uhh first time using the list function so let's hope this works out! played more games in 2019 than I have in most recent years combined, and I had a lot of thoughts about them that I wanted to put into writing, if only to aid my failing memory.
Showing 1-10 of 14 items
[Honorable mention.] So, I didn't actually play Judgment -- the gameplay of the Yakuza series isn't for me. But I did watch my best friend play through it and I thought it was another great Yakuza game. Framing it in the manner of a TV show was a nice touch; it was an exciting murder mystery that got deeper and weirder the more you tugged at its threads. Plus, you get the usual ridiculous side stories and excellent localization. They could make a hundred of these games and I would watch someone else play every single one.
[Honorable mention.] A bad idle game is like a pet rock: useful for staring at and not much else. A good idle game is like a pet cat: you slowly befriend it, learn its habits and what makes it tick, and eventually trick it into producing 1.8e308 diamond coins. This is a game I check on a couple of times a day, running various buff builds in order to complete secondary objectives, tweaking production builds to get a little more out of them, or (sometimes) simply watching number go up. Not particularly exciting, but a good substitute for a pet or a child. Would have been like #5 on my list, but it's not a 2019 release.
[Honorable mention.] Three of my top ten games are on this thing, I played another half dozen great games on it to completion, and there's another dozen or two past that that I still want to get around to. Ridiculous value, even if the launcher is crap. Go play Yoku, or Timespinner, or...
[#11] I already wrote a review of this game, so I won't go into much detail here. To be honest, I like this game more for what it is pushing toward (shorter games with themes relevant to our times) than what it succeded at (being a nice-looking and less-buggy Fallout with filler gameplay). Wouldn't have made the list if I had played more games, but I didn't.
[#10] Picked this one up on a lark while digging through gamepass. It's a tricky platformer that controls a little weird, but in a way that makes it exciting to play as you spend more time with it. I think it looks great and managed to stay fun and challenging. It does an excellent job of capturing bike physics and fitting them into a game.
[#9] When Tetris 99 was first announced, I read it as a naked attempt to get in on the battle royale craze -- a weird toy, at best. Instead, I found myself caring about Tetris again for the first time in decades. I never thought Tetris would be able to give me the feeling of picking off wounded competitors from hundreds of yards away. Now I just need it to give me the feeling of hiding in a closet for a quarter of an hour.
[#8] It's kind of like... pinball meets 2d Zelda? Smoothly delivered the experience of exploring abandoned machinery, and told an interesting post-apoc story through a scant amount of dialogue and documents. Swiftly dodging lasers and smacking around balls felt great, especially in the later parts of the game, when rooms with dozens of projectiles flying in all directions made for complex but not impenetrable challenges.
[#7] A brilliant take on the block-pusher. An understated but memorable soundtrack accompanied by a cute style. An absolute motherfucker of a puzzle game that requires creative solutions and allows you to do some really weird shit.
[#6] I don't often get excited for upcoming releases. There are just so many games in existence that I prefer to catch up on my backlog of games that are now $15 instead of getting them at launch for $60. But when I saw that Control was pretty much SCP: The Game, I wavered and picked it up only a few months later... for $30. I'm trying to improve, okay? Honestly, I'm kind of glad I waited. The setting is a joy to dive into, and it's probably the prettiest game I've ever played, but I found the gameplay unpleasant enough that I actually gave up on it about 80% in. For what it's worth, third-person shooters aren't my bag. I'm not that great at them, and they don't excite me. Everything else about Control kept me pushing through, because I wanted to hear the next audio clip, to read about the next weird item or event, to find out more about Jesse or Marshall or Pope or Darling. But, eventually, I found the action too stale and the checkpointing bad enough that I just gave up on it. Fellow user TK perfectly encapsulated my feelings with a quote: "I had a lot of fun with Control, but I feel like a lot of my love of that game could be distilled into a coffee table book of all of the collectibles." Still, I want more, and hopefully with better accessibility options (or at least a story mode) next time. [Edit] Missed a few points I wanted to make: a) I think Control does a great job of introducing you to its setting, not just through writing but through environmental storytelling, b) the nature of Altered Items provides a consistency of storytelling that helps the setting feel less disjointed than the SCP Foundation, and c) locating an overhead enemy by seeing its shadows on the wall in front of me was one of the coolest moments I had all year. Credit where it's due.
[#5] Heave Ho is a remarkable example of my favorite kind of multiplayer game: a goofy, colorful clusterfuck that is simply fun. It's collaborative, yet competitive. It's fun when you team up to grab the coin, it's fun when you kill someone by farting. It's simple to pick up, and difficult to put down. Without a doubt the most fun I had all year. Brutal on the fingers, though.
