Still the only 2019 game I’ve played is Golf Peaks, which I loved. I wish it had more levels.
Older games I picked up this year include New Super Mario U Deluxe, Firewatch, Final Fantasy XII Zodiac Age, and Hob. I think Hob was pretty remarkable, understated, rough. The rest of the games I like less than Hob but at about roughly the same level to each other.
Final Fantasy XII is the game I’ve played the most all year. It’s really relaxing.
Yeah I meant the discourse about the game as it existed (which was fine, e.g. I found Felix’s dissident take an interesting addition to the conversation), not the discourse about the word Sekiro as a symbol referring to some abstractions applying to any game that some kind of social media virality process spread around. SB’s thread thankfully didn’t dwell on the latter as much as Twitter did.
Nah, I didn’t take it that way. I mean, at some level it makes perfect sense that, since a single-player game never changes, may as well play it when it’s cheap and at a moment that fits your life (right mood, free time). Whereas for multiplayer games it’s often critical to get on board before you have to deal with declinism phenomena, like long queue times and all other players being ridiculously skilled.
I basically wanted to express that I find it interesting that there some games like Sekiro that can reasonably be treated as either.
also you can always steal stuff
(not to be glib, I’ve just always hated the pretense that a retail purchase actually excludes you from culture)
had forgotten about this until you and bennett mentioned it this week and aaaaaa it’s great
the only 2019 games i played so far are pubg lite and the newest hearthstone expansion so those i guess
So far it’s
Baba
Katamari Damacy Reroll (came out in december but if you care you’re a pedant)
I have literally not played anything else that has come out this year???
technicall seconded, with sanic kart 3 being a third game i tried my hands on.
gotta have to pick up sekiro again, didn’t get far enough in that… but would prefer to get katamari 2 rerolled edition anytime, any second.
Yeah I’ve barely played anything from this year but the important part is I am actually playing games a little again after like a year of only buying them 
Maybe it’s cause I’m a loser with no life but I try to play at least 20 new games a year. I find a lot of cool hidden stuff this way.
Same, this always means I never play anything to the point of mastery like when I was a kid. I’m always beating then immediately moving on to the next new thing. It’s pretty compulsive.
likewise
I do sometimes feel ambivalent about it, like the sheer volume of stuff I’m actively interested in is frankly way beyond what I would’ve expected at either my present age or at this point in videogames and between actually having friends and family (well, my partner and my pets) and work I do catch myself scheduling my time with certain games beyond what seems ideal to get the most out of them but I am a fairly compulsive person in this respect and I make it work and I set fairly high standards and value all of it so I think I’ll keep it up as long as there are so many games I like
but this is going to be a year in which there are easily 20+ notable games for me and that’s a huge number however you slice it
I also watch too many sports
like I’m keeping up with the women’s world cup because hey it’s interesting what the hell
it still kind of messes with my self image because I think of myself as reasonably weird and niche and not necessarily having too much in common with any given person but I think it’s a sign of actually being comfortable with myself that I can seemingly get interested in anything time permitting
it does mean that I’m fairly bad at keeping up friendships that don’t encompass those interests but it’s easy to rationalize those tensions as inevitable given that my personality is fairly unchanging at this point
Good thing that tv has eaten film and I don’t always feel obliged to watch a 10 episode series because otherwise I’d be trying to keep up with too many movies too!!
this line of thinking also reminds me of when I try to get away from Twitter discourse thinking it’s maybe too much but I generally come back around to the acknowledgement that I am a postmodernist at heart and I find being “extremely online” to be in its way maximally rewarding in full awareness of all the different component parts of knowledge that are required to get there, just like how videogames increasingly seem like an implausible synthesis of so many other media that still manage to come into being in all their complexity.
but uncomplicated life is still very important to me too so I basically just have to compartmentalize more and more efficiently in order to have it all
that shouldn’t be a fair requirement of engaging with art but I don’t think it’s an unreasonable expectation of engaging with too much art
It’s so compartmentalized; there’s always a level of personal drama and circle feuds that form the day-to-day context but rarely filter into the work that lives beyond a year.
Or perhaps it’s my distaste for specific characterizations in favor of allegorical characters that reflects onto my exhaustion at scene gossip
its more that everyone hates eachother secretly because they all wanna be the most famous
I haven’t touched anything from this year yet, but I think I will once I get back to the USA. I switched up how I approach games and it’s been more rewarding this year than usual.
Anyways, here’s a neat ten:
LSD: Dream Emulator
Yume Nikki
These two fit into a similar space in my head. I was surprised by my emotional reaction to these abstract experiences. Without a narrative line, I was left to decide how I fit into it. Poetry.
Galatea
Beautiful characterization. An empathy training program.
Vampire: The Masquerade “Bloodlines”
I like raving as a sexy, remorseless undead and I will gladly do it again. I wonder what games we lost with this studio.
Gone Home
Kentucky Route Zero
Two games that I’ve been putting off, knowing that they would be great for me. I love the simplicity Gone Home’s story. Reality is so beautiful. Storytellers in the medium should check it out more often.
Terranigma
Dark Cloud was a fixture between me and my two siblings when I was younger. I wish this had been there instead.
The Void
I dipped my toes in Pathologic and I’m still not ready. This, on the other hand, has got to me. I was physically sick when I started playing so now I feel sick when I think about it, harmonizing perfectly with its aura.
Contra Hard Corps
I had this back when I thought collecting games was cool. I could only get the ~secret~ ending back then. I have since leveraged save states to have the perfect Contra experience. More games should have instant death instead of life bars.
Suikoden II
My older sister played through the first two of these games on the other side of the world a month ago. I’m closing up this one now. You have a sister in this game who loves you a lot. I think one way you could tell my life story is to say it was a journey towards learning how to love my sister. I was a really bad brother when I was a kid and I’m happy I was able to progress from actively hating her, to being annoyed by her, to hopefully making her feel happy and appreciated. She’s getting married soon so it’s been on my mind more than usual.
that is quite an excellent year
oh if we’re allowed to say games not released this year then this list will be fucking easy
Still, to this day, my favorite piece of interactive fiction.