I want to nominate Unravel two.
https://howlongtobeat.com/game/57358

We can only hope that Sega releases a Saturn mini (and Dreamcast). But that seems wishful thinking, as Sega's CEO has indicated he doesn't want to do so.

In honor of Robin Williams next month, I nominate Hook.
https://howlongtobeat.com/game/4500

@ OldiesGoldiesGoodies:
Yea, nah, mate, the admins are totally on the case to ensure that every discussion is free from lies, because I could totally be lying about my nativity, because... profit, I guess :>?

@ Olympic:

The drama created on social media, by streamers and the people who respond to it should be of no concern.

If it's of no concern, why did you bring this up in the first place? I am genuily puzzled how "Here is some streamer drama about a guy I don't even know about" is supposed to make people sign a petition.

But let's get back to the petition itself. You mention Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes and you say that it is as good as unplayable. I can't comment on the state of the game, but you are implying that it is still playable and checking the current player base on steamcharts.com I see that the average number of players per month is at 10 to 20 people, while the average number of the definitive version is also at around 20 players (a bit higher which is to be suspected with a newer version). So that means that the game is de facto still playable and being played. That means the initiative wouldn't change anything about this. An initiative making games playable for a lifetime doesn't prevent cases in which games might be playable badly for a lifetime.

Now you want offline modes for games that are only playable online. But how exactly is that supposed to look like? What about games that are just designed to be playable online like mmo's or online shooters? The online component is the crucial element of those games. In a shooter like Team Fortress 2 or Overwatch you can surely have the player walking around in empty maps, but that wouldn't reflect the original game and game preservation would fail. People still wouldn't be able to play TF2 or Overwatch, they would walk around in empty maps. That means the developers are basically forced to make at least some bots or some other form of offline mode, which has to be made. But instead of having to do that, they can also just refuse to sell their game in the EU (as we saw Sony straight up removing Helldivers 2 in some countries), so we have all EU players being blocked off. How do we prevent that? This is also if their budget allows to have a choice in this matter, because smaller developers might just not be able to implement some form of offline mode for their online-only mmorpg. So the EU would also have to ban all those games.

I get what this initiative is about. "Paid games should stay playable" and "Protecting the consumer" sounds good on paper and there might be cases in which developers used scummy practices. But what I still don't see is a detailed plan how we are actually suppoed to get there without creating new problems and to actually solve the issues we originally had.

Because I wanted to explain why the number of signatures had stagnated (until last week)

And because you reacted so strongly and passionately defended the streamer in question, I looked it up more.
What I found was not in favor of this streamer. Personal attacks aimed at the founder of this initiative (why?). Spreading false information. I also watched a few videos of the founder. As far as I saw, he never attacked the streamer personally. He himself offered to have an open discussion. But the streamer declined.

Today I came across this video on youtube. Nice explanation of how it all can work, such as using API adapters for online games. The community can be very creative. At least when they are not held back as in the past.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txrp2whwnmE

This is the last time I reacted to the dramatic situation because the focus must remain on the initiative.
Just before reaching 1 million signatures, the EU site went down. You could almost think of a conspiracy...

If you paid for a game you should be able to play it for the rest of your life. That's the essence of the matter.

The drama created on social media, by streamers and the people who respond to it should be of no concern.
But I see that it unfortunately influences people not to sign in the end, as you also indicate.

An example is 'Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes'.
The original version on steams got an update that made it as good as unplayable. Then it was removed and a new version came 'Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes - Definitive Edition'.
People were downed to buy it again. We should not tolerate such practices.

The same with games that are originally only playable online. The developer/publisher has every right to stop supporting a game. But then there must be a possibility that people can continue playing the game in an offline mode.

Especially in a time where digital gaming is increasingly being forced upon us, it is important that the consumer is protected.
For that reason, it is important to sign this EU initiative.

In the meantime the UK has reached its threshold and we are only 73,000 votes away from the EU threshold :)

I don't know if it has been mentioned here yet, but last year an initiative was launched in the EU to protect (online) games.
In short, they want to get legal rules when a company stops supporting a game. So that people who bought the game can still play it (in an offline mode).
The initiative was opposed by a streamer (i don't know him) with ties to Blizzard.Big surprise there....

In any case, the initiative did not yet have half a million last week. While 1 million signatures are needed.
But it's back on track and now has over 780 000 signatures! At this rate we're going to hit 1 million by the end of this month :)

Only residents of the European Union can vote. Link to the official EU site:
https://eci.ec.europa.eu/045/public/#/screen/home
At the top right you can choose your own language (globe icon).

There is also a chance for UK residents to vote. They need 100,000 signatures by 14th July (at the time of writing there are 83,600 signatures):
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/702074/

If possible, try to make the initiative as widely known as possible. Many people have not heard of this yet.

I had calculated it last year. If I game 7 hours a week (which I usually don't manage at the moment) I need more than 21 years...
This fact has caused me to buy less games.

Late response but I didn't find time to finish paper mario in january/february (only managed chapter 1-2). I got around to it this month and finished it today. A great game. Better than I expected. Has aged very well. It was a pleasure to play this.

I nominate Streets of rage 2
https://howlongtobeat.com/game/9258

Olympic - Switch

Would it be possible to get a separate pie chart for your personal stats in connection with the storefront? That way you can quickly see what percentage of physical and digital games your collection consists of.
(I have a rule that my collection cannot consist of more than 10% digital games)

A lot of people don't like the "linearity" of Zero Mission, since the statues just tell you where you need to go next. But I also personally prefer the progression in Zero Mission compared to Super Metroid much more, because like you said you don't get completely stuck nearly as easily. If you're interested enough by it Metroid Fusion is a very similar experience, though I don't like it quite as much as ZM.

I also had to use a lot of save states on my first playthrough, a lot of sections felt very unfair at first. I didn't end up using a single save state in this GOTM playthrough to give myself a challenge, and even with all my Metroid experience I struggled in a few spots. I completely agree with the Mother Brain and elite space pirates near the end of the game though, I think I had 3 deaths in my playthrough, two of which were to the Mother Brain. And for how awesome getting the power suit back feels in the final section of the game, the elite space pirates are just a party killer. I had pretty much the exact same thoughts after my first playthrough, I'm sure my love for the series has me a little biased nowadays.

Funny, everyone's perspective is different. It was my first Metroid/metroidvania game and I sometimes found the backtracking annoying. Especially towards the end I couldn't motivate myself to find all the items.

Late to the party but I finished it two days ago.I guess I'm still getting used to the metroidvania genre. I'm not sure I appreciate backtracking.
I liked the music tho. And it gave me a bit of a stargate feeling which is a plus :)

The price of the console is only 50-100 more than for a Switch 1. People have been complaining for years that they wanted a much stronger console. Many also complained that they wanted a chat function. I find the latter completely unimportant, but if it makes people happy, all the better. But then there should be no whining about the price going up.

The price of the games stood out to me more. But if you consider that in the 90s the games were already 50-60 (that is more than 130 in this time due to inflation), then 70-80 is still reasonable in comparison.
Maybe we have all been spoiled. As a child I had 10 games on the GameCube during its entire time span. I had a lot of fun with it and did not get bored. On the Switch I have more than 200 physical games...
A difference from the past is that many now watch a gameplay on Youtube immediately and then complete the game in 1 week. In the past, it could take weeks or months to finish a game. You had to figure out a lot more things yourself.

GOTM: Tinykin https://howlongtobeat.com/game/93960

April Fool's:Alpaca Ball: Allstars https://howlongtobeat.com/game/86780
Football with goofy alpacas!

I've been experiencing some pretty severe game burnout in the past few days and it got me thinking, so I'm going to try to revive this thread here.

I've completed more games in the last year than I have in all of the previous years of my life combined, I've been playing a ton, mostly because I'm trying to branch out, try different genres and series. I'm certain it'll pass and that fire will be re-lit for me, but what I noticed is that I've gotten pretty bad burnout even with all these new genres and games, to the point where none of my comfort games seem enjoyable and I don't feel like starting anything new at all. So I guess a question is do video games as a medium just become more boring the more you play, and maybe less enjoyable despite efforts to keep playing fresh new games and genres? I have a few ideas, like how if you've experienced the highest of highs in so many games and you've played so many 10/10s that it eventually becomes more difficult to reach that again. Another theory I have is that I may be taking game completions too seriously, I'll write pages of notes while playing games and write lengthy reviews for my blog, so maybe that's taken some of the enjoyment out of playing these games, as much as I love writing reviews. And maybe I'm way overthinking it, it could be something really simple like external factors, or maybe our brains just get bored sometimes and need a second to recover.

I managed burnout very well for a while but I think it's caught up to me now. I've retired a few games very recently just because I got bored and frustrated with them which I suspect is related, I had trouble enjoying Hades, FTL, and the GOTM Turnip Boy Commits Tax evasion, retired all of them within almost a week. So I'm just wondering what other ideas people may have, do you experience burnout at all? How do you manage it? etc. Really just anything that comes to mind with your experience of it, and I'm not particularly looking for a solution, I just want to hear some thoughts.

I would advise you to stop gaming for 1 month. Or even longer, until you really feel like gaming again. And stop writing (long) reviews for a while. Gaming should not feel like a job.

You can compare it to a rechargeable battery. Yours is empty.
You can stop for a few days but then you hardly charge anything so it quickly goes back to 0.
Sometimes you have to take a step back to enjoy something again.

With that iconic title, the game has been on my radar for a long time now and since it was given away for free on the Epic Games Store at some point, I had no excuse not to participate in this GOTM.

It's a very chill and lighthearted experience for sure. It was mentioned before that there are light parallels to Legend of Zelda and yeah, the references are very obvious.
The fetch quest adventure style gameplay loop was fine. Never actually challenging and the comedic writing taking most of the spotlight. The actual gaming was just engaging enough though it would probably overstay its welcome pretty quick if it went on for longer than it does.
That being said, after beating the regular boss fight and getting the credit roll, I noticed I was only missing 3 more documents to destroy and with the help of the clues from the post-game cave cat, I got the rest of them as well and beat the extended boss fight as well.
I also did one run of that Sunset Station roguelike challenge. Seems like a decent idea and it works well enough with the systems of the game, but the engine lends itself better for slower puzzling than fast-paced action. So that didn't really keep my attention past one attempt.

Speaking of the plot and lore, I predicted the nuclear warfare reveal. Don't think that's a very original or surprising twist. But I did enjoy the slightly disturbing sequence of invading those survivjng humans' bunker and essentially dooming the parents' remaining child with radiation before killing her. Pretty fun juxtaposition of tone there.
I also liked that, as the world's background story becomes clearer, the goal basically became to destroy all remaining documents of humanity's bureaucracy, to stop it from corrupting this new vegetable society. Kinda satisfying. lol

All in all, nothing great but a chill short time. It's not something I'd go out and actively recommend to people but if you get it on sale (or even for free) then there are worse ways to spend two to three hours.
I am very curious though where they might go with the sequel. From what I've seen, they're doing a more action-oriented twin-stick shooter style thing with that one. So, seems like it probably feels completely different to play. Probably gonna pick that one up for a low price someday as well. I imagine it might be more engaging in the gameplay department.

Shoutout to the random macaroni piece reciting the entirety of the Navy Seal copypasta. Had absolutely no bearing on anything but that one always makes me smile. lol

- Matt

The title was also the reason the game caught my eye last year.

I finished it and I enjoyed it. Definitely recommended if you want to play a game after a long/difficult game.
It would be nice if more games used the mechanism of saying what things you missed after you finished the game.

I'm glad I nominated this one.

One of the first games I played with my daughter. A simple, fun, fast-paced game that keeps you engaged without relying on tutorials or anything like that. Even my daughter (shes 3 yo) managed to do well in some scenarios and responded well to the controls. Definitely a very enjoyable experience.

It is an honor that my chosen game is a fun memory with your daughter.

I started it today. I will finish it this weekend.

I am pleasantly surprised that the game I nominated won.
I bought it last year but hadn't started it yet. The store doesn't even exist anymore.
I nominated it because I wanted to play it this year. Never thought I would play a game with a turnip as the main character.
It seems to me a perfect 'in between game' between longer/heavier games.

Not many responses in this topic.
I haven't had time to finish it yet. But I will definitely do that in February.
Just like hpuente85, I am not a fan of the N64 graphics, but I think it works out well for this game. Maybe this is also because I played Pokemon Violet before which is a blurry mess.

Anyway, my girlfriend asked me if it was a recent game when she saw me playing it. She thought the graphics were good for an old game.Maybe also because she saw me play violet first :p

For regular: Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion

No idea (yet) for a game from 2015

I don't care about online gaming anymore, but bought a membership a few months ago to try out a few specific games. But I ended up forgetting about it/starting other games. Paper Mario was one of those games. When I saw the nomination I thought "now is the time to finally use the membership" :)

I think you are right that this Paper Mario is overlooked. I didn't know about it until 2024 either.

I suspect I'll start it halfway through this month

To start 2025 with speed I nominate Need for Speed: The Run.
The shortest game in this series if I'm correct.

I want to nominate Pikmin 4 (the easiest of the Pikmin series)

Retire usually means you stop playing a game before you beat it and have no plans to go back and finish it. If it's a physical game that you sold before beating it I suppose that also qualifies.

Then I use this tab completely differently.
I use retired for games that I no longer have (because I sold or borrowed them). So it is possible that I give a game both the completed and retired tabs.

I have a custom tab called pause for games that I have started and want to finish later.

Apparently I use the 'retired' button differently. I retire games when I no longer own them. Is this wrong?