2018 was an interesting year for games as always. There weren’t as many big releases this year, but the ones that did come out were probably some of the most highly anticipated games of recent years. Red Dead Redemption 2, maybe the most anticipated game since Red Dead Redemption 1 was released all the way back in 2010 (the fact that RDR 1 is 8 years old is baffling to me), finally made its way out from under the crunch of Rockstar. Everyone got the big console Monster Hunter game they have always wanted with Monster Hunter World. Marvel’s Spiderman was set to be the successor to the legendary Spiderman 2. And God of War had a sequel that reinvented the series entirely.

Of course, there were smaller games that made a big impact as well. The smaller surprises are sometimes the most fun, as games I had never heard of before are released seemingly from nowhere and are incredible to play. Most importantly, the overall quality of games has definitely risen across the board. Of the 22 games I played this year, I enjoyed all of them, some more than others of course. But each game I played had its own unique and fun qualities, to where I didn’t regret any of my purchases, perhaps a first for me in a time where I generally buy more games than I have time to play. While I still found myself taking issue with things like repetitive quests, bloated open worlds, and some lackluster game mechanics, for the most part this year’s batch of games felt like they were all attempting to do their own thing or truly improved upon mechanics of old.

Games That Didn't Make the Top 10

Artifact – Artifact is surprising to me in multiple ways. It’s related to Dota, it’s created by the guy who created Magic the Gathering, and it’s the first game Valve has released since Dota 2. All of these things made me think Artifact was going to instantly be a huge success, perhaps even becoming a true competitor to Hearthstone in the virtual CCG space. However, the player base plummeted and sales were apparently extremely low. I guess not being free to play, not having progression, and not explaining the games economy well enough hurt the game badly. The other surprise is that while I like the idea of Artifact and while I am someone who loves deck building and competitive card games, I just don’t enjoy playing Artifact. It’s weird and I honestly can’t pinpoint one exact reason why, it just doesn’t feel fun I suppose. I see the strategy, I see how smart the draft mode is, and yet I don’t want to touch it at all. Perhaps I’m just too deep into Gwent to want to get invested in any other card game.

State of Decay 2 – I put a few hours into this game and, like with all survival games, this is another one where I love the idea of the game but don’t enjoy playing it very much. The idea of managing a Sims like community during a zombie apocalypse is cool, I just couldn’t get myself to enjoy playing the game enough to keep going with it.

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 – This game was fun for a time, its very well made and has enough replayability and progression to be satisfying. I just finished all the missions and played a few runs on the harder difficulties and then had my fill. I certainly liked it more than similar games like Left 4 Dead.

Far Cry 5 – Far Cry 5 is a good game for making your own stupid fun in the open world. Playing co-op with my friend and doing dumb things like seeing how many dead bodies we could load into the back of a truck and drive around with, or seeing how terrible of a crash we could cause with the various vehicles were really the high points in an otherwise repetitive, standard open world game. Nothing about Far Cry 5 is really bad, just mediocre, and eventually I had played enough and stopped before I had finished it.

Dragonball FighterZ – Probably the most I’ve ever learned about how to be good at a fighting game came from this game. It does an amazing job of letting you have success and look cool while button mashing, while also having an incredibly deep and difficult learning curve. I played it enough that I was able to win at least a few matches online, which was good enough for me.

CrossCode – This game would be at the top of my “game that probably would have made my top 10 had I played more of it” list if such a list did exist. The entire concept of the game feels unique and the world feels open in a way that a lot of other smaller games such as this don’t. It has challenging combat and smart puzzles and as someone who spent far too much time playing World of Warcraft, I love the whole MMO setting. I hope I play more of it, but as we roll on into 2019 I feel like this will be one of those games I enjoy but just never really get back to playing.

Vampyr – My favorite part about Vampyr is how it attempts to mix story decision making with actual gameplay. A lot of games don’t have actual consequences for most decisions, particularly if you choose the good guy route. Vampyr tries to solve this by making ever decision you choose have an impact. If you bite and kill people you grow more powerful, making the actual combat easier and allowing you to buy and max more of the powers. However, by doing this you will miss out on the characters stories, and perhaps ruin districts of the city. If you choose not to bite people you will be able to see all their stories and learn all about them, however you will be weaker and make the enemies tougher to kill. Cool idea in theory, in practice however it doesn’t really amount to much. In my time spent with the game I did not bite anyone and yet the game remained relatively simple. Enemies all have similar attacks and the game doesn’t do much in the way of changing their behavior to make things tougher for you. Even if it were more difficult, dying doesn’t really matter, you just reload and continue on your journey. Perhaps some sort of vampire nemesis-like system would have been the perfect solution to this problem. I appreciate what Vampyr attempted to do, and although it isn’t a great game, I enjoyed the time I did spend with it. Hopefully I get around to finishing it one day.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 – Black Ops 4 is the most mindless fun I had playing a game all year. The competitive multiplayer has some neat new twists, the hero class system works better than I thought it would, and the new blackout mode is an enjoyable, faster paced version of PUBG. I like Black Ops 4 quite a bit, but make no mistake, it is still a Call of Duty game through and through. It’s definitely an achievement that over a decade later these games still play the same and are still lots of fun, but its also not enough anymore to get me to consider it as one of the best games of the year. Also, the season pass and cosmetic system is absolutely terrible. Blops 4 has some, of if not the worst customization menus ever.

Assassins Creed Odyssey – AC Odyssey is a great game buried under a mound of mediocrity. The world is huge and fun to explore, the loot is varied and surprisingly allows you to create completely different character builds, the skill trees actually change the way you play and the skills themselves are surprisingly fun to use, some of the side quests are incredible and when the humor is good its really good. The boat gameplay I loved so much in AC 4 Black Flag also returns and is still just as fun, the mercenary system is a neat idea, and finding and assassinating the cult members is a cool side adventure. The game is just packed full of stuff to see and do and while people say you can never have too much of a good thing, Odyssey tries its hardest to prove those people wrong. Twenty bandit camps to take over would be fun. One hundred is not. The list of side quests and collectibles is never ending. That’s something that it seems Odyssey doesn’t want to happen. It doesn’t want the game to end. Unfortunately, the content in the game is not good enough to justify a 150-hour adventure. 50 hours though? Definitely. It’s a shame the game is so bogged down with such repetition and over abundance of stuff because the core systems are solid and running around as Kassandra is the most fun I’ve had in an Assassin’s Creed game since Black Flag.

Octopath Traveler – Octopath Traveler was easily going to be in my top 10, but eventually slogging through the stories, of which most are quite boring, lead me to stop playing the game. In a huge sprawling RPG with multiple party members, I think character interaction between said members is probably the most important thing to enjoying a JRPG and its story. While the combat in Octopath is extremely fun, combining the party members classes together to create different builds is rewarding, and the boss fights are some of my favorite in recent memory, I just couldn’t get over the way the game handles its various stories. The eight characters hardly interact with each other, to the point where each story is completely written as if none of the other seven characters are even there. It’s weird and makes the story telling even worse when you are slogging through a character story that is the most basic JRPG story ever written. The game looks great and plays great, it just didn’t have the narrative pull to keep me going past the 40 hour mark.

Celeste – Although part of the official splatformer genre, Celeste feels more like a splatformer – lite. The main campaign is challenging, but not extremely difficult like a Super Meatboy or even an Ori and the Blind Forest felt. It controls great, it stays fresh by changing its mechanics with each new zone, and it has a good story. None of it really wowed me, but it was a nice enjoyable game that doesn’t over stay its welcome. Also I have heard the B side levels are extremely difficult, I just have no interest in even attempting them.

Dead Cells – Dead Cells feels incredible. The controls feel exactly how you want them to and the character moves and reacts exactly how you think they should. Its surprising to say that that’s a big plus for a game in this day, but when so many games just don’t get the feel right, it feels so good when a game like Dead Cells comes along and nails it. The combat is snappy and quick, the sound effects and enemy explosions are satisfying, and the plethora of weapons allows you to have a new tactic every attempt you make to beat the game. It’s a lot of fun, but after a while the game wore me down. The levels aren’t random enough for me to run through them time and time again and while the game does incentivize speed running, I was never good enough to properly get to the locked doors in the later levels. I reached the last boss, who is insanely hard, and after dying to him multiple times, I felt like I had played enough of the game. The runs just began to feel more like repetitive work than fun, and my progress began to slow to a crawl when all that was left was unlocking the rest of the weapons. Even still, I really enjoyed Dead Cells and it was very close to be being on my list.

The Top 10

10. Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales

The most overlooked game of the year (Giantbomb didn’t even do a quick look for it!) Thronebreaker seemed to have released and then disappeared within the same minute. Even if you don’t care about Gwent, I highly recommend this game. You play as Queen Maeve, Queen of Rivia. When she is betrayed and has her kingdom stolen from her, she journeys across the lands of the Witcher universe to fight for her people and to see justice be done. It’s a basic premise, and while I haven’t actually gotten around to finishing the game yet, the writing is as good as you would expect, with tons of difficult moral decisions that not only effect the story but the gameplay as well. You collect different party members during your journey and each one becomes a unique card you can add to your deck. You could spend half the game building a strategy around one of these cards, but then you might make a story decision that upsets the character and they leave your party for good, taking their card with them. It’s a really cool mechanic that intertwines story, decision making, and gameplay. The deckbuilding and progression is fun, and even if you don’t like Gwent the game has enough interesting challenges such as various puzzles and variations on Gwent’s rules, that each “combat” encounter never really feels the same. Most of the time, you aren’t ever really playing a traditional game of Gwent. Each round might have a different rule or completely different mechanics, and all of the cards are entirely unique to the campaign itself so none of the competitive multiplayer side of Gwent has any effect on Thronebreaker. Plus, you get to explore beautiful drawn maps, search for hidden collectibles and resources and make story decisions worthy of a Witcher game. It’s a fun experience that I continue to make my way through and I look forward to finishing later in 2019.

9. Hitman 2

Hitman 2 was literally just more Hitman, and that’s ok. IO perfected the formula with 2016’s surprise reboot and its just as fun in this sequel. Some of the maps are absolutely outstanding and the sheer stupidity of the humans that inhabit the world of Hitman never gets old. The best part about Hitman 2 is that all the maps, disguises, and weapons from the first game get integrated into the game seamlessly. While having all the new maps upfront did shorten the time I spent with the game it was still a hell of a lot of dumb fun.

8. Return of the Obra Dinn

The best part about Obra Dinn is it feels unlike any other game I’ve played before. While the game does have a unique look, the frozen diorama-like scenes told backwards Memento style adds an interesting level of story telling and characterization. You never see anyone move or speak, so you create profiles of each character based on facial expressions and their actions as they playout from start to finish. Not only was I trying to figure out who everyone was and how they died, I also found myself giving the characters personality traits, motivations, and emotions. The story goes places I wasn’t expecting and I found myself absorbed with the atmosphere of the ship. The sound effects you do get to here are often brutal, menacing, and emotional. The music is stunning and wraps the presentation of every scene into a nice package of carnage and mayhem. The gameplay makes you feel smart and the difficulty never gets too frustrating. I haven’t felt this good about solving puzzles since The Witness. While moving back and forth between scenes is cumbersome, Return of the Obra Dinn does more with less better than any other game.

7. Forza Horizon 4

Horizon 4 is the first racing game I’ve spent any significant amount of time with since I played Burnout Paradise 7 years ago. Before that I played a lot of Need for Speed Underground 1 and 2 on the PS2. My history with the genre isn’t much, so it’s easy to say Horizon 4 is my favorite racing game ever. While the races are fun, particular the cross country and off-road sprints, the open world is where the game is at its best. The driving feels incredible and was something I did just for fun. Normally open world games keep me engaged through markers on the map, collectibles, and other checklist boxes to fill, but Forza Horizon 4 is one of those rare game where I just enjoyed playing the game regardless of whether I was making any sort of progress or ticking off boxes in a menu. I would just speed around the map, hitting the occasional sign, getting 2 stars as I accidentally ran through a speed trap, or crashing my car wildly over a wall and into a river. The moment to moment action of speeding through the beautiful terrain and small country towns and the feeling of getting noticeably better at the driving was what compelled me to keep playing. Sure, the races are fun, the collectibles are challenging and often got me addicted to trying them over and over, the online modes are interesting, the weather is awesome, but it’s the core gameplay that makes Forza Horizon 4 an amazing game. The only real problem I had with the game is the economy, which pretty much forces you to play an absolute ton if you care about owning all the property, building a massive car collection, and tuning all your favorite cars (I am a big fan of the Nissan GTR). Even still, it didn’t matter enough to ruin my enjoyment of driving around the world at 200 mph. I know all this is old news for people who have played the previous three games, but as my first experience in the series, this game was outstanding.

6. Marvel’s Spider-Man

As one of apparently millions of fans of the legendary Spider-Man 2 game from 2004, Marvel’s Spider-Man was exactly what I wanted from a modern-day Spider-Man game. Swinging around New York is easy to do and feels intuitive, fluid, and fun. The combat feels like the “Batman combat” which I’m still fine with. Honestly, most of the game feels like Insomniac looked at the Arkham series and used it as template for their game, which I’m also fine with. Those games were great, and this game follows in their footsteps of being an actually great licensed superhero game. While the overall gameplay is continuously entertaining, the story and the character of Peter Parker and what he does as Spider-Man is what really makes this game stand out. While Batman will always be my favorite superhero, his dark, brooding nature and pessimistic outlook on the world can be depressing. Not to mention he’s unfathomably rich, and has no care in the world other than stopping super villains (usually). Spider-Man on the other hand is completely broke, yet spends his time volunteering at a homeless shelter, working practically for free to try to better mankind through science and technology, and still taking the time to do things like stop pollution and find missing pigeons. While the side content isn’t the greatest, I did love the research labs because they were a great representation of who Spider-Man is as a hero. He’s in the middle of saving the city from maniacs with super powers, yet he takes the time to stop natural disasters and failing technology. He loves the city and he always has a positive outlook on people and life, even though he’s barely making ends meet and nothing in his personal life really seems to go his way. This makes the story engaging, particularly with the smart choices Insomniac made by making this Spider-Man their own entirely new version of the character. While some of the gameplay in the story missions was mediocre, the stealth sections were bad, and the open world gameplay felt a bit old by today’s standards, I’m hoping Insomniac builds on this framework and comes back with a bigger and better sequel to an already awesome game. Also, I believe Spider-Man has the best character movement/animation in any game ever. The way he twists and twirls through the air while web slinging and the way he flips and springs off walls before backflip kicking an enemy in the head all look outstanding.

5. Into the Breach

When I first started playing Into the Breach I struggled. The game plays like a tactics game similar to XCOM or Fire Emblem, so I played it like one of those games. Once I realized that Into the Breach is absolutely not a tactics game is when I really started to love the game and understand its brilliance. Into the Breach is a puzzle game, where from the first move on you can play perfectly or at least near perfectly to win. If you make too many mistakes turn after turn your chance at being able to win dwindles. Once I understood this, I began taking my time with each turn and tried my best to determine the most successful move. Even with knowing this, the game is still incredibly challenging as there are so many important decisions to make constantly throughout a run. Do you let your best pilot die, taking a hit to save an attack on your energy? Do you try to line up a high damage play on the next turn, risking the enemy moving out of your reach? Do you focus on the side objectives, or risk skipping them in the hope that all your mechs surviving and maintaining high energy will be all you need to win? It’s just smart addicting gameplay, with a small easy set of rules that you can pick up and learn quickly. With tons of different mechs to unlock, different difficulty levels, and multiple islands to save, the game has a staggering amount of depth and replay value. I’ve honestly only scratched the surface of the greatness of Into the Breach, and it may have been even higher on my list had I spent more time with it.

4. Monster Hunter World

Being my second Monster Hunter game, I knew what I was getting into with World. Thankfully they removed or changed a lot of the annoying parts of Monster Hunter making an easier, more accessible version with World. Unfortunately, they somehow made getting a multiplayer game going with friends more difficult than it was on a 3DS. The decisions they made with the multiplayer are confusingly bad and really hurt an otherwise remarkable game. The appeal of Monster Hunter is mastering all the different weapons and mastering all the fights with countless monsters. It is a very difficult game, filled with grinding and RNG loot, but it is a game where you improve as a player because of your skill, not just because of your stat screen. I appreciate the difficult challenges Monster Hunter offers, and I appreciate them even more now that I can face the challenges with a controller in my hand on a big TV instead of on a tiny 3DS screen. The Kulve Taroth raid was one of the coolest things I took part in this year in gaming, and all of the events and new weapons and outfits added over time were fun and kept the game going for months after it came out. I obsessively grinded monsters over and over just to complete armor sets (I think I ran the Kulve Taroth event about 20 times) and I even pushed into the post end game content, trying out different builds and fighting the toughest versions of some of the monsters. Monster Hunter is this incredibly unique series that feels like an RPG, action game, and MMO raids fights all rolled into one. Even when it feels clunky or nonsensical at times, the feeling of defeating an Elder dragon after a forty-minute fight is like nothing else in any other game. I’m excited to see what the expansion has to offer, and hopefully in the sequel they use modern day multiplayer mechanics instead of the nonsense they implemented with World. Also, the cats are dope.

3. Slay the Spire

I love card games, I love deck-building, and I enjoy run based games. It’s easy to see why Slay the Spire is my favorite run-based game ever. Although I’ve beat the game with all three classes multiple times, I still pop back into the game to see new updates and just go for a run or two. With hundreds of cards and relics to be able to find on any given run, there are dozens upon dozens of different builds to try to achieve victory with, each with their own unique playstyle. You can build a combo deck that focuses on you playing low cost cards and continuously drawing through your deck, you can build a defensive deck that allows you to hurt the enemy based on your armor, you can build a deck where you hurt yourself to deal damage, you can create a deck where you store up your energy for one massive kill shot…I could go no and on. On top of an excellent base game, there are ascension runs that add modifiers increasing the games difficult, custom games where you can combine your own rules such as preset decks or card drafts or combined modifiers, and a daily challenge. When you combine all the different cards, relics, random events, modifiers, and different enemies, no run ever feels the same. At the same time the game really feels like there are hundreds of decks that could lead you to victory and experimenting is half of the fun. I am not the type of person that goes back to a game after they beat it, but I kept returning to Slay the Spire throughout the year. It doesn’t even leave early access until later this month and it is a perfect example of early access done right. They just recently added another level to the Spire in a patch so I still have new content to see. For anyone who likes card games and run based games this is an absolute must play.

2. Red Dead Redemption II

Red Dead Redemption II is one of my favorite games of all time and also one of the most frustrating, annoying games I’ve ever played. The more time I spent with the game the more I came to the conclusion that the writing, story, voice acting, facial animation, world exploration, and discovery were some of the best, if not the best in any game I’ve ever played. I also came to the conclusion that the gameplay, controls, and mission design are absolutely terrible. There are so many amazing things this game does that it’s completely baffling that Rockstar still uses gameplay and mission design that feels the same as it did in GTA Vice City. The open world feels real and alive like no other game, with tons of secrets to find, random events and encounters, beautiful land to see and explore, and tons of options for the player to be able to interact with that world. The number of things to do and find is staggering and they all feel incredible, especially when the rewards are just the discoveries themselves or perhaps some cosmetic items. When you find something you feel excited because you found it yourself and so many of the secrets are very well hidden. The vastness and freedom provided by the open world is unrivaled, which is why it is so horrible when you play story missions that allow you no freedom whatsoever at any point to do anything. The game literally tells you where you have to stand, who to shoot, when you can shoot, what path you have to follow, and if you do anything other than what the game explicitly tells you to do you fail the mission. Coupled with the fact that most missions involve ten minutes of riding followed by 10 minutes of bad, swimmy shooting where its easier to repeatedly tap L2 to keep auto locking onto enemies then actually freely aim, most of the gameplay in these story missions is boring and forgettable. There were numerous instances of the controls pulling me out of the immersive world as well, like horse riding. Most times my horse would leap a fence with no problem. Other times? A 1-foot high rock would send my horse crashing. It took me the better part of 10 hours to stop accidentally pointing my gun at people and it took me nearly the entire game to remember to reset my loadout at the horse because for some reason the game likes to remove all your weapons at seemingly random times so you run off into battle without a rifle. I hated parts of this game and I shut it off multiple times out of frustration. It plays like its over a decade old and it doesn’t respect your time, at all. I’m still in the epilogue after doing nearly one hundred missions. It’s slow and dragged out beyond belief. How did it get so high on my list then? Arthur Morgan.

Arthur is my favorite character in any game ever and potentially my favorite character in any story ever. His redemption arc is incredible and some of the moments in the game are truly inspiring, but also incredibly sad. I’ve felt sad over game stories before, such as To the Moon and The Last of Us, but Arthur’s story hit me on an entirely different level to the point where I’m constantly thinking about his character and the story. I’ve watched a certain scene multiple times (where Arthur talks to the Nun about how he’s dying and how he’s afraid. It is the most heartbreaking, inspiring, powerful moment in any game ever) and I keep replaying it in my mind. I’ve even considered going back and restarting the game, when I don’t really enjoy playing the game. Yet I want to experience Arthur’s journey again, and find all the secrets I missed and partake in the tons of conversations and camp activities I missed out on. Seriously, I think something is wrong with me. If it weren’t for the numerous things I strongly disliked about this game, it would have won my game of the year and it wouldn’t have been close. Having it be my #2 game this year despite it starring my favorite playable character of all time is really unfathomable, but here we are. And I can’t stop talking about the damn thing.

1. God of War

God of War was the one game this year that felt like the total package. It has everything I want in a single player game. Great story, awesome characters, challenging fights, interesting side content, meaningful exploration, and fun gameplay. The story kept me excited from start to finish and I think it is astounding that the developers were able to take Kratos, a character known for not having any personality or story other than being angry, and turn him into an actual person with emotions, feelings, and reasons for his behavior. I think most of the interactions between him and Atreus are powerful and the story arc between the two is well earned. The writing is sad, funny, surprising, and is able to combine big budget popcorn action with mystery, emotion, and life lessons. While I don’t think all parts of the story are told perfectly, I think it is the second-best story told this year and the one story that constantly had me eager to play just so I could see what twist would happen next. On top of an excellent main tale, the world is filled with interesting side stories about dragons, dwarves, and gods. The backstory you get to hear while traveling around the lake is always entertaining, and the game is able to be funny and smart when it needs to be. Although the world is mostly dead, it is quiet in ways that make it feel like an old, lived in place, filled with history and stories to tell. The atmosphere has a mystery to it and also a sadness that kept me eager to explore. This game is probably the best example of being able to mix bombastic, thunderous action sequences, with extremely quiet moments of exploration and character building. Most importantly, the game’s combat is fun, unique, and challenging in ways the original trilogy wasn’t. The Valkyrie battles were some of the most satisfying moments for me in gaming in 2018 and I spent hours running through the Niflheim mists until I completed everything. Any critiques I have about the game are minor things that can be easily retooled or balanced in a sequel, such as making more of the loot matter and fixing the early pacing issues. I was never annoyed or bored when I was playing the game, which for a game I spent around 50 hours with is pretty incredible. The ending leaves tons of unanswered questions that I am excited to see where it goes with the sequel.