2019 was a really solid year for me in gaming, the 5-10 slot was hard to order since there's a whole bunch of games that could have fit in its place. I could pretty easily go to 15 deep but there's a certain point where I need to just not.
Unlike most years, the top end was fairly easy, with number one being the easiest choice I think I've ever had to make.
X. Devil May Cry 5
DMC fans have had one hell of a ride in the last decade. Oh wait, DMC4 was 200-FUCKING-8 JESUS
*ahem*
DMC5 is finally a game that exists, a direct follow up of the best-selling game in the franchise that led Capcom to disregard that and give the series to an outside developer, as a part of their cocaine bender that lasted all too long. And it is exactly what you would expect and want from DMC. Blistering action, negative amounts of level design, combat, a lot of flesh hallways, did I mention action? Cuz, hey, action.
Nero, Dante, and V are the rotating cast of this game. Dante is peak action game nonsense, a character honed to a sheen after so many iterations. The amount of options at your fingertips with him border on obscene, between weapon/gun switches and styles on the fly, which all work together into making the character incredibly fun to play. And how could he not? Every fight can be completely under your control, if you can get a handle on the wealth of options. Dante possibly has my all-time favorite DMC weapon, Balrog, which is pretty much a perfect rendition of a gauntlet-style weapon we've seen before. Special mention to the idea of having voice acted hype shout outs built into the weapon for the heat up mechanic, which makes the rapid flurry attacks INCREDIBLY satisfying to pull off. Good usage of frame stops for the impact of the charged punches add the extra spice on top of the feedback loop that DMC5 does extremely well.
Nero, on the other hand, has had a lot to compete with. In 4 he filled a much simpler role, though the exceed mechanic on his sword always had benefits for proper timing. Beyond that, he only had Red Queen and Blue Rose, his single sword and gun. This was not a character of weapon swaps, but at the same time he kinda needs to not be a copy paste of Dante to stand out. 5 fleshes him out a lot more and makes him genuinely damn fun to dive into combat with as well—ESPECIALLY post game, where he actually unlocks quite a few things with DT, and the old charge shot makes its triumphant return. He has Breakers now, slottable arms that give him new abilities: Slow down time in a radius, punch out a (rideable) rocket arm, or overcharge your sword at the expense of lock on ability. He probably has around 10 of these, so this all works together to give him plenty of options, plus some new core moves that help flesh him out. Gotta say, though, even after beating this a lot of times I still don't like the breaker mechanic all that much. Instead of being able to swap within your loadout, these…well, break when you get hit while using them, or having Nero himself explode them to swap. Instead of it feeling like a proper risk/reward situation it instead feels like it limits a game that otherwise encourages breaking all limits. Still, I can't help but feel that Nero as a whole was a resounding success here.
V is the newcomer of the group, and in my opinion less successful, but his entire style is pretty bold to even go for in a game like this. V is a more passive player, letting his minions do the legwork for him while he comes in for the final blow. Summons causing stuff to just happen all over the screen is fun for a bit but doesn't offer the same breadth of options the other pair provide, on top of just not being as fun as Dante teleporting into that ass, or Nero pulling enemies to him directly. The style system completely breaks under itself for him as well, which is maybe for the best for some players, but it does mean that what options he does have really aren't called upon as much as the others.
As is to be expected, just being these characters is enough to carry the game. There's a fun story wrapped around it all that ends up being heavy on the fanservice by the end, though it's a bit lacking in the wacky cutscenes and Lady/Trish are underutilized. But if you want more than that? This ain't the game for you, as the aforementioned level design is probably as phoned in as it could be. This usually doesn't mean much to me in this genre, but at the very least there's a lot that can be said for the sake of visual diversity when half of your game ends up in a kinda assy looking flesh hallway. The characters visually look incredible but end up being pretty let down by the rest.
Still, Capcom is clawing their way back to old form, and I'm glad we were able to get a proper-ass DMC game again. Dante alone is probably the single most impressive feat action gaming has seen.
IX. Gears 5
Since its inception, Gears has been a nice comfort food series for me. That may sound a little odd as the game is high octane, and the MP is infamous for making you die on the inside because of the gnasher's often inexplicable ability to do 95% in one shot to an enemy that instagibs you. But the series still stands out to me in many ways due to just how much content get jam packed into it—Gears 2 paved the way for Horde modes to pop up in games, but the series keeps adding more on top of it. This is a game that now has a meaty campaign, a meaty MP component, Horde and Escape. The newcomer, Escape, is actually a lot more fun than I expected, offering a separate slice of PvE for people who don't want to hunker down for hours in a horde match that ends in everyone quitting anyway. It's a relatively brisk mode that changes a lot based on the map and modifiers and was something I found myself playing a lot more than I expected.
MP has had its ups and downs, but I'm pretty happy with it in 5 overall. The gnasher will always be a gun of controversy in its pure dominance over the game, especially in KotH, but few guns tie into the core mechanics as well as this does. The usage of the cover system to initiate slides, which are then cancelled and aimed elsewhere to bounce around the stage will always be something uniquely Gears, that at a certain point you either get or you don't. That said, this time the Lancer is no slouch, and there are plenty of map sightlines that leave you open to get crossfired if you just run around the map. It's something that requires a good amount of consideration and keeps some of the crazies at bay. Also newly added is an Arcade mode, something that is more based around streaks and loadouts, though I personally found this to be a bore as it shows what happens when you don't entice gnasher pushes—a lot of people sitting behind a wall, shooting at anything they see. No thanks. But in the core mode, there's still nothing out there that can encapsulate the peaks and valleys of a Gears MP suite—the pure, unbridled rage that can come out from a bad round, or the euphoric feeling when a 1v5 clutch happens.
But those same highs and lows can apply to a lot of the MP wrappings here. They've been pretty slow for my tastes on additional content, having an especially weak starting roster that is still plagued by crossover weirdness that can create a genuinely annoying imbalance when you're fighting a squad of slender, black terminators on a dark map wondering in the back of your mind where in the hell Ben Carmine is. The Coalition have made it so characters need loadouts of a sense not just for Arcade mode, but Horde and Escape as well, which slows down what they can potentially do and honestly doesn't feel like it's worth it. There are already characters that are useless in Escape and I can't give a damn about Arcade mode, so this feels like an experiment gone wrong. Further, the ranked system was baffling as all hell at launch, KotH was a mode to play if you wanted to get a flashbang bukkake, and the roster of maps felt a bit light. The map issue was not helped by the fact that some of them (icebound and exhibit) kinda blow, though YMMV on that. On the other hand, "living games" as it were are still a relatively newer concept, so these issues can all be remedied with time, especially when the core is so sound. Additionally, it costs the player nothing at that point as you no longer have to pay for maps, plus 4 ended up adding a lot over time so I'm sure 5 will be there all the same.
The main reason Gears 5 is here, though, is the campaign. I did an unexpected blow through the entire series around August, and it was pretty eye opening when I got to 4 again. The crew felt much hollower than the original cast, often feeling like Marvel quip machines that blended together in a way that sullied them having any real identity for themselves. Awkward pacing leading to fighting way too many robots at the start, horde scenarios that were integrated into the campaign that lasted too long, etc.
Gears 5 is a tremendous improvement in this regard, possibly being my top campaign in the franchise. JD is put through the wringer and takes a back seat to Kait and Del, who end up getting a lot of screentime to bounce off each other which was sorely needed after 4. Overall scenario design, pacing, etc. feel much better across the board, with clever little gimmicks added to a lot of fights, and a solid spread of (good as HELL looking) environments. The widened areas end up working a lot better than I expected with Jack in the mix as well, and while I'm not really rooting for every game to slap RPG mechanics onto a game, the upgrade system with him was a simple but effective way to make engagement with the side content areas constantly rewarding. Late game usage of abilities to hijack enemies, stim yourself while DBNO for a revive, or making a big ol' "fuck you" barrier that reflects bullets back aren't going to redefine the combat, but add some extra options to consider and help pull the game away from just hunkering behind a wall.
The beauty of Gears is that any individual element can be worth playing the game for, and even if there's a piece you don't gel with, this is still a meaty package that likely offers something to everyone. People may not touch the MP or campaign at all, and just dig into horde, and still be completely satiated. And while I try to separate this from the overall feelings of the game, I still find it hilarious that I got it as a part of a service that was offered for $2 at the time. Videogames are getting weird, man. Gears continues its trend of being a good-ass-time for me, and I'm genuinely interested to see how 6 is even tackled after the way this game ends.
VIII. Astral Chain
From the initial reveal, Astral Chain has always caught my eye. The general style, a switch game that actually doesn't look like visual ass smear, plus Platinum doing something ridiculous with combat sounds like a solid combination to me.
What we got is not what I would call the best Platinum has to offer, but it's a weird experimental thing that I like to see from them. In many ways, Astral Chain feels like a smorgasbord of their previous games: The Revengance sword slicing, the slowmo on dodges, to the line drop straight outta Nier; this is indisputably Platinum, mixed in an extremely Anime aesthetic. The gimmick here is all about the Legion, a second being that you can control simultaneously; basically, we got Neon Genesis Jojo's, with the eva01 color to boot. This takes…quite awhile to mentally adjust for regarding controls, but the combat ends up being a really fun romp, with special highlights to the connecting chain having some clever usage, ranging from manually spinning your Legion around an enemy to bind them, to extending the chain out to catch and fling an attacking enemy backwards. The different legions have different powers, so by the end of it there's 5 sets of these, all with compounding abilities that are always at your fingertips. Unfortunately the ranking system doesn't bounce very well off of this, instead being an incredibly easy system to game just by pure variety of actions, instead of showcasing genuine mastery over the systems. That can lead to plenty of top scores with little more than mashing, even if the potential depth is there.
With a game pulling from so many sources, being unique on its own seems like a daunting task. However, due to clever theming, Astral Chain still stands out. You are a police officer; albeit a super cop of sorts, and in many ways are just meant to be an everyday hero. This is not a standard action game that ends up being a series of fights hamstrung together, this is a game that lets the player breathe. This is best shown off by the Police Station hub, which on a surface level is effectively a 3D player space in place of a menu, it helps give context to the world. You can do as little or as much here as you desire, from donning the police dog mascot outfit to cheer others up, to assisting the residential toilet phantom, or just reading logs in the computer, maybe messing with cosmetics in the locker room. Leaving via the helipad is a shit gets real moment, as you're now flipping over to the meat of the game. But even here, Astral Chain is content to hammer in that you're meant to handle anything, large or small. Picking up cans to throw away, wiping down extradimensional gunk off the streets, or a plethora of smaller scale side quests give this a very different vibe from the nonstop adrenaline games of this DNA typically have. That, of course, is a dividing stick in many ways in how much you enjoy something like this, but I personally really dug these moments. For the most part. They aren't all winners, such as File 08 being loaded with some pretty trashy minigames (that are, of course, ranked…).The investigations are basic, ribbing some stuff from everyone's favorite Batman, but it's almost surreal to see a game that is otherwise so combat focused dip its toes into these other areas. You better believe I went Mario Sunshine on that gunk's ass, cleaning every bit of it I saw.
The other main part of Astral Chain is the Astral Plane. While the visual diversity isn't quite there, these are surprisingly thoughtful from a level design perspective. The Legion gimmick offers a wider range of player options to toy with, and that is most often flexed in these segments. Sending out a hovering legion to jump to, ride the doggie down a timed pathway, hitting switches to trigger moving platforms—again, the gamut here is hardly new, but having it all mixed together in one big mechanical soup bowl means that you're pretty often doing something new for the surprisingly meaty runtime here.
Plotwise, this is peak Anime. The core ideas are sound, and the final boss is visually fantastic, but there wasn't much else for me to grab on there. The most interesting area and character, Kyle in the off limits District 9, end up being the biggest standout, but they aren't focused on for long and don't get much of a resolution at all. The protagonist being mute is possibly the biggest misstep here, as it's a constant reminder back to the attitude of their own other projects, or even other games within the same genre. A lot is lost when you remove the devil may care attitude Dante exudes. Nero's cockiness. The playful sexuality of Bayonetta. These are often called Character Action Games for as good reason, as that Character MATTERS. It helps in so many ways to express charactization through animation, and when we have a wet blanket…there's not much to attach to. It doesn't hurt quite as hard as it would if Bayonetta 3 suddenly hit her with amnesia and the inability to speak, as this dips its toes into plenty of other areas, but it would have been a nice benefit for the already Anime as hell plotline if the MC was able to contribute to the increasingly over the top scenarios. You instead have a voiced twin sibling, who is an annoying, whiny trashcan of a character, which does not make for the greatest lynchpin for the plot. Devs, please stop making mute characters. They suck.
But overall, this game helped reestablish why Platinum is a name I respect in a time where I feel they can sometimes dip into their usual bag of tricks too often. Astral Chain is not a game that always cleanly comes together, but this was a stark reminder that when they go for a more out there concept, they still got it.
VII. Resident Evil 2
The Resident Evil franchise will always hold a special place for me, and the original RE2 is no exception. In the rise of digital media it's an unfortunate blindspot that isn't nearly as accessible as it should be, but it was always my favorite of the classic style games, though REmake is right on its tail. RE4 is my favorite game of all time, and this remake looked to be a marriage of the two styles. To say I was excited would be an understatement.
In basically ever way, the camera conversion is a complete success. RE has been through A LOT since the inception of the original, the biggest one likely being the almost complete removal of the classic zombie threat. RE4 onward has had more aggressive enemy types, though I still remember the excitement when the RE5 DLC hit that maybe we would see our slow, lumbering pals again (spoiler: lol not so much). They are not only back, but they are more threatening than I ever would have expected. The narrow claustrophobia of the RPD hallways let them really shine, as they take a lot of firepower to fully kill. Despite that, the act of engagement is still satisfying and purposeful—a detailed dismemberment system is in place, so you can opt for some leg shots to rip it apart and have an easier time running by the now face-planted zombie. But that zombie will remain there, and this is where the magic happens.
The zombies are but one part of this puzzle, since Lickers have always been an icon of RE2. For good reason, those are creepy motherfuckers. But the SYNERGY they have in this game with the other moving pieces is nothing short of incredible, and take them to another level. The best ways to handle a zombie? They all cause noise. Pulling one back, just to juke and run by. Whether you shoot one in the head or the leg, a gunshot is loud. Lickers are blind and attracted to noise, so a ceiling with a licker on it over top of a zombie creates a conundrum. A ticking time bomb. Then you hear the loud, thundering footsteps of an undying meat rectangle. You can't write up about this game without mentioning Mr. X, but the pieces of this puzzle are why he's so effective. Mr. X damn near blocks off the entire hallway with his frame, holding the role of forcing forward momentum right into this licker/zombie bomb. The final result is capable of being a giant mess, the zombie grabbing you as the licker screams out and lunges around, while Mr. X closes the gap to punch you in the back of the head. Handling all of this with quick on the fly decisions is a large part of why RE2 feels so great. It's an incredible usage of just a few enemy types, especially when they're all no slouches on their own. Mr. X especially is enough to cause anxiety just from his footsteps, knowing this unkillable monster is roaming the area.
This all comes together as something pretty simple—the RPD is masterful, as it always was. A great usage of the old style RE staple, ridiculously overcomplicated building designs that don't let you just open a pathway with a normal ass door. This lets them send the player back and forth between different areas without feeling like actual backtracking, which gets additional usage of previous zombie threats you left behind, on top of feeling internal gears clicking when you pick up a new key and think about the routes that are now open to you. This is still a remake however, and RE2 suffers in the same way the original did…leaving the RPD is a noticeable decline as you head into the sewers and lab, so this is very much a case of the strongest foot forward. This rendition has pros and cons with this, as it does absolutely nail the atmosphere of the areas, but it also cut some enemies that I feel could have helped out a bit. Mr. X is a double edged sword here, as his expanded role makes his presence impossible to ignore, but that also adds to the sting when you finally leave as he's also out of the picture. That said, it's not like these remaining sections are bad, just less engaging. There are still good moments dotted around the sewers and the lab, but it doesn't reach the same level of the interconnected web from before.
What hurts more than this is the axe taken to the zapping system. The Leon and Claire campaigns are still worth playing through, but without the interactions they shared before tying into the gameplay, they feel a lot like they're here because it was RE2 and they had to be, instead of being present (or even expanded upon) to prop up the ideas in the original game. As such, the OG still has a lot to offer in this regard, though it was likely inevitable that due to how different this remake is--both games stand tall as entries worth experiencing, whereas the original RE1 is outright not needed post REmake.
Needless to say, the early year 1-2 punch from Capcom worked pretty damn well on me. RE2 is a great reimaging of a classic, and is strong enough to be more than worth playing even without previous experience with the game or even series. Having two of their games on my list feels like it hasn't happened in a long time, and I'm hopeful they keep up this upward trend. RE3 is not too far away, and I don't think there's much to worry about there given the role Nemesis already played. In some ways, this might have just been a testing ground for what we end up seeing in there, and that is extremely exciting.
VI. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
I have played plenty of great crowdfunded games, but games that I myself have backed are very few--two in fact, Yooka Laylee and now Bloodstained. I was not super thrilled about Yooka when it was all said and done, and Bloodstained was one that I got increasingly worried about. I paid for this in 2015, and kept seeing it slip back farther and farther, which despite the oft used Miyamoto phrase is not something that exactly exudes confidence. There was even a spinoff Bloodstained game that already came out, before the origin of the namesake. The hell!
Of course, this is a game of the year list, and this is on my top 10, so it's safe to say that this time I'm very happy with the end result. Bloodstained came out better than I imagined it would, and stuck the pitch in ways I didn't expect. This is Castlevania under a different name in the most literal sense, and Bloodstained shows that from the very first screen as you mess with the buttons and just see how the SotN gamefeel is damn near transplanted here. The backdash, the arc of the weapons, the visualization of the map—it's all very clearly done to remind you that Iga has returned.
The gaming landscape has changed quite a lot when he was churning out Igavania's on handhelds every year. Order of Ecclesia was in 2008, before Castlevania went into Lords of Shadow territory, only to trek further into the ether of space and time as Konami chokes on Pachinko money. He's missed out on the rise of the indie game, something that oh-so-often uses the phrase Metroidvania. We have had a ton of games in this style, but they often lean harder on the Metroid than the Vania. There was still an itch I've had that is rarely scratched. It's not just about the power up progression giving access to new areas, it's about the lite RPG elements. The menu full of stats, level ups, and a nearly overwhelming amount of weapon options. Bloodstained is all of this, wrapped up in the same kind of dressing SotN skirted where it was fine just throwing everything and the kitchen sink into the player's hands, even if balance went out the window alongside it.
We got a Crissaegrim. We got references to the inverted castle built into mechanics via being able to INVERT EVERYTHING WHENEVER. And despite the kickstarter origins, we have a shocking amount of those small mechanical easter eggs I thought would be very hard to recapture with a more limited scope. A goofy toy boot weapon that squeaks each time you move, glasses that zoom the screen in and out, a voice changer that makes all of Miriam's dialogue a squeaky high pitch. The game is chock full of this stuff, and it works well to recapture the goofy underbelly these games can have.
While Bloodstained leans hard on the SotN, there's still the whole shard mechanic which feels like a return to some of the cool ideas explored in Dawn of Sorrow. Almost every enemy has a drop that then gives you access to a move that suits them. These range from the ridiculously effective Heretical Grinder, an aimable shaft of rotating blades that can be held out for rapid damage, to something as simple as tossing a bone. Weaponize your money! Or transform into a rabbit demon. There's so goddamn many of these things, that you could replay the game using entirely different sets and have a very different experience each time.
And when it's all said and done, that's what this game encapsulates so well. It's a plethora of options offered to the player, almost overwhelmingly so, while they're unleashed for a romp into a castle that barely makes sense. It's exactly what was pitched, and exactly what was delivered. Bloodstained is my feel good game of the year, doubling as both a nice return trip to the metroidvanias of past, and a reminder that this setup legitimately still holds up and works well on its own. Bloodstained may not topple the king, but it's certainly in the upper echelon of Iga.
V. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
From Software have got to be the success story of the last decade. While they've been around for much longer, nobody paid them much attention until demon's dark souls. Since then, they've pretty made it. The goofy name now inspires roars from a crowd during a reveal. It led to competition in the indie scene on trying to make soulslike even more prominent than metroidvania. Hell, it might have won that battle at this rate. But from such success can easily come shackles, an expectancy that every game they make must contain that same essence. While Sekiro isn't the first IP they've had in their post-souls boom, it is the most they've pulled away from what they're known for.
If many ways, Sekiro is a spiritual follow up to Tenchu. This isn't just about clanging swords with foes, there's the element of surprise, and the grapple-arm which lets the environments stray more to the vertical end. This is a From Software game where the act of jumping isn't sketchy as fuck! It's also one where you can't just circle strafe around enemies fishing for a backstab. Combat in Sekiro is a nice back and forth, broken out of the idea that stamina needs to be here as a leash. You can attack to your heart's content, run as much as you'd like, and even dip out of fights by grappling away. This can often lead to some sketchy moments, like the AI being unable to handle what you're doing, lining them up for a mostly undeserved "stealth" kill. However that AI goofiness is charming in a weird way, you're not getting a hardcore stealth experience here, but you don't need to be. Any exposed stealth that leads to a fight can always be handled with player skill, even if it can be made much easier by icing a priority target before this happens.
Perhaps this speaks more to how similar From games have been getting, but Sekiro is probably the most I've gotten worked in their games basically ever. It started on something that wasn't even a boss, just a giant chained up Ogre. That guy slammed me into the ground. Tossed me off the level. I probably died over 20 times to this fucking thing, and that's where the aptly named title comes into play here, with a revival at your fingertips when death comes calling. This actually expands farther than just once, and it's a surprising case where that is REALLY needed as the mainline path of Sekiro does not hold back. I finally toppled the Ogre, just to hit a new roadblock. This hits especially hard at Genichiro, a very clear example of a skill check that you NEED to be able to handle, with no ability to rally online help to cheese your way through. Souls games are known to be hard, but with so many ways of mitigation, this can be an eye opener here. Anyone who completes Sekiro will have to truly know how to handle the mechanics, and given what's sitting along the mainline path, that's actually a pretty bold ask.
Attack recognition comes into play more than it possibly ever has in one of their games, as your victory is rarely coming from depleting enemy health bars, but from filling up their stagger bar from deflections or blocked attacks. This is an intelligent little design as that stagger bar naturally depletes if they aren't under pressure, so it causes players to prioritize aggression when they might otherwise be comfortable taking a step back. Bayonetta may have coined the mode Infinite Climax, but in many ways Sekiro's combat is a lot closer to that realization. The building anticipation as the enemy is nearly staggered, knowing you're almost there, getting that sound cue as it fills and you see the mark to stab. The release.
S H I N O B I E X E C U T I O N
The gamefeel is off the chart here. The sound of the swords clashing, getting a deflection, plunging your blade to cause a geyser of blood to shoot out. These are all elements they've been good at, but Sekiro takes it to another level.
The intimacy of the boss fights elevate this all to dramatic heights and gives some of the greatest creations they've ever had, such as the Guardian Ape. It seems hard enough, a rampaging, frantic monster that jumps around, has wide sweeping attacks, and does a hell of a lot of damage. He may get the better of you multiple times over, but eventually you get it, with a very satisfying beheading to boot. And that's when the magic happens, a wonderful usage of ingame UI to toy with player emotions: A death fake out that still has the confirmation of a boss dying pop up, just to rip the rug from underneath the player as the now beheaded ape wiggles back to life. The unnerving animations here serve to not just tie this enemy into the lore of the world, a parasite now hosting the body, but it serves as an incredibly clever way to toss off the rhythm of the player. It's a new, awkward pacing to deflect these second phase attacks, the offputting lunging that's not entirely of this world anymore. A player that's already on the backstep because, motherfucker, I JUST BEAT THE BOSS, yet they're pulled from an emotional high back into the fray. They got blue balled after a release. The AUDACITY.
That is but one example of quite a few on why Sekiro is so often seen on year end lists. The game is dripping in atmosphere, and once you get beyond the Bull and see how the game opens up before your eyes, it's hard to not get giddy at the possibilities. It doesn't quite go the lengths their previous games did regarding setting, but the cult-like obsession with immortality shown with the parasites, and the ability to sever that bond was one that I found really engaging. Story is more at the fore front here, and it's pretty well done.
Though as much of a sheen the game has when you're locked into an intimate boss battle, some of the other mechanics suffer a bit. The usage of spirit emblems tied to other prosthetic arms, and most of the skill tree, come off as feeling a bit half baked. They have their uses, but tying things like that to a consumable item always has a pretty bad feeling that can't help but linger. I found a lot of the consumables to be fairly useless as well, in a way feeling like a Souls hangover where you're gonna fill out your inventory with a bunch of stuff for the sake of it, whereas Sekiro is often best handled with no bullshit, sword only, final destination. These are fairly minor blemishes when the rest shines so brightly, but I couldn't help but shake the realization that as much as I liked exploring the environments, I was mostly getting junk out of doing so.
Sekiro isn't my favorite game From have made (Bloodborne still has that title), but it's certainly up there. That was cemented further by the time the credits rolled around, after beating my head against the final boss for hours. He has so many health bars! Yet by the time he finally fell, I was barely getting touched. There's a pathway of player skill in Sekiro that is very obvious in retrospect, especially with the early "forced loss" against Genichiro. What was the first thing I did after beating the game? Started again. And I kicked his ass without getting hit. You feel the improvement, and it feels really damn good.
IV. Sayonara Wild Hearts
I went into Sayonara Wild Hearts pretty much totally blind. I actually thought it would be more of a traditional rhythm game, but I could not have been more wrong. Instead what I got was a fully playable pop album, and the visual/audio experience was something I was not ready for. This is a game that runs barely over an hour long, but it leaves a hell of an impression upon doing so.
If I had to ding any part of this game, it would likely be the initial setup. You're shown a pretty traditional level select, yet many of these individual levels are not much more than a minute long. This prompts the menu to come up again for you to select the next level and continue on. It's an abrupt stop/go setup that made it so I wasn't even sure if I liked what I was playing for the first 10 minutes or so. After beating the game, it unlocks an album mode that removes the level select and just plays the entire game strung together, which is where everything really clicked for me.
Sayonara Wild Hearts is a game that is genuinely impressive in its craft. In such a short run time, there's a shocking amount of variety on display here, and the way things just happen and the player must adapt is pretty cool. One level has you doing QTE fireball dodging, just to return to driving a motorcycle that drives over a separating cliff where you then backflip off and begin floating. This is in a manner of seconds, and is synced up to the song so the floating part is a big payoff of the song drop. Another level features parallel universes, with two characters that continue to snap their fingers which sends you back and forth between them, so you need to look ahead and really vibe with the song to collect everything.
Obviously this all works better in tandem to the music, so here's the aforementioned
snapping song. Even without context in the game, you can pinpoint where they would put a "snap" in place and how rhythmic that would be within a level.
But even beyond that, there's the usage of the camera along with the music. A level where you drive a car that's not unlike Outrun, where you do drifts around heavy road bends. The camera spins around to transition from a full car view to a closeup behind the driver's seat where the handling swap along with it, no more drifting, now it's just lane control. Again, done to the music, in a manner of seconds. There's a level that is entirely in first person, based around movement on an x/y plane that is nothing like the rest. Sayonara Wild Hearts isn't content to just have you just vibe out to the music, it wants to constantly mix up the minute to minute scenarios, whilst juggling a synced soundtrack on top of it.
If I didn't already dig this game after the album mode, then getting gold ranks on all of the songs is where a lot of these other parts get noticed. Sayonara isn't a game that controls in the tightest fashion, so some of the levels require a bit of memorization to know when to preemptively start holding a direction so all of the hearts line up to get neatly collected. But while doing this, it goes without saying that the soundtrack is a complete ear worm, so I didn't even care if I had to repeat levels. If anything, I welcomed it. Anyone would. What happens after you beat
Begin Again ? You begin Begin Again again, so you can begin again. And you don't care. It's great.
Sayonara Wild Hearts is a cool ass game. It's an hour long playable pop album, with great imagery, a constant gameplay mixup, with a great soundtrack cherry on top. One of the best surprises of the year.
L E T ' S P O P
III. Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Fire Emblem is not something I've been very well versed in. The 3DS was my first foray into the series, which might not be all that uncommon given how popular Awakening appears to be in comparison to everything else. Though even then, it didn't leave a particularly lasting impression on me, but I didn't fully commit to the strategy layer at the time. I didn't play with permadeath on, as I was a big ol' softie. Things have changed a lot since then, and I have many more strategy games under my belt, but that all lines up well for Three Houses to be a pretty big blind side hit for me this year.
Three Houses always looked to be an appealing blend of settings, especially when they showed their hand regarding the time skip. What we have here is an almost Harry Potter-esque ground layer. You're roped into being an instructor and must pick a class containing various amounts of goofballs that you'll grow attached to for the next year. It clearly wasn't meant to be a surprise, nor is the game very subtle about foreshadowing what's going to happen beyond this—bad things will happen, this relatively chummy atmosphere turns dark as a time skip leads to a time of war, and the former classmates are pitting lives against eachother.
First and foremost, I want to say that this game is...not the prettiest. I alluded to it in the Astral Chain write up, but this is much more in the "ass smear" category. Though I like the character designs and the stylings on the models themselves, a lot of the backdrops suffer. Most of the fields look pretty poor, the monastery is pretty damn ugly for a hub you spend so much time in, and there's this incredibly weird effect in most conversations where the background is a 2D picture that has a weird seam down the middle. It doesn't quite look right. It's not all bad, as I like the combat animations, but there's a bit of an adjustment period, though that's not too uncommon with Switch games (have you seen that pokemon Wild Area? WOOF). However, unlike pokemon, Three Houses actually has ambition. It's much easier to forgive this aspect when I see how much is happening, from the strategy layer to the sheer scope of the game. The different routes change a lot in the time skip phase, and this game is SO much longer than I expected. My first run through was Black Eagles, and it clocked in over 70 hours.
Yes, I said first run. Despite having nearly 3 days of playtime in the game, the first thing I wanted to do after finishing it was restart it as the Blue Lions. I wasn't sure if I was totally going to commit, but lo and behold I now have like 140+ hours in Fire Emblem and beat it twice. And I want to do a third, still. At the start of the year, I never would have pegged Three Houses as being one of my top played games at all.
But why is that? Most of the systems just clicked with me in ways I didn't expect. The monastery is a persona-lite that works on multiple levels. Each chapter gives everyone new things to say, with some quests that can tie into little mini-plots here. As a teacher, you have free range to tell your students what to study in, something you keep seeing every week as the bars fill (and these are some good ass bars). This is where you bond, google what gifts people like, and continuously rope Petra into tea time. This works multiple times over, as this makes you care a lot more about everyone. They're all effectively units on a field when push comes to shove, but you can't help but see the character through it all. It's one thing to have unit X die to enemy Y, but am I letting Bernie get killed when she finally leaves her room? Hell no, she needs to ascend to Bow Knight. She's been working on horseriding for so long, and you can't take that away from her.
The strategy layer is mostly what you'd expect from the series. Grid based movement, bonuses based on square type, etc. This is all backed by a very solid soundtrack, with preparation and map themes that are easy to hum along to. Combat Arts are a nice idea, adding the ability to expend weapon durability for the sake of specialized attacks, though these end up being a bit hit or miss beyond the early game where they're very useful. Magic, however, gets a huge boost in TH, unshackled from needing to stockpile spell books that have finite uses. You instead get a per-map amount of charges for spells, which is so much more fun to play with. Hubert became an incredibly top tier unit for me, having super high crit chances to nearly one shot everything from absurd ranges while he laughed like a maniac. I'm here for it.
Also new to the series are the monster units. Enemies that take up multiple tiles and require a different strategy to take down, namely that each "square" of space they have being breakable, putting them in a stun state, and typically having multiple life bars. They've dangerous if they attack, but with smart attack ordering, most of their threat can be diminished. But they add a nice wrinkle to the combat, especially mixed in with other normal units. The late game gets especially dastardly with usage of them, and I found them to be a great addition.
It's hard to disassociate how much you grow on the characters here, and how much that can make playthroughs fun. My Blue Lions run, which has a ton of close ranged power, was so much different from the Eagles which were comprised of mostly magic and ranged. Felix was an MVP outta nowhere, someone I barely interacted with in my 70+ hour initial run. He ended up being an enjoyable character in his many interactions, and an absolute slayer on the battlefield. Dedue could not take damage. He was a god. Nobody survived an encounter with Dimitri. It had such a different flavor to my other run, where Petra was a close ranged crit hitter while almost everyone else was squares away from danger. This is assisted by a smart NG+ system that makes it really appealing to start over, being able to rebuy stats and relationship levels so you can try a large variety of classes and characters out. Characters from other houses can be recruited into your own, though I think makes the second half lose a lot of impact if it's abused. But in NG+? Who cares! The more options the merrier. There's a ton of character conversations that cross over beyond the time skip that most people will never see. I can't even imagine how long it would take to genuinely fill all of that out yourself.
With so much ambition comes some failings, but that's to be expected. The inventory management per unit could get a little much, as each character has a pretty large amount of skills to equip, weapons and items to have on, and as much as I liked the core gameplay, the actual class progression is fairly odd. The final tier is not essential to jump to, but it still feels strange that so much of it is so narrow in its focus, almost entirely dependent on having a high skill in Riding/Flying. Some of the gender locked roles are a bummer as well, which especially stood out during the Black Eagles as Gremory is female locked, but you have multiple male units that are heavy magic users. Though the Monastary still serves as your hub in the time skip, it loses a lot of purpose as it's much more barren. This is pretty easy to mitigate, though, as you can spend as much or as little time here as needed. I instead opted to just do a lot of extra sermons, but the pacing in the back half can still get hit from these moments considering the structure is still based around one main mission per month.
But the more I played, the less these things mattered to me. Three Houses is a triumph. It was an incredibly enjoyable experience the whole way through, and a much bigger time sink than I expected it to be. It's hard to believe Fire Emblem was nearly on its death row before, but I'm thrilled to see the series thriving like this now. This is a series Intelligent Systems isn't content to just churn out and spin their wheels on, and I can't overstate how much this game benefits from that. Sign me the hell up for whatever else they do next, even if they have their work cut out for themselves trying to top this one.
Everything about Apex Legend's existence has a pretty hilarious undertone to me. A f2p battle royale by Respawn. Under EA. The amount of record scratches on that is alarming. So alarming, in fact, it's the entire reason this game was a complete secret until it released—they KNEW that was a marketing nightmare. The self-awareness on display there is great, and it works entirely in their favor as we saw from the slightly early leak. THE NEGATIVITY. GODDAMN.
However, after actually getting to play it, Apex is incredible. While Fire Emblem shocked me with how much I played it, Apex holds the crown for the game I played the most this year. 15 days of playtime and counting later, there's so much of this game that still stands out to me.
From the getgo, Apex is a mixture of a hero shooter and a battle royale. 20 teams of 3 drop into the field, having to find and scavenge the areas for everything. Armor, weapons, ammo, attachments—mix that with a diverse range of characters that have abilities and ultimates, and you get a game that constantly has unique situations always cropping up. The places you fight determined by the ring, what weapons you have, how many meds you have, the state of your team in general, the variables here are vast and a reaffirmation of why Battle Royales work so well. You never see the exact same thing twice, and if one game ends early and poorly, the next can always be a victory.
Respawn is a name I hold in high regard, as Titanfall is an incredibly great feeling mechanical sandbox. The effortless wall running, the level routes to chain around without touching the ground, down to the nitty gritty of the gunplay always felt great. Apex still holds true to all of that, albeit minus the wallrunning. Though it's not hard to see why that's missing, as there's already A LOT going on, and the TTK is a very different beast here. That TTK is also a large part in why I find this game so fun: Loot isn't particularly complex, and armor works in chunks of 25 so it's never much of a surprise to know how strong or weak an enemy is. The act of shooting feels nice and punchy, from the crack of a longbow to the rapid death of an R99. There's plenty of smart sound usage from damage feedback as well, such as the loud shatter sound that happens after you break an enemy's armor. This works to not just FEEL good, but it genuinely useful information to relay to your team as that's now a priority target. Mid-long range fights have so many possible options regarding repositioning, having time to back up and heal, or usage of specific abilities like Gibraltar's dome shield for cover, so that games that end in a loss can often be thought back on with insight on what could have been done differently to prevent it. Sometimes, however, it's just meant to be, as a team swooping in right after a fight to finish the weaker team off is very common and hard to avoid. This is practically a BR staple at this point, but the mobility in Apex makes it a strategy that needs to be considered more often than not.
Apex is a game focused more on momentum—downslopes are always a joy to find as it's a free ride to slide and pick up speed, sprinting is faster with no weapon equipped, and specific characters like Pathfinder can work all of this into his grapple to slingshot into slides. It all just feels right, and I especially like the mechanical interplay from putting your gun away for faster movement. It's a very minor thing on the surface, but can be used to surprising effect within a fight to reposition or cut off angles, yet always holds a risk that the re-equip time will mess you up. It's the type of elegant design that has me inadvertently doing the same action in other FPS games and wondering why I'm not going faster.
Honestly, this is just a game I could gush over for awhile. The usage of colors is all over this game in such an intelligent way—from damage (blue damage numbers = blue armor), to looting (purple box? Purple loot). Running into a room and seeing 9 death boxes sitting around tells a story in this game. A story of shit going down and everyone dying. Whereas most games seem to just have enemies explode into a loot pile, this works in favor of the gameplay as well, since from the color coding it now sets various priorities on where to loot first. Sure, that gold box might not have the incredibly useful armor you're looking for, but it's an extremely clever way to signpost where to look as a general rule.
On launch, the ping system and revive ability caused quite a ripple, and it's easy to take those for granted as they feel so natural now. Some of my favorite, most memorable matches of Apex have actually been the sloppiest. Drops gone horribly wrong, where the team is nearly wiped but someone gets away. A sneaky recovery later, and we're all back on our feet! But lootless, with a target on our back. Most games of this ilk would just be put on break after death, knowing there's potentially 20 minutes of dead air to come. This works so well to craft stories in each match, especially when these turn into an outright victory. There's so much risk involved in getting back to the boxes where everyone died, to summoning the ship that plenty of the lobby is looking right at, but it leads to some absolutely insane moments. But pinging? Man.
The ping system is brilliant. Even in full voice chat as a 3 man squad, it's incredible. No more "he's in that building in the back! No, BEHIND THAT", no "the armor was in the hallway where we landed…I think". Now it's an exact pinpoint of location, so everyone knows where you're looking. It's marking an area with doors already being opened, so everyone knows enemies have been there. It's pinging good loot, which a teammate can dib to keep it on the screen and know its exact location. It's pinging your own inventory to let people know what you need. It's pinging objects within a dead enemies box, so they see attachments or ammo worth grabbing. It's SO useful, all the time, and Respawn knew it would be. You can simply look at the controller layout for that—RB is a button of very high priority, and here, it's used simply to mark things. It's a great showing of innovation sometimes coming from the most basic and unexpected of areas. The idea of spotting is hardly new, of course, but to give such a clear attentive focus in making it so prominent within the game, it almost baffles you into wondering how nobody did it to this level before. It even works to bridge the gap with randoms without using a mic. Just landed and got decent armor, and ran into another? Ping it. Why not? The button is right there, and even if my teammates don't end up grabbing it, they still see it as an option. This works right from the start of the game as well, pinging where people would want to land, being able to ping on their own ping for agreement…it's simple, but offers so much.
When it's all said and done, however, Apex's greatest strength is also its Achilles heel. This is a team game, and no matter how much certain systems like the ping system help, randoms can always derail a match. The jumpmaster, the choice of where to land, is offered to one player, but (naturally) people can split off and go where-the-fuck-ever. Do you join a random that split to hot drop? Maybe. Then you die, and see your teammate run right by your box, not even humoring the idea of a revive. Or you don't go with them, see them die immediately and angrily spam pings. People are garbage, and that isn't really Apex's fault, but it does hinder how much playtime can be squeezed out of it without a solid crew unless you have a high tolerance for some bullshit. Some nights you're hankering for some drops and your bud is playing some really awful MP shooter instead, and ya can't do much about that. Apex has toyed with LTM modes, including Solos, but that mode showcased to me that this is truly built for and around groups of 3 going at it. Solos boosted the loot drops so nearly everyone had purple armor, there is no use for any character outside of Pathfinder, and you run into people teaming up because they're garbage at the game (again, people suck). If that gets added permanently, hey, I'd play it more. But it also isn't quite what the game is best at.
My main issue with Apex is actually just the F2P wrappings. While characters can technically be purchased, any semi-regular player will be swimming in the currency to do so (They've added three characters since launch, and I can buy the next NINE CHARACTERS right now without playing anymore), so we're mainly talking cosmetics. It's the usual fare: Gun skins, legend skins, a banner you can decorate, weapon charms, etc. It has loot boxes, hooray, and the amount that drop is finite. This has been recently remedied to an extent as they massively expanded the level cap and added a lot more drops, but it's a well that still runs dry eventually. That means crafting materials specifically are limited, and that means it's hard to get the specific thing you might want outside of a loot box lottery. The à la carte option is both fairly random due to a slow rotating store, and also sometimes outright impossible if you want something that isn't specifically a legendary character/weapon skin, but even if the stars align and you do get something you want…that asking price is high. Pretty much copying the Fortnite model, but in a game where skins are much less valuable due to the perspective. Specific cosmetic events seem to be a running theme, where the asking price for everything is really high, and each roll of the dice for a loot box cost $7 EACH. Though F2P does have its own perks, since even if you ignore all the cosmetics, the content still flows. Beyond characters and weapons, they added an entirely new map, which still shocks me. The battle passes are pretty much no brainers to support for people playing a lot, but that's a potentially self-sustaining product as each pass pays out for the next one. I genuinely don't think I've been in this position with a game before. I would best sum it up as this: Apex is a game I want to spend money on, and rarely find a good outlet to do so. Pretty weird.
Anyway. Uh. Yeah. Apex is a fun fucking time. Had some of the funniest moments this year playing it, and there's plenty more to come, even if I have to forcibly pull my friends into it sometimes. Keep on keepin' on, Respawn.
We are finally here: Outer Wilds. This videogame. I was pondering what to do with this, as something that commonly follows up a write up for this game is mostly a big emphasis that the less you know, the better. That is totally true! A big part of why this game works is the unraveling of a mystery, yet there's so much game here to dissect and talk about, that I can't help myself (if you couldn't tell by how much verbal diarrhea is already here (boldly assuming more than like 3 people even read this lol)). The abridged version would be: Incredible open ended storytelling, with a sense of wonder I don't think I've felt before. Outer Wilds respects and trusts the player's intelligence, and takes them on a hell of a journey by doing so. But this game is so much more than that.
Outer Wilds starts off on Timber Hearth, a small little planet with its eyes on the stars. You're one of the Hearthians, about to take your first foray into space as a part of Outer Wilds Ventures. It all starts off like this is going to be a nice, quaint game. It has a heavy outdoor campfire vibe, with twangy instrumentals, and the residents are all pretty chill. A guided tutorial introduces the few mechanics there are to work with, and establish that this is a pretty small community not really comprehending much of the outside world. But even here—something seems off. Ghost Matter is introduced early, a hazardous substance that…kills you pretty much instantly just by making contact with it. Maybe this game isn't going to be so jolly. A museum of your people's space faring accomplishments is your first objective, featuring artifacts and pictures of things that are all too real in this world. It does not take long for the first venture into space to come to fruition, a journey that gets cut short. This is the first of many examples of showcasing how open Outer Wilds is—this first trip could end in many ways, from an early death, or fully experiencing the main hook of this mystery. The sun is exploding, with a supernova that envelopes and spells the end for all. This is not set up in a way to script the player into needing to see what happens, they may be inside and not sure of what's happening when the music kicks in, or they may be out in space, wondering why the sun is turning so red. Eventually, they'll know, and fully understand the issue in front of them.
Something happens after all of this. A statue locked eyes with you earlier, and everything you just did happens in reverse before you. You reawaken at the campfire you began at. You are now stuck in a time loop, cursed to forever see everything you know repeatedly perish in front of you. But this curse is also budding hope, with infinite lives comes infinite time to figure out why this is happening, and what, if anything, can be done to prevent this. Conversations with the townsfolk go as you'd expect—people think you're crazy, nobody else is reliving these moments. As such, the answers must come from the solar system before you. If you haven't played the game, I wouldn't read beyond this point.
Outer Wilds is not a game on an especially large scale, despite being a solar system. There are only a handful of planets to observe here, yet the density of these locales cannot be understated. It's hard to compare this to much else, but there are certainly influences that can be caught. Myst, Majora's Mask, maybe even Metroid--this is an exploration game on ever-changing planets, where the only thing you obtain is knowledge. What is possible 5 minutes into a loop will not be when it's 15 minutes. The story unravelling before you is open ended, criss crossing an engrossing tale between planets, with a handful of particularly powerful moments "locked" behind some of the more difficult mysteries. Those are your missile powerups. This is tied together on your ship's log, a flowchart that displays what information you've learned, specific wider mysteries that may be linked towards, and a good resource to keep your head on straight. It's like a game built out of the Bomber's Notebook in Majora's Mask.
There are only precious few things you actually need to do in this game, and it features no combat. A probe to take pictures, a scanner to track objects, and a translator tool are really all you get. Yet despite that, there is incredibly strong level design throughout the game. Brittle Hollow is a planet being bombarded by balls of lava, which is taking chunks of it off at a time. By the end of a loop. It's barely held together anymore. It exposes a black hole within the core of the planet, not to mention a hanging city beneath the crust. There are crystals that change gravity, let you walk upside down on the inner parts of the planet that get blasted away over time. How this planet is tackled changes dramatically based on how the loop is going, yet the player can often find ways around this anyway. Jump by the black hole and use the gravitational pull to do a massive arced jump onto what little remains. Giant's Deep has extremely high gravity, and is full of whirlwinds that rip islands off of the planet. Ash Twins is a connected hourglass of a planet that is pouring sand from one half to the other, covering secrets on one while revealing areas on the other. I was constantly engrossed in not just finding out what was happening, but the vehicle for delivery in doing so. It's genuinely a blast to mentally unravel what to do on these planets, seeing how it ties into the time loop, and how the knowledge from one planet may assist on another. Being on a cave on Ember Twin that's rapidly filling with sand, nearly cutting off all passages is a uniquely thrilling experience that can't help but be intoxicating.
I have never experienced such a heavily feeling of dread from a game before. Almost the entirety of Outer Wilds got under my skin in an uncomfortable, unnatural way, surpassing most outright horror games I've played. The atmosphere in space is unnerving as hell, constantly feeling like you might just crash into who knows what while traveling around. Being on the surface of a planet just always feels so desolate, often having the sun always in view, knowing what's going to happen, with nothing to accompany you aside from your character's paced breaths. The earlier mentioned black hole is another good example of this, as that is something I already get shivers thinking about in real life. The droning sound when you're near it, and the way the visuals around the edges refract are equal parts well down and terrifying. Losing my footing and falling into it for the first time, not knowing what was going to happen, might have killed me on the inside a little bit. But in Dark Bramble, I'm pretty sure I outright couldn't breathe.
This fucking song is so effective there, just droning nothingness. A planet of sorts that looks small on the outside, and is infinitely vast from within. It's full of a cloudy fog that envelopes your sight, elevated by the horrors that lurk within--Angler Fish, making noises in the background of this music, hanging out all over this seed from hell. Dark Bramble is a series of expanding passages, but the only thing you can see is a light that leads to the next, and a view full of lights extending in all directions. What looks like a path, may just be the tip of one of these things, and it will kill you. This is a game where death is inevitable, you are effectively invincible, and yet you STILL feel weak here. But these elements extend beyond just this area—the Quantum Moon. Quantum objects in general. These all have such a disturbing, unnatural undertone. This game made me damn near realize I had phobias I never knew existed. It perfectly mirrors what space should be, the fear of the unknown, anything can be out there. Plus I'm not gonna lie, I straight up took my headset off to navigate in the Bramble, because the sounds were fucking me up too much. I have never done that with anything, ever.
The tale of the Nomai are the core of the plot here, and it's incredibly well down how the game unveils its hand here while still being so open ended. Most of this is essentially just finding out what happened many, many years ago—the reason the game's atmosphere feels so desolate is because it is. The Nomai died out a long time ago, seemingly abruptly as they left all of their studies around the solar system. They come off as well meaning, if not over excited, science nerds with an infatuation on the so called eye of the universe. Their research reveals a lot regarding motivations, culture, history, and what led them to this point. Hours of decoding messages on planets, seeing similar names cropping up as you follow a pathway previously carved out by these characters. But things take a turn and I once again felt a sinking feeling that I've rarely seen before as the sun station became the new subject. Their plan to find the eye revolved around shooting out a probe, with usage of wormholes that they used to also discover the essence of time travel, so it would loop out in different directions and log the location. But what they needed was power, a LOT of it, and they were going to forcibly blow up the sun to to harness the energy to do so. Things turn dark, and these Nomai that felt so well meaning now change a lot. But the moment on the sun station is incredibly powerful. The hallway leap while right next to the sun is such a cool moment, and the revelation afterwards is just as good. The Nomai readings here now have a much more solemn tone—they actually failed. They aren't the reason the sun is exploding, and your previous sickness turns to relief. Then…sorrow? Is it bad that they failed? But then there's another hint at what happened next, and it points to the Interloper. This was a mysterious object that they felt incredible power from, so maybe there's still a chance. Yet this ends up being their gravesite, as the interloper is what carries ghost matter, which exploded off and filled the solar system, killing everything.
Ghost matter may be my favorite singular element of this game, as it's a good standalone plotpoint that signifies why I like this game as much as I do. We get very little detail on what this substance actually is, and I LOVE that. It doesn't matter why it kills you, or where it came from. So many franchises are eager to sever the allure of mystery and end up going so deep into explanations that it retroactively harms everything around it. From Midichlorians to Nanomachines, explaining the unknown can get stupid. The Reapers from Mass Effect get a whole lot lamer when they detail the motivations behind their dumb plot. Even standalone stories, like Death Stranding, all too often refuse to let some stones be unturned, and must explain away the "why" of every little thing as characters line up in an orderly fashion to explain the origins of their goofy ass name. Outer Wilds doesn't do that, and lets this linger—everything you need to know, you get, and a player can infer from ingame knowledge the rest. Ghost matter wiped out everything, but avoided the Hearthians at the time due to them being water based creatures that later evolved to be on land. Thus, ghost matter, whatever it may be, is stopped by water. And whatever the fuck Dark Bramble is, as Angler Fish are still around. This, again, helps give the already rich atmosphere of the game another boost. What in the ever loving hell IS the interloper? It will always be flying around the area, and you know it's the reason the Nomai died, which makes it creepy as hell. Dark Bramble already IS creepy as hell, and just becomes SSJ creepy. Maybe it was a created weapon, or a natural formation; either way, the player is left to use their imagination. And that's a beautiful thing.
All of this and more help culminate into an incredibly powerful ending. Finally figuring out not just what your main objective is, but how to actually pull it off, is great. Once you get the ash twin warp down and get inside, you know things are about to get super weird. The power charging this entire time loop is your source to the eye, and with it comes vulnerability…not to mention a trek into the most dangerous place you know of, the good ol' Bramble. The vessel is reached, the coordinates are in, aaaaaaand a deafening silence. The eye is there, right in front of you, and it is goddamn unnerving. The trek onto it, walking upside down to jump into a void of nothingness, knowing you can now actually die, and that the solar system is exploding for the last time as there is nothing left to do but take the plunge into whatever lies ahead. A few crazy sequences later, and there is one last thing left to do: A final campfire song. The bits and pieces of the song that you've been hearing throughout the game with your tracker reaches its apex, as all the instruments hit at the same time. The universe is dying, yet this moment is uplifting. You cause a big bang, condense everything into one more chance for others to thrive, now little more than an observer. It's the absolutely perfect endcap to an already unforgettable experience. Consciousness, mortality, failures, successes—it hits so many beats all at once. It's in ways the most depressing game I've ever played, and subsequently the most inspiring. It's goddamn incredible.
Outer Wilds has such a great attention to detail permeating throughout the game. Even when it was all over, I couldn't help but glance at the achievement list and saw the silly things the developers not only knew were possible here, but actively encouraged. The shell of Giant's Deep that requires the specific knowledge to pierce, can actually be broken just by flying your ship absurdly fast right into the planet. The laboratory where the Nomai realized the black/white holes could be powered up to have an object exit the white hole before it enters the black hole can be sabotaged midway through, duplicating an object and causing space time itself to be consumed by black tendrils as the entire universe was just broken. This is even paired with a super sped up credit sequence, and a kazoo version of the main theme. Your fellow Hearthian bud Gabbro on Giant's Deep is also connected to a statue, and is the only other person experiencing the time loops as you are. Yet he's content to just hang out on a hammock and stay calm as everything keeps dying. As such, he can teach you to meditate and end a sequence whenever you want. It's the only "ability" of sorts you can earn, yet is both easy to miss yet logical to obtain. The way a loop ends influences how one begins: Do said meditation, begin with a more relaxed, deep breath. End via suffocation death? The next cycle starts with a very loud, desperate gasp for air. Chert is the Heartian on ember twin, and he's the one who's most interested in charting the galaxy, and as such is actually the most reactive to change as his dialog changes through a cycle. He changes his demeanor a lot near the end, as he is seeing that supernovas are actually happening everywhere, and can tell your sun is about to do the same. And this is something the player always could see too: Closely looking at all the far away stars, you can see faint explosions, everything is dying. Nomai readings are all over the game, and their languages is based on swirls that branch off in various directions. Sometimes, you get big chunky lines, because these are logs from child Nomai—they are naturally not as well versed in this language yet. These are but a small handful of easily missed details this game is loaded with, but to me help show how much passion went into every ounce of this game. There was actually a patch in December that added an entirely new, weird easter egg. Who does that?! Such an incredibly small amount of people will ever see it, but they did it anyway.
A huge portion of my list is known quantities. Veterans of the gaming industry. This is the first game Mobius Digital has ever made, and that is absolutely nuts. So much of this feels like it was backed via a master of its craft, when it really wasn't, it just started off as a student project and spiraled into this. This incredible, unforgettable experience. This mechanical solar system toybox that tells an incredible story, which hits the gamut of emotions in a way I've rarely, if ever, felt before.
Outer Wilds is my game of the year 2019. Yet that's also selling it short--Outer Wilds is one of the greatest games I have ever played.
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That's all I got this year. As mentioned, a lot of games could have easily made this list. Off the top of my head, that would include Luigi's Mansion 3, A Plague Tale: Innocence, The Outer Worlds, and Jedi: Fallen Order. Special shout out to Slay the Spire, an incredibly good game that I played the hell out of years ago. I guess it technically falls under this year's umbrella, but I don't mentally associate it with that at all and didn't really play it much at all this year, so it feels wrong to put it anywhere.
Videogames are something so great.
