2023 is starting! January is usually not a very big month for games, and I’d say this January isn’t changing the trend. But there’s still a few big things coming out anyways. And I’m still doing my thing, I have 2 reviews I’m currently writing, they should pop up soon, and there’s gonna be more to come.

So for January 2023, I’m highlighting: 12 multiplats, 1 Switch exclusive and 1 PC exclusive. As far as anything I’d buy, there’s 2 I’m getting for sure, 2 I’m pretty sure I’m getting, and a maybe or two more. So not a very big month, but there’s stuff coming out, mostly later in the month.

Let’s go!

Disclaimer: I only list games that I think are worth mentioning. This includes games I’m personally interested in, games that will likely be popular, highly advertised games, some more niche stuff I may notice, and such. Not just games I care about myself, I highlight as much as I think makes sense. And of course, I can’t see the future, so I may be missing games and I may be listing games that may get delayed.

And no I’m not including such masterpieces as “Webcam Sex” and “Hentai EroElf”. Steam has really weird standards, I gotta say. Japanese RPGs and visual novels get censored or taken off the store weirdly frequently for no reason at all, but those shitty puzzle games with nudity remain somehow.

*EDIT 12/31: Added a game, oops*

It’s time for a new year! Finally done with the few 2021 GotY and 2022 hype posts so it’s back to regular business. And regular business means monthly release list post!

I posted a whole 10 times since the last release list post, which is pretty good. And I have a few more reviews coming, so I’m definitely keeping busy with this blog. Just a few holdover games to play through and write reviews for, pretty much.

January 2022 isn’t looking to be a huge month, but there are a few big-ish releases. We have; 1 Switch game, 4 multiplats, and 2 PC ports. For me there’s 2 games I’m definitely buying… and that’s it, unless I missed something.

Let’s go!

Oh and there’s DLC for Ghostrunner and Dead Cells.

Disclaimer: I only list games that I think are worth mentioning. This includes games I’m personally interested in, games that will likely be popular, highly advertised games, small interesting ones I may notice, and such. Not just games I care about myself, I highlight as much as I think makes sense. And of course, I can’t see the future, so I may be missing games and I may be listing games that may get delayed.

2021. It was 2020 again, but weirder. On my side, I’ve been stuck in my house, working from home, since March 2020, I’m fine with that. Just working, working out, watching an unhealthy amount of vtubers and playing an unhealthy amount of video games. I had cataracts all of 2020 and early 2021 so I could barely see for a while, I got those fixed this year so that’s nice. I don’t really have much else to say on the non-gaming side of things, no big health emergencies in the family this year so that’s good. Not much activity overall. That said there was SOMETHING new… this website. I talked about this in the first post I made here, but I had a different site before this (called The Save Points, which originally was a group project but became a solo project fairly quickly), but ran into some DNS issues and decided to abandon the site I had built for the last 13 years. Switched how I did a few things, but yeah, having fun with this new site now. Definitely want to improve things a bit, I want to post more than I do.

As far as gaming, 2021 was actually pretty solid. I don’t know how it happened, but I constantly had something to play. Every month had at least 2 great games (plus a bunch of smaller decent games) which is not something that happens in most years. I didn’t even play all the games I was interested in this year, it was too busy. I didn’t even play too many stinkers, pretty much just Outriders, Axiom Verge 2 and NEO TWEWY.

So I have my own way of doing things for the GotY. Instead of being lame and choosing one winner, or being even lamer and doing a bunch of weird meaningless categories that have a ton of shitty nominations (made by people who hate video games), I just choose, like, 7 winners. I do put one winner on top of everyone else for maximum subjectivity, but yeah, 7 winners, the 7 best games of the year, let’s fucking go.

Since this IS an end-of-year post about the top games of the year, I do want to take the time to look back on some things, so I’ll rant about the console manufacturers a bit and whatever else catches my fancy, then select the 7 GotY winners. I also list a bunch of honorable mentions because I’m just a nice guy like that.

Oh hey I conveniently linked to the relevant sections if you want to skip my inane rantings. You’re welcome.

• Rant (seriously skip this part if you just want to see the winners)
• Games of the Year Winners
• Games of the Year Super Winner
• Honorable mentions

I will note before this that there are in fact games I haven’t played. So if a game you liked isn’t on the list, know that it’s either that I didn’t play it, or it sucked balls. It’s okay, you’re allowed to like bad games. Also I didn’t get a PS5 this year (for reasons I might rant about), so the one good exclusive on it is also a game I didn’t play. I’m sure Ratchet is great (impressions are basically all positive), I just didn’t want to buy a PS5 just to play that one game. I didn’t play Village (though I did analyze the gameplay from watching Gura playing it, it needs some help). I hear great things about Inscryption, I didn’t buy it. And there’s other games I’m interested in I didn’t play like Cruisn’ Blast, Super Robot Wars 30, Eastward and probably some others. I also literally just got a few other 2021 games that I will review later, maybe they’re good too.

Without further ado, let’s do this thing. 2021 Games of the Year let’s fucking go!

I never “really” played Monster Hunter. I’m pretty quick to make a judgement on games, so a new franchise has to impress me fast. In the case of Monster Hunter, I played the first one and gave up real quick, I didn’t “get” it after doing some early small monster hunts. I gave it another chance on PSP, but I gave up on that one even faster and I never touched the series again.

So the demo for Rise came out, and since it actually made you play the real core of the gameplay in a way, actually getting you to hunt big monsters, I figured I’d give it a chance again (I’m sure some other MH demos did that too, but that was when I was in “gave up on MH” mode so I paid no attention). It took me a bit, but after trying out different weapons and figuring out how I was supposed to play, I became able to kill the demo monster, Mizutsune, pretty reliably (didn’t play the second demo that had Magnamalo). And I was enjoying it. So I figured… let’s jump into MH for real this time, unlike my original “attempts” with the series.

So yes this is a review not at all from a fan of the series, but a newcomer. So I don’t really know what’s new in this one except a few elements, I don’t know if it’s better or worse than any of the other games, I’m judging this as if it were a whole new thing. If you want a review from a veteran, you’ll have to look elsewhere. Let’s see how a newb deals with his first MonHun!

I mentioned this in my intro post, this is a type of post I’ve done monthly since 2008 on my previous site The Save Points. I just highlight upcoming games, give my impressions on them based on currently-known info like trailers and demos and such. This includes games I’m interested in, games that may be/become popular whether or not I care about them, and random stuff in-between… Basically anything I feel bears mentioning for any reason. Obviously I can’t tell the future but I will try to somewhat keep this up-to-date as interesting games get release dates and remove games that get delayed at the last minute.

I also like to use these posts as a quick update thing, talk about recent and upcoming stuff, you know… I mean, I made a new site, posted several reviews, changed a bunch of things in the design and functionality of the blog, all has been going well on that end. And I got my second cataract surgery so I CAN SEE, without glasses… that’s pretty cool! I do have a bunch of reviews upcoming, right now on my currently-playing list I have Cathedral and Persona 5 Strikers and Bravely Default 2 and Ghosts ‘n Goblins Resurrection… Curse of the Dead Gods looks kinda cool too so that’s a maybe… and there’s some stuff coming out in March that I’m getting… so I’m not running out of things to post for a while.

So March 2021… it has a couple of the year’s biggest heavy hitters. I’m counting: 11 multiplats, 4 Switch games, 1 PS5 game, 6 PC releases and 1 PS4 game. I’m buying a couple things in there, it’s a decent month.

Well, let’s go and see what March has in store for us! I was gonna post this a bit earlier but a State of Play was announced so I decided to wait, just in case something happened. Nothing happened, so no reaction post. Sony sucks. Maybe I should do a new “Sony is not a good game company” post for the lulz. Did one last year after another shitty State of Play.

*EDIT 03/01* Had to remove a PS5 game that I didn’t notice got pushed back yay!