Played through the OUTRIDERS demo over last couple days and wanted to throw up my thoughts on it, as it's a style of game I'm really interested in and feel like I can speak on with some authority, because I love me both some third-person cover shooters and loot shooters. Here goes!

The Good

• The shooting feels pretty good! The sfx/vfx are satisfying and your cursor shows a skull icon when your shot kills whatever you're shooting--a great readability feature that I hope we see in more shooters.
• Visually, the combat is very flashy. Lots of cool elemental effects and gibs flying everywhere. I played the Devastator class, an earth-aspected tanky class and could sheathe myself in stone and mud for defense or turn myself into a meteor, crashing down on enemies and turning them into a fine blood mist. The first "blue" gun you get as part of the prologue had a perk that was essentially Fallout's Bloody Mess perk, causing enemies to explode and their bone shrapnel to inflict DoT damage to other nearby enemies

• Speaking of weapon perks, the perks found on the rarer gear actually felt useful and game-changing. I had gear perks that extended specific skill durations by 50%, or let me cast the ability twice before going on cooldown. These felt a lot more meaningful than games that simply add a few percentage points to skill power or durations (looking at you The Division 2)
• The healing system in the game rewards constant aggression. There is no medkit equivalent--instead each class has specific healing passives that reward their specific style of play. The tanky Devastator, for instance, heals upon enemies dying while near them. Enemies that are in-range to proc this passive have an icon on their health bar which is another nice readability feature. Many weapons also seemed to come equipped with "leech" abilities, healing for a % of dmg done.
• There are four classes that seem to fit fairly different archetypes, whose playstyles are smartly enforced by the aforementioned unique healing mechanics. The Devastator is the tank class, focusing on close-range damage, damage mitigation, and a really cool gap-closer that gave me Mass Effect 3 Vanguard vibes. The Trickster is similarly close range but behaves more like a rogue, inflicting debuffs like stasis and paralysis and then getting the hell out. The Pyromancer focuses on DoT damage and a marking mechanic, while the Technomancer reminds me of a The Division character: turrets, missile strikes, and group heals. Each class has a pretty sizeable skill tree that branch into three different specs. The Devastator's seemed to split into weapon damage (shotguns, specifically), tankiness, and "anomaly" power (aka dmg done by abilities and melee attacks).

• There's an in-game "accolade" system that seemed very similar to The Division's commendation system. Completing accolades award you cosmetic options and emotes
• You can change your appearance anytime almost immediately after the prologue--more games should let you do this!
• Outside of cutscene weirdness that I'll cover in the Bad section, my game ran at a super smooth 60 fps throughout the demo. It could have ran higher but I manually set the in-game FPS limiter to 60 to keep fan noise down. More in-game FPS limiters, please!
• There's a loot-all button that automatically loots everything dropped in the area and you can set the quality of gear that you loot when you do it. Even if you don't do this manually, the loot will be picked up as you leave the area. This does not include loot that is still inside unopened chests so there's still a bit of exploration that needs done to find any chests in the area.

The Bad

• The cutscenes in the game were limited to 30 fps and were all shot with an overactive shakey cam and motion blurring that made them tough to watch. This is something that I believe they've already mentioned will be fixed in the proper release.
• Transitions into and out of cutscenes felt really rough. I'm hoping this is another case of it just being a demo but it was rather jarring how unpolished they felt.
• As good as the shooting felt, the cover mechanics and traversal felt pretty bad. After putting in hundreds of hours into The Division franchise, where cover-to-cover movement feels silky smooth, I had a lot of issues with getting into, getting out of, and changing cover. The game doesn't even seem to have a corner cover move, which seems like a huge oversight to me. Cover-to-cover movement does not automatically dodge sniper fire, which feels really bad when playing as a character that needs to get up close to thrive.
• The game commits what I consider two cardinal sins when it comes to loot-centric games. First, there appears to be some sort of input lag when doing actions inside the loot menu. For instance, if I wanted to mark a bunch of guns as junk, I needed to press the button then wait a beat before pressing it on another gun for it to "take." Second, getting in and out of the gear/map/journal menu was unforgivably slow. I'm not sure on the exact timing, maybe a second, but pressing the menu button does a fade from gameplay to black and then fades back into the menu screen. It's infuriating.
• When using a controller in menus, you're simply using the joystick to move a cursor around as if it's mouse control. This is something Destiny did and I guess people think if Bungie does it, then it's okay to do. Those people are wrong. It's stupid that I have to slowly pan a fake mouse cursor across my inventory menu instead of simply getting to the item I want with four quick swipes across highlightable buttons. The Division does this correctly and is one of a multitude of reasons why it's the superior franchise.

The Intangible

• The tone of the writing in the game is very weird. What begins as a typical space marine colonization story quickly turns to Mad Mad-esque depravity--"the mud and the shit." They constantly return to the shlocky "dude gets shot in the head mid-sentence" trope. The dialogue writing and lore entries are interesting and seem well-written, but your protagonist teeters between begrudging hero and complete asshole from scene to scene and gives the whole thing thematic whiplash. The alien world of Enoch as seen in the trailers seems pretty cool, but the demo/beginning chapter does not show off any part of that, instead sticking you into a very brown and rebar-colored wasteland.
• As the years go on, I have less of a stomach for post-apocalyptic/escaping-from-a-doomed-Earth fiction. Reading lore entries about city-wide riots in response to utilities getting turned off is no longer far-flung speculative fiction in my mind, and it really stresses me out.

The Bottom Line

• I came away from the demo recognizing the game has some serious flaws, but I think the flaws are fixable. The core of the game, the combat and loot, is in a good place but I have a lot of concerns about menu navigation, cutscene transitions, and the bugginess of the cover mechanics. They seem to be making an attempt at taking equal parts Destiny, The Division, and Gears of War and turning it into a unique experience, but at this point I don't think it's doing anything better than what any of those games can offer singularly. I'm afraid if they don't solve some of the issues here, the game they'll end up getting the most comparisons made to will be Anthem. In the end, I still think this would be a day-one purchase for me, except that the juggernaut that is Monster Hunter Rise will be releasing just a few days earlier and I doubt anything will pull me away from that.

8. Fall Guys

Fall Guys sits on my list as a sort of catch-all for multiple games that captured a lot of attention in 2020. As COVID disrupted release schedules and AAA games disappointed, this was a year that the game-playing (and perhaps more importantly, game-watching) masses yearned for lighter, more social, and more casual fare. Along with games like Among Us and Phasmophobia (neither of which technically ‘released’ this year so they’re not on this list), Fall Guys slotted into that peg perfectly. This goofy game of strange bean people ragdolling through obstacle courses doesn’t seem to have the staying power as the other two games, but there’s no denying how much joy it brought me for a few weeks in this hell year, and it gave us this all-time streaming moment that garnered so much attention they made an ESPN mini-doc of all things.

7. Ghost of Tsushima

Ghost of Tsushima had quite the redemption arc for me this year. My original assessment after playing it on release was a bit harsh: a pretty yet vapid open-world game that didn’t do much to push the genre forward. People joked that this was just Sucker Punch’s stab at “Assassin’s Creed: Japan.” Incidentally, four months later we got an actual Assassin’s Creed game and it was such a bloated, overwrought mess that suddenly Ghost’s streamlined take on gear, skill trees, and collectibles felt a lot more palatable to me. And it does do some unique things that I enjoy. Using wind as a waypoint mechanic is a nice touch for the minimal-UI crowd and the standoff mechanic both fits the game’s cinematic themes and is a satisfying way to enter enemy camps when you’re tired of stealth. I’m looking forward to getting a PS5 someday so I can see this game running at a full 60 fps.

6. Deep Rock Galactic

Deep Rock Galactic is such a satisfying online co-op experience. While I have some issues with the game’s gear and perk progression, the pacing of the gameplay is where the game really shines. They managed to achieve a visual/aural feedback bliss point when it comes to mining out ore and gemstones--the clunk of your axe feels so good--and the pacing of the missions (at least on normal difficulty) feels well-honed too. Missions start in a very workman-like manner--get your bearings, throw out some glowsticks for light, and start putting pick to stone--but it doesn’t take long before the alien bugs show up or people get separated and suddenly chaos reigns. The cherry on top is hitting the extraction button on your mobile cargo bot (your M.U.L.E) and making the mad dash for the drop point.

5. Risk of Rain 2

Speaking of well-paced online co-op experiences! There was a lot of uncertainty for me around RoR2’s announcement. Could the sequel live up to my expectations after a stellar debut? Would it even feel like a Risk of Rain game when it was moving to fully 3D gameplay? Turns out: yes on both counts. Risk of Rain 2 is a remarkable distillation of the frenetic horde shooter genre, with good character classes, good loot, and good...prog rock? (real talk, how they manage to make what is often the most chaotic part of my runs be right at the point that I’d rather be air guitaring to this sublime piece of guitar work is some real magician shit) While I think they stumbled a bit with their final boss design and map, the rest of the game is good enough to overlook it.

4. Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Animal Crossing has always been a franchise that I’ve wanted to get into because the fandom around the games was so joyful. Every few years some heartwarming story would make its way across the internet about a grandmother with a thousand hours of playtime or someone who nurtured memories of a deceased parent via their old saved village--it was clearly special to people and I wanted to be part of that.

Unfortunately, the games’ structure was a complete roadblock to how I preferred to consume them. Finite things to do every day, a real-time clock, no goalposts to shoot for--the series just wasn’t for me. New Horizons solved a lot of those issues with the mystery islands, crafting, and the Nook Point achievement system, but there’s no mistaking that the state of the world in late March 2020 meant that the rigid structure of the game was welcome this time around. To be perfectly melodramatic about it, this game came out in our collective time of need. Whiplashed by unprecedented change in how I lived, worked, and socialized, knowing I could wake up every morning and turn on my Switch to be greeted by my lovable villagers, shop for new clothes, and decorate my house really kept me going. Finally, I could be part of that global AC-loving community, and all the funny videos, villager tier lists, fanart, and twitter jokes helped keep a light on in a very dark time.

3. Yakuza: Like A Dragon

Speaking of franchises I wanted to love if I didn’t hate most of the actual game mechanics! Yakuza games have great characters, great writing, and genuinely engaging plots but I’ll be damned if they aren’t just the biggest chores to actually play. At some point in Yakuza 0, the combat and equipment management just got to the point where I didn’t want to play anymore and I watched the rest of the game be played on this very website. Miraculously, in Yakuza 7 (AKA Yakuza: Like A Dragon) they changed the game to one of my favorite genres: a turn-based RPG with a job system! They also introduce a new protagonist, Ichiban Kasuga, which was probably an even scarier leap of faith for the dev team than changing the combat, considering how beloved of a character Kiryu is. But I loved Ichiban almost immediately; an earnest dumbass who loves Dragon Quest so much he sees the world through its lens, but also a ripped street brawler who can take on any punkass who gets in his way. The game’s reverence to Dragon Quest is clear and purposeful and draws itself into another comparison: Earthbound. That’s right, Yakuza 7 is the Mother 4 game we’ve all been waiting for. Ichiban rolls around with two other men (one with glasses) and a woman. His preferred weapon is a bat. You fight characters with names like “Neo Hippie” and “Problematic Old Man.” The signs are all there!

PS. This game wins my Best Music of 2020 category as well, because holy hell this boss’s theme and this stage theme are put-down-the-controller-and-jam-out good.

PPS. This cutscene early in the game is when I knew this game was going to be something special. I admit it made me a little emotional.

2. Hades

Hades is the crowning achievement of Supergiant Games’ oeuvre. The music, the writing, the art, the feel--they nail it all. The roguelite genre has gotten crowded with some really great games these past few years, from Rogue Legacy to Dead Cells to Children of Morta, but Hades stands out above them all. I think one particular reason for this (besides the aforementioned bullet points) is its unique ability to make me look forward to a run ending, prematurely or not. The anger and disappointment of death quickly fades as I realize “Oh I wonder if I can talk to Dusa without her running away yet?" or "I wonder if I give Megaera this nectar she will like me more?” The mechanical underpinnings are still there of course--a decent run lets you upgrade health, damage, and weapons--but moving relationships forward with well-written, fantastically voice-acted characters is what kept me going for 60+ runs.

1. Monster Hunter World: Iceborne

Monster Hunter World is one of the greatest games of all time, full stop. However, I’ve struggled all year to explain why I think that is. Being into MonHun is like being in an exclusive club, not because it’s some invite-only secret society, but because it is apparently only something you can discover on your own--all attempts to convince friends to play with me have been met with a resounding “meh” after a dozen hours of play. Still, I want to try and give this game its due and expound on what makes it so special and the only way I can think of doing that is with a big ol’ boring bulleted list, so here goes!

• Soulsborne combat -Animation priority, stamina management, dodge rolls (although much harsher i-frames), heal animation that roots you in place--MonHun and Dark Souls share a lot of mechanical DNA.
• Command input and tech reminiscent of fighting games - One aspect where MonHun differs from Souls is the combat has a lot more depth. There are 14 weapons that behave very differently from each other, with their own pages of combos typically composed of specific sequences of two face buttons and analog movement. There’s a cottage industry on YouTube dedicated to explaining all the tech for every weapon, be it documented in-game or not. One 20-minute Gunlance tutorial video from Arekkz Gaming has 1.2 million views.
• Math - I really have no patience for games that consider obfuscating what your gear does and how much it does it an interesting gameplay quirk. MonHun gives you clear in-depth stats for every piece of equipment you own and the tools to sort and filter said equipment via every variable you can think of.

• No RNG’d gear stats - MonHun does not have randomized stats on gear. A Bone Helm is a Bone Helm. There is no Uncommon Bone Helm, no Bone Helm of the Whale. This takes out a lot of the frustration I have with games like Destiny and The Division where “bad rolls” on good gear just feel like a shitty way of keeping you playing. I also think it democratizes access to meta discussions and the competitive scene. That’s not to say that there is no RNG in MonHun--players will farm hundreds of hours for the exact set of ultra-rare gems they want to slot into their gear, but it doesn’t feel like a necessity.

• No experience levels, no skill trees - While the player does get more powerful over time via gear and weapon upgrades, that power has a ceiling (because of the previous bullet point) and there’s always another, more powerful monster waiting to two-shot you. Instead, progression comes in the form of internalization, and I think that’s the most powerful pull of this game. Going from getting your ass beat to fully downloading a monster’s moveset is such a satisfying loop, then you turn their corpse into a new set of greaves and move on to take on the next big bad and do it all again.

I’ve covered what makes MonHun great at large, but haven’t really delved into Iceborne itself. Iceborne introduces Master Rank quests, monsters, and gear. In Master Rank, all monsters from World have more health, more stopping power, and a new move or two, and their loot allows you to craft new more powerful versions of their old gear sets. There’s a new (and better) hub area, a new region, and a significant endgame area. Each weapon got a couple new moves, including a powerful new combo path for Sword & Shield that cemented it as my weapon of choice. The highlight of Iceborne for me, though, is the reintroduction of some of the series’ past flagship monsters. Zinogre, Nargacuga, Brachydios, and the infamous Rajang are iconic monsters for a reason--they are fun as hell to fight and their music fits them so well that it’s strange to hear without their accompanying roars. What’s really interesting to me as a newcomer to the series is just how much the old-school MonHun heads hated MHW, and Iceborne even more. While there’s no doubt that a large part of that is rose-tinted nostalgia, and a defensiveness that their exclusive club is being invaded by newcomers like me (MHW is the best-selling Capcom game of all time), it does make me very interested to see what the next game in the series, Monster Hunter Rise, will be like as the series shifts back into the hands of the portable dev team that the old folks seem to love so much.

(Spoiler warnings a few games on this list, especially #1 and #2!)

10. Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark

I’m pretty sure that if it was constructed in a certain way, I could play Final Fantasy Tactics forever. Like my father before me and his cartridge of Goldeneye permanently embedded in his N64, it could be my forever game. Alas, after a few hundred hours across dozens of playthroughs it gets pretty same-y, and for whatever reason it’s the one FF game Square isn’t porting to every system under the sun. So when a game comes along that unabashedly cribs its style and does so competently, I’m here for it.

9. Wargroove

Speaking of cribbing, Wargroove filled the Advance Wars-sized hole in my heart that’s been growing for the past decade, as Nintendo has apparently decided to focus primarily on Fire Emblem (spoiler alert: I’m okay with this, apparently). This ‘homage’ treatment is even more on-the-nose, with its pixel graphics, bouncy animated sprites, and--at launch at least--an unrelenting difficulty. Great music too!

8. Nowhere Prophet

It feels petty to couch the placement of this game on my top 10 by comparing it to a game that did for many others, but here we are. Slay the Spire was disappointment for me. The art isn’t great, no sense of story or universe, and a difficulty ramp that looks like that wall you gotta run up at the end of Ninja Warrior. It just didn’t do it for me. Nowhere Prophet, however, addresses those issues with an interesting take on the deck-building node-exploring genre by infusing it with some light tactics and resource management.

7. Death Stranding

Death Stranding is a perfectly balanced scale, weighted on one end by my love of its mechanics, and weighted on the other by my hatred of its story. Its core loop of backpacking your way through hostile terrain while managing the weight and placement of the goods you’re trying to deliver was so satisfying to me. It provided the same sort of zen I get from games like American Truck Simulator or theHunter, but with the polish and graphical fidelity of a AAA game. However, the trappings around it whether it be the painful dialogue, the cudgel of metaphor, or the treatment of women made those moments between the quiet hikes nearly unbearable. The feeling of horror and mystique when you first find out the power and scale of the Beached Things is an all-time moment--I wanted desperately to know their origin, their motivation, who was pulling the strings. But all that potential is lost, washed away by some nonsensical plot that goes on for way too long. I wonder if Kojima and his company will learn the right lessons in a potential sequel, or will he tip the scales in the wrong direction in a successor?

6. Remnant: From the Ashes

What a pleasant surprise this game was. With a generic name, from a developer whose portfolio I’ve not played, and zero media attention this game could have easily passed me by if not for a smart, well-timed streaming marketing campaign that caught me and my friends’ attention. On the surface is a competent third-person shooting Souls clone, but delve deeper and you’ll find one of the more unique and fleshed-out post-apocalyptic universes in games that it teases out in dark corners of its dungeons for those who want to look for it. But even if you’re not a fan of lore you get a tightly designed randomly generated series of dungeons, quests, and gear. Besides its appeal as a game, Remnant is also an interesting specimen of the industry in its current state--bypassing the media and mass marketing by going directly to streamers was a tactic rewarded, and the price point ($40) made it an easier decision to convince viewers (and their friends) to give it a shot.

5. Teamfight Tactics

When DOTA Auto Chess took the MOBA community by storm, I was immediately intrigued. The idea of setting some units on a board and letting them duke it out independent of a user’s control has always been appealing to me, from Battle Chess to Ogre Battle to even Madden’s coaching mode. What was unappealing was diving into the DOTA ecosystem and mod scene, so I waited, knowing the industry's penchant for copying design if there's money to be made. And sure enough, Riot answered the call this summer with their take in Teamfight Tactics. The conceit is a seductive one for sure. Build a team from a pool of champs given to you at random, shared between you and seven others, building on race and class synergies to buff them, arrange them on a grid, then watch anxiously as they duke it out against others in a round robin style tournament. It’s betting on horse races except you’re betting on a horse you’ve built yourself, out of parts you've won out of a slot machine.

4. The Division 2

In the holy trinity of shlooters that is Destiny, Borderlands, and The Division, I’ve always been that weirdo that preferred The Division. There are a lot of factors on why, some of which I laid out in this blog post, but another reason coalesced after reading some criticism on how the game’s gear is boring compared to, say, Borderlands’ gun-shootin’ guns. And I think the boredom is what I like? The appeal is in the math. The radius of a turret, the vector of a cover-to-cover move. Your marksman rifle does 123.5K damage multiplied by 2.25 if you land a headshot but also your knee pads give you a .12 chance to critically hit and your holster does 1.3x more critical hit damage and when you plug all that into the calculator that is your right trigger, the solution is a boss that no longer has a head. That will always be more appealing to me than Destiny’s completely arbitrary light level system or Borderlands guns that cluck like chickens and shoot bad memes.

Ubisoft is also able to leverage it’s umpteen studios to present an environment that is untouchable in terms of scope, depth, and scale. I’ve played hundreds of hours and still find myself gobsmacked when I wander into something as mundane as a tech office or parking garage and see every minute detail accounted for. A computer at every desk, water pooling in a low spot, detritus strewn everywhere, trash piled into corners. And this is in a couple square meters of a game that spans multiple square kilometers. It’s truly impressive from an art, QA, tech, and production management standpoint.

3. Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers

When I finished the campaign in Shadowbringers, I immediately tweeted that FF14 is the best MMO ever made and questioned if it’s the best Final Fantasy ever made. Thinking on it in the months since then, I no longer think it’s a question. Final Fantasy 14 is the best Final Fantasy game, and Shadowbringers enshrines it as such.

I had a lot of doubts as we learned more about Shadowbringers in the months before release. Dancers weren’t going to be healers--hell we weren’t getting a new healer at all! The environments looked underwhelming and were in a permanent state of daylight (“what, no night themes?!” I thought). Outside of the tidbit from Rak’Tika Greatwood, the music previews weren’t blowing me away either. But these doubts were washed away hours into the campaign. Well, almost--I’m still a little salty about Dancer and what they did to my darling Scholar.

After the first dungeon, you learn your role in this new world: bring back the night. The night environments and their themes, always my personal favorite as the nocturnal sort, now had to be earned instead of given. But the task takes a toll on you, and one of Shadowbringers’ larger themes comes into play: You Are Not Alone. The campaign does a lot of great things--humanizing a villain, some great twists, gut-churning horror--but I think its greatest attribute was showing that You are not the only hero this world needs, not the only one who makes sacrifices and loses friends. Sure, You inevitably succeed where others have failed, but their failures buoy you, and were prerequisites to--at long last--winning the day. The campaign culminates in one of the best cutscenes MMOS have ever seen. And, yes, the rest of the music was still good but Rak’Tika is still the all-timer--I almost regret that I heard it in videos before hearing it in the game proper.

2. Control

Control is one of those rare games that feels like someone made it explicitly for me. It obviously has a lot of influences, but I came to it from a love of X-Files, Twin Peaks, and brutalist architecture. There was even a smidgen of Persona 5 in there, as both universes operate under a rule in which “if enough people believe in a thing, their combined cognition can make it real in some circumstances.” There is something freeing about a realistic setting that treats the supernatural as natural. X-Files lives partially in that world--the audience quickly learns that Mulder is always right and everything is real. And despite the obvious skepticism, the FBI is still a government bureau that can’t help but keep strict procedure and file away all photos, interview transcripts, and evidence. Control doubles down on this and something about that acceptance is so seductive. The stale codifying of the supernatural: internal memos about shifting spaces, dry explanation of other-dimensional beings on official letterhead, cringey office culture posters except these are about staplers that gain sentience--it’s all just so good. Combine this worldbuilding with some really satisfying physics-based combat and puzzle solving, beautifully stark environments and UI treatment, and memorable characters such as Dr. Darling, Zachariah Trench, and of course, Jesse Faden and you’ve got a game and a world that I desperately want to explore more of.

1. Fire Emblem: Three Houses

Fire Emblem 3H made me realize something about myself. I believed this whole time that I was attracted to tactical games like XCOM, Fire Emblem, or Final Fantasy Tactics because I had a keen mind for said tactics--that their difficulty put me a cut above the rest of other small-brained folks. But no, difficulty means nothing and I like games better when I cut can through them like soft butter. What I actually liked about tactical games this whole time was building a team, molding them however I see fit, and ideally, making them smooch. Three Houses does something few, if any, games have ever done: it makes you fall in love with over two dozen different characters, then forces you to kill two-thirds of them while directing the hand of the other third. It is emotional manipulation of the player of the highest degree. To this day you can scroll through tumblr or an FE stan twitter account and see fan art of your favorite ship locked in embrace, then scroll down further and find art of one crying over the slumped body of the other after slaying them in combat. It’s soul rending. My first playthrough was with the Black Eagles and when Edelgard turned on me I was in such a state of shock I got up and paced around the couch a few times. How could she do this to me? How could I, even after the apparent betrayal, still take her side over creepy Church lady? Was it because she was pretty? Was it because I had already spent so much time shaping her and her House into absolute units that laughed in the face of all opposition? Was it because surely the game’s writers would justify her actions? Surely?! Plenty of games have choices to make, but nothing I’ve played has felt as meaningful--as agonizing--as that one. Doubt nagged at me after every mission, all the way to the end of the game. And then, thinking “Well surely the Black Eagles playthrough is the realest one,” you start the Blue Lions campaign and find there are still plenty of holes to be made in your heart.

With Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 coming out in three weeks, I wanted to write something about how much the first game impressed me and what set it apart from the rest of the genre. Before I get started, I want to drop a couple caveats. First, for all the things it does well, it is still a loot shooter/looter shooter/shlooter. Like a Diablo or a Destiny or an Anthem, you are still repeating similar mechanics and content in order to get the colored loot that makes your numbers go up. Either that appeals to you or it doesn’t--and that’s fine! Second, even for those that do enjoy loot games, The Division fell short for them in various ways. Perhaps they don’t like third-person cover shooters, or felt the PvP was bad. Perhaps the lawlessness of the Dark Zone turned them off, or the endgame content simply fell short for them. While I have my opinions on what an “endgame” can or should be in a game with no subscription model and an already-lengthy campaign, I won’t get into that here.

Instead, I want to speak to what really shined to me, as both a player who is a sucker for worldbuilding and environmental storytelling (which has been done so poorly so often that it's hard to actually put that in writing), and as a QA engineer whose mind reels at the art, design, and QA work that had to be put in to make it polished. Originally this blog was going to be couched in the pessimism that surely they wouldn’t put in all that work a second time, but after having played a couple beta sessions of the sequel, I am happy to report that The Division 2--for the most part--continues the efforts put forth in its predecessor.

The debris, the chaff, and the trash

In his preview coverage for The Division 2, Kotaku’s Stephen Totilo wrote “No one, just no one in video games renders a pile of trash bags like the people making The Division 2.” And it’s true, both in 1 and 2. The utmost care has been put into realizing the half-looted apartment, the overrun-then-abandoned hospital ward, or the hastily-built sanctuary in the subway tunnel. There’s beauty in the mundanity and the filth, and any one corner of it would be impressive on its own, but there’s that much detail put into every inch of four remarkably dense square miles of Manhattan. It’s practically unheard of outside of a few blockbuster studios, and definitely not in this genre. And all that trash is in service of the story--the staggering body count, the ways in which society broke down, or how soul-sucking corporate culture was before it all came crashing down.

NPCs that exist for their own sake, not yours

I remember the first time I got to Camp Hudson after the tutorial missions in Brooklyn and feeling overwhelmed by the sadness facing me. Nearly every NPC you walk past is in a state of personal crisis, and they’re not even civilians. One woman is bent over a body bag, promising the health and safety of an unborn child. One Joint Task Force officer is talking another through a panic attack. Others are huddled around a makeshift memorial on which hangs an obscene number of dog tags.

The game is filled with these sort of “incidental” NPCs. They aren’t there to talk to the player, they aren’t related to some quest, and they aren’t loot pinatas. They simply exist to flesh out the world, to lend credence to a game’s setting. I think it’s possibly my favorite aspect of The Division, and the lack thereof my biggest criticism against other games. Too often online games feel too sterile, even in the social spaces. Where are the normal people? The children? What are their concerns and how are they dealing with the situation? The Division answers this without being inconsiderate of a player's time. How much work did they put towards rigging and animations just for this incident in the corner of a random safe house?

Audio logs

If you told me audio logs these days are overdone and rarely of import I would agree with you, but The Division has some great ones, expertly written and delivered, and--like NPCs--exist on the periphery instead of being a burden. Here’s a couple of my faves:

A daughter comes out to her mother, and the mother's response

A chunky Christmas

Rick Valassi

I love a game with a good radio personality and The Division’s resident conspiracy theorist Rick Valassi is no exception. Great delivery, great accent, and somehow a calming voice when you hear him crackle on in a safe house after some tense Dark Zone action.

Rick diving into weather control conspiracy

A living, evolving base

The Base of Operations is based on the James A Farley building in New York City, and at the beginning of the game it’s a complete mess. Watching the various aspects of it get cleaned up and come online throughout the campaign was one of my favorite parts of the game, and it becomes a primary source of the incidental NPCs I’ve mentioned above. A guitarist and pianist that you rescue in side missions show up to brighten the atmosphere, people begin to hang Christmas decorations, computers and servers hum and blink. The city is coming back from the brink thanks to you and the evolution of this post office proves it.

The base early in the game--dirty, empty, quiet

Some cleaning has started, some wings added, but place is still pretty empty

A walkthrough of a completed BoO

Music

Okay, so this one isn’t really a small detail nor does it contribute to the game’s worldbuilding, but allow me this tangent at the end here because The Division’s music is remarkable and criminally underrated. Ola Strandh gave the game a rollercoaster of a soundtrack full of percussive, heart-pumping, synth-y goodness and I look forward to hearing what he’s got for us in the sequel.

Precinct Siege

Heartseeker

Whether by chance or by design, the games that came out this year stood in direct opposition of our hellish reality in 2017, so much so that thinking back on them for a GOTY-style list made me appreciate life's circumstances, and brings me hope going into 2018. Above all things, I'm happy that I have a job, friends, and family to support me in being able to forget they exist for a few hours while I try to save the princess.

This list is going to serve double-duty as also my favorite game music of the year. Music in games are so important to me and my memory of them lasts longer than most other aspects, so separating it into two lists seems redundant.

10. Prey

Prey's opening plot twist is worth the price of admission, even if it sort of fails to stick the landing by the end. The game feels like a relic in many ways--surprisingly difficult enemies, backtracking, inventory Tetris--but it's a reminder that the formula works, and I wish we had more of these outside of a Shock game every 3-4 years.

Music

Most of Prey’s soundtrack is serviceable ambient backdrop to the horror going around you, but the opening in-environment credit sequence music is a head-nodding synthwave bop.

9. Heat Signature

Tom Francis’s follow-up to Gunpoint ensures that I’ll be buying anything he puts out in the future. Here’s a lot of words strung together that anyone can use to bait me into spending $15: run-based top-down stealth-action game...in space.

Music

If there’s one issue with run-based games it’s that the music can wear on you after a while, no matter how good. Still, Heat Signature can bring the space-tinged electronic beat

https://memorylick.bandcamp.com/track/2-class

8. Cuphead

I don’t like platformers. I especially don’t like difficult platformers. Doesn’t matter. Cuphead made its way into my Steam library (and this top 10 list) purely on style points. It’s one of those games that made me wish I didn’t live 2,000 miles away from my father so I could hop over and show him this thing in action, because he’d love it. This game was close to being resigned to the Honorable Mentions Because At Least The Music Is Good section, but the couch co-op redeems the frustrating gameplay. Inviting my sister over to yell and laugh and struggle definitely transported us back in time to NES Contra days.

Music

If I did end up writing a separate list purely for music, Cuphead would be in the top 3. It’s absolutely amazing. I live for big band music, and the breadth and depth of the game’s soundtrack is jaw-dropping. There’s even tap dancing! You put tap dancing in your game you’ve got my money.

7. Destiny 2

Destiny 2 is such a curious beast. I really disliked Destiny 1. It was one of the few times where I sort of felt betrayed by the game journalists that normally have the same tastes as me. There was so much hype around The Taken King. “Finally, a year later, Destiny is complete, it’s good now!” they cried, from the Bombcast to Kotaku to Polygon. I felt bamboozled. Then D2 comes around and, for me, they do all the right things. The gameplay loop is sensical and rewarding. The story doesn’t blow the doors off but at least it’s cohesive. It looks and runs fantastic on my aging PC. So here I am, happy they made a game more my style...and the game’s community implodes because it’s not more like Destiny 1. They want an MMO without paying MMO prices. I don’t get it.

Music

Bungie has been a powerhouse in the “sweeping symphonies that will anchor the next touring video game concert” for a while now, but even without Marty O’Donnell, Destiny 2 brings it. The work they put in to make sure the music swells with the action made the story beats hit hard. The song “Journey” plays as the player escapes the fallen City, coming to grips with their loss of power, and struggling to survive. It starts sad, and slowly crescendos, before finally punching through as if to say “You will overcome, you will rise.”

6. XCOM 2: War of the Chosen

War of the Chosen does what every expansion should strive for: shore up a game’s inadequecies in ways that players didn’t realize it was inadequate. After XCOM 2’s DLC offerings whiffed so hard that I ended up uninstalling them, I had a lot of fears about this expac. Fears were quickly assuaged. Meaningful new enemies, meaningful new soldiers, a fantastic revision to the strategic layer--it all felt integrated instead of merely bolted on. I hope Firaxis takes some of those lessons for the first Civ 6 expac, but I doubt it. Bonus: nearly every new character added is voiced by a Star Trek alum. Games industry, learn from this game and Mass Effect: put Marina Sirtis and Michael Dorn in everything.

Music

XCOM 2’s music is fine but nothing super memorable.

5. Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood

Another expansion here. I am an MMO addict. I’ve been subscribed to one MMO or another for nearly 20 years at this point. FF14 is the best in the genre. I think I’m in the minority that thinks Heavensward was the better expac, but Stormblood is no slouch. With the expac came a huge ability revamp that made endgame combat more enjoyable, at the cost of early-game being a huge bore. But push through, dear reader, and you’ll find a MMO that manages to go toe-to-toe with mainline FF games in terms of story, characters, and the music.

Music

Oh, the music! Depending on the weather and my mood, I might say FF14 music is the best of the entire series, which is an extraordinary feat as an MMO. All of Stormblood’s new overworld zones have separate day/night tracks (all games should do this). The Azim Steppe day theme rightfully became a classic as soon as people heard a few seconds of it in the benchmark trailer, but the echoing piano melodies that serve as dark reflections of the expansion’s daytime themes are better in every other zone.

4. Battle Chasers: Nightwar

So I’ll be the first to admit that this one might only be as high on this list as it is because it’s the game I’ve most recently played, and because I’m disappointed how few times it’s showed up on anyone else’s list. Modern JRPGs are going in a direction combat-wise that I’m not a fan of. FF15, Xenoblade Chronicles and more are turning toward realtime combat in an attempt to keep things interesting and fast-paced for a wider audience. Battle Chasers eschews that, sticking with turn-based tactical combat that I find reminiscent of Final Fantasy X and even a bit of Darkest Dungeon. Colored loot, crafting, randomized dungeon layouts--it is modernized in all the right ways, while keeping party-based, turn-based combat intact. It’s a real delight, even if the story is a complete bore.

Music

The music in Battle Chasers is mostly dungeon ambience and forgettable, although the boss music is a real stomp-and-clapper that I enjoy quite a bit.

3. PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS

So much has been said and written about PUBG, I don’t really have much to add. Something I’m surprised isn't written about it more often is that its core system is very similar to roguelikes. You get in, you try to get the best randomly placed loot you can, and when you die--that's it, time to start a new game. It’s an addicting conceit--this game alone has convinced multiple friends to buy/build new computers, and I’ve put in 200+ hours playing along with them.

Music

PUBG has one song, the menu music, and it’s MCU-yawnworthy. Don’t bother.

2. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Something I came to terms with years ago as I waggled my way through a bit of Twilight Princes: I don't think I actually like Zelda games. I never beat the NES one. I got stuck in Link to the Past. I got bored with Ocarina of Time. I never bothered to unwrap Wind Waker. The series, I decided, just wasn’t for me. Breath of the Wild changed that. I think it might be the best game Nintendo’s ever made. The environment/level design will be talked about in game design classes for years to come, and rightfully so, but it's Nintendo’s remarkable ability to make likeable, memorable characters that steals the show.

Music

BotW’s music is an appreciation of the understated, the silence between the notes of a tinkly piano speaking volumes. Then they come at you with the whole kitchen sink, hitting you in the face with instruments like tubas, marimbas, oboes, and some of the best staccato trumpet work I’ve heard in a game.

1. Persona 5

Nintendo’s best game of all time, and it comes second fiddle. That’s 2017 for y'all. With Persona 3 and 4 being two of my favorite RPGs ever, my expectations for 5 were astronomical. And yet 5 met those expectations, then blew past ‘em. Video games can be a lot of things, but so few of them manage to be so hip. If the appeal of playing an RPG is to live out a power fantasy, apparently my power fantasy is being a tall, slim bespectacled teen that gets all the women and hears smooth jazz everywhere he goes. The social-sim-meets-dungeon-crawling-RPG formula has proven to be a powerful one, and while Persona 5 doesn’t do anything markedly different from its predecessors, I think that’s a strength. All it needed was a fresh new theme--baby boomers will destroy the world with their selfish greed and only coffeehouse jazz will save us--and a new coat of paint.

Music

I was so anxious about whether P5 would clear P4’s towering shadow that in a moment of weakness, I tried to see if anyone had uploaded the soundtrack after the game was released in Japan. Just a taste, mind you, to be sure. Atlus was pretty quick about taking down stuff, but I managed to find an obscurely named soundcloud channel and after a few listens, my fears melted away.

Perhaps my favorite song in the game only plays when it’s both nighttime and raining. I’m struggling not to trip over myself with hyperbole so I’ll just say it’s my #forevermood

This is the best boss music ever made. Hearing this in context at this point in the story filled my soul to bursting.

RPGs are a slog, and it’s often nonstop fighting. Saving the world ain’t easy, and it can weigh on you after tens of hours. Because of this I have a real soft spot for dungeon themes that are lighthearted and fun. It takes the edge off. Persona 5 does this really well in its later dungeons.

Honorable Mentions Because At Least The Music Is Good

Nidhogg 2 is a fun game, but I'm not sure it's any better than its predecessor, or really needed to exist at all. It's music, however, is dope.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is a game I haven't played and have no interest in playing, but when I heard these two songs playing from my roommate's bedroom, my ears pulled the rest of my body over to investigate, like some sort of Looney Tunes skit. Apparently Yasunori Mitsuda (Chrono Trigger) got a hold of Anúna, an Irish choral group, to do a couple songs and boy, it's beautiful.

(Before I start I just want to pay my dues and point you towards @Tidel 's blog about his experience with Journey as it is very much identical to mine, but probably better written/more succinct than what I'm about to say. I'm finding that across the Internet my story isn't a unique one, which makes me so very, very happy.)

**I DO MAKE REMARKS ABOUT THE END OF THIS GAME, BUT CONSIDERING IT'S STYLE AND WORDLESS NARRATIVE, I'M NOT SURE HOW SPOILER-Y IT REALLY CAN BE** I try to keep it as vague as possible.

I thought that I knew what Journey was. A journey of solitude, a wordless narrative that told its story to the player through fantastic art and fantastic music. A philosophical "art piece" but perhaps not much of a game. I was ready for this, and was eager for it. What I wasn't ready for was the fact that solitude had nothing to do with it, and it absolutely wrecked me.

I had played through the first area and, honestly, I thought that maybe the hype machine was going to let me down. I was pleasantly surprised by the "game"-iness of it, with the puzzler aspect of the scarf and the glyphs, but the music was sparse and I was afraid I just wouldn't "get it." I unlocked the second area, paused the game (or so I thought), and went to do a load of laundry.

When I returned and began playing again I heard a distant bell-like "brling" in the distance. I turned towards the sound (and the subtle but helpful white light) to see the source and I see another 'me' jumping about and flitting about. I had totally forgotten about Journey's purported restricted multiplayer aspect. My first instinct was to unplug my PS3's ethernet, the same as I do for Demon's Souls. I didn't want some internet rando to screw up this experience. But for whatever reason, I didn't. Obviously he posed no harm, and I figured we would probably just go our separate ways at some point.

And yet...that never happened. We goofed around a bit, I pinged at him a couple times to come find some hidden scarf glyphs I found, and we both unlocked a piece of the cloth bridge to progress. Something within me decided that I would stick with him (or maybe her) if s/he would do the same.

And then, to put it simply, we never left each other's side. I found myself growing increasingly attached to him. He was a carefree spirit while I was more conservative with my scarf, but I was always happy to lend him more of my power when he came floating back to earth. We would wait for each other when we got to the meditative spots or the vague murals tucked away in each level. Slowly, the game itself and the story didn't much matter to me; it was all about him, and ensuring we saw this thing through together. I no longer cared about the time, or my laundry, or anything else. All we had were our little chirps. PING! "here's a scarf glyph" PING! PING! "thanks man" PING! "get behind this to shelter from the wind" "PING! PING!" "thanks bro"

The triumphant ending sequence of the game is very fast-paced and has a lot of verticality to it. I saw him rise into the clouds and I went to follow, both of us pinging throughout, but at some point I lost him. I continued to rise and rise, pinging as I went, but the music had swelled to a point that I could barely hear my own pings, and the whiteness of the light meant I couldn't see the subtle UI hint of his location. And so I continued to rise, camera turning every which way to find him. Initial panic and frustration turned to sadness. This was such a fascinating and uplifting part of the game, but there was regret and disappointment that we weren't going to take that final step together. "Oh well," I thought to myself, "we got this far together, that's all that matters"

Finally, I reached an archway with an incandescent portal glistening. There I stopped and looked back down the mountain. Hoping for a glance, a ping, anything. I pinged once, twice, I sat there for a minute I'm sure. Finally, with a heavy head, I turned and walked towards my destination. I hit the portal and became a shining beam of light, rising gloriously to the summit.

When I landed I saw...something, in the haze of snow. Was that him? My heart raced and I pressed on, fast as the game would let me. If that was him, he had waited a long time for me, because I had waited quite a while thinking he was behind me. But now it appeared he was done waiting, and he was moving towards the cleft of the rock. PING! "Wait! I'm here!" PING! PING! "I didn't abandon you, I'm here!" My pings were getting quieter; the game was drawing to a close and the audio level with it. He doesn't hear me! He doesn't see that I'm right behind him! He'll think I abandoned him, that I raced ahead or quit. But I didn't! I was right here the entire time. As we reach our destination our pace slows, the light dims, and so does the sound. My frantic, constant pings are completely inaudible.

And then, I swear to everything holy not one step before the point of no return, he stopped, just long enough for me to catch up. I'm not sure how, if at all, he saw me. I don't think you could turn the camera inside that little canyon. I don't know why, I don't-...we crossed that threshold together, shoulder to shoulder in that tiny little canyon. It's all I wanted, was for him to know that I didn't abandon him, that he wasn't alone. Tears of relief and happiness streamed down my face for reasons I can't even explain. I sat and stared at those credits in a daze, lip quivering. I thought that I knew what Journey was. But it was something else, and it will live with me forever.