaction is still in draft, I'll share it once I finish 😢
Franchise of the year: for me, it's Disney. And again, it's very simple: a whole bunch of incredible animations, Disney Speedstorm, board games (just consider Sheriff in the style of Robin Hood). And the celebration of Disney's 100th anniversary is also the event of the year; I even received a festive collectible vinyl as a gift from my beloved wife❤️ It's just a pity that their shares are not growing because I have some money tied up there 😢
There are no games that I would just like to highlight. Well, because I simply played very few video games, and those that were worth it I've already included at the top. But what's important to understand - the amount of content being released and filling us up is incredibly large. With the era of AI development, and how the games of the future will be dynamically adjusted to our preferences, each playing something uniquely their own, I won't even start. There's an understanding that life is not enough to try/see/play/read everything. This makes me very, very sad. But at the same time, there is an understanding that we need to approach our choices much more qualitatively, and therefore, with my summary of this year, I guess I'm on the right track 😉
🎉 My report for 2022: [Facebook link]
🎉 My report for 2021: [Facebook link]
🎉 My report for 2020: [Facebook link]