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berjiwhir

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GOTY 2018

2018 was a pretty cool year for video games, even as the world beyond the borders of the screen burned in new and terrible ways. I think it's telling for the state of the medium that my pick for favorite game of the year came down to a choice between a long-in-development sequel with limitless funding and touched by hundreds of developers across three continents and a debut game made by an untested studio made largely by two people.

There were certainly growing pains along the way, but it's heartening for me to see once one-dimensional icons of the previous generation given surprising new depth, and stalwart pop culture icons brought back into the medium is richly satisfying ways. Gaming for me is all about pushing the medium forward while never forgetting the foundation that all current games are built on, and I think 2018's slate of releases beautifully and at times painfully illustrated that idea.

List items

  • This game was kind of a thing this year, huh? And not the generation-defining, universally beloved thing that its 2010's predecessor was. In some ways, RDR2 feels like a sequel developed in a bubble or a sealed bunker far away from the other video games that have come out in the eight-year interim. A secret bunker with mandatory overtime, hostile supervision, and other problematic working conditions.

    It largely ignores many of the trends of modern open-world gaming, for better and for ill, while also doubling-down on the sometimes player-hostile aspects of the original game. The controls are serviceable at best, and downright obtuse at worst. The animations, while beautiful, are unskippable and ponderous. It's far too long, with an especially egregious detour into an entirely different country in the game's back half. It doesn't seem to really care if the player is having fun or not, only that the player is, at every possible moment, experiencing this game on the developer's terms. It's got an eight-hour epilogue that only serves to raggedly join the sublime end of the main story and the beginning the previous game, a move that, I argue, they absolutely did not need to make.

    And yet.

    I played this game religiously for two weeks. I was willing to forgive the crummy controls because the world was so large, so vibrant, so engrossing and almost spookily real. I overlooked the weird detour in Chapter Five because I could taste the ending that the game had been building toward since the Van der Linde gang descended the snowy mountain on the run. And the key to all of this is Arthur.

    I don't think I've ever--ever--been as dumbfounded and impressed by a performance in a game as I was by Roger Clark's portrayal of Arthur Morgan. I, like many others I'm sure, was dubious about the idea of a protagonist in a Red Dead game approaching John Marston, but Arthur is unlike any character I've seen in a game. It's just...it's really something. The overstory of RDR2 is overstuffed and at times nonsensical and insultingly broad, but the core of it--the tragedy of Arthur Morgan--pulled me through to the end. The often tedious epilogue soured me a bit on the whole experience, but I'll be thinking about Arthur Morgan for a long, long time.

    Please don't make Red Dead 3. They'll probably make Red Dead 3.

  • Like most folks, I missed Hollow Knight in 2017. My brother-in-law told me that it was one of the best games he'd ever played. And as his recommendation does not come lightly, I picked it up when it dropped on the Switch this year.

    What an absolute gem this game is.

    This game unfolds in the way that the best games of the genre do. Just when I was getting a little bored, I would find a new power-up. Just when I was getting comfortable, the game would throw a new, seemingly-impossible boss at me. Every time I thought I had tapped out an area, I would stumble, sometimes literally falling, into a new, vast, unexplored maze.

    I'm not good at Hollow Knight. The game's later levels require a level of skill and precision that I'll just never have the patience or drive to attain. But the core of this game, leading up to the "last boss" (which is totally not the last boss) was a consistent joy for me. Hollow Knight tells a deeply melancholy of a world in decline and the illusion of heroism. It was just about my favorite thing that I played this year and, for my money, one of the very best games of its kind ever made.

  • I was very thankful for Spider-man this year. It's often hard for me to divorce works of media from the time in which I encountered them, and this game what exactly what I needed this year.

    I loved Spider-man 2 on the PS2. Like, loved it. I can still remember swinging from helicopters to get out to Liberty Island to pose on the statue's torch. I remember tumbling through street corridors, trying desperately to not mess up my pizza deliver. A little girl's plaintive cry of "My balloon!" is etched with a diamond chisel into my memory.

  • One of my fondest gaming memories is wandering into my local GameStop in 2005 and playing the Hydra demo for the original God of War. I, like many, was blown away by that pitch-perfect, opulent, over-the-top, bonkers boss battle. So much so that when God of War eventually came out on PS2, I picked it up, started, and...never finished.

    That's the story with God of War and its myriad sequels. So when God of War (2018) was announced, it didn't hit me in quite the same way as I assume it did for folks who had years and years of Kratos baggage and nostalgia.

    So, in a weird way, this game exists for me in a vacuum, apart from the series' storied (and checkered) past. And I think that's actually a really good way to approach God of War. The remnants of the old games are still here, but the game never tries to tuck those old elements away into a corner. This is a remake that is not at war with its past iterations. Instead, it uses them as a platform off of which to launch into one of the more satisfying action games I've played in quite awhile.

    Much as been made of God of War's story, and for the most part I think those accolades are worthy. Sure, there are a few clumsy or non-subtle parts, but every dad hover-hand and grumbled 'boi' and whiny pre-teen pre-god tirade added up to a cohesive and confident whole for me. By the time I got the end, I didn't love Kratos, but I did love the world around him. Mimir, Atreus, Freya, and Baldur was amazingly acted, well-drawn characters (though, like many, I wish Freya had more to do). This feels like a great Norse mythology game that just happens to have the big, lumbering Greek-patheon-killing Kratos dropped into it. I think God of War is important in 2018, and I hope for good things from the sequel.

  • Assassin's Creed Origins would have been on my 2017 list if I had played it by years end. Instead I spent most of January and part of February doing basically everything in that game.

    So when Assassin's Creed Odyssey came out, I grabbed it during a sale. But I wondered, am I really in for another action RPG of that same size and scope? I pondered sitting on it, but, during a break before the holiday, I booted Odyssey up.

    And holy crap. Assassin's Creed Odyssey is, for my money, the best that the series has ever been. Ubisoft Quebec took everything that made Origins into the surprisingly engrossing adventure that it was and, well, made it bigger. The recreation of the Greek islands is nothing short of staggering. Just the other night I was remarking about how absolutely, gobsmackingly HUGE the world was. And then I went into the menu and found that I had discovered...32% of the map.

    But bigness alone does not make a good game, so it's so wonderful to see that Assassin's Creed Odyssey fills that world with actually engaging characters, fun activities, and (and perhaps this is most surprising) a genuinely intriguing story that winds together the personal and the cosmic.

    And I'm only maybe, MAYBE, half way done with the game as of this writing. Had I finished it by 2018's end, it very well could have taken the top spot.

    In a way, Odyssey is the anti-Red Dead Redemption 2. The game is full of gameplay concessions and smart quality-of-life features that it makes RDR2's slavish devotion to realism and authorial intent seem downright restrictive, if not malicious.

    I'm sort of glad that Ubisoft is taking a year off, because I'm not sure I'd be down for another game just like this in eleven month's time. But, then again, that's what I would have said in January. But here I am, in 2019, having an absolute, joyous blast with an Assassin's Creed game, again.

  • Somehow, Hitman 2 managed to be one of my favorite games of the year and my biggest bummer of the year.

  • What a pleasant surprise Black Ops 4 was this year. Prior to release, it was really easy to approach the game with a healthy skepticism, if not cynicism. But it turns out that a lack of a campaign doesn't doom this entry. I never missed it. The addition to specialists to the multiplayer is a smart innovation, even if I wish there was a mode for folks who wanted a more classic Call of Duty experience. The Specialist HQ mode that introduces players to these new heroes is a crucial experience, which is a shame because the writing in that section of the game is...it's really fucking bad. But once I was past it, and into the multiplayer with the new specialists, I had a ball. It's a new thing for Call of Duty to ask you to make strategic picks and counter picks for Team Deathmatch. And while the specialists are not over used, I still had another layer of considerations to make before respawning after I died.

    I haven't touched Zombies, and I probably never will in a meaningful way, but the addition of Blackout mode rounds out the package really nicely. I think they made a really smart iteration on the Battle Royale formula that at once shamelessly apes what made PUBG and Fortnight cool, while still having it be recognizable as a Call of Duty mode. Hopping into a squad and racing to the center of the circle with three other guys was one of my favorite gaming moments of the year.

  • My game of the year of 2016 remained in heavy rotation in 2018. The game continues to refine itself and add new content. I've been especially happy to see how willing the development team at Blizzard is to completely reimagine existing heroes. New Torbjörn is a really smart change, and the addition of Brigitte, Wrecking Ball, and Ashe to the roster this year seals 2018 as one of the best years Overwatch has had.
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