Return of Obra Dinn. Such an incredible experience.

Horizon: Zero Dawn.

Captivating storyline combined with interesting fights and beautiful visuals.

Disco Elysium.

I missed it when it came out, but it’s an amazing game. An amazing amazing game.

The normies? What is this, reddit

I was almost not going to respond with Outer Wilds, since it feels like I played forever ago. But apparently I only played it in June of this year, so that's my choice. It's one of my favorite games now, if not my favorite game ever.

It's so good, in fact, that it's helping me get over this weird anxiety I have of talking about my hobbies with other people (including my closest friends). Outer Wilds is so good that even though I hate talking about games I like, I still feel the need to recommend it to people. And now that the floodgates are open I feel a bit more comfortable talking about my other favorite games, like Baba is You, which I got another person to play as well, and The Messenger, which I'm playing now and loving it.

Probably Hollow Knight.

Saying Crusader Kings III feels like cheating cause I‘ve just been playing it for a long time.

I finally got around to playing the Mass Effect trilogy (the Legendary Edition remasters, anyway). It's excellent.

In 2011, I gave up on ME1 after getting to a very difficult combat encounter that I was not prepared for and having no other saves to go back to. I essentially rage-quit the trilogy for over 10 years, lol.

Still about halfway through ME3 but I am already planning my second playthrough. Truly a God-tier set of games, IMO.

Kenshi. Unlimited replayability and modability.

Mass Effect Legendary Edition (the full trilogy)

Tunic. Not that old either (2022), but I guess it's not "this year". The whole game is captivating.

Super Mario Odyssey. It's mostly extremely fun, controls well, with only occasional camera angles and poor checkpointing infuriation lighting its copybook.

Celeste.

To a lesser extent, I liked Hitman 3, Factorio and Plate Up! (fun to play on the TV locally with friends)

I'll share three based on how much I want to play them again soon

• The Last of Us Part 2
• Kena Bridge of Spirits
• Days Gone

Autonauts, Astroneer, Factorio, Minecraft. All great games with excellent replay value IMO.

I gave Fallout 4 another try recently, after only playing a few hours of it a couple of years back. I ended up getting sucked into it. So far, I've only used a couple of quality-of-life mods, like a high FPS fix and allowing Dogmeat to be a companion alongside any other companion, which the game had unimplemented code for.

Probably 'Talos Principle'. I still haven't finished it though. A tier puzzle game for me. Maybe S tier by the time I finish!

Grounded, The Forest.

Good on a steam deck.

I just started playing Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and man alive is it good. I've never been a fan of the soulslike genre but apparently all I need to fall in love are the samurai aesthetic and a mother frickin PARRY ability!

Probably Mass Effect Legendary Edition

I don't know if it's the best, but the oldest games I've played this year are:

• Montezuma's Revenge
• Commander Keen
• Zelda (NES)

I'm also looking for an old game I had on a 5" floppy back then... a fast-paced vertical scrolling shootemup/bullet hell, possibly with "Goose" in its name...

That and a Space Invaders-like that sounds like Galaxian, but is not Galaxian...
Similar concept, but possibly from the 90s, and your ship had a retractable claw to catch power-ups, and some sort of vertical sidebar in its UI with your score, wave progress, etc.

• God of War II
• Tekken 1 through Tekken 5 (so far)

I used to play Tekken 1 and Tekken 3 on PS1, so huge nostalgic trip. And I've wanted to play God of War for forever, but never had a PS2, but Steam Deck (and Emudeck) made emulation so easy that I'm catching up.

Toem. I heard it was pretty good but I was surprised how cozy it was to play. A great example of Iyashikei in gaming

I’ll have to say Cloud Punk.

A small indie game about a girl starting her courier job in a cyberpunk future.

• The game-play is okayish
• The graphics try to emulate a voxel look and are functional at best.
• The Sound design, music and the full synchronisation make this game exceptional!

The story captured me and together with the audio and visual style kept me playing way into the small hours.

ADACA and Signalis just came out last year so not far behind but they were fun. ADACA is billed as Half-Life meets Halo meets STALKER by reviewers and it’s a fun, light FPS. (although I couldn’t get into the more open Zone Patrol mode)

Signalis though, that oozes atmosphere, an excellent soundtrack, and offered feels in a neat fleshed out world. I enjoyed the gameplay quite a bit, a callback to top-down survival horror from an era I never really played. I really appreciate a lack of jump scares except one enemy’s presence when you enter a room making your screen/radio go haywire but hardly FNAF material which I will only watch.

For me, it's No Mans Sky. I've put a lot of hours into it this year.

My backlog is so big I figure any game that I've played would qualify.

Ticket to Earth would be mine.

I am working my way through Yakuza 5 though which I'm really enjoying.

I'd say Hitman III (now called World of Assassins) or No Man's Sky. Both are really great values for their price.

I think I'm mostly done with the Hitman franchise for now, but I'll probably come back to NMS next time Starfield has some big update and I need to scratch that exploration itch.

Red Dead Redemption 2. I got like 200 hours out of it already and still not done.