Video Game Tim

It was pretty hard to narrow down the list this year. 2019 was a lot stronger for video games than 2018 and I feel a LOT more confidant about my picks and GOTY choice. In addition, there were also a lot of indie games not mentioned here that I think I will highlight in another post a bit later. For now, here’s the Top 10.

10. Sayonara Wild Hearts (Simogo)

Sayonara Wild Hearts is something special. Although clocking in rather short at just under an hour long, I would best describe the game as an Album Video Game. Each of the game’s 23 or so levels has its own song. The actual gameplay consists of mostly on-rails segments where you have basic movement and avoid obstacles and collect pickups to boost your score, but every level has a unique take on that concept with major climax levels being full tracks with vocals. It’s incredibly stylistic and tells a heartwarming story about dealing with heartbreak. I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys musical games.

9. Fire Emblem: Three Houses (Intelligent Systems)

Fire Emblem: Three Houses is the first game in the series that managed to grab me. It’s a very competent tactical RPG with one of my favourite casts of characters this year (especially the Black Eagles house). I was consistently impressed the most with just the sheer amount of content and detail that went into it. An unnecessarily large amount of the dialogue is voiced, the second half of each of the three selectable house’s routes are totally unique, and each route takes around 60 hours to complete. I really never thought a Fire Emblem game would be my new most played game on the Switch by a mile but here we are. 

8. AI: The Somnium Files (Spike Chunsoft)

Kotaro Uchikoshi’s (creator of the Zero Escape trilogy) latest work might be his finest. AI: The Somnium Files is the game on the list this year with the most heart put into it. Consistently funny and over-the-top, a wonderful cast, and a really well executed sci-fi murder mystery. It makes me hope that Uchikoshi continues to make the kinds of games he wants to make, because you can definitely tell he had the most fun making this one.

7. Resident Evil 2 (Capcom)

Resident Evil 2 is the new gold standard for game remakes. I could go on and on praising it for how good it feels to play, the sound design, and the painstaking detail of recreating the original game from the ground up to be a third-person shooter. Quality of Life changes like the map marking items and telling you when a room is cleared and telling you when it’s okay to throw away key items are such fantastic additions. It gives me really high hopes for the RE3 Remake next year. Capcom’s hotstreak continues.

6. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (From Software)

Sekiro rightfully earns its spot as my second favourite FromSoft game. The Souls formula is still there, but the gameplay is fairly different now. Taking Bloodborne’s aggressiveness encouragement another step forward, Sekiro rewards not giving the enemies a chance to breathe more than ever. Boss battles are a tug-of-war of trying to break each other’s posture and perfect blocking to mitigate it. The dodge button pushes you forward by default and you often hope to have your attack blocked more than a it be a direct hit. Some of my favourite FromSoft bosses reside in this game with the final boss perhaps being my favourite overall. Level design is also at its best with the game finally giving you a greater range of movement and verticality with jumping and grappling. There’s even decent stealth mechanics. Sekiro was a really pleasant surprise and I hope they continue The Wolf’s story.

5. Judgement (Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio)

Judgement is a Yakuza game in all but name, and RGG Studio’s first one set in Kamurocho without Kiryu as the main character. After giving up being an attorney, Takayuki Yagami becomes a freelance detective and investigates a series of murders in the city with the help of his former law office and ex-Tojo clan friend Masaharu Kaito. Substories are framed as side cases that Yagami can take on to earn some extra money, and new mini-games like drone racing and the Paradise VR board game are incredible additions. Anyone who is a fan of the Yakuza series should really check this out, and newcomers can jump right in without prior knowledge. 

4. Disco Elysium (ZA/UM)

Disco Elysium has some of the best writing I have ever seen in a video game. As an amnesiac detective, you explore the rundown post-wartime district of Martinnaise trying to find who was behind the lynching of a mercenary before the situation gets out of control. What sets Disco Elysium apart from other RPGs in terms of gameplay is its character builds. As there is no combat, the 24 skills that you can put points into when you level up are all social skills. The higher you have various skills leveled, the more you will hear advice from them during conversation trees. A high Authority level will constantly remind you to tell people you are The Law, where a high level in Inland Empire will let you talk to inanimate objects to gain new perspectives. I also feel I have to give a nod to your partner throughout the game, Kim Kitsuragi. I’d rather not give anything away but they could not have written a better character to support you throughout your journey. I’ll likely be thinking about this game for a very long time.

3. Control (Remedy Entertainment)

I think Control flew under a lot of people’s radars until the publicity from the overwhelming number of Game Awards nominations. Control is a game for people who like SCP, psychokinesis powers, cool architecture, and a bit of Alan Wake. It wears its inspirations very blatantly on its sleeve and wraps a very cool story and even better side quests around them. It’s very stylish and has phenomenal lighting. Perhaps this is my Remedy bias but I really really adored this game and featured the coolest moment of the year for me. Please check it out if you get the opportunity.

2. Kingdom Hearts III (Square Enix)

Kingdom Hearts III has been a long time coming and what I think it nails best are the size and scale of the worlds. Olympus is the best its ever been with how much of the area outside the Colosseum you get to explore. The Caribbean is more expansive with boat combat that’s better than it has any right to be. Monstropolis has a great original story with some incredible tie-ins to the Kingdom Hearts plot. There’s a ton of incredible fanservice moments too for everyone waiting to see their favourite characters again. I still think a lot of it is really hype albeit cheesy, and it finally puts to rest an arc that has been going since the very first game. Kingdom Hearts isn’t over, but KHIII wraps a lot of things up in as satisfying of a way as they could for a story so expansive and often times convoluted. It’s very rare when a game that has been anticipated for so long not only doesn’t fumble it, but delivers on what I had hoped for, so I’m really glad it got to finally release this year.

1. Devil May Cry 5 (Capcom)

Speaking of games that I’ve been waiting a very long time for, DMC IS BACK! Every moment of DMC5 is a treat. Dante and Nero are at their most fun to play in this game, and V is a very cool addition both story-wise and gameplay-wise.This is the game from this year that I’ve kept going back to the most whether it’s for getting good at harder difficulties, or playing through bloody palace until floor 70 and give up ,or practicing with different weapons. It makes me happy to know that Platinum haven’t just been relegated to being the character action studio and that Hideaki Itsuno’s still got it. There’s no question that this is my Game of the Year and anyone who loves action games but hasn’t ever jumped into this series really needs to address that because DMC5 alone is worth it. 

I’ve tried to keep this review as spoiler-free as possible. I make a brief mention to how the game is paced in the paragraph about story, as well as a couple of character names. Feel free to skip those paragraphs if you are concerned.

Hideo Kojima took the blank cheque that Sony gave him and used it to make the biggest budget arthouse indie game there ever was loaded with his favourite actors, directors, and other celebrities. The result was a game that on paper, should be AAA poison. Death Stranding is slow, meandering, sometimes frustrating, action is downplayed, and the plot is sometimes difficult to follow. Yet considering all that, it’s still earned a spot on my Top 10 list this year.

The primary gameplay of Death Stranding consists of package delivery. The main character Sam (Norman Reedus) is a porter who journeys across a post apocalyptic America, connecting outposts and depots to the network and delivering packages along the way. Upon your first journey to each outpost, the challenge is how you’re going to get there with the tools at your disposal. You’ll typically gear up with ladders, ropes, and a pair of boots to start with and you’ve got to do your best not to stumble or fall even with the mountain of cargo on your back that affects your balance. As you progress further through the game, you unlock more and more equipment that makes your job that little bit easier. All these unlocks are well-paced throughout the story. I really recommend that anyone who is having a tough time with the early game to just stick with it until Chapter 3. Once you’re in that chapter the game really opens up and you get some much-needed equipment almost immediately that make your life a whole lot easier.

Once you’ve linked an outpost up to the network, you’ll be able to see other player’s structures and equipment in the surrounding area. You can see how lots of other people tried to solve the same problems you did, and it makes subsequent trips that much easier. Maybe someone put a ladder across a gap you didn’t think to do. Maybe someone built a bridge over a river that saves you some time and stamina trying to cross it. This is absolutely one of my favourite parts of the game and something I’ve never really seen on this scale before. There was one moment in particular during Chapter 3 where I was about to walk into an enemy encampment when on the corner of my screen I noticed someone had left a sign warning me that there were enemies ahead, and behind me was another sign from a different player pointing to a side path up a cliff that let me avoid the area entirely.

Another core part of the experience is the Like system. Say you found someone’s structure or sign helpful, you can literally mash that like button and send that player a whole bunch of likes, which upgrades one of their five Porter stats. You’re constantly getting notifications about players who liked something you did or built which really helps it feel like an interconnected experience.

Combat does exist in the game and it’s serviceable, but it takes quite some time for it to pick up and be a little more engaging because many of the combat equipment is locked to later chapters. Much of it is fun to use though. Stealth exists too, but in all my time playing I didn’t have any success in (or really, need to) sneaking up on the regular human enemies.

The stealth instead comes up in the BT areas in which you must maneuver your way through rainy areas of ghosts that you can only see if you’re either very close to them or you aren’t moving at all. The BT stealth segments I found to be well done on their own. They’re stressful because you’re typically trying to get through them with all the gear on your back, and since the rain accelerates time of anything it touches, you’re on an invisible timer to get through it before all your gear is ruined. If one of the ghosts catches you, it will attempt to drag you off into a mini-boss encounter. These mini-boss fights are generally easy if you’re well equipped, but you can also attempt to escape the zone too. Defeating the BT will stop the rain in that area while you’re there and reward you with an otherwise uncommon resource as well. My problem with these encounters is that they are too frequent. After defeating a BT, the encounter respawns almost immediately after you leave the vicinity and it’s often difficult to run right through them which gets annoying even in familiar areas.

For me, the weakest part of the game is unfortunately the story. It’s rarely engaging, and I think the major reason for this is Kojima’s tendency to over-explain himself. This has always been the case and was especially true of the Metal Gear series, but I think the key difference here in Death Stranding is that Kojima explained things he shouldn’t have.  There’s so much incredible world building and Lovecraftian designs/ideas in the game and a lot of that is diminished when you get beat over the head with every conceivable explanation and detail of what it all means. There are plenty of great moments and set pieces too, but a ton of that is backloaded into the final stretch of the game. A certain Square Enix game earlier this year was paced similarly, and this is that times a million, so keep that in mind if it does or doesn’t bother you.

The other side of the writing is the characters, whose writing quality is bizarrely all over the place. A few of the characters are wonderfully written and a joy whenever they are on screen (Heartman was my personal favourite), a few of the characters are criminally underdeveloped (see Deadman), and a few of the characters are downright nonsensical or straight-up terrible. It sometimes felt a lot like all the characters and their arcs were written by different people.  

Overall though, I’m very happy this game exists. I hope Kojima continues to get the funding he needs because for better or for worse, he is doing what he wants to do. A game like Death Stranding achieving the success that it has is also hopefully a symbol for certain publishers and creators that it’s okay to take a chance on things that are further outside the realm of convention. I’m going to continue playing it myself because I still haven’t tired of making deliveries, and I’ll probably be listening to Low Roar while I do it.

The Outer Worlds is a game that starts with the player character being cryogenically frozen aboard a large-scale colony ship bound for the Halcyon solar system.  The journey was supposed to take 10 years, but something malfunctioned and the player is woken up after 70 years by scientist Phineas Welles. From here you begin a quest visiting the various megacorporation run planets and moons in the system in hopes of finding a way to revive all your fellow colonists who are still frozen.

The Outer Worlds is a Fallout game in all but name with a handful of refreshing new spins on it. You have your standard set of skills that you level up, everything from one-handed melee weapons to lockpicking to persuasion to science. In TOW, skills are grouped together in categories. For example, Persuade/Lie/Intimidate are all together under Dialog and Sneak/Hack/Lockpick are together under Stealth. You level the whole category up until the first skill in the group reaches level 50. After that, you must level those skills individually. This is a fantastic implementation, especially for first playthroughs as it lets you experiment in the early game with different skills until you decide what’s going to be most important for your character.  Additionally, each skill has a list of milestones for every 20 levels in that skill that enhance it in some way. For example, the level 20 milestone for lockpicking lets you unlock doors that would normally require one lockpick for free.

There’s also a perk system much like Fallout which the player may take every 2 levels. Unfortunately, save for a handful they are all basic minor stat increases. Throughout the game the player will also get the opportunity to take various flaws, which are permanent stat decreases or temporary debuffs (e.g. Robophobia will give you a decrease to some stats whenever you are in close proximity to mechanicals) in exchange for a free perk unlock. However, since many of the perks are so inconsequential these rarely feel worth taking.

There’s even a replacement for V.A.T.S. called Tactical Time Dilation (TTD). A side effect of your extended cryostasis, the player perceives time differently and can effectively move in dramatically slowed-down time. Your TTD bar drains faster when moving or attacking, but while active you can see weak points and other stats (like health) of the target you’re looking at. This makes for a lot more of a speedy and natural combat flow than V.A.T.S. It’s also very handy for sneaking through areas quickly.

TOW’s writing unfortunately starts off at it’s strongest. The starting town of Edgewater has the best written side quests and story arc in the game. As you visit later destinations you feel the stories going on in each planet are less and less developed until the finale when it somewhat picks back up again. There are a few different ways to complete the game however so the replayability is there. You also have a set of 6 companions you can recruit, almost all of them within the first couple of areas. They’re all likeable enough, but only half of them get a strong questline with character development and the others get shafted, with one companion lacking any quests at all beyond their initial recruitment.

In general, there’s two more glaring issues I have with the game. The first is that it’s too easy. I was worried playing a melee build that I was going to have to stock up on resources since I’d be in more immediate danger, but after the first couple areas I felt unkillable and I rarely had to repair my equipment. The other issue I have is with the absolute abundance of supplies. The first part of this is that stealing items is risk-free. NPCs aren’t very attentive, and even if you do happen to get caught all one has to do is pass a relatively easy speech check or bribe their way out of the situation to avoid conflict. Even if you decide not to steal, there are recovery items everywhere. There’s a difficulty mode called Supernova with a bunch of different modifiers including needing to eat at regular intervals, but there’s no way this could ever be an issue. The loot, number of vendors, and items laying around really needed to be toned down to feel like exploring and collecting items felt a little more meaningful.