Notes:
Top 20 Games of 2019
1. Resident Evil 2 = 1406 points, 6 honorable mentions
2. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice = 1173 points, 4 honorable mentions
3. Fire Emblem: Three Houses = 969 points, 4 honorable mentions
4. Death Stranding = 960 points, 8 honorable mentions
5. Control = 868 points, 7 honorable mentions
6. Devil May Cry 5 = 614 points, 7 honorable mentions
7. Disco Elysium = 532 points, 3 honorable mentions
8. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order = 482 points, 12 honorable mentions
9. Outer Wilds = 441 points, 5 honorable mentions
10. Luigi's Mansion 3 = 414 points, 9 honorable mentions
11. Astral Chain = 382 points, 3 honorable mentions
12. The Outer Worlds = 379 points, 8 honorable mentions
13. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night = 329 points, 11 honorable mentions
14. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening = 324 points, 9 honorable mentions
15. Slay the Spire = 289 points, 3 honorable mentions
16. Kingdom Hearts 3 = 289 points, 4 honorable mentions
17. Judgment = 274 points, 3 honorable mentions
18. Pokemon Sword and Shield = 274 points, 5 honorable mentions
19. Super Mario Maker 2 = 268 points, 8 honorable mentions
20. Baba is You = 255 points, 7 honorable mentions
- We would like to thank Cerium, Muzy, Rösti, OneAndOnly, tgr_williams, Mist, Hecht, ColdSun, ratrosaw, and all of the site staff for assisting in this year's Game of the Year effort.
- This year's trophy has been designed and created by Rösti
- We would also like to thank the community for voting and commenting. ResetEra GOTY would not be successful without your participation and support.
Top 20 Games of 2019
1. Resident Evil 2 = 1406 points, 6 honorable mentions
Resident Evil 2 - Slim pickings for me this year. But I gotta get a vote in for RE2, an absolute joy and masterpiece I didn't expect to be so good. I am terrible at action games despite my love for old school RE, and I also have arthritis, but the game's very customize-able difficulty and control options made it very accessible even for someone like me. I do think, as someone who ranks the original as one of the lower-tier old-school RE games in my very personal opinion, that it surpassed the original. Capcom proved that the industry still has some life in it yet for some ultra-jaded old fart like me. Cannot wait to see what they do to 3, which is my least favorite of the old-school games.
Resident Evil 2 - This game was about as much as I could expect for a near perfect remake of the original game. The overall atmosphere of the areas is significantly darker and creepier, zombies are once again a threat (no more reverse suplexing monsters through tables), and Mr. X instills extra difficulty, causing you to think on your feet in order to avoid him, current threats, and solve puzzles. My only complaint is that I wanted more DLC, and that's honestly not much of a complaint considering RE3 is coming in mere months. I did nearly everything there was to offer in this game. It's been a while since I've been bothered to go back and do extra content that wasn't massive DLC like Old Hunters or War of the Chosen
Resident Evil 2 - This game exists to remind us why we fell in love with video games in the first place. Perfectly designed levels and maps to explore, sense of discovery, thrills and excitements of encountering and overcoming a challenge. In my eyes, Resident Evil 2 is the definition of video games; a playground for people to have fun in. In addition, the game tries to tell a story, and knows how and when to progress it. The story and the cutscenes, are in fact a reward to the player. I loved everything about Resident Evil 2.
2. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice = 1173 points, 4 honorable mentions
Sekiro Shadows Die Twice - It's FromSoft's most polished gameplay, it's like they learned to fix most of the issues with DS and BB and pushed it without too much RPG stuff so it could sell to everyone, still one of the hardest FS games, on par with Bloodborne need to re-learn combat. Lore is interesting. Art is beautiful. Multiple endings. Already GOTY on TGA. What else
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - Just as with Bloodborne four years ago, Sekiro is a game of deliberate nips and tucks at the now iconic mechanics of the Souls series, accentuating some and minimizing others, in order to provide a less sprawling but overall much more refined experience. And just like Bloodborne, From has absolutely nailed it with Sekiro. There's just so much to love about it: The animation and sound design are top notch and used to enhance not just visual spectacle but also playability. The addition of a new grappling hook mechanic allows the level design to be much larger and more vertical. The evolution of trick weapons into metroidvania-lite prosthetic weapons, each with their own set of upgrade trees, makes for plenty of hidden strategies against what could otherwise be extremely challenging encounters. The storytelling focus this time is on plot rather than just lore, putting the player character in the middle of the most interesting events of the story, and giving the player the option of 4 extremely different endings that could all equally suggest a sequel. The increased attention to cutscene direction that gives each of the many story beats so much more weight. The quality of life improvements, like making it more difficult to fall off ledges, and if you do, respawning back on the ledge with only minor health loss as opposed to totally killing you. And all of these improvements and more lay atop the foundation that From established all those years ago with the original Dark Souls - a fully realized world with incredible level design, full of amazing sights to behold and monsters to overcome, which constantly forces the player to make a difficult decision: is the reward that might be around the next corner... worth the risk that is almost certainly around the next corner?
3. Fire Emblem: Three Houses = 969 points, 4 honorable mentions
Fire Emblem: Three Houses - Absolutely fantastic game and an improvement on the 3ds Fire Emblem games in pretty much every way. Great character writing is what really elevates this above the other recent games. This game is everything Fates wanted to be and more. No it's not the best looking or running game on the Switch, not even the best this year, but every other aspect of the game is amazing. I have only finished Golden Deer at this point but the only thing stopping me from playing another route is knowing that other games I want to play will be pushed to the side if I did.
Fire Emblem: Three Houses - It's the grand return of Fire Emblem on the big screen! My favourite Fire Emblem before this one was Path of Radiance, a game I have played to death on the GameCube back when I was like 10 years old. The customisability present in that game was what made it the most interesting Fire Emblem I had ever played. Three Houses takes that aspect and amped it up to eleven. Every character can become any class you want them to become - assuming you give it enough effort - and there was an incredible variety in the amount of classes available to you. This customisability really speaks to me, and I spend hours upon hours figuring out what classes suited both my strategy and the pool of characters that I was working with. The reward that resulted from these hours of customising was a war machine that was nigh invincible, and that sense of Pride and Accomplishment really made the game for me. I also loved the characters and the story. The strategy gameplay was quite good, though not quite at the heights of Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade or even of Path of Radiance. The package as a whole, though, was something extremely special, and it has elevated the game to the no. 1 spot on my list of best Fire Emblem games, and no. 2 on my list of best Switch games. The game was incredible, and the wait was absolutely worth it! I have finished two routes (Golden Deer and that route), and I plan on playing through the Blue Lions route in the coming months.
4. Death Stranding = 960 points, 8 honorable mentions
Death Stranding - Never thought a game about delivering packages would be my favorite game of the year but it made basic movement feel so good and rewarding. The writing was not very subtle, but I feel like it nailed most of the big emotional beats. Mads, Tommie Earl Jenkins and Troy Baker put in excellent performances. It's rare for a game to make me feel something, and this one did.
Death Stranding - Metal Gear series is one of gaming's greatest but I've always wished we would see something entirely new from Kojima and his team and they delivered (pardon the pun) a masterpiece with DS. The amount of originality and direction is explosive especially for a AAA game, I loved everything about this work of art from the unique world with its own rules to the gamification of walking and traversal and the story with the stellar cast of characters.This is my GOTG.
5. Control = 868 points, 7 honorable mentions
Control - Where do I even start? Never have I played a game that felt like it encapsulated my own perception and thought process so well. From the combat balance, document writing, environmental design, and sociomateriality nu-weird ideas, it felt like Sam Lake and crew extracted a slice of my brain put it in some weird Finnish smoothie making machine and then served it back to me. Whoah, I guess I just suggested that Remedy made me drink my own brain matter, but that's what Control felt like. I'm in.
Control - This science-fiction shooter gripped me with its responsive fast-paced action combat, stunning art direction, complex world narrative, and overall creativity. It has a special place within my heart and is an experience I cannot wait to relive someday.
6. Devil May Cry 5 = 614 points, 7 honorable mentions
Devil May Cry 5 - Easily the best combat in any game made EVER. I've waited for this game for so so long and boy did it not disappoint. Fighting in this game is fun personified, so many options, so many choices and it looks so good and stylish as you do it. On top of that the game boasts a banging soundtrack and excellent visuals; Capcom put out a classic.
Devil May Cry 5 - The grand master and originator of the character action genre is back and in glorious form. It's so great to play a video gamey ass video game with production values like this. It's wonderful, it's everything a DMC fan could want and it's the best game to come out this year.
7. Disco Elysium = 532 points, 3 honorable mentions
Disco Elysium - This game rightfully gets praised for its incredible writing, but I also really love how it handles attributes and leveling up. It is such a refreshing game.
Disco Elysium - A melancholic, unrelentingly acerbic, and preeminently consumable exploration of the postmodern human condition, Disco Elysium's script is what might have resulted if Dostoyevsky, Baudrillard, and Terry Pratchett performed a three way fusion dance then sat down to write a detective novel turned adventure game. With that, striking visual design, and a staggering abundance of meaningful player choice, Disco may well be the touchstone for CRPGs of the future, and is surely 2019's shining example of literary talent in videogames.
8. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order = 482 points, 12 honorable mentions
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order - Respawn knocked it out of the park again. After Titanfall 2's depressingly short campaign, I knew they'd end up scratching that itch properly down the line. Never expected it to be a Star Wars game, but here we are
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order - Souls-like combat meshed with Metroid style gameplay in the Star Wars universe; what more needs to be said. Oh, and it turned out to be fantastic!
9. Outer Wilds = 441 points, 5 honorable mentions
Outer Wilds - An awe-inspiring experience of scientific curiosity and discovery that is elevated by its philosophical criticality and grounded by its understanding of personal and collective relationships. I am moved by this game in so many ways.
Outer Wilds - Just an incredibly cool experience all around. Time looping, a world on a schedule, all of this is my shit to begin with and it all worked so well together. I never felt stuck (though I played after lots of QoL changes, I know) so I could always just keep pulling at threads and feel like I discovered something huge. Ending maybe didn't strike me as strongly as it did some people, but if nothing else it provided a strong sense of conclusion to a game where you can kinda do anything in any order, which is definitely an achievement.
10. Luigi's Mansion 3 = 414 points, 9 honorable mentions
Luigis Mansion 3 - My favourite way to play games is curled up on the sofa cuddling my wife with some kind of Coop adventure where we both have a seperate role to play. I loved Rayman Legends on WiiU because of the asynchronous multiplayer and this is as close as anyone has gotten to that gameplay. Playing together taking on the role of the lesser loved Mario bro whilst my wife took on the role of a jellified repolice was a joy from start to finish. The varying puzzles from floor to floor were satisfying, the atmosphere was spot on as a cheesy spooky vibe and the OST was heavenly. Charles Martinet was the star of the show with what must be his most involved game yet. To top it off my kids absolutely love it too.
Luigi's Mansion 3 - Surprise of the year, do I dare say best for this ghost gooey hunting of a game?!
11. Astral Chain = 382 points, 3 honorable mentions
Astral Chain - I've played my fair share of Platinum Games, I enjoyed them, but I was never an hardcore fan, you know what I'm a fan of ? Riding a Beast Legion while wielding a Sword, controlling 2 characters without the game turning into a mess, a killer soundtrack and, surprisingly for an Action game, a lengthy campaign. The story isn't mindblowing, it's very much something you'd expect, what you don't expect is a well built world with charming characters (including a lovable K-9 pup) that screams set-up for something greater to come. This game also has a fair ammount of Anime references that are well implemented and very satisfying, it never dips too much into it though, so if you don't follow the medium it's not like you're missing out, it's just a novelty for those who saw the likes of Neon Genesis Evangelion or DBZ.
12. The Outer Worlds = 379 points, 8 honorable mentions
The Outer Worlds - This game grabbed me. I'd heard and read this was 'just another one of /those/ games', but as someone who has not played lots of /those/ games, this was captivating. As I progressed, I was enjoying it so much that I intended to complete every mission and side-mission. Somewhere along my path, I made some choice(s) which left me hated and Kill On Sight for the faction that controls the last area of the game, thus I had to abandon several side missions there. Nonetheless I clocked in at about 54hrs completion time, exploring each landscape and populated area until I had sufficiently exhausted what I could do, and had a grand time along the way. Parvati never left my side and made for a fantastic teammate.
13. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night = 329 points, 11 honorable mentions
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night - The Return of the King. Your boy IGA saw the avalanche of metroidvanias coming out of the indie scene, tossed his wine glass and said, "I need to remind you amateurs how it's done." RotN is on par with Symphony of the Night for me, and SotN is a top ten OAT tier game. While the graphics and soundtrack aren't quite there, the absolutely massive magic and movement list and ways to approach exploration and combat dwarf even the best the genre has offered recently, such as Hollow Knight. The alchemy and cooking systems provide a good incentive to explore, while the shard system (which allows stacking multiple versions of the same shard) pushes you to engage in the combat. It all makes for a game where all the gears are grinding as they should, where all the systems complement one another. Getting David Hayter and Robert Belgrade (Alucard) on board is just the icing on the cake. Turns out high profile Kickstarter projects can actually turn out pretty well when a true genius is at the helm.
14. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening = 324 points, 9 honorable mentions
The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening - the original is one of my favorite games of all time (and my second favorite zelda after breath of the wild), and playing the remake was jus as magical as playing the original game boy game. the visuals and music are beautifully made and the improvements to controls fix the one issue the original had.
15. Slay the Spire = 289 points, 3 honorable mentions
Slay the Spire - I was highly anticipating this game and once it hit the Switch, I found myself having put 65 hours in like it was nothing. Highly replayable with card combinations and synergies more satisfying than anything else I played this year. Dipping into the PC modding scene (I rarely douple dip, but this game made me) brought even more joy from wonderfully crafted fan builds, easily implemented thanks to the devs' willingness to embrace them. The very recently added 4th character brings even more to the game ensuring it will be a 2020 staple for some time to come. Customisation options are insane with a huge list of modifiers to further make what is already an evergreen experience even more fresh and exciting. I hope this game is supported for a long time to come.
16. Kingdom Hearts 3 = 289 points, 4 honorable mentions
Kingdom Hearts 3 - The epic conclusion of the Xehanort Saga, maybe a bit easy, but it was fun all the way through.
17. Judgment = 274 points, 3 honorable mentions
Judgement - In 2006 I bought, started, and dropped Yakzua 1. Wasn't feeling it. Months later I returned to it and it hooked me and the series has developed into a sort of comfort food. Judgement is the tenth or so of these games I've played and I still find them engaging and fun and weird and after all this time I'm still not tired of running around Kamurocho. Aside from the far too frequent tailing missions, Judgement stands among the best of the series. And for someone wanting to jump in to the Yakuza series but not wanting to revisit seven games to get caught up, it's a great entry point with it's lessened focus on Tojo drama.
18. Pokemon Sword and Shield = 274 points, 5 honorable mentions
Pokemon Sword/Shield - After hating Pokemon Sun so much my love for the franchise died quite dramatically, thankfully Let's Go! Eevee last year and now Pokemon Sword this year rekindled my fandom with a really fun Pokemon game! It's far from perfect but the core things I care about (catching/raising Pokemon, filling the Pokedex) are really well done. Honestly some of the best Pokemon designs in MANY generations, with certain ones even being added to my top tier fav list of ALL TIME! I love them! And the OST is surprisingly phenomenal, not really something I associate Pokemon with usually but it's really great! Raid battles are an awesome feature and the Wild Area is such a cool place with so much promise. I just hope they keep with them and develop it bigger and better in future titles to come!
19. Super Mario Maker 2 = 268 points, 8 honorable mentions
Super Mario Maker 2 - No contest with this one for me. I loved the first one, and I managed to play over 200 hours of this in the first couple of months, while only slightly neglecting my family, and recently topped out at ranked 21st in the world for Maker Points. I had to take a break when I got tennis elbow from holding the Switch too much... The new additions to the game may look a little slim on the surface, but stuff like vertical levels, scroll lock and a much more generous limit for ground blocks massively expand what's possible.
20. Baba is You = 255 points, 7 honorable mentions
Baba Is You - One of the most original and mind bending puzzle games ever. It is super hard, perhaps too hard for it's own good, but I love how it pushes you to think outside the box, constantly. No puzzle is solved by routine. Instead every solution feels like a huge achievement. Perhaps not the best game of the year, but absolutely the best new concept.
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