[Awards] Game of The Year 2019 - Gamers Rise Up
It's time once again to award various games with awards and tell you which one is the best, because we live in a society... that likes to give opinions and put good things on pedestals so as to not reward failure.
If you can't tell I don't know how to start top 10 lists and "of the year" posts I just don't fucking know how. Do you know how bad it feels to have these shitty opening lines every time? How is anyone supposed to get into reading this if I can't have a good introduction? I'm decent at introducing reviews I think but stuff like this I just suck at. Why am I so terrible? Is it inherent, or am I not trying hard enough?
Uh, well, whatever, let's just start already okay?
So first off I'll talk about some games I didn't get to play from 2019 that I wanted to or was at least a little bit interested in. This is in no particular order here
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice: I wanted to play this but I think something came out around the same time. It's for the best I probably wouldn't have got very far in it, I'm bad at Soulsborne games. I mean that's not some shocking revelation, most people aren't. I appreciate them very much, with a lot of difficult games or even if I just happen to suck at it, I get very frustrated very easily. I tried playing Donkey Kong Country a couple months ago and the level where you gotta shoot yourself past the bees over the bottomless pit pissed me off a lot that's how much I suck and rage. But Dark Souls and Bloodborne don't upset me at all, they're like Castlevania in that way. Somehow, even when they're being exceedingly cheap I always go "oh damn I died again man this game is hard" instead of "mother fucking fuckity fuck I fucking died again this fucking piece of shit game god dammit fuck you" like I'm the AVGN or something. Maybe it's because both games are pretty slow and methodical. The games I get mad at require lots of quick reflexes and timing, whereas I feel like games like castlevania and soulsbornes reward smart play, planning, and preparing. They still require some quick reflexes but you need to prepare yourself to do that and put yourself in the best circumstances anyway. I dunno, point is I like how these games work and I feel like they are always how difficult games should be. I never get very far, because I'm too stupid or something, but I always feel like it's my fault that I can't.
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night: I wanted to play this even though I don't usually care for "metroidvania" games, but I like what I've played of Symphony of the Night and this game is just that. It seems pretty cool I'd very much like to play it some time.
Jedi: Fallen Order: Man are all these games gonna have colon titles that make this format look bad? Anyway, speaking of soulsborne this is basically star wars souls game but way easier. There's another game I'll talk about that's basically bloodborne but easier a little later. This game looks pretty cool, I've heard some good things aside people whining about it that it's too hard because it looks from the outside like some kind of sony movie game, and it's star wars, so lots of casuals are hoping on in. It seems real cool though and I'd like to get around to it.
Shenmue III: I guess not. I would like to play Shenmue III but I have neither watched nor seen a playthrough of Shenmue II yet so sadly, I cannot learn what Ryo knows about chinese. This game seems "great" though, in the same way the other Shenmue games are "great". I understand why this game is a cult classic, it's just you'd have to be crazy to even like this ironically, and I sure am crazy. The second game has a lady who seems to never get off her motorcycle and is accompanied by rockin' tunes. This game looks like you patched in HD textures into a game from 2004. Everyone still talks super awkward and badly translated, it's great.
Plague Tale: Innocence: Oh here we go, another one. I'm kind interested in this even though it seems to be very light on the game side of things, very movie game, almost walking simulator. But hey, I sometimes like those if they have really good stories, SOMA was great for example. This one seems like it's got a good plot and some cool setpieces, though I'm worried that since it's a western game with a female lead that it's some kind of feminist thing. Cuz that's usually how it is.
The Caligula Effect: I dunno it's some anime game jrpg thing maybe? I'll maybe play it some day.
Super Robot Wars T: I got the play asia english subs version of Super Robot Wars V, but this one has Gunbuster and GunXSword in it. And GaoGaiGar which I wanna watch. And Harlock. And somehow Magic Knight Rayearth? Is there something I'm missing, does Rayearth have mecha in it?
Atelier Lulua & Ryza: I am so behind on the Atelier games.
Contra Anniversary Collection: I think this has some free play modes which probably the only way I'm ever beating a Contra game. I'm interested in this for sure, I like Contra as much as I like Metal Slug, and am just as bad at them. But I like them!
Crash Team Racing: Nitro Fueled: I always liked this game.
Anodyne 2: If this ever comes to PS4 I'll probably play it, I'm interested in this game. I like indie games when they're real weird and aren't the same bullshit most indie games are.
Catherine: Full Body: All of these colon titles. I never played the original so I'm interested in picking it up on PS4 and finally trying it, but not that much.
Star Ocean: First Departure R: It's like a port of the PSP version of Star Ocean. I played that but never finished it so I'd like to get around to it sometime.
But now on to games I actually did play this year. As always the games I didn't play part was just for if you're wondering why something didn't get an award. If I haven't mentioned it in either section, chances are I just don't care.
First, some non-standard awards
Most Nostalgic Game:
Control
I got around to playing Control right before I started making this post. I liked it, it probably won't get any other awards but it is getting this one. What does it mean? Well, let's get this out of the way right now: I like creepypasta. Okay, more like I liked creepypasta. People now like to say "creepypasta was always bad" but these are people who jumped on when they were the cringey stupid teenagers that fucked creepypasta up, or are people who were never into it and only learned of it by the time it was shit. I was a cringey stupid teenager too when I found out about it, the difference is I didn't fuck it up and I know of it's origins. Creepypasta wasn't always shit, the stuff under the modern definition of creepypasta is what's shit. Most people don't even know it comes from the term copypasta, a copy-paste story. It's a creepy copypasta. They were meant to be stories, usually told on /x/ by people who actually believed them, that would be saved and then posted around a bunch until they eventually gained notoriety. Modern ideas of creepypasta are literally just scary stories written by edgy idiots usually with their username attached to it so they can get validation. This is why so many people act befuddled by the very name of it, making fun of it by calling it stuff like "spooky spaghetti", because modern creepypasta is a fucking joke and isn't even in the same format as it's namesake.
What I like are the classics. People telling you about weird ass diners in the middle of nowhere you can only enter at 12:01 PM on Sundays in April, stories about The Holders, accounts of weird shit that happened to someone, weird ARGs, stories about horrible cryptids. That was the good stuff. When it became people just trying to write horror fiction and get credited was when it became fucking lame, and right after that is when all the edgy kids writing their stupid "jeff the killer is in love with me and together we're gonna go kill all my bullies" shit happened.
My point here is that Control is highly inspired by creepypasta, specifically The Holders and the SCP Foundation. Now, the SCP Foundation is newer and is also total shit now, but it was one of the good ones. SCP Foundation(SCP = Secure Contain Protect) was a fictional government agency that found paranormal objects and creatures and contained them somewhere in their massive facility, in reality it was a place where people posted mock government reports on the various "SCPs", with redacted portions to make it more spooky. The first SCPs were all creepypastas posted on /x/, which were then gathered for the SCP wiki, the most famous of which is SCP-173, a sculpture that moves when you aren't looking at it. The FBC(Federal Bureau of Control) is basically that. They find weird objects and creatures that have otherworldly powers and contain them, have reports with redacted portions on them, and often tests them on low level agents. An Object of Power can be bound to a person and they can use it, like one of the Holders(The Board, your extra-dimensional boss, even calls you one at one point). The building you're in, and other Places of Power, are a lot like those weird locations people posted about, always shifting and can't be found unless you're looking for it. Altered World Events are like the weird accounts of crazy shit happening. And there's a puppet TV show that's a lot like the Candle Cove creepypasta.
All of this shit is stuff is concepts I used to be really into, before people absolutely destroyed them. It's nostalgic, and I'm also glad these ideas can live on in a better place.
Runner up: Onimusha: Warlords remaster.
Most Bare Bones Remaster:
Onimusha: Warlords
This is really just a slapped together thing it feels like. Not only is it just the first game(why not an HD collection of 1-3?), it's really just "we upresed it". Like it looks fine I guess? It's just an upresed port of Onimusha. The 16:9 mode is just it zoomed in, which might just be because of the pre-rendered backgrounds, but some of them scroll enough I feel like you could still maybe open up the frame? I dunno, I just feel like if capcom had put more work into this they coulda made it a lot better. Still, nice to be able to play this game on PS4.
Runners up: Ace Attorney Trilogy and Metal Wolf Chaos XD
Best New Old Game:
Final Fantasy VIII Remastered
Not much to say here, it's FF8, you either love it or hate it. My issue here is how half assed the upscaling of the pre-rendered backgrounds is, how shit the polygonal battle bacgrounds look, the weird technical glitch where one track will be replaced by it's bad original PC port version, and I don't know how I feel about Squall's new model. All the other models feel like nice upresed PS2 model versions of the characters, but Squall's make's him I guess look more in line with later renditions of him. However, I like how Squall used to look, and I don't care for altering things that much when remastering them. We get mad at stuff like that when they do it with movies, why not with games?
Most Fun Game I Didn't Finish:
Dragon Quest Builders 2
I plan to complete this game some day. But man, I fucked around too much and played like 30 hours and got like 1/3 of the way through. Totally made me wanna just put it aside for then and play something else. I messed up, but don't get me wrong, this is a great game! I didn't play the first one but this one is for sure really great. Lots of fun, very cute, very charming, very simple but good. Kinda challenging at times too! In a way a building game can be I guess.
Best Game With the Most Problems:
Kingdom Hearts III
I've had the whole year to think about this game, what award to give it, and how I feel about it. I had at one point considered giving it "biggest disappointment", but I realize I'm not really disappointed in it... well, not because of the game itself, but because of what I did. It's hard not to get hyped for a game that you'd been waiting, what was it 13 or 14 years for? I got hyped up by my wait, but Dream Drop Distance, by the trailers, by myself. I expected this game to be something I knew I shouldn't have expected it to be. For one thing this is Kingdom Hearts we're talking about, and second I mean I knew Nomura wrote himself into a corner and would need to write himself out. Don't expect this to be a grand moving epic finish to the story, nor to be super bonkers nuts with crazy retcon plot twists(there are a few good ones), expect Nomura to be doing his best to give everyone a happy ending after trying his best to make that impossible. And also some cool setpiece moments. Now, I think I did really like this game and might play it again, and who knows? Maybe Re:Mind will actually make the story even crazier. I at least wanna play as the other characters like it seems I'll be able to.
But it still has a lot of issues. Why don't I tell you some? Like how the disney stuff has even less reason to be here and is way worse done. For the ones where it doesn't re-tell the disney story and is a standard crossover(hmmm, all the pixar stuff is that hmmm), it's not bad. But it doesn't do that every time, you know what it usually does? Things like having the events of like an entire move pretty much happen off-screen in the Pirates of the Caribbean world? Even Frozen world, brain scratchingly enough, does this. You only see like 3 scenes from the movie and you spend most of the time stuck in an ice tower they made up. I suppose some of it tracks with what Frozen fans care about, since they clearly don't care about the story, you get to fuck around with the snowman, you're there for "let it go" and you're there for the ending. But if I didn't already know the plot from reviews of the movie, I'd never fucking know what was happening cuz I've never seen it. This is a game that 100% expects you to know and remember the plots of the disney movies, which is fine for Frozen since it's recent and most people have seen it, but Pirates? How old is that 3rd movie now? I suppose some of this comes from its development hell.
Another problem is how Fragmentary Passage kinda lies to you about some things. The basic mechanics are still there, but things like the style change stuff leading to the cool situational attack like when you bind up and slash the darkness orb at the end with Aqua and Micky, simply don't happen here. I was hoping for that, because honestly I found a lot of the bosses to be boring.
Another big issue is the pacing of the story, and the purpose for events, and I mean KH2 had this problem but I feel like to a lesser degree. You often, even in the better more standard crossover levels, don't really have a purpose to be there or really much story. You really just go in, fight some baddies, and then leave. You're only in the Monster's Inc world so you can meet Vanitas, so meeting Vanitas is really all you do in the Monster's Inc world. In KH2 something thematic would usually happen, and then the next time you went there, something thematic and with one of Nomura's OCs would happen. When it retold a disney story at least it was you taking part in it and actually serving a purpse, here you don't even really interact with the characters. Frozen girl doesn't even meet you I think, and your only contribution to the plot is you beat the boss at the end. The ones like Toy Story are better, but as I said there isn't enough interaction with the toys and none of it is plot or theme relevant aside from a few things, so it all comes off as pointless.
That's the thing, it's a game that wants to impress and show things off and be gimmicky, partly because that's what Kingdom Hearts is, and partly because I think its time in development has let to it being too full of stuff developed over time. They didn't take anything out or rework it into the rest of the game, it's just how and where it is when they put it in. It's a game and story that feels very disjointed. KH2 has similar problems but Nomura had gotten better, DDD had a good balance of pointless disney stuff and main story stuff. I feel like it's here in fits and starts, and then all crammed in at the end. It feels like an evolution of KH2, but plotwise in ways its a devolution.
There are other things but it'll take a while to get into and remember, and some of it is spoilers. I'll say there is a lot that is really good about it and you just gotta get through the not as good stuff. The game is super fun anyway, so it's not that big of a deal, it's just that you play Kingdom Hearts for the story, as ridiculous as it is.
Runner Up: Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition
Dumbest Game:
Metal Wolf Chaos XD
Controls pretty loose and clunky, but overall I think it was a pretty fun game. However, if it hadn't had the stupid and silly story straight out of a japanese interpretation of an 80s action movie, I wouldn't have cared as much. The story is about the president of the united states, who has to fight in his mecha, the metal wolf, against his former vice president who has staged a coup and is now the dictator of the united states. The game is full of what japanese people think of americans, like that they are constantly spewing out things about justice and freedom, and our action movies. The dialogue is exactly as it was in the japanese version, as it was recorded in english originally, so it's all very awkwardly written and delivered, which is great. This is a dumb over the top game with influences of tons of dumb things, and dumb dialogue performed in a dumb way. It's super dumb.
But now, on to some more standard awards!
I'll get the "bad" out of the way first, as there's only really two.
Most Mediocre/Disappointing:
Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition.
Really, mediocre isn't even the right word. It's still a Tales game, so I mean it is, to me, at least above average. However, it still has a lot of issues. For one, the plot almost doesn't seem like a Tales game. You don't really learn anything about the Big Bad, either of them, until way later in the story. Compare to even Tales of Symphonia, where Mythos was built up as a hero for the majority of the game until you learn he's the villain. The cast isn't great, the story is 5x more meandering and slow paced than the rest of the games, plot points sub plots and entire themes are dropped 2/3 of the way through, it's just all around a very sloppy narrative that just barely manages to make any runs and never hits it out of the park. Spoilers, the primary atagonist is a personality-less great evil which is revealed to be the antagonist about 2/3 into the story, like this is some kind of early Final Fantasy game. Hell, there's even some weird we have to save spirit energy and stop using our magic things or the planet will die like it's FF7, not a Tales game. That's really the big issue, I get so little of what I want out of a Tales game here, there's so much lost potential. I could go on but I have a big and very spoiler filled list of complaints that I put in a text document and it got pretty long, so here's a paste-bin link if you wanna read it: here
Runner up: Judgement
Worst Story:
Judgement/Judge Eyes: Shinigami no Yuigon
"Worst" is maybe misleading, but it was the story I liked the least in a game this year. I was so excited for this game, and honestly it is a good game, but man oh man the story. To be fair, most of the story is good. The issue comes when you actually start to get to solving the case. The more you learn about what's going on and why, the dumber and more disappointing the story becomes. As this is a Ryu Ga Gotoku studio game, the climax of the story comes well after you've figured out who is behind everything, thus making it feel like the story has dragged on. The side stories aren't that interesting, and then you do the main story which gets dumber and dumber. Has the Yakuza team just forgotten how to write these things? 0's story wasn't great and 6's story really sucked. What makes this alright is that the protagonist characters are all really good, and the end makes it feel like there will for sure be more games with these guys, which is good I'll play them, but... like Yakuza 6, the adherence to the story's theme and core concept end up with far too many scenes of people endlessly talking about one specific topic, this time being Alzheimer's disease. Like yeah I understand it's the villain's motivation to cure Alzheimers BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY. but they never fucking shut up it feels like I'm having a med school lesson. The dialogue is a repetitive and a lot of the reveals are dumb, so I just kinda don't care about this story.
Runner up: Tales of Versperia
Best Story:
Ace Attorney Trilogy
Ah, but now, best story. I'd give this to Death Stranding, but really the story of Death Stranding is only good when it's dealing with Clifford Unger, the rest of the time I kinda just wanted to get back to my deliveries. Instead, I'll go with something I already like, and that's the story of the Ace Attorney Trilogy. Man, I love these games. I think all together they form a really tight and engaging, albeit campy and often goofy, narrative, that just really works and actually made me think sometimes. I experienced the end of the Trilogy twice this year, once in the form of the anime and once in this game, and I still really like it. Godot might not be a great character in terms of his characterization, but his purpose in the plot, the questions he brings up, what he means to the saga of everyone's favorite spikey-headed lawyer, all that stuff is great. All 3 of these games are great and tell really good stories about murder and the meaning of Justice. You should pick this up on whatever platform it's on that you have if you haven't played them already, I know some people don't like the look of the sprites in this version, and they do sometimes look a little wrong, but overall it looks nice. But hey, you could also just emulate the DS versions!
Best Action Game:
Devil May Cry V
Dante is back, baby! After DMC: DMC, it's great to get a proper return to the world of demon hunting action. Say what you will about the gameplay, or even the story, of DmC, but it was a reboot and it didn't continue the narrative of the real games. You can argue you don't need to, but I'd argue you do. I like the story of DMC so I'm happy to see it continued. I like Nero too so I'm fine with playing. Honestly even though he's annoying, I'm happy to play as V too, since he has a fun and unique playstyle that I was actually pretty good with. My combo meter was really going when I played as V, I got the most A and S ranks with him, maybe my only S ranks. I'm not great at DMC, and luckily this one seems to be easier, as I had a surplus of gold orbs by the end and used them to brute force the final boss. This isn't game of the year by a long shot but it's a great return to form for the series and a good action game for sure.
Best Return to Form:
Ace Combat 7
The best return to form however is Ace Combat 7. DMC only had one bad game between good releases, but Ace Combat had 2 bad games(Assault Horizon and 6) and like a maybe okay free to play online thing called Ace Combat Infinity? I've only played 5 and this so far, but I like them enough I'd like to go and play 4 and 0 some time. 5 was a real great story, and this one has a slightly less good but still very good story. Feels a lot like the same game but with QoL improvements, and I suppose after a game like Assault Horizon you'd want that. I don't have much to say aside this is a great game with great graphics, a really good story, good music, and great action packed dogfights. I dunno why people haven't really talked about this game at all.
Best Horror Game:
Resident Evil 2 Remake/Resident Evil 2(2019)/RE2Make
RE2Make is a great game. It's a remake of a great game that is able to modernize it while keeping the spirit of what made it good to begin with. This proves that old survival horror concepts and mechanics can still be done well and be profitable today, more so than RE7. It looks fantastic, it plays fantastic, it's still a real good story. My main issues come from the changes to how the dual protagonist/story works, the story changes in general, and honestly just that the amount of bullets it takes to down a zombie is so inconsistent. Like, I think I get why, it still works as a factor to consider, but it maybe shouldn't be that way. Playing Clair A Leon B and then Leon A Claire B, or vice versa, is totally useless now, as very few things change. In the original, not only did certain things you did affect the other playthrough, but which order you did the stories would effect what the character does. Certain bosses would be fought by different characters, item locations were different, and both stories can happen without contradiction each other. Now, B scenario changes items and adds the final boss/true ending. Claire's A and B scenarios are the same, and so is Leon's, the only real difference is who talks to marvin, is on what side of the fence, and who fights the final boss. Claire will always fight the penultimate Birkin form, Leon will always fight Super Mr. X. Worse, aside from that they fight all the same bosses in the same places as the same time! The original made each character's actions be able to take place on the same timeline without them bumping into each other in gameplay. I feel like times they meet up have been cut down too. How do you do this less good than a game that came out in 1998? Mr. X even shows up in both A and B scenarios, even though the idea is he's sent in later so the protagonist further down the timeline encounters him! It's just weird. I expect them to make more differences and more interactions, not less. Like fine, make it so you only have to do A and B once, but make them more different different. The other problems I have come from more weird story changes, biggest on is that Claire is now a generic strong female character and boring, when Claire was already a good character and cute and badass before!
That said it's still real good, a great horror game. I get a lot of the same feelings I do from the old games; the feeling of mastering a map, helped by how rooms go from red to blue on the map now when you got everything you need out of them. I felt the thrills of item management. The chills of entering a room and it being filled with zombies and realizing you're not prepared for it, wondering if you can slip passed them. And best of all, the feeling you get when you save up all your good ammo for the last boss and you end up using half of it or less. I coulda been fucking up zombies with this and saving myself so many close calls and green herbs! The fact this is possible in a modern RE game is amazing, I like the RE4 style games just fine, but I miss survival horror and Resident Evil.
Most Unique Game:
Death Stranding
I can't say Death Stranding is the best story of the year. It's really not. Specifically anything to do with Cliff is damn fantastic, and really that is the story, but that's only a small amount of what you're getting when you aren't playing or are hearing people talk. The rest of it is pretty lame, honestly a lot of wasted potential. It makes sense he didn't show much outside of the good stuff in trailers cuz this is for sure sub-MGS level story for most of it. It's got a lot of the issues that MGSV had, thought it has a lot more of an actual story, and I dunno the job you do in this game is by it's nature repetitive so I didn't mind doing the same thing over and over so much.
But what I wanna talk about is how unique this game is. I won't pretend that all individual elements or ideas have not been done before, but this combination and the specific feeling it gives you really hasn't. It's a weird game, and while I don't think Kojima really invented a new genre of game like he thinks, it's at the very least a unique entry. Going around delivering packages to people in the weirdly surreal yet weirdly grounded world of "this is america, really", a world where the boundaries of life and death have been severed, and you can get attacked by the dead who will summon a bunch of black goo, a whale/squiid, and old dead cities as if it's an amalgamation of everything that's died trying to kill you for still being alive. Then, you find stuff other people built for you and leave them likes, and then get likes for putting up helpful structures. Then you go talk to a man named fucking Heartman because his heart stops every 20 minutes so he can go try to find his family in the afterlife. Then you go fight a guy named Higgs who calls himself The God Particle and wears egyptian eye makeup. Then you read an email about how walls are bad but are also what allowed the few survivors to survive in this deathpocalyptic world. Have you ever played a game like this before? You have? You fucking liar.
Game of the Year:
Code Vein
If you asked me at the beginning of the year what I thought my game of the year would be I would have said Kingdom Hearts III. And that's honestly probably #2. And I thought that would be Death Stranding, but it's probably not even #3. I had a hard time deciding, or rather there were several games I considered giving game of the year that I just said I can't in good conscious put there.
Code Vein is the game I said, yeah you know what? That's my game of the year. I like this game, a lot. It's really good. Like it's great. This is anime Bloodborne. It's an edgy as fuck anime that I might not have watched had it actually been one, but it's still a good story. And it's a really good game. It's easier than a soulsborne game, but still pretty fucking hard. It works pretty much the same way, like do I need to describe it for you? There are still bonfires, still souls basically, enemies still respawn when you save, you make shortcuts back to beginnings of the level, you level up. It's all the same thing, and that's a good thing. It does enough of it's own thing aesthetically, narratively, and sometimes mechanically that it's not just a ripoff. The story is that one day The Horrors came, and to combat them they used recently discovered parasites that turn things into super powered, nigh immortal zombies. Except they're basically vampires because they need blood and turn into ash when properly killed. Instead of dying when killed, they instead go poof and reassemble themselves back at Mistles(bonfires) which collect their particles. This can lead to memory loss and well, your protagonist(you create one), has some serious main-character-who-is-super-important amnesia. But before that, well, these vampires, called Revenants, were used as soldiers to fight the horrors until one day, their Queen "frenzied" and had to be killed, which released a red mist which can cause revenants to frenzy and turn into horrible blood starved monsters. Then, the whole place got sealed off to protect humans from the revenants. You can also become one of those mosnters if you just don't get enough blood, and with few humans and few "blood beeds"(fruits that contain blood), more and more are succumbing. You set out on a quest to find the source of the blood beeds and hopefully get more, but this quest turns into something much bigger. It's a great, pretty JRPG story(or perhaps one that takes place after a failed JRPG quest), and I like it a lot.
The gameplay is great too of course. You know what it is, I told you, but it is pretty good. My only issue is I feel like sometimes the heavy weapons don't feel as heavy as they should, but they still do feel properly weighty. The hits feel great, the game is fun, and because I care about the story I was incentivized to get better and complete the game, unlike a Dark Souls where they story is told on fucking loading screens. The character creator is fun, letting you create a cute anime girl(or hot anime guy if you want, I guess), which I did. It was a very fulfilling but also draining game, and I like that a lot. I felt like I accomplished something when I was done, hell when I finished any area. It tired me out but in a good way. I recommend checking it out for sure you want a slightly easier souls game and like this edgy goth anime style.
And that about does it for this year's post. I got nothing else to say so I hope you enjoyed what I did. Here's hoping that this year has a lot of great games and that FF7 remake doesn't suck!
If you can't tell I don't know how to start top 10 lists and "of the year" posts I just don't fucking know how. Do you know how bad it feels to have these shitty opening lines every time? How is anyone supposed to get into reading this if I can't have a good introduction? I'm decent at introducing reviews I think but stuff like this I just suck at. Why am I so terrible? Is it inherent, or am I not trying hard enough?
Uh, well, whatever, let's just start already okay?
So first off I'll talk about some games I didn't get to play from 2019 that I wanted to or was at least a little bit interested in. This is in no particular order here
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice: I wanted to play this but I think something came out around the same time. It's for the best I probably wouldn't have got very far in it, I'm bad at Soulsborne games. I mean that's not some shocking revelation, most people aren't. I appreciate them very much, with a lot of difficult games or even if I just happen to suck at it, I get very frustrated very easily. I tried playing Donkey Kong Country a couple months ago and the level where you gotta shoot yourself past the bees over the bottomless pit pissed me off a lot that's how much I suck and rage. But Dark Souls and Bloodborne don't upset me at all, they're like Castlevania in that way. Somehow, even when they're being exceedingly cheap I always go "oh damn I died again man this game is hard" instead of "mother fucking fuckity fuck I fucking died again this fucking piece of shit game god dammit fuck you" like I'm the AVGN or something. Maybe it's because both games are pretty slow and methodical. The games I get mad at require lots of quick reflexes and timing, whereas I feel like games like castlevania and soulsbornes reward smart play, planning, and preparing. They still require some quick reflexes but you need to prepare yourself to do that and put yourself in the best circumstances anyway. I dunno, point is I like how these games work and I feel like they are always how difficult games should be. I never get very far, because I'm too stupid or something, but I always feel like it's my fault that I can't.
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night: I wanted to play this even though I don't usually care for "metroidvania" games, but I like what I've played of Symphony of the Night and this game is just that. It seems pretty cool I'd very much like to play it some time.
Jedi: Fallen Order: Man are all these games gonna have colon titles that make this format look bad? Anyway, speaking of soulsborne this is basically star wars souls game but way easier. There's another game I'll talk about that's basically bloodborne but easier a little later. This game looks pretty cool, I've heard some good things aside people whining about it that it's too hard because it looks from the outside like some kind of sony movie game, and it's star wars, so lots of casuals are hoping on in. It seems real cool though and I'd like to get around to it.
Shenmue III: I guess not. I would like to play Shenmue III but I have neither watched nor seen a playthrough of Shenmue II yet so sadly, I cannot learn what Ryo knows about chinese. This game seems "great" though, in the same way the other Shenmue games are "great". I understand why this game is a cult classic, it's just you'd have to be crazy to even like this ironically, and I sure am crazy. The second game has a lady who seems to never get off her motorcycle and is accompanied by rockin' tunes. This game looks like you patched in HD textures into a game from 2004. Everyone still talks super awkward and badly translated, it's great.
Plague Tale: Innocence: Oh here we go, another one. I'm kind interested in this even though it seems to be very light on the game side of things, very movie game, almost walking simulator. But hey, I sometimes like those if they have really good stories, SOMA was great for example. This one seems like it's got a good plot and some cool setpieces, though I'm worried that since it's a western game with a female lead that it's some kind of feminist thing. Cuz that's usually how it is.
The Caligula Effect: I dunno it's some anime game jrpg thing maybe? I'll maybe play it some day.
Super Robot Wars T: I got the play asia english subs version of Super Robot Wars V, but this one has Gunbuster and GunXSword in it. And GaoGaiGar which I wanna watch. And Harlock. And somehow Magic Knight Rayearth? Is there something I'm missing, does Rayearth have mecha in it?
Atelier Lulua & Ryza: I am so behind on the Atelier games.
Contra Anniversary Collection: I think this has some free play modes which probably the only way I'm ever beating a Contra game. I'm interested in this for sure, I like Contra as much as I like Metal Slug, and am just as bad at them. But I like them!
Crash Team Racing: Nitro Fueled: I always liked this game.
Anodyne 2: If this ever comes to PS4 I'll probably play it, I'm interested in this game. I like indie games when they're real weird and aren't the same bullshit most indie games are.
Catherine: Full Body: All of these colon titles. I never played the original so I'm interested in picking it up on PS4 and finally trying it, but not that much.
Star Ocean: First Departure R: It's like a port of the PSP version of Star Ocean. I played that but never finished it so I'd like to get around to it sometime.
But now on to games I actually did play this year. As always the games I didn't play part was just for if you're wondering why something didn't get an award. If I haven't mentioned it in either section, chances are I just don't care.
First, some non-standard awards
Most Nostalgic Game:
Control
I got around to playing Control right before I started making this post. I liked it, it probably won't get any other awards but it is getting this one. What does it mean? Well, let's get this out of the way right now: I like creepypasta. Okay, more like I liked creepypasta. People now like to say "creepypasta was always bad" but these are people who jumped on when they were the cringey stupid teenagers that fucked creepypasta up, or are people who were never into it and only learned of it by the time it was shit. I was a cringey stupid teenager too when I found out about it, the difference is I didn't fuck it up and I know of it's origins. Creepypasta wasn't always shit, the stuff under the modern definition of creepypasta is what's shit. Most people don't even know it comes from the term copypasta, a copy-paste story. It's a creepy copypasta. They were meant to be stories, usually told on /x/ by people who actually believed them, that would be saved and then posted around a bunch until they eventually gained notoriety. Modern ideas of creepypasta are literally just scary stories written by edgy idiots usually with their username attached to it so they can get validation. This is why so many people act befuddled by the very name of it, making fun of it by calling it stuff like "spooky spaghetti", because modern creepypasta is a fucking joke and isn't even in the same format as it's namesake.
What I like are the classics. People telling you about weird ass diners in the middle of nowhere you can only enter at 12:01 PM on Sundays in April, stories about The Holders, accounts of weird shit that happened to someone, weird ARGs, stories about horrible cryptids. That was the good stuff. When it became people just trying to write horror fiction and get credited was when it became fucking lame, and right after that is when all the edgy kids writing their stupid "jeff the killer is in love with me and together we're gonna go kill all my bullies" shit happened.
My point here is that Control is highly inspired by creepypasta, specifically The Holders and the SCP Foundation. Now, the SCP Foundation is newer and is also total shit now, but it was one of the good ones. SCP Foundation(SCP = Secure Contain Protect) was a fictional government agency that found paranormal objects and creatures and contained them somewhere in their massive facility, in reality it was a place where people posted mock government reports on the various "SCPs", with redacted portions to make it more spooky. The first SCPs were all creepypastas posted on /x/, which were then gathered for the SCP wiki, the most famous of which is SCP-173, a sculpture that moves when you aren't looking at it. The FBC(Federal Bureau of Control) is basically that. They find weird objects and creatures that have otherworldly powers and contain them, have reports with redacted portions on them, and often tests them on low level agents. An Object of Power can be bound to a person and they can use it, like one of the Holders(The Board, your extra-dimensional boss, even calls you one at one point). The building you're in, and other Places of Power, are a lot like those weird locations people posted about, always shifting and can't be found unless you're looking for it. Altered World Events are like the weird accounts of crazy shit happening. And there's a puppet TV show that's a lot like the Candle Cove creepypasta.
All of this shit is stuff is concepts I used to be really into, before people absolutely destroyed them. It's nostalgic, and I'm also glad these ideas can live on in a better place.
Runner up: Onimusha: Warlords remaster.
Most Bare Bones Remaster:
Onimusha: Warlords
This is really just a slapped together thing it feels like. Not only is it just the first game(why not an HD collection of 1-3?), it's really just "we upresed it". Like it looks fine I guess? It's just an upresed port of Onimusha. The 16:9 mode is just it zoomed in, which might just be because of the pre-rendered backgrounds, but some of them scroll enough I feel like you could still maybe open up the frame? I dunno, I just feel like if capcom had put more work into this they coulda made it a lot better. Still, nice to be able to play this game on PS4.
Runners up: Ace Attorney Trilogy and Metal Wolf Chaos XD
Best New Old Game:
Final Fantasy VIII Remastered
Not much to say here, it's FF8, you either love it or hate it. My issue here is how half assed the upscaling of the pre-rendered backgrounds is, how shit the polygonal battle bacgrounds look, the weird technical glitch where one track will be replaced by it's bad original PC port version, and I don't know how I feel about Squall's new model. All the other models feel like nice upresed PS2 model versions of the characters, but Squall's make's him I guess look more in line with later renditions of him. However, I like how Squall used to look, and I don't care for altering things that much when remastering them. We get mad at stuff like that when they do it with movies, why not with games?
Most Fun Game I Didn't Finish:
Dragon Quest Builders 2
I plan to complete this game some day. But man, I fucked around too much and played like 30 hours and got like 1/3 of the way through. Totally made me wanna just put it aside for then and play something else. I messed up, but don't get me wrong, this is a great game! I didn't play the first one but this one is for sure really great. Lots of fun, very cute, very charming, very simple but good. Kinda challenging at times too! In a way a building game can be I guess.
Best Game With the Most Problems:
Kingdom Hearts III
I've had the whole year to think about this game, what award to give it, and how I feel about it. I had at one point considered giving it "biggest disappointment", but I realize I'm not really disappointed in it... well, not because of the game itself, but because of what I did. It's hard not to get hyped for a game that you'd been waiting, what was it 13 or 14 years for? I got hyped up by my wait, but Dream Drop Distance, by the trailers, by myself. I expected this game to be something I knew I shouldn't have expected it to be. For one thing this is Kingdom Hearts we're talking about, and second I mean I knew Nomura wrote himself into a corner and would need to write himself out. Don't expect this to be a grand moving epic finish to the story, nor to be super bonkers nuts with crazy retcon plot twists(there are a few good ones), expect Nomura to be doing his best to give everyone a happy ending after trying his best to make that impossible. And also some cool setpiece moments. Now, I think I did really like this game and might play it again, and who knows? Maybe Re:Mind will actually make the story even crazier. I at least wanna play as the other characters like it seems I'll be able to.
But it still has a lot of issues. Why don't I tell you some? Like how the disney stuff has even less reason to be here and is way worse done. For the ones where it doesn't re-tell the disney story and is a standard crossover(hmmm, all the pixar stuff is that hmmm), it's not bad. But it doesn't do that every time, you know what it usually does? Things like having the events of like an entire move pretty much happen off-screen in the Pirates of the Caribbean world? Even Frozen world, brain scratchingly enough, does this. You only see like 3 scenes from the movie and you spend most of the time stuck in an ice tower they made up. I suppose some of it tracks with what Frozen fans care about, since they clearly don't care about the story, you get to fuck around with the snowman, you're there for "let it go" and you're there for the ending. But if I didn't already know the plot from reviews of the movie, I'd never fucking know what was happening cuz I've never seen it. This is a game that 100% expects you to know and remember the plots of the disney movies, which is fine for Frozen since it's recent and most people have seen it, but Pirates? How old is that 3rd movie now? I suppose some of this comes from its development hell.
Another problem is how Fragmentary Passage kinda lies to you about some things. The basic mechanics are still there, but things like the style change stuff leading to the cool situational attack like when you bind up and slash the darkness orb at the end with Aqua and Micky, simply don't happen here. I was hoping for that, because honestly I found a lot of the bosses to be boring.
Another big issue is the pacing of the story, and the purpose for events, and I mean KH2 had this problem but I feel like to a lesser degree. You often, even in the better more standard crossover levels, don't really have a purpose to be there or really much story. You really just go in, fight some baddies, and then leave. You're only in the Monster's Inc world so you can meet Vanitas, so meeting Vanitas is really all you do in the Monster's Inc world. In KH2 something thematic would usually happen, and then the next time you went there, something thematic and with one of Nomura's OCs would happen. When it retold a disney story at least it was you taking part in it and actually serving a purpse, here you don't even really interact with the characters. Frozen girl doesn't even meet you I think, and your only contribution to the plot is you beat the boss at the end. The ones like Toy Story are better, but as I said there isn't enough interaction with the toys and none of it is plot or theme relevant aside from a few things, so it all comes off as pointless.
That's the thing, it's a game that wants to impress and show things off and be gimmicky, partly because that's what Kingdom Hearts is, and partly because I think its time in development has let to it being too full of stuff developed over time. They didn't take anything out or rework it into the rest of the game, it's just how and where it is when they put it in. It's a game and story that feels very disjointed. KH2 has similar problems but Nomura had gotten better, DDD had a good balance of pointless disney stuff and main story stuff. I feel like it's here in fits and starts, and then all crammed in at the end. It feels like an evolution of KH2, but plotwise in ways its a devolution.
There are other things but it'll take a while to get into and remember, and some of it is spoilers. I'll say there is a lot that is really good about it and you just gotta get through the not as good stuff. The game is super fun anyway, so it's not that big of a deal, it's just that you play Kingdom Hearts for the story, as ridiculous as it is.
Runner Up: Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition
Dumbest Game:
Metal Wolf Chaos XD
Controls pretty loose and clunky, but overall I think it was a pretty fun game. However, if it hadn't had the stupid and silly story straight out of a japanese interpretation of an 80s action movie, I wouldn't have cared as much. The story is about the president of the united states, who has to fight in his mecha, the metal wolf, against his former vice president who has staged a coup and is now the dictator of the united states. The game is full of what japanese people think of americans, like that they are constantly spewing out things about justice and freedom, and our action movies. The dialogue is exactly as it was in the japanese version, as it was recorded in english originally, so it's all very awkwardly written and delivered, which is great. This is a dumb over the top game with influences of tons of dumb things, and dumb dialogue performed in a dumb way. It's super dumb.
But now, on to some more standard awards!
I'll get the "bad" out of the way first, as there's only really two.
Most Mediocre/Disappointing:
Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition.
Really, mediocre isn't even the right word. It's still a Tales game, so I mean it is, to me, at least above average. However, it still has a lot of issues. For one, the plot almost doesn't seem like a Tales game. You don't really learn anything about the Big Bad, either of them, until way later in the story. Compare to even Tales of Symphonia, where Mythos was built up as a hero for the majority of the game until you learn he's the villain. The cast isn't great, the story is 5x more meandering and slow paced than the rest of the games, plot points sub plots and entire themes are dropped 2/3 of the way through, it's just all around a very sloppy narrative that just barely manages to make any runs and never hits it out of the park. Spoilers, the primary atagonist is a personality-less great evil which is revealed to be the antagonist about 2/3 into the story, like this is some kind of early Final Fantasy game. Hell, there's even some weird we have to save spirit energy and stop using our magic things or the planet will die like it's FF7, not a Tales game. That's really the big issue, I get so little of what I want out of a Tales game here, there's so much lost potential. I could go on but I have a big and very spoiler filled list of complaints that I put in a text document and it got pretty long, so here's a paste-bin link if you wanna read it: here
Runner up: Judgement
Worst Story:
Judgement/Judge Eyes: Shinigami no Yuigon
"Worst" is maybe misleading, but it was the story I liked the least in a game this year. I was so excited for this game, and honestly it is a good game, but man oh man the story. To be fair, most of the story is good. The issue comes when you actually start to get to solving the case. The more you learn about what's going on and why, the dumber and more disappointing the story becomes. As this is a Ryu Ga Gotoku studio game, the climax of the story comes well after you've figured out who is behind everything, thus making it feel like the story has dragged on. The side stories aren't that interesting, and then you do the main story which gets dumber and dumber. Has the Yakuza team just forgotten how to write these things? 0's story wasn't great and 6's story really sucked. What makes this alright is that the protagonist characters are all really good, and the end makes it feel like there will for sure be more games with these guys, which is good I'll play them, but... like Yakuza 6, the adherence to the story's theme and core concept end up with far too many scenes of people endlessly talking about one specific topic, this time being Alzheimer's disease. Like yeah I understand it's the villain's motivation to cure Alzheimers BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY. but they never fucking shut up it feels like I'm having a med school lesson. The dialogue is a repetitive and a lot of the reveals are dumb, so I just kinda don't care about this story.
Runner up: Tales of Versperia
Best Story:
Ace Attorney Trilogy
Ah, but now, best story. I'd give this to Death Stranding, but really the story of Death Stranding is only good when it's dealing with Clifford Unger, the rest of the time I kinda just wanted to get back to my deliveries. Instead, I'll go with something I already like, and that's the story of the Ace Attorney Trilogy. Man, I love these games. I think all together they form a really tight and engaging, albeit campy and often goofy, narrative, that just really works and actually made me think sometimes. I experienced the end of the Trilogy twice this year, once in the form of the anime and once in this game, and I still really like it. Godot might not be a great character in terms of his characterization, but his purpose in the plot, the questions he brings up, what he means to the saga of everyone's favorite spikey-headed lawyer, all that stuff is great. All 3 of these games are great and tell really good stories about murder and the meaning of Justice. You should pick this up on whatever platform it's on that you have if you haven't played them already, I know some people don't like the look of the sprites in this version, and they do sometimes look a little wrong, but overall it looks nice. But hey, you could also just emulate the DS versions!
Best Action Game:
Devil May Cry V
Dante is back, baby! After DMC: DMC, it's great to get a proper return to the world of demon hunting action. Say what you will about the gameplay, or even the story, of DmC, but it was a reboot and it didn't continue the narrative of the real games. You can argue you don't need to, but I'd argue you do. I like the story of DMC so I'm happy to see it continued. I like Nero too so I'm fine with playing. Honestly even though he's annoying, I'm happy to play as V too, since he has a fun and unique playstyle that I was actually pretty good with. My combo meter was really going when I played as V, I got the most A and S ranks with him, maybe my only S ranks. I'm not great at DMC, and luckily this one seems to be easier, as I had a surplus of gold orbs by the end and used them to brute force the final boss. This isn't game of the year by a long shot but it's a great return to form for the series and a good action game for sure.
Best Return to Form:
Ace Combat 7
The best return to form however is Ace Combat 7. DMC only had one bad game between good releases, but Ace Combat had 2 bad games(Assault Horizon and 6) and like a maybe okay free to play online thing called Ace Combat Infinity? I've only played 5 and this so far, but I like them enough I'd like to go and play 4 and 0 some time. 5 was a real great story, and this one has a slightly less good but still very good story. Feels a lot like the same game but with QoL improvements, and I suppose after a game like Assault Horizon you'd want that. I don't have much to say aside this is a great game with great graphics, a really good story, good music, and great action packed dogfights. I dunno why people haven't really talked about this game at all.
Best Horror Game:
Resident Evil 2 Remake/Resident Evil 2(2019)/RE2Make
That said it's still real good, a great horror game. I get a lot of the same feelings I do from the old games; the feeling of mastering a map, helped by how rooms go from red to blue on the map now when you got everything you need out of them. I felt the thrills of item management. The chills of entering a room and it being filled with zombies and realizing you're not prepared for it, wondering if you can slip passed them. And best of all, the feeling you get when you save up all your good ammo for the last boss and you end up using half of it or less. I coulda been fucking up zombies with this and saving myself so many close calls and green herbs! The fact this is possible in a modern RE game is amazing, I like the RE4 style games just fine, but I miss survival horror and Resident Evil.
Most Unique Game:
Death Stranding
I can't say Death Stranding is the best story of the year. It's really not. Specifically anything to do with Cliff is damn fantastic, and really that is the story, but that's only a small amount of what you're getting when you aren't playing or are hearing people talk. The rest of it is pretty lame, honestly a lot of wasted potential. It makes sense he didn't show much outside of the good stuff in trailers cuz this is for sure sub-MGS level story for most of it. It's got a lot of the issues that MGSV had, thought it has a lot more of an actual story, and I dunno the job you do in this game is by it's nature repetitive so I didn't mind doing the same thing over and over so much.
But what I wanna talk about is how unique this game is. I won't pretend that all individual elements or ideas have not been done before, but this combination and the specific feeling it gives you really hasn't. It's a weird game, and while I don't think Kojima really invented a new genre of game like he thinks, it's at the very least a unique entry. Going around delivering packages to people in the weirdly surreal yet weirdly grounded world of "this is america, really", a world where the boundaries of life and death have been severed, and you can get attacked by the dead who will summon a bunch of black goo, a whale/squiid, and old dead cities as if it's an amalgamation of everything that's died trying to kill you for still being alive. Then, you find stuff other people built for you and leave them likes, and then get likes for putting up helpful structures. Then you go talk to a man named fucking Heartman because his heart stops every 20 minutes so he can go try to find his family in the afterlife. Then you go fight a guy named Higgs who calls himself The God Particle and wears egyptian eye makeup. Then you read an email about how walls are bad but are also what allowed the few survivors to survive in this deathpocalyptic world. Have you ever played a game like this before? You have? You fucking liar.
Game of the Year:
Code Vein
If you asked me at the beginning of the year what I thought my game of the year would be I would have said Kingdom Hearts III. And that's honestly probably #2. And I thought that would be Death Stranding, but it's probably not even #3. I had a hard time deciding, or rather there were several games I considered giving game of the year that I just said I can't in good conscious put there.
Code Vein is the game I said, yeah you know what? That's my game of the year. I like this game, a lot. It's really good. Like it's great. This is anime Bloodborne. It's an edgy as fuck anime that I might not have watched had it actually been one, but it's still a good story. And it's a really good game. It's easier than a soulsborne game, but still pretty fucking hard. It works pretty much the same way, like do I need to describe it for you? There are still bonfires, still souls basically, enemies still respawn when you save, you make shortcuts back to beginnings of the level, you level up. It's all the same thing, and that's a good thing. It does enough of it's own thing aesthetically, narratively, and sometimes mechanically that it's not just a ripoff. The story is that one day The Horrors came, and to combat them they used recently discovered parasites that turn things into super powered, nigh immortal zombies. Except they're basically vampires because they need blood and turn into ash when properly killed. Instead of dying when killed, they instead go poof and reassemble themselves back at Mistles(bonfires) which collect their particles. This can lead to memory loss and well, your protagonist(you create one), has some serious main-character-who-is-super-important amnesia. But before that, well, these vampires, called Revenants, were used as soldiers to fight the horrors until one day, their Queen "frenzied" and had to be killed, which released a red mist which can cause revenants to frenzy and turn into horrible blood starved monsters. Then, the whole place got sealed off to protect humans from the revenants. You can also become one of those mosnters if you just don't get enough blood, and with few humans and few "blood beeds"(fruits that contain blood), more and more are succumbing. You set out on a quest to find the source of the blood beeds and hopefully get more, but this quest turns into something much bigger. It's a great, pretty JRPG story(or perhaps one that takes place after a failed JRPG quest), and I like it a lot.
The gameplay is great too of course. You know what it is, I told you, but it is pretty good. My only issue is I feel like sometimes the heavy weapons don't feel as heavy as they should, but they still do feel properly weighty. The hits feel great, the game is fun, and because I care about the story I was incentivized to get better and complete the game, unlike a Dark Souls where they story is told on fucking loading screens. The character creator is fun, letting you create a cute anime girl(or hot anime guy if you want, I guess), which I did. It was a very fulfilling but also draining game, and I like that a lot. I felt like I accomplished something when I was done, hell when I finished any area. It tired me out but in a good way. I recommend checking it out for sure you want a slightly easier souls game and like this edgy goth anime style.
And that about does it for this year's post. I got nothing else to say so I hope you enjoyed what I did. Here's hoping that this year has a lot of great games and that FF7 remake doesn't suck!
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Ey watchu think mang?