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paco

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2018 Games

With 2018 done and over with, here's a list of games I liked playing this year. Unlike last year, there wasn't a cornucopia of touching, personal games with a message that resonated with me, so I don't have full essays to write this time for every game. But who knows, maybe a certain game will get me feeling a type of way that makes me want to say some shit. I try to avoid spoilers, but with some games shit needs to get spoiled as I have opinions that need to be said for my own sanity. I try to give ample warning when I do spoil something.

List is is descending order. First 2 entries are more honourable mentions, if anything.

List items

  • Technically a 2017 game, I didn't play it until the beginning of this year. Gorogoa is an M.C. Escher painting made into a video game. Like my number game this year, it's really hard to describe and just needs to be experienced. It has an incredible mood, atmosphere, and sense of place. It also looks visually stunning, with a vivid and striking use of colour. It took me roughly 4-5 hours to beat it in one sitting and I was enraptured until the very end.

  • Also a 2017 game, Steamworld Dig 2 is a metroidvania about digging. Playing as Dorothy, the robot shopkeeper from the first Steamworld Dig, she sets out on a journey to find out what happened to the first game's robot protagonist Rusty. The world is also breaking apart, and you are tasked by one of the last remaining robot villages to find the source of the earth-shattering quakes and stop them. You dig for treasure, you buy upgrades with said treasure, you solve puzzles, you fight bosses. Sure, that all sounds super reductive, but you do so with super engaging traversal mechanics that make exploring the claustrophobic caves below the robot village fun. However, what really stuck with me was the ending. What happens to certain characters and to the world was really touching and has left me eagerly waiting for a Steamworld Dig 3.

  • What started out as a pretty good side-scrolling action platformer ended on a pretty mediocre metroidvania marred with backtracking issues and a giant info-dump just before the final area and underwhelming final boss battle. Regardless, I enjoyed my time with the messenger, as it was able to pull off the one thing that gets me to stick with games that overstays their welcome: the act of moving around/jumping felt smooth, precise, and enjoyable. The cloud-step mechanic, which allows you to jump again after landing an attack in midair, allowed for a range of movement that just made it fun to traverse the levels even as you groan about having to backtrack through the same area for the umpteenth time. Combined with all the upgrades and abilities that are unlocked as you play, you are zipping through areas without ever touching the ground. The writing was also better than it had any right to be, as it tries to play the 4th-wall-breaking comedic angle that many games fail at. But the shopkeeper had some legitimate funny bits and the last story they tell is legitimately touching.

  • Katamari but with raccoons and holes. BK is a jerk.

    In all seriousness, Donut County is a delight. A fun, positive game that explores gentrification in some really funny ways. The dialogue between the characters is well-written. You can spam a bird sticker when texting people. Quadcopters are heavily involved. Look, it's hard to describe what made this game great without just retelling the jokes, so just play Donut County and be happy for once.

    And BK is still a jerk.

  • Finally, a worthy successor to Melee. Smash Ultimate is the video game version of the Xzibit "Yo Dawg" meme. Smash Ultimate has the "most" video game out of any video game that has ever been made. So many times while playing a match, I would pause the action and it would look like a renaissance painting. Characters, stages, items, and assist trophies from what seems to be every video game ever made all appearing on one screen. Besides that, it's still a blast to play with a group of friends; since release, it's all that my coworkers and I play during our lunch breaks. My King Dedede game is unmatched, come at me and get a face full of HAMMER.

    I will say that, I was hoping the World of Light mode would be an actual follow-up to Brawl's Subspace Emissary mode, which made an actual story out of random Nintendo/Video Game characters fighting each other. But, what is offered is a fun varied mode with each fight feeling bespoke and tailored made for the spirit you are fighting (racially insensitive spirits notwithstanding). All in all, it's a smashing good time.

  • The sequel to Chess no one knew they wanted. An isometric, turn-based strategy game that removes all random chance (save for a few actions that, really, can only work out in your favour), Into the Breach has you commanding a rag-tag squad of mechs as they battle through space and time against an invading horde of alien insects. The game has its rule-set, and everything abides that rule-set, including the enemies. Every enemy conveys what they are going to attack, how they are going to attack it, in what order they will attack, and how much damage they will do. It is up to you to utilize that information, along with map events and environmental factors, to use your mechs in ways that negates all enemy attacks. Sometimes, what to do is extremely obvious, while in other times you need to observe, be patient, and ponder what to do. What makes Into the Breach work is that there is always a solution to every turn that results in nothing getting damaged except for enemies, and it feels so satisfying when it all comes together.

  • Full disclosure, I'm an Undertale fan. I understand they have a bad reputation on the internet. I don't care, Undertale is amazing. Undertale explored personal morality and what role it has in player agency in such a skillful way. It also helped that it was extremely funny and had a lot of dogs. The reason I bring Undertale up is because Deltarune (technically just the first chapter of Deltarune) builds on and improves what Undertale already amazingly did in just about every way. The visuals, the battle system, the animations, the characters, even the UI has been improved in Deltarune, and the game lets you know that too! The only negative is that it's only the first chapter, and Toby Fox has stated that he's not sure if he will complete the rest of the game. I hope Toby Fox ends up making more Delarune, because I just want to hang out with Lancer as he does cool bike tricks. Dark Fun Gang > Fun Gang.

  • I played Lucas Pope's first game, Papers, Please, when it first came out but I never completed it. I understood the message it was trying to get across with how it structured its gameplay, but at the time I wasn't bought into the whole idea of "utilizing gameplay to tell an effective story, often at the detriment of gameplay" and it got too stressful for me to continue playing it. Now that I've matured in terms of what I can appreciate out of a game even if it's not directly "fun," I was excited to try his new game, Return of the Obra Dinn.

    Playing an insurance inspector, you are tasked with finding out the fate that befell the crew of the good ship Obra Dinn. (An aside, but the name "Obra Dinn" just sounds so pleasing to me, in a "cellar door" kind of way.) Rami Ismail of the game studio Vlambeer put it best by calling Obra Dinn, "Murder Sudoku." You start the game with a book containing the ship's full roster (including names and roles), pictures of all the crew mates unattached to names, and empty spaces detailing the story of the game. In those empty spaces, you will: 1. attach a name to every crew member picture 2. indicate how they died and 3. indicate what killed them, if anything. You get this information by finding corpses around the ship and using a supernatural pocket watch too see a freeze frame of their final moments that you can fully navigate around in. Using context clues found in these memories, you start to connect dots and find out who every crew member is and what happened to them. I say "context clues" because the game tells you outright that some crew members can only be deduced through the process of elimination. You need to cross-reference minutia as small as the number tag of a bed someone is sleeping in to the number of that person in the ship roster while also remembering that someone mentioned this person had tattoos in a completely different memory. I don't want to spoil too much, as discovery is what makes this game, but what seems to be a simple mutiny at the beginning of the game ends up being a complicated web of betrayal and eldritch horror. I finished my first playthrough of Obra Dinn uncovering everyone's fate, but I still don't know exactly what happened on the good ship Obra Dinn. And to be honest, I don't think I need to know.

    ...I should really go back and finish Papers, Please.

  • Dragon Quest XI is my first Dragon Quest game, but I had a strong sense of nostalgia during the 97 hours I spent playing it. It took me a while to understand why I had this feeling, but near the end of my 97 hour playthrough, I understood why. It was a nostalgia for the expansive JRPGs that I played as a kid on my SNES and Playstation. Spending hours as a kid playing Mario RPG, Final Fantasy VII, and Chrono Trigger, bonding with party members and going through an extensive journey so that good can prevail over evil. Dragon Quest XI is a modern take on the classic JRPG formula without being bogged down in dated mechanics and tropes. It's is whimsical game that, while maybe a bit saccharine at times, made me feel like I was on a grand adventure. I'm glad games like these are still being made and are still fun to play the entire way through.

    Before I continue, I will be spoiling major plot details and end game of Dragon Quest XI. I'll try to refrain from anything too specific, but if you don't want to be spoiled, stop here and go on to the next game, but I have some shit I need to get of my chest because MAN THIS GAME GOES PLACES.

    Dragon Quest pulls a pretty derivative twist during what is ostensibly halfway through the game, roughly 30 hours in. It's so much of a derivative that it's essentially the twist from Final Fantasy 6. The bad guy destroys the world, becomes an evil god, and you need to traverse the now-blighted lands to reform your party and take down the bad guy once and for all. Once you do, the game acts like the story is done and rolls credits, but teases some post-game content for you to explore. This is after 60 hours of beating what should be a full game, mind you. Turns out what they teased was a second twist where you go back in time to beat the bad game before he gained the upper hand. YOU THEN PLAY AN ENTIRELY NEW SECOND HALF OF THE GAME. YOU SPEND ANOTHER 30 FUCKING HOURS TO FIGHT THE "REAL" BIG BAD BUY AND GET THE TRUE ENDING THAT HAS NO POST-GAME AFTER THAT! THE AUDACITY! THE NERVE! I LOVE IT!

    I love this game so much.

  • There's so much I want to say about Iconoclasts, so let me get my thoughts in order. First off, it plays really well. It's a metroidvania that centers around using a wrench to swing around fixed points in the level or grind on electric rails. There was a flow to the way you traversed the world that always felt fast-paced and fun. The story and setting are intriguing, but I was a little meh on the story by the end of the game, due to some unclear dialogue and lack of explanation about the nature of the story's central antagonist. Having said that, the individual characters themselves are what endeared Iconoclasts to me. Each character was really well written and had believable personalities and motivations for their actions.

    There are 3 characters specifically that left an impact on me: Agent Black, Elro, and Royal. All three have tragic arcs that feel unique but are intertwined in some cosmic, star-crossed way. Agent Black, a recurring antagonist in the game, is fueled by grief and rage caused by Elro which ends up consuming her humanity. Speaking of Elro, fuck Elro! He gets himself, his family and others hurt due to his selfishness and egotistical reasoning masked as concern for Robin. And then there's Royal, a member of the enemy royalty that just wants to help Robin and has good intentions, but his own naiveté about himself and the nature of his religion just ends up being his own undoing. All 3 characters met an end not unlike something out of a ancient Greek tragedy; each doomed by their own forms of hubris.

  • Tetris Effect is the best game of 2018. It's hard to describe what makes it so amazing; you just need to play it for yourself. If you watch a video of it, it's just colourful, musical Tetris. Once you play it, you realize it's something so much more. It's not just that the visuals are bright and vivid and makes excellent, consistent use of themes for each level. It's not just that the music utilizes those themes as you rotate tetrominos, socket them into place, or clear lines all in tune and in sync with the music. It's also not just Tetris is still an amazing and addictive game to play, still, in the year of our lord 2018. It's all of that combined (and more) to make a truly synaesthetic experience about togetherness and the human experience.

    It's Art

    Tetris Effect is art.

    Suck it, Roger Ebert.
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