With the world returning closer to normal from the isolation of the pandemic, I still continued streaming games but my audience had changed from random folks watching my Pokemon play to just a few friends playing through more story driven games and some unique games.
There were also some big releases this year, and with the revival of my website, I spent some time writing about games again and taking several photos in games for posts on the website.
Because of the shift in my gaming habits, and my interest in Pokemon waning, Playstation was the winning of the two major platforms for me.
Not so much in the quantity of the games, but the time spent playing those few, yet amazing games, each of which I wrote blog posts about.
With the debut of the HBO series, I became very interested in The Last of Us. Zombies are so absolutely boring and over, but I think the TV show highlighted the best parts from the game, which, at the time, I thought was rather derivative. I suppose enough time had passed that these ideas seemed novel again.
With the completion of the game and the show's first season, we continued with The Last of Us Part 2, which was an absolute beauty of a game. The story focused on the cost, guilt, and obsession of vengeance in beautifully lush and unique environments. In my opinion, Last of Us 2 is Naughty Dog's masterpiece, and it's borderline criminal that you could easily buy the game for $10.
In Summer, Final Fantasy XVI was released, which was another incredible unforgettable experience. The Final Fantasy series continues to grow, mature, and innovate itself by pushing the boundaries of what people consider the Final Fantasy series is capable of. The story is long, but you feel the weight of your actions and consequences. There's more DLC and story on the way, too.
Having experienced some amazing stories, I was looking for another world to immerse myself in. People had been raving about Cyberpunk after it had gotten some significant updates with a new expansion and new story. When it first released in 2020, I had played it for a while, but eventually fell off with its repetitiveness. These new updates kept the game interesting, and the photo mode kept me snapping. I eventually fell off again, but these updates made it into the game it was meant to be.
Back with Nintendo, the year was dominated by one of the Switch's best games, Zelda.
The Legend of Zelda is one of my favorite game series of all time, along with Pokemon and Final Fantasy. With the release of the Switch, Breath of the Wild was a new take on the series focusing on open world exploration, and solving puzzles using a limited amount of tools. The story was pretty boring, but the overall gameplay and experience completely over shadowed it, so it didn't matter.
Tears of the Kingdom is a direct sequel to Breath of the Wild and completely surpasses it in every way. Dungeons are now more expansive and allow for more natural discovery rather than relying on finger pointing by the game's quest system. Your tools are far more powerful giving you far more creative freedom on how to solve puzzles and complete objectives. Most importantly, the story complements your exploration of the world, and, for the first time, The Legend of Zelda actually makes sense as a title. It was another incredible gaming experience for an amazing year.
Also, I spent a lot of time playing racing games on the Switch. Having decided to return home in winter for the first time in 4 years, I bought Mario Kart 8. I was sure that my nephew had played this game to death, so I needed some practice to not embarrass myself when he eventually challenges me to race. Later in the year, F-Zero 99 was released, the first F-Zero game in nearly 20 years. It was an incredibly fun multiplayer racing game. Ultimately there wasn't a ton of depth to it, so I dropped off.
Whether PlayStation or Switch, I kept streaming throughout the years and talking about all my favorite games as I played them.
Thanks to my community, I was able to talk through a lot of the ideas I had about the games we were playing, and ultimately write a well-thought and complete post.
More gaming next year. :)