As someone with 300 hours in BG3 the most I've ever had for a game that's not a shooter or a competitive multiplayer. God I feel this on a spiritual level. and I still have like 3 characters that I haven't beat the game with yet that are in act 2/3 so that number is going to keep climbing
... ok "crispy critters" has to be a prank there's no way nobody mentioned that to me until now EDIT: the impact of unpausing only to find that he had a fourth "crispy critters" waiting for me in his back pocket
the wordless, exactly-the-right-amount-of-too-long lingering pause on the phallic imagery in atomic heart was a stroke (oh no, i swear that pun wasn't intended, welp) of comedic genius
Starfield's literal emptiness wasn't a problem for me. I had my problems with the fact that nothing had improved from other games. Everything was still so shallow. No strives whatsoever in immersion. Actions during questlines meant nothing, got locked out of routes for no reason. Just so lame.
It is petty of me but I was very very smug this year after seeing the general reception to Starfield be so lukewarm, because it was _exactly_ as uninteresting as I expected from the trailers. The thing that has been filling the L4D shaped hole in my heart lately has been Deep Rock Galactic. Not quite the same vibe but it's working!
Yeah, I was weirdly suckered in AFTER it came out, but before people started getting to the slog. I rushed to the ending and then uninstalled it. I will probably return for DLC, but I won't be playing it in a decade like I am with Skyrim or New Vegas.
The problem is that it’s a lukewarm space simulator, hurt by all of the quests you have to do. And it’s a good RPG with fantastic elements and stories, but you have to play this space simulator to find those very hidden gems.
@@freyjathehealer5559 This is entirely it. They tried to cram two MASSIVE ideas together and didn't actually give either enough attention. I was so upset when I grinded dog fighting so I could survive against the Starborn only for there to not be another real fight against them in space. I regret the time I wasted on the UC quest after I learned there was literally zero effect on the game after your final choice (at least Skyrim's Civil Ware changed some of the city leaders).
Thank you so much for doing this, I love the idea of putting out a "most anticipated" list and then assessing it. Maybe we can all learn what kind of games will be worth getting excited for and be better at this. Or maybe every year will be full of disappointments and things not coming out
"reverse cowgirl humility" is going in my repertoire, thank you so much. you never lost my trust but if you had, it would have been re-earned by that line alone.
@@NeillSmith Eating crow is like "eating your words," or acknowledging that you said something confidently but you were wrong, which is a way of showing humility. Humility is the opposite of arrogance; Arrogance is overestimating your own ability or judgment, and generally adopting other unsavory personality traits as a result, while humility is downplaying your own ability or judgment to avoid arrogance. Reverse cowgirl is a sex position in which the "dominant" partner lies on their back and the submissive partner "rides" them in an upright position, facing away from their head. It's like a really Devolver Digital press release way of saying "I'm admitting I'm wrong and taking the initiative by being humble."
Went back and watched the original before this, and seeing Redfall really hurt. I also adored Prey and was really hoping for a return to something like that...what the heck happened man.
What happened is that a company known for making single player games with intricate but small linear sandboxes was pushed into making an online open world game. They then lost all of their long-standing talent who didn't want to make this and a bunch of new talent who applied because they loved Dishonored and Prey and wanted to be a part of that next interesting iteration. Now they're Arkane in name only save for a few hold-outs.
I speak russian and english so one thing i can tell you about Atomic Heart is that its probably worse in english. Worse meaning more intresting in this case bc fuck is atomic heart boring/bad and those english camp moments are the only thing that might make it playable for some.
i feel the same, while I definetly cringed less while playing in russian at least i laughed out loud for the pure shock while playing in english. Definetly not the same experience
for me it's way harder to enjoy modern aaa values camp because i can just FEEL how many man hours were wasted on it give me that old poorly translated ps1 fmv shit where everyone is obviously having a good ass time
I don't think I understand your meaning. You are saying that Atomic Heart is less campy in Russian? Because, Crispy Critters, I love the camp in the english dub. Playing this weird golden retriever of a Russian major is the best part of the game to me. Edit: I actually wrote this comment before getting to the part of the video where Jenna discusses it, so the crispy critters joke on my part was fully unintntional. I actually 100% disagree with her on this, because the camp is what makes the game. And the commenting on video game tropes? I love that. Not in the Nuts & Bolts "this sucks, games shouldn't have this" sort of way but the Resi 7 "who makes these locks?" sort of thing. Game mechanics are weird but weird doesn't mean bad. It only adds (in my opinion) to the experience to have a character getting increasingly frustrated with weird locks because of course you would. The fifth time you have to find the snake emblem to open a door you'd get annoyed but when playing a game you don't mind it. It's ludonarrative dissonance applied in a way to improve the experience.
Baldur's Gate 3 is hands down, not even remotely debatable, my biggest time sink this year. I have an embarrassing amount of hours in that game now with roughly 9 total saves and 5 in the last act... I- I havent seen the sun in a long time.
"Sometimes anticipation can ruin things when they don't live up to your hype" is SO TRUE. Lots of games with lots of hype and anticipation feel like they fall flat because of this, when you actually play them with no expectations they are very enjoyable :) Good video, thank you Jenna.
At least if it's your own anticipation, you can blame yourself. I got hype-suckered into Baldur's Gate 3, and it has NOT lived up to that. I've clocked 42 hours, and I can genuinely say that I've enjoyed maybe one and a half of them. (All of which were in the Underdark)
Well, you got me there! But let's be honest Baldur's Gate 3 is definitely an exceptional case. For me it happened with Cyberpunk, I didn't bite into the hype and I just enjoyed for it what, and even on release and enjoyed the experience! @@EinDose
i honestly feel like this is part of the reason i loved tears of the kingdom. i don't get hyped very easily for games because they are rarely mind-blowing, which means that they rarely disappoint me unless they are just truly bad (pokemon scarlet/violet 😭)
@@LeeCsM same here! while i waited for at least a few patches and a hefty discount to get into it, once i did it was far better of an experience than anything i could imagine it being, especially as someone who's never liked a CDPR game or most RPGs before lol. I'm so glad that it got the redemption it deserved with Phantom Liberty and the 2.x patches. another surprising game was NFS Unbound; as a lifelong racing game fanatic and someone who has been playing the NFS series since before Underground was a thing, I genuinely expected Unbound to be another soul-less post-2015 cashgrab, but it genuinely oozed style and arcade sensibilities in a way that the series sorely missed. its not perfect, but not giving into the hype or hate train definitely made my experience better!
I felt the exact same way about BG3 and then my friend bullied me into buying it with my CS2 refund money and uh. Yeah I clocked 40 hours over three days.
This invaded my recommendations completely at random and I LOVE your energy about everything. I don't even care that I didn't watch the video this was based on, this is just funny on its own legs.
I think the problem with Starfield, or at least *my* problem with it, is that it was two different games forced to share one .exe, one being a space sim and the other being a bethesda RPG that just happens to be set in space. I don't know if these were different phases of development or different visions by different people on the team, but the typical bethesda RPG side was *really* hurt from having to share space with a space sim. but honestly, the bits that were there have me really excited for Elder Scrolls 6. The biggest flaw with the open-world RPG side of starfield was that it was procedurally generated, so no one place had any character. Elder Scrolls 6 will (likely) have a proper authored map rather than proc gen, and it'll also hopefully keep the writing and dungeon design that's *leagues* better than Bethesda's previous games.
That was totally my biggest issue too (along with the total lack of any interesting unique weapons). I think if you took all the handcrafted content in Starfield and condensed it into a single star system like in The Expanse or Firefly, it becomes a far better game.
I think the problem with Bethesda's direction though starting with radient quests in Skyrim and migrating to being the entire backbone of a faction (Minutemen) in Fallout 4, and then entire radiant environments in Starfield is that I can't really see them walking any of that back for TES6.
Starfield is a perfect example of how more is not always better. If they cut out most of the space sim parts the game would be 90% good instead of 40% good.
@@adanufgail that’s my biggest issue with the game. So often, I’ll run across something because I’m looking for something specific I read about online (like a new outfit) and then I’ll love the place I found. I talked to everyone in New Homestead, I spent a few in game days admiring the resort of Paradiso. But I wouldn’t have gone to those places had I not looked it up online. I get they were trying to go for a “space is endless and you never know what you are going to discover” but the problem is that the game doesn’t try to cleverly guide you towards interesting things. It’s rewarding for people planning to spend 200 hours playing the game, and I’m sure they’ll appreciate discovering new exciting things at hour 158, but I’m not going to play it long enough to get there.
What has been interesting to me regarding Armored Core 6 is seeing the thoughts of players who have fallen in love with FromSoft during the Darksoulsbordenringkiro era. I personally dreaded that they might make it too soulsy as I missed the old Armored Core formula terribly since its last title and it hit just right for me. With the exception of the stagger meter. I can live happily if I don't see another stagger meter in my life. Just wish there wasn't this whirlwind of disappointment from every camp about that game, felt like after its launch I couldn't go two steps without seeing "this game bad because not souls" or "this game bad because too souls" when really, in my opinion, game just right. Agreed, though, would have liked at least one goblin.
Found your channel with this video. It's been a while since I found a channel who's editing is genuinely funny without needing anything but a cut. And when you DO decide to go beyond, like with BG3, it's hilarious!
Cassette Beasts was really good. Another sleeper indie to check out. Deathbulge: Battle of the Bands. Deathbulge: Battle of the Bands. Typed it twice cuz you should buy two copies. it's amazing!
I think "doing a bad job" is an indicator that you're really putting careful thought into your research and results! If you're not gonna take big swings, you'd just make the same "most anticipated" list everyone else does.
At least this video came out this year! Wait that's not a joke about your upload schedule. You post plenty often. I'm just happy to see a Jennea Stoeber video
Just wanted to say that I'm really glad that more of your stuff has been popping up in my recommended lately! Your editing is super great, and your commentary is excellent, your pacing makes it feel very "off the top of your head" but I can tell you put a lot of thought and care into the topics you discuss. Really great stuff!
I kind of feel like your comments on Armored Core 6 aren't so much a criticism of the game as "sad that it isn't a different game entirely"? Like, yeah, Soulslike exploration is fun. But Armored Core mission-based gameplay isn't bad, it's just a different vibe.
This is proof we should simply live like the Buddha and not anticipate things. But then again, he never got to play Hades. We don't know how the experience would've changed him.
If AC:6 had come out as an open world roam around in your big mech game it would have been a massive betrayal for all of the existing Armored Core fans. Just for the sake of clarity I'm not saying that an open world AC would automatically be a bad thing (it could be great) but AC is a fundamentally different experience to the soulsborne games and holding that against it feels somewhat unfair.
I agree. It's important to innovate within an existing series' identity. People get really hot when I say, "Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom is an incredible game, but a bad Zelda title." All I mean by it is, if someone wanted to have their first exposure to Zelda, played BotW/TotK, and thought "That was fun! I'm gonna play more Zelda games!" and went back to literally any other mainline Zelda, it would be a huge WTF because none of them play like BotW/TotK.
I also wasnt hyped for TOTK but ended up enjoying and beating it! Cassette Beasts was very cute but also had a pretty meaningful story in the end, I'm excited for their dlc
i was also excited for Cassette Beasts only to be surprised at how little it did for me, given my love for both Pokémon and those PS1 era monster rancher games where you could put in a CD and generate a monster to raise. Is it possible that I too have changed somehow over the years? nahhhh.
Armored core 6 is perfectly in line with armored core games, more a case of mismanaged expectations. But thats totally fair for people to want that souls like in mecha, weve all dreamed of an Armored Souls
I do have to ask why you played Armored Core 6 and expected ideas from the Souls Series kinda carrying over? I mean you can see some carry over with how the stamina and engine bar management is a big part of the game and how it brutally brings you to a proper skill level but Armored Core works because it's not Souls. It's entirely on you, not the game that it didn't deliver that unreasonable expectations you had for it
"Armored Core 6 didn't really have any of that [Soulslike exploration], but that's okay because I still had Lies of P" That's interesting to me. I didn't really gel with Lies of P and after some reflection after beating it, I think the reason I didn't like it was that the souls-style exploration wasn't really there as far as I saw it. It felt to me like a few decent bossfights with some barely meandering hallways in between. Sure I had to backtrack to throw a bomb at a corpse to get a secret item or whatever a few times, but it always felt like I had exactly one direction to go and one way to get there. Lords of the Fallen, a game with much worse boss design, was so far on the other end of the spectrum that it was almost TOO much. That game clicked with me because exploration was so much a part of the experience, but they also don't have the level design chops of Fromsoftware so it got a little too labyrinthine at times. I learned that I value exploration in these games a lot more than I previously thought. I figured I was a combat first, everything else second gamer. But Lords is on my favorite games of the year list, and Lies... is decidedly not.
I perfectly understand this list (it's a very good list), but I have to say, being disappointed in Armored Core 6 because it wasn't at all like a Souls game really was not the game's fault at all. It never tried to sell itself as a Souls game or anything like it, and perfectly fits within the Armored Core series in tone, gameplay (imo) and themes. It being more Souls-y than it already is (the older Armored Core game are even LESS reminiscent of Souls games) would have been a disservice to it and its legacy. Bonus fun fact! The first Armored Core game predates Demon's Souls by 9 years!
As someone with almost 200 hours in BG3 I understand. Unfortunately it is exactly the type of game I spend too many hours in and I knew it already, considering the way I played Divinity Original Sin 2…
this is a great list! it's fun to like reflect on anticipation and "hype" being excited for things is fun but not always a reflection of their realities :)
i went into redfall hoping it would be a multiplayer immersive sim. something that leaned heavily on hostility, resource scarcity, and tactics. This type of game is what arkane is known for. deathloop, dishonored, prey, arx fatalis, dark messiah... seeing them this far out of their comfort zone is depressing. i can SEE a great game in there. but i don't know if they'll ever make it.
i had to go on a bg3 tolerance break because i would go crazy and spend two days straight playing bg3. it killed my impulse control and my sleep schedule LOLOL 10/10 game
This was fun! And I think it highlights that "most anticipated" is always going to be SO subjective. Like for next year, I am super excited for Turnip Boy Robs a Bank and Fantasy Life i, moreso than any AAA game that's been announced.
Honestly it's so wild to see all the games that did come out this year. There were a handful I didn't even know about until either right before or right after they launched, and was pleasantly surprised: As a Souls fan, I was pretty enamored with Lords of the Fallen - a game I'd never heard of, which was a sequel to a game I'd never heard of, which was a clone of Souls, and somehow managed to provide a really well-rounded experience. I haven't played Lies of P (not my aesthetic) but I've seen a lot of comparisons to that one, and both games seem to have really done some justice to the Soulslike genre this year. The other one I was blown away by was Alan Wake 2. I didn't even know they were making a sequel until I saw a play through pop up on TH-cam three days after the game came out. Yes, the game has bugs, yes it's got some design problems, but buy and large it's one of - if not THE - most enjoyable gaming experiences I've ever had, especially in the survival horror genre. In most cases I enjoyed it more than Baldur's Gate 3. However, I can't deny that BG3 is one of the best RPGs that has come out in several years. It's just crazy to see how many heavy hitters we got this year. One particularly interesting thing about that is how diverse the genres of these games have been (broadly the good games that came out this year, not the various RPGs and one survival horror game I mentioned lol). There have been solid games all across the board. Hopefully next year will be similar, but I'm not holding my breath.
I was so stoked for Bombfunk but the controls were so shitty, I dropped the game very quickly. Looking forward to the actual sequel, though, whenever it comes.
As a huge fan of the Bioshock series, I really wanted atomic heart to have amazing writing and story but it hurts me deeply when I see people talk about it. Still on my list to play but near the bottom of the list
I had a game that was poisoned by hype *after* I'd already played it: _Hollow Knight._ I first bought and played the game because I was going on vacation and I wanted a game to play on the airplane, and I had heard some good things. I was pleasantly surprised by its complexity and difficulty, and I beat The Radiance to get the final ending. Then I spent a couple years listening to people gush about how it was a masterpiece, and when I went back to play it, while it was good for awhile its flaws really became apparent. So I feel you and hype; I try to avoid it as much as I can. I hope _Silksong_ and the _Hades 2_ beta come out soon for you.
(echoing like a regret) _a lot of hours in, a lot of hours in, a lot of hours in..._ ...Yeah. Same. Thank goodness Act 3 was so exhausting, I got hold of my life back.
I expected Atomic Heart to be so much better. The visuals are great and music works but unfortunately the combat is not as good as even Bioshock Infinite and that released in 2013.
Saw the short of this video, then went to the most anticipated video then watched this one lol. Thanks for saving me the trouble of looking into Atomic Heart
Crispy critters, you really had to take a lot of L's with that list! Jokes aside though, yeah, I get what you mean about some games being known quantities that you don't really need to get hype about. Oh well. I suppose that's what finding something new that sticks with you out of nowhere so enticing. Glad you ended up having fun with BG3. (Though those are rookie numbers. Gotta pump those up with Update 5 if you haven't already.)
I had a pretty great time with Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, but I also agree that the movement is lacking long-term. I'm looking into addressing that with mods (MovementPlus doesn't quite do it for me), but OFC that's modding. I really hope we can see a sequel to Bomb Rush Cyberfunk that moves forward more while keeping the spirit alive.
I actually really enjoyed the movement. I think the game does a really, really bad job of explaining the systems though. That is absolutely a mark against it. I would agree with the notion that there is room for more complication to add, but I think level design challenges makes it hard to give the player too much movement freedom without making the levels boring.
@@DannoHung Agreed. It could have taught a lot of the tech better. I also do think that the stages are pretty well designed for the current movement, but my biggest issue with the current movement is that once you learn a decent set of lines, it's mostly a matter of consistency and player choice is primarily route planning across lines. You can even optimize tricks pretty well for lines without much work once you learn the relatively small amount of useful trick flows (for points, speed, or boost, but that mostly becomes points/speed because boost is so cheap to come by and mostly meaningfully consumed for tricks to get more points), i.e. tricks mostly don't present the player with meaningful choices. Cops can introduce more meaningful player choice to traversal, but it's not too much, and they border on the annoying side. I want traversal itself to be more fluid, however that's accomplished, so your execution of a planned route involves how you execute the lines between connections more and, similarly, your best connections out of a line at a given point depend on how you've been executing the line, such that from moment to moment the player is making meaningful choices in how they traverse a line and simultaneously change what lines they can choose to go to next. Admittedly, that is on the smaller scale and doesn't address how to make the choice of route across lines meaningful, but I think it's a good place to start. Activities like multiplayer tag could become a lot more interesting with that movement because they make routing across lines dynamic & interesting, which meshes well with more engaging lines & traversal between lines.
Wait. Wait wait. Wait. Why do you still think Silksong is releasing this year? What do you know?!?!?! ... Okay. Sorry, sorry. What I meant was, this video is great and I enjoyed it. But also you fully gremlinized me with that casual aside. Fully gremlinized!!!
i am very glad spirit swap got delayed tbh LOL. i don’t want a game made by making the devs crunch id rather just have them take their time and value their mental health
One or more of these games could potentially "crunsh" themselves out before the new year. Or they do some kind of retroactive Christmas-miracle patch that make them a lot better or worse, but also in the past. Imagine the shame and regret you would feel! :)
I have never said "oh no" as many times as while watching you run down that list
It truly was heartbreaking
Its like how i feel having achieved none of the goals I set out at the beginning of the year 😅
Just throwing this into the void, but if you and Jenna ever want to do a collab, you'd make a lot of people's week.
Baldur's Gate 3 is far too easy to sit down for "a little while" and then realize you've not seen the sun in 14 hours
how many of us are still having those "oh I'll just pop it on for a sec and hey wait it's 3am" moments
fire pfp
@@p6v665so fire that I laughed for 1 minute straight
I STILL haven't played much of it...and I want to change that.
As someone with 300 hours in BG3 the most I've ever had for a game that's not a shooter or a competitive multiplayer. God I feel this on a spiritual level. and I still have like 3 characters that I haven't beat the game with yet that are in act 2/3 so that number is going to keep climbing
... ok "crispy critters" has to be a prank there's no way nobody mentioned that to me until now
EDIT: the impact of unpausing only to find that he had a fourth "crispy critters" waiting for me in his back pocket
the wordless, exactly-the-right-amount-of-too-long lingering pause on the phallic imagery in atomic heart was a stroke (oh no, i swear that pun wasn't intended, welp) of comedic genius
The grub noise after the mention of Silksong was a small consolation for being reminded of the unending vigil. I appreciated it.
Starfield's literal emptiness wasn't a problem for me. I had my problems with the fact that nothing had improved from other games. Everything was still so shallow. No strives whatsoever in immersion. Actions during questlines meant nothing, got locked out of routes for no reason. Just so lame.
The fact that the same bugs from Oblivion still happen is really a mark of shame.
The starfield total conversion mod for Morrowind will be the true way to experience
It is petty of me but I was very very smug this year after seeing the general reception to Starfield be so lukewarm, because it was _exactly_ as uninteresting as I expected from the trailers.
The thing that has been filling the L4D shaped hole in my heart lately has been Deep Rock Galactic. Not quite the same vibe but it's working!
Yeah, I was weirdly suckered in AFTER it came out, but before people started getting to the slog. I rushed to the ending and then uninstalled it. I will probably return for DLC, but I won't be playing it in a decade like I am with Skyrim or New Vegas.
The problem is that it’s a lukewarm space simulator, hurt by all of the quests you have to do. And it’s a good RPG with fantastic elements and stories, but you have to play this space simulator to find those very hidden gems.
@@freyjathehealer5559 This is entirely it. They tried to cram two MASSIVE ideas together and didn't actually give either enough attention. I was so upset when I grinded dog fighting so I could survive against the Starborn only for there to not be another real fight against them in space. I regret the time I wasted on the UC quest after I learned there was literally zero effect on the game after your final choice (at least Skyrim's Civil Ware changed some of the city leaders).
Thank you so much for doing this, I love the idea of putting out a "most anticipated" list and then assessing it. Maybe we can all learn what kind of games will be worth getting excited for and be better at this. Or maybe every year will be full of disappointments and things not coming out
"reverse cowgirl humility" is going in my repertoire, thank you so much. you never lost my trust but if you had, it would have been re-earned by that line alone.
"I'm here to eat crow and reverse cowgirl humility." You know your audience well.
Going to be honest, I didn't understand that line...
Yeah wtf does that mean
@@deazma1453 You’ll find out when you’re older.
YeeCaw!
@@NeillSmith Eating crow is like "eating your words," or acknowledging that you said something confidently but you were wrong, which is a way of showing humility. Humility is the opposite of arrogance; Arrogance is overestimating your own ability or judgment, and generally adopting other unsavory personality traits as a result, while humility is downplaying your own ability or judgment to avoid arrogance. Reverse cowgirl is a sex position in which the "dominant" partner lies on their back and the submissive partner "rides" them in an upright position, facing away from their head. It's like a really Devolver Digital press release way of saying "I'm admitting I'm wrong and taking the initiative by being humble."
the sentence "i'm here to eat crow and reverse cowgirl humility" has dealt me irreparable psychic damage from which i cannot and will not recover
Went back and watched the original before this, and seeing Redfall really hurt. I also adored Prey and was really hoping for a return to something like that...what the heck happened man.
What happened is that a company known for making single player games with intricate but small linear sandboxes was pushed into making an online open world game. They then lost all of their long-standing talent who didn't want to make this and a bunch of new talent who applied because they loved Dishonored and Prey and wanted to be a part of that next interesting iteration. Now they're Arkane in name only save for a few hold-outs.
@@adanufgail where did all the old talent go?
Wait is 98 a lot of hours? My concept of time has been so irrevocably broken by old-school runescape that I legitimately don't know
I speak russian and english so one thing i can tell you about Atomic Heart is that its probably worse in english. Worse meaning more intresting in this case bc fuck is atomic heart boring/bad and those english camp moments are the only thing that might make it playable for some.
i feel the same, while I definetly cringed less while playing in russian at least i laughed out loud for the pure shock while playing in english. Definetly not the same experience
for me it's way harder to enjoy modern aaa values camp because i can just FEEL how many man hours were wasted on it
give me that old poorly translated ps1 fmv shit where everyone is obviously having a good ass time
I don't think I understand your meaning. You are saying that Atomic Heart is less campy in Russian?
Because, Crispy Critters, I love the camp in the english dub. Playing this weird golden retriever of a Russian major is the best part of the game to me.
Edit: I actually wrote this comment before getting to the part of the video where Jenna discusses it, so the crispy critters joke on my part was fully unintntional. I actually 100% disagree with her on this, because the camp is what makes the game. And the commenting on video game tropes? I love that. Not in the Nuts & Bolts "this sucks, games shouldn't have this" sort of way but the Resi 7 "who makes these locks?" sort of thing. Game mechanics are weird but weird doesn't mean bad. It only adds (in my opinion) to the experience to have a character getting increasingly frustrated with weird locks because of course you would. The fifth time you have to find the snake emblem to open a door you'd get annoyed but when playing a game you don't mind it. It's ludonarrative dissonance applied in a way to improve the experience.
good call on BG3 at least, update us when you get to act II
this burn hit so hard i'm roasted in the periphery
Baldur's Gate 3 is hands down, not even remotely debatable, my biggest time sink this year. I have an embarrassing amount of hours in that game now with roughly 9 total saves and 5 in the last act... I- I havent seen the sun in a long time.
"Sometimes anticipation can ruin things when they don't live up to your hype" is SO TRUE. Lots of games with lots of hype and anticipation feel like they fall flat because of this, when you actually play them with no expectations they are very enjoyable :) Good video, thank you Jenna.
At least if it's your own anticipation, you can blame yourself. I got hype-suckered into Baldur's Gate 3, and it has NOT lived up to that. I've clocked 42 hours, and I can genuinely say that I've enjoyed maybe one and a half of them. (All of which were in the Underdark)
Well, you got me there! But let's be honest Baldur's Gate 3 is definitely an exceptional case. For me it happened with Cyberpunk, I didn't bite into the hype and I just enjoyed for it what, and even on release and enjoyed the experience! @@EinDose
i honestly feel like this is part of the reason i loved tears of the kingdom. i don't get hyped very easily for games because they are rarely mind-blowing, which means that they rarely disappoint me unless they are just truly bad (pokemon scarlet/violet 😭)
@@LeeCsM same here! while i waited for at least a few patches and a hefty discount to get into it, once i did it was far better of an experience than anything i could imagine it being, especially as someone who's never liked a CDPR game or most RPGs before lol. I'm so glad that it got the redemption it deserved with Phantom Liberty and the 2.x patches.
another surprising game was NFS Unbound; as a lifelong racing game fanatic and someone who has been playing the NFS series since before Underground was a thing, I genuinely expected Unbound to be another soul-less post-2015 cashgrab, but it genuinely oozed style and arcade sensibilities in a way that the series sorely missed. its not perfect, but not giving into the hype or hate train definitely made my experience better!
I felt the exact same way about BG3 and then my friend bullied me into buying it with my CS2 refund money and uh. Yeah I clocked 40 hours over three days.
CS2...Cities Skylines 2?
This invaded my recommendations completely at random and I LOVE your energy about everything. I don't even care that I didn't watch the video this was based on, this is just funny on its own legs.
Same
Same context and I 100% agree
I think the problem with Starfield, or at least *my* problem with it, is that it was two different games forced to share one .exe, one being a space sim and the other being a bethesda RPG that just happens to be set in space. I don't know if these were different phases of development or different visions by different people on the team, but the typical bethesda RPG side was *really* hurt from having to share space with a space sim.
but honestly, the bits that were there have me really excited for Elder Scrolls 6. The biggest flaw with the open-world RPG side of starfield was that it was procedurally generated, so no one place had any character. Elder Scrolls 6 will (likely) have a proper authored map rather than proc gen, and it'll also hopefully keep the writing and dungeon design that's *leagues* better than Bethesda's previous games.
That was totally my biggest issue too (along with the total lack of any interesting unique weapons). I think if you took all the handcrafted content in Starfield and condensed it into a single star system like in The Expanse or Firefly, it becomes a far better game.
I think the problem with Bethesda's direction though starting with radient quests in Skyrim and migrating to being the entire backbone of a faction (Minutemen) in Fallout 4, and then entire radiant environments in Starfield is that I can't really see them walking any of that back for TES6.
@@Peterincan I wish Neon was it's own game. I sank probably 6-7 hours there and never once felt like it outstayed its welcome.
Starfield is a perfect example of how more is not always better. If they cut out most of the space sim parts the game would be 90% good instead of 40% good.
@@adanufgail that’s my biggest issue with the game. So often, I’ll run across something because I’m looking for something specific I read about online (like a new outfit) and then I’ll love the place I found. I talked to everyone in New Homestead, I spent a few in game days admiring the resort of Paradiso. But I wouldn’t have gone to those places had I not looked it up online.
I get they were trying to go for a “space is endless and you never know what you are going to discover” but the problem is that the game doesn’t try to cleverly guide you towards interesting things. It’s rewarding for people planning to spend 200 hours playing the game, and I’m sure they’ll appreciate discovering new exciting things at hour 158, but I’m not going to play it long enough to get there.
What has been interesting to me regarding Armored Core 6 is seeing the thoughts of players who have fallen in love with FromSoft during the Darksoulsbordenringkiro era. I personally dreaded that they might make it too soulsy as I missed the old Armored Core formula terribly since its last title and it hit just right for me. With the exception of the stagger meter. I can live happily if I don't see another stagger meter in my life. Just wish there wasn't this whirlwind of disappointment from every camp about that game, felt like after its launch I couldn't go two steps without seeing "this game bad because not souls" or "this game bad because too souls" when really, in my opinion, game just right. Agreed, though, would have liked at least one goblin.
the goblin was invincible rummy.
Found your channel with this video. It's been a while since I found a channel who's editing is genuinely funny without needing anything but a cut. And when you DO decide to go beyond, like with BG3, it's hilarious!
Great video, I hope they come out next year
Cassette Beasts was really good. Another sleeper indie to check out. Deathbulge: Battle of the Bands.
Deathbulge: Battle of the Bands. Typed it twice cuz you should buy two copies. it's amazing!
jenna the phrase "reverse cowgirl humility" took me the fuck out and i missed the next 45 seconds.
I think "doing a bad job" is an indicator that you're really putting careful thought into your research and results! If you're not gonna take big swings, you'd just make the same "most anticipated" list everyone else does.
At least this video came out this year! Wait that's not a joke about your upload schedule. You post plenty often. I'm just happy to see a Jennea Stoeber video
Just wanted to say that I'm really glad that more of your stuff has been popping up in my recommended lately! Your editing is super great, and your commentary is excellent, your pacing makes it feel very "off the top of your head" but I can tell you put a lot of thought and care into the topics you discuss. Really great stuff!
I kind of feel like your comments on Armored Core 6 aren't so much a criticism of the game as "sad that it isn't a different game entirely"? Like, yeah, Soulslike exploration is fun. But Armored Core mission-based gameplay isn't bad, it's just a different vibe.
The only thing that disappointed me about Bomb Rush was the length, I feel like it nailed the vibes and I love the soundtrack.
I did remember Redfall being on that list and being curious of your post-release reaction. I'm glad you ended up enjoying TOTK!
This is proof we should simply live like the Buddha and not anticipate things. But then again, he never got to play Hades. We don't know how the experience would've changed him.
CRISPY CRITTERS! A new Jenna video!
People don't do this enough, look back at their predictions and learn from them! Good video, and tee hee piston machine.
If AC:6 had come out as an open world roam around in your big mech game it would have been a massive betrayal for all of the existing Armored Core fans.
Just for the sake of clarity I'm not saying that an open world AC would automatically be a bad thing (it could be great) but AC is a fundamentally different experience to the soulsborne games and holding that against it feels somewhat unfair.
It will strange open world vehicle mech without going out mech like your ac need maintance n such
I agree. It's important to innovate within an existing series' identity. People get really hot when I say, "Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom is an incredible game, but a bad Zelda title." All I mean by it is, if someone wanted to have their first exposure to Zelda, played BotW/TotK, and thought "That was fun! I'm gonna play more Zelda games!" and went back to literally any other mainline Zelda, it would be a huge WTF because none of them play like BotW/TotK.
I also wasnt hyped for TOTK but ended up enjoying and beating it! Cassette Beasts was very cute but also had a pretty meaningful story in the end, I'm excited for their dlc
everyone i know is obsessed with baldurs gate but i personally just... didn't like it at all and i feel like i'm the only one on earth
I clicked this thinking "But 2023 was such a good year for games, how could her list be so regretful", and boy oh boy was I wrong
wow i went from kinda liking "crispy critters" to getting tired of it and hating it all in four voice lines. great work
i was also excited for Cassette Beasts only to be surprised at how little it did for me, given my love for both Pokémon and those PS1 era monster rancher games where you could put in a CD and generate a monster to raise. Is it possible that I too have changed somehow over the years? nahhhh.
Armored core 6 is perfectly in line with armored core games, more a case of mismanaged expectations. But thats totally fair for people to want that souls like in mecha, weve all dreamed of an Armored Souls
Took me a bit too long to figure out what Hub Ris means
"I'm here to eat crow and reverse-cowgirl humility" was grounds for an immediate sub. Happy to be here. 0:25
This is a lot of fun to look back on. I didn’t look forward to the same things as you, but I was there’s for 2023
This is a very nice way to bookend the year of games! Also a fun way to learn that Silksong is supposed to be released soon!
I am so glad I found you after you left Polygon. You should join Second Wind. They need more female voices, and I your content matches their brand.
That pipe dream bit did me some psychic damage
I do have to ask why you played Armored Core 6 and expected ideas from the Souls Series kinda carrying over? I mean you can see some carry over with how the stamina and engine bar management is a big part of the game and how it brutally brings you to a proper skill level but Armored Core works because it's not Souls. It's entirely on you, not the game that it didn't deliver that unreasonable expectations you had for it
"Armored Core 6 didn't really have any of that [Soulslike exploration], but that's okay because I still had Lies of P"
That's interesting to me. I didn't really gel with Lies of P and after some reflection after beating it, I think the reason I didn't like it was that the souls-style exploration wasn't really there as far as I saw it. It felt to me like a few decent bossfights with some barely meandering hallways in between. Sure I had to backtrack to throw a bomb at a corpse to get a secret item or whatever a few times, but it always felt like I had exactly one direction to go and one way to get there. Lords of the Fallen, a game with much worse boss design, was so far on the other end of the spectrum that it was almost TOO much. That game clicked with me because exploration was so much a part of the experience, but they also don't have the level design chops of Fromsoftware so it got a little too labyrinthine at times.
I learned that I value exploration in these games a lot more than I previously thought. I figured I was a combat first, everything else second gamer. But Lords is on my favorite games of the year list, and Lies... is decidedly not.
“To eat crow and reverse cowgirl humility” Jesus Christ i chortled
This is a good video idea! (And also a good video, ofc)
at least you had cassette beasts on the list! which would be indie game of the year any year that sea of stars didn't also come out
"Pipe dream"
I just-
I perfectly understand this list (it's a very good list), but I have to say, being disappointed in Armored Core 6 because it wasn't at all like a Souls game really was not the game's fault at all. It never tried to sell itself as a Souls game or anything like it, and perfectly fits within the Armored Core series in tone, gameplay (imo) and themes. It being more Souls-y than it already is (the older Armored Core game are even LESS reminiscent of Souls games) would have been a disservice to it and its legacy.
Bonus fun fact! The first Armored Core game predates Demon's Souls by 9 years!
I haven’t been seeing your videos pop up in my sub box until this one ): time to go on a Jenna Marathon and rewatch that not-hour long video again
As someone with almost 200 hours in BG3 I understand. Unfortunately it is exactly the type of game I spend too many hours in and I knew it already, considering the way I played Divinity Original Sin 2…
I have no idea who you are but this video is great and I loved your analysis AND your Pusheen shirt
this is a great list! it's fun to like reflect on anticipation and "hype"
being excited for things is fun but not always a reflection of their realities :)
Unrelated, but I had to say-- love your sweater!!
thank you :)
Getting this recommended to me at the end of 2024 makes it even better for some reason
i went into redfall hoping it would be a multiplayer immersive sim. something that leaned heavily on hostility, resource scarcity, and tactics. This type of game is what arkane is known for. deathloop, dishonored, prey, arx fatalis, dark messiah... seeing them this far out of their comfort zone is depressing.
i can SEE a great game in there. but i don't know if they'll ever make it.
Crispy critters this is a great video!
i had to go on a bg3 tolerance break because i would go crazy and spend two days straight playing bg3. it killed my impulse control and my sleep schedule LOLOL 10/10 game
This was fun! And I think it highlights that "most anticipated" is always going to be SO subjective. Like for next year, I am super excited for Turnip Boy Robs a Bank and Fantasy Life i, moreso than any AAA game that's been announced.
Jenna, you point so much. And it's pretty rad.
Really glad this got a follow up
As the only person who liked Starfield (including Todd Howard), I love my big empty personal galaxy. Also Andreja.
Honestly it's so wild to see all the games that did come out this year. There were a handful I didn't even know about until either right before or right after they launched, and was pleasantly surprised: As a Souls fan, I was pretty enamored with Lords of the Fallen - a game I'd never heard of, which was a sequel to a game I'd never heard of, which was a clone of Souls, and somehow managed to provide a really well-rounded experience. I haven't played Lies of P (not my aesthetic) but I've seen a lot of comparisons to that one, and both games seem to have really done some justice to the Soulslike genre this year.
The other one I was blown away by was Alan Wake 2. I didn't even know they were making a sequel until I saw a play through pop up on TH-cam three days after the game came out. Yes, the game has bugs, yes it's got some design problems, but buy and large it's one of - if not THE - most enjoyable gaming experiences I've ever had, especially in the survival horror genre. In most cases I enjoyed it more than Baldur's Gate 3. However, I can't deny that BG3 is one of the best RPGs that has come out in several years.
It's just crazy to see how many heavy hitters we got this year. One particularly interesting thing about that is how diverse the genres of these games have been (broadly the good games that came out this year, not the various RPGs and one survival horror game I mentioned lol). There have been solid games all across the board.
Hopefully next year will be similar, but I'm not holding my breath.
Great video, how have I never seen you
I bet your channel's going to blow up :)
First exposure to your channel. Sub'd looking forward to more! Hopefully ya nail 2024 most anticipated. 2023 was weiiiiiiird
I was so stoked for Bombfunk but the controls were so shitty, I dropped the game very quickly. Looking forward to the actual sequel, though, whenever it comes.
Man. Haven't thought about Jet Set Radio in years.
The lock joke in Atomic Heart reminds me of some other recent gameplay where I thought, are you making fun of me for playing your terrible game?
Great video.
As a huge fan of the Bioshock series, I really wanted atomic heart to have amazing writing and story but it hurts me deeply when I see people talk about it. Still on my list to play but near the bottom of the list
I had a game that was poisoned by hype *after* I'd already played it: _Hollow Knight._ I first bought and played the game because I was going on vacation and I wanted a game to play on the airplane, and I had heard some good things. I was pleasantly surprised by its complexity and difficulty, and I beat The Radiance to get the final ending. Then I spent a couple years listening to people gush about how it was a masterpiece, and when I went back to play it, while it was good for awhile its flaws really became apparent. So I feel you and hype; I try to avoid it as much as I can. I hope _Silksong_ and the _Hades 2_ beta come out soon for you.
This is an incredible follow-up 🤣
cassette beasts is incredible if you put the time into it, easily a top ten best
Wow. I guess every game you were excited for either didn't come out this year or sucked. I'm so sorry. Great video though!
I found this video after scrolling a bit on the front page! Huzzah! This TH-cam machine gave me what I wanted, for once!
Crispy critters, that was quite the list
haha yes. 98 is a lot of hours to put into a crpg. *shoves 900 hours of playtime in Pathfinder into a desk drawer*
What does it say about me that I clicked on this so fast. I see regret and immediately I click.
Killing it.
First time seeing Redfall gameplay, and the scale thing... it's giving Cats 2019.
(echoing like a regret) _a lot of hours in, a lot of hours in, a lot of hours in..._
...Yeah. Same. Thank goodness Act 3 was so exhausting, I got hold of my life back.
I expected Atomic Heart to be so much better.
The visuals are great and music works but unfortunately the combat is not as good as even Bioshock Infinite and that released in 2013.
Saw the short of this video, then went to the most anticipated video then watched this one lol. Thanks for saving me the trouble of looking into Atomic Heart
Crispy critters, you really had to take a lot of L's with that list! Jokes aside though, yeah, I get what you mean about some games being known quantities that you don't really need to get hype about. Oh well. I suppose that's what finding something new that sticks with you out of nowhere so enticing. Glad you ended up having fun with BG3. (Though those are rookie numbers. Gotta pump those up with Update 5 if you haven't already.)
You wore a Pusheen sweater! That looked so cute!!!
I had a pretty great time with Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, but I also agree that the movement is lacking long-term. I'm looking into addressing that with mods (MovementPlus doesn't quite do it for me), but OFC that's modding.
I really hope we can see a sequel to Bomb Rush Cyberfunk that moves forward more while keeping the spirit alive.
I actually really enjoyed the movement. I think the game does a really, really bad job of explaining the systems though. That is absolutely a mark against it.
I would agree with the notion that there is room for more complication to add, but I think level design challenges makes it hard to give the player too much movement freedom without making the levels boring.
@@DannoHung Agreed. It could have taught a lot of the tech better. I also do think that the stages are pretty well designed for the current movement, but my biggest issue with the current movement is that once you learn a decent set of lines, it's mostly a matter of consistency and player choice is primarily route planning across lines. You can even optimize tricks pretty well for lines without much work once you learn the relatively small amount of useful trick flows (for points, speed, or boost, but that mostly becomes points/speed because boost is so cheap to come by and mostly meaningfully consumed for tricks to get more points), i.e. tricks mostly don't present the player with meaningful choices. Cops can introduce more meaningful player choice to traversal, but it's not too much, and they border on the annoying side. I want traversal itself to be more fluid, however that's accomplished, so your execution of a planned route involves how you execute the lines between connections more and, similarly, your best connections out of a line at a given point depend on how you've been executing the line, such that from moment to moment the player is making meaningful choices in how they traverse a line and simultaneously change what lines they can choose to go to next.
Admittedly, that is on the smaller scale and doesn't address how to make the choice of route across lines meaningful, but I think it's a good place to start. Activities like multiplayer tag could become a lot more interesting with that movement because they make routing across lines dynamic & interesting, which meshes well with more engaging lines & traversal between lines.
and what were your favorites? have you played ff16? happy new year btw!! loved the video
I loved many games this year but BG3 was my favorite. really nice game
Love u Jenna
This was a great video
I trust you, Jenna
Wait. Wait wait. Wait. Why do you still think Silksong is releasing this year? What do you know?!?!?! ... Okay. Sorry, sorry. What I meant was, this video is great and I enjoyed it. But also you fully gremlinized me with that casual aside. Fully gremlinized!!!
i am very glad spirit swap got delayed tbh LOL. i don’t want a game made by making the devs crunch id rather just have them take their time and value their mental health
Deep Rock Galactic has done a great job of substituting for Left 4 Dead for me, as someone who also dearly misses that game!
One or more of these games could potentially "crunsh" themselves out before the new year. Or they do some kind of retroactive Christmas-miracle patch that make them a lot better or worse, but also in the past. Imagine the shame and regret you would feel! :)
Casette Beasts is so good tho!