Top 5 Games (that I played) in 2019

2019 was a year where, more than any time in my adult life, I've started to feel the weight of real life pushing my game time out of the way. I'm sure this will ebb and flow in years to come, rather than snowballing out of control, but hey who knows! Games are an important part of my life—not just for personal enjoyment, but because they're part of how I stay connected to many of my closest friends. Whether it's my friends on the East coast or friends at the office, the games we play are important to us and allow me to find common ground with them no matter the circumstances.

That said, THERE ARE WAY TOO MANY (GOOD) GAMES TO PLAY, Y'ALL. There are always a handful of video games that release in a given year that I look at longingly and say, "Boy, I'd love to check that out, but not quite as much as these other three games." And this was doubly true in 2019. I feel like (good) games were coming at an astonishingly rapid pace. And due to a relatively small budget I imposed on myself this past year, I literally could not keep up on every single thing that came out that I REALLY wanted to play. In the end, I did find this to be a positive thing, because it gave me a reason (some might say excuse) to say "no" to some games and allowed me to dig into the games I had. I made a full list of all games I spent a significant amount of time with here.

So, while there are plenty of games that I might get around to next year or the years after that, these are my top five that I played in 2019.

List items

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  1. Monster Hunter: World

  [PC] This is my first Monster Hunter game. I originally bought this game in 2017 to play with a friend who convinced me to play it, and because I had a GPU that could teeechnically play it, I went for it. However, as soon as I booted it up for the first time the performance was less than okay, so I set it down. Then, after almost a full year some other friends decided to get the game, so I decided to boot it back up again despite having not upgraded my GPU, and it ran *okay* this time, likely due to some patches and updates. So, as I began to play more, especially with the help of friends who knew what they were doing, the bug definitely bit me.

  Over the course of the next 2-3 months I put a solid 90+ hours into the game, upgraded my GPU to get the game running at a decent framerate, and kept playing long after my friends who helped me get into it set it down until closer to the Iceborne expansion. Speaking of which, Iceborne for PC is RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER and I'm incredibly excited.

  I am so glad that I finally *get* why people love Monster Hunter. Where I am fully aware that I'll never master this game like some, I will never tire of trying.

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  2. Apex Legends

  [PC] Apex caught a lot of people by surprise by design, and I'm no exception. I never played Titanfall 1 or 2, but now I know I need to if it feels anything like playing Apex Legends. The way this game *moves* is easily my favorite part about it, and honestly I just want every first person game's movement to feel as fluid and dynamic as Apex. I caught myself a couple times wishing I could slide down a hill or grapple somewhere while playing both The Outer Worlds and even Halo Reach.

  This game has officially taken the spot that Overwatch held for a solid 3 years as my go-to multiplayer shooter. When it comes to shooters, I always lean toward arcadey and sci-fi, and Apex ticks both of those boxes. I already liked battle royale games like PUBG and I'd played a bit of Fortnite, but Apex stole their thunder with ease.

  This is definitely my favorite shooter of the year and my favorite of the battle royale games out there right now.

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  3. Wargroove

  [Switch] This game blew me away initially as something of a medieval spiritual successor to Advance Wars. It's got a ton of flavor and likable characters, as well as tons of variety in maps and unit combinations. Sometimes it feels like a giant chess game that I've lost 10-15 turns before actually losing, which can be frustrating, but that's something inherent to this type of game. Just like a Starcraft or Warcraft, if you don't plan well and your units are caught out or you lose a bunch of resources, it's hard to recover.

  Overall, I love this game, and what I have loved most is playing by correspondence with friends. We use the pointing finger emoji 👉 to convey when we're done with our turns, and it works well enough. Would be great if they built it into the game somehow, but not sure how they'd do this cross-platform. Also this game is cross-platform! Which is a really nice, as I play with people on Switch and PC.

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  4. Outer Wilds

  [PC] Outer Wilds is undoubtedly a marvel of both technicality and in game design. I'm not quite done with it yet, but through Giant Bomb GOTY discussions, general internet buzz, and watching Noclip's recent documentary on the game (https://youtu.be/LbY0mBXKKT0), I can tell this game will be considered an all-time giant.

  What Outer Wilds tries to accomplish in visuals, sound design, and discovery is truly something to behold. Where it definitely took a couple hours to orient myself, once I started to understand what was happening—and more importantly what the game was asking me to do—I have been pretty well hooked.

  Now, unlike the other games on this list, I haven't been able to just binge Outer Wilds to completion. For me, this game has come with a lot of awe-inspiring moments that actually leave me a little emotionally drained. Once, I got sucked into a black hole, separated from my ship indefinitely, managed to land on a nearby space station using my suit's limited propellant, only to die from not finding any place to refuel my oxygen, leaving me to suffocate and die.

  So, I've taken decent breaks between sessions, and where I feel like that has been somewhat detrimental for me to understand the small stories that are being told, I also think I'm understanding the larger story pretty well. Outer Wilds is great. I recommend it highly to anyone looking for a space flight simulation game with rich story and incredibly creative environments to explore.

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  5. Untitled Goose Game

  [Switch] Hard to say more about this than the internet has already said, but this game is simply delightful. I was into it as soon as I saw the concept in a trailer, and I was only more and more impressed/surprised as I played through the game.

  The best surprise? That I was able to enjoy it with folks who don't play many games at all. We completed most of the game's goals while swapping the controller back and forth. I loved every minute with this game.

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  6. Hades

  [PC] So listen, I know I said this was a top five, but I can't NOT include this on my list just like last year. And you know what, it'll have a proper spot on my list next year, I can guarantee it!

  I've continued playing this since December 2018. It's been over a year since they released in Early Access on the Epic Games Store and they have continued to deliver super interesting, game-changing updates regularly throughout 2019. I look forward to each update with fervor.

  I "beat" the game at each stage of development as they went on adding new zones and bosses. They now have it to where you can escape Hades (the core mission in the story), and I even beat that, but I'm still banging my head against this game. It's good enough and plays well enough that I'll happily win or lose again and again to experience a new way to play each time (this is a roguelike, of course).

  Can't wait til the 1.0 release so some more of my friends can jump in and experience how great the fourth entry from Supergiant Games is.