Thanks to the proliferation of affordable game subscription services like Apple Arcade and Game Pass, I ended up playing a much wider variety of games this year than I ever have before.
2019 was a phenomenal year for indies, but maybe a bit of a drag for AAAs. For me, though, it's always going to be remembered as the year I played Outer Wilds.
Still in progress, to be added later: Hitman 2 2019 Season, PikuNiku, Astrologaster, Eastshade
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Playing Super Mario 64 is one of my earliest memories. I grew up in a very small apartment in a business district, and being an only child, I rarely had the opportunity to interact with other kids until I was six or seven. My father bought me a Nintendo 64 for my birthday one year, and Mario along with it. Exploring that game’s castle, full of entire worlds hidden in paintings which were always shifting and re-contextualizing themselves, struck a chord with me. Sometimes, you’d find yourself expunging the depths in search of sunken treasure, or inside a literal clockwork world that changed depending on when you’d enter it, or being eaten alive by a piano with teeth. The possibilities seemed endless. More than the platforming and the characters, the sense that I could escape and explore somewhere exotic and beautiful – while I was huddled in my little room, alone – had meaning for me beyond even what the game could have hoped to convey. It’s the kind of formative experience you can only have once, before the reality of a piece of media can be made concrete to you; before you understand the marketing, product consumption, game development, office work, design theory, and authorial voices that make the game you're enjoying exist in the first place. And then Outer Wilds comes along, and I’m brought right back to where I started. Again, I’m outside myself, filled with optimism, completely in awe of what I’m about to find. Again, I’m approaching a new space that becomes more intricate and dense with character the more I explore it. Again, I’m terrified of a really big fish and need to go take a walk to calm down because the video game got too scary. Besides the aesthetic similarities between the two, Outer Wilds has somehow synthesized the imaginary language I had invented for Super Mario 64 into an optimistic statement on the beauty and inherent worth of life, discovery, and trying your best, even when it doesn’t seem worth it. Outer Wilds is a game about accruing real-world knowledge. As such, it can only truly be experienced once. There is a gorgeous finality to that, made all the more stunning by all the climactic revelations during the end game. It’s an experience I’ll carry with me for the rest of my life.
People misinterpret Disco Elysium. I've read so many articles describing Disco Elysium as so broadly nihilistic, so defeatist, that it fails to express an unironic opinion about the world and succumbs to a kind of doomer malaise. I don't think this is true, and I think this understanding of the game misses the point entirely. Disco Elysium is not a roadmap to a better world - Disco Elysium is an eloquent expression of what 'right now' feels like, a cathartic validation for those who advocate for something better in a society which guarantees bad outcomes even under the best of circumstances. If someone bonked the memories out of your head and sent you off to survive in the world as it is today, I guarantee you that you would feel like the main character of this game. Imagine it: you wake up out of a coma, saddled with debt (this is your introduction to the economic system: debt). The debt makes you imminently homeless. Every time you ask a question about the world ("why is there a lock on this dumpster? why does this kid have a drug problem? why are so many people languishing on the street?") people respond, annoyed, that it's *supposed* to be that way. Later that day, someone explains the concept of global warming to you, like Joyce Messier describes The Pale to Disco Elysium's protagonist. Bad news! You have become an Apocalypse Cop. Put more simply, Disco Elysium is a material analysis of how capitalist society works in the language of an isometric role playing game. It is an expression of a political understanding of the world in the language of interactive fiction. Disco Elysium's decrepit urban setting, Revachol, does not get designed the way it's designed without its developers possessing a Marxist framework for understanding capitalist society and a working knowledge of left-leaning revolutions throughout contemporary history. Ask a Marxist to describe San Francisco in the year 2022, and they'll gesture towards something like Revachol. Of course, it's not *just* a ~radical mirror held up to our shitty world~ or whatever. That would be pointless; that would be a cell phone camera pointed at the street while the videographer shakes their head in disappointment at a homeless encampment. No, it's what Disco Elysium uses its material analysis and its rich prose to *do* that makes it special. This game is not only a kind of 'here is what the world really look like' explainer, but it's also personality-tester - a *mean* personality tester maybe, but a good personality-tester. It asks its audience pointed questions which demand real introspection. Disco Elysium is constantly demanding the player to look inward, to reflect on their own rhetoric and aesthetics, and to interrogate that. Why are you Sorry Cop? You have already completed the action which demanded the apology - is that apology actually for the victim of your actions, or is it really just for you? Your self confidence has granted you the title of Superstar, and that has only enabled you to be a worse person because of your outsize power as a police officer. Maybe you're a literal communist, and you believe you can start a movement to make the world a better place - that's great, but having that thought in your head only makes the world more difficult to interface with, now that you know how difficult change is going to be to implement, especially with an anachronistic title like Communist Police Officer. Disco Elysium features a Thought Cabinet, in which certain ideas might spring to mind that you can internalize as a part of your personality, either to your betterment or your detriment. If you internalize Marxism as a core trait of your character, the game tells you that "0.000% of Communism has been built" and that possessing a fundamental understanding of Marxism makes you feel like Karl Marx "fucked you over personally with his socioeconomic theories" but that it also "makes you feel like a very, very smart boy with something like a university degree in Truth." I don't read that text and think to myself, wow, Disco Elysium is 'afraid of earnest expression.' I read that text and I laugh my ass off because *that is exactly what reading Karl Marx feels like.* It's mean, intentionally so, but it's also the most earnest expression of an exhausted leftist I have ever heard in my life.
(Episodes 2-5) Like most of the other people placing Life is Strange 2 on their end of year list, I’m going to go ahead and say it – the lengthy release schedule for LiS 2 murdered it. I’m sure there was a good reason for the wait time between episodes, but it ultimately capsized enthusiasm around the game. With that out of the way, HOLY SHIT was this a tremendous game. It’s nowhere near as classic-feeling as LiS 1, the gameplay hook just isn’t quite as catchy, and the ‘I’m just barely able to choke out this sentence!’ voice acting is weirder than ever, but as an interactive story, the Diaz brothers’ odyssey through an America emboldened by hateful ideology and corrupt figures in power felt more immediate, thrilling, and heart wrenching than almost any other game I’ve played. I’ll steer clear of spoilers, but all this is to say: Life is Strange 2 is not to be missed. There are many, many moments in Life is Strange 2 in which I felt like my gut had fallen to the floor. There are the big, life-defining decisions, in which its clear any action you do or don’t take will alter the lives of the protagonists forever, but there are also the quiet moments in which Sean has to pick up the pieces of a life gone wrong. And then there are the painful moments in which the people around Sean and Daniel reveal themselves to be the worst kind of monsters; moments where our protagonists have to choose between humiliation at the hands of a racist abuser or to stand their ground at the expense of their own safety. Telltale style games have their limitations. So many gameplay moments in LiS 2 have the player character simply wandering around an environment and thinking out loud about its contents, which is not especially compelling. Dontnod at least manage to make these spaces interesting. Besides the dense (and super accurate!) scenery, there really aren’t any characters in LiS 2 write large that aren’t interesting to get to know. Sometimes the world design is…quite real! Unlike the fantastic, Twin Peaks escapism of LiS 1, LiS 2 allows the tensions of the real world simmer (and sometimes explode) to the surface of the story. It manages the precarious narrative balance of portraying the racial and political divisions in America – as well as the racists and politicians responsible for creating these tensions in the first place – without shoehorning the player into a foregone conclusion. This is to say, LiS 2 asks us to live in its Latin American protagonists’ shoes; to live in a country where the wrong someone could ruin your life for an arbitrary reason. It’s claustrophobic, infuriating, and cruel. Filmmaker Howard Hawks once said that for a movie to be great, it would only need to contain three great scenes, and no bad ones. If we apply this rule of thinking to video game narrative design, this makes Life is Strange 2 a great video game. The first great scene involves a (if the player so chooses) romantic interlude by a campfire, in which every injustice up to that point washes away, if only for a little while. The second great scene involves Sean being penitent in a church during a moment of extreme tension. The third great scene is at the very end, in which the player is given a final choice, where all of their actions up to that point are put in their truest context. Life is Strange 2 is a great game. Play it, dorks.
As someone who’s been a fan of Remedy since Max Payne, Control was a tremendously exciting game this year. It’s got a certain AA quality to it (the constant spawning of enemies to fill time, the barely-there side quests, the constant re-use of footage in cutscenes), but it’s probably the best game the studio has ever produced from a sheer design perspective. From a lore perspective, Control is also best-in-class. It’s maybe a bit *too* X-Files, but when Control wants to get creative with its paranormality, it fucking *goes* some places (that goddamn fridge). I’ve read a few reviews complaining about all the reading you need to do to get the most out of Control. Those people are out of their minds. Granted, I was a big Alan Wake fan, but I *loved* the redacted documents in this game. They’re so rich with detail, and grant a mystique to the few objects of power the player actually does end up getting to interact with. They’re like miniature short horror stories. I love them. Here’s to hoping we get some more Threshold Kids in the DLC next year.
Ape Out is an audio/visual tour de force about a gorilla who loves jazz and needs to kill you. I fucking LOVED Ape Out. I’d dismissed it initially as a Hotline Miami clone, but it’s so much more than that. It’s Hotline Miami set in boiling water and exploding out of the pan, set to The Peter Brotzmann Octet. It’s the visceral, primal release of the self vs. the establishment. It’s the culmination of freeform art and experimental computer programming. It’s a gorilla punching his captor in the chest with such vicious energy that the man’s arms FLY. OFF. Ape Out is hard, too, and I guess that can be offputting to people but I don’t care. I had a huge smile on my face for each and every level.
Even forgetting that it’s a remake, Resident Evil 2 has the sense, for the first time in a long time for this series, of being a classic. It’s nowhere near as frightening as the more ambitious (and, probably, better) Resident Evil 7, and not as much of a singular experience as the remake of the first Resident Evil, but it’s the perfect combination of high-tech sheen and low-brow shlock. Even if it doesn’t do much as far as scares, it does an excellent job of capturing the imagination. I had a blast exploring all the nooks and crannies of the police station, a setting which provides excellent incidental tension thanks to its tight hallways and office rooms busy with desks and equipment. I particularly loved sequences involving lickers, which are these weird, skinless, human-shaped dogs which detect the player by sound instead of sight. Being forced to navigate around these creatures with such limited options made for a few truly excellent moments of tension. Aesthetically, Resident Evil 2 is a fuckin’ delight. It brings the bright blue, action-figure look of the PS1 original to current gen hardware. I loved the characters, who veer between genuinely likable and hilariously B-movie in the span of seconds. I even love Mr X’s dope-y trench coat. I guess I just love a game that will be as corny and ridiculous as this one with a straight face. Horror tends to be either over-dramatic or self-aware, recently, making Resident Evil 2 a fun, refreshing change of pace.
As someone who didn’t particularly love the slow pace and clunky feel of Obsidian’s Fallout: New Vegas, The Outer Worlds was a terrific surprise. It’s a true role-playing game that, thanks to a very Mass Effect-ian cast of characters, has some real emotional stakes to accompany all the big ethical decision making the game demands of you. The first half of Outer Worlds is terrific. I love playing stealth characters, but their inclusion in these first person Bethesda-likes always feels stapled on. Imagine my surprise during my first foray into Edgewater's wildlands when I came upon a small gang of anonymous marauders protecting an item I needed to collect, who were alongside a hidden series of boxes and pipes which provided a makeshift staircase directly to the objective. I snuck through patches of tall grass, hid out of site and climbed to the roof, allowing me to complete my first quest without firing a shot. It’s a small thing, but as someone who’s been pining for these games to allow me to make a stealth character, it was an exciting little moment. The second half of the game is less compelling. Once you’ve already spent time developing relationships with your crew, you can start to see where their subplots are heading, and their quests feel less like bonding and more like busy-work. The final quests in the game in general, in fact, all feel a little light on content. There’s just not enough in the way of meaningful world building when you finally arrive at the heart of the establishment The Outer Worlds spends so much time mythologizing. I’d also be remiss if I didn’t bring up the endgame. I’ve never been a fan of the ‘and heeere’s what happened to everyone!’ slideshow that always kicks in at the end of the Fallout games. The epilogue in The Outer Worlds is probably the worst version of this trope I've seen. It feels more like a report card than it does a reasonable glimpse into a possible future for all the characters. It reduces the otherwise thoughtful conflicts between all the in-game factions to one, perfunctory question: did you sufficiently convince each warring faction to work alongside their enemy, or did you choose a side and therefore fail? If there was any doubt as to Outer Worlds' 'the answer is always somewhere in the middle' thesis, then reach The Outer Worlds' credits and wonder no longer. I digress. These qualms aside, The Outer Worlds is a succinct open world game with a ton of heart and flair. I’ll definitely be coming back to this one next year. I just gotta see what happens when you play this game like an asshole.
Here’s the pitch, reductive as it may be: Void Bastards is a Doom (circa the ‘90s)-esque rogue-like with a Hellboy art style. How could I possibly say no? Easily one of the greatest examples of procedurally generated design I’ve ever seen, Void Bastards casts the player as an unfrozen convict, freed from cryostasis only to enter into indentured servitude. Losing a life as a prisoner allows the player to respawn as a new prisoner with a new unique attribute. Some of the attributes are useful – perhaps your character has the ‘small appetite’ trait, and therefore can survive on less food – others, such as the ‘smoker’ trait, which forces the player to cough up a lung on a random basis, are less useful. But all of them are great. Basically, Void Bastards is a series of fetch quests for various McGuffins that takes place over several acts. The player flies from ship to ship in search of each objective, accruing new weapons and tools along the way, while also remaining on the lookout for survival prerequisites like food and fuel. Too many roguelike games’ entire points are that they’re roguelikes. What elevates Void Bastards above many of its competitors (besides its unique, old-school FPS design) is its narrative flavor. The game doesn’t have much of a plot, but, like Binding of Isaac, another great roguelike, its disparate pieces form a cohesive thematic whole. As a survival thriller about a comic-book corporate dystopia, Void Bastards can be a genuinely funny satire. It’s singular in a way so few other roguelikes are.
The more I play this game the higher up my list it goes. It’s the perfect mix of tactical card play, simple rules that don’t put off a casual player like me, and punishingly difficult to keep you coming back again and again for one more run. It’s also got a fun little narrative, and some outstanding boss fights to spice up all the repetitive action. Slay the Spire is one of those games in which your experiences with the mechanics and dice-rolls end up telling a story even more compelling than the game’s actual story. It’s a phenomenally considered rogue-like.
Everyone’s favorite break from reality this year, Untitled Goose Game is a delight. I’ve seen quite a few critics point out that the collect-athons in each sequence are time wasters, and that the game ultimately wraps up far too quickly. They’re not wrong, honestly, but I don’t care. Untitled Goose Game nails that sense of an animal just up and deciding to fuck some shit up. I saw a video on Twitter just the other day in which a goose, without any warning or provocation at all, leapt beak-first and full of fury at a non-threatening woman just takin' a walk in the park. Sometimes geese just do that! I will allow House House to waste as much of my time as they want in order to provide me with the satisfaction of just, for one single day, being the ‘y’know what, fuck it’ goose.
