Happy new year, everyone  c:

Happy New Year! Thanks for another great event!

I've done a summary of my top 50 in previous years' events, so might as well do that again. For anyone interested, here's my top 50.

2024 marked the first time that I had given every game in my top 50 a personal rating of 9.0 out of 10 or higher.

New Games:

• The Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure (#48)
• A Plague Tale: Requiem (#42)
• Theatrhythm: Final Bar Line (#41)
• Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth (#24)

Which then meant that the following games fell off my list this year:

• A Plague tale: Innocence (#50 last year)
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky the 3rd (#49 last year)
• God of War 2018 (#48 last year)
• Uncharted 2: Honor Among Thieves (#47 last year)

Honorable mentions:

(Games that just missed my top 50)

• Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age (FFXII was in my top 50 years ago, and the Zodiac Age version almost pushed it back in. Even right now I'm still wondering if I should put it above some of the bottom games on my list so it might appear there in the future)
• God of War: Ragnarök (Also just barely missed making it in)

Movements in the top 50:

• The biggest drops this year were Uncharted 4: A Thief's End (-6 spots to #20), Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater, Stardew Valley, Suikoden II, and Final Fantasy XVI (-4 spots each).
• Upward movements were quite small, as no game made any significant positive jumps. 8 games in total went up by 1 spot.

Platform Breakdown:

(I've played some games on multiple platforms, hence why the total doesn't add up to 50)

• PS4 is by far the most represented platform, though that includes 11 games I originally played on a different platform, so technically the real number is 15.
• The highest ranking game for each platform is as follows, going by the platform I first played the game on:
  • PC: Freespace 2 (#3)
  • PS1: Final Fantasy IX (#1)
  • PS2: Shadow of the Colossus (#6)
  • PS3: Dark Souls (#4)
  • PS4: Bloodborne (#8)
  • PS5: Horizon: Forbidden West (#15)
  • Xbox 360: Lost Odysey (#47)
  • NES: Super Mario Bros. 3 (#45)
  • SNES: Final Fantasy VI (#16)
  • Switch: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (#44)

Series Breakdown:

(Series with multiple entries in my top 50)

• Final Fantasy: 9 games
• The Legend of Heroes: 7 games
• Dark Souls: 3 games
• The Last of Us: 2 games
• Horizon: 2 games
• Valkyria Chronicles: 2 games

Decade/Year Breakdown:

(going by the original EU release year)

• 1980s: 0 games (Mario 3 wasn't released in the EU until 1991)
• 1990s: 6 games
• 2000s: 10 games
• 2010s: 23 games
• 2020s: 11 games

Most represented years in my top 50 are:

• 2017 with six games
• 2016 with five games
• 2020 with four games

Developer Breakdown:

(Developers with multiple games in my top 50)

• Squaresoft / Square Enix: 8 games
• Nihon Falcom: 7 games
• Fromsoftware: 5 games
• Naughty Dog: 3 games
• Guerrilla Games: 2 games
• Nintendo: 2 games
• Konami: 2 games
• Sega / Media.Vision: 2 games

And that's all I can think to mention. Thanks for another great event, and hopefully see you again next year for the same thing.

Back from the mayhem.

9, 5, 2 ,1  were all correctly guessed.

The extremely underrated Digimon games were left unguessed.

8 is Digimon World 2

3 is Digimon World

Digimon World especially has no other game like it and is very ahead of its time in many aspects. But Digimon World 2 is also pretty unique, though it does borrow from other great games heavily.

4 is also unguessed. Nioh 2.

Also very good game. As you can see from my list, I rate it higher than any Souls game. It is difficult like a Souls game but it is much different.

I am too tired from my trip to write more, but maybe my top 10 get some more writing involved during my break later.

I finished my list in the official thread. Newest addition is Deep Rock Galactic at number 38. Gears of War 2 got kicked out of the list.

In making the list for this thread, I found something really odd. As a hardcore gamer for vast swats of my life, falling off for a few years every now and then but generally keeping at least casual and always on top of news through magazines or the Internet. At 34 and with hundreds of games completed and thousands played, there are only about 70 games I'd even bother to rank on a list, after number 45ish, the scores dip to 9/10 and then and after they dip to 8/10 I could give a fuck less. All those great games that I'd score an 8/10 or good games I'd score a 7/10 become meaningless, just a vague remembering of some time wasted while there are about 30 games that actually meant something and less than 20 that effect me personably and less that effected my life. Like Bloodborne and Sekiro truly effected my life, making me a more patient person and mental gear shaped the vast majority of my interests, The last of us got me resinterested in playibg the guitar something that is now my main hobby outside of gaming but there are so few of these games among so many, some that I can't even remember past the title or the odd image of a scene. If I needed any more incentive to not bother with the 5's and 6's and just quit them instead of continuing on some small thread of fun, this thread gave it to me.