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Where Red Dead 2 had higher highs, God of War is an experience that is great throughout its entire run time.
My history with the franchise is limited, I played through the original and the sequel, but didn't play much of the third game or the many offshoots.
Kratos has been made into a character worthy to care about, but the narrative really isn't about him as much as the characters that surround him. The lore of the world is enthralling, and the combat is exceedingly satisfying. Coupled with a narrative that is continually pushing you along at a quick pace, and it's easy to see why a game like God of War reviewed as well as it did.
The fact of the matter is that God of War ticks all of the boxes to be a "good game," but it's the heart and soul poured into the small moments that make it great . Whether it's Kratos and Atreus's story times on the boat, or the candid looks into the dynamic between the father and the son, these moments are what make the world so engaging moreso than the larger story of Norse gods being dicks to everyone (which is historically accurate, more or less).
I struggled a lot whether this should finish second or first on the list, but God of War grabbed me and didn't let me go until I saw credits, and I can't say as much about...
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Red Dead Redemption II should be the winner of this list. I struggle to simply praise its "Story line," because it truly is so much more than that. Its narrative isn't necessarily breaking new ground, it wears its spaghetti western influences on its sleeves, but it does it in a way that forces you to become deeply invested in these characters that you know have no true way out.
Everything about the game demonstrates a complete commitment to the vision of what the developers aspired the game to be. It's almost an exercise in auteurship, despite being constructed by a legion of people, in what culminates in what could be described as the most expensive, mainstream "indie game" of all time.
Arthur Morgan is an absolutely unforgettable protagonist with an even more unforgettable tale, but the title is held back by repetitive mission design and clumsy controls.
If Rockstar had demonstrated as much restraint with its number of "Ride into a shootout" missions that it did while constructing its narrative, this would have been a slam dunk number one.
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There's always trepidation about going into a late entry into a series that has been running as long as Yakuza 6, and it's doubly so when you haven't played 3 of the prior entries.
Yakuza 6, however, is almost a reboot. The engine has moved on from its PS3 roots and become something truly worthy of being called next-gen, and a new locale and cast of characters allow newer players to easily slip into the shoes of Kazuma Kiryu and understand ... most of what is going on.
It's a solidly told story that kept me entranced throughout, and the central mystery was one that I was very eager to get an answer to. That answer, however, is a bit underwhelming due to cultural differences that I'm not exactly privy on.
In addition, the new engine means a lack of content when compared to games like Yakuza 0, but what is there is delightfully Yakuza.
If it sounds like I'm being overly negative, it's because I'm comparing it largely to 0, which is one of the greatest games I have ever played. Yakuza 6 can be compared to that game, which is enough rationale to have it high up on this list.
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In 2013 a game about being a border customs officer completely consumed my life. Lucas Pope, the creator of Papers, Please, followed up the absolute masterpiece with something that, while it didn't have the same lasting affect on my entire life from that moment forward, truly made me feel like a kid again discovering a new genre that pushes the limits of what video games can be.
Massive run-on sentences aside, Return of the Obra Dinn is an absolute masterclass in ... whatever the hell it is that it's trying to do. It's a detective game that presents its findings through player intuition rather than endless text boxes that funnel you towards the conclusion.
While it's no Papers, Please (in my opinion), Return of the Obra Dinn is something that I believe everyone with even a passing interest in puzzle/mystery games should experience.
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I thought I had largely outgrown Smash Brothers, and I still might be right about that.
Despite finding the core gameplay stale, and a lack of real affinity for many of the Nintendo characters, Super Smash Brothers Ultimate delivers something that I found completely missing from Smash 4. Progression and single player content worth playing.
The game is like a museum for all things tangentially-related-to-Nintendo. I can easily lose myself in the My Music tab just listening to one of the hundreds of songs lovingly packed into the game.
World of Light offers an inventive way to bring existing characters into Smash without having them directly in the game, and it's always neat to see how the game will adapt its parameters to make you buy into the fact that you're fighting a Zero-Suit Samus that is behaving like The Boss from MGS3 would if she were in Smash.
Unlocking the spirits, discovering remixes of old favorite songs from Nintendo titles and beyond, and experiencing a lot of the personalized single player content truly is what Smash Bros Ultimate special, but at the end of the day I'm still playing Smash, and that's kind of the part I like the least about it.
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Nothing can quite sell you on VR like ... Tetris?
Look, I can't really say anything that will make Tetris Effect seem as significant as it is. It's the very definition of "More than the sum of its parts."
The music, the visuals, the transitions, it all just combines into this experience that just feels ... Important?
The game has a clear message, and that message is completely hypnotic. I highly recommend any PS4 owner picks it up, but especially so in VR.
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This is my biggest shame in terms of video games in 2018. I love the Yakuza series to death, but I just haven't forced myself to back and finish Yakuza Kiwami 2.
By some accounts this is the best story told in a Yakuza game other than Zero, and that alone is exciting to hear.
What I can say is that it offers so much more variety in game activities than 6 did due to the continued development of the Dragon Engine.
I will finish Yakuza Kiwami 2, and I'll probably kick myself for having it at number seven afterwards, but it is what it is.
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So I'm bending the rules here. I largely played Fortnite's Battle Royale mode in 2018 when the Switch port came out.
The complaints about Fortnite are absolutely justified. The shooting feels bad, the technical limits on the Switch port can make the game look downright ugly at times, and some of the late game strategies like aggressive building can just slow the game to a halt as this game of cat and mouse becomes more of "hey I hope the circle closes on his tower instead of my identical tower."
Regardless, it's very clear why Fortnite is as big as it is. It provides a formula that took the world by storm with practically zero entry cost. The implementation of microtransactions are done in a completely non-game breaking way and it's just a ton of fun to play with a few friends.
I'm thoroughly burned out on Fortnite now. I doubt I'll ever seriously play it again, but it made for a fun activity during the down times of the year.
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I am terrible at fighting games. It's like trying to learn another language with a different alphabet to me. I can appreciate high level mastery, and I've been able to grasp high level concepts, but putting them into movement has always been a problem.
Dragon Ball FighterZ fixes these problems by implementing a system that allows even a complete baby idiot like me to pull off some real cool shit.
The art style is perfection and the little details and throwbacks to the original anime are well appreciated. The story mode was pretty damn lame, and I had no real interest in getting my ass kicked online, but it's certainly the most fun I've had playing a traditional fighting game in a long, long time.
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Spider-Man had a lot of things going against it.
I've largely fallen out of favor with superhero-related content, open world game fatigue was personally pretty high at the time of its release, and the combat system looked fairly uninteresting to me while the web-swinging was the whole reason why I was interested.
The game shakes off the majority of these worries with ease. The world is extremely well written with many memorable characters, swinging around as Spider-Man has simply not felt nearly as good since Spider-Man 2 on the PS2.
I'm sure if I dove more into the game, it would be higher on this list, but the fairly generic open world missions hold it back from better something greater. For now, it's largely only "good."
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