Hello! It's time for Cow's 6th Annual Game of the Year List, where each year I think too much about video games and then write too many words.
Honourable mention: I should note that I have not yet played Return of the Obra Dinn, and I'm pretty sure that would've been on this list, too. And with that, Happy New Year!
Celeste is a complete package. By far, the best soundtrack of the year (I'm listening to it as I write this), thanks to the brilliant Lena Raine. Solid platforming and controls, where every time you die (and you die a lot!) it feels like it was your own mistake; I never felt cheated. And an actual story, so rare for this genre, about struggles with mental illness, impossible challenges, and piecing your life and your soul back together.
I am bad at video games, but I found that if you mainline it, it's not particularly difficult; it's a hard game, but I think doable by most people. But the side challenges are where it gets fun, where it becomes as much a puzzle game as a platformer--you have to plan out your moves, figure out what you're going to do, and then iterate on it until you execute it. My proudest video game moment of the year was the first time I beat a B-Side. I took a screenshot and shared it everywhere; I felt like I'd climbed a mountain of my own.
I honestly can't think of a bad thing to say about Celeste. A complete surprise, an utter delight, and the best video game of 2018.
I would never have believed I'd have a Monster Hunter game on this list. Oh, they can be fun, but they were never good like this -- this ate my entire winter and a good chunk of spring. I made an entire new circle of friends through this game (the same ones I played Fallout 76 with, but nobody's perfect). The different maps look great and feel so different; the monsters are often at once terrifying and hilarious; and the climb up the mountain from Hunter Rank 1 to 100 is less about grinding up your stats and more about just getting better at the game. You, the character, don't even have stats; your weapons and armour do, and they're important, but it's more about your personal ability than grinding out a few more levels before taking on the next challenge.
This reminds me of that time, my second-proudest video game moment of the year, when we finally beat Behemoth, after so many tries. I had to respec and I had to really, really up my game, as did all of us; we also had to get team cohesion and communication together in a way we never had before. It was a great feeling to feel Good At Games for even just those few minutes.
I played this in one long setting and felt like I came out of a fever dream. Great music, great gameplay, great writing, and that feeling of pure joy I got the first time I picked up Katamari Damacy. I'm torn: on the one hand it didn't overstay its welcome, but on the other I really wanted more. Raccoon of the Year.
Perhaps it's because I played them back to back, but Wandersong felt like the anti-Gris to me. Suddenly, I'm playing as a happy-go-lucky bard who isn't the hero--he is emphatically not the hero, as everyone loves to remind him--but gosh darn it, he's just so happy he's gonna try. The world is shiny and colourful, although it's also ending and everyone in it knows they're doomed and, well, that's just how it goes, I guess. Except the bard, who isn't willing to go quietly. Ever.
I read an interview where the creator said he did a cross-country bike trip, and it's what gave him the idea for this saga. I can kinda feel it--while "random hero leaves home and travels the world" is a cliche in JRPGs and other games, this feels a bit different, somehow. It feels like it was made by someone who's had to ride into town and crash on strangers' couches. It's not exploring a map as much as going on a road trip.
The game isn't very difficult, and some of the ongoing platform sections do wear out their welcome a bit, but I was hooked to keep getting more dialogue and character interactions.
It's just nice to feel happy, sometimes.
It's been a few years since I fell deep into a JRPG, but this one is a good one to fall into. A lot has been said about the visual style, and they're right--but the writing in this is also fantastic. Each of the eight heroes has a story to follow, and while I think some were better than others, I was engaged by all eight paths. The little moments between characters are some of the best.
The combat, while good, did get old over my time with the game; especially late in the game, when enemies have a ton of HP and, even when the fights aren't hard, they're long. That said, the class system and other systems forced me to actually improve at playing them; I made it to about chapter 3 just sort of brute-forcing the game like you do any JRPG, and the game made it clear that would not be good enough. I started actually learning the systems and experimenting and really enjoyed the result.
I'm not normally one for this sort of run-based game, but something about Dead Cells grabbed me tight and held on for a long time. The movement, combat, everything just feels so perfect. It's got a great look, an unbelievable weapon/spell/trap/etc variety, and just a perfect loop to keep you trying. I found myself getting just better enough to not burn out on it, and unlocking new weapons kept each run fresh.
What killed it for me was I had two long runs in a row glitch out and break. It's not usually a buggy game, but when it does glitch out and you lose unfairly, it breaks the game's spell. I might get back to it someday, but even if I never do, I still had a great time with it until the end.
Moss was one of the games that finally got me into VR. From the moment it starts, with you sitting in a chair in Suzzallo Library, it blew me away--sitting in a space I've spent so much time in in the real world, looking around, taking it all in. Then you enter the storybook, and it really is a magical journey.
Every little detail inside the storybook is great. The first thing I noticed was the scale; the game immediately makes you feel so very tiny, like a mouse, by just how huge everything in the forest is. You play as the Reader, not the mouse itself, so you control the mouse as it runs from left to right in front of you. Sometimes the characters stop and wave, and one time there was a lake and I leaned forward and saw the shadowy figure of the Reader looking back. I would often pause on new screens and just look around at all the detail work. The characters are fun too (long live the attack squirrel).
My main frustration, like so many PSVR games, is relying on the tracking of the controller. Puzzles that should be easy, that I knew how to solve, would often take far too long just because the camera kept losing the controller. If they had just let you control the game, rather than forcing PSVR's broken motion controls into it, this would've been much higher up the list.
Every year my 8th place game is some silly puzzle game I sunk way too many hours into. Fill-a-Pix is a new take on a Picross-style puzzle, where instead of rows and columns, it's all about the surrounding blocks. In this case you're making images from all over the world. I've been poking at it on and off for most of the year and I'm still not done. It's just a great way to zone out for a little bit of time.
Gris is the most visually stunning game I've played this year. Everything is communicated through visuals; there isn't a word in the whole game. The dark environments, the physically-impossible but nice-looking structures, and the main character's billowy black dress against the landscape, all convey the grief and loss that the game is about working through. It reminds me of Journey in a lot of ways, but takes it in different directions.
Actually playing the game, though, is where it fell apart for me. The controls weren't great and the puzzles weren't interesting. Also, some of the choices were just bizarre--I played part of it in handheld mode on the Switch, and there are parts where the camera zooms way out for your puzzle, and your character is basically one black pixel lost against a dark background. in general, I would have much rather had this be an animated short or some other kind of non-interactive experience.
I took a selfie with the Mothman!
There's been no shortage of covering the flaws in Fallout 76. And they're right; it's a buggy, broken mess, and the studio that made it seems to be doing their best to self-immolate in the wake of it. But there is beauty and fun to be had, too. West Virginia, in late autumn, reclaiming itself from human influence, is a beautiful, haunting place. The folklore and music of Appalachia also come to life all around you; it truly is a love letter to West Virginia.
If you have a group of friends to play with and get up to silly adventures together, you can have fun in this game. We ran around abandoned shopping malls, built our own houses, made items for each other based on what plans we'd found (I made a bearskin rug for a friend's floor, and she made a Mr Pebbles, The First Cat In Space poster for my wall), and just generally got up to shenanigans.
I don't know how much we'll go back to it, but it was fun while it lasted.
