Well, here we are. I’ve always wanted to publish a Game of the Year list, so let’s start with 2019! Here are my favorites of this year, and I genuinely hope you check some of them out.
10
– Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night –
Ah Bloodstained. The long awaited, glorious return of Koji Igarashi. Igarashi, known to most gamers as just “Iga”, is responsible for some of the most beloved Castlevania games ever made, and is widely credited with creating the Metroid-vania subgenre With Konami, the developer of Castlevania, and many other beloved properties turning itself into well, whatever this is over the last 5 years, Iga’s “Castlevania, but totally NOT Castlevania” game was eagerly anticipated. If only I had done some research into which console to purchase it on. With gorgeous graphics, a wonderful soundtrack, and delightfully campy/awful voice acting, I was all-in on my Switch purchase of the game until I started getting the creeping feeling that the game wasn’t optimized properly for this platform. With several second loading times between rooms, more freezing and slowdown than I’m comfortable with, and overall jankiness, I can say that it was one of my favorites of the year, while also screaming from the rooftops that you should buy this on any console besides the Nintendo Switch.
9
– What the Golf? –
Oh man, what a love-hate relationship I had with this fucking game. Love in that, aside from Threes this is far and away my favorite mobile game of all time. Despite some inscrutable touch screen controls, the love and humor and care that went into each and every level shines through at every moment. But now, the hate. OH, the hate. There I was, patiently waiting for a bug fix that would allow me to claim the 1% completion percentage I was missing. Then, when the update came, it wiped my 99% completion game clean. Just gone. I’m slowly but surely making my way back through (gotta get that 100%!), but the lack of developer communication, alongside this huge black mark, kept me from rating it higher.
8
– Judgment –
SEGA has had an excellent long running series centered around a very specific, detailed section of Tokyo known as Kamurocho, focused on the Yakuza underworld called, wouldn’t you know it, Yakuza. With nearly 8 games under their belt, the team, Ryu Ga Gotoku wanted to try something new. While I haven’t yet finished it (so for all I know, I could end up rating this thing a hell of a lot higher), what I’ve gotten so far is a well written and acted Japanese detective story, set in an open world, where I can’t wait to see what comes next. And, well..I can’t.
7
– Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order –
I truly wanted to rate Fallen Order higher. Just from following it throughout development, the question of “hey, wanna play Sekiro, except the combat is Lightsaber-focused?” was something I couldn’t quite get out of my head. Now that I’ve played it, while most of that promise has been realized (make no mistake, this is definitely a Sekiro training kit vs. something on the level of the real thing), some other things pleasantly surprised me, like the Zelda/Metroid aspect of obtaining abilities that allow you to access sections of levels that you previously couldn’t. On the other hand, some serious frame rate/performance issues and bugs really slowed down my enjoyment. All in all though, I hope this marks the beginning of the prestige single-player games the Star Wars license deserves.
6
If we’ve met for more than an hour, there’s a non-zero chance I’ve brought up Metal Gear Solid in conversation one way or another. I’m coming up on 22 years of following Hideo Kojima, and despite the lukewarm reception, there was no way I was passing up Death Stranding. In the most basic way I can describe the game’s plot, you’re a post-apocalyptic delivery boy tasked with not only delivering frivolous things like pizza (I kid you not), to medicine, equipment, and one guy’s case, his literal wife. All the while, you’re bringing the United States back online (we’re calling the internet the “Chiral Network” now, try and keep up), while also fighting off enemies called “BT’s” who may or may not be spirits of the dead that can hear you while you breathe. Oh, and quick side note, you’ve got a baby strapped to your chest that lets you see the aforementioned ghosts easier, but if they get too agitated, you’ll have to rock the controller back and forth until they fall asleep (I’m not kidding). The entire thing is a trip, to say the least, with VERY deep system management (when carrying heavier packages, you’ll find yourself squeezing the right or left triggers to steady your balance, for example) that may not be for everyone, but as I pretty much expected, Kojima has created something wholly unique that, while it wasn’t my favorite game of the year, I’m very glad exists.
5
– Control –
If we’ve met, you know how I feel about BioShock, and games that, to use a terribly cliche term “have a sense of place”. Holy hell, does Control have a sense of place. You start out by visiting an unmistakably Brutalist building in New York City called the Oldest House, the home of the Federal Bureau of Control (think bureaucratic Ghostbusters) in charge of regulating “paranatural” activity, from wonderfully mundane things like staplers who don’t stay on the desk employees put them on, to refrigerators who will murder you if you break eye contact with them. Add to this some fun shooting mechanics, and the ability to LEVITATE, TEAR THE MARBLE FLOOR UP AND USE IT AS A SHIELD AND THEN THROW IT AT PEOPLE, ALL WITH YOUR MIND, and you’ve got some video game-ass video game going right here. Quick note, if you’re playing on a base PS4 or Xbox One, the performance is approximate to that of a dumpster fire (dropped frames, 3-5 seconds of freezing when coming out of the pause menu), but the story, aesthetics, and gameplay kept me going . Also if you do play this game, I IMPLORE to you to not stop until you understand exactly what the Ashtray Maze is.
4
– Outer Wilds –
When I was a kid, I was lucky enough to have parents that would always take me to Disney World (way superior to Land, don’t @ me) for a summer vacation now and then. Our visits were never confined to just the Magic Kingdom, and we’d usually end up at Epcot on day two or three. I vividly remember sitting in one of those huge IMAX theaters watching a movie/presentation thing called the Universe of Energy and being completely overwhelmed by what I was seeing on screen, to the point of fear and helplessness (I was 5. Relax.). The HUGE ocean waves that would crash right into the screen, huge volcanoes, thunderstorms, just, the full majesty and terror of mother nature on full display. That helplessness, awe, terror, and amazement are the feelings that Outer Wilds evokes in me in spades. You start out as astronaut from an alien civilization taking their first space flight. As you lift off, you realize that you can now explore a fully functioning solar system with four or five planets, each with their own gravity, weather patterns, natural hazards, and so-on. After deciding on a planet to land on, and after 20-25 minutes pass, a small thing happens. The sun kind of, erm, explodes. You wake up right where you started, and congratulations, you’re in a time loop! The rest of the game (that I’m on my way to finishing) is centered fully on exploration, and learning new things about not only the civilization you’re a part of, but the mysterious alien race that came before you. In order to solve this mysterious loop you’re caught in, you don’t find items, and you don’t solve puzzles. You merely gain literal knowledge of the environments around you, and put that into practice. If you go into the game knowing everything, you could conceivably finish it in 15 minutes. But after 15 hours with it, it’s one of the biggest achievements of this year, and I can’t wait to get to the end.
3
– Sekiro –
“Is it better to be loved or feared?” “It’s a good question. It’s nice to be both, but it’s very difficult. But if I had my choice, I’d rather be feared. Fear lasts longer than love.”
As I started Sekiro for the third time this year, that quote kept coming back to me. I don’t LOVE Sekiro, but you could certainly say I fear it, or at least deeply respect it, and that’s what kept me coming back. I wanted to finish this goddamn thing, one way or another. FROM Software’s first explicitly non-Soulsborne game hits you like a ton of bricks from the start. As you slowly get up to speed in the opening hours, it dawns on that this is not your standard build-a-character RPG. You’re a ninja samurai (a shinobi) with one outfit, one sword, and a whole lot of parrying and deflecting to do. I don’t think I’ve ever played a game that dedicates itself to ONE specific thing so thoroughly, which is, in this case, sword on sword combat. When I tell you that you absolutely MUST learn every move and every combo an enemy or boss is going to throw at you, please believe me. Even now, the confidence it takes for a developer to put something THIS challenging out into the world as a major release and have it be this successful is stunning to me. Many of the boss fights don’t last longer than 5 minutes, but I promise that those 5 minutes are some of the more intense you’ll have in any game. Additionally, I adore the feudal Japan setting, the exceptional Japanese voice acting (it’s on by default, and if you change it to the English dub, you’re a cop) and engaging story make it one of my favorite games of the year.
2
– Resident Evil 2 –
I was deathly afraid of zombies for most of my childhood and part of my adult life. Something about those white, cataract-filled eyes just absolutely freaked me out. Then, at 24, I watched Shaun of the Dead, and the spell broke, for the most part. I STILL was too much of a scaredy cat to play any of the Resident Evil games , and only barely got through Silent Hill 2. But here I was, faced with what was by all accounts, a fantastic remake of Resident Evil 2 from 1998, and I decided to bite the bullet. Tense, terrifying, and adding an 8 foot tall maniac in a leather coat that relentlessly pursues you through the police station in which you’re trapped kept me on the edge of my seat, and even got me to play through it more than once from another character’s perspective. Cannot recommend enough.
1
– Cuphead –
I can’t say anymore about this thing that hasn’t already been said. An absolute love letter to Fleischer Cartoons, rubber hose animations and all. It was love at first sight since it’s reveal, and was PRETTY close to buying an Xbox just to play it, but luckily lightning struck and the Nintendo Switch release came in April. After the uh, 100+ hours I spent playing this insanely hard tribute to not only the aforementioned animation studio, but to 2d 8-bit side scrollers it is, top to bottom, my favorite gaming experience of the year.
The Regular 
