What are your favourite games this year?

And what do you think could win staff lists GOTY?

I think this has been the weakest year in a long time. For the first time in a decade I’m struggling to name 10 games I even beat this year let alone enjoyed. That must just be me though.

I’m very interested in this years GOTY deliberations because from what I’ve seen this year there hasn’t been a game the staff have been incredibly blown away by compared to previous years.

Your thoughts?

Control by a mile. After that, Bloodstained and then maybe . . . Resident Evil 2?

I agree that it has been a pretty weak year. It's a bad sign that I know I've played a lot of games this year but am struggling to actually remember any of them. The end-of-generation doldrums are definitely here.

I bet Sekiro will be on a lot of peoples' lists, but personally . . . ugh. Terribly designed game in so many respects. Easily one of the worst experiences I've had in a long time.

I thought it was an incredible year so far, but then I’m someone who’s more interested in indies than in AAA. The only AAAs that might end up on my top 10 so far are Sekiro and Fire Emblem. I was very excited for DOOM but it got delayed. We’ll see about Death Stranding and Outer Worlds.

The indie output has been amazing though, Outer Wilds and Mutazione are two of the best games this gen for me. Then there’s been stuff like Heaven’s Vault, Kids, Kind Words, A Short Hike, Sayonara Wild Hearts, Wilmot’s Warehouse, Over the Alps, Telling Lies and I still have many other to play.

It’s been a pretty strong year for me.

@therealturk: Sekiro is probably my 2nd fav game this year. I’m disappointed there’s no dlc for that game. I doubt anyone on staff beat it.

Resident evil is my #1.

I think it's been a pretty strong year. Right now it's Sekiro or Shadowbringers for me, though there's a few things left I'm very excited for.

None so far

Sekiro, RE2, Fire Emblem, Remant are all pretty high on my list. I was obsessed with all four of those games.

Control is fantastic.

MK11 is probably next.

After that, I’m really not sure. Frankly, if I play 10 new games in a year, that’s my top 10.

I loved Resident Evil 2 right up until Mr. X showed up. That's just a bridge too far for me and I knew that'd be the case (skipped RE3 as a kid for similar reasons) but it was an awesome ride up to that point, managing typewriter ribbons and medicinal joints again after all this time. I'd be surprised if it ranked especially high, but I'd understand since the only reason I quit playing was my own mental frailty.

I loved Sekiro right up until it became entirely about bosses, like a boss around every single corner gating progress in every direction. Turned out I just wanted to do all the ninja and exploratory stuff in between. The music in the garden/mountain area might be the video game soundtrack cut of the year. I bounced off this game so hard and I hope that aspect of it is represented during GotY, but for the people who got over the hump, I salute you.

Apex Legends is the first competitive shooter since SOCOM II I've considered a daily play, so that's very up there for me on the strength of that alone. Destiny, and to a lesser extent Destiny 2, were daily plays, but the only time I ever played Crucible was when I was absolutely desperate for something novel to do in those games. Even Gambit, a very cool mode, doesn't have the sort of immediately wake up and want to knock out my dailies allure of Apex.

MLB The Show 19 seems to have solved every known problem with the Ultimate Team style game mode and thus will once again, for the third year in a row, be my most played game.

Control stands out to me the most in terms of games I like to play - focused, third person, narrative adventures. It had a lot of rough edges but that just made it more charming, especially once the gameplay loop really dug in. I didn't go bonkers for the parts a lot of the game's fanbase did, but I was so enthusiastic about so many little things in this game, plus you could take out your day's frustrations on an entire office floorspace if you wanted.

TL;DR? Apex/MLB, Control, Resident Evil 2, Sekiro. Hoping for solid sales on MK11 and Man of Medan before the end of the year while looking forward to Star Wars, Death Stranding, Outer Worlds (and Wilds coming to PS4) and RIP DOOM Eternal 2019.

Easily Sekiro with Shadowbringers second (still haven't got around to playing RE2R). Frankly, I couldn't care less what the staff GOTY is, their tastes on average are too different from my own to be useful and the cyclical / reductive discussions plain irritate the shit out of me.

Fire Emblem's my number 1 with a bullet, but I doubt it will get much love from the staff.

Not hot takes on the staff picks other than Outer Wilds will be that game that the staff slips into the number 10/9 slot to round out the list.

@rejizzle: outer wilds might be much higher.

Control is a good choice. I need to play that and maybe now I can before December.

Probably Monster Hunter World: Iceborne, if that counts.

Others include: Resident Evil 2, Devil May Cry 5, Sekiro & Remnant. I also spent a lot of time playing Dead or Alive 6 and even though I had a good time it probably should have launched as a free to play game.

EDIT: I guess should add my pick for GB's GOTY: Probably either Modern Warfare, Apex or Control

I wasnt a big fan of any of them (Control was alright) granted Modern Warfare isnt out yet but the beta seemed like more of the same unsurprisingly, not bad just very safe. (and a bit boring honestly)

DMC5, RE2, Sekiro and Fire Emblem were all great, and Bloodstained plus like one or two more were also quite good. But yeah, there hasn't been a ton. I've also played less games overall this year. Less time. Unlucky.

Slim pickin's this year. Days Gone, RE2, and the final two chapters of TellTale's TWD: Final Season (so good). Untitled Goose Game would definitely be on my list if I had a Switch.

Bloodstained is pretty high up there, even in spite of the fact that I played it on Switch. Metro Exodus is up there because I really like those games. Gears 5 is up there. Operencia: The Stolen Sun is a pretty neat. Haven't finished yet, but I enjoy those first person, dungeon crawler, RPGs. Plenty of stuff I haven't gotten around to this year yet though. Mostly Japanese stuff, from series I've played to death and have tried to take a break from. Seikro, Fire Emblem, Judgement. I should probably play those at some point.

I think for me:
GoTY: Control

Runner Ups:

-Resident Evil 2

-Tom Clancy's The Division 2

-Mortal Kombat 11

Curious to see what they have for this year. Control was such an outstanding game, I really want that game to get so much more traction then it is overall.

In some order:

• Mortal Kombat 11
• Sekiro
• Resident Evil 2
• Tetris 99

I need to sit down and get through Control and Outer Wilds. Seems like both will be up my alley. Also enjoyed Creature in the Well, though I don't think it is among my favorites for the year.

fire emblem is the only release i've played to completion this year, so it kinda wins by default.

been putting in work on the backlog, though. ori and the blind forest is a super good game, yall.

Gears 5

I didn't actually play a whole lot of new games this year, but I doubt any of them would have beat out Fire Emblem: Three Houses for me. I liked that game way more than I expected.

I never bother throwing my hat into the GB GOTY discussions, because my tastes rarely align with theirs. At least as far as number 1 picks go.

The only 2019 games I played are Sekiro, AC7, DQ Builders 2, and CTR. I'm waiting for a sale on Control, and I'm debating even playing RE2. This year was light for Switch. I just ordered Link's Awakening and the only other 2019 Switch game I played is Cuphead, which doesn't count.

Sekiro is my game of the year. Even if I played more games, I'd expect for Sekiro to stay number 1. I'm really only waiting to see if Death Stranding would overtake it.

I haven't played many new games this year. Instead, replayed God of War, RDR2, Spiderman, Hitman 2, and finally played Wolfenstein 2, Doom, Shadow of the Colossus, and The Last Guardian. It was a good year for me despite it being weak for new releases

Gears 5 and crackdown 3. Looking forward to trying borderlands 3. Maybe try control down the line.

Prob RE2 for me. I’m also really enjoying Link’s Awakening. I started Gears 5 but just kinda stopped bc it feels like I’ve played that game 4 times before. Want to play Control, Bloodstained, and DMC5.

I can be a little slow getting through long games and spend a good bit of this year playing RDR2 and it was great.

Since I actually bought some games that came out this year, my top runners are Astral Chain, Devil May Cry 5, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, Void Bastards, and I'm gonna preemptively add The Outer Worlds to the top of my games of the year list.

• Fire Emblem: Three Houses (my first Fire Emblem game, loved it)
• Resident Evil 2 Remake
• Life is Strange 2 (if it counts I guess)
• Gears 5
• Metro Exodus

Judgment disappointed me. Want to get Control soon. Looking forward to Outer Worlds, Pokemon Sword/Shield, MediEvil and Luigi's Mansion 3.

Apex Legends.

Everything else.

I feel this has been a very strong year, especially its first half. Doom's delay sucks some wind out of the fall for me. But I got super into Sekiro, Fire Emblem, RE2, and Outer Wilds. Not many years have a quartet that strong for me. Plenty of other games I've enjoyed too.

As for the staff, that's trickier. I think Apex Legends is pretty easily the game they have all collectively played and talked positively about the most. If I had to guess, that'd be their pick right now. RE2 and Control will probably place highly too.

Borderlands 3, by far so far. I’m very much looking forward to Outer Worlds in a few weeks, though.

Oh, and WoW Classic. Does that count as a “this year” game?

I don't think I've played anything that's been released this year. Not for lack of interest, I suppose, just playing through other things. I finished RDR2 earlier this year, but have mostly been playing some multiplayer games like Divinity: Original Sin 2, Rocket League, and Elite: Dangerous with friends on the weekend. That's been most of my gaming time this year.

- Fire Emblem: Three Houses

- Trails of Cold Steel 2 HD

- Indivisible

Fire Emblem Three Houses, for the whole month of August we spent together.

RESIDENT EVIL 2 and Control, for the couple of sleepless nights I spent on the 2.

I recently just rented Fire Emblem(finally Gamefly sent it to me) so going to give it a shot)

meh, can't get into this game. I really wish it was a more traditional JRPG instead of an SRPG. Love everything about the characters/story until i have to play it. Oh well.

So far, these are the 2019 games I have played, ranked in order of likely to be in my of the year

• Control
• Bloodstained
• Mortal Kombat 11
• Apex Legends
• Dicey Dungeons
• Children of Morta
• Baba is You

If we are including re-releases, I think the PC version of Yakuza Kiwami 1 and 2 should be up there...

Below is my list of all my games played and ranked in 2019. Knowing the staff Bloodstained, Control, Apex, Destiny 2 Forsaken or some other random Triple A game will make the top of the list as they don't really play a lot of games that require much more effort then pointing and clicking, any investment of time, or give many indie / slower games a chance. Really whatever they as a group complete is more relevant then anything else. Often games they put as a series playthrough get pretty heavily skewed as they end up enjoying it more as they are A) playing it with friends and B) actually forced to play it through.

Current Games of 2019 List Ranked Top to Bottom:

FE3H

Metro Exodus

Sekiro

RE2 Remake

Days Gone

God Eater 3

FF14: Shadowbringers

They are Billions

World War Z

Total War: 3K

Remnant

Gears 5

Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition

Divison 2

Surge 2

Code Vein

DMC5

Outward

Borderlands 3

Greedfall

Fell Seal

AI: The Somnium Files

Dauntless

Void Bastards

Bloodstained

Apex

Rage 2

Anthem

Wow Classic

Sinking City

Pathologic 2

Still Coming:

Disco Elysium

Outer Worlds

Deaths Stranding

MechWarrior 5

Pheonix Point

Notable games didn't play / avoided:

KH3: Been to long, didn't want to replay all the games. Watched a lot, visually looked nice, thats really it.

Far Cry New Dawn: Didn't want to spend money on Far Cry 5 DLC, looked like a Far Cry 5 DLC.

Jump Force: Love anime, don't like fighting games

Outer Wilds: Not on PC gamepass, but probably something I'd like.

MK11: Don't like fighting games

Control: A lot of games came out around this time, sacrifices had to be made. If it comes out on gamepass or a mega sale maybe.

Astral Chain: Same as control.

For me my favorite game of 2019 so far is Fire Emblem 3 Houses. A freaking fantastic Turn Based Strategy game that has addicting gameplay and oozes in compelling lore and charming characters. Who'd da thunk eating meals with students and faculty and then teaching them new combat skills could get you hooked.

I'll list other games that I've played and really liked as well:

• Super Mario Maker 2
• Ace Combat 7 Skies Unknown
• Baba is You
• Wargroove
• Untitled Goose Game
• Tetris 99
• Cadence of Hyrule
• Mortal Kombat 11 (I at least liked the story mode a lot)

I'm mostly in the camp of thinking it was not a hot year for games. I wouldn't call it bad or weak, just 'not hot'. Like there are loads of games this year that I'd give a solid thumbs up to, and that's it. Not a lot of stuff that was mind-blowingly awesome for me personally. I feel like I've said it about the output for the past maybe 2 years prior: huge steps in gameplay innovations are fewer and far between these days and game mechanics on average are mostly plateauing at 'good enough' but what games have been doing better than ever in this generation is styyyyyyyyyyyyle. It was possibly a limp year even for styyyyyyle as a lot of aesthetics of main stream stuff felt very derivative of older stuff. There are a whole lot of sequels and spiritual successors, heck the 99th Tetris game came out this year (only half kidding). Part of it also might be the new hardware on the horizon. As someone who still mostly plays on a PS4 Regular, it is somewhat deflating that certain high profile games like Control and Sekiro are putting the older version console hardware through the wringer in terms of performance and therefore are less appealing to play through.

In all honesty my favorite game to play this year was probably Divinity Original Sin 2 and I feel like a fool for putting it off for so long. As of now if I had to pick something from this year it would likely be between RE2make and Apex. Though I've played Apex more than anything this year I don't think I'd call it number one purely because for as much as I like it I still find Titanfall 2 multiplayer to be fundamentally more fun. So that leaves RE2make which blew away my expectations for what a remake could do, but having said that it still ultimately is just RE2 again... Still playing through a handful of stuff so I guess there's time for something to really impress me.

EDIT: Finished Outer Wilds 5 days after posting. New front runner right here, at least for games that came out this year.

It was actually really hard to think of games I played that came out this year. I've been in a habit lately of playing games I bounced off years ago and getting way into them this time for some reason (Prey is really good y'all). Of the games that came out this year I played

Borderlands 3

Dicey Dungeons

Void Bastards

Mario Maker 2

Cadence of Hyrule

Of those I guess my favorite was....Mario Maker? I dunno. There's nothing I've played or seen that jumped out to me as an obvious favorite the way something like Red Dead or The Witcher have in years past.

Devil May Cry 5 for me this year. I'm not the biggest fan of the series, I kinda bounced off the old ones for one reason or another. But this one's fantastic, and it made me go back and give DMC3 another shot, and it turns out that's a great game too. DMC5 though, that's just on another level. It takes the solid mechanics the series has built up to this point and improves upon them, strips out all the extraneous gimmicky filler bullcrap, layers in a heartfelt and engaging story and presents it all with extreme style. It surpassed God Hand and Bayonetta for me as my favorite character action games this year.

Sekiro is a good second place. I mostly like it more than... every other Souls game, it's a very exciting action take on those systems. But there are parts of it I found to be more tiring as it went on. I haven't been able to keep up with the game's difficulty, and this latest roadblock has kept me from progressing for quite a while. It might be a bit too tough for me to really adore in the long run, as much as I do really love parts of it.

It has been a slow year, but some beautiful games came out.

1. Fire Emblem

2. Control

3. Disco Elysium

4. Modern Warfare (competitive mp)

5. RE2

6. Luigi's Mansion (not far but loving it at the moment)

7. Sekiro( flawed by FROM standards but dope as hell nonetheless)

And that's all she fuckin wrote

GTA and fortnite!!

I have 3 Houses and Control to play and they'll probably end up pretty high on this list but here is a ranking of the games I've played from this year:

08. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (Campaign Only)
07. Sayonara Wild Hearts
06. Assemble with Care
05. What the Golf?
04. Devil May Cry 5
03. Neo Cab
02. Grindstone
01. Resident Evil 2

I’ve played Bloodstained and Outer Worlds recently. Both very much top 10 games. I’m enjoying the opening of Afterparty, as well. It’s promising.

Disco Elysium

3. Outer Wilds
2. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
1. Outer Worlds

Outer Wilds has been a treat from beginning to... end-ish? I feel like I've played part of the ending, or at least experienced one of them, albeit prematurely. The game has been both completely peaceful (Skipping across the sands of Hourglass Twins) and utterly terrifying (looking at you, Dark Bramble) and the 22-minute time loop mechanic is brilliant. The way it forces you to hunker down and focus on objectives kept me sharp. Of course I had plenty of lax sessions in which I just threw myself in various situations just to see what happens... always fun.

Sekiro is kicking my ass, to the point where I've put it down and haven't touched it for months. It sucks, because it's gorgeous and unique and I love what I've experienced so far. It's just too hard for me, I guess. I haven't progressed past the giant white snake and feel like I have so much to learn in that game. Nonetheless, it possesses a satisfying combat system that is quite punishing if you aren't attentive. I'm not used to such hardcore games. I played and beat Bloodborne (not the DLC) and felt like it was much easier. Oh, well. I think it's a mood thing and I'll be back to play it HOPEFULLY before the new year.

GOTY (so far): Outer Worlds. Having never played a Fallout and not many RPGs, Outer Worlds exploded onto my radar seemingly brimming with original, creative content. I'm particularly fond of great game writing, which is present here. The ability to play the game exactly how you wish is also appealing. I found myself testing the boundaries of the game, to see if I could break something, and, well, the game bested me. I haven't found a loophole... yet. I find myself pushing myself so much in that game, constantly thinking of new ways to play and experience the world. Since its release date, I played it every day for a little over a week until I beat it. And even then, I plan to go through it again. And again. Considering purchasing it on console (played it on gamepass for PC) even though from the looks of it, the graphics are slightly downgraded. Meh. I can deal with that, especially if I'm kicked back on a comfy couch in comfy pajamas battling nasty creatures and saving someone from certain doom.

Note: I've pre-ordered Death Stranding, so we'll see how that influences my choices.