2019 GOTY

tiers:

definitely liked: 1 - 8
so-so: 9 - 18
definitely lean toward dislike: 19 - 23 (end)
hate: none

Games I didn't play in 2019, but I think had a real shot of making the top half of this list:

Control (short; sounds easy to find compatibility with my tastes)
Disco Elysium (potentially pretentious, yet praised by many as the first worth P:T successor)
Sekiro (mythical Japan setting, hyper-focused character action by the masters at From)

Showing 1-10 of 22 items

basically completely fulfilled my relatively high expectations based on the preview versions and trailers; not as good as Duke3D, but tied with Blood for second place; slightly lacking in personality/humor and variety of enemies & weapons

3. Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition

not a new experience, except for being able to pause, which is big; totally comfort food; perhaps the best remaster ever for remaining faithful to original, enormously improving presentation in a seamless & high-quality way, tons of QoL feature additions, all previous add-on content included, and some all-new content added