Every year has been a challenge to play video games with the available time outside of work and engagements. Since I joined Giant Bomb in 2012, I have managed to play through a number of video games despite a majority of time sucked away by work. In years past, I was able to find decent pockets of time to delve into gaming, hence I was able to complete over 20 games from 2013 to 2017 and was able to list out a satisfactory list of my favorite games for those years. In the back of my mind, I knew this pace would not hold. This year was the first year where I felt the weight of the world finally get the best of me.
A year ago, I was assigned to take over work for the company’s Southern California region. I held court on how their processes were last year, but this year I had to commit more of my time and resources to improve that region’s processes which included a quick three-day turnaround trip to their Irvine office to sort things out with the project managers over there. Constantly having to juggle work from two different regions has now taken a significant toll with my time. This year, I have spent more of my weekend time coming into the office to catch up on the non-stop waves of work. Work combined with an increase of other engagements (music concerts, sporting events, week visit to Los Angeles) have further hampered my game time and progress. Hence this year has been my least amount of games I was able to complete in a good while.
Stemming from the increased workload, the two genres that got hit the hardest this year are fighting games and Japanese RPGs. Last year, I somehow played through three JRPGs (Persona 5, Etrian Odyssey V, Fire Emblem Echoes which carried over to January 2018) while managing to squeeze in Guilty Gear Xrd REV2 in the middle of numerous games that I poured many hours into. This year I barely played Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[st] and a bit of BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle but unable to play the genre’s other numerous offerings, nor could continue to play recent other fighting games that still get playtime or have changed due to balance and roster updates. On the JRPG front, I was limited to only Dragon Quest XI.
As I was compiling my GOTY list, I ran into another problem. In years past, I felt like I played enough of a game to feel confident enough to include a game onto my year-end list. This year, I made the concession to include games on my list that both I have not played enough of or to its conclusion to fill it out. Part of me feels uncomfortable compiling such a list, but as the reality of my limited gaming time potentially decreasing in the near future, such concessions have to be made. Besides, the games still made enough of an impression on me to include them on the list. GOTY lists are celebrations, as I’ll do my best to treat this list as such despite my lamentations.
Writer’s Notes
1 - I have decided to not include the following games into consideration for GOTY 2018.
2 - My sincere apologies to the following 2018 games that I could not find the time to play or haven’t played enough of to adequately judge.
3 - Acknowledgment of the 2018 games I did put some time into.
Showing 1-10 of 10 items
[#10] It was a hard decision to include SSBU onto the ten spot, but I feel the overwhelming package of Smash with its large roster size, the sheer amount of content, the finding out the hundreds of nods throughout Nintendo and guest characters wins out over the other games that were in the running for the tenth spot. Even though I haven’t unlocked the entire roster nor played much of its content, the sheer amount of content of its World of Light and finding out the spirits that were selected along with unlocking the main cast and the forthcoming additional characters (Persona 5’s Joker certainly helps extend my interest) helps in keeping at Smash Ultimate well into 2019. For a game that is competitive at heart, it’s surprising that the single player adventure mode would be the mode that would make this Smash worthwhile. SSBU’s World of Light mode is a wonderful single player mode that is surprisingly satisfying in multiple ways. The main roster characters you awaken in this mode will also unlock for you if you haven’t unlocked them via challenge. The map is large and filled with so many spirits to unlock and varying battles that matches the “spirit” and keeps the battles from getting stale quick. This mode makes Ultimate more valuable than other Smash games in that it gives folks who don’t play with others often have something to work for by themselves that other Smash games did not offer. Otherwise Ultimate would have been another Smash game where I’ll play for a little bit then completely not bother with it any longer. Props to Nintendo for seeing where Smash can do much more than a party or headcore competitive game. The rest of Ultimate’s package is impressive in varying degrees. The decision to unlock the entire roster is a decision that works in its favor that pushes players to dive into the game more. Ultimate comes packaged with every stage and relevant material with its roster, it’s nice for Nintendo to go above and beyond the pack in over 800+ songs that make Ultimate work as a Spotify lite for players to listen to their personal favorite songs. My personal knocks against Ultimate at its core looks and feels like a big update to Smash Wii U and I found the game hard to play with the Joycons and pushed me to purchase a Switch pro controller in order to feel comfortable playing Smash. I only cracked the surface and I may not be able to achieve everything the Smash Ultimate offers, but the promise of what’s to come is enough for me to stay interested for the time being.
[#09] I took a gamble on acquiring Marvel’s Spider-Man (bought it on sale) as I neither know much about the large Spider-Man lore or have much affection in playing open-world action games. Insomniac deserves a ton of credit for developing a game that is easy to jump into and builds upon the player’s skill set and challenges gradually along with a decent story and tons of content for the player to engage. While I felt the story beats to be odd and had some issues around the traversal, combat, and content buildup in some ways, I still found my way enjoying what the game offered. This game may not have blown me away to push its way up further on my list, but it’s a game that I enjoyed playing and respect the difficulty of producing a big licensed game fun for almost everyone. My favorite aspects of Marvel’s Spider-Man is its gradual buildup of the player skill set and the freedom of letting the player play at their own leisure. I was afraid from the on-set on the number of buttons to press under numerous situations was going to be overwhelming and hamper my enjoyment of the game, yet the opposite happened. All the controls under different situations feel right, works mostly as intended, and is fun to play. There are certain issues, such as wrangling control and camera while traversing up buildings and swinging around in a few instances and in combating hordes of enemies, but for the most part the game plays and controls wonderfully. It’s also great that folks can play the game however they choose, sometimes there are moments where you want that breather and want to swing around Manhattan or tackle side content. All of the content is well worked into the game that it’s enticing to go for everything it offers, it’s a lot but never feels overstuffed to make up the value around its story missions. I was relieved that the game delivered on the gameplay front because I felt a bit cold with its story. It’s far from the worst story ever developed but it didn’t quite resonate with me as much as it did. The boss fights and stealth missions were easily my lowlights gameplay-wise with Spider-Man. Not everything hit with me, but it won me over in the areas where it counted most. Marvel’s Spider-Man has that summer action movie flick feel, a massive production (I though the production in this game is excellent, as it should) that’s not going to win the major awards, but delivers the action that folks will come away satisfied. It was far from my overall game of 2018, but it was definitely worth the price of admission to buy and play.
[#08] Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon is an impeccable project that serves as excellent filler for the main Bloodstained game and excellent homage to the NES Castlevania games. It nails the old-school Castlevania to a tee that it will please fans of the older games and presents itself nicely as an icebreaker to those not familiar with the influential franchise. But Curse of the Moon isn’t just a straight up copy of Castlevania, there are a few neat tweaks worked on top that makes it stand out on its own. As a person who always admired the Castlevania franchise from afar (I never put into significant time into the few Castlevania games I played), this serves as a great substitute to get a feel for those games and an excellent game to play. As a callback to the 8-bit style of games, players will have to deal with certain gameplay traits from back in the day. I welcome the feel of character movements feeling sluggish, the constant mindset of timing your jumps and attacks, and generally gutting through areas with the slimmest of health. Luckily for most folks, CotM doesn’t adhere the 8-bit spirit to a tee. I would not have been quite as enthused for the game if it did not come with a few modern gaming features to make the experience more than being bearable. CotM thankfully offers an easy difficulty for folks who want to play the game up to its conclusion, which I took up on when I was hitting a rough patch playing the Nightmare Mode run. I also enjoyed the interplay of switching between the members throughout the game, with certain member’s skillsets are required to get through certain areas where they are the only ones with the ability to do so. For most folks, I would assume their journey through CotM is playing and rotating through all four members. Though I love the penalty for losing that character if they die on stage until all members died, I feel at certain areas and boss fights that left to certain characters they are extremely limited in whatever capabilities on hand to handle certain situations. CotM also offers multiple endings depending on some early actions the player can decided to undertake, which is nice for folks who enjoy the game and are looking to dig into it a bit more. It nails the 8-bit aesthetics to a tee: the sound effects, music, font, pixel art… the whole nine years. With Konami far from being the once great video game company they were, and their classic franchises languishing within, this is as close to a new old-school Castlevania game we can get.
[#07] I’m still amazed on how much I still enjoy playing the Forza Horizon games in spite of how the gameplay and events remain the same. The combination of an open world, playing the game at your own leisure, the variety and quantity of content of driving disciplines and events all make the Forza Horizon formula still fun to play after four games. I would be satisfied if FH4 was more of the same from FH3, but the tweaks to discipline progression, additional “story” content, and the seasons/weather changes are welcome additions onto Horizon’s already packed content. The driving and events may feel the same throughout the franchise, but FH4 delivers its content in a different way that makes it the most palatable and pleasing Horizon game to play. FH4’s tears down its game progression completely from FH3 and the results may vary. I didn’t mind FH3’s progression where everything you did goes into an overall progress well for an area, which made it fun to focus on that area to compete at and see what unlocks. I favor FH4’s model where each driving discipline has its own progression. So if you only want to race cross-country, FH4 makes that happen and it never forces the player to play further into the other disciplines. FH4’s story chapters add more racing variety, each with their own racing spin. I also love the season shifts that adds their flavor in season specific challenges that makes players have to adjust on how they conduct themselves in events and exploring in the free open world. I had a hell of a time with FH3, but these meaningful additions and changes has me favoring FH4’s experience slightly. Outside of tinkering and re-working the Forza Horizon experience, my major criticism I’ll lay on FH4 is that even with the thoughtful tweaks, it largely feels more of the same. I haven’t put in as much time into FH4 this year compared to the time I spent with FH3 a few years back, but I felt major deja vu on how much I’m enjoying Forza’s driving and Horizon’s open-world setting. I also feel the United Kingdom setting to be bland even if it does copy FH3’s areas of city, beach, forest, mountains, and open space. I haven’t touch any of the multiplayer aspects, but FH does a good job providing enough events to keep solo players interested and not forcing them to join any of the multiplayer events. It’s still fun for what it does, though I’m hoping the next FH game does something more than being a big, fun celebration of open world racing.
[#06] Tag fighting games always gave me more headaches than one-on-one fighting games, mostly because I felt in spite of promised accessibility, a combination of the meta in team composition and the execution in properly calling assists or chaining combos between two or more characters. Now that BBTAG has matured where the same trappings have crept up, I still managed to find minor success during the game’s beginnings and this is the first tag FG that I have truly enjoyed and able to play more than a few curiosity sessions. It also helps that it was able to fill in a majority of content from three well-liked anime fighting game franchises and adding in RWBY cast and material in seamlessly. I was impressed on how quickly I picked up BBTAG’s setup and quickly was able to pull some small but neat tag moments that I never got to pull off with consistency in other tag games. ArcSys did an incredible job of reworking character movesets, a set of battle mechanics, and control scheme that trims it down to an accessible and comfort level where most players that are barely accustomed to fighting games to easily jump in and perform. Even if it feels that a lot of the deeper fighting game aspects were cut in order to make the tag game play easier, there’s still some deep tactics that largely revolves are the tag mechanic that will fill stronger FG folks will find and dig into. It also helps that all characters can work with each other to an extent that won’t discourage folks from not playing particular tag combinations because they just don’t work with each other. For everything that BBTAG does right, there are a number of underlying issues that prevent me from fully enjoying the game, even if it’s the first FG tag game I loved to play. While BBTAG does an excellent job of making the entire cast play with each other, but as you drill down, there’s a crop of tag combinations that work much better than others. The trimmed movesets and assists also favor certain characters over others and hence there’s probably going to be limited character representation in top-level competition. BBTAG’s story mode is stale and the tutorials aren’t quite as useful and to assist players who were hoping to push their talents to a higher level. Despite the issues with the game at a high-level vantage point, the game still won me over that I can jump in and have fun playing a tag game where I can execute moves, assists, and tag combos with ease with my team.
[#05] The unfortunate reality for games such as GRIS is that it lacks a lot of characteristics that we allude a normal video game to entail. Its gameplay lacks challenge and gameplay, only takes a few hours to finish, and relying heavily on presentation, production values, and storytelling to make its pitch to the player. If I had played more impactful games this year, GRIS would have not made the cut. Though I can understand knocking GRIS for not being much of a game, I would argue on its behalf that it has enough of a game along with excellent production values that would make bigger developers jealous of, and an intense emotional buildup that pays off at the end. GRIS hands down is the most visually striking game of 2018. I could not stop thinking on how gorgeous the game looked throughout its short story campaign. The progression from grey to adding bits of color as you reached a checkpoint was a nice visual touch of how much the developers flexing their artistic muscles while serving as a progress in the story on fighting forward in order for your world to be more vibrant. I also loved how the visual progression had interplay with the gameplay, though at times the art direction conflicts with the gameplay in unfortunate fashion, such as obscuring view and not making a clear distinction of platforms and boundaries. While everyone will laud GRIS for its visuals, I found the soundtrack and sound design to be equally as impressive and essential to what it wants to deliver. The score is stirring and appropriate while coming across neat sound design uses found throughout the game. Everything production wise is done with much meticulation and care and it shows. On one hand, it’s nice to see games like GRIS going for what they want to do and putting it out as a video game. On the other hand, it’s hard to justify it as a video game considering it lacks certain challenges, objectives, and other things folks tend to look for in a video game. I would argue for GRIS’s behalf that they do a competent job in the gameplay department, especially when the protagonist gains power ups that sorely adds much need spice to a mostly non-challenging platforming venture. It’s not going to win folks who were hoping to find some sort of substantial gameplay matching its impressive presentation, and others may not be receptive to its emotional string tugging and storytelling, but I think the developers probably weren’t too concerned about that audience. GRIS didn’t impress much on delivering an exciting gaming experience, it more than impressed me in other areas that exceed my expectations. The game’s buildup and release of its climax is definitely a standout moment alone that pushed me into including GRIS onto my list so late into this year.
[#04] We rarely look at video games as a medium to tell a raw and powerful message. It also takes a courageous director to slowly reveal its message through a puzzle platformer utilizing self-harm and a touch of Twin Peaks inspiration. Underneath its mad concoction is a journey that many of us may not have delved deep as The Missing drags J.J. though. I did not pick up what The Missing was alluding to until the final sequence of events, that’s where it all came together and entrenched its mark. There’s a reason why the game pits through the player through hell and its message upon startup is something we all should strive for with each other. In gameplay terms, The Missing plays out very similar to Playdead’s style of puzzle platformer where the player is tasked to solve the puzzle by scouting the area and figure out the sequences to advance to the next area. SWERY ratchets up Playdead’s formula by a unique and gruesome idea, to injure the protagonist. Some of the ways the game mutilates the protagonist is hard to take at times, but it produces some great puzzle platforming moments that I never imagine playing. Who knew that having to reduce the protagonist down to her head to navigate an area or purposely burning her to burn an obstacle would be mindblowing gameplay moments? I did find the puzzles become less clear from the middle of the game onward, which I had to look up resources to find out the solution. Minor puzzle gripes aside, I found the puzzle platforming satisfying, but finding out the underlying meaning of the self-harm mechanic at the end made me appreciate what SWERY had done even more. The Missing wraps up its brilliance with sublime yet satisfying storytelling. I loved the use of J.J.’s cell phone text messages as a device to slowly reveal and flesh out J.J.’s identity, particularly her texts with her mother. I feared the worst when I thought I reached a particular conclusion between J.J. and her friend Emily, but man I never thought it would actually entail something more after that moment. Once I saw what the finale entailed, I had multiple emotions rush through my head: amazement, relief, sorrow, anguish. The Missing isn’t the first to ask its players to be more empathetic to others, but I hope it lays the groundwork to push more game developers to craft more games to send urgent, compassionate messages to each other. “This game was made with the belief that nobody is wrong for being what they are.” If I did have to levy any faults with The Missing, I think it’s just a matter if folks are all-in with SWERY’s unique brand of storytelling and/or its in-your-face torture tied in gameplay. The Missing was not the most impactful game for me to play, but it was the most impactful game to me in its ambition. It more than deserves a spot and mention as one of my games of 2018.
[#03] Tetris is a hard game to iterate from because its core gameplay is simple and perfect. Most Tetris games have geared to adding on top of or bending its core, such as non-Four Tetriminos, playing Tetris in a sphere, and even combining it with another celebrated puzzle franchise to spice Tetris up. I never thought that bring Tetris into a different direction, immersing it with mesmerizing visuals and sublime audio, would more than re-energize my appreciation with Tetris. It’s one thing to play Tetris; it’s another thing to make playing Tetris feel like an out of world experience. The extra sensation while playing Tetris easily places Tetris Effect as one of the few best iterations of Tetris ever produced. Tetris Effect offers two modes, each of them impactful in their own ways. Journey mode puts the player to play Tetris around some of the most visual and auditory sensory stuff going on as Tetris is going on. It was an odd moment that I was admiring the themes going on, yet not be so distracted by them that I can still focus and concentrate on playing Tetris. I also enjoyed the challenge of switching up the drop speed levels and the focus power-up is a nice element for scoring and trying to get a bit of breathing space. It should not take proficient Tetris players more than a two hours or so to play through Journey mode in its entirety, but the journey wasn’t much about getting a high score but playing well and enjoying the themes play out as you play along. A lot of folks will mention more about how much they enjoyed the sensory aspects of the game, and while I credit Tetris Effect for doing a great job in doing that and my major crux on why I enjoyed it, the game’s other mode should not be overlooked. I liken Effects mode as targeted Tetris exercises, and they’ve actually helped in improving my Tetris play a bit. I’m now able to flip pieces clockwise and counter-clockwise with more confidence and better acclimated to handle Tetris at higher speeds. Some of the exercises have shown me different ways to clear lines that I never thought imaginable. It’s a slight bummer that avatars can only be unlocked by participating weekends, but at least playing them whenever accumulates toward your overall level. Tetris Effect would be cool but alright if it only had the Journey mode, but the Effects mode was the mode that solidified my purchase and glowing thoughts of the game. The only thing that probably holds Tetris Effect back for me is the product’s limited scope. While the execution of its scope is tredemous, I can briefly resign that it’s just more Tetris. I counteract that argument that there’s more terribly produced Tetris games out there than good, and it’s great that this and Puyo Puyo Tetris and putting Tetris back in good graces. The beautiful visuals and audio helps, but Tetris Effect made playing Tetris FUN again. It’s been awhile.
[#02] Dragon Quest XI was the only JRPG game I managed to play this year, which was a hard choice in itself as I had doubts if I could play the game at a pace where I could make constant strides in yet hoping not to eat up so much of my time to it. Though DQXI took some considerable amount of time to finish, I rarely felt the game was wasting my time. I was shocked on how much this game wanted to focus on its storytelling, characters, and giving players a sense of being involved in moving this fantasy-esque story along. The game does falter a bit leaning towards the rigidity of 90s JRPG design, but it won me over by giving me a grand sense of adventure that I rarely experience from the crop of video games I played this year. In the past few years, I have awarded JRPGs onto my GOTY list for more on the strength of their gameplay and the amount of content to play around its gameplay over their storytelling. I was surprised to how invested into DQXI’s story I was from the start. DQXI is still a long game to play through, but I never felt the story or game dragged along over any case game design or story wise. In fact, I think the story moves at a brisk pace. The characters (despite the heavy-UK dialect voice localization efforts) all have their special personality and charm and do their jobs to push the story along. I was shocked on some of the turns the writers took with DQXI’s story, and all of them were executed well and makes sense within the context at their points of the story. It certain helps that you can venture through the game at your own pace and not bogged down with random encounters. I’m glad that DQXI succeeded in the story and character department because it the game is a bit stale in the gameplay department. There are a number of positives: not having to deal with random encounters, map indicators to tell you where to go to progress to the next part of the story, the crafting mini-game to produce new equipment or improve upon existing ones, the numerous campfires found in the open world. Where DQXI falls unusually flat is its battle system and world design. Both elements feel like a return to the classic 90s JPRG formula, which is not bad and works as designed here but it ends up being stale, especially in its battle system where it ends up being more of a battle of attrition instead of having a wrench to spice up the system. The world, while adventurable for the most part, still feels linear as many areas are there to serve the next part of the story rather than places you can dig deeper into. None of DQXI’s shortcomings ruined my enjoyment of playing through the game and my wonderment of its characters and the events unfolding. I likened my experience with DQXI to reading a gripping fantasy book. The volume of the adventure is big, but there’s so many neat moments that occur to give players a great sense of comradery with the party members and adventure as it moves the player along numerous towns and areas to see what event unfolds. DQXI may not have succeeded in providing a mindblowing gameplay experience, but it succeeded in being the most adventurous game I have played in years. Though it me over 70 hours to finally finish, it was all time well spent.
![Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[st]](https://www.giantbomb.com/a/uploads/scale_super/8/87790/3102648-box_unist.png)
[#01] Building upon an strong, established material is always a tricky endeavor, a minor tweak here and there can easily sour what was already great. It’s rare to see a game sequel to find pockets of where it can improve upon and enhance the strengths from its predecessor, but Soft Circle French Bread manages to find those crevices in UNIEL and implements them onto UNIST. UNIST stood out to me on how tight its package is: the new characters blend in well with the existing cast, the character tweaks makes the overall cast more balanced and competitive, an impressive and extensive tutorial that digs deep into more into the complex fighting game techniques frequently used in top-competitive play, and fighting that feels great to play with neat mechanics that adds surprising depth. Despite my limited time with UNIST this year, I easily felt how impactful the additions and tweaks that brings this niche anime fighter into new heights. The highlight of UNIST’s tight and almost complete package is its comprehensive tutorials. Yes, there’s a few other games that also offer comprehensive tutorials, but I haven’t heard any other fighting games explain and demonstrate top-level fighting game techniques such as option-selects, whiff punishes, etc. I appreciate French Bread for going so deep into the technique well to show how these apply in their game, though I wish they could’ve taken a step further and shown how these techniques apply to their entire roster. French Bread didn’t just step up their game in including a deep general tutorial package, but they also stepped up their character mission guides. It’s not just a group of combos the developers come up with, but splitting combos into difficulties, notating what the combo is, and is mostly viable in actual competition. I also love the brief cliff notes on five items the players should employ while playing as that character is a nice touch that I think all fighting games should provide. UNIEL was already a great and fun game to play, but from a top-level competitive viewpoint, the game had slight issues on how wide the character balance was. I’m not an expert UNIST player, but based off murmurs it feels like UNIST’s roster can go toe-to-toe with each other a bit better. Even a character that’s considered low in the tier list can still be a viable character in the right hands. (I kept seeing how it was great and very impressive for an Enkidu player to place third in the side-run EVO 2018 tournament.) It’s great to hear that you can pick any character and you can succeed with proper training and execution. UNIST maintains its strong roster balance with the inclusion of four new characters. While there are characters that follow certain 2D fighting game archetypes, everyone has their own strong style that it’s fun to dig into what your character can do and what others can do to you. French Bread did an impeccable job making UNIST more well-rounded product and kept its excellent combat gameplay intact. There’s something about its fights that feels measured in its chaos. I believe the mechanics in and around the fights that rarely results in a lackluster bout. It’s hard enough to fight and defeat your opponent, but having to fight for GRD and knowing when to utilize certain fighting mechanics adds another fighting layer that players have to account for. Having to account and fight for an intrinsic benefits within battles should sound detrimental to the experience, but somehow UNIST makes it work within the battle that it feels part of the battle at hand. It’s a shame that UNIST couldn’t work in an Arc System Work’s online lobby style options and the online netplay is hit or miss, but at least they work and you can have a casual bout up to seven others or test your might in ranked. I’ll admit UNIST was an inspired choice as my number one game of 2018. UNIST just stood out to me a bit more than the others since I feel like I got more out what I thought I was getting for. The fighting remains great, the new characters are great, the character balance is tightened, serviceable online options, and an incredible game and character tutorials that should be the standard for other fighting games should include in their respective games. Lest I forget the crazy character designs and personalities, a story mode, and an excellent soundtrack that I think can compete with the other games of this year with incredible music. UNIST wasn’t the game I had spent the most time with, or had the most fun with, but I found so many neat things big and small with my short time with UNIST that in the end, I decided it was enough to earn as my favorite game of 2018.