My Selection Box picks are of three games that I did not vote for in the Advent Calendar. Two of them didn't come out this year, which is an easy disqualification, but the reality is that I also don't think any of them truly deserve a place in one of those hallowed chambers.
Yet all three are games that in some way defined my year, and I feel affection for each of them. Let me explain why.
]]>Unlike a lot of the team I'd imagine, my opinion is this: I thought the year was quite middling for games. Or at least, it was middling for my own personal taste, which is quite unsavoury at the best of times. Most of my best picks made it into the calendar proper, but a couple didn't. One I hadn't even played properly until after the vote, and the other? The other is a flawed pick, but one that I couldn't stop thinking about.
Anyway, hope you all have a restful Xmas folks and a cracking new year. I hope Santa bought you some nice warm socks or a chocolate orange so dense, you could tee it off at your local golf club.
]]>I'm quite proud of the delights that we packed behind each door of the Advent Calendar this year, to be honest. All my major choices are in there, plus a few more that I haven't played but I'd watched other people play, and had a swell time doing so. Still, there are always a handful that don't quite make the cut, but still deserve a heaped Christmas plateful of praise at year's end. So here's my selection box, my bonus games of the year for 2024. It's an unusually diverse triad this time.
]]>I’m actually quite happy with how many of my voted games made it into this year’s Advent Calendar, not least because it proves I am acutely in-touch, and definitely didn’t dedicate at least fifty percent of my 2024 playing time to a late-onset Elden Ring obsession. Point being, I can present to you my almost-made-it picks without malice nor bitterness, unlike my loser colleagues who didn’t get as many in the main list. Nyeh nyeh.
]]>I'm a sucker for a good first-person runabout. I don't need to shoot, but it's sometimes nice to get a sword, or a big whip. As long as I get to be immersed in an adventure. I think that's the big theme of my selection box: being grounded within my player character. I want to feel what it's like to hike through canyons with too much sellable loot in my backpack. I want to park my soul in the head of a scared Scotsman way out of his depth, hundreds of miles from shore. The closer I can comfortably fit in my character's shoes, the more I seem to buy into the world they inhabit. Even if that world is constantly glowing a magnificent crimson.
]]>If pushed, I’d describe my 2024 gaming habits as eclectic, but that would actually be a lie. All my favourite games for the year are actually very similar: they are all the best. Unfortunately, the realities of sharing website space with several less-correctos means they didn’t all make this year’s advent calender.
]]>2024 was my first full year at RPS, and as a guides writer, it was a year packed with the sort of games that make you roll your sleeves up, wipe sweat from your brow, and stare up at the sky from the trenches, ruminating on what life is like when you aren't dealing with back-to-back Soulslikes interspersed with gacha games that feature incomprehensible lootbox mechanics.
]]>My selection box isn't really a selection box. It's a tray of barely-nibbled leftovers, hastily lifted from my Steam backlog. One of the disadvantages of being news editor, you see, is that I have developed a goldfish-grade attention span. In my hectic pursuit of the next scoop, or the next Elden Ring update changelog, I snatch and cast aside game demos like a pickpocket speedrunning the checkout line at Harvey Nichols. I'm dimly aware that some of these cast-aside games are Very Good. A few might even deserve to be played for longer than 30 minutes. I feel immensely guilty about that. Perhaps a little... existential, too. I have measured out my life in tutorial levels.
So! Rather than digging out three of the games I've actually completed this year, such as The Crush House, Death Of A Wish and Mask Quest, I'm going to gamble on recommending a few I've barely scratched, but which sure feel excellent and have attracted a positive critical consensus. If I am false in this assessment, may Horace the Endless Bear bite my head off for my impudence. Let's begin.
]]>Happy Wintermas, dear reader. And happy new year, I guess. Are you enjoying yours? I'm writing this in the distant past of mid-December, a period of total spiritual desolation. If all has gone to plan, I am currently waving a goblet over my head like some kind of hipster barbarian, and trying to finish all the dodgy vegan Xmas food I've cooked which the rest of my family won’t eat, the savages.
I have now read our so-called RPS 2023 Advent Calendar and found it to be woefully deficient in flirty rebels, lunar deities and stage coaches packed with damned adventurers. Never fear, however, because by happy coincidence I have also now written an end-of-year/start-of-year round-up article about these very things.
]]>Everyone's saying 2023 has been a stonking year for video games. To be honest dear reader, I don't think it's been my year. That might be because I've not had a huge amount of time to play loads outside of review duties and general life things, but there's only been, like, less than a handful of games that have truly commanded my attention.
One of said games comes backflipping in right at the tailend of this year: Astral Ascent. It's a 2D roguelike in the vein of Dead Cells, where you battle through stages, power-up, try and get as far as you can, inevitably die, reinvest your winnings, power-up permanently, then go again. It saddens me that I've not seen much excitement for the game elsewhere, so here I am with a little pudding for you. A little treat. Here comes the plane, nyaaaooownnn.
]]>Greetings all! Hope you're enjoying a Christmas with an appropriate degree of merriment. Me, I'm not. I'm angry. I'm fuming. Why? Because the RPS 2023 Advent Calendar is wrong. It's wrong, I tell you!
If all were just and right in the world, then it wouldn't have left out the following list of excellent games that came out this year! Plus a couple others that came out of early access in 2023 but which I sadly don't have time to write about in full. Trust me, The Last Spell and Against The Storm are both phenomenal games as well.
Anyway: in this handsomely decorated selection box, you'll find four of my honourable mentions for games I've enjoyed playing the most this year. If you have a hole in your Steam library, maybe these will help fill it over the Christmas break!
]]>I’m going to level with you, readers. Probably something like 70% of my 2023 games time was spent on precisely two co-op shooters, neither of which I’ve written about much, nor were new enough to be eligible for the most recent Advent Calendar. I apparently have a type. I’m sorry.
Still, while the man’s rules prevent me from recommending Deep Rock Galactic or Darktide, I do have a few picks that fell short of full Advent Calendar glory. And they’re all... colourful, quite short indie platformers? Hmm, maybe I have two types.
]]>Welcome to my first selection box for Rock Paper Shotgun, where I get to pick my favourite games of 2023 that didn't make it into our Advent Calendar draw. In anticipation of your judgment incoming, I'd like to preface this list by saying I didn't play nearly as many games as I should have this year (something echoed by other RPS staffers). My pile of shame is ever-growing, but here are a few games I did play and actually liked.
]]>I've mentioned elsewhere that I played a lot of huge games this year, both literally referring to their size, and metaphorically referring to their brand name awareness (I had great intentions of doing a long-running Starfield diary, where I visited every planet I could until I got demoralised by the project, but unfortunately that turned out to be the length of one entry). I didn't play quite as many small, odd things as I would have liked in 2023. I am very pleased with the shape of our Advent Calendar this year, though, especially the mid-table, which has some good weirdo entries and some surprises there.
So I thought I'd struggle to come up with three reminders for you for the Selection Box. And yet I didn't! They're also very on brand. Words and murder you say? Maybe in 2024 I should make a resolution to switch things up a bit. Gotta keep you guessing, dear readers...
]]>This year, I've mostly played smaller games, mostly from small or solo developers. Playing a giant timesink game all day hasn't appealed as I've sought to spend more time in forests and up hills and down rivers, and Destiny 2 burned me out so hard on live service games that I still can't face those. But a year of little games has been great fun, short bursts of play and ideas explored concisely, so here are some of my other favourites.
]]>In a year as stuffed with great games as this one, it was always inevitable that lots of very good ones would be left on the cutting room floor of our Advent Calendar this year. It's also perhaps no surprise that in the big spreadsheet of games I've played this year, I've set yet another new record for things I've played to completion. At time of writing, my list stands at 58 games for 2023, and by the time you're reading this in your post-Christmas lunch coma, I wouldn't be surprised if it had risen further. 58! That's more than one a week! Honestly, what was past Katharine thinking? No wonder I'm so chuffing tired right now.
In any case, my list of honourable mentions is so long this year I've taken the cheeky liberty of cramming some extra entries into my 2023 Selection Box, bringing you five more personal picks that I think are just smashing and that you should absolutely play when you get a spare moment or three.
]]>Oh. OK. I guess it’s time for me to publicly confess which games I voted for in this year’s advent calendar but that didn't get it, and without the usual protection of anonymity granted by group lists. Listen: please don’t judge me. I just want to say that up top before you find out where I live and start sending me pizzas or something. I am fallible. You cut me, I bleed red. I put my bread in the toaster one slice at a time.
Anyway, with that out the way, here’s a list of things I liked this year that no one else at RPS had a chance to play, or in one case just thought was total ass.
]]>These honourable mentions lists are a lovely little wrap up of games we couldn't squeeze into the 2022 Advent Calendar, and mine is also a useful reminder that I didn't just spend the entire year playing Elden Ring. Lots of time was spent as a lowly tarnished, getting smacked around by big fucken madlads with a dragon for an arm, sure. But I also got lost in a thrilling narrative adventure, laughed at flatulent renditions of our national anthem, swept up loot in Al Mazrah, and became enamoured with a lil gator. Here's to 2022, everyone.
]]>As both a parent and the resident news lad here, I probably spend way more time talking and writing about games than getting hundreds of hours to actually play them. While most of the games I've snuck the odd minutes with – I hesitate to say hours – made it onto our Advent Calendar for Horace’s approval, the three below were a few that made me and my family smile at different points throughout 2022. Roll on 2023 - and even more games.
]]>I didn't play as many games as I wanted to this year - but then I say that every single year and will probably continue to do so until the end of time (I assume at some point my consciousness will be uploaded into an immortal robot that will exist until the heat death of the universe, and that robot will still be doing previews). Like everyone else who has written their selection box, my top picks made it onto the Advent Calendar this year. But some didn't! Here are but a three of them.
]]>I confess: I usually did my damndest to rig the RPS Advent Calendar vote. When every year has so many more than 24 good games, I always tried to tactically vote and reshuffle points to wedge in a few wee great games I knew not many people had played. But with a change to voting procedure this year, I simply couldn't get some games on our list. So, here are the games I would've slammed into our advent calendar if I were still allowed to cheat, along with some that simply didn't quite make the cut.
]]>It's a well-documented fact here at RPS that I love a good spreadsheet. Specifically, my spreadsheet that lists all the lovely games I manage to play each year. I've been looking at that spreadsheet a lot in recent weeks, and I'm pleased to report that most of my top game picks from this year have successfully made their way into the RPS Advent Calendar. There were plenty that didn't, of course (pouring one out for you, Dorfromantik, Flat Eye, Dome Keeper and Lost In Play), but such is the way of things when your current list of completed games for the year is teetering on the verge of 50.
No word of a lie, I would probably be here all day if I laid out my entire long list of honourable mentions for 2022 (additional shoutouts to Railbound, Cursed To Golf, God Of War, Weird West, Jack Move, Hard West 2 and The Kids We Were), but for the sake of all involved (and poor Alice Bee's editing pencil), I've narrowed it down to a shortlist of three. (Do still go and check out those other games, though. They're all absolutely rad).
]]>Sequels are often contentious, but I feel like video games can get away with being a part of a long-running series – and, crucially, still be good while they’re at it, well past the point where a book or movie franchise would have outstayed its welcome.
The thing is, though, when it comes to GOTY lists like our Advent Calendar, it’s a much bigger task to convince your fellow voters of the merits of your new favourite game when it’s the third, fourth, or maybe even sixteenth in its series. I’m adamant that those games deserve their share of recognition at the end of the year, which is why my honourable mentions celebrate 2022’s new entries into some of my favourite ongoing series.
]]>It’s my first RPS Christmas Advent Calendar, whoooo! I feel so honored - and I’m pretty happy with how the GOTY 2022 Calendar turned out, as most of my top choices made it into the roster. However, great games are sure to fall by the wayside in any year - which is why we have our Selection Boxes of honorable mentions this year, right? For my picks I've swept up three quite different games, but I think they come together to give a very Rachel vibe.
]]>Don’t look at me, I’m just the hardware guy. But I do recommend looking at these, my favourite also-ran games that weren’t quite team-impressing enough to win a spot on the RPS Advent Calendar 2022. Out of everything I played this year, these are the avatars of adequacy, the sultans of satisfactory. The prime ministers of pretty good.
I’d probably also tip a hat to Warhammer 40K: Darktide, but Alice0 already nabbed it for her honourable mentions, and frankly there’s enough shootybang stuff here as it is. But, also: toilet build quality testing, pushing Nazis into cement pits, and more than a hint of 70s funk. Check ‘em out.
]]>Listen, I don't have much time. I enjoyed a lot of games this year, but Alice just told me that if I spend more than 1,500 words on this list then she's going to murder my whole family*. And that includes some people I like.
So without ado: here's a handful of the games I enjoyed the most this year which (crushingly) didn't quite make their way into our soft 'n' snuggly RPS Advent Calendar 2022.
]]>Maybe I hadn't looked hard enough, but I played a lot of games this year which ended up being a bit naff or totally fine. All of my top picks made it into the Advent Calendar, so that's good! But otherwise, I didn't have to think too hard as to what I'd shout out here. Hope you're having the merriest of Christmases and catch you for - hopefully - a big 2023 filled with big games.
]]>
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