ResetEra Games of the Year 2019 - Voting Thread (READ THE OP) [Ends Jan 26th 8:59am EST]

[Takuhi]

1. Fire Emblem: Three Houses - I probably played this game more than the other nine games on this list combined. Its story and characters thoroughly captivated me, and its gameplay loop was strangely addictive. Easily my favorite Fire Emblem ever, and a bold new foundation for the series to build on.
2. Control - Wow, I've never slept on a game more than this one. I was so disappointed when I saw the Alan Wake team was making another shooty game, but shockingly, this proved to be a brilliant game that thoroughly scratched that Alan Wake itch.
3. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night - The first truly successful kickstarter I participated it, this game released as a buggy mess with most of its content MIA and yet it was so thoroughly, exactly what I wanted from Iga that I don't even care. I don't know if it's the best Igavania or it's just been so long since someone did this kind of game right that I was excessively hungry for it, but whatever the reason, I loved the crap out of it.
4. Ring Fit Adventure - What can I say? I'm losing weight, building muscle, and sticking to an exercise routine more than I ever have in my life. I wish I could replace its dopey workout-themed RPG with, like, a version of DQXI modded to use the same mechanics, but it's getting results and improving my life. That's gotta be worth a top 5 spot, right?
5. Resident Evil 2 - A nearly perfect remake of a beloved classic. I wish it offered a little more depth to get me coming back to it, but hey, I enjoyed our time together a lot.
6. Life is Strange 2 - I wasn't sure where this one would land until the last episode hit, but after a lot of thought, I'm really glad I played it. The game had a lot to say, said it well, and left as much of an impact as the first title. That said, by putting you in the shoes of a powerless (in every sense of the word) character with a mostly infuriating brother, Dontnod did not do a good job of making the experience fun. I hope they can improve that balance for the next one.
7. Slay the Spire - For a few days there, I played this game obsessively. It's really brilliant, although I desperately wish I could have its play mechanics over the course of a multi-day adventure instead of a two-hour, one-death-and-you're-done experience.
8. Luigi's Mansion 3 - An impressive and enjoyable title that ultimately felt hollow and kinda forgettable.
9. Sayonara Wild Hearts - When this game's simply play mechanics, dreamy storytelling and trippy music all clicked, it was incredible. Sadly, I think all the pieces only came together in a few of its 20-some levels. Its highlights are amazing, but the rest is just bad time attack stuff with a terrible scoring system that I have no interest in replaying.
10. A Plague Tale: Innocence - I considered cutting this entirely, since I hated the shitty trial-and-stealth gameplay of its latter half with a fiery passion. But the characters, performances and visual design were fantastic. Fuck this beautiful game!

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[Deleted member 1656]

1. The Walking Dead: The Final Season - My daddy was a railroad man.
2. Sayonara Wild Hearts - Playing this gave me a nice moment of elation and renewed passion for games when I was a bit down. It's a delightful, succinct tribute to the medium but it also stands on its own as an opera of action and self-awakening.
3. Control - This is probably the best of the bigs this year. It's a good-ass time. It's a nice moment of redemption for Remedy after the disappointment of Quantum Break.

• Honorable, ineligible mention: Kenshi

I think Kenshi may be the most revolutionary PC game since Deus Ex and together they form a night and day / blue and red game design duology. I realize those are pretty bold words and that on the surface, the games share little. Deus Ex is a wet, urban level-based first person shooter and globetrotting adventure, and Kenshi is an open world real-time strategy game set in a hot, infertile desert.

In 1993, Warren Spector started planning a game where as a designer he would be the player's collaborator. Circa 2006, Chris Hunt began making one where he would be the player's enemy. I believe this is essentially a natural evolution that took roughly twenty years to come to fruition in a three-dimensional game.

DX inserts the player in places with problems and provides them information, tools and paths to solve them. Kenshi does the same thing minus that level of providence—minus almost any providence, actually. You have to struggle for power over yourself and your world in Kenshi. DX hands you cutting edge augmentations and GEP gun. Kenshi gives you a stick and some rags. If you want to be a cyborg, you actually have to go through the excruciating process of having your limbs chopped off.

However, they both feature intricate dystopian hellscapes and challenge the player to rise up against the oppressors. DX starts you amongst the bureaucracy and corporatocracy responsible and sets you on an path where you are artificially awoken and forced to turn on them. Kenshi starts you amongst the destitute and you can stay there, rebel, or help maintain the status quo. It's the choice Ion Storm wanted you to have in 2000, but they were limited by budgetary and creative constraints. After twelve years of development the mostly one-man team of Lo Fi Games made it happen. It's not pretty; it's jank as fuck. Like DX, it breaks rather easily. But that choice—that freedom in a space brimming with unique lore and atmosphere is there; brimming with a similar level of ambition and dissident energy is there and that is a beautiful, hopeful thing to me.


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[Thewonandonly]

This year has been a weird year with many great games, yet I didn't finish many of them. I would get burnt out of most the games before the end then just stop. Anyway with that in mind let's get started with my list!

1. Apex legends - This game came out of no where and took me by storm. I have been playing it almost everyday since it came out and I'm still having as much fun as I did day one! This is easily the best battle Royale out there with really fun and fluid first person combat! Here's to Respawn, may they bring great content this year!
2. Death stranding - What a unique game this is. In all my years of gaming I would never imagine I would spend 40 hours delivering packages and having an amazing time. This game success comes from its pacing and just how masterclass it is. You get equipment at a perfect rate and it really makes the progress feel worth it. The cinematography is also incredible and some of the best in gaming!! If only the story was better then this could have easily been numero uno!
3. Slay the spire - Dominion but one my favorite genre rouge lite, count me the fuck in!!! What an amazing game and I'm still hooked to it whenever I jump back in
4. Control - This is easily the most atmospheric game of this generation. Everything about it from the notes to the posters around the facility add to it so much. The gameplay is really fun to and it makes you feel like a Jedi more then fallen order in my opinion. Throwing rocks will never get old it's this years leviathan axe!
5. Resident Evil 2 - This is how a remake should be done! What a intense well paced game this is. Loved everything in the police station and that is one of the best levels of the generation! Bring on 3!
6. Sekiro: shadows die twice - From software is my favorite developer ever. While sekiro is my least favorite game of there's it still deserves a high spot on my list. This game was just to hard though and I ended up giving up right at the finale boss and just watched the final cutscene lol. Also guardian ape is one of Froms best boss fights hands down!
7. Devil may cry 5 - Combo combo combo!!!
8. Children of Morta - A fantastic rougelite Diablo like with a really good fairy tale like story with touching moments about family that hits hard. Also amazingly addicting gameplay that will keep you saying "just one more run"
9. Gears 5 - One of the better gears campaigns out there and might be the the second best under 3. Loved the story and it really made you care for the characters which is impressive because I gave less then zero shits about them in 4. Really emotional ending as well that gets me excited to see where things lead. Would be higher if I was into multiplayer and horde mode more but they didn't grab me as much...
10. Star Wars: Jedi fallen order - Game of the year if you only take the first and last 2 hours of the game. This would be so much better if it was linear like uncharted but instead they went with a dark souls like open world. It just doesn't work for the cinematic vibe they are going for as well so that is why the game ended up so low... Really good gameplay though and the story is surprising good with nice twist and turns along the way.

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[TP17]

1. Fire Emblem: Three Houses - I voted it my most anticipated game in 2018 and 2019 on here and it didn't disappoint. If you have a switch, go play it!
2. Slay The Spire - Didn't click with me in early access but over the past three months it did and I've been working my way slowly through the ascensions on the various characters. Recommended for all card game fans.

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[jimboton]

1. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - Action RPG, the FromSoftware way.
2. Apex Legends - Some of Titanfall's Pilot vs Pilot high mobility pvp concepts made their way into a Battle Royale that felt more polished and well thought out at launch than PUBG, Fortnite or any of the others did with months or years of iteration behind. And was a lot more fun too
3. Supraland - 3d puzzlevania that's incredibly well designed and scratches the puzzle/exploration itch better than anything else this year if you can get past the slightly 'straight out of Unreal asset store' looks.
4. Yooka Laylee and the Impossible Lair - The best Donkey Kong Country game ever. Yes that includes the music.
5. Bloodstained - Not Symphony of the Night good, but still very good.
6. Baba is You - Great idea for a puzzle game and some really devious levels.
7. Remnant: From the Ashes - Nice mid summer surprise. Souls meets TPS combat is addictive, shame the worlds and pseudo rogue-lite structure weren't as interesting as they could have been.
8. Monster Boy - Super pretty, super polished metroidvania that sadly suffers from excessive handholding somewhat diminishing the satisfaction of exploration.
9. Jedi: Fallen Order - Wasn't expecting to have as much fun with it as I ended up having. I just wish the combat had been tighter, the exploration a little less guided and the platforming parts more Prince of Persia and less Uncharted.
10. Rage 2 - Another one I'd been led to believe I wouldn't enjoy all that much. It's the type of game where playing on a higher difficulty helps bring into focus the nuances of each encounter whereas just sailing on normal every mission and objective just kind of melds into each other and all you're left with is a fairly undistinguished open world grind. But I'm glad I gave it a chance on Gamepass: good action and beautiful vistas.

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[Synecdoche]

This year has been a weird year with many great games, yet I didn't finish many of them. I would get burnt out of most the games before the end then just stop. Anyway with that in mind let's get started with my list!

1. Apex legends - This game came out of no where and took me by storm. I have been playing it almost everyday since it came out and I'm still having as much fun as I did day one! This is easily the best battle Royale out there with really fun and fluid first person combat! Here's to Respawn, may they bring great content this year!
2. Deathstranding - What a unique game this is. In all my years of gaming I would never imagine I would spend 40 hours delivering packages and having an amazing time. This game success comes from its pacing and just how masterclass it is. You get equipment at a perfect rate and it really makes the progress feel worth it. The cinematography is also incredible and some of the best in gaming!! If only the story was better then this could have easily been numero uno!
3. Slay the spire - Dominion but one my favorite genre rouge lite, count me the fuck in!!! What an amazing game and I'm still hooked to it whenever I jump back in
4. Control - This is easily the most atmospheric game of this generation. Everything about it from the notes to the posters around the facility add to it so much. The gameplay is really fun to and it makes you feel like a Jedi more then fallen order in my opinion. Throwing rocks will never get old it's this years leviathan axe!
5. Resident Evil 2 - This is how a remake should be done! What a intense well paced game this is. Loved everything in the police station and that is one of the best levels of the generation! Bring on 3!
6. Sekiro: shadows die twice - From software is my favorite developer ever. While sekiro is my least favorite game of there's it still deserves a high spot on my list. This game was just to hard though and I ended up giving up right at the finale boss and just watched the final cutscene lol. Also guardian ape is one of Froms best boss fights hands down!
7. Devil may cry 5 - Combo combo combo!!!
8. Children of Morta - A fantastic rougelite Diablo like with a really good fairy tale like story with touching moments about family that hits hard. Also amazingly addicting gameplay that will keep you saying "just one more run"
9. Gears 5 - One of the better gears campaigns out there and might be the the second best under 3. Loved the story and it really made you care for the characters which is impressive because I gave less then zero shits about them in 4. Really emotional ending as well that gets me excited to see where things lead. Would be higher if I was into multiplayer and horde mode more but they didn't grab me as much...
10. Star Wars: Jedi fallen order - Game of the year if you only take the first and last 2 hours of the game. This would be so much better if it was linear like uncharted but instead they went with a dark souls like open world. It just doesn't work for the cinematic vibe they are going for as well so that is why the game ended up so low... Really good gameplay though and the story is surprising good with nice twist and turns along the way.

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Click to shrink...

Edit or Death Stranding not count

 

[Thewonandonly]

Edit or Death Stranding not count

Click to shrink...

Word thanks man 👌

 

[404LinkNotFound]

1. Dragon Quest XI S : Echoes of an Elusive Age - My first Dragon Quest game ever and despite only being half way thru the story its become of one of my favourite games of all time. It took a bit but the game suddenly just clicked for me and i finally understood why people love DQ so much. It has more simplicity than other RPGs but to me thats one of its biggest strengths. It's easy to get into and understand and has a healthy balance of dark moments and optimism.
2. Ace Attorney Trilogy HD - By Far one of my favourite trilogy of games ever. Even with the 2nd game being hit and miss and some annoying parts of the gameplay the games really did nail the writing and making you care about the characters. The Court segments remain my favourite moments in all of gaming
3. Luigi's Mansion 3 - This game takes the best of the first two games and produces a wonderful game chockfull of details , really ingenious and creative levels and most importantly bringing back Polterpup!
4. Astral Chain - This was my first Platinum game and i can say i was not disappointed. As someone who isnt good at Action games i appreciated how accommodating the game was for noobs like me. The Jojo-Esque battle system is never stopped being cool and the detective sections where you feel like a friendly neighbourhood cop really helped mixed things up.
5. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order - Till now im still shocked a singleplayer only game was published by EA with no Microtransactions and multiplayer. The story was really engaging and its been so long since I've gotten to play as a Jedi that I'm really happy this game pulled off that feeling again
6. Control - This game i bought on a whim and im very glad i did. It really does feel like SCP Foundation: the video game with its wierd and wacky fantasy elements. The gameplay is really fun too with you basically being a force user straight out of star wars and the gunplay is really great. The Story so far is really great too
7. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening - This remake allowed me to finally play one of the few zelda games i had yet to fully play. Its art style is really cute and charming along with its cast of characters. Its definitely a wonderful game that i was glad play
8. Tetris 99 - Legit my multiplayer game of the year and the best battle royale game. It became very addicting and satisfactory clearing lines and making Tetrises
9. BoxBoy! + BoxGirl! - A very nice slow pace puzzle game that really shows how talented HAL laboratory is. BoxBoy for Smash plz Sakurai (even as an assist trophy)
10. Pokemon Sword and Shield - Its really great to finally have Pokemon on the big screen. I haven't finished it but its been really fun so far

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[Deleted member 25117]

1. Disco Elysium - An incredibly human story with a unique twist on the CRPG genre, bringing forth some of the best writing of the decade, great music and beautiful art making this the most refreshing experience of 2019.
2. Red Dead Redemption 2 - Breathtaking in every sense of the word. A strong narrative with an amazing lead performance really elevates this game and puts it at a solid number 2 for me. It isn't without faults, but it is great in spite of them which is why I feel it deserves this spot.
3. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - Extremely punishing but definitely the most rewarding From Soft game to date, I loved my time with Sekiro and I have to give it props for being very well optimized on PC. It feels amazing to play and the sense of accomplishment I got from beating difficult encounters is unmatched this year.
4. Slay the Spire - My introduction to deck builder games, and it is so fucking good that I fear it might've ruined other games of its type for me. Has tons of replayability and is very rewarding. StS is insane value and they recently added a new character to play making it a must have for anyone into roguelites or deck building games.
5. Noita - Remember that Powder Game? This is that if it was a roguelite in a big sandbox where you can wreak havoc on everything whilst laughing like a maniac die over and over again in hilarious ways. But hey, at least you're having tons of fun at the same time!
6. Pathologic 2 - I felt the need to add Patho 2 to my list even though I'm not anywhere close to finishing it because in the ~30hrs I've played so far its been an awesome, confusing, engaging and frustrating nightmare of a game in all the best ways and I want more of it and more games like it.
7. Halo: The Master Chief Collection - I had to mention this because Halo is finally back on PC and it is every bit as great as I imagined. I can't wait for the other entries to make their way over as well!

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[KernelC]

Oh snap, Pokemon might actually chart. What terrible timeline is this

 

[hitmon]

1. Fire Emblem: Three Houses - My most played game of 2019. This was a much better game than the last iteration of Fire Emblem and feels like less of a moneygrab (Fates: Conquest and Birthright).​
2. Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown - Ace Combat returns to greatness. This would be my GOTY if it weren't for Fire Emblem Three Houses. A terrific job with all those invovled in getting this game released. The campaign and soundtrack is amazing, but I wasn't a fan of MP mode. It's too bad they haven't added VR support for the rest of the game or on the PC version.​
3. Resident Evil 2 - A great remake, absolutely loved it. Hooray for no tank controls.​
4. Death Stranding - Beautiful game from Kojima and his team. It's not for everyone, but I enjoyed it. Who knew delivering packages would be enjoyable.​
5. The Outer Worlds - Enjoyable RPG where your decisions appear to make an impact on the game. I don't know if they fixed it, but there was a bug that caused a companion mission to fail without warning. This knocked down the enjoyability and ranking of this game.​
6. MLB The Show 19 - The best sports game of 2019.​
7. Ring Fit Adventure - An innovative and fun way to exercise while gaming.​

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[nib95]

1. Death Stranding - One of the most unique and beautiful games I've played in recent years. Whilst it's certainly not without its faults, all the different systems, environmental and strategic challenges, systemic gameplay elements, incredible audiovisuals, along with the at times profoundly helpful, innovative and also deep asynchronous multiplayer, all made for a truly refreshing and captivating experience.
2. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - Despite being constantly stressful, challenging, tense and daunting, even bordering on annoying at times, the mechanical precision, depth and fluidity of both the combat and movement/traversal, coupled with the impressive world design and bosses, all came together to make for a constantly rewarding and addictive experience. Feudal Japanese themes given that FROM approach and standard of quality.
3. Apex Legends - By far my favourite Battle Royale game or gaming experience. I have hundreds of hours in this, and whilst I may vehemently dislike some of the more predatory paid options and subsequent loot odds, I can't argue with the incredible gameplay. The movement, weapons, gunplay, abilities, characters, level design, upgrades, plethora of strategic options and depth etc, all make for one of the best multiplayer experiences I've had all gen.
4. Gears 5 - The best Gears game in many releases. Not only has the combat been refined with headshots and precision aiming both that much more meaningful and rewarding, but I really enjoyed the new additions such as Jack's abilities and all the subsequent upgrades, as well as the beautiful open ended segments, which acted as great calm before the storm breathers amidst all the carnage and action. I only wish they'd leaned into the upgrade and open world stuff even more, and had a more meaniful story and characters.
5. Resident Evil 2 - One of the better remakes I've played. Just supremely polished and engaging, with combat and gore that is unnervingly satisfying and realistic, and a level of underlying tension and suspense that underpins the entire play through. If it was less repetitive and the gunplay was more reliable (eg headshot kills etc weren't so randomised), it may have been higher on my list.
6. Devil May Cry 5 - An over the top, frenetic and flamboyant hack and slash that oozes style, and was on the whole highly enjoyable to play. The characters, OST and general themes weren't necessarily my ideal cup of tea, but the fluid and mostly very well executed combat made up for that.
7. Kingdom Hearts 3 - Whilst the game was far too easy and had a plot and characters that were all over the place, it was still such a colorful, vibrant and gorgeous experience that had bags of charm, spectacle and wonder.
8. The Outer Worlds - Whilst a bit old school and archaic in both its mechanics, animations and approach to design, and also another game that was just far too easy, I still mostly enjoyed this quirky, often funny and eccentric title.

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[Rommaz]

1. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - Action RPG, the FromSoftware way.

2. Apex Legends - Some of Titanfall's Pilot vs Pilot high mobility pvp concepts made their way into a Battle Royale that felt more polished and well thought out at launch than PUBG, Fortnite or any of the others did with months or years of iteration behind. And was a lot more fun too.

3. Supraland - 3d puzzlevania that's incredibly well designed and scratches the puzzle/exploration itch better than anything else this year if you can get past the slightly 'straight out of Unreal asset store' looks.

4. Yooka Laylee and the Impossible Lair - The best Donkey Kong Country game ever. Yes that includes the music.

5. Bloodstained - Not Symphony of the Night good, but still very good.

6. Baba is You - Great idea for a puzzle game and some really devious levels.

7. Remnant: From the Ashes - Nice mid summer surprise. Souls meets TPS combat is addictive, shame the worlds and pseudo rogue-lite structure weren't as interesting as they could have been.

8. Monster Boy - Super pretty, super polished metroidvania that sadly suffers from excessive handholding somewhat diminishing the satisfaction of exploration.

9. Jedi: Fallen Order - Wasn't expecting to have as much fun with it as I ended up having. I just wish the combat had been tighter, the exploration a little less guided and the platforming parts more Prince of Persia and less Uncharted.

10. Rage 2 - Another one I'd been led to believe I wouldn't enjoy all that much. It's the type of game where playing on a higher difficulty helps bring into focus the nuances of each encounter whereas just sailing on normal every mission and objective just kind of melds into each other and all you're left with is a fairly undistinguished open world grind. But I'm glad I gave it a chance on Gamepass: good action and beautiful vistas.

Click to shrink...

Use the ordered list function(check the OP) or your vote won't count mate.

 

[hitmon]

Will the vote still count correctly if it has "[LEFT " before the title in the receipt?

 

[Dash Kappei]

•About my picks and why this or that is missing:

I gotta say that my list for this year's (and the past one as well to be honest) GOTY picks doesn't really reflect fully what my tastes are because I was "forced" to choose from a restricted pool of games (and yet so huge to make me build a shameful backlog of dozen of 2019 titles), despite owning every platform under the sun and then some.

I've become a 90% exclusive Undocked-Switch gamer. What's left is mostly spent on Oculus Quest with a spruce of
Xbox. So I play what comes to Nintendo's platform, which is not everything but it's a fucking LOT nontheless; my PS4 has seen 1 game truly played in the last 3 years (God of War, which was great) and the Xbox+GP has become my "try-before-you buy ON Switch" machine.

I'm fully aware and feel it in the guts that something like Sekiro and Resident Evil 2 would be top10 material for me, no doubt about it (after all both RE4 and Souls have a spot in my all-time TOP10) but these games just don't come out on Switch. It's that simple really. Before I was buying everything but playing nothing; the Switch really got me back as a player, it just suits my lifestyle like a silk glove and luckily it excels at representing most of what my tastes are. So yeah, it sucks it's not powerful enough to offer better fidelity to some visually spectacular games, yet I enjoyed Senua's Sacrifice very much on it, even tho graphically it was a far cry from the og release (you know, the one that I owned for a year prior and had played as far as the opening credits) I still loved the heck out of Ninja Theory's craft and the way it handled suffering, sensibile social stigmas and themes, along with the audiovisual design and combat.

Then there's games that I've bought, but haven't really tackled properly yet. Games like Fire Emblem 3H, which I love as a series, but hey I just sampled it for 1 hour or so and there are plenty of interesting games that I've completed fully and I'll stick to those.

Here goes my list of the 10 games I've enjoyed the most in 2019:

1. ESP RA.DE. PSI Ψ ; The Switch has become the de facto shmup console, with a library growing each week with new and old greats including first time and exclusive releases, and its ability to easily support TATE and the birth of the Flip Grip accessory is a match made in heaven and has made the genre crazy popular on the console, all it was missing was Cave's goodness and especially M2's seminal ShotTriggers series. Finally, after years of hearing fans clamoring for such Switch ports, M2 pulled the trigger porting over a Cave game and oh boy they sure as shit didn't miss that shot! It's a stellar port that the perfectionists at M2 have managed to release. This is a truly fantastic game, in its best form ever thanks to the reworked scoring system, coming to console for the 1st time ever and it's just a delight to play, to see, to hear. From the art, to the setting, to the flow and gameplay, as a whole this is right up with my favorite Cave titles like Muchi Muchi Pork, Ketsui and DDP:D/R. The only thing that could make this port even better would be to hear from M2 that more #ShotTriggers are coming over thanks to ERDΨ's sales numbers.
2. SUPERHOT VR ; Oculus Quest's untethered VR experience was a game changer. This is so fucking cool. Bond and Bourne can cry me a river, I'm the real thing boys (lol)
3. VADER IMMORTAL: Episode 1 ; I don't care if it's short (it's less than a pizza+coke and the 3 episodes together are well worth the €25 price tag. I respect that for someone it can be shallow. But for a '77 kid, raised on bread and Empire, this is some next level cool shit. I was fucking training like Luke, they nailed the lightsaber in the fucking head and meeting Vader was fucking terrifying. Basically a dream come true. This is just the beginning. It blew me away and I would have cut my right hand to have something like this growing up as a TRILOGY kid.
4. Racket Fury: Table Tennis VR ; I'm a former semipro tennis player and I was of comparable level as a TT player. This is the real deal and it's the first videogame to somehow alleviate how much I miss having a table at home and good players to play with. Room scale/Untethered/Simulation Physics +Online PvP play is an incredible experience and I can't wait for the new updates, it keeps getting better and better.
5. Deltarune ; As an Earthbound and especially MOTHER 3 fan (I'd say that M3 is in my top10 most beloved games ever), the universe Toby Fox has created really resonate with me. Deltarune was no exception and I can't wait for the next full chapter in the saga.
6. Beat Saber ; I was torn between BS and Pistol Whip. I love both, but the great community mod support made choose for the former. With a few more updates and better tools for level builders PW can also get up there. Right now tho? BS is king.
7. Katana Zero
8. Dragon Quest XI: Definitive Edition
9. Luigi's Mansion 3 ; without a doubt a technical masterpiece and the most graphically impressive Switch game to date.
10. Samurai Shodown

Honorable Mentions:
x. Ring Fit Adventure
x. Senua's Sacrifice
x. Jamestown +
x. Pinball FX VR
x. Pistol Whip
x. Trials Rising


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[dreamfall]

Another year, and so many wonderful titles. So much I wish I could've played, here are things I loved!

1. Death Stranding - Disclaimer, I am only 40ish hours in, nowhere near the end and completely enthralled. To me, no game this year has the ambition and awe that Kojima and his team have provided in this title. Every little bit of terrain presents a challenge to navigate, every new system or mechanic introduced allows for creative engagement to utilize to carry and transport more items, every bit of a structure crafted with the help of others feels so mind blowing. I love the fearless direction the man went to create his delivery simulator. I'm not sure how much I love the bits of the narrative I've experienced rebuilding the UCA. The BT and combat encounters feel more frivolous with better unlocked tools, sometimes a bit cumbersome or tedious. But I think this development team challenges what we expect in an open world title - a true sense of arduous journey, just to fulfill simple fetch quests. I found myself burning out on trying to achieve Star ranks for each lifeless hologram - to what avail? When I simply let go, let myself wander, experience trepidation of whatever stumbling challenge presented itself, I felt something few games have ever managed to provide me with - peace. Peace in failing, peace in meandering, peace in rote resolute focus to make it to a new destination. No frivolous filler unless I wanted, just a simple desire to see more and more of lifeless world. Special credit must be give as always to the magical art direction, the insane reworking of the Decima engine and the insanity of all the finely detailed environmental detail during Timefall. I think "Asylums for the Feeling" stands out as one of my favorite gaming moments ever. No rush to finish, no rush to make it to the other side - just one step at a time. I feel grateful and fortunate to be able to experience such a project, full of oddities and absurdities, along with such fearless hope of a director willing to estrange every audience to make what he wished.
2. Resident Evil 2 - My favorite Resident Evil game, remade to absolute perfection. The RPD is so gloriously rich in brilliant atmosphere, Mr. X's thunderous foot steps chasing you at every turn and making zombies terrifying again led to one of the best games of the year. Figuring out Claire's path first and then diving immediately into Leon's made me so happy - even the little bits of care regarding Sherry and Ada's sections were powerful. The third person shooting mechanics are flawless, the drive for another run gives the game so much replay value and prospect of getting the third title remade in the same fashion has me so hyped!
3. Control - Remedy the absolute Gods! Nothing ever comes close to the frenetic combat and intensely creepy hallways of The Oldest House. Courtney Hope did such a stellar job as Jesse, and levitation transformed the navigation of combat into a wicked delight of utter destruction and controlled mayhem. Enough praise can not be expressed at how technically marvelous the game is - in movement, traversal, object physics, Ray Tracing, dynamic lighting. I could spend days analyzing how much effort was spent in achieving such a striking vision of truly unsettling environments and enemies. This is a game, like every other Remedy title, that will be replayed several times - it's that good. Bravo to their team, I adore them.
4. Metro Exodus - The game is a technical showpiece in every regard. I love 4AD's commitment to more open hub areas to explore and the wonderful environmental variety that ushers the narrative along. The shooting and simple crafting kept me scouring every bit of the Volga, the Caspian was such a wild change of pace, and The Taiga is breathtaking. Every footstep taken, every flashlight recharge, every stealth encounter made the game feel absolutely ambitious, even with some of the clunkier mechanics. The shooting and upgrading of weapons was top notch, and Artyom's journey with his band of survivors felt way more personal and intriguing. I love exploration in the game completely.
5. Judgment - Nagoshi and the RGG team continue to earn my respect as the greatest team. Yagami's charm and fighting style breath new life into an already stunning entry in the Dragon Engine saga. It's the subtlety of light-hearted humor and intense melodramatics that make their games my favorite series (Yakuza) of all time. I heartily enjoy the chase sequences and slower pace of the investigations as they allow for a new way to examine and inhabit the seedy underbelly of a city we know and love so well.
6. Mortal Kombat 11 - One of the best uses of HDR and the best brutal fighting combat systems flawlessly executed. What a cast of incredible older and newer generations of killers, and great incentives to unlock weapons/skins/fatalities/everything. A ton of time was spent this year trying to piece together practical combos to take into online matches - and it's the prettiest fighting game I've ever seen. Jade foreva!
7. Crash Team Racing - The hallmark title of my youth, I was so excited to check out the reimagining of some of the best and most creative kart racing tracks of all time. The amount of effort and love devoted to the Grand Prix updates have kept me returning throughout the entire year, and it's been such a fun game to play with my brother as he remembers how much agony the game caused us as kids. Crystal Cup will always be my favorite, and the boost mechanics have been finely tuned for greatness - one of my favorite games ever.
8. Luigi's Mansion 3 - What a stunning first party endeavor for Nintendo, and such a whimsical journey through the haunted hotel halls. The graphics often gave me a true sense of satisfaction, Luigi's every animation felt so meticulously hand crafted and endearing. It was such a treat to play this on Halloween night, well into the morning - the perfect spooky delight for a wonderful Holiday.
9. The Outer Worlds - Could Obsidian take the best aspects of a Western RPG into space? I think the answer is decidedly a yes, the tighter shooting mechanics and simplified looting systems gave a refreshing take on the genre since Fallout 4. I think the density and smaller scale of the explorable hubs lend to more creative dialogue interactions with great companions and a fun story. The premier Gamepass title for me, and a great one to revisit.
10. Greedfall - I found myself truly appreciating the renewed focus of heftier combat and the wonderful dialogue options while wandering in Greedfall. It's got such a pleasant world to explore - and really rivals some of the better aspects of older Bioware titles. Still working through it to fully decide how much I love it, but every little bit of it has left me feeling like it's got a ton of promise and engaging combat set pieces.

Honorable Mentions
x. Dead Or Alive 6 - Shimbori and Team Ninja have got to decide what direction they want to take with this franchise, I love the game's new Rush combo system and I think it's their best effort yet. But either embrace the fan service angle or abandon it entirely - the game deserves more care, and I revisit it constantly. Diego was an awesome addition!
x. Days Gone - Although Bend took a lot of criticism for some of the more tedious failings of an open world, I heartily enjoyed upgrading my bike and riding away from hordes of zombies in an action packed survival adventure. I like Deacon and all his angry muttering to himself, the game really let's the player decide how to explore and combat the challenges of using resources to survive. It's a stunning game to watch and play and deserves more credit for its ambitious attempt at making a fun zombie open world romp.
x. Call of Duty Modern Warfare - I really love that Infinity Ward put so much heart into the game, it's my favorite probably since Treyarch's work on the first Black Ops title. Some fun multiplayer modes, great gun selections and upgrades and I love that they're working to include some of the best maps from COD4.

Games I Need to Play More Of!
x. Sekiro - I love my From titles, and I think GA was one of the best boss fight encounters ever. Went a solid 20, and I need to be in a very isolated and depressed hyper focused mindset to finish the game, like I always do with the wonders of Miyazaki and his incredible team. I think I played too much Nioh, and I hate to compare the two, but I'd like to try to finish Sekiro before Nioh 2 devours all my time like the first title did.
x. Shenmue III - I've always the loved the franchise, I was heavily involved in a 1+2 extended replay before committing fully to 3. Played a solid three hours and loved what I had experienced, a slow burn with the trappings of the earlier adventure titles. Can't wait to truly explore the world with Ryo one more time!
x. Dragon Quest XI (Switch) - Special credit must be given for the most glorious demo I've ever played - more than 15ish hours in, blown away. If I ever get finished with the demo, I'll be spending some long cozy nights reveling in the best DQ formula gets again!

What a year it was, and so many wonderful titles! Thanks to all the Game devs and our amazing Reset family!

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[SatelliteOfLove]

2019 In Gaming for me has been a year of parallels. Multiple games with characters that have characters in their heads, multiple characters with cursed superpowers, multiple games with bizarre juxtapositions of the mundane and the fanciful, multiple games with flowery prose growing from the grimy dirt that sustains it, and general surprises all around. I'm also back to a place where my #1 was not on my anticipated list at the start of the year, which I think is a better place all things considered. Also, like, 3-11 is really really close this year. There's no drop off and that's great.

1. Baba is You - (PC) Every so often, a game comes out that rewrites things. Not just "peanut butter and chocolate" stuff, but truly, fundamentally shifts the world of video games on its axis. The fluid intelligence and epic MINDBLOWINGEDNESS of BiY is the latest of this one. It's maddening in that way all revolutionary games are on top of going places even someone with experience coding is finding difficult. It is giving you the very language used to make cheat codes and making that as it is the rules. You are like unto a god, but a young, clumsy one.
   
   I may actually finish it one day too!
   
   
   
2. Disco Elysium - (PC) Disco is as much of what isn't than what it is; it's the opposite of an Open-World game. It's not the product of frothing-at-the-mouth Communists. It's not the endless perfection that shall be hewed to henceforth for that matter.
   
   But what it does do is take a rookie effort and do things CRPGs will be learning from (not aping, learning from) and go down in history as the one game, the ONE GAME that managed to ascend to the realm of Planescape: Torment.
   
   And it does so without ever getting stuck in a rut. The game isn't depressive or treacley, so the stories of Working-Class Woman or Gaston Martin don't end up trying to clumsily grope at your raw emotions. They simply are and make up a neighborhood by doing so. They could have been crude stereotypes to tell a Sociolology 101 story but they avoided it. That is discipline.
   
   What's also discipline is the ability of the game to focus the prose, making sure every flowery purple jaunt is to elucidate what is unshown, stuck with coarse, dirty language, or lampshaded here and there to keep it honest. I liked that.
   
   But the two things that I'll truly take from this is the Skills being complete party members inside the protag's head and Kitsuragi. Having the Skills have personalities, that go from rarely uttering basic feedback at 1 to being super-oppresive in their prescence at 10 (to the point of blanking out dialogue options) was brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. No two gameplays are the same given the builds; I've had people find the game full of ugly bigotry, power-plays, and colorless existance with a PSY at 1 whereas mine was at 6 and the vignettes, views on the people and places you encounter, and understanding of what things meant a rainbow of realization. Kitsuragi is, without going too purple, too good for this game, or rather the world of the game. I've never seen such a decent, decent individual that managed to avoid a simple cardboard existance. He thinks, he judges, he hopes, he strives, but only brings those opinions out if needed to do the right thing.
   
   I do agree with the take that the end 1/5 is railroaded too much, and some plot threads are tied up inelegantly, and the largest world-building conceit (Pale) doesn't ever really connect with much other than as a lore dump, (not to mention the movement system and a few crashes), but for a first time effort? Not a patch on them for it.
   
   
   
   
   
3. The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel 3 - (PS4) As a connoiseur of Trails, I try to stick the landing between nit-picking and blind faith but CS3 I can say is easily the 2nd best Trails I've played.
   
   Take what you tried to ignore from CS1 & 2, purge 97% of it, put it back into those games, then flesh it out to a full 110 hour triumph. There are for example, NO waste scenes so characters on-screen have agency and are never ignored or forgotten. They managed to take a bajillion plot threads hurtling in from 7 previous games and got them interweaving in harmony as the plot itself hurtles past mid-point for the series. Rean is finally, FINALLY the character he was supposed to be: hurt, wisened, caring, yet no one's fool. Not to mention Old Class Seven fully earn their places and break free of the ball & chain that is the tropes before. New Class Seven is a treat; they feel from the get-go to have roles, but not rigid archetypes. When you have them in the field, they seem interested in learning, bickering, thinking, conversing, etc like a full ensemble even when the rest of the massive cast is up in front of them; they simply pick back up after reacting to what just went down like their characters aughta.
   
   It's also incredibly DENSE. Even more so than previous games, there's dozens of wheels turning and paying off from side-quest to series narrative over and over with no stopping. In fact, it intensifies as the game goes on like Sky FC does WHILE being so dense. It's a refreshing and exhausting ride, dense and intense.
   
   And oh my Christ at that end like, 7 hours. Masterful ever-escalating crazy and drama, each topping the last. Even characters in the know were taken aback by this it got so wild! Lovely.
   
   The music was, as I said in my SOTY post, a step down from 1&2 (which are some of Falcom's absolute best) but that only means it's merely "great". I've been told it's a "remake" of 1's soundtrack where they felt tasked to replace 99% of the music and that's quite accurate. Still: JDK.
   
   I have problems that likely staunched its shot at 1st. First: WHOA, FRAME RATE. This is like the PS4 here. There's not that much on-screen. Secondly, bad habits continue to sneak into the game's dialogue. Like, do not do Tita that way. That's supposed to be a dead baby joke to be funny; it ceases to be a joke, it's only for the creeps. And don't be problematic with Angelica like that. I got to cringing when they were on the screen like that expecting some nut who sees those otherwise lovable characters that way to get their rocks off.
   
   
   
4. Druidstone: The Secret of the Menhir Forest - (PC) Almost Human, makers of fine, Game of The Decade-Quality Grid 'Em Uppers of Merit, had a few of their number try their hand at a SRPG and wouldn't you know, it's as brilliant as you'd expect
   
   Druid doesn't waste time with alot of character building or long fights, it's in that mold of a 3-4 member Fire Emblem Meets Into the Breach where one mistake can get you killed, the mission variety is sky-high, and things can get fucked in the best of ways.
   
   I can see where the Gem system can turn some off; blow your gems on boosting usage of Fire spell only to find all enemies get healed by this or having to rekit your crew up for more defensive options to clear a fight easily that would destroy you on the first go-round is kind of simplistic, yeah.
   
   
   
5. Sunless Skies - (PC) The Other PS:T attempt this year, and like Seas, is verbose, wild, and staving off that Roguelike problem better than the last go around.
   
   See, Seas had a problem with rote money-making endeavors. You hewed to them, made your cash and upgrades, THEN went down those long, loving words to the theater of the mind. Skies fixes alot of that with more money-making options where acquring the non-monetary currency is more paramount and running routes is only potentially a life-or-death struggle (and usually only in that hellhole Blue Kingdom). And it takes you places; from a mine where Time itself is wrenched from the stone, to a Parliament adrift both politically and physically, to a bizarre prison you truly leave a changed person, to an odd and previously-explained dangerous afterlife.
   
   Then there's the absurdist Britishness soaking everything. From 19th century class struggles to bizarre reactions to a world where humanity is less than a curiosity, to the maddening winds of the cosmos, having that absurdist stiff upper-lip really shining here stronger than ever really helped this game.
   
   Still could have used some work on enemy behavior; even with high Veils enemies "wander" into aggro range anyways.
   
   
   
6. Indivisible - (PC) A kickstarter title I was waiting years for paid off. Got That Kikuta Goodness, got great art, the Valkyrie Profile gameplay, and a stunningly diverse cast of fun-playing characters. I'm sold!
   
   I wasn't really expecting how effervescent and chatty it was. Maybe I thought it would be closer to the tone of VP1 given its inspiration? These folks got jokes. It never got out of control though, just forgot this was a Lab Zero game and they do serious when they gotta, heh.
   
   I did have problems with the on-field turn-based combat (you'd fall off and reset things a ton), but yo, that dude took his urumi and sliced up those dudes then made it his turban!
   
   
   
7. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - (PC) I need to stop being a n00b and return to Git Gud on this. The 26 minute speed runs alone embarrass me.
   
   
   
8. Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark - (PC) Between this and "FFT Salty Bet" on Twitch, having one of my oldest classics return in multiple forms is a treat.
   
   I like what they did both with classes and how they mete out the game's "job points". JP is easier to earn than XP what with the bleed-over effect between characters so you can get to building broken teams faster without that steep road to 60.
   
   Plus they ask about metrics which is always commendable in this day and age.
   
   "They made another one of those" are not dirty words.
   
   
   
9. Etrian Odyssey Nexus - (3DS) Sort of a 9-course meal of your favorite foods, you kind of get tired and stuffed around the end.
   
   Nexus, probably my last 3DS game, and unlike CS3 above, overstays its welcome. By the 12th stratum, you find yourself noticing the tricks and tribulations borrowed from EOs past and wondering when you'd reach the end. That's not good for a dungeon crawler where the ingredients are so high quality.
   
   Now, there were some good new stuff here. Great new tunes, a neat new class, a great great penultimate boss, plus just mixing and matching classes from twelve years of dual-screen exploring never ceased to be fun. It's arguably the best place to go for EO newbies for those reasons alone if they're OK with taking it slowly and avoiding the side stratums. You know, before the carts get pricey and the eShop shuts down.
   
   
   
10. Outward - (PC) Jank is love. Because when you see Jank, you know a dev said "yes, the movement is squirrely, and the enemies barely connect right, and the animations fall apart, but gosh-darn it, we have A Vision!)
    
    And for Outward, that vision was for us to run like scared bitches from all manner of terrifying monstrosities, limp from hunger, and scrounge for cash. Because make no bones about it, this game will piss off many people who don't deal well with restriction-based game balancing.
    
    But its' really well-done restriction. Checking your bags, repairing your gear, brewing up potions, setting traps for monsters, the game makes survival a zen rather than a worry once you meet it half-way. Next thing comes breaking it once understanding you treat fights like hunts rather than combat encounters. Great music too.
    
    
    
11. Touhou Luna Nights - (PC) TOKI YO TOMARE
    
    So I bought a Toe Hoe game. The music rocks, the Graze mechanic works well in a Metroidvania, the pixelart is to die for, and your MP are fucking knives. Not bad.

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[saltine161]

1. Death Stranding - game that I played the most this year, and was really enthralled by the the gameplay and story
2. Ring Fit Adventure - amazing gameplay where I actually had fun working out
3. Call of Duty Modern Warfare - it's fun again as always but I only really play multiplayer
4. Apex Legends - fun game but it's hard play alone when you can't get a group together
5. A Plague Tale: Innocence - really weird game but i beat it and mostly enjoyed it
6. Mortal Kombat 11 - fun gameplay as usual just didn't get around to playing it too much
7. Seriko: Shadows Die Twice - amazing gameplay but I just didn't have the patience to beat it
   
   
   

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[Deleted member 29682]

1. Disco Elysium - This is one of the best RPGs I've ever played. I'd been following news about Disco Elysium for a few years now, intrigued by a dialogue focused detective RPG with an unconventional skill system. I had always maintained that if ZA/UM accomplished half of what they set out to do then it'd be a phenomenal RPG. As it turns out they succeeded completely, but what I wasn't expecting was the quality of the writing and worldbuilding. It's easy to just post images of the silly and wacky moments that play out when the impulses in your head get the better of you, but the game is undercut by a layer of earnestness, sorrow, frustration and just trying to make the best of things. It is genuinely affecting in ways that no game I've played has managed to pull off. If this is what ZA/UM can do with their first game, I can't wait for whatever is up their sleeve next.
2. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - I've had hit or miss experiences with Soulslikes, partly down to the relatively slow pace compared to other 3rd person action games, occasionally opaque RPG systems and a bunch of big monster bosses where I'd prefer human-sized duels. Sekiro manages to find a medium I'm happy with, and once you're in the zone and blades are clashing, there's very little to match that exhilaration. It stays strong throughout its runtime and features some of the most engaging and entertaining boss fights I've ever played.
3. Control - Control features enjoyable gunplay, an intimidating brutalist environment and some of the best looking environmental destruction in the business. Paired with an SCP-esque setting/story and Remedy's own brand of (occasionally cheesy) weirdness, Control is a great looking and very compelling game.
4. Fire Emblem: Three Houses - The first Fire Emblem I've played, and I found it a very enjoyable and well presented SRPG with plenty of surprisingly compelling characters and scope for replayability. So much so that it's the only thing on my Switch that rivals the playtime I have for Stardew Valley.
5. Slay the Spire - A deck-building roguelike that commits to the card-based gameplay (as opposed to Hand of Fate). Learning card synergies, interactions with passive effects and enemy patterns to hone a pile of cards into an efficient and personalised strategy works tremendously well. I'd played this for quite a while in early access and I pretty much knew it was going in my top 10 once it officially launched.
6. Untitled Goose Game - A very silly stealth puzzle game that doesn't outstay its welcome or stretch its content too far. I finished in the space of an afternoon and loved its daft little details and the silent movie-esque shenanigans you could get up to. An incredibly charming game that I can't help but look back on fondly.
7. Pathologic 2 - I've yet to finish Pathologic 2 and it's honestly quite difficult to bear at times. The game epitomises hopeless struggle in a slowly collapsing world, utterly rejecting the notion of a power fantasy. The combination of the harrowing atmosphere and the surreal and strangely desolate feeling world is uncomfortable and unique for a game that doesn't fall into the easy tropes that some other horror games do.
8. Hypnospace Outlaw - A recreation of early internet poking fun at late 90s/early 2000s online communities. What starts out as a series of pages effectively making their own joke develops over time, as the users' stories become intertwined and your own role as a pseudo-moderator in this space becomes more complicated. There's a surprising amount of pathos too, elevating it beyond a simple parody.
9. Darksiders Genesis - It's much more like isometric Darksiders than I was expecting. I know that's exactly how it looks, but the whole structure, gameplay and tone of the game follow suit. I played through almost entirely as Strife and the twin-stick shooter style was very satisfying and addictive. More than anything, it feels like a game that's made by people who understand and love the franchise, and are willing to commit to its gleefully comic-book-esque premise.
10. Cadence of Hyrule - I didn't find it as replayable as Crypt of the Necrodancer and was mildly disappointed in the relative lack of variety in runs. That being said, it feels polished, looks great and Danny B's Zelda remixes are fantastic. I might have only wanted to play through it a few times, but it was a good time nonetheless.

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[Egida]

1. Celeste: Farewell - I didn't play Celeste the year it was released, so I'm glad I can vote for this masterpiece even if only for its magnificent final chapter.
2. A Plague Tale: Innocence - Lovely surprise, loved the story and twists, set pieces and incredible historical recreation.
3. Untitled Goose game - Such a classy, relaxed and cool goose simulator.
4. Outward - Best couch coop experience I've had in years, so much fun.
5. Control - Very enjoyable TPS, in spite of its terrible map and performance issues.
6. Fire Emblem: Three Houses - I had very high expectations for this one, being announced in 2017, between BotW and Odyssey. It didn't met those expectations, far from it, but still, very good game with many issues.
7. Days Gone - Very formulaic, yes, but ambitious and a rare opportunity to play a AAA single player zombie game. I ended up enjoying the story a lot more than I thought I would.

All in all, underwhelming year imo with lots of very good games but lacking brilliance.


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[StraySheep]

A bit behind on games this year, but at the end of the day I managed to scrape together a decent list. Even if I haven't finished some of these games.

1. Judgment - The Yakuza team contiues to make some of the most compelling stories and characters in the biz. Simple as that. The middle drags as they force you to essentially do side quests as part of the main story, and overall I found the side stuff less compelling that with Kiryu, but with the still fun Yakuza combat and gripping detective story it was a shoe-in for my GotY.
2. Control - One of the games I haven't finished yet on this list, but I am love with this game and everything it stands for in the industry. Also featuring an intiguing story so far, what I really have to praise here is the ways Remedy is experimenting with presentational tricks. FMV, overlayed characters, giant font, filmic cutting, etc. Too many games play it safe in this area.
3. Slay the Spire - Like many I was initially put off by the art style, but this game is really addicting. And it makes up for the fact my girlfriend won't play Dominion with me.
4. Outer Worlds - The Fallout game I was wanting after New Vegas and was yet to receive.
5. Catherine Full Body - So right off the bat two problems here. 1) I don't like voting on remakes or ports or whatever the hell this game is classified as. 2) I haven't finished a run of it yet (although I am listening to the sweet tunes of the Stray Sheep jukebox as I type this -- I might try to finish a game before tomorrow). And I guess a third being the controversy around handling of trans characters in this game, which is for another place. All that said the original was my favorite game of all time - hence the username - and this game manages to update it several meaningful ways while also introducing a compelling new character in Rin. It also seems to me to attempt to make Katherine a more compelling character from the start by showing the good old days, which I think helps balance the choices you have to make as Vincent. But ultimately what can I say? I love hanging at the Stray Sheep.
6. Astral Chain - Also haven't finished this one yet. I find more than others it is a Switch game that demands it be docked and that you spend some time in one session. And when I have done that I find the combat super unique and the world interesting.
7. Ring Fit Adventure - The most fun I have ever had exercising outside of sports.
8. Sayonara Wild Hearts - Is this game novel or what? Love how they take their somewhat simple mechanic and find all these different genres and presentation styles to mash it into. I also appreciate that we are getting more games about love.
9. Fire Emblem: Three Houses - The first half of this game would have been in my top 3. The slog of a story in the second half knocked it down for me.
10. Untitled Goose Game - Honk.

Not mentioned: Baba is You, Yoshi, Pokemon

Games I couldn't get to yet or haven't played enough of: Disco Elysium, Outer Wilds, LM3, RE 2, FF XIV Shadowbringers, Dragon Quest XI: S, AI: Somnium Files, Hypnospace Outlaw, Death Stranding, Jedi Fallen Order, Wattam, Concrete Genie, Kind Words


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[Tricky I Shadow]

1. Shenmue 3 - What can I say? I had been waiting so long for this, and it delivered! What Yu Suzuki and the team pulled off on such a small budget is nothing short of a miracle.
2. AI: The Somnium Files
3. Resident Evil 2
4. Luigi's Mansion 3
5. Astral Chain

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[QuixoticNeutral]

This was the most difficult crop to sort through since I began participating in 2014: not because I had too much to choose from—quite the opposite, in fact, as I'll be considering mild letdowns by the time I count to ten—but because the uppermost echelon of new releases had such a commanding presence, such bottomless depth, that the more I played them the further I seemed from getting my fill and seeing it all. In 2019 I reverted to my preferred pattern of playing few games and playing them deeply, knowing there was no point in rushing through a vast library for the sake of filling a list by January, and the selections reflect this.

Despite the eligibility of remakes, remasters, and late ports in the arithmetic this year (which I support), I have adhered to my usual policy of voluntarily setting them aside. Last year I made an exception for Hollow Knight, which was simply too important to ignore despite its ineligibility for the final tally, and this year I considered extending the same favour to Cuphead, but ultimately ruled against it, lest we find ourselves relitigating the unusual bumper crop of 2017 every polling season from here to eternity. Nevertheless, I recognize it here with the most honourable of unranked mentions.

And now for the list.

1. Fire Emblem: Three Houses
   
   It's not the series' battlefield masterpiece—that would be Fates—but Three Houses is certainly everything else.
   
   The long-term reception of Fates revealed, more sharply than ever, the presence of a chasm between separate constituencies in the Fire Emblem player base that didn't seem to share the same priorities or even commensurable visions of what the series is: those who properly appreciated Fates (in particular its crown jewel, Conquest) for its considerable strategic nuance, mature vision of the meaning of difficulty, memorable objectives and map-level interactions, bold new experiments with class and weapon design, and systematic repair of every minor mechanical grievance with its charismatic predecessor, Awakening; and those who, inexplicably, dismissed all this painstaking refinement as inconsequential next to the storytelling, character development, and tone of the support-conversation relationships, as if they hailed from a distant parallel universe where those were ever the principal achievements of the Fire Emblem series in its finest moments. With this in mind, Three Houses cannot be lauded enough for doing the impossible: build a bridge, settle a truce, and for the strategy-minded players in the former category, provide a tantalizing vision of how the other side lives.
   
   For what we have before us is a triumphant interweaving of systems management and narrative—never this successful in concert anywhere, much less in the first-party Nintendo catalogue, wherein Three Houses is the most significant and ambitious landmark in terms of story since that other sprawling tapestry of network fiction, Majora's Mask. It transports us to a world where playing the maps for the express purpose of teasing out hidden motivations, disguised subplots, and furtive social bonds, for once, is actually the right thing to do. Nothing here is so rewarding as matching the right character to a named opponent on the field to extract a buried line of dialogue, a scrap of testimony to their personal history of love or hatred.
   
   None of this is to demean Three Houses' capable spin on Fire Emblem's meat and potatoes, the swashbuckling action on the grid. It's gentle, yes, but excusably so, as a consequence of erring in favour of overloading the player with flexible, flashy manoeuvres—most noticeably in the space it creates for dynamic, fast-moving, uncluttered mid-range play, matched by the new and ubiquitous multi-phase minibosses; and in the renewed provision of the Shove-and-Swap spatial mechanics that have always opened Fire Emblem's decision space to its unquantifiable best. If only the map count were anywhere near sufficient to populate even two distinct campaigns, let alone three or four; it's the terrain, above all else, that fails to support the scope and ambition of a single game that aspires to be so many at once. And perhaps the mechanical novelties are merely a start, one that will fade with revision just as Awakening was somewhat diminished by the improvements across the board in Fates. But as a complete experience, and a consensus-builder beyond our wildest dreams, Three Houses has already secured its generational legacy.
   
   
2. Super Mario Maker 2
   
   It's conventional, and mistaken, to speak of a community-content game like Mario Maker like two discrete activities taped together—here you Make, there you Play—and be reluctant to give Nintendo too much credit for anything but the in-house playable content, here substantially expanded into a reasonably thorough tutorial suite and buttressed with the recent addition of brilliant, nuanced speedrun challenges, meticulously devised to reward all levels of technique and trickery. This attitude understates the game-like compulsions of the build-and-test cycle when you pull out the palette and experiment with abandon to see what happens—but to be fair, SMM2 steps back from its predecessor in this respect, aggressively dialling back the editor's openness to unintended uses, while introducing a grab bag of elements that are by and large not as susceptible as they should be to the mix-and-match multiplicity that elevates the Maker engine so far above any ordinary modding tool. Whatever the causes—a rush to release, or a compromise to accommodate the slapdash multiplayer mode—this incremental sequel provides no shortage of reasons for ambivalence, and the deeper you get as a player, the likelier you are to notice the smallest foibles.
   
   And yet, when the dust settles, this looks certain to be the game that outlasts everything else on the Switch (at least until such time as the online subscriptions all drop off and the community unanimously migrates to a future platform sporting Super Mario Maker 3). The additions to the toolkit, hit or miss, have on the whole opened up such a gigantic space of possibilities for invention, expression, and personal style that even after hundreds of hours, a spark of surprising ingenuity is always around the corner. The greatest testament to the impact of SMM2—and one too readily taken for granted—is the immediacy with which its original contributions have been absorbed into the Mario vocabulary. Mere months from launch, it is difficult already to think back to a time before the Dry Bones Shell, the Swinging Claw, the back-formed sprites and Koji Kondo tracks for forest and desert worlds that never were, the countless ways to trigger an on/off switch, and the entirety of the underrated 2D transformation of 3D World. The latest additions, among them the Master Sword and a powerfully reimagined Spike, have inspired more confidence than ever that despite some initial stumbles and reservations, SMM2 could very well remain the most tenacious of evergreens and the pre-eminent Nintendo experience of 2020—just as how SMM1, so slight now as it recedes in the rear-view mirror, never stopped giving all the way into 2019, if only one glanced at it long enough to notice.
   
   
3. Baba Is You
   
   Baba Is many things, among them You—but perhaps it can be most succinctly described as the first video game to merit its own chapter in a hypothetical future expansion of Gödel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter's classic self-referential study of logical structures that devour themselves if you follow them through to their conclusion. Standing as one of the most elegant exhibitions of the use-mention distinction in any artistic medium, it seems inadequate to praise this game as merely clever, or even in the vaguest terms as ingenious. Its accomplishment isn't only in its concept, brilliant and simple as it may be: it's that the enormous suite of puzzles is so thoroughly committed to answering every sidelong question suggested by the mechanics, however oblique. It picks up its central idea and runs—and runs, and runs, and runs. Call it a design that completes its sentences; it would only be in the spirit of the game.
   
   
4. Oxygen Not Included
   
   The new spacefaring overlord of colony simulators, it's as though ONI was formed in a singularity that collapsed the entirety of dense, generative independent PC games of the 2010s. Its kinship to Dwarf Fortress descendants like RimWorld and Prison Architect is obvious enough, but what has not been appreciated in equal measure is how its side-scrolling, tile-mining 2D format—in the vein of Terraria or SteamWorld Dig, but without the direct character control—imbues it with an exploratory sense of progression where the world is full of locks, but technology and infrastructure deliver your keys.
   
   It all adds up to the greatest game about x for so many over-specific values of x: architecture, terraforming, climate change, entropy, lavatory sanitation. The experience arguably sags in the middlegame when the systems become so densely layered that one begins to engage more vigorously with under-documented rules and edge cases than with an inferred, holistic understanding of what the mechanics represent—this isn't, shall we way, how atmospheric gases actually work—but in the end this hardly detracts from the uniqueness of the survival experience, which rests not on spikes of chaos and enforced disaster (as is so common in the genre), but on gentle forms of pressure and resource depletion that overwhelm you on a long scale. In the most literal sense, you can clock your hours into the hundreds and never scratch the surface.
   
   
5. Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair
   
   There are times when the conversation about independent video games looks alarmingly like it is barrelling towards the sentiment that the 2D platfomer is verging on oversaturation and exhaustion. This is as wrong about the welcome renaissance of the genre in the 2010s as it was in the mid-nineties, when the flourishing of one of the most vibrant design languages original to games was prematurely interrupted by the rush to 3D, and nothing in 2019 disproved it so vividly as the freshness of Yooka and Laylee's sophomore outing. Yet the lead story here isn't the ringing reminder of how much there is left to do with the roll-and-jump fluidity of Donkey Kong Country, or how scarcely we see a scale of level construction that is broad enough to give the obstacles sufficient breathing room to develop, while providing both frenetic momentum-based play and patient exploration in the same overlapping space.
   
   Those are notable accomplishments, to be sure, even in the presence of the occasional clunky collectible placement, awkward camera pan, or outright bug. (We are still a long way from the unfettered rippling flow of Tropical Freeze.) But the signal contribution to platforming by which Playtonic's neo-DKC will be remembered is in the level and progression structure, which revolve around the heart and soul of the game—the pièce de résistance of its triumphant titular stage, the Impossible Lair. This level deserves the most fervent advocacy as a matter of principle, as a flag-bearer for arcade-style capstone marathons that are all about stamina and consistency, and a courageous bulwark against modern audiences that clamour for checkpoints as a solution to everything and are all too quick to complain about long-form difficulty as artificial. The Lair arrives as a great relief to an underserved constituency of players, if a moral victory that is all too rare, and the fury it has stoked among its detractors has only confirmed its success.
   
   
6. Luigi's Mansion 3
   
   At last, here is the game that Dark Moon suggested all too distantly: a Luigi's Mansion that unifies Next Level Games' bountiful supply of colourful puzzle-adventure sequences with the original concept of the mansion as a contiguously explorable space. This ambition isn't quite fulfilled to total completion—there remains a lack of spatial connectivity between zones apart from the sporadic Polterkitty pursuit, so chapter divisions are still somewhat enforced, even if movement back and forth across the whole game is now thankfully unimpeded—but this is a minor reservation at best, given the pacy delivery of one elaborate thematic playground after another, a few of which are garlanded with their own internal sense of verticality and three-dimensional stitching. One might describe LM3 as a stack of Zelda micro-dungeons with no interstitial padding, but this belies one of its most subtle masterstrokes: its brazen abandonment of the increasingly conventional reliance on character power progression to keep a player interested, committing to a move set that is minimal in the extreme and trusting the stage layouts, puzzle interactions, and considerable aesthetic flourishes to carry the day. That it never runs out of ideas and so rarely repeats itself over 20-30 hours of content is a remarkable achievement, a landmark study in environmental versatility.
   
   
7. Cadence of Hyrule
   
   On the introductory difficulty, this offbeat spin on Zelda is merely inspired: a magical, singable synthesis that you couldn't have dreamt of yourself, but now comes off in hindsight as the most natural and destined collision in the world—yet something you play through once and put away, satisfied that you have seen what the concept has to offer. But on Permadeath, around which the experience was unambiguously balanced, every aspect of this simple diversion—the enemy patterns, the weapon selection, the peculiarities of each tile on the map—blossoms into a delicate extravaganza of tightrope-walking perfectionism, with every element coming into the sharpest focus.
   
   It's here, with the rapid reseeding that comes with abject failure, that the structure of the game—a close cousin to the Link to the Past speedrunning scene's drift towards randomization—orients its sense of mastery around a deep improvisational fluency in reading the board. Whether this produces the best 2D Zelda of all is not a question worth asking, but what we can say with confidence is that Cadence is easily the most precise. As with most games built on random generation, it doesn't take long to perceive the general shape of everything the game can throw at the player; but for all that, Cadence stands as an exemplary reimagination of an established design vocabulary with an eye squarely on finesse, and a soundtrack infectious in the extreme.
   
   
8. Shovel Knight: King of Cards
   
   It takes a certain lack of imagination for a player to walk into Shovel Knight's grand finale expecting a tidy, conventional separation: here's the main game, where you jump and slash and collect, and there's the side game, an anomalous outgrowth to be treated as a second-class take-it-or-leave-it bonus. Such a presumption is grossly unfair to King of Cards—where the platforming, constructed on an inventive foundation of intensely layout-driven pathfinding exercises, is as crisp and competent as always, but marred by a truncated scope that proves to be a poor fit for the series' meticulously balanced checkpoint system and leaves far too little room for the stage elements to connect, combine, and flourish.
   
   The real revelation is in the tile-shoving pyrotechnics of Joustus, a marriage of block-puzzle miniatures with deckbuilding to produce a strikingly rich and dynamic suite of asymmetric challenges in spatial control. The compactness of the grids understates the flair of the duels, the moment-to-moment thrill of a thrust or parry as you jostle for territory and set up traps, all of it only sweetened by the assonance of the mechanics with the characters on the face of the collectible playing pieces. It's deep, compulsive, and so rewarding to master, and out of everything in the finished package, Joustus offers the most promising glimpse into just how versatile Yacht Club can be as the studio sails into uncharted waters.
   
   
9. Astral Chain
   
   Strip off the label and you still wouldn't mistake this for anything other than a PlatinumGames original to its bones: like Bayonetta's debut, here we have a wild, overgrown spectacle that implants its input complexity into your fingers and takes you soaring—but not without the reliable thunk, right on schedule every chapter, of an overstretched ambition or fidgety gambit that doesn't work quite right. It's a shotgun approach to action game design, a maximalist ethos of trying everything at once and doing just enough of it well, trading polish and perfection for sheer audacity. How unfortunate, then, that the incredible combat system is let down by a scoring system that is wholly inadequate to the task of coaxing the player towards cleaner, more fluid mastery, choosing instead to incentivize blundering through the fights as a jack of all trades. It's startling how much this matters in the PG format of bedecking the player with medals and grades—which is perhaps an ill fit on the whole, underselling the overwhelming intrinsic pleasures of zipping around this cyberpunk fantasia, in and out of combat, fast and slow, through the city streets, upon the ethereal Astral Plane.
   
   
10. Wargroove
    
    Everything about Wargroove's colourful and lovingly animated exterior is calculated to evoke its central inspiration, Advance Wars. It is Chucklefish's profound misfortune, then, that it is precisely this direct comparison that exposes their homage's severest weaknesses, chief among them a clumsy macro-level economy design that ripples down to the pacing, flexibility, and managerial interest of the single-player campaign, which is largely too reluctant to let the player build. But tear away its desperation to be compared to its forebear, and you quickly see that Wargroove is at its best when it leans into its original innovations—principally, the unit-level tactics of adjacency bonuses and commander powers. Nothing testifies to this more clearly than the included suite of one-turn checkmate puzzles that squeeze every drop out of the unit interactions—far too few in number, indeed, for how well they exhibit the systems at their finest while masking the ample strategic deficiencies. In many ways this was the great disappointment of 2019, so it is a testament to Wargroove's bedrock of tactical solidity that it nonetheless endures, warts and all, as a memory of time well spent and masterstroke decisions cleverly made.

Previous ballots: 2017, 2018.


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[MeltedDreams]

1. Resident Evil 2 - Replayed this masterpiece 15+ times and i can't get enough of it. This game is up there with RE REmake for best remake (or reimagining, whatever you want to call it) ever made.
   Now only if other developers take some notes and follow the Capcom steps... One of my wishes for next-gen is - less remasters and more real remakes. Remakes that change a lot of original, but still keep its spirit.
2. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - Different take of Souls formula and i loved it!
3. Sayonara Wild Hearts - Great experience. Pop album turned into beautiful video game with short stages that are easy for replaying. Reminds me of so many classic games -Space Harrier, F-Zero, REZ and even Punch Out with how crazy
   and varied are some of the stages.
4. Valfaris - A challenging run and gun, Contra like with killing soundtrack by ex-Celtic Frost member Curt Victor Bryant.I wasn't ready for this. Valfaris is Heavy Metal: The Game.
5. Death Stranding - Kojima's weird experiment. I admire him for taking risks and i'm glad Sony fundedthis project. Hiking parts are perfect and way more enjoyable than i ever thought they would be. Building zipline network on mountain was probably my favourite task.
   The game takes nosedive after episode 8 tho and last ones are forced bad shooting segments and endless cutscenes, with same old exposition you hear through the whole game, but this time from different angle. This soured otherwise great experience overall.
6. Control - Possibly Remedy best work since Max Payne 2? Not much original, but good at the things that is trying. Game's physics engine really shines playing on PC with higher framerate. The level of destruction is like early glimpse of what is yet to come with next-generation games. Oh and btw, Matthew Porretta (aka Dr. Casper Darling in the game) have did one hell of a performance!
7. A Plague Tale: Innocence - AA The Last of Us. Surprisingly enjoyable and polished. Using rats as a mechanic is simple, yet super cool and refreshing.
8. Blasphemous - Still haven't finished this one. It's 2d metroidvania, at times is trying to be Souls, for good or for bad. Soundtrack is not memorable at all. It's ok after few hours.

Sorry for my english by the way.


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[Ahti]

1. Control - Remedy off the leash. Control is their best work since Max Payne 1 imo and one of the most intriguing games I´ve ever played.
2. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - Extremely sweaty sword fighting, gripping atmosphere and great level design make this an instant classic for me.
3. Apex Legends - A brilliant shooter that makes other Battle Royale games look unfinished. Haven`t had this much fun with multiplayer in years.
4. Astral Chain - My favorite PlatinumGames-title. I loved that mix of detective adventure, over the top-fighting and Zelda-like dungeons.
5. Disco Elysium - I was never a fan of this kind of RPG but Disco Elysium blew me away. A game I will replay again and again.
6. Resident Evil 2 - A survival horror-game that feels fresh and modern while staying true to what made the classics great? Yes, it`s possible!
7. A Plague Tale: Innocence - A dark yet beautiful and heartwarming journey with well written characters and atmospheric set pieces.
8. Gears 5 - The new installment delivers the Gears all-round carefree package with nice improvements and a pretty good campaign.
9. Katana Zero - My personal "sleeper hit" of the year.
10. Luigi's Mansion 3 - I enjoyed the first two games and this one is no exception. One of my favorite Nintendo-franchises.

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[bunkitz]

Didn't play much new games last year, sadly, and I've not yet finished Jedi Fallen Order and Darksiders: Genesis, nor gotten started with Metro Exodus so it wouldn't be right to add any of those here.

1. Kingdom Hearts III - Yep. You're reading that right, Kingdom Hearts III is my GOTY 2019. Is it a perfect game? Heck no, far from it. Is it the best game I played this year? Absolutely not. Is the story's pacing a mess? Yeah. However, it's a great game and not only that, but the emotional investment I have in this franchise prevents me from putting it any lower. That, and the fact that I really, truly enjoyed this game. I had such a blast with the combat system, even though it could still be so much better, especially the magic. The worlds were fantastic (Kingdom of Corona is probably my favorite?) and some of the most fun I've had in a Kingdom Hearts game. The best part of it all is in the game's final act where the story finally starts moving a lot. The emotional payoff after all these years was so worth the wait.
   
   The game also deserves a special shoutout for making underwater combat a freaking blast. I was surprised at how much fun I was having with it.
2. Devil May Cry 5 - Ahh, the other game I spent years waiting for. DMC5 finally happened and it's Itsuno at his best yet, gracing us with peak action game goodness. The game brings DMC4's action to the next level, giving players even more options for both Dante and Nero while somehow… actually working and even being easier to play with than DMC4. That's how I felt with Dante, at least. The two returning characters controlled like a dream and experimenting with the different options available to both characters were so much fun. Seriously though, the amount of options you'll have with Dante and Nero by the end of the game is bonkers. The addition of a third playable character with V was quite welcome too, though I'm not too fond of his playstyle, it's exciting to see something so fresh and new. It certainly doesn't hurt either that the game looks and sounds utterly gorgeous. Capcom has done some magic before, but Devil May Cry 5 is simply incredible to look at, with a killer soundtrack to boot. Silver Bullet and Devil Trigger are *Pacha meme*
3. Death Stranding - I honestly didn't expect to like this game so much. I found it intriguing until we finally saw what it was like to play and... it just didn't seem that fun. Then I actually played it and found myself strangely addicted to this game about making deliveries. From the get-go too! There's something so uniquely satisfying about safely making your way across the ruined remains of America using simple tools while also being an inventory management game (we really ought to have an even more precise inventory management feature, though, particularly for the backpack) of sorts. In a way, the game can be a pretty good way to relax because of that. It's not exactly difficult, even when dealing with BTs and MULEs, so you can just calmly think about how to get from point A to point B. It's also got a pretty interesting story with plenty of crazy sci-fi ideas that can be a little hard to grasp at times but the underlying message about connections and helping one another is so uplifting that I can't help but give the cheesy moments a pass because it's an important message we need to hear in this day and age.
4. Resident Evil 2 - This was my first full and proper entry into Resident Evil's survival horror games. It was a terrific experience all throughout. I thought it might be too scary for me (I love horror movies and can sit through any easily, but horror games are a whole other beast) but luckily it wasn't. The tense atmosphere of the RPD and other locations were just perfect. Enough to keep me anxious and tense for whatever may lurk around the corner, but not too frightening that I would just freeze there. Solving various puzzles and managing my fluctuating supplies of ammo and other tools while being chased by a trenchcoat-wearing monster was surprisingly a lot of fun. Who would've thought?
5. Control - The art direction of Control is probably what stands out most about it, and it's one of my favorite things about it as well, but my god, what an interesting world Remedy has crafted. Now that, that's my favorite thing about this brilliant game. The Oldest House has to be one of the coolest settings I've played through with all the weird and fascinating shit you can find scattered all over. This makes exploring it (which you'll be doing a lot thanks to the fact that it's a Metroidvania!) feel so rewarding. Thankfully, the combat is a lot of fun as well thanks to the suite of powers we get access to, so even if you're not too invested in the weird stories you'll find, you're still in for a good time. I also really appreciate how easy it is to use all the different powers because of how the controls are mapped. Everything is on a button, so there's no need to pull up a power wheel or enter the menu to use this power or that. It's fun and easy to feel like such a badass in this game.

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[jimboton]

Use the ordered list function(check the OP) or your vote won't count mate.

Click to shrink...

oops forgot about that. Thanks!

 

[olimpia84]

1. The Outer Worlds - Loved the setting, characters, and how well structured the game was. I wasn't expecting much at first but ended up loving the game.
2. Slay the Spire - Never really cared much for card-based games but this game is plain addicting.
3. Astral Chain - Platinum Games goodness.
4. Resident Evil 2 - Fantastic REmake to one of the best games in the series.
5. Untitled Goose Game - Great setting and fun concept.
6. No More Heroes: Travis Strikes Again - there's something about the NMH games setting and characters that I love. Game is far from perfect but it has that NMH/Suda charm that I enjoy.
7. Super Kirby Clash - My most played Kirby game of all time, clocked over 30 hours in this game.
8. FIFA 20 - More of the same, but I always enjoy playing Career Mode and manage a team in detail for a couple of seasons.
9. Darksiders Genesis - Didn't get to play much, but the few hours I put in have been fun so far.

Regrettably, I did not play as many high profile games as I was hoping. I was looking forward to play Shenmue 3, Judgment, FE, Disco Elysium, and so many other games but I just couldn't. Hopefully, I can catch up this 2020.


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[Gevin]

1. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice: Hard to learn and even harder to master, but incredibly satisfying once you do, From does it again with the best boss fights the genre has to offer. Grinding will not save you in this game.
2. Baba is You: A really fun and smart logic game, full of mind blowing secrets.
3. Devil May Cry 5: another successful entry in the DMC series, with the combat being more fun than ever.
4. Katana Zero: pretty well done action game with an enjoyable story and an amazing soundtrack.
5. Resident Evil 2: probably the best video game remake in modern history, stays true the original while introducing much needed QoL changes.

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[Tankard]

1. Resident Evil 2 - The original was already one of my favorite games of all time and this REmake surpassed any expectation I could have had. The best remake I ever played and already a top 5 games of all time to me.
2. Death Stranding - It scared for a moment... a moment as in a few hours... but once I got a hold on what was going on, how to progress, the story really captivated me on a way only Kojima could. Very unique experience.
3. Control - NOW we are talking, Remedy. Realized Quantum Break's mistakes and took what was the best on that to make this unique game with unique powers and unique ways to go through it. The combat is so satisfying. A very replayable game, my platinum is fairly close.
4. Devil May Cry 5 - Stupid fun to play just as I hoped. It's one of my favorite franchises. I recognize the game missteps but I still loved every moment of it.
5. Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order - Well well well, lokk what we have here. That is a shocker to me. Thought the game was gonna suck, completely wrote it off and the game shut me up good. What a world to explore. Super fun to play too.
6. Mortal Kombat 11 - They keep improving the fighting system with 11 and Injustice 2 and I love it. Should have been higher on my list but i'm super down and disappointed in the studio for how they treat people.
7. Life Is Strange 2 - Loved the story of the two brothers. Didn't find it as impactful as Chloe and Max but still hit it.
8. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - Demon's Souls was the most frustrating game I played in the past decade. Nearly broke my controller a couple of times but ended up loving it. Sekiro makes a run for it. The combat is amazing, the world is so beautiful and colourful this time but yeah, sooo frustrating with its mechanics. Thought about giving up about 10 to 15 times. The satisfaction of beating it was not great enough for me this time to put the game on top but i respect the devs and who does put it on top.
9. Concrete Genie - It just hit it home with me. Beautiful game to playthrough and one I've played with my mom.
10. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night - I hoped it was going to be better but still the game feels great. The atmosphere is what I wanted and Iga knows how to do it.

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[The Unsent]

1. Kingdom Hearts 3 - The Disney worlds are so magical and do a great job of expanding the scale and detail of the ones in past games. It's night and day in comparison. I had a smile on my face the whole game. This felt a Square game from an earlier generation in the best possible way,
2. Yoshi's Crafted World - The second best Yoshi game, Yoshi's Island crossed with LittleBigPlanet, which is a reassuring combination. The craft Vehicles add some nice variety like punching everything in with robot Yoshi. It's always nice to see Kamek and Bowser argue and the last boss is wonderful.
3. Control - It's of course a nice 3D Metroidvania which is always a pleasant surprise, some of the weird images like a character looking ominously at a haunted fridge and the never ending corridors will stick in my mind. I'll never forget this game.
4. The Outer Worlds - The game wastes no time and drops you into a random planet when two factions intensifying about how to provide for its colonists, their individual pros and cons, which is straight to the point in a game that was hyped as the spiritual successor to Fallout: New Vegas. It's pleasantly colourful and accessible, and the weighty choices makes you think about what's in it for you, are you doing that because you actually believe that's the right thing to do or because you'll get a pat on the back? An enthralling game indeed.
5. Shenmue 3 - I try not to judge against the length of the wait, the weight of expectation and whether it was going to be worthy sequel to the masterpiece of 2, in short Shenmue 3 isn't a great RPG, however a positive experience, it at its most fun, when you treat it as an animal crossing style game and just appreciate the laid back activities such as levelling up your martial arts style with training exercises in the quaint Chinese countryside, or the amusing turtles racing, and catching chickens for an eccentric martial arts master. The two main towns are fantastic, Bailu Villiage which feels like an eccentric resort village. The other Niaowu is the most beautiful port town you can imagine with massive temples, loads of Buddha statues paving the streets and a wonderful bridge area with dragon walls, where you can admire the sunset above the massive cliffs like you're almost on holiday

Going to play Jedi Fallen Order Soon


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[Memory Pak]

Played very few 2019 releases, so won't be contributing much here at all, but I figured I'd chuck one vote towards a game I really liked.

1. Shovel Knight: King of Cards - What looks to be the final Shovel Knight campaign is also probably the best entry in the series. Developer Yacht Club Games scaled the levels down into more bite-sized chunks, which keeps the pacing high despite the simultaneously expanded world map. Playing as the sniveling, whining King Knight is a real delight. Everything about this character just oozes pathos: he lives in his mom's basement and relies on her to cook and sew for him, and yet is perfectly fine betraying her and everyone around him for personal gain. From his pompous gait to the use of crocodile tears to regain health; it's easy to imagine this maladjusted man-child, who exclusively befriends literal rats, as a caricature of several Western political leaders.
   Besides the excellent characterisation and the best storytelling in the series since Plague of Shadows, King Knight is also just fun to play as. A versatile and fluid moveset allows for a lot of acrobatics, and his sub-weapons give you a lot of ranged offensive options. Plus, there's a mostly optional card game included here too, which should appeal to fans of Final Fantasy VIII'sTriple Triad. All in all, King of Cards is the most complete Shovel Knight campaign yet and allows the series to end on a very high note. While Plague of Shadows remains my favourite of the bunch, King of Cards is so much more than a remixed level pack, and deserves recognition in the GOTY thread.

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[Sir Sonic]

One Day Remaining

 

[StormEagle]

1. Outer Wilds - An utterly unique and awesome experience. This is a true exploration game. It is not just a game with a strong emphasis on exploration whose main loop is in another aspect like fighting, bas- or character building or platforming. Exploring the planets in the system and finding out what is happening and what happened before is everything. It is also not a pure story "walking-simulator" as the exploration is more adventurous with space flight and 3d movement and platforming. It has puzzles that involve the movement, physics of the world and/or flow of time. All progress is knowledge based and it is highly nonlinear and open, but also very lightly guided. This openness and lack of player guidance might lead to some confusion and frustration in some. People that want to find out the mystery of a world and dead race by themselves without being funnelled into a developer intended route/experience and that love the feeling of finding secrets without a guide, will love this game. People that miss a guiding hand might find enjoyment in playing with a veteran player on call that might give non-spoilery hints when they feel stuck. This games fights with "The Return of the Obra Dinn" from last year as my game of the decade.
2. Baba is You - Really unique puzzle game that incorporates changing its own rules as a gameplay mechanic. The intelligently designed puzzles force you to understand its rules and how they can be changed on all levels. That is not an easy task and it will be frustrating. But if you like puzzles that are hard and still logical and not bullshit, this game is absolutely recommended.
3. Dragon Quest Builders 2 - A Minecraft like game with a great and wholesome story, well suited for kids. The story might be a bit dark at times with the death of "good" people and the despair of an apocalyptic world, but it all wraps up well in the end with a message of friendship, optimism and kindness. The building is also great and combat is not too bad. Best Dragon Quest game by a large margin.
4. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night - It is a new Symphony of the Night or aria of Sorrow. But with more things to collect and more systems to learn or ignore.
5. Control - An action X-files/Fringe mystery game that hopefully can become more than just this one game. Its combat and 3D gameplay are good and does not weigh the game down even during its "random encounters" when you are exploring. The best part for me were the lore, characters and story of the game, in that order. It really paints a world like the aforementioned series with a lot of mystery and adventure. The world building is so great that it makes me yearn for a game that is more focused on the sidequests of this game and goes deeper into the world and lore.
6. Cadence of Hyrule - The perfect mix of Zelda and Crypt of the Necrodancer. Less roguelike than Necrodancer, but that is more of a positive in my opinion. The musical remixes are stellar
7. Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair - Many compare the game to the Donkey Kong Country series and rightfully so. Its 2D platforming is closest to the DKC franchise. It also looks great and colourful and has wonderful music. With only a change to characters and story this could be DKC and I love DKC. I did not have enough time to play it to see if it holds up through the whole game, so it is rather low on my list.
8. Code Vein - The short: it is better than Dark Souls in every single aspect. But it has still quite a bit of bullshit, so it is not higher on the list. Yet it is the first of this kind of games that I actually finished. It has the most detailed anime character I've seen although clothing choices are quite limited. The RPG systems are also quite reduced, which makes it easier to focus on the fighting itself.
9. Borderlands 3 - It is more Borderlands and prettier and more varied than ever. The style and humour is the same as before which seems to be a downside for many but my range on the characters goes from neutral to enjoyment.
10. Blasphemous - Igavania with stunning 2D pixel art and a more monstrous Spanish catholic than classic horror aesthetic. The levelling is more exploration gated and it lacks an RNG based ability grinding (shards, solus, cards, etc…) The difficulty is on the higher side stemming from errors being very punishing with incoming attacks dealing s lot of damage and many instant death traps/pits/spikes. Enemy placement is also often rather dickish and you lose all your currency upon dying. So, it has enough the bullshit of a soulsbourne game for many to put it into that category, just like Hollow Knight. But it is not as bad that it can't be also just seen as a more difficult Castlevania game with some strange new elements.

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[PlatypusDude]

1. Disco Elysium - The only game this year where I can be a sorry, art-loving, communist cop. In all seriousness as someone who loves what CRPG's try to do, but can never get into their combat systems a wonderful written text-driven game of that ilk was going to be something I loved and it was.
2. Fire Emblem: Three Houses - Come for the SRPG goodness, stay for the wonderful characters. Edelgard did nothing wrong.
3. Sayonara Wild Hearts - A game buoyed by the raw strength of its indie-pop style soundtrack and wonderful artistic vision.
4. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - Its interesting that I have never finished an actual "Souls" game, but I loved my time with Sekiro and previously Bloodborne. Maybe its just the faster pace of combat or just the settings. In Sekiro's case I have never felt more satisfaction beating a few of the endgame bosses in the 20 years I've been playing video games.
5. AI: The Somnium Files - After the misfire that was Zero Time Dilemma I was hesitant if Uchikoshi had anything left in the tank. I'm glad I was wrong since AI is a wonderful standalone mystery game that while not perfect, pervy humor and weak Somnium sections drag it down some, I strongly recommend to anyone who enjoyed the director's previous output.
6. Astral Chain - Platinum Games certainly know how to get the most of less. Astral Chain is clearly not that high of a budget game with the location reuse in the back half of the game and several other caveats, but it was probably the most pure joy I had in an action game this year.
7. Luigi's Mansion 3 - This is almost the perfect Luigi's Mansion game. Merging the more mission-esque structure of Dark Moon with the standalone floors with a large number of boss fights reminiscent of the first game it meshes the best of both world's for a enjoyable romp.
8. Devil May Cry 5 - While I'm admittedly terrible at it, got to love the stylish combat of this game. Also, BANG BANG BANG PULL MY DEVIL TRIGGER.
9. A Plague Tale: Innocence - Such a wonderful surprise. This has all the makings of a weird mid-budget game out of Europe, but instead had a wonderful story and solid stealth gameplay. You'll never look at a rat the same after you play this.
10. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order - While riffing a little too close to the Souls formula to its detriment, the mediation points and such, but Respawn made a good competent Star Wars game in 2019 when such a thing seemed impossible. They deserve all the credit in the world for that.

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[Gale Moran]

...

Click to shrink...

Your list doesn't seem to count, I'm not an expert in saying what's wrong, but there's no votebot.

 

[phant0m]

1. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - My favorite "souls" game behind Bloodborne.
2. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order - This had a lot of technical problems, but is still the best SW game of the decade. Made you feel like a Jedi by being "skilled" instead of just overpowered.
3. Death Stranding - Weird Kojima is best Kojima.....also worst Kojima.
4. A Plague Tale: Innocence - Punches far above it's weight class with a gripping story, unique gameplay, and excellent soundtrack.
5. Control - Remedy again shows their mastercraft at combat and world building, shame I really didn't like Jesse as a character.
6. Divinity: Original Sin 2 Definitive Edition - I generally dislike putting console ports on GotY lists, but the Switch version of this is so goddamn good with Steam sync.
7. The Outer Worlds - This really scratched my sci-fi RPG itch, and I loved that it didn't take 60 hours to get through.
8. Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair - A superb platformer in every respect, shame the original game wasn't this good.
9. Judgment - Detective stuff, in MY Yakuza? It's better than you think!
10. Dragon Quest Builders 2 - an unexpected joy that bested my expectations at every level
11. Mortal Kombat 11 - MK is the only fighting franchise I'm really into, and this one hits all the right marks.
12. Metro Exodus - Get out of here, Stalker.

I'd also like to note that Judgment was NOT on the spreadsheet and I am offended.

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[Raijinto]

1. Pokemon Sword & Shield- To be honest I'm not really sure if these games will stand the test of time, or even if I believe they are the best games I played this year right now. But I still had a blast and something has got to be top of my list and even if only for its strengths alone as another great Pokemon game or even just because I want to for other maybe more petty reasons I'm happy to have these games as no 1 on my list, for better or worse.
2. Slay The Spire- Now quickly onto a game I'm completely confident about praising the living heck out of. Sure there are still things I'd like to see improved or added to in this game, but as someone who never really enjoyed a 'rouge-like' or even very many card games aside from Yu-Gi-Oh I am both surprised and delighted by how much I enjoy this game. I hear the art style and music are turn offs for some but for me I find them just fine, great even. And when the core gameplay loop is this fantastic it only adds to the experience. Roll on the patch for The Watcher on consoles. Special mention has to go to Game Pass as well here without which I may not have even tried to game out, well worth the money for that alone. The standout game I experienced throughout my first year of subscribing to the brilliant GP service for sure.
3. Monster Hunter World: Iceborne- So this is me cheating a bit, as I'm technically not just voting for the quality of the expansion alone here, as I also only really got round to playing the base game this year too. But 150 hours later I'm convinced that this is one of my favourite games ever. Also the game I spent the most time playing this year too so that has to count for something.
4. Fire Emblem: Three Houses- Now despite me being probably one of the latest people to vote for this game here, I'd imagine I'm likely nevertheless to be the first to vote for this game despite not enjoying it overall as much as the previous game(s?) in the series. Fates has a rough time around here that's for sure, but I really enjoyed it warts and all, and it succeeded in ways that TH does not, despite being a mess narrative-wise, its gameplay along with its 3 genuinely unique campaigns had me hooked. TH was not quite as successful as Fates in that regard though, as despite completing the Blue Lions path quite quickly it remains the only path I have done so. To pros and cons of TH v Fates are perhaps better suited for another time however and despite being somewhat disappointed in how the game is structured across its multiple routes I nonetheless had a blast in the one that I did complete. Not the FE game I would have made were i in charge but another good one all the same.
5. Resident Evil 2- Not much to say about this game that I'm sure hasn't already been said many times ITT. All I can say is that it was my first experience of RE2 and it exceeded my expectations. Is it the best RE game? No, that's still RE4 which I am more confident than ever about after also playing that multiple times this year through the release of the Switch version as well as in GP but I'm quite pleasantly surprised at how close it is. Much better for my tastes too than RE7, which I also liked but definitely not as much as this game.
6. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening- Oh hey look another remake. And it's pretty much the same story too, never played LA before but this was a great time for me to experience it for the first time. It felt a bit too... I dunno lacking in structure and direction maybe at times with roadblocks for progress being unlocked through rather arbitrary and unsatisfactory means but the core experience was solid, surprising so considering how faithful it is to the original game, unlike with RE2 for example. But yeah these were two great remakes to release this year and will live long in the memory.
7. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order- A mixed bag to be sure. Narrative-wise I thought it was boring, technically it was an absolute mess on a PS4 but something had to make up for that in order for it to be on this list and ultimately the gameplay and overall aesthetic experience go a long way in doing so. I couldn't care less about the plot or any of the characters like I said and I would hesitate in recommending it even though I enjoyed it based off of the technical shortcomings alone but man it was great to play as a Jedi in a game that so shamelessly takes... 'inspiration' form much more established and quite frankly better games as Metroid Prime and Dark Souls for example. That along with as I said the music, visuals and such help make it into an authentic Jedi game that I definitely enjoyed. Just wish there were less glaring problems overall, it could have been something really special if so.
8. Luigi's Mansion 3- I wish I could place this higher. Overall it was great, almost certainly the best of the 3 LM games as a whole. I'm especially glad they didn't cave into those who were demanding the first game be basically remade wholesale instead of doing something genuinely fresh and new in response to the critics of LM2, which was also great too. I just feel like this game is best experienced in co-op as the switching between the 2 Luigis does get tiresome before long (and even remembering Gooigi at times was enough to have me stumped as I was still so used to his total absence in the first 2 which I played for the first time in 2018) and the sheer amount of abilities and gadgets in this game also add to the frustration at times. But yeah it's still fantastic overall. It looks brilliant too.
9. Untitled Goose Game- A game I'm definitely glad I played through instead of just accepting that this is just down to memes and goofiness. There's a genuine quality game here and it's a bit of a shame the marketing has obscured that somewhat. Maybe a bit pricy at full price considering its very short length but it reminds me of Donut County from last year in this regard too- a a game I would wholeheartedly recommend otherwise. Again another mention for Game Pass here, in some ways it's the ideal way to experience the game if you're unsure.
10. Super Mario Maker 2- Ultimately I was unsure about what game would be 10th spot here, there were also Kingdom Hearts 3, Tetris 99 and maybe even New Super Mario bros U Deluxe for here despite the fact that I didn't play many other games to completion last year as I would have been able to previously. But yeah SMM2 is here if only for the dozens of great levels that compromise its story mode, which I only actually finished quite recently too. I don't get much out of the creation side of things but hopefully now that the story is finished I can experience some of the best levels online too.

Whew. Great year overall for me. Glad too to be able to vote this year, didn't get the formatting right in 2017 and just was not enthused to do so last year.


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[Stefarno]

1. AI: The Somnium Files - One of the main reasons I held off completing this list is that I'm playing through this game at the moment. I'm not quite finished with everything but I've seen enough to put it to the top of the list. A fantastic visual novel with great characters and a perfect blend of seriousness and humour.
2. Judgment - Honestly, I basically knew I'd like a detective Yakuza game but even so this really exceeded my expectations. Really great story and characters.
3. Crackdown 3 - I don't get the hate this game gets at all - I had loads of fun with it. It's basically a really pretty remake of Crackdown 1. My main negative about it is that I wish it had destructible buildings - not even in a 'power of the cloud' sort of way but even if it was basically like in an EDF game.
4. Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age – Definitive Edition - I was unsure about listing a port, but I feel that this merits inclusion. This is a really great RPG and it has a decent changes from the PS4 version too (especially the music!). It is also an absolutely amazing technical achievement.
5. Astral Chain - It feels like this game has been a bit forgotten about which is a shame because it's another fantastic Platinum game, albeit with some pacing issues.
6. Devil May Cry 5 - I've never really been able to get into this series, and I probably wouldn't have ever tried it if it wasn't added to gamepass, but it's a really great game - super fun with oodles of style.
7. Resident Evil 2 - Exactly what you want from a remake - a faithful recreation of a classic game but with changes in all the right areas.
8. Tetris 99 - Not sure there is too much I can say about a Tetris game, but it is crazily addictive. Finally winning a game was easily one of my highlights of the year.
9. Dragon Quest Builders 2 - Takes the first game and improves on it. It's just a shame it doesn't run a bit better on Switch.
10. Gears 5 - This game looks stunning, even on an old Xbox One S, and the fundamental gears formula can't go wrong, but I'm not really a fan of Kait and the open-world stuff seemed kinda pointless. Still really enjoyed myself though.

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[Joltik]

I didn't get to play a lot of 2019 games as I got a PS4 late last year and I was mostly playing PS4 games from 2018 and earlier so this list maybe small compared to the other lists here.

1. Dragon Quest XI S:Echoes of an Elusive Age - Definitive Edition - Yep. This was my favorite game this year and it was a close one between this and the second game on my list. I really liked the characters' dynamic, the large world and how the monsters interact with it, the vignettes, the skill tree and how you came experiment with the builds, the forge to create better weapons and armor and I like how long this game is. I also like the Draconian mods that makes the game more challenging, more games should have custom difficulty mods like this, I know Celeste does. The only thing I didn't like was the soundtrack, where the only good tracks where from older games. Though the orchestra is much better than the PS4/PC midis.
2. Dragon Quest Builders 2 - Wow! This was the first game that prompted me to spend the full $60 on a Steam title where I usually spend $30 or less on a single PC game. It also made me care about playing a Minecraft-like title thanks to having objectives to give me a reason to create something and to ease me on in the future if I want to create more complex structure. This game has a lot of heart. The stories and characters within the island are charming. When you build something new they all clap and cheer for your accomplishment. You are accompanied by your cool partner Malroth who aids in defeating monsters and gathering materials for you. It's a pretty relaxing game, especially post-game. The only reason it's not my number one is that sometimes you have to build rooms a certain size(they cant be too big) or they won't register as a room.
3. Sayonara Wild Hearts - This game is cool and more complex than I thought it would be. For the first two or three levels, I thought I would simply just move my character with the analog stick, collecting hearts, with the occasional button prompts to an awesome soundtrack. However, the game threw some curveballs by changing genres and even perspectives on me throughout the levels. They even got surprisingly intense on me. I was mostly playing this game docked with my 8-bit do SN+ Pro controller, but I have a feeling that I would do better playing this game handheld. I need to get the OST to this.
4. Pokemon Shield - I enjoyed this game more than I thought I would. I like the new Pokemon and their cute animations on Pokemon Camp. The soundtrack is great. I like the concept gyms being a much bigger deal here than previous regions and I like the gym Leader designs. I somewhat like raids, though I have a feeling I would like them even more if I played multiplayer. Though this entry feels really rushed in some parts, the story towards the end made me go "???", and the game could really use a hard mode. Despite all that, the game was okay to make this list.
5. The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince - This is a sweet little fairy tale as a puzzle platformer. You play as a wolf who accidentally blinds a prince after being shocked that he saw you singing, and you guide him through a dangerous forest as a human princess(thanks to a forest witch) so you bring him to the witch to cure his eyes. The storybook artstyle is the best thing that pops out in this game. It also has some nice animation from the characters and monsters. It's a pretty short game but I payed 50% off the price it was on the eshop. I think the downside is that the physics with holding the prince's hand is tricky. Sometimes he let's go of your hand when your making high jumps via springy mushrooms.

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[janusff]

1. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice : Superb game by a company at the top of their game. changed it up and even made souls veterans cry out in pain. glorious
2. Dirt Rally 2.0 : This turned out to be my all time favorite rally game.
3. Apex Legends : by far my favorite BR game
4. Sayonara Wild Hearts : loved the vibes of this game. and the design of it all
5. Risk of Rain 2 : risk of rain but in 3d. brilliant
6. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order : probably my favorite SW game that has ever dropped. too bad about the technical probs. would've been number 1
7. Control : a neat little game
8. Knights and Bikes : a charming little game
9. Timespinner : great little bedtime game or for in the middle of the night for after putting the baby back down ;_;
10. Horizon Chase Turbo : this game brought me back. neat art style too

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[Arrahant]

Since I'm not into survival horror or Soulsborne, coming up with my GOTY required more thought than usual. Not one game on my list I would consider a 9 or a 10. Nevertheless, I came up with a list of 10 titles that I finished in consecutive sessions and loved playing (or simply played a lot over the year).

1. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order
   All in all the most complete package I experienced in 2019. The story especially stood out to me. The character and the script weren't that special, but I loved how the themes of the story were different from a regular SW story. This one is more about dealing with loss and even PTSD! Gameplay is solid overall, a fun more forgiving Bloodborne combat system, solid platforming, and exiting and nostalgic set pieces. I played the PC version and performance was perfect. Great graphics, sound and music. The metroidvania aspect could have been implemented a lot better in my opinion; not a enough dangling carrots.
2. Destiny 2: Shadowkeep
   It's "just" more Destiny, but once again this thing managed to provide me and my clan another 300+ hours of coop enjoyment. I have to respect that fact, I guess. Even though most encounters feel familiar. The new raid is a lot of fun as well. We got some new secrets and puzzels to uncover. All in all a pretty complete Destiny experience.
3. Ion Fury
   The new 3D Realms showed the world it walks the walk, I would say. This game represents a massive tour de force of the old Build engine, yet applied in a way that makes proper use of modern hardware. The interactivity and balance between combat and exploration is just perfect. Modern shooters could learn from this 30+ hour campaign that is just filled to the brim with proper shooter gameplay. The level design kept me curious throughout. The only thing lacking was the end boss, imho.
4. The Outer Worlds
   Great sci fi rpg with western vibes. The third act really lacked content, which made the end of the story less impactful. Especially the Byzantine stuff. Monarch and the first planet were lovely though; that kind of stuff completely makes the hours fly by. I thoroughly enjoyed this old school rpg from beginning to end, although it never surprised me. Gunplay felt a bit stiff. Excellent writing and humor.
5. Control
   I was able to play this game with ray tracing in 4k on my oled, and I was completely enthralled by this games' atmosphere the first night I played it. Somehow it just feels really "cool"? The story and location also ooze mystery, which really made me want to dig into the lore. Great acting and script, everything felt quite surreal and otherwordly. That maze section might be the most memorable scene in gaming in 2019 for me.
6. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
   You can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you get what you need.
7. Civilization 6: Gathering Storm
   Climate change, the weather and the way society can have influence their escalation over time was simulated nicely. One of the few games that tries to make gamers consider this. Apart of that I got more civs and more variety into my game of Civ, which is always a nice thing. Special shoutout to the excellent folk music using appropriate instruments and artists. Civ always manages to inspire me to study history more.
8. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
   Charming and cosy game that really helped to give my christmass vacation a nostalgic feel :) The classic Zelda gameplay is still very viable anno 2020.
9. Metro Exodus
   Great escalation of the Metro series. Nice implementation of (semi- ?) open world design with just enough stuff that rewarded exploration. Solid gunplay, nice environmental puzzels. Nice set pieces. A bit short.
10. Gears 5
    Solid shooter filled with set pieces and beautiful graphics. Games like Gears and Metro are my gaming equivalents to a nice snack. Like a nice and juicy hamburger. I really came to love Jack in this Gears title and the ending was very nice and felt complete for an "in between" part of the story.

Honorable mentions:

• Xbox Game Pass
  For this price point it's hard not to love Game Pass. Such great value. It also really helps to get clan members to play other games together outside of the regulars like Destiny, Siege and Overwatch. I just hope the service is also lucrative to 2nd and 3rd party developers. I guess Phil deserves the benefit of the doubt for now. This is one subscription I'll keep.
• Forza Horizon 4
  It's not normal for a racing game to provide hundreds of hours of enjoyment over more than two years. Game Pass finally gave me a steady group of clanmates to play with. I can't wait for the next chapter in this endlessly fun game.
• Disco Elysium
  Unique fusion of story, character progression, conversation options that in the end did not keep my entertained. But I have to admire the craft.
• Luigi's Mansion 3
  I probably should have played this one and it might have gotten on my list.
• Outer Wilds
  I hated the time reset stuff in Majora's Mask as I do here, but I want to love this game damn it!

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[kadotsu]

1. Dragon Quest Builders 2 - Probably the best progression system I've ever played. Charm and fun challenges for days.
2. Slay the Spire - It is the third Rogue-lite game I can play for infinite hours. It is in the company of Spelunky and Dead Cells.
3. Luigi's Mansion 3 - An animation feast. The pinnacle of the Casual Adventure Game genre.
4. Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth - A potent mix of grind that instantly gets you into a flow and fun character moments.
5. Baba is You - This year's Stephen's Sausage Roll, but better.

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[Gift of Fury]

1. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night - Delivers a solid SOTN experience and even adds upon it. The shard system in particular is very fun to experiment with along your journey.

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[Kokoro]

1. Death Stranding - I really loved this game. The gameplay was something I never knew I would've liked before I tried it, but I found it interesting and engaging in the long run. The story was weird and sometime a little too crazy but there were emotional moments that moved me. The OST was very good. Overall it's the game I have the most enjoyed in 2019.
2. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - I wasn't sure to love this game because it wasn't following exactly the "Souls" model, leaning more toward action game. The beginning was hard for me but I have persevered and it clicked. The combat was really good when you learn to parry, you must learn every enemy and boss moves, but it wasn't too hard, just enough to be fun and rewarding.
3. Resident Evil 2 - I never played the original, but I love most modern Resident Evil. I wasn't disappointed with this one. The great level design, the horror atmosphere, the terrifying Mister X, the beautiful graphisms and the gameplay, everything was good in this game.
4. Days Gone - I was interested in this game the moment I've seen the big hordes of zombies. The game didn't disappoint on this front, even if you really fight them near the end. The story was pretty good (even if I regret they took off the multiple choices system) and the game was beautiful, especially the climatic conditions like rain and snow. The gameplay was good, nothing really special, but not bad.
5. Borderlands 3 - I played the game alone at first and really enjoyed it. The gameplay is much better than the precedent games, more fluid and agile, and the weapons are also more fun and enjoyable to use. After finishing the game once, I played it coop with friends and it was even more fun. The only downside are the very high number of bugs at launch, some that are not yet fixed.
6. Kingdom Hearts III - I am not a big fan of the serie Kingdom Hearts but I really enjoyed my time with Kingdom Heart III. The gameplay is fun and revisiting the Disney world is great when you know them/have seen the films. The story is complete nonsense though, at least for me who just had watched summary of the other games on Youtube.
7. Apex Legends - I'm not playing a lot of competitive multiplayers games, and even less Battle Royal games. But I loved Apex Legends. The gameplay is so good, the weapons are fun to use, and the ping system is really great, whether you play with friends or with random players. And the characters are really nice in design and personnality.
8. Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled - I've not played it for too long, but the time I spent on it was pure fun, especially with my friends. A great arcade kart racing game, with a lot of content to unlock to customise your favorite(s) character(s).
9. The Division 2 - At first I loved this game, even if there were some bugs. I played it with my friends in coop. But after finishing the story and grinding a little, I became bored with it, so I stopped playing. The decision to not have matchmaking for the raid definitively made me not come back to the game.
10. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order - I hesistated to put this game in my list. It's not a bad game, but there are a lot of little details that frustrated me in this game. A lot of bugs or technical issues and the combat who sometime felt imprecise. But despite that, I still kind of loved the game as a Star Wars fan. I was waiting for so long for a good Star Wars single player game, and I had it. I hope if they make a sequel, they take their time and improve a lot of things.
11. Anthem - I spent a lot of time on Anthem with my friends. The gameplay (especially flying) was good, but there were too many issues with the game (the stupid AI of the enemies, the lack of content...) to keep a good memory of it. Maybe it will be better if they relaunch it like said in some rumors.
12. Disco Elysium - Why is this fantastic game so low on my list? Because I havn't finished it yet. I didn't want to put game I haven't finished or played a lot of hours on my list, so I keep them for my honorable mentions. Disco Elysium is probably the most well written game I have played. I had constently a smile on my face while playing it. It's THAT good. It could have been easy in my top 3 if I finished it.
13. Control - Same as Disco, I have played Control but not finished it. I really liked the game, especially the weird story/atmosphere. I love when Remedy make some strange game like that.
14. The Outer Worlds - Not finished it too, but this one is more due to being disapointed than a loss of motivation. I really liked the first hours of the game, everything was cool, especially the dialogs and choices you can make. But the more I played the game, the more I found little details that I didn't like, like the few choice of weapons and armors, the combats who become too easy, etc...

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[Tagg]

1. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - The Souls formula was perfected with Sekiro and I've never felt such a feeling of accomplishment as I have defeated bosses in this game
2. Control - I had zero expectations around this game but the frenetic gameplay is a pure joy to play and the Mr. Robot-esque narrative was incredibly compelling
3. A Plague Tale: Innocence - Another game that went under the radar for me but delivered an amazing story as well as some decent gameplay fundamentals
4. Kingdom Hearts III - The story is nonsensical and the gameplay lacks any real challenge but I will forever love a series with Goofy and Donald as two of the main characters
5. Days Gone - A lack of polish and repetitive gameplay diminished the overall quality of Days Gone, but the open world sandbox an atypical character development means it deserves a place in the Top 10 for me
6. Luigi's Mansion 3 - Pure joy to play with it's cartoony, physics-based vacuum gameplay
7. Fire Emblem: Three Houses - Overly length exposition aside, this is Fire Emblem in HD and providing three separate storylines in a single product for the first time
8. Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order - Still a little clunky at time, but I've been asking for Uncharted with lightsabers for years and this delivered that to me
9. Resident Evil 2 - Not a horror fan but I can't deny the genius of Resident Evil 2 and its amazingly designed enemy encounters and level layout
10. Astral Chain - Yet another fantastic if generic action game from Platinum

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[Terror-Billy]

1. Resident Evil 2: if this isn't the best remake ever made, I don't know what it is. A tight, polished experience and an example of how to remake a game.

2. Sekiro: one of the best games From has ever made. A welcome addition to the soulsbornekiro family with amazing boss battles and gameplay.

3. Slay the Spire: the best "one of those" game of the year. An addictive experience like no other.

4. The Outer Worlds: a great game even with a great narrative and a good sense of scale. A really great alternative to the Bethesda experience.

5. Pokemon Sword: a welcome evolution to the formula. It's not as innovative as one could wish, but is still best in class when it comes to it's own genre

6. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order: the best Star Wars game in a long time. It would be a bit higher if there was more polish.

7. Gears 5: a welcome addition to the Gears franchise with amazing visuals, tight combat an a very interesting story. It falls short on what it tries to innovate, but everything else is great.

8. Remnant: From The Ashes: SO GOOD. THAT'S ALL. IT'S TOO GOOD.

9. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare: one of the best looking games ever. Also, a welcome comeback to the roots of the franchise, with great multiplayer and a good campaign.

10. Metro Exodus: while I enjoyed more the previous titles, Exodus is a welcome change to the formula. Stunning visuals and atmosphere, great exploration and a couple of new stuff that's appreciated.

 

[Deleted member 12352]

1. Death Stranding - A unique, beautiful adventure that tries to do something new and interesting with open world game design by offering a haunting and atmospheric experience that de-emphasises violence in favour of exploration and traversal to tell an engrossing, convoluted (and sometimes silly as hell) story. Visually astounding, fantastic OST and some great feeling gameplay make this another Kojima classic.
2. Judgment - Yakuza in all but name. Gloriously batshit as you could want and stuffed with content and fun gameplay. Another winner for the series that keeps on giving.
3. Ace Combat 7 - A looong overdue return to form for the series with a deeply engaging campaign and great feeling combat.
4. Days Gone - Some technical rough edges aside, this enjoyable post-zombie apocalypse open world actioner captures the feel of being run down by a herd of zombies better than any other game before it.
5. Mortal Kombat 11 - It's not exactly breaking any new ground but it is every bit as enjoyable to play as the past couple of entries have been so I was happy enough with it.
6. Resident Evil 2 - A perfectly judged remake of the aged classic with superb visuals and satisfying gameplay.
7. Kingdom Hearts 3 - I have no idea what's even going on with this series at this point, but the game was a lot of fun to play through so... it was doing something right at least. Not telling a coherent story of course, but y'know...
8. Astral Chain - It's not exactly Platinum at their best, but it's still an enjoyable actioner with some satisfyingly designed combat that maybe could've used a little tightening up on the controls for my liking.
9. Observation - Not normally the sort of thing I'd be the biggest fan of, but Observation's story was engrossing and enjoyable enough to make you not care just how many cues it was taking from 2001.
10. SD Gundam G-Generation Cross Rays - A basic but highly enjoyable piece of Gundam fan service gaming that takes forever to play through.
    

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[Hixx]

1. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - From have always been great at making you feel your progression in their games (whether it be stats/equipment or your own skill) and I think Sekiro is the best of them at doing that.
2. Resident Evil 2
3. Days Gone
4. Gears 5 - so I didn't actually like the new "hub" areas. But the 2 linear chapters were absolutely brilliant Gears of War content. Hopefully with their next attempt they can finally nail the campaign.
5. Judgment - the trailing missions are absolutely horrendous but otherwise I loved this game. Still not burned out on this formula which is incredible with how often they release these games.
6. Fire Emblem: Three Houses
7. A Plague Tale: Innocence

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[Deleted member 2791]

1. Astral Chain - Platinumgames having my favourite game of the year is starting to be a trend, but they truly outdid themselves with this one. Already one of my fav works ever from that studio and in the character action game genre overall.
2. Resident Evil 2
3. Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes
4. Fire Emblem: Three Houses
5. Devil May Cry V
6. Pokémon Sword
7. Luigi's Mansion 3
8. Your Turn To Die: Death Game by Majority
9. Dragon Quest Builders 2
10. Gears 5

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