2018 had stuphhhhhFFFF.
By mcbisquick 0 Comments
THE 10 BEST GAMES THAT I DECIDED WERE BETTER THAN OTHERS!
10. Mega Man 11
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.
9. Spider-Man
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.
6. Donut County
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!
Whatever! Base hit! It counts!
2. Onrush
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.
My Game of the Year: Red Dead Redemption 2
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.
