Ron's Top 5 Games of 2018

This is probably the hardest list I've had to make so far. I spent a huge portion of 2018 playing nothing but World of Warcraft... to the point where I played almost nothing else until around November...

One big takeaway from this year is that, like the last two years, World of Warcraft: Legion made the list. At this point I'm comfortable saying that Legion is the best WoW expansion I've ever played and probably the best expansion Blizzard has ever done. The amount and breadth of the content in Legion is absolutely staggering. Everything from single-player content to 5 man content all the way up to raid content was great. Legion is the first expansion where a lot of my friends were able to stay interested long enough to form a raid group and clear it.

Unfortunately, Battle for Azeroth isn't making the list... if Legion is the best then BFA is a strong contender for the worst. It's only about 4 months old at this point but I've already basically checked out. Our raid team cleared the raid multiple times and then went on hiatus in early November. The next raid doesn't open until mid-January... in the mean time there is nothing to do. That in and of itself feels bad... but I'm not holding my breath that there will be much to do even when the next raid opens.

With that said the following list represents the best games I played this year.

List items

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  1. Red Dead Redemption II

  I was absolutely enraptured by this game from start to finish. This is Rockstar at their very best. I loved virtually every choice they made with this game. Every action has an animation. Every movement feels deliberate. Every story-related cutscene feels like a scene from a film. Arthur Morgan is probably one of my favorite characters of all time. I was absolutely gutted the first time one of my horses died. This whole game was just a rush of feelings and I wish I could erase it from my brain and play it again.

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  2. Night in the Woods

  This game came out in 2017, but I played it for the first time this year. I feel like a fool for ignoring all the people who told me to play this game last year. I think this might have been the "realest" game I've ever played. The way Mae and her friends talk to eachother feels like how I might talk to my friends. Mae's inability to talk about why she dropped out of school and her family and friends obvious reluctance to ask about it (despite being obviously curious) felt so... real. Playing through this game was an absolute joy. The effect this game had on me made me consider it for the #1 spot for a long time... RDR2 barely edged it out.

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  3. Katamari Damacy

  OK... so this game came out 14 years ago LOL. But, I played it for the first time on the Nintendo Switch re-release and holy shit... this game is incredible. It's just soooo satisfying and creative. I honestly don't know how in all the years since this came out I never played any of these games... or anything like it. This is honestly a masterpiece in game design and execution.

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  4. World of Warcraft: Legion

  For the third year in a row this is on my Top games list. It's hard to say something that I haven't already said. From start to finish this was the most fun I ever had in World of Warcraft. I ended up leveling 8 different characters to max level and then completing all of the "single player" Mage Tower challenges for most of those classes. Now that Legion has ended I can say with confidence that it is the best WoW expansion I've ever played.

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  5. Celeste

  Honestly, I feel like Celeste was a little over-hyped. I really enjoyed the platforming parts of this game but all the levels with enemies chasing you and killing you completely soured my feelings on it. The unfortunate thing is that if it weren't for those parts I would probably say that this is the best platformer that I have ever played. I don't want to make it sound like this game is bad, though. It honestly feels amazing to play and even with the parts I disliked I would consider this one of the better platforming games I've played.