Game of the Year So Far: It should be MLB The Show 19, they made so many smart improvements to the reward paths and economy in Diamond Dynasty this year that it completely locked me into a mode I thought might have a real short leash after how much I played it the past two years, I play for several hours multiple days a week. It's the perfect podcast game as well! That said, it is essentially the same game I've been playing all summer long for the past four years beyond those improvements, so in an era of games as a service it makes less and less sense to reward sports games for releasing on yearly cycles, especially now that their primary form of revenue is these fantasy card modes rather than the initial point of sale.
So my actual vote went to Apex Legends, which because of its poor reward structure I take long breaks from but whenever I come back to it I have a wonderful time and I typically hate competitive first-person shooters but I can play that game for hours at a time when the itch strikes, and I'm very excited to see how the other two seasons this year play out now that they've learned so much from the first one.
Disappointment of the Year: Sekiro. I was madly in love with this game for the first four or five hours, and I honestly love the combat with regular enemies. I wish there was a lot more of it! I enjoyed the horse knight boss and felt a huge rush of satisfaction when I beat the other bosses I could beat, but I found the game unplayable once I had Lady Butterfly / Ashina Elite / Seven Spears / Snake Eyes in front of me all gating progress in one regard or another. My skill level wasn't increasing and my fights with each were constantly ending at the same point, leading me to believe either my television is too latent or my fingers are too slow, and that's the first time I can remember straight up being unable to finish or progress in a game since I was a child.
I really expected this to be one of if mot my favorite game of 2019 because it was leaning into the aspects of Bloodborne's combat I preferred (the smaller, one-on-one encounters focused on parrying like Gascoigne, Blood-starved Beast and the Hunters). Initially the lack of Bloodborne's RPG elements seemed like a justifiable decision, but once I hit that wall and had no obvious way to get around it, I really came to miss all the ways in which that game would let you take side roads and alternate paths through certain bosses if you just weren't good enough at the fight.
Still Would Like to Play But Haven't: I don't buy games new that often anymore, largely due to the hooks MLB has in my but also just because PSN is so convenient and sales are weekly I find myself willing to wait and spend less on an expensive hobby. Bloodstained seems interesting but I never played Symphony of the Night, I'm still more curious than I ought to be about Days Gone considering what I saw of it here and elsewhere really turned me off, I loved DmC so much that I've been totally ignoring DMC5 as a sort of silent protest, I was very interested in Judgement until Alex revealed it's just another Yakuza game for the most part and I already have Zero and Kiwami in my backlog from PS+, I wish Outer Wilds had any shot at all of coming to PS4, Resident Evil 2 is the game I most want to play but am waiting for a killer deal since I saw Claire's campaign via Abby.
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