#goty 2024

[futuristicghost]

games of the year

[diedoffscreen]

if house md took place in 2025

cameron: the patient is dying, where is house?

chase: he's in his office playing balaurtror on his phaurne

[r0yalstar]

Little sparkly GOTY award winner!!

[stiltsthegm]

GOTY 2024 #1 - Heaven Will Be Mine

I can't believe it took me this long to play Heaven Will Be Mine. It's over 6 years old at this point. I had known about it since it released, so it's not like it blindsided me or anything. I just...never got around to it. At the same time, though, I'm glad it took me this long to play Heaven Will Be Mine. I don't know if 2018 Iris would have appreciated it as much, or in the same way. Fuck, I still hadn't figured out I was Iris until 2021 so, you know, things are looking a whole lot different from the other side of that.

Heaven Will Be Mine is a visual novel about three women who pilot giant mechs for three different factions. These mechs, however, cannot kill, because they weren't designed for fighting things of flesh and blood or even metal. They were designed to fight ideas. These girls will try to use them to make their own ideas real.

Every fight in the game is a conversation, an argument, a reminiscing, a flirtation, a reconciliation. Pluto's mech is massive and overwhelming and all-encompassing because that's what Pluto's personality feels like. Saturn's mech is slippery and bitey and scrappy because she's a mischievous brat. Heaven Will Be Mine sees the metaphor of the humanoid mech and decides to simply toss aside the thin barrier of separation between man and machine. The man is the machine, the machine exists because the man sees themselves in it and as it. In such a world, a child might decide that this new and potentially limitless expression of the self is far more liberating and fulfilling than anything they had on Earth. They might decide to stay in space to build a new life for themselves. To be a new type of human. One that doesn't fit the previous definitions.

And what would happen if Earth decided it didn't want the definition of "human" to change?

The three factions in the game represent three different answers to that question. It's a testament to this game's phenomenal writing that all three answers feel "right," even if there's one particular ending I like more than the others (mine is Cradle's Graces, for the record). Because that's the only true way to handle that question, isn't it? We're all trying to figure out what being us even means, and we're gonna have different ways of doing that.

God, I've been rambling about themes and introspection and shit and I haven't even mentioned the art and the music. It's stunning, gorgeous, evocative, and I could heap more superlatives on it, but it'd start to feel insincere even though I mean every word of it. I adore every character in this game and want only the best for them. I love reading every chat log and news article and mission briefing. Every ending makes me cry, even when I'm seeing them for the second time.

I suppose it's fitting that the only game that had a chance of knocking 1000xResist from first place was an even gayer visual novel that came out almost 7 years ago and is a contender for one of my favorite games of all time. And if you don't agree with me, well...

[dromie-11114]

Oh my god. Oh my god

I’m going to pass out

[madame-helen]

[qiyusheart]

silent hill 2 remake won the Japanese GOTY OMGGG the world is healing y'all!!!!

[yourfriendlyengineer]

Preorder a copy NEVER cause it doesn't exist :(