Okay, so it’s a bit of a clickbait title. More accurate would probably be: “My Favorite Year in Gaming History?”
I haven’t played that many games in the last…decade or so. I don’t have any interest in most AAA stuff, and even stuff I want to like often can’t hold my interest. I often feel like I could be spending gaming time trying to make something, so it’s hard for me to even feel like I have time to game.
So only now (mostly due to Covid) am I catching up on the unusually high amount of game purchases I made over 2019.
And…holy shit. It’s like every big game in 2019 was made for me, and many of them are nearly perfect.
Games I’m Playing That I Love: (No Spoilers Please)
Death Stranding
Outer Worlds
Tetris 99
Untitled Goose Game (finished)
Games I Haven’t Gotten to That I Will Most Likely Love: Breath of the Wild
Bloodstained
Indivisible*
Games I May Never Play That Seem Really Good:
Sekiro
Disco Elysium
Y’all have to understand: I finish, like, one new, non-phone game per year. Even games I respect and want to like often turn out to not really be my thing (I just couldn’t get into the Souls series). Getting me addicted to a game to the point that playing it isn’t at least 10% a chore is a major achievement, all the games I’m playing now are doing that, and the ones I want to play show that potential.
So yeah: even being objective, I think 2019 is definitely up there with 1997/98 and 1994. Bad year for the earth in general–great year for gaming!
*Yeah, I’ve heard it’s disappointing, but that doesn’t change the fact that it was literally created just for me.
the only good game came out in 2016 and it is called Devil Daggers
shitposting aside i agree. 2019 was a great year across the board, AAA to indie. really varied too, good spread of niche and popular releases to dig into
If all of my favorite games from prior to last year formed a constellation, then Outer Wilds is the sun that obscures them for 12 hours at a time. It’s not perfect, but it’s perfect for me.
to be fair, emulation of botw surpassed perfection in 2019
imo the best years of games forever are probably 1994, 1998, and uhhh idk we had a pretty deep dive thread about this once, like almost a full decade ago. it’d be fun to do that again at this point! you know, where we all start in idk 1980 or whatever and spent a day or two all posting our lists of games of that year, one by one, until we have some kind of aggregate list at the end or we’ve just had a bit of fun arguing about shit
anyway yeah 2019 was pretty good, i still need to finish a bunch of games from it lol. sekiro and disco elysium are prob tops. i don’t have a switch but i still carry a torch for dragon quest xi S in hopes i may be able to eventually emulate it, if square enix doesn’t bring those extra features to pc.
slay the spire came out of early access in 2019, that’s a real good time
Lonely Mountains Downhill is a “diorama biking game” and really relaxing to play and master. Multiple paths through each course means exploring the route is more than just perfecting your line (although that’s still part of it).
Noita. Will let the trailer speak for itself.
Risk of Rain 2, sequel to one of my favorite roguelites, and IMO a perfect translation to 3D.
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night finally came out. I’m a sucker for SOTN-likes; I know they’re easy and mindless but man it’s just so much fun to putter around a castle doing random shit and killing monsters.
Void Bastards, excellent translation of immersive sim combat to rogue-like structure. Honorable mention to Prey: Mooncrash here too, it didn’t come out in 2019, I think, but it does the same.
This is just from me looking through my Steam backlog and picking the stuff I felt the most confident recommending (that other people haven’t already, like Baba Is You)
I checked out Baba is You, because I had seen it on shortlists but forgot what it was.
It’s very clever and cool, but I have a hard limit on how much I can enjoy tile push games. I find the fundamentals of the genre really samey, and I don’t love those fundamentals.
Baba is You is probably my favorite of the genre, and it’s fun to watch my GF play it too.
I will probably beat it; I’ve just gotten to the point where the timing of MOVE objects has become important, which I find a little annoying. I love the programmatic logic aspects, but the parts that are just tile push space puzzles bore me.
I consider it to be in that subgenre of “programmer games”–the titles I never remember that coders recommend, because “they actually teach you programming, in an abstract way.”. I’m not saying that’s dumb, but… it’s definitely a pattern that’s out there. Though I did appreciate that my very basic coding knowledge allowed me to blaze through the early game.
I look forward to a sequel that includes IF, THEN, ELSE, and FOR.
