Wilsown's Top 10 (And 1) Games of 2019

It's been another year for games. I kept busy. There was certainly stuff, nay, good stuff, to play. I still have some catching up on a few games I couldn’t play in time, but I’m also definitely looking forward to 2020 which should have, well, more good stuff. Anyway a few notes about the list: The “And 1” spot is for a game that either might not have otherwise made the list due to a technicality (an expansion, remaster, early access etc.) or just something I think is flawed or rough but wanted to write about anyway. I also included novelty awards at the beginning for all the other games I played this year but didn’t rank in case you were thinking “did you play ________?”. Thanks in advance for reading and hopefully you find some of your favorite games of 2019 here too. [Edit 3/5/24: Very belatedly adding Trails of Cold Steel III in at #5 so I can rant about Trails, knocking A Short Hike off of the list]

Novelty Awards

2019’s Old Games of the Year: Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden, Florence, Cytus II, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Steep, Iconoclasts, The Missing: J.J. Macfield and the Island of Memories, Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon, We Know the Devil, Yakuza Kiwami, Soma, Gris, Quarantine Circular, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered, Analogue: A Hate Story, Hate Plus, Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition, Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII, Return of the Obra Dinn, Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen (Switch), Rez Infinite, The Red Strings Club, Mario Tennis Aces

Best damn intro cutscene: Pikuniku

Best damn outro level: Ape Out

Best intro to deckbuilders: Steamworld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech

Best proof that I suck at deckbuilding still: Slay The Spire

Best exercise in muscle memory: Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled

Best rocket-powered fist surfing (not a euphemism): Devil May Cry 5

Best Titanfall consolation prize: Apex Legends

Second best Titanfall consolation prize: playing the mech class in Borderlands 3

Best solitaire variant: Eliza

Biggest 180° on art style (didn't like it at first): The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening (2019)

Somehow second best Zelda game about collecting instruments: Cadence of Hyrule: Crypt of the Necrodancer Featuring The Legend of Zelda

Prettiest game: Gears 5

Best rummaging simulator: The Outer Worlds

Best rummaging simulator, but on crack: Void Bastards

Hardest game of beer pong I’ve ever played: Afterparty

The “Better Quit While I’m Ahead” award: Only playing up to Chapter 3 in Death Stranding

Best video game shotgun™: Actually, it’s the Coach Gun from Remnant: From the Ashes

Best (also most?) character art: Indivisible

Best substitute for Tetris Effect DLC: Sayonara Wild Hearts

The "Okay, I didn't actually play these games but will at some point next year".... award: Disco Elysium, Judgment, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

Best game played in one sitting: A Short Hike

And 1. Steins;Gate: Elite

In a year with some strong remakes and remasters, anime time travel ends up winning the day with an often complex, sometimes problematic, but always affecting tale. I had only heard the name Steins;Gate floating around over the years without any sense of what it was about or even what kind of game it was. Anyway, I finally found out about the anime and watched the pilot before finding this release and thinking “why not ‘play the anime’?” as the game’s description suggested. What I found was what I would describe as a “AAA” visual novel, with some really nice visuals and full voice acting wrapped in some snazzy menus.

Also what makes this game a good fit for this category is I for sure have a few problems with the game. Okabe kind of sucks for about the first half (which is like 15 hours!), and it many times has some poor treatment of its female characters, to say the least. This is a smaller gripe, but to get the true, best ending is also really difficult to stumble upon naturally the first time through and also has multiple requirements throughout the game, making it hard to just go back to a single save. But you know what? That’s where I think I realized how much I liked this game. Because, on a replay, even though I found out it has a nice, easy option to skip through to each decision point, I actually found myself stopping frequently to play a bunch of scenes again, not quite wanting to story to end just yet.

Finally, Makise effing rules, mostly because she gives Okabe shit a lot of the time but she also makes for a surprisingly compelling, and comically tsundere, love interest during the course of the true ending path. I did really like the version of time travel presented in Steins;Gate too, with all its painstakingly science-y explanations of the physics involved as well as all the ethical and existential questions like “do the bad things I do in these timelines matter?” and “what’s the ‘real’ timeline?”, etc. This confluence of time travel, friendship, retro PCs, catgirl maids (don’t ask, nya), and other wild things was a better experience than I could have hoped for and where there was nothing now the name Steins;Gate brings with it some pleasant memories.

Number of “muahahahahaha”s: I lost count after about 32

10. Kingdom Hearts III

Alright look… LOOK PEOPLE. Let me try and explain this weird, dumb journey as best as I can and then you can decide whether to throw this list in the garbage. I started this year having never played a Kingdom Hearts game, but ultimately I decide to play III. I listened to all of Waypoint’s Lore Reasons (twice!), watched the videos they referenced, read the summary on The Orange Groves at least three times, and finally watched all the cutscenes for 0.2 A Fragmentary Passage. This silliness takes about two months, give or take. And when it comes time to actually play the game, it somehow works. I recognized that when this game does decide to actually get to the plot it has some moments that I had wanted to see for weeks, and longer-time fans for years.

As I say that though, I remember too that I probably spent about two-thirds of this game wondering where the capital P Plot is and how there is just the thinnest explanation for why I am traipsing about these Disney settings. I imagine series fans are probably laughing at me for thinking this is anything new for Kingdom Hearts, but I digress. Either way, the last quarter or so of the game made it probably worth it, and this is one of the better examples of me enjoying the things around a game more than the game itself. To borrow a phrase from somewhere, you don’t tell the story of gaming for me in 2019 without mentioning Kingdom Hearts, and if you told me that a year ago I’d have thought you were a little bit Goofy (h'yuck h'yuck).

Actual best crossover moment: When they just decided they wanted to be Ending E from NieR: Automata (spoilers in link)

9. Life is Strange 2

Well, I kept my promise. I worried last year that Life is Strange 2 might not finish in 2019 and I would have to arbitrarily put it in ranking limbo for another year. But thankfully, episode five came in under the wire and DONTNOD put out a totally solid second season that I’m worried people might have already forgotten. It wasn’t going to be like season one and, to its credit, didn’t try to be. Admittedly, the supernatural bits in this season don’t always feel as well integrated mechanically as they were the first time around, though that may also have to do with my soft spot for time travel BS (see And 1 above).

However, the relationships at the center of this game, and the quirky cast of characters you meet along the way, feel right at home in this universe. You’re regularly on the move over the course of the story, so sometimes it feels a shame to have to dump each new setting and characters for a new set (NOT *CLAP* ENOUGH *CLAP* LYLA), but I thought that there's enough continuity where it matters. The story also does way better than it perhaps should have at walking the line tonally between some of the cheesy innocence of the original with more heavy and serious subject matter. Not that the original was all sunshine either, but this season has a kind of maturity to it that I think best differentiates it as its own story. It’s kind of hard to point to one particular moment or flash point with this season where everything just clicks, but again I’d say it’s solid throughout and if you have any kind of fondness for the general space that the original played in, you should check it out.

First and final mention of how good Game Pass is: This and about eight other 2019 games I played were on it at some time or another

8. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

For me, comparisons between this and another melee-based action game higher up on this list are unavoidable as are a few parallels between this and Respawn’s last single-player campaign effort in Titanfall 2. And while this does have, you know, Star Wars going for it, when held up to those high expectations it didn’t quite get up there for me. Like, you know, maybe the movement and parrying doesn’t feel as good (or, more likely, I still suck at parrying) or the exploration in between isn’t the most compelling and there also isn’t a killer equivalent to Effect and Cause.

But enough of that, a good Star Wars game is plenty reason to be excited. This game’s scripted moments and lightsaber duels rule as does your little buddy BD-1. And I gripe and complain, but the times where I could throw a dude off a ledge or reflect back multiple blaster bolts were still fun as hell. You’ve got a pretty efficiently told Star Wars story here too, with fun side characters, a good villain, and enough ties to the larger Star Wars universe to feel significant. After this, I could honestly be equally excited for either a sequel or another entirely different game from Respawn and that kind of anticipation is pretty unique.

Biggest handicap: Not realizing that extra stim canisters were a thing you could find and playing all but the last level with only the initial two that they give you

7. Control

You know, moment-to-moment this game wasn’t so different to me from Quantum Break **collective gasp**. What I mean is they both have pretty solid combat systems that take a little bit to get going but once they do it is a great joy to zip around and wreck fools. However, one HUGE difference this time around is that Control has a much better vibe and setting than Quantum Break ever did, and that ended up making all the difference in how memorable this experience was. The in-game lore and the story bits and pieces were all delivered with just this consistent styyyyyle that kept me involved throughout. I do think that the end of this game and the main story payoff are kind of a bummer (something it also shares with Quantum Break), but I sure appreciated the road to get there.

Best use of Finland: Ahti just stealing every gd scene he’s in

6. Tetris 99

I had pretty much experienced the explosion of Battle Royales from the outside looking in, but finally with a few small tweaks I jumped in and joined the craze with Tetris 99. Turns out, these games were asking the right question with "where we droppin'"?, just instead of Loot Lake and Skull Town it was “right in that I-block shaped hole”. Anyway, you probably already know what it is (Austin Walker voice), so I'll just talk about a personal experience. It's May 2nd, I've been playing at least a game everyday since it's come out, and I finally get that W after about 350 games played. I'd won some team matches before in shooter BRs but this one, as they say **checks notes**, hit different. I was pretty late to the party, but hey, it's still a party and still led to one of the most memorable moments for me this year.

Favorite theme: Get to my number one and take a guess [Fire Emblem]

5. The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III

In my never-ending endeavor to catch up on Trails games, I’m writing this entry in 2024 having just finished this game but not having started IV yet. It’s also worth noting that I didn’t start playing Trails games until after a certain very similar game high up on this list (I don’t know why I’m being coy, it’s Three Houses). I only mention that because it’s funny how Cold Steel I in particular was essentially doing the same thing as Three Houses but four years earlier and in a world that I like more. Even still, sometimes the order you play stuff matters, who would’ve thought? Anyway if that unnecessary preamble wasn’t enough to tip you off, my thoughts on Cold Steel III (much like the game) are going to be long and messy, so buckle up folks.

I came into this game pretty much loving every other title in the series so far in different ways. I also entered it having no idea where they would go from the end of Cold Steel II. And after finishing III, I still kind of have no idea? Each of the other entries that are basically a “Part I” (e.g. Sky I and Cold Steel I) do a good job of telling a mostly complete story, but with a great hook at the end to tell you what the next game is going to be about; Cold Steel III definitely makes a lot of noise towards its finale, but also just kind of…. ends…. without a clear direction. This could all be largely moot if Cold Steel IV ends up delivering but in the moment, it’s an ending that leaves me to wonder what all the lead-up was even for.

Compounding the problem is that the lead-up was all really good. The individual chapter arcs are good. The new characters are good. The expanded roles for existing characters are good (I never thought I’d care this much about Altina or Aurelia after Cold Steel II). It becomes a bit formulaic in how all of the old characters come back (Mass Effect 3, anyone?), but did I cheer every time an old friend showed up? You bet. The abrupt ending of Cold Steel II kind of hampers the delivery of III in that you want to still include the original party, but trying to balance them with new characters ends up being an unwieldy and delicate act. Previous Trails games to me always had this balance between new elements and callbacks right, but with the scope of Cold Steel III being bigger than ever before it feels like, for the first time, the story is breaking a bit under the weight of all of Trails's worldbuilding.

All of this said, the outlook I like to have is that I’m only complaining because I care so much about the series and want it to be better. The fact that it’s only number five on a great list of games instead of a shoo-in game of the year is barely even a disappointment. I still love and care about the majority of what Cold Steel III is doing, even if it leaves IV with a lot of work to do in order to bring all of these wayward arcs home.

Biggest Tease: How about not mentioning Estelle like ten times over the course of the game if they're not going to show up in this one, eh?

4. Outer Wilds

Roasting marshmallows, getting the band back together, and falling through black holes. This game is a trip sometimes between its folksy fly-by-night astronaut vibes and just the absolute terror of wandering through space and dying repeatedly out in the unknown. I didn’t realize that it would be this kind of game going in, but taken as an evolution of the walking simulator this has one of the most memorable spaces to explore that I’ve seen along with an equally compelling story to discover.

Honestly, what made me so much more at ease starting it was looking at the map and seeing “oh, it’s only four planets”. They certainly go a lot deeper than that, but between that and the ship’s conspiracy board of threads to follow I found it very manageable to work my way through most of the universe’s mysteries. Eventually though, what I do with pretty much every game about exploration and discovery is break out a guide to find my way through the rest of the puzzles. I don’t fault the game for this, and if anything I would praise that it took as long as it did for me to want to use a guide because I was having a great time on my own. Throw in some quantum mechanics, some timey wimey BS, and a terrific ending and you get a trip for the ages.

Number of deaths from forgetting to put the space suit on: About three too many

3. Resident Evil 2 (2019)

So in addition to the infinity of space, I’m also scared by limited in-game resources and let’s be generous and call them deliberate controls, so I have usually avoided Resident Evil games aside from about half of RE4. But somehow, I braced myself and fumbled my way through Leon A and Claire B. The police station in the game is such an extremely well laid-out and tense space that was perfect for making small, panicked runs from safe room to safe room, hopefully picking up something useful and not spending too much in the process. There’s also just a lot of smart choices that were made here between the map system and the remixing between playthroughs that are not just good additions on an old game but just good additions for games in general.

Eventually, a guide came out for this one too, somewhere around the sewer section because I didn’t want to spend any longer in there than I had to, for good reasons and bad. Anything to get me through a daunting, but super worthwhile experience is fair to me. Play games how you want, and try different types of games that you weren’t ever into before. Sometimes the quality breaks through, just like a Mr. X punch to the head.

Most egregious tension-breaking habit: Playing this game while watching the GBE playthrough

2. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

I didn’t think I’d find this experience here, but Sekiro was the best damn playing thing that I touched all year. I sucked at parries in Souls games and honestly within the first couple of hours of Sekiro I thought I might actually have to give up on it. But fate stubbornness intervened and I ended up discovering a From Software game more in line with my preferences than I thought. As someone who usually gets overwhelmed and doesn’t know what to do with all the armor and weapon options in Souls games, it was great to have one main weapon, one armor set, and a small(er) set of skills and tools to draw on. And yet, and yet, I still felt like I had tons of freedom in combat and stealth situations. Moving around too just felt great and definitely maybe led to some situations where I used that to cheese or otherwise flub through some encounters (double apes, owl father, or anything where I could get a free deathblow through stealth).

Another thing that I finally got out of one of these games is a story that I can somewhat follow without a ton of detective work, to which I have nothing against but just generally don’t prefer. The world has enough going on with it too between lots of cool environments and exhilarating boss fights to deliver another winner of a From Software combat system. Oh, and if you are wondering: yes, I used a guide on this too. I have no shame whatsoever.

Most Prince Zuko-like moment: On my last legs, getting the lightning redirect on Genichiro (castle fight) to set up the clinching blow

1. Fire Emblem: Three Houses

I suppose let’s set the stage. I never played a Fire Emblem game before Heroes and based purely on that, it had my curiosity about what a console Fire Emblem might be like. I kept that curiosity fixed on Three Houses during its development but not until I heard the Persona comparisons did it have my attention. Then some of the early impressions started coming in, and I felt something I hadn’t felt in some time: true pre-release hype for a game. Usually the way I play games nowadays is to take note of what looks good and then try and get to it later on. I don’t usually get things day one or get really excited before release, but somehow this effin’ game broke through all of that. Sure enough, that feeling lasted through actually getting my hands on it, because I was either playing it or feeling super excited about wanting to play more.

Anyway, personal BS aside, I played Black Eagle and did both the Crimson Flower [support Edelgard, AKA the right choice] and Silver Snow [support the Church] scenarios as part of the long campaign of playing this game. My large, proud house had basically all of Blue Lion recruited and a decent amount of Golden Deer and Church of Seiros folks too, so I saw a lot of different character interactions over time. And that, to me, is where the game really excels. Looking at a huge web of social interactions and delighting at “Oh man, I wonder what ______ and ______ have to say to each other” was a great extra layer of strategy to not only win battles with strategy, but win battles with friendship to unlock more conversations.

The story structure is also wild to me. I happened to have the two separate campaigns within one house by going Black Eagle, but the variance in how these two paths play out really surprised me. I've so far avoided seeing how the other houses play out, because someday when there is time, I’d probably like to do another playthrough. That I’d be signing on for another run at this game for the chance of a new perspective on a story I’ve already mostly seen shows just how much this game occupied my time and my mind this year. Sometimes things you have hopes for come through, and this beautiful mess of systems (I didn’t even talk about how much time I spent on tea and lost items!) really brought it.

MVP, on and off the battlefield: Who else but Bernie?

Thanks for reading.