I'm going to try the yearly Top 10 thing again, but this time I'm gonna try to sum up my thoughts about each game in roughly one sentence, because nobody has time for explanations! We all have too many games to play or in my case, games you stare at for days telling yourself you should really get around to.
In that theme, here are some games that won't make the Top 10 solely because I didn't play enough of them to make a judgment call yet. They're games I either haven't started or just barely scratched the surface of so far. I do intend to play them, though.
Judgment
Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Control
The Outer Worlds
Bloodstained
Hynospace Outlaw
Blasphemous
The Outer Wilds
What the Golf?
Now for the Top 10 Best Games of 2019 That I Kinda Feel Good About But I'd Probably Change The List Tomorrow If You Asked. Again, gonna try real hard to keep it to one sentence and god damn is that tough when you love to ramble.
10. Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
For me, this Zelda game falls somewhere in the Majora's Mask tier where the actual dungeons aren't too great, but it does get a lot of mileage out of its style and tone for a charming, if slightly eerie time.
9. Astral Chain
Platinum Games and Astral Chain are both at their best when they're using what they have learned from previous games and experimenting, and both are at their absolute worst when they have terrible mini-games to try to pad the length out.
8. Untitled Goose Game
At least Agent 47 kills you after he ruins everything around you.
7. Baba is You
One of the smartest puzzle games I've ever played, even if I preferred the moments where you could use the rule manipulation mechanic to come up with a variety of solutions whereas the late game puzzles don't really encourage that kind of creativity.
6. FutureGrind
You grind and flip on bizarre future bikes to get giant combos and feel real fucking cool.
5. MLB The Show 19
MLB The Show was always kind of a punching bag of a game for me with its many, many rough edges but 19 is actually a very good baseball game and maybe the A's can win a god damn postseason game in this!
4. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
Modern Warfare has some really smooth, snappy gameplay that kept me hooked about as much as the series ever has, and has almost made me forget the fact that the PC version was completely unplayable for over a month.
3. Resident Evil 2
A phenomenal remake that captures what worked in the original game in terms of level design and setting, while updating everything to make you feel capable of handling the terrifying things waiting for you, even if you're really not.
2. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
Sekiro is just another A+ game to add to FromSoftware's resume, with another fascinating world to explore in terms of lore and layout while diving deep into a new parry-centric approach to their combat that I'm still a little amazed I was able to wrap my head around.
1. Devil May Cry 5
As a fan of Devil May Cry since the beginning, I'm still in disbelief that Capcom actually pulled the plug on the reboot and went back to give me the game I wanted since 2008, and I'm even more stunned after all this time away that they ended up making possibly the best game in the entire series and one of the best action games of all time.
So there's 2019 for ya. And thanks to gross overuse of commas, I could still adequately ramble!
Who knows what fucked up writing tools to abuse 2020 will bring!
So I talked about my favorites of the year, but I played a lot more than those games and I wanted to play more than that. Since I had already written about these said games, I figure a follow-up post was in order.
Vibe I'm getting: Pretty confident this game would crack my Top 10. Nothing about it seems bad at all. JRPGs are just a “time and place” sort of thing of thing for me. I got this pretty much certain I wouldn't really get around to it until next year.
Vibe I'm getting: Weird and rough. Almost certainly not a Top 10 contender, but a creepy, janky, and funny thing I'm glad I've played around with. Not enough to cement an opinion, though.
Vibe I'm getting: Really liked the first game, and heard this one was solid too. Wouldn't surprise me to see it be a Top 10 game in my book if the year wasn't so hectic.
Vibe I'm getting: It looks like something that would either hook me to the point of obsession, or the stress would push me so hard off it I'll never touch it after one sitting. I bought it after hearing so much praise, though, so we'll see.
Vibe I'm getting: I like some good video game water. On the other hand, I haven't been feeling inventory and survival management as much this year. I'm pretty sure there will be a point where this comes off the bench and hooks me, though.
The business model for this game is weird, and I'm not entirely sold on the whole Gougi mechanic to begin with. But I like the roster, and there's a looseness to this game that other 2D fighters don't really have. There's just not a lot of depth to the game, and it came out at a time when there were so many other fighters offering either more polish or more content that it got lost in the shuffle a bit.
But it's something fun and a little different in that genre. I do recommend it.
I think what this game tries to do with Kratos as far as using fatherhood to develop him beyond the “ARGH! I HATE ZEUS!” psycho he has been is very ambitious, and I think the game mostly succeeds. I really like Kratos in this game, and that's saying something because I always thought he was lame as fuck as a character. As for the rest of the cast and their personal stories? I'm a little iffy on them.
Atreus' personality kind of bounces around, and most of the time he's a very generic kid. Which might work in some games, but I have a hard time believing this kid grew up with Kratos as a dad and didn't end up a little more complex and flawed beyond just his childish immaturity. If this a start of a new chapter of God of War games, I want more out of Atreus than what this first part gave us (for what it's worth, I do think the writers are setting more up with him for future games).
And where the game leaves Faye off at? It's really dumb. Again her personality just swerves, and Kratos-who goes into brutal “no-bullshit” mode-to nip the Baldur thing in the bud suddenly swings back into “bullshit for everybody” mode for her. They make her dumb. They make him dumb. It's dumb.
The rest of the ending was real nice, though.
Meanwhile, the new combat is much more engaging to me than the previous take the franchise had on its action, but I still didn't really like it. Once enemies got better at getting behind you, or the game just decides to spawn them there, I found it all pretty damn tedious and couldn't wait for it to be over.
I think this is a good starting point for something new here with this series. I like the structure, I like the tone, and I think there's room to develop the action further. Great moments, but the overall package just didn't land with me like it did for other people.
This is a strong Call of Duty multiplayer experience, and their take on battle royales is very well done. I think what keeps this off my Top 10 is just the burnout I feel from battle royale stuff in general. Last year was all about PUBG for me and my friends, and I have not had a real urge to get into a new one.
But Cops Swaps 4 is a damn fine game if you just want some team deathmatch or something.
I might have played too much of this during Early Access. Loved it, and when it finally got “released”, I tried to hop back in again with mixed results. The game feels and looks great, but I feel like the grind was more apparent in a way that new weapons wouldn't really help me with.
I think I just need more time off from it to come back fresh. Still, I do think the progression is a little more grueling than it needs to be. While it might appeal to some people, Dead Cells is not the type of game I need to last forever and its structure adds a lot of god damn padding to a playthrough.
Damn, do I wish I liked Celeste more. A relatable story of having to co-exist with your issues rather than “defeat” them, fantastic music, all contained in some challenging but satisfying platforming.
I know it's good. But it also taps into that part of my brain that NEEDS every fucking berry in every chapter, and repeating challenges when I can't find that stuff is exhausting. So I fell off. I'm not proud of it, and I hope I'll get the urge to go back to it soon.
I was pretty sure I wouldn't like this game from everything I saw and heard, but damn if I wasn't gonna try.
I don't completely hate it, and I actually kind of enjoy watching people who understand MH and its systems take on some of the tougher hunts. The game is just not for me, really. And I'm almost afraid to suggest any changes for fear that the series would lose something vital to what makes it work for so many others.
Alright, now that I got all that 2018 out of my system. Let's move on.
I love Mega Man. Way too much. Not enough to like Mega Man 8, but enough to like most of them.
And 11 is pretty good. I think the music is strong, I think the feel of the platforming is solid, and the gear mechanic makes it probably the most accessible the series has ever felt, while not completely stripping away too much of the challenge for people like me.
That is to say, people who time themselves playing the first game not for a stream or a world record, but for their own psychotic amusement.
In a lot of ways, this game is mechanically another Arkham game but with Spider-Man stuff. And that's fine, because that last Arkham game was bullshit and swinging around is way more fun than that crappy car.
There's a lot of open-world busy-work in this game, but getting around never got old to me and the little tweaks they added to the familiar combat system made any combo-related challenges feel less strict and more exciting as you got to use more of your arsenal. I also think the game really hit its stride in the late-game story to really capture the struggles of what Peter Parker wants out of life and the sad reality of it.
Playing Spider-Man reminded me of why all the garbage surrounding the hero over the years irritated me. It was because there was a time when he was my favorite superhero. His abilities are some of the best, and there are some really great stories to be told within his world. Movies and games just started fucking it up for some reason.
So thank you for not fucking it up, Insomniac. Spidey fans needed it.
WarioWare is just so good. The rapid-fire, reflexive mini-games just hit a part of your brain that keeps you engaged without feeling stressed by it. And that was something I really appreciated from this game, that it was intensely fun without actually bringing too much pressure.
Gold is sort of a “best of” for this series that was probably long overdue, honestly. And if Nintendo wants to make another one, I'll be right there for it.
The amazing visuals, the chill atmosphere, and classic gameplay make this probably the best version of Tetris that I've played (although, DS was pretty great).
Now a lot of people play this game and just immediately relax, while I immediately realize just how damn angry I get at Tetris.
“Stop with the fucking particle effects! I NEED TO SEE!”, I scream as everything I've been working towards just falls apart because of one rushed block placement.
Still, Tetris is a classic for a reason, and Tetris Effect is amazing because it respects that design and adds to it in a way that can captivate any type of player.
In a Katamari sort of way, this game takes a simple idea like “put shit in a hole” and squeezes a ton of enjoyment and satisfaction out of it within just a few hours.
The writing is pretty funny, but really its how the hole interacts with stuff. Most of the time it's just eating objects, but sometimes those objects pop back out of it in some really interesting ways. That's not to say at any point that Donut County will challenge your puzzle solving skills, but I've said for awhile that a solution in a puzzle game needs to be satisfying. That doesn't necessarily mean it needs to be difficult to find. If your puzzle gets a player to rethink how he's interacting with things, then you don't need to exactly be making The Witness to be doing something right.
This was a year I put a lot of effort into getting into fighting games. I bought an arcade stick which I'm already starting to think was a waste of money. I bought Street Fighter V which I'm already starting to think was a waste of money. I followed multiple Evo tournaments. I watch Tekken 7 streams constantly now.
Tekken 7 and Dragon Ball FighterZ were the games that set me down this path at the beginning of the year. They're both incredibly well-made, but DBFZ actually came out this year so we'll talk about that (but play Tekken 7 if you haven't!)
It's so easy to pick up and just start having fun, but there's an absurd amount of depth if you want to find it. The flashy visuals and smooth animation make me remember the show way more fondly than it probably deserves, and the DLC kept me coming back all year to experiment with some interesting new characters on top of an already strong roster.
Its single-player offerings are pretty weak, but DBFZ overall is damn good, and probably the best fighting game I personally played this year.
SCVI is certainly NOT the best fighting game I played this year. I think the reverse edge sucks and kills the pacing of a fight. I think the critical edge is okay, but makes the power meter pretty damn simplistic. And some of the single-player challenges are ungodly cruel.
But it's the fighting game that stuck with me more than any other. It's the one I have the most fun with. It's the one I feel like I'm learning something every time I play it. It feels smooth like how I remember the series feeling in its prime, while expanding on the wacky-ass custom character tools from the later installments.
There's a lot of fun to be had fighting other people, and there's plenty of content just for yourself if you prefer to go that way. While it's not mechanically the best, it may be the most well-rounded fighting game I played this year in terms of what it offers for your buck. That, combined with my personal nostalgia for the series makes SCVI an easy favorite of mine in the genre. Also, Geralt and 2B are great guest characters.
One of the best baseball games I've played. Simple, cartoony, and fun. While The Show will probably always offer more depth for the more serious baseball fans, Super Mega Baseball 2 just mechanically works so much better than those games it's a little astounding. It's just way more enjoyable to play than a lot of other sports games out there.
Even in those moments where you cranked up the difficulty too much and find yourself in the 15th inning without a hit. You just want any kind of decent contact, and then you smash a comebacker right at the pitcher that knocks them the hell out!
It bums me the hell out that this game didn't click with a lot of people, because I think it is pretty brilliant. It's a racing game where placement means very little in the traditional sense, yet it matters a lot in Onrush's emphasis on boost, wrecks, zone capturing, and tricks. You need to be in the right spots, but that doesn't mean you need to be in first. It's way more important you're just behind someone going off a jump, so you can land on top of them.
The game asks, “What are other ways people could compete on a wide variety of race tracks?” and creates a hectic, fun time out of its ideas. With tons of single-player challenges and multiplayer when you're done with that, Onrush gave me plenty of hours of enjoyment even if I did find myself asking the AI “Why?! Why wouldn't you just take that dude out?!” as they did something colossally stupid to cost us the game.
In some ways, I feel like if Burnout had continued on, it very well could have approached ideas like Onrush as far as how a player could experience an arcade-y sort of racer. I do hope we see this philosophy explored again sooner than later.
Yeah, I haven't beaten it. Yeah, the story has hit some beats I think are preposterous (the Arthur Morgan I know would have shot Micah a long fucking time ago). Yeah, the game is slooooooo-hooo-hooo-hoooow both in animation and in general pacing. Yeah, the stealth and shooting are average at best, and a real fucking pain in the ass at worst. And yeah, Rockstar still somehow makes a basic controller feel like you're using a 100-button, 50-lever robot console for a basic third-person open-world game.
I still love this god damn game.
It took weeks of trying before the game hooked me, but I am obsessed with it now. The amount of depth and detail to the world is really unmatched, in a way that pretty much guarantees I will never fast travel in it. Too much weird shit happens along the way and a lot of it will just find you out on a ride. And it's all made so much better because you're viewing it from the lens of a surprisingly-grounded, likable fuck-up of a man.
Arthur Morgan is without a doubt one of my favorite video game characters ever, which is crazy because I was almost positive I'd find him unbearable. Instead, he's the only character who is contemplative enough to see the writing on the wall for people like him, as he sees opportunity after opportunity slam shut in his gang's face. But he keeps going, even as his dreams begin to die and mindless loyalty becomes all that remains.
No open-world game is ever going to perfectly pace their story, and RDR2 is no exception. But this game does make Arthur's story so much more powerful just by having you live through the character's life. Some days go by and you won't do shit but chit-chat and play dominoes. Other days, it's time to mount up for a big bank job where someone will almost definitely fuck something up, and then somehow get mad at Arthur for rightly getting mad at them!
I totally get this game being too slow for people, but for me it has been those slow moments that really built a connection with this character. The slow days contrast with the loud moments, and give Arthur's story all the emotional ups and downs of life. When I play this game, I laugh, I get angry, and I feel sad.
It's a game that challenged me to think about some pretty unpleasant shit that I had already been feeling this year. Like what keeps you going forward when you feel detached from the world? Like, do we give our loyalty away too easily and lose sight of our dreams somewhere in all that? And what are those dreams? Have you been rolling with the punches so long that you lost any idea of what you actually want?
This is not to say RDR2 will answer questions like that for anyone (this is still a goofy-ass game where wagons will kill a man next to you and then claim YOU committed the crime), but to take in these thoughts through the eyes of Arthur made the questions not seem to scary. I know this just sounds like cliche, sappy video game blog bullshit, but it really is the one game I needed this year.
Which is probably good, because it takes like a fucking year to play through it.
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