Originally this year was at the bottom of the list because, if I’m being honest, I played little that actually interested me from this year. While I generally don’t think any year was entirely bad, 2019 is maybe overall the weakest. It did manage to squeak about 2014 at the last minute with a game I played over quarantine… but we’ll get to that soon enough.
First, a quick list of noteworthy games this year that I didn’t get around to playing but wanted to make sure you knew I wasn’t forgetting about:
- Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order
- Steamworld Quest
- Astral Chain
- Gears 5
- Super Mario Maker 2
- Telling Lies
- Tetris 99
- What the Golf?
- Apex Legends
- Daemon X Machina
- Resident Evil 2 Remake
- Death Stranding
- Luigi’s Mansion 3
I actually have copies of Luigi’s Mansion 3, Daemon X Machina, Astral Chain, and What the Golf?, I just haven’t gotten around to playing any of them. I’m pretty weary of putting any Tetris game as a “new” game, but Tetris 99 was popular enough and different enough that I think it merited mentioning. I could probably get a good feel for this game in an hour or two of playing, but I’ve never been a HUGE Tetris fan and I have an idea of what my opinion would be. Even if I do end up liking it, I find it HIGHLY unlikely that 99 will unseat my actual number 1.
To be honest, I didn’t play a TON from this year, and I’m not entirely sure why. So this year is maybe going to be a bit shorter, but it’s going to pick up past this point, mark my words!
And now, quick talks about games I didn’t like/didn’t finish:
Pokemon Sword and Shield – Oh boy did this one disappoint me. For the first mainline pokemon game on a home console, I expected this to be the definitive Pokemon game. But it just kind of fell flat. No real noteworthy new features except the Wild Area, a very by-the-numbers story, missing pokemon, poor performance, empty cities, lackluster content, little endgame… I guess it’s not a bad game, but very, very disappointing. Maybe the upcoming expansion packs will help bolster the game though? Here’s hoping.
Heaven’s Vault – Another game by Inkle (makers of 80 Days, mention in the 2014 list), this is maybe their first game that they published that wasn’t mobile. It’s a pretty fascinating visual novel about an archaeologist in a fictional world of islands surrounded by a sea of clouds. It’s advertised as another Choose Your Own Adventure game, but I kind of disagree with that. Your choices are much more limited in Heaven’s Vault than they are in most of Inkle’s other games, and it plays much more like a visual novel. And that’s kind of my main problem with it. It has a really cool art style and high concept, but very little actual gameplay. There are some puzzles for sure, and this weird vocabulary based meta game, but on a whole, it doesn’t have much interactivity and at times it can feel PAINFULLY slow, especially when you just have to sail around the cloud seas for five to ten minutes. And the sailing mechanics aren’t very fun. You get sick of it really quick, but the “fast travel” system is very limited, so you’ll have to play through a lot of it. I’m honestly going too far into detail on this one, but I was honestly pretty disappointed by Inkle’s first project on this scale. I just expected a lot more from them. Unfortunately, when they upgraded the graphics, they were forced to scale back a lot of what made their games so fun. Huge branching narratives, great writing, meaningful choices, great descriptions of areas, and just so much more depth of narrative. I had high hopes for this one, and while it’s still an interesting experience, it feel well short of my expectations.
Phoenix Point – Basically set up to be an XCOM competitor. Though it is quite a bit more complicated than XCOM, which I think is to its detriment. Not dissimilar to a game called Xenonauts that I played for a bit and then dropped. I didn’t finish this one, but would like to get back to it someday.
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice – I know this was GOTY for a lot of people, but I’ve never really been able to get into Soulslike games. I played a bit of this one and it was fun from what I played, but maybe I just need to be in the right mindset before I really get into it.
Outer Wilds – Pretty solid from what I played, but it’s another one that I didn’t get much into. A fun game about a Groundhog’s Day situation where you have to explore a galaxy before it goes supernova, and do it all over again to try to find out what the hell is going on. It’s definitely a very interesting game and I’d like to play it some more at some point, but for now it’ll have to remain as more of an honorable mention.
And now to games that I actually liked!
Untitled Goose Game – The indie darling this year. A fun, goofy, funny game for sure, but it was very short, and the joke started to run a little thin by the end. I felt like maybe there was a bit more they could have done to beef up the game and keep it fresh for longer.
Dicey Dungeons – I’m actually adding this one after I’ve already posted the list. It’s a really solid roguelike with a cute art style and a good sense of humor. Some really egregious RNG holds it back though; frequently it seems like skill takes a backseat to luck, and while luck will always be a part of Roguelikes, it feels like I have far less control in Dicey Dungeons than other games.
Teamfight Tactics – I’ve been playing some auto chess games recently and I had a lot of fun with set 2 of TFT. A fun distraction, but definitely not strong enough to push ahead of the crowd.
Superliminal – A really cool trippy puzzle game I found on Reddit that I played through the Epic Games Store. It uses forced perspective in really interesting ways and definitely borrows elements from the likes of The Stanley Parable and Portal. Unfortunately it isn’t NEARLY as funny as either of those games, nor is its story as strong, but it was fun enough to grab my attention.
Don’t Escape: 4 Days to Survive – A series I recently got into (and is very cheap and quick to catch up on), this is the latest in the “Don’t Escape” series, which is a flash game series from Armor Games which takes the “Escape a Room” point-and-click puzzle genre and flips it on its head. Instead of trying to escape, you’re trying to reinforce a location against something, or otherwise NOT escape. In the first game you’re a werewolf trying to stop yourself from killing anyone when you turn. In the second game you’re trying to reinforce a base before a zombie attack, etc. The first three games are actually all available for free on Armor Games and are pretty short bite-sized experiences (as you’d expect), but there’s also a Steam version which bundles the first three games together. And 4 Days to Survive is a Steam Exclusive game which is the biggest game yet (and, for the record, narratively none of the games are related, so you don’t HAVE to play the first three before playing 4 Days, but I’d recommend it nonetheless because they’re all free, short, and fun). You follow a man named David, trekking through a post-apocolypic wasteland. The weather is wildly dangerous and fluctuates on a dime, terrifying creatures roam the land, and raiders also want you dead. Worst of all, the moon is about to crash to the Earth and kill everyone anyways. But there is some hope in the form of a girl named Cate that you meet who claims she can help you find a spaceship and get out of dodge before everything goes down. But you need to survive for long enough to get that far. For 4 days, to be precise. Fortunately, in your dreams you’re getting premonitions of what dangers are to come that night, giving you time to prepare ahead of time. Sorry this turned into a mini-review, but I kind want to talk about this game and am not sure if it merits its own full review. Either way, it’s good, but pretty graphically primitive, skinny on content, has a bit of a confusing plot that itself doesn’t seem sure what it’s really doing, and pads itself out by making you play through different (but similar) situations in a second playthrough before giving you the true ending.
My Friend Pedro – An interesting take on a action movie kind of game, giving way to slow motion and stylistic kills. Unfortunately, all I seemed to be doing by the end was spamming the dodge move to become practically invincible. As it turns out, all the really cool stuff in the game is also not super easy to pull off or particularly effective, which makes the game less fun. Puzzles at the end of the game also tended to muck up the fun, as did trying to crowbar a coherent story into this game. It’s at its most fun at the beginning when enemies are pushovers and you can experiment more.
Griftlands – I love deck building games. Both physical and digital. In fact, digital DBGs can have something of an advantage over their physical counterparts and provide mechanics that would otherwise be impossible. Griftlands is a really ambitious DBG that goes for a heavier story than its counterparts and I’ve had a lot of fun with it. Unfortunately, its heavier story leads to a much slower format that you’d like for a Roguelike or a Deckbuilder, which gives the game a bit of a hitch (though a recently released mode offers the same DBG action with significantly less story, which definitely helps). Though it’s still in early access, so I can’t award it full points with all the rough patches it still has.
Not much there this time, eh? Well, on to the big contenders this year.
The Outer Worlds – (Not to be confused with Outer Wilds. They’re two completely different games that happen to have a very similar name and were both released in 2019) When I heard this game was coming out, I fully expected this game to run away with GotY this year. A new IP made by the team that made Fallout: New Vegas, one of my favorite RPGs? Sign me the hell up! The stars were right for this one to run away with it, but for some reason I just never felt the game was firing on all cylinders. The companions felt a little flat, the story somewhat uninspired, the good high concept let down by a somewhat uninteresting universe, and the game felt weirdly restrictive. Few weapon choices, less character build customization than I’d like, not terribly fun combat, and, most surprising, a world that simply wasn’t super fun to explore. The game is still solid and I had a lot of fun playing it (and some really great writing helps elevate it further), but I can’t help but feeling that the game just came up short almost entirely across the board. Here’s hoping Obsidian’s next endeavor goes better.
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night – Another game I expected to really make a much better run at GotY. Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoyed Bloodstained quite a bit. I’m a big fan of metroidvania games, and Bloodstained didn’t disappoint for the most part, though I found the 3D graphics looked a little… bad (making it pixel art just like Symphony of the Night probably would have been more appropriate and looked a hell of a lot better), the story wasn’t super interesting (and seemed like a direct copy paste of Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia), and the combat was just okay. It still had a great world, good challenge, huge enemy and weapon variety, and exploring was a blast. I just felt like it had more in it.
Disco Elysium – Did I say that Untitled Goose Game was the indie darling of the year? Because I clearly meant Disco Elysium. Seems like everyone either picked Sekiro or this for their GotY. And… yeah, I can’t deny that it’s a really well made RPG. It has great writing, a deep world full of choices, a really fascinating character building system, some stellar comedy, great mystery, and a story that really kept pushing you through to the end. In particular, the idea to make each of your statistics in the game have their own personalities that you can talk to and interact with as you play is just brilliant and so well realized, leading to some of the funniest moments in the game (such as your Encyclopedia personality flubbing every answer on a quiz and constantly feeding you the wrong answers while you argue with it about how much it really knows). I do have to say that some of the writing and direction the story takes can be a bit… er, big for its britches. Sometimes characters are talking about shit and the analogies and symbolism just completely loses me and I find my eyes just glazing over waiting for it to get back to something I do understand. Also, the lack of any real combat in the game can make the game feel one giant book with graphics. Nothing wrong with a visual novel, but with how the game presented itself, I definitely felt like there’d be… a bit more action involved than I actually got. To be honest, this game made a serious run of it, but there were a couple games I liked more.
Devil May Cry 5 – I have a soft spot for this series. DMC4 was one of the first console games that I ever owned, and despite the problems it had, I really liked that game. And Devil May Cry 5 does not disappoint. It knows that DMC4 was rushed and DMC Reboot wasn’t what the fans wanted, so it returns to its roots and turns everything up to 11. Tons more enemies, three playable characters, tons of different weapons and abilities, lots of varied and huge bosses, balls to the wall action, an incredible soundtrack, snappy one liners… this feels like the ultimate Devil May Cry game. The story can definitely be goofy, but Devil May Cry revels in its silliness and manages to keep things rolling right back into the action whenever it gets in danger of getting too campy. And the combat system/action really is the star here. With three characters and tons of weapons and combos to pick from, combat never gets old, and killing enemies at the end is just as satisfying as killing them at the start. I will say that I wasn’t the biggest fan of how one character (V) fought, but that’s a minor complaint in the grand scheme of things. The story is pretty dumb, but sufficiently over the top and ends on a completely bombastic finale that definitely sets up a future game that I imagine will only get more insane. But still, not my favorite of the year.
At one point, I was set to make Devil May Cry 5 my game of the year. But while I delayed making this list and quarantine hit, I happened to finally play a game that had been recommended to me over and over again…
Slay the Spire – Hell. Yes. I touched on this when talking about Griftlands, but I absolutely LOVE deck building games. But up until this year they’ve mostly been physical only. But thanks to Slay the Spire, that’s changing. Digital DBGs are becoming more frequent, and I love it (on a related note: this year’s Monster Train is another fine example of a quality digital DBG and I love it). Slay the Spire is just a quality roguelike. You have four classes to pick from and each play differently. After each fight, you get a chance to add cards to your deck. Throughout the run you’re trying to manage your health, deck size, artifact count, all while trying to set up your disgusting Wombo Combo that will end up winning you the game. And that’s another thing: rather than discourage these gross, borderline game breaking combos, the game almost challenges you to find a way to make them happen. The game is difficult enough that sometimes that level of cheese is necessary to counter the game’s bullshit. But good bullshit. The kind of bullshit you want in a roguelike. You don’t want the game to just roll over and get beaten after the first run (COUGHIntotheBreachCOUGH). You want to EARN that victory. And Slay the Spire allows you to do just that. It has a really unique visual style (almost like a paper cutout art style), a great concept, and the devs are still updating it (one of the four classes was just added earlier this year). So here’s to a huge future for Digital Deck Building Games! And well done to Slay the Spire, my favorite game of 2019.
The Loony Bin 