Every year, we here at The A.V. Club’s Games section get together in December to reflect on another big bushel of days gone by. (Although not Days Gone; that one didn’t crack our list.) Games are discussed, highlights are mused, feelings are explored. Numerical rankings are eschewed—they’re great, we love them, if you’ve got one, please share it in the comments—on account of them not being exactly our style. Instead, we’ve assembled a list of those games that stuck with us for whatever reason in 2019, and one strong, specific reason why we liked them. Some of these games appeared on our mid-year list; most of them didn’t, as 2019 continues to toss up welcome surprises in its latter half. If there’s a theme to the list, meanwhile, it’s that these were the games we just couldn’t get out of our heads. Whether walking through the wilderness of the United Cities Of America, trudging the streets of somber Revachol, or just obsessing about a beloved K-pop group, these were the titles that took up residence in our brains and refused to vacate in 2019.
As always, feel free to offer up your own entries in the comments, using our beloved “I liked X because Y” format. We’re looking forward to seeing what your gaming in 2019 was like.
Apex Legends
I liked Apex Legends because it’s the first online shooter in a long time that I want to stick with for as long as possible. I play Call Of Duty every year, I tried Overwatch for a while, and really enjoy PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds when I’m in the right mood to handle something so uniquely stressful, but none of them have really clicked with me in the way that Apex Legends has. It’s a game I want to keep playing for as long as I possibly can, learning the new characters as they’re introduced and keeping up with the ways that the developers at Respawn try to shake things up. My big concern earlier in 2019 was whether or not Apex would be able to hold onto its early buzz with meaningful updates throughout the year, and Respawn has definitely pulled that off. My favorite thing that they’ve zeroed in on is the game’s personality, moving past each character’s specific gimmick in favor of skins and voice lines that lean more into who they are than what they do. [Sam Barsanti]
BTS World
I liked BTS World because it was an impressive bit of fan service that didn’t make me rotate my phone. If you’re planning on creating a mobile game that centers on arguably the biggest boy band on the planet, the pressure to create an experience that will satisfy its fandom has to be immense. Instead of buckling, Netmarble, South Korea’s largest mobile-gaming company, teamed up with BTS to make an immersive simulator that shines a very human light on the band and its arduous path to success. As you stand in as the group’s manager and navigate its rise to fame, it’s hard not to marvel at the amount of time that both the developers and BTS must have dedicated to this project in an effort to make it as realistic as possible. Mounds of taped footage, voice work, side stories, and music work together to help players get a full sense of how their efforts “affect” this very real group of men. (There’s even one instance involving a simulated video call that had me unconsciously fixing my hair.) And while not having to switch my phone to landscape mode might not sound like a major deal, it does speak to the overall user-friendliness of an interface that allows you to slide in and out of the game with ease. BTS World is a thorough thank-you to the BTS ARMY and some first-rate fun for even the most casual of fans. [Shannon Miller]
Control
I liked Control because it made me happy to see an under-appreciated studio get a win. Remedy—the studio behind Control—made the old Max Payne games and got a huge push from Microsoft for the overly experimental Quantum Break, so it’s not like the developers have been languishing in obscurity. But it seemed like Remedy’s last few games struggled to hit that level of general recognition that they’ve deserved. With Control, it’s like seeing a band you really like stick to it for a handful of albums and then finally hit the charts with a record that is not only surprisingly popular but that also fully embraces the charm and personality that made you like the band in the first place. Control is just as weird and clever as other Remedy games, like the criminally underrated Alan Wake, but the studio finally managed to put that weird cleverness together with a game that feels good to play, has a strong story, and just looks really neat (instead of just having maybe two of the three). [Sam Barsanti]
Death Stranding
I liked Death Stranding because I can’t stop thinking about it. I played a ton of Death Stranding in a relatively short period of time for the review, and being unable to really talk to anyone about some of the ridiculous shit in it forced me to sit with it in a way that probably wasn’t good for me. When I was playing Death Stranding, I was trying to process what I was seeing: the headless giant made of ink, the multiple full-length credits sequences, Norman Reedus’ character saying that a cool motorcycle should be on his AMC motorcycle show. When I wasn’t playing Death Stranding, I was trying to figure out how to articulate my thoughts on it. Was it fun? Not really. Did I enjoy it? Somehow, yes. It’s silly and stupid and pretentious and stylish in all the best and worst ways simultaneously. I wish more games were like it, and I also wish no games were like it ever again. [Sam Barsanti]
Disco Elysium
I liked Disco Elysium because it made me feel everything. ZA/UM’s beautiful, brilliant, bold, funny, heartbreaking detective RPG seemed to arrive fully formed in my life, like Athena emerging from the head of a deranged, smiling Zeus. It’s my game of the year in a walk, slotting neatly into my personal canon alongside titles like Chrono Trigger and Planescape: Torment, the latter of which it resembles, and sometimes even surpasses. As an amnesiac detective wandering through an alternate universe version of France, I committed acts of vandalism, argued with my inner gym teacher, traced bullet paths, talked open a locked door, contemplated my copotype, investigated a hole in the world, and was almost killed by an incredibly uncomfortable chair. Disco Elysium feels like it was derived from nothing, in the best way possible; it doesn’t feel like a reaction or a reference to the current conversation, but the beginning of a new one all on its own. It made me feel happy, miserable, touched, and more; it possesses that rare quality of grace, an acknowledgment of the sublime goodness of humanity that can only be stumbled into when you allow its evil to be fully contemplated as well. It’s good, is the point I’m making here. [William Hughes]
Elsinore
I liked Elsinore because I’m a sucker for a good time-loop story. And you could argue that Golden Glitch’s innovative adventure game is a great time-loop story, given that it’s adapted from Hamlet, which, you know, is pretty well-regarded in literary circles. Elsinore earns its place among great time-loop games not through its Shakespearean influences, though, but by pushing just how far the limits of its famous story can go before breaking. Do you want to have playable character Ophelia kill off Hamlet, seduce his uncle, and rule Denmark? Go for it. Run off and be a pirate? Why not? Just straight up kill everybody? Hell, that one’s practically canon. Elsinore is sometimes a little clunky, but its innovative approach to keeping track of the schedules of the play’s various characters, and its thoughtful meditations on fate, destiny, and doom—topics Shakespeare himself could only have approved of, despite the unfamiliar format—are worth revisting time and time again. [William Hughes]
Heave Ho
I liked Heave Ho because it’s one of the funniest couch co-op games I’ve ever played. The basic premise is simple: You and up to three friends have to toss yourselves around an environment to reach an exit point, making Barrel Of Monkeys-style chains and throwing each other through the air. The catch is that the only control you have over your little guy is moving the arms around and grabbing things with either your left or right hand, which is why you have to do a lot of throwing and catching and praying that you can make an impossible leap. The platforming puzzles are fun and clever, and Heave Ho very smartly takes away any real punishment for failure. If you miss a jump, your character simply explodes offscreen, showers your friends in cartoony viscera, and then comes back for another try. This makes failing funny, which keeps Heave Ho from becoming frustrating, which makes it easy to want to keep playing. The only real barrier to that, if you’re playing on Switch, is the crushing finger pain from having to hold down those shoulder buttons for an extended period of time. [Sam Barsanti]
Outer Wilds
I liked Outer Wilds because it made me feel the thrill of space exploration. 2019’s best space-set video game with “Outer” and a word that starts with “W” in its title isn’t afraid of killing you, or eating you alive, or sending you hurtling into a sun. (Twenty-two-minute time loops are handy that way.) It’s also not afraid to show you something incredible, though: sand flowing between two twin planets; massive storms sweeping across an ocean’s surface, cities suspended above the heart of a planet. Or even just the solar system itself, as glimpsed from the window of a ramshackle wooden spaceship. Or not—remember not to fall into any random black holes, kids, unless your spacesuit’s got plenty of air. [William Hughes]
Resident Evil 2
I liked Resident Evil 2 because it was the ideal distillation of classic survival horror. I played the original Resident Evil games when they were new, and though I was a dumb kid at the time, I can pretty confidently say that none of those first three games are as good as the Resident Evil 2 remake. It has the excellent sense of place that people loved about this series and the endearingly byzantine puzzles that we all tolerated/enjoyed, but it also has a more modern, player-friendly sensibility that makes it feel good instead of just scary. Really, it’s the best kind of remake in the way that it captures an idealized version of Resident Evil 2 that fans have in their heads, rather than the literal version that won’t have aged particularly well. If we’re lucky, Capcom will do a whole series of remakes and then promptly run it into the ground just like the first time around. (They’ve already announced a new Resident Evil 3.) [Sam Barsanti]
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
I liked Sekiro because it made parrying sword strikes feel as natural as breathing. There were a lot of games peeking over FromSoftware’s shoulders at the Dark Souls playbook this year—Remnant, Code Vein, The Surge 2—all to pretty mixed, sometimes even meh, effect. But From itself charged boldly ahead, revamping its latest entry for a focus on stealth and the satisfying feeling of an enemy’s attack deflected. Shadows might die twice, but players died a whole lot more, with Sekiro’s difficulty kicking off a fresh argument about the role and desirability of customizable difficulty in games. (Short version: It’s pretty much always a desirable trait.) But when the game goes right, it sings like few other entries in the genre; there’s nothing quite like parrying a headless ape at just the right moment to land the final, perfect (un)killing strike. [William Hughes]
Slay The Spire
I liked Slay The Spire because it let me see what was coming next. Seeing the future in a turn-based game is a powerful tool, for players and developers alike. In the hands of players, it allows you to dodge otherwise certain danger, while for game designers, it widens the limits of what those dangers can be. Slay The Spire gets that, with enemies that will tell you exactly what they’re going to do to you, and only a single turn in which to pull together a hand of cards to defy them. The game builds its appealingly replayable nature from those cards, challenging you to find new builds, strategies, and coveted infinite loop combos. But the brilliance is more elemental, leveraging the power of foreknowledge in order to push players’ problem-solving talents to their limits. [William Hughes]
68 Comments
A lot of weird stuff came out this year.
Personally, I found Death Stranding to be quite fun. I really liked working with the other porters to make the world better and much more traversable.
I really wish the marketing emphasized the shared porter stuff, because aside from the surprisingly great characters, that was easily the star of the show. The trailers got a lot of dismissal for stupid things like “It’s a walking simulator!”
For me from this list alone its a toss up between Sekiro and RE2. In fact those would probably be my choices anyway.
I’m not going to blast people who aren’t into games. You don’t have to like games! They aren’t for everyone.But a mobile game made by a huge corporate nonsense to burn money out of fans of a Korean boy band sounds…Well, you know exactly what it sound like.
Which is kind of odd, since the same studio just released a surprisingly good and extremely free-to-play friendly King of Fighters mobile game.
Like heresy.
Death Stranding, Disco Elysium, Sekiro is my top three.
/cheer /cheer! That’s a splendid selection of 2019 classics. Though something feels conspicuously absent above… hmm… can’t quite place my finger on it…Oooo, that’s right. Sam Barlow’s Telling Lies! I liked Telling Lies because it made the horrors of contemporary duplicity utterly palpable and chilling. If the 2019 HBO mini-series Chernobyl extensively depicts the global scale of a nation choosing to ignore facts it finds contrary to its grand narrative, even to the point of throwing its best and brightest onto an effigy pyre to maintain that facade, Telling Lies goes all in on the elucidation of the personal stakes of deception—much smaller in scope but equally devastating.Here in this FMV gem, you can examine, Citizen Kane-style, the depths and nuance of one man’s continually perpetuated delusions of white-knight “greatness.” This is his Zelda world and he’s Link and he’s doing whatever he thinks is right, every single time he wills to do so. No matter how much his boss, his wife, his friends; ANYONE and everyone tells him he’s wrong and/or he needs to stop yesterday. He never stops gaslighting, course correcting his narrative, and preceding with a new set of lies to paint himself anew from victim to hero once more. Again and again and again. And the ripples of disgusting damage he causes is only eclipsed by the sheer pointlessness of it all. None of this has to happen. But if you’ve lived with anyone remotely like this from 2016 onward, and chances are you know DOZENS of people like this, the cycle just keeps repeating itself. “I didn’t mean it like that! That was taken out of context! I know I’m a good person! This world’s getting out of hand! Nobody ever listens to my side and just does what’s best for them!” Someone who only preaches but never listens. Who only knows how to control because he’s too scared to truly be vulnerable and take the risk of rejection. And who can never truly change because you need to be capable of looking inward and reflecting rather than deflecting to be able to progress as a person.There’s always going to be people like this out there. But we don’t have to keep building society around their narratives and subsidizing it, either. At least we’re making some progress in that regard.
Damn, I’ve been seeing things about this game for months, but you finally sold me. That sounds rad.
I hope you have a great time with it! Note that its weakest element is that, since you’re using a search engine of sorts to sift through dozens of clips for information on this guy and his life over the course of a few years, you can frequently stumble into one side of a 5 minute conversation where one person’s just listening to someone else (whom we can’t hear) and rarely interjecting. There’s a side for each clip of that 5 minute talk, but you only hear the one side and if that person you’re viewing isn’t talking, you can still potentially just watch them react to the other person (albeit with fast forward and rewind capability + subtitles to let you know when to stop). You search and hone in on the words they actually say in those conversations, and the actors do a really good job of adding nuance and personality to those sequences where they’re just listening to the other person talk, but it’s not for everyone. This game, much like FMV forefather Gabriel Knight II before it, is very My Dinner with Andre: The Game. “Tell me more! Bon Mot! Trenchant insight!” So if that sounds wonderful, the deeper you go down the FMV clip rabbit hole, the more resonant and engrossing its sequences can be. If that comes off instead as a really awkward way to analyze pieces of someone’s life over more traditional cutscenes punctuated by 1-3 choices on where to go next, then this ride might end up just stacking on tedium more than anything else.
That’s good to know. I went ahead and bought a copy. I figured I’d dig it, because I really liked “Her Story” and this seems similar. I’ll report back when I’ve got a good sense of it. Thanks!
Telling Lies was utterly boring and poorly presented *as a game* due to that questionable choice to make real-time rewinding necessary to enjoy the game. Genre and subjectivity being what it is…the story was very bland and cliche for me and there was next to no mystery or drama to actually hook a viewer.
Boy you must have hated Life Is Strange
I don’t believe you ever had 6-10 minute clips to watch in Life is Strange. The amount of time you spend just in rewinding alone is a substantial part of playing Telling Lies.
I really liked Her Story, but I thought TL was just a heavily drawn out version that turned playing into a chore. I’m not even sure if I finished it. Maybe I’ll give it a 2nd look.
I’ll be sure to include this in my “Shamelessly Crowbar’d in GIFs 2019″ roundup
Where’s the goose from?
It’s a fan made gif depicting the goose from Untitled Goose Game transporting cargo ala Death Stranding.
I’ll be honest. The only fully brand new game I enjoyed this year (i.e. not a port or a remake) was Astral Chain. Most of the sequels I played (such as Mario Maker 2 or Pokémon Sword/Shield) were also massively disappointing. I actually played more games this year that originally came out before 2019.
What were some of your favorites among the ones you played from previous years? Mine included Dark Souls, Celeste, Moonlighter, Shadow of the Colossus, and Zelda Oracle of Ages, all of which I played for the first time this year (DS and SotC were the remasters). Those are all amazing games, and would all be higher on my top ten list this year than everything outside of Sekiro and possibly Dragon Quest XI.
Astral Chain probably wasn’t my favorite game of this year, but it was probably my most totally enjoyed game of this year. My overall favorite experiences were often big highs with disappointing lows (Control, FFXIV: Shadowbringers, Octopath Traveler), but there wasn’t a minute that I was playing Astral Chain where I wasn’t having just a ton of fun.
I think Astral Chain has been kind of left out of year-end conversations not because it’s a bad game, but because it wasn’t what players were expecting. If you wanted something like the philosophy of NieR:Automata, you weren’t going to get it here, and this didn’t have the pure focus on combat of a game like Bayonetta. It has basically the same pacing as an immersive sim like Dishonored, and that’s not really what Platinum is known for.
I just realized I did not play any games in 2019 that were actually released in 2019, save:
Kingdom Hearts IIIUntitled Goose GameI assume this means these are my two favorite games of 2019. Damn, I replayed a lot of stuff this year; I’m hoping 2020 isn’t the same….and I doubt it will be with Cyberpunk 2077, The Last of Us 2, and Ghost of Tsushima all lined up already.I hope everyone else had a great year of gaming!
RE2 was everything I wanted out of a remake.
My three choices are:Apex LegendsControlOuter WorldsThese are the three games that i’d continue cherish and talk about in the future. Apex Legends will have a healthy e-sports scene for a decade. Control will definitely become a cult hit in the vein of Alan Wake and Pathologic, and The Outer Worlds will become a very relevant game in the current age of late capitalism with stories of labour exploitation in places like Amazon.While yes, Death Stranding is a masterpiece, to me it’s still weak in a lot of areas especially as a guy whose favourite films are Children of Men and Mad Max Fury Road. Death Stranding might be Kojima’s best, but I definitely won’t be talking about the game like how I can talk about Nier Automata and Children of Men for hours.
The part of Deatb Stranding that I COULD talk about for hours is how amazingly it did online multiplayer. Kojima managed to make a system that is relentlessly positive and supportive, and doesn’t even give the option to be an asshole. Not only that, but participating in it is actively beneficial for ALL involved. I’ve never had any interest in online multiplayer in any other game. In DS, as soon as I hooked up a new place to the chiral network, the first thing I did was see what infrastructure other players had put into place, and how I could add to it.
Agreed.
i was super worried early on about the consequences of connecting to other players — would the beautiful landscapes be utterly fucked by all the bridges and highways and whatever? But I ended up breathing a sigh of relief every time i brought a new area online or left an area with no coverage, and I built up everything I could just to win as much approval as i could. I made sure to like the fuck out of any spare zipline pylons that i incorporated into my colossal personal zipline network throughout the entire mountain area.the only time i feel like somebody might have been griefing was when i found a ladder that didn’t actually serve any purpose, it was just placed against a sheer cliff and couldn’t reach any ledge. i just plopped a “do not use” sign in front of it and moved on.
Man, I probably should’ve built more ziplines. I suspect that that right there is the reason why I spent so many hours torturously sliding trucks sideways up forty degree inclines. I have a really bad habit of overloading on missions and cargo in that game. If I was smarter about it, I would’ve just taken on two or three missions at a time and used motorcycles and ziplines to get around the mountains. Oh well, hindsight and all that.ps- In regards to the ladder to nowhere, you know you can disassemble other people’s constructions, right?
i did learn i could disassemble other constructions, but i never did because i wasn’t sure if that affected other players. in hindsight, it seems obvious that it wouldn’t, but at the time i was worried about impeding other players’ validation generatorsziplines honestly feel like a bit of a mistake, gameplay-wise. they cost very little to make and they allow you to move as much cargo as you can carry as far as you can build your network faster than any other form of transportation without expending any stamina or fighting BTs. The only limiting factors that I found is that it’s unlikely that any random player is going to see any more than a couple of your pylons (so they’re not going to stumble on your entire network and praise you for it, they’ll just, at most, incorporate some of your better-placed pylons into their own network), and that you can’t take more than you can carry with you. Using them even cheers BB up!
I going to say you are mostly correct regarding other players being positive but I’ve seen a few instances of trucks wedged into places, specifically nearby the entrances of bunkers. I can’t say for certain if this happened due to an accidental park job or an intentional means to make life hard for people who have to move the trucks out of the way but it was usually stuck in a way that required some precision.
Baba Is You has to be one of the most unique, not to mention mind melting, gaming experiences I’ve ever had. I’m gonna have to give that quiet, unassuming little indie puzzle game my GOTY pick.
Definitely one of the most unique games I’ve played in a long time. It friggin’ melted my brain.
Death Stranding does not belong here.
Surely the Korean boy band mobile game does, though? I can’t tell whether this a crappy list, a mediocre year for games, or possibly both.
Yeah I did not say that, but you construe how you will.Outer Worlds belonged on this list, and should have knocked both those garbage choices off.
Then write a comment about Outer Worlds then! That’s the whole point of this: what game was personally your favorite and why?
The Outer Worlds was just okay.
kojima says this is the first strand-type gamebut he forgot about Desert Bus
I wouldn’t call myself a gamer by any stretch, I played lots of video games back in my younger days but now it’s rare for me to pick a new one up. That said, I have had more fun playing the new COD Modern Warfare than I have playing video games in years. It definitely has its issues but man, it is fun.
This year’s cod is fantastic. My weekly squad has been playing CoD together for over 10 years now and this is the best entry since Black ops 2 for me. It has a lot of problems but far less than what Black ops 4 became late in the year
When I was playing Death Stranding, I started dreaming about balancing shit on my back. Even in dreams, I was stumbling left left left straight straight right right right straight left straight right straight. It was nightmarish. I’m right there with Sam. I think I might have kind of loved it, but equally never want to play anything like it ever ever again. After about five straight days of skidding trucks up mountains and stomping through nigh endless rock quarries at 2mph, I was just like, “Sigh…. I’m really tired of being the apocalypse FedEX guy”.
When the game first introduced gangs who were literally addicted to delivering cargo, I found it hilariously stupid. Then 10 hours later I was the one addicted to delivering cargo all the time and suddenly Kojima’s genius was evident. Death Stranding also had probably the most well done cast of characters in any Kojima game. Everyone had a fun personality and natural character arcs. Mads Mikkelsen was obviously the star, but even initially boring Norman Reedus grew on me (he slowly evolves from generic bitter guy to someone who actually shows affection for people).
Outer Wilds was so good. I wish I could forget it and play it again.
I benefit greatly that my other half goes to bed really early and our son usually will crawl into bed with her so they can read/talk, etc. That gives me a good 3 to 4 hours at night where I can play uninterrupted. This year I finished the Mass Effect trilogy on my PS3. Bought a PS4 after that and finished up Spiderman and Detroit: Become Human. Currently working on Uncharted 4. I already bought a couple of the games on most “best games on PS4″ lists and asked for more for xmas so I have plenty to choose from going forward.
I really don’t know what my favorite game of the year is. Overall it’s probably Astral Chain but I really didn’t like it THAT much. Maybe its the Outer Worlds but again I didn’t completely love that game to death. I think I played too many games this year to even pick the one that stood out to me the most. Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, ok fine I’ll just say Death Stranding and sit down…
Astral Chain is so close to being an amazing game that the fact that it just really isn’t one stings extra badly.
I see some of the flack the BTS game’s inclusion is getting, and I get it (though at the same time, these aren’t all auteur, non-corporate games, so I was surprised and kind of intrigued by it because I am interested in the formal aspects of it. Telling Lies, another game that’s getting praise, never piqued my interest because I remember the fmvs of old–though Shinigami Apple Merchant’s endorsement induces several second thoughts–and cause despite all the praise that Her Story got I thought it was a bit clunky and the story was “just” a thriller potboiler. But I know that’s my taste, so I know other things can appeal and go on, and so with this BTS game. I dunno, it reminds me of professional wrestling fandom, yes, it’s all fiction, but it’s the execution of the plotlines that matter. I’m not a fan of BTS, but now I want to know how a well-designed game for players who probably don’t identify as gamers plays.
If there’s one word for me that sums up 2019 gaming in a nutshell, it’s variety. And I’ve looked at my top ten list in the past month and consistently realized, “wow, I can probably only wholeheartedly recommend 2-3 of these games to anyone. A lot of this stuff could run super hot OR cold depending upon what people want from a gaming experience.” I absolutely adored Telling Lies, Eliza, and Shenmue III to the core, but they’re not remotely for everyone out there. And there are plenty of people who didn’t connect equally to Untitled Goose Game and Resident Evil 2 Remake despite how stylish and charming and well designed those gems were. They wanted UGG to have stronger puzzles or stealth components or they desired RE2R to be more hokey like the original RE2, etc. So I totally get where you’re coming from. It’s fascinating to see all these different niche games open pathways to people who might not have ever otherwise checked out an interactive experience before and connect with the joys of gaming. 2019 gaming might not reach the heights of 2017’s accolades, but it certainly has cast a very unique, wide net to all kinds of different platforms and designs out there.
Slay the Spire is great. I found it on XBox Gamepass and just blew so many hours into it
Wish the write-up on Control had said more about the game itself, but I share the general sentiment. For some reason, I root for Remedy, and I’m glad control is slowly but steadily building up attention and acclaim. And it doesn’t just feel good to play — some of the abilities Jessie gets, I can’t remember a game that did those things better than Control. Some reviews say the combat got repetitive, and I can see what they mean, but with fun, really well-implemented powers like that, there was never a dull moment for me. I can’t wait for DLC to dig in to some of the games remaining mysteries and storylines.And the Ashtray Maze has to be one of the best sequences/moments of a game this year too.
Also just bought Outer Wilds, and haven’t played it for more than a couple hours yet, but I can tell its going to be special..
Control was super fun, and the Ashtray Maze for sure the silliest fun I’ve had with a game this year, but Outer Wilds, man….whew….GOTY for me. Game of the last two years.
I personally hated the Ashtray Maze—Control was actually my first Remedy game, and right up until that point, it had this weird feeling of finding kindred spirits to me. Everything they did was just so perfectly something I love and would want to see happen, even if I didn’t think of it myself.But the Ashtray Maze… I’d found that part of the map much earlier in the game, of course, when it’s a really fascinating dead end, and my imagination was abuzz with what that could be, since I’d heard people praise it without details before. And it seemed like it was going to be exactly something I love, which is just hardcore messing with physical space; surely this was going to be a big House of Leaves take, or maybe like some of ‘modern’ Doctor Who’s takes on that like The God Complex, Flatline, or It Takes You Away.But then I get there, and it’s just… not. It nailed home this feeling that no, these developers aren’t in step with me, and they have a very different idea of how their story should climax. It’s fortunate that I loved the sequence immediately after the Ashtray Maze, but the maze itself just profoundly disappointed me.
I’ve been a hardcore Remedy fan for years, so my hype for control was absurdly high. It actually exceeded my expectations with the amount of detail and extremely satisfying combat. It definitely feels like the culmination of all their past work and hopefully the DLC actually manages to properly integrate Alan Wake after he was teased.
I am so, so glad to see Outer Wilds on here. Even though I finished it months ago, I keep thinking back to it. I’m so used to playing linear games – that make your next move not only obvious but obligatory – that the freedom of Outer Wilds was a complete breath of fresh air.After the pretty simple tutorial stage at the beginning, once you’ve got your launch codes you are at liberty to go anywhere in the beautifully realised solar system. The story slowly reveals itself, as do the various characters to meet, places you’ll want to explore and puzzles you’ll need to solve.It never tells you what to do next, but gives you just enough prompts and clues to figure it out for yourself. I only resorted to online help once (for something to do with the Interloper), and I really wish I hadn’t even done that, as the thrill of figuring things out for yourself is incredibly rewarding.Combine the scale and variety of the solar system to explore, the fascinating backstory, the intuitive controls, the beautiful art-style and the haunting music, and not only is this my favourite game of 2019, it’s on a par with my favourite games of all time (The Last of Us, The Witcher 3, the Mass Effect trilogy…).If you haven’t tried it yet, you should play it!
This list offends me.And Dragon Quest Builders 2 is GOTY and it isn’t on here.
Well, since you specifically asked for a numbered list, I’d be happy to share mine! Here’s the short version:1. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice2…everything elseHere’s a more fleshed out list of my favorite games of the year:Sekiro: Shadows Die TwiceDragon Quest XI SAstral ChainThe Legend of Zelda: Link’s AwakeningFire Emblem Three HousesCadence of HyruleBloodstained: Ritual of the NightShovel Knight: King of CardsLuigi’s Mansion 3Super Mario Maker 2Games I really want to play but haven’t yet: Control, Outer Wilds, Disco ElysiumI liked Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice for two main reasons: It has my favorite melee combat in any game ever (I like the writer’s metaphor above about parrying getting to feel as natural as breathing). And, because there are absolutely no frills at all. Every item is valuable, every move, ability, stance, etc, is useful, every system is vital to progression. Also, I liked the act of moving through the environment far more than in other FromSoft games.Also, quick shoutout to Cadence of Hyrule, of which I am currently in the middle. That game is incredibly fun and addicting!
Disco Elysium is GOTY for me, hands down. Some of the best writing I’ve ever seen in a video game. Not just a worthy successor to Planescape: Torment, but a game that actually surpasses it.
Just fucking no with Control. If you wanted to make a Dead Souls style game, you should have marketed it as such. (And then I wouldn’t have wasted my money.) It looks good (but really? the raytracing stuff is cool, but WAAAAAY overused/overdone), but the constant fucking dying makes me put it down for a month at a time. Just not into games without a difficulty option/slider/etc.
UNTITLED GOOSE GAME
Jedi fallen order may have been ripping off 12 other games, but it ripped them off well into something surprisingly coherent and entertaining. It didn’t have a single original idea, but it was a solid star wars game and that was more than enough.
I’m curious. Do any of the people who put together this list own a Switch?
This is the worst year for video games.
Mine would be: Outer Worlds, Outer Wild, Days Gone, Borderlands 3, Ghost Recon: Breakpoint. I love single player and co-op games.
Outer Worlds was my favorite of the year. A fun RPG where your decisions have real consequences, but you can play through it, sidequests included, in 25 hours. Much as I love an RPG I can sink 120 hours into, I’m a new dad and don’t have that kind of time anymore, so I appreciate a developer putting out such a solid but short RPG.
I’m going to talk about some games that I haven’t seen mentioned elsewhere in this thread.I liked Manifold Garden because it proved that mind-bending puzzles didn’t have to be excruciatingly difficult. Once you get the hang of the game’s gravity- and factal-based mechanics, it’s pretty smooth sailing. This is a game that rewards thinking through a puzzle rather than brute force, but each puzzle is perfectly tuned so that tinkering gives you a hint about what to do. Couple that with a gorgeous aesthetic and butter-smooth animations, and you’ve got one of the best first-person puzzlers in years.I liked Heaven’s Vault because it actually made me feel like I was uncovering a mystery. Heaven’s Vault is a difficult game to describe. It’s part linguistics simulator, part Telltale clone. It also features something akin to stop-motion animation but where characters leave trails of slowly-fading palimpsests behind. And it’s all wrapped up in a unique aesthetic I’d describe as “post-post-apocalyptic fantasy Arab-futurist.” The prose is stunning, and the story brims with historical intrigue. It’s not a game I’d recommend to everyone, but it’s definitely a game for people who like experiences such as these.I liked What the Golf? because it’s basically the ludic equivalent of an absurdist Twitter account. This is a game that’s almost entirely premised on jokes. Deeply stupid jokes. It’ll take one joke, layer it on top of another joke, and then call back to that joke an hour later by mixing it with a third and fourth joke. It parodies everything under the sun, and when it runs out of stuff to parody, it just parodies itself. You don’t have to like golf to like this game — in fact, hating golf is encouraged — but you do have to like being pelted with extremely stupid humour.
I like all these games, I’m a professional gamer and I enjoy more my games when I play by using ppsspp here I download https://freeppsspp.info/ppsspp-gold/ . Its so amazing. Thanks for sharing these games.
I just picked up Control yesterday on a decent sale. Love it. Less of a game and more like watching a really good cable drama series (feels very much like FX’s Lesion). The gameplay is smooth and enjoyable, but not challenging—and I don’t really want it to be. It’s just a necessary bit of grind to pace out getting to the next story point. I also picked up Disco Elyssium a couple months ago, and similarly enjoyed the story, but didn’t stick with it. The progression was a bit slow. I feel compelled to explore every single interactable point—and it’s rewarding to do so, but it does make getting back into the game feel like a 5 hour commitment. Control feels like a game that’s getting somewhere in a relative hurry. I will definitely come back to Disco soon though, and do commend it to anyone.