I'll try and get mine edited in the official thread tonight.

This might mean me keeping the thread alive until February but I'm gonna finish my list goddammit!

#17: Hades

I quite enjoy myself a rogue-lite (like? who cares?) but I had come to terms with the fact the format meant you had very little progression on the story front and that each run was at the mercy of RNGesus. Hades flipped that on its head big time! In a stroke of genius Supergiant Games incorporated all your deaths of retries into the story and filled the game with near endless dialogue where NPCs will discuss your latest demise, comment on who killed you, what weapon you are using. The world of Hades feels alive (ironic since you're  surrounded by dead souls). 

The gameplay is robust, responsive, varied and above all customizable. Yes there's still a degree of randomness to all your runs but as you unlock keepsakes by giving the different Gods some Nectar, you end up being able to guide your builds. When playing for your first clear, you are always encouraged to experiment and little by little the items you unlock make you feel more powerful in tandem with you becoming more agile at dodging enemy attacks. Eventually, you reach a point where you clear the game more often then not but Hades keeps things interesting by allowing you to tweak the difficulty at your leisure for more goodies, more weapons, more companions and soon enough you're more than a hundred hours in and still loving every second of it.

#16: Super Metroid

The last Metroid is in captivity, the galaxy is at peace. Well... not for long and it's a goof thing because this means we get to experience this masterpiece. While Metroid and Return of Samus did lay the groundwork, I believe it's with Super Metroid that the franchise (and the whole genre) got it's real start. As you explore Zebes you discover wildly different regions, blocked paths, encounter fierce enemies. The power ups you gather are fun to use (speed booster and shine spark being my favorites) and the backtracking is done effortlessly for the most part. The music is also a big part of the experience, every theme suits the atmosphere of the region you're traversing from the fiery caves of Norfair to the creepy vibes of the Wrecked Ship.  

#15: Super Mario Galaxy 2

I fully expected to like Super Mario Galaxy 2 less than its predecessor. After all, Super Mario Galaxy was a high bar to clear but the wizards at Nintendo actually managed to outdo themselves with this sequel.

Yoshi who wasn't present in the former title is used in great inventive ways and not merely a ride for Mario, you can whip yourself attaching his tongue to flowers (don't ask), hot peppers make him dash around uncontrollably at high speed, Bulb Yoshi allows you to see hidden platforms, Blimp Yoshi lets you fly up slowly. But that's not all folks, Mario has new tricks too like Cloud Mario who can create his own platforms and Rock Mario who can roll around and smash things.

Another big advantage SMG2 has over SMG is once you've gathered all 120 stars, you unlock a whole new set of stars that you have to search for in the galaxies you've cleared which is much more interesting than simply redoing the stages with Luigi.

Final word here, Nintendo sucks for not including this game in the Switch Collection, thankfully I still have my Wii U which can play my original copy of the game.

#14: Final Fantasy IV

After enjoying Final Fantasy I on NES despite its limitations. Final Fantasy IV (or II as I knew it back then) was a revelation. Instead of the blank class of the original, this time around you follow a cast of characters each with its hopes and aspirations. The story explores the ideas of redemption and sacrifice as our main hero Cecil starts out as a Dark Knight carrying out his king's orders diligently until his latest errand ends up killing a little girl's mother and burning her whole village. Throughout the game, Cecil makes up for his past sins and eventually becomes a Paladin but he's not the only one who faces his demons. The interactions between all characters are very well done and the story surprises you time and time again. On the gameplay side, I've always enjoyed how unique each playable character is with them sticking to their "class": Rosa is a white mage, Rydia a black mage/caller, Edward is useless. 

Fun fact, the character limit for spells meant the spell Meteor was called Meteo which to a French speaking guy like me read like the French word for weather. It took me a very long time to realize it was just missing an R.

Almost there Trucks! At least you're not the only one who hasn't finished yet.

Okay, took me a bit, but I also got some stats from my list, here goes.

Let's start off with the guessing game. This is the most important, of course. This year I changed the hints up by making them all just audio-based (something I'd been thinking of doing for many years, actually) and if there's one thing I learned, is that I greatly overestimated yall's audio memory. But anyways, here's the ranking:

11 guesses: @Ultrashroomz and @UnderwaterFunktown
7 guesses: @Darashiva
5 guesses: @Machina
4 guesses: @drbunnig and @Mnementh
3 guesses: @S.Peelman
2 guesses: @coolbeans and @kenjab
1 guess: @Angelus and @Metafee

That's right, it's a tie! I don't think that had happened before, not with my lists at least. And certainly wasn't something I expected to happen, especially when Ultrashroomz was guessing essentially every game at the beginning of the event. UnderwaterFunktown left it very late too, coming in clutch with two top 5 guesses. Also, if the total numbers there add up to 51, that's because both @Mnementh and @Darashiva were credited with the #2 guess (don't expect me to hand out double guesses too often!).

Now looking through the list itself, here's some interesting bits...

• This was by far my worst year for new entries, with only 4 making it in (a tied all-time low). Of those 4, only one made the top 20 (also a tied all-time low), and it didn't exactly stroll into it, seeing as how I had it lower down the list for a while until deciding at the last minute to raise it to #20. The new entries this year were Death's Door (#40), Splatoon 3 (#33), Hades (#30), and Alien: Isolation (#20).
• As only makes sense with few high-ranking entries, it was a remarkably stable year for the high end of my list, with 8 out of the top 13 games seeing no change year-on-year, and the top 17 games were the same as last year's top 17, with only a few moving no more than 2 spots up or down.
• This stability wasn't necessarily reflected in the list overall, however, with some games seeing significant change year-on-year - The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask rose an impressive 13 places to make it to #24, while at the other end, the steepest decline is a tie between Persona 5 Strikers (#49) and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (#41), both of which went down by 10 spots.
• Three games came back into the list after missing out last year: No Man's Sky (#50), Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (#46) and Splatoon (#34). This is tied for second-most unranked games coming back, only in 2015 were there more (which is only expected with it being one of my earliest lists too).
• Since seven games came in, seven games fell off. Of those, Hyper Light Drifter and Biomutant had the most graceful exits, finding their way into the Honorable Mentions. The other omissions were Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Super Mario Odyssey, Bayonetta, and Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth – Hacker's Memory.

Alright, time for the platform breakdown. I'll just put a number below the platform number and y'all know that means how many games on each one. Not much room to spare here

• While the PC barely failed to overtake the Switch overall, it is easily the system with the most "exclusive" games (as in, games I only played on one platform) on the list, with 10 out of the 14 it had total. Meanwhile, out of the Switch's 15 games, only 7 were listed with the Switch as their only platform.

And here's the highest ranked game for each platform (to avoid repeats, I'll only consider the platform I enjoyed each game the most on):

• SNES: Super Metroid, #9
• N64: The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, #24
• GC: Metroid Prime, #12
• Wii: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, #5
• Wii U: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, #7
• Switch: Ōkami, #2
• GBC: Pokémon Gold & Silver, #23
• GBA: Metroid Fusion, #22
• DS: Pokémon Black & White, #17
• 3DS: Pokémon X & Y, #10
• PS1: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, #43
• PS2: Shadow of the Colossus, #6
• PS3: Persona 5, #4
• PS4: Thumper, #19
• X360: Portal 2, #13
• MD: Sonic the Hedgehog 2, #46
• PC: Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, #1

To close this out, here's the yearly and decade-based breakdowns. Here's the list of years that had multiple games listed, and which game ranked highest from those years.

• 1997: 2 games – Highest: Star Fox 64, #28
• 2002: 3 games – Highest: Metroid Prime, #12
• 2004: 2 games – Highest: Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, #25
• 2006: 3 games – Highest: Ōkami, #2
• 2007: 3 games – Highest: Portal, #31
• 2010: 2 games – Highest: Pokémon Black & White, #17
• 2011: 2 games – Highest: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, #5
• 2014: 3 games – Highest: Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, #18
• 2015: 2 games – Highest: Ori and the Blind Forest, #21
• 2016: 3 games – Highest: Persona 5, #4
• 2017: 6 games – Highest: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, #7
• 2019: 2 games – Highest: Astral Chain, #16
• 2020: 4 games – Highest: Ori and the Will of the Wisps, #3
• 2021: 3 games – Highest: Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, #1

2017 is unsurprisingly the year with the most games, but I'll admit I hadn't realized just how many games from the last few years had found their way in. But I've always been more biased towards newer games, as evidenced by the numbers for each decade (and I'm sure many are judging the complete absence of anything 1980's from this post, outside of the Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack that is):

• 1990's: 7 games
• 2000's: 13 games
• 2010's: 22 games
• 2020's: 8 games

Also, just a quick shoutout to Super Metroid, which at #9 is my game of the decade for the 1990's (it being the only game from 1994 on the list means it didn't show up on the yearly breakdown up there).

And also another shoutout to Hollow Knight at #8, the only game from my top 10 to have been omitted from this post so far because it always ended up behind something else on each breakdown (it used to be above Breath of the Wild until last year, too).

Okay, think that'll be all from me. This post got way longer than I expected it to. Looking through those lists of previous years to see how this one compares makes me realize this year's list (2023, that is) will be my 10th time on this event. It's a great way to feel old, but hey, getting older ain't all that bad. Has its plus sides for sure. Anyways, have a nice year everyone!

Top 50 >>

Cue "Last Suprise"!

It's an honor to tie with Ultrashroomz, the fastest guesser in the West.

OK, time for the final game, before we get too deep into the new year.

Yes, I have a new #1. And yes, it is totally boring, the same game everyone likes. But I just enjoyed my experience with Elden Ring... a lot.

As you can see my list contains Demon's Souls for years, so I am no stranger to From Software games and like the style. But Elden Ring did that - and a lot more! I also think Souls games are much less frustratringly difficult as some other genres. Yes challenging, but not that difficult. For instance in a Jump&Run, if I cannot do a certain jump or combination of jumps, I am stuck - forever. If I can't do it, I can't do it. In Souls games I always have options to progress: get another level to boost my abilities, try another weapon, other effects, other spells. Elden Ring adds much more options with crafting items for specific elemental damage or protection against them and also add summons. Also the open nature of the game makes it much easier to stop banging on the boss and go somewhere else for a while - and wherever you go, it probably makes you stronger and add more options to your arsenal. This way a game like Elden Ring avoids the frustrations some games I get stuck are producing.

Souls games excel at producing a certain atmosphere, a world of loss and decay. And Elden Ring is no different. This atmosphere is present in a lot of details in the world and reflects in the gameplay. Yet it is not just simply dark like some games that try to copy the Souls formula. You see remnants of greatness, tokens of hope and power, characters that strive for healing. Namely Nepheli Loux has a questline, in which she falls into despair in the middle, but if you trigger the right sequences she recovers and will become the new leader of Limgrave. This contrast of a decaying world, but still with hope in it and characters that try to make it better, this makes the impression the world does so much stronger as if it only was despair all around.

I also think the game has great art style. I often stopped, just to marvel at the looks I got to see. Some of the new regions took my breath, the first look at Liurnia or Altus Plateau, the first real look at the capital Leyndell, seeing the rotten lands of Caelid - all this was so impressive, so grand. The only other game that comes to mind with a similar effect each time I saw a new region was Xenoblade Chronicles.

Miyazaki said that Breath of the Wild was an influence for Elden Ring. And I can see it, although it doesn't seem obvious. Many early games that tried to take inspiration from Breath of the Wild copied the glider, the ability to climb everywhere, the possibility to see pretty much all of the map from the beginning. In this regards Elden Ring is the opposite: you cannot climb the mountains and they are seemingly unbeatable obstacles, the geography also prevents you from seeing regions you haven't gotten to yet and even in a region a lot is hidden.

But the inspirations from BOTW are more subtle: although you cannot see the whole map, you can see your final goal from the beginning and everytime throughout the adventure: the Erdtree. This is similar to how you can always see castle Hyrule in BOTW. Especially in an open world game which gives you a lot of ways to stray from your main goal, to have always the visual reminder of what you have to do has a great psychological impression. It is also stated from the beginning where to go. Many other open world games have you lose sight of the direction with their main story. Also similar to BOTW you can find things to improve everywhere in the game, but also similar to BOTW you don't get direct markers on the map, but more subtle clues. For instance in BOTW the shrines shine in strange lights, in Elden Ring you find caves by torches or mines you can spot on the map if you know what to look for.

Elden Ring gives you a great experience exploring. I love exploring. I mentioned before how the geography prevents you to see unexplored regions, but this gives you new insights once you overcame an obstacle and rewards you with the breathtaking vistas. Forging your path can be difficult, but if you are tenacious you eventually will find a way and it opens so much new possibilities. But Elden Ring has not only geographical exploration. It also gives you a gameplay with lots of systems to explore and finally exploit to your advantage. Be it weapons, crafted items or spells, so much combinations and styles can be tried. And then there is the exploration of story/lore. The Lands Between have a deep history, but it isn't told to you by some NPC or spoon fed by some cut scene. Instead you get a lot of clues and pieces - in item descriptions, locations, NPCs and so on, that over time fuse together to a grander picture of what happened - if you keep looking and making connections. Elden Ring may well offer the best experience for explorations I have ever seen.

And yes, the games has some flaws, nothing is perfect. But all the flaws I could point out, all the nitpicks I have, they seem pointless in comparison to all the ways Elden Ring presents me with an exciting and unique experience. So yes, it is the #1, at least for this years list.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3Huy2cdih0&ab_channel=BANDAINAMCOEurope

Just want to mention that Astral Chain is fucking epic. And it's now my 2nd favorite game ever after being 4th last year.
I put over 300 hours into that masterpiece.

Gonna probably do a third play through this year.