January/June 2022 - A Midsummer's Night* Update

By far the main time vampire of the year, with my first play-through being north of 140 hours long and the two following runs taking around 45 more combined.

I'd say I expected to like it: I enjoyed every From Software game I've played so far and people that tried the test build were raving about it; what I didn't expect was to have even the rosiest, most unrealistically high expectations I could have had completely blown out of the water.
It's not a perfect game, but it's a special game like very few, I'll write more about it in the following update as it'll be for sure my GOTY (spoilers!)

Speaking of time vampires (heh) it's hard not to mention Vampire Survivors, that with a simple but extremely addicting gameplay loop stole many, many hours from me. The amount of content that continues being added every other week keeps pulling me back for a few more runs, to the point where having paid only €2,39 for it feels like an actual crime.

I’m not a Marvel fan and I haven’t enjoyed the gameplay, so it might look weird to see this mentioned here, but I can explain.
I happened to watch someone else play the first couple of hours of this game and I absolutely fell in love with the writing, more specifically with the banter between the various team members.
The dev team clearly had a blast writing and recording hundreds if not thousands of lines that many people won’t even hear, because whenever you have the option to just chill and hang around your teammates you can expect multiple minutes of hilarious dialogues and merciless banter, which managed to carry an otherwise mediocre game.
Frankly I can’t recommend it without heavy warnings about the drab and repetitive gameplay, but on a deep discount (or “free” right now if you have gamepass) it might be ok to try.

Another special game that would have probably fought for my GOTY last year if only I played it sooner. It's difficult to pick a genre to describe it as it's a mix of visual novel and walking simulator, with some map-based and 2D side-scrolling exploration, a dash of RPG/CYOA, and bit of resource management; all of this is wrapped up with a clean presentation that doesn't get in the way of the real star of the show which is the great writing and world-building.

I was completely captivated by this game during the week when I played it: I remember thinking about it long after every play session, and the characters with their stories stayed with me for a long while after finishing it.
Song plays an important part in the story so the OST is also worth mentioning. Sometimes uplifting, sometimes harrowing, it runs the gamut of human emotion matching pretty well every situation where it's called to the stage.

Many emotions were had, many tears were spilled, it will definitely be in my top 5 (possibly even top 3) for games played this year.
I'll also mention that I found out there are two other "OPUS" games from the same developer that aren't really linked to one another story-wise. I beat one a few days ago (it was pretty average) and I'll beat the other (plus its prologue) soon.