2019 is almost over. HOLY... $#*%!!! It was an 'interesting' year for games. I played a lot of games throughout this year but not many that were actually released this year. I'll run down a quick list of games I played and a quick thought or two about them but I'm only going to award games released from the year proper.
Without further ado let's look at my games of 2019...
This year in games surely felt odd to me. There were no releases that I felt were truly great in any way. Gears 5 is a game that I don't have any enthusiasm for after finishing it but yet here it is winning game of the year. It was good but not great. I had higher hopes for Star War Jedi: Fallen Order but the technical issues and my struggles with the combat were just too much to make it higher on the list. The one game I just didn't get to that I really wish I had was Control. With the performance issues it had at launch time I just never looped back to it after they had a chance to improve things.
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Incomplete - I just started playing it and haven't finished it. So far the controls are bad. The graphics are ok as well as the story. If it had not been part of Game Pass I would not have even played this game.
The hottest of messes - It boggles my mind how bad this game was when it came out and the state that it is still in. This was EA's flagship game for the year and it was seen by many to be their answer to Destiny. The game did not play well and it was buggy. On top of that it was uninteresting. I have EA Access on Xbox One so I had up to ten hours to try it out. I made it through about half of that time and walked away from the game. It was glitchy, which has been somewhat fixed, but the story was boring and the game play just didn't feel good. It's sad to think about the expectations that this game had on it versus the results. The fact that it is already part of the EA Access vault is telling that EA can't just drop support but also can't get people to buy it and the only way to get people playing it to give away access to it. I still haven't played since it was added to the vault and I truly don't plan to either.
Staring into the - It was a novel concept to make a shooter that was run based. I didn't much care for the run based aspect and felt like it screwed you into playing the same part of the game over and over. That's not to say it was bad but rather it just wasn't something I wanted to play. Others really took to the game and enjoyed it, good for them.
Hoping for More but Getting Less - I really didn't have an interest in this game and honestly would not have played it if it had not been included in Game Pass. It felt like it was well built but it also felt like a game I just didn't care about. The shooting worked well but somehow felt weak. Melee combat felt better but more risky. The story seemed a bit confused and after a while I didn't quite get what I was supposed to be doing or why. After ten plus hours I turned it off never to return and I'm ok with that.
A Little Too Daunting - Basically you go around hunting monsters to get parts and such. It was fun for a bit but the endless loop of going on a hunt just seemed mundane. Going through the exact same environments to kill the same monsters over and over just wasn't my jam. The game worked well and ran well on every platform I played it on but overall it was just dis-interesting to me. I hope other people keep playing and enjoying it.
Oh, If Only - I had little expectations of this game but such high hopes. The story and how it was told was very good but two things held the game back in my mind. 1.) The technical issues with how poorly it ran. There were times when the framerate was in the single digits. Several times I got stuck against a wall and couldn't even see the fight I was supposed to be in. 2.) The combat was bad. I could never get the timing on the parry and dodges even after putting it on the easiest level. Had the game ran better this might have been my GOTY.
Not Quite There - As much as I loved and played the original game, this one did not hold up as well. I played regularly for the first few months and then trailed off. When I went back it still felt like it was not balanced properly and I could get mowed down by random enemies. Even though I bought the higher end package I never went and played out the additional story missions just because it didn't seem to matter. With Underground and Survival never coming back this game it was good but just fell flat.
Life of the - This was a short but clever game. Making your way through hell to out party the devil is a good enough concept but the game pulls it off in very entertaining way with some subtle twists and turns throughout it. Highly recommended since it is fairly short but very entertaining.
Greasing the - It wasn't the best Gears game ever but it also wasn't the worst. I loved the combat and the environments. Even most of the story was good, failing only at the end. Also, that skif was fun at first then became more a nuisance. It left the door open for the next game and it felt incomplete because of it. Overall, I enjoyed the game but felt like it still had issues.