I know 2021 was yet another strange year within the 2020’s for many. For me personally though, it was a pleasant if somewhat eventful year for me. I got a full-time promotion at my job and that felt great to achieve. It was also the “Year of the Pasta Maker” for me since I made lots of different fresh pasta dishes with my Kitchenaid mixer and honestly, I rarely go back to package pasta unless I don’t have lots of time. I also went to the state of Colorado for the first time ever while visiting my brother. It was amazing to witness the sights of the state for the first time seeing various state parks as well as enjoy a lot of pubs and grub within Fort Collins and the state. Colorado is freaking great!

For video gaming for me 2021 was nearly a complete opposite to how I played games in 2020. Two years ago I played 12 games total (all of which were games that came out that year) and I put A LOT of time into certain games. I put 250 Hours into Animal Crossing New Horizons and over 100 hours (and still counting to over 150 from last year) into my 2020 GOTY Cook, Serve, Delicious 3. Not a single 2021 release reached the 100 hour mile mark for, but that evens out because I played 23 games that came out last year and 36 games overall counting old games I checked out in 2021 too. Part of that was also me playing games on my bro’s PS5, who was lucky to get one while I wasn’t. But that’s fine, because if anything I’ll look back at 2021 as a great year in gaming despite me still not having a current gen console…yet. What really carried the weight this year included Game Pass which I finally signed up for and this was a stellar year for the service, the Switch having a few heavy hitters and the indie gaming scene once again shining bright. And as how I usually type one every year, here’s the annual MocBucket62’s top games of the year list for 2021. Though I want to clarify that historically I’ve written some hefty essays breaking down my favorite games from years past. 2020 had 3 mini essays for my top 3. So with this format, I’m gonna try to type 1-2 paragraphs per game with a “Favorite Moment(s)” section of me talking about my favorite moments from each game (save for the last game though, which will have a longer writeup).

THE MOST HONORABLE MENTION/The Plus 1-New Pokémon Snap:

Here’s the one game that was so close to making my top ten but not quite making it. I never played the original N64 game, but picked this one up to see why the Original Pokémon Snap is so beloved. Basically, you are playing a light gun shooter but instead of shooting your targets with bullets you’re shooting Pokémon with camera shots as well as getting the best pics of these pocket monsters. If you are getting a Pokémon to act abnormally (like bopping a sleeping Arbok with a flufffruit and making it fall) that is worth more stars. I had a really good time trying to figure out how to get the Pokémon to line up for some money shots or get them to act out of their zone. If lucky the Pokémon can be seen fighting each other up close (Pinsir and Heracross are NOT friends) or they’ll interact in some wholesome, cute interactions. I do wish that this game allowed for complete freedom to explore the safari that my Photographer is in rather than do the classic Pokémon Snap style of being transported thru a route and take as many photos as I can before going back to the center. It also feels kind of grindy to unlock more areas as I spent more time in certain zones than I’d like. But this was my go-to game for most of Spring and while it wasn’t quite top ten tier for me, I wanted to give it a special shout out paragraph as THE most honorable mention. Its got my boys Blastoise and Crawbrawler in it and you can feed them fruit. That’s rad.

Favorite Moment: Essentially getting a Blastoise out of the water cyclone at the Sunset Reef level. Once I figured it out, I got a glorious animation of a Squirtle on top of a spinning Blastoise shell and that Squirtle surfed on that flying Blastoise shell that was propelled by its sweet cannons. Definitely one of the key reasons why Squirtle and Blastoise are some of the best Pokemon.

#10 Death’s Door:

I picked up Death’s Door after seeing a lot of buzz for it when it launched in July. Though funny enough Death’s Door didn’t start out technically great for me. The very first time I booted up the game it booted me back to my Steam Page and during the game I had weird bugs such as the whole level turning black which was fixed with a simple quit and relaunch. But thankfully a patch came in sometime after release and I didn’t have any more technical issues. Death’s Door as a game is a satisfying Zelda like action-adventure game that also takes inspiration from Souls games thru the combat but feels accessible to avoid being too complicated. Also like From’s titles you collect souls as you slay enemies and the many great boss fights. It also has a simple yet lovely looking art style and some very pleasant music to accompany the journey as you are a sword wielding crow who is recently employed to reap the souls of those who are in denial that their time has come. Though there’s more weapons than just a sword as there’s hidden weapons scattered around the game, with the hammer being my favorite overall. It would be higher on my list if it had a map even though Acid Nerve made the intended choice not to include one and I wish the upgrades from the soul store felt more meaningful. But its still a testament to how solid Death’s Door is that its still on my top 10 I can see why so many people see it as one of the best indies of the year.

Favorite Moment: I managed to beat the Urn Witch first try. Which that alone is great but how I did was even more special. For 2/3’s of that fight, I had one 1 pip of health left. After getting beat up early on, I studied the Witch’s attack patterns and found secret ways of stunning her which all helped me take her out in the initial fight while knowing one more blunder would mean defeat. That alone felt awesome.

#9 Moonglow Bay:

For those who don’t know what Moonglow Bay is, it’s a relaxing fishing RPG where the player is a marital partner who is saddened that their fishing expert partner has disappeared for 3 years. After their daughter comes in to encourage them to start getting into fishing themselves, they rebuild the fishing business that their partner had once run and that becomes the central economic force of rebuilding the wore down community of the titular Moonglow Bay. Now granted for the technical faults Death’s Door had, Moonglow Bay was also guilty of having its bugs too. There were moments where I got stuck on geometry and couldn’t go nowhere which meant I had to load my save that was 10-15 minutes ago. But that’s a bug that would be terrible for someone whose last save was hours ago. I even sequence broke a boss fight by accident and when I fought the boss proper, I couldn’t progress (I restarted the fight and it went back to normal).

So why is Moonglow Bay at #9 despite its issues? Well honestly as someone who has done plenty of real-life fishing, I have wanted a Fishing centric RPG for years and this game nails that feeling of reeling in big and small fish. The normal act of fishing itself is exciting as you pull against the fish’s direction, and it was always a joy to see what I caught. Whether it be a real fish such as Atlantic Cod or one of the fake fish such as the Chilli Squid (a squid that looks like chili peppers that's also called pepper Fish) I got a kick of what I caught. Expect for Moon Eels, which are the Magikarps of Moonglow Bay. There’s also Trap Fishing, Cast Net Fishing and Ice Fishing to mix up the fishing out in the water. Fish can also be donated to an aquarium Animal Crossing style, be sold in a vending machine to earn money or be cooked which typically increase their monetary value. The cooking itself had a very calming element as I’d play some Cooking Mama style minigame to either wash, chop, fry, boil or bake my dishes and try to get 3 star ratings on cooking dishes such as Boiled Lobster and Spicy Fish Tacos (which because of this game I cooked in real life). More recipes also unlock after reaching certain mastery levels of previous dishes too. It also felt very rewarding to make enough money to either get a major boat upgrade or finance a repair of one of the town’s run-down buildings, roads or parks. I played this on Game Pass and while I won’t say you should check it out there since the XBOX version has yet to be updated last I checked. I’ll say check out this calming, voxel art Fishing RPG when it’s updated on Game Pass/XBOX or get the Steam version which is more up to date. Also, this is one of 2 great OST’s done by the wonderful Lena Raine. Give the Reeling It In track a listen.

Favorite Moment: My favorite moment came from what’s really a simple medium size fish catch in the game but it resonated with me big time. It was catching the Red Drum. For those who don’t know Red Drum (or Redfish) are a species of fish that can be found from the coast of Massachusetts to the Gulf of Mexico and typically have white bellies, amber-red backs and a spot or more next to their tail. It’s a fish that my family and I have a special fondness for whenever we go fishing and the fact that Red Drum made their gaming debut in Moonglow Bay as well as catching one for the first time was an amazing highlight for me. I acted like how many people were excited seeing Sora get announced for Smash to be honest ha. I also yelped in excitement seeing Permit be in the game too.

#8 Age of Empires 4:

10-13 year old me would be livid it he saw me not put a brand-new Age of Empires game at #1 let alone top 5. Age of Empires 2 and Age of Mythology hold special places in my brother and I’s hearts for the RTS genre as we spent hours either playing the games’ campaigns, doing skirmish matches or even customize a random battle for fun. After 16 years we finally get a new Age of Empires title, and it is an impressive return to form for the series. Clearly its catering to AOE2 fans since the setting is back to Medieval times and much of the base building and army production is like AOE2 as well. I’ve heard some folks complain that AOE4 played it too safe and should have gotten more experimental with the formula. But honestly as someone who hasn’t played AOE in a long time nor has touched the definitive editions, I’m happy that Relic played it mostly safe and it’s making me positively nostalgic for the series’ hay day back then. I love how the campaign is set up as its presentation is very History Channel in tone that provides a brief history on the campaigns such as the Norman Conquest and 100 Years War. I also really enjoyed finding ways to achieve the various campaign missions as I was patient and planned out how to achieve those goals. I also love the inclusion of the Art of War challenges which for certain challenges add an unexpected Speed-Run like focus for AOE by clearing objectives such as collecting resources to advance to the next age. This is also the one game on this list that I have yet to roll credits in yet as I’ve only beaten the Norman Campaign and am working on the 100 Years War. That said I’m thrilled AOE is back and glad this is a quality RTS that can be played on PC Game Pass. It’s a bummer there’s no map editor at launch though. Hoping that gets added.

Favorite Moment: That would have to be clearing the Norman Campaign. Especially beating the Second Battle of Lincoln as I managed to crush the rebels outside my fort with the forces I had. But then my economy got better as I got a small village outside my fort to help get more resources. From there I patiently produced a large army of Men-At-Arms, Longbowmen, Knights and Trebuchets to squash the French camps that kept sending troops to interrupt my army. It felt so good to bulldoze those bases after getting constantly annoyed with the same 5 Spearmen, 4 Archers and a battering ram invading to poke at my troops.

#7 Unpacking:

Unpacking is such a unique and soothing experience that I loved playing on Game Pass. Unpacking is a zen puzzle game where the player is a nameless woman who is as the game implies, unpacking a bunch of boxes and is putting away all her belongings. The puzzle part is finding out where to put things such as a bunch of books the lady owns or where her stuffed pig toy she’s had since childhood belongs. But what makes this stand out is that each level is a part of this woman’s life and uses environmental storytelling to show where this woman’s life goes without any spoken dialogue (save for a few written comments that appear after you decide to finish a level). The first level has her as a young girl moving into a new bedroom. Later levels will have her go to college and be in an apartment with a romantic partner. After everything box is unpacked, the game will alert the player if any item is misplaced and sometimes finding where certain items belongs actually gives the story more emotional depth than expected. The moment I realized I had to out the diploma under the bed made me rage at the woman’s boyfriend not having any wall room for that. But even with some heavy emotional beats, Unpacking is a relaxing puzzle gem that worth a look. Its only 3-4 hours long, the pixel art is gorgeous and the audio design is incredible. The amount of detail hearing the various sound effects of putting a saltshaker on various surfaces is something. The act of moving items in their places is also pretty fulfilling to get everything organized, much like how the real act of unpacking boxes are. The soundtrack was done by Jeff Van Dyck who is responsible for one of my favorite OST’s Rome Total War. The fact that he goes from epic Roman Battle music to some calming guitar/8-bit tracks shows that he’s got range and is one of the best in the business.

Favorite Moment: I want to say for this it’s the fact that there is some sick pixel art for Gamecube titles such as Wind Waker, Metroid Prime 2 and all time classic The Simpsons Hit and Run.

But my real answer is between chapters 7 and 8. Warning, I'll put a spoiler block for this moment

#6 Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury:

Simply because I never had a Wii U, I never got to play Super Mario 3D World when it first came out in 2013. But now that it finally got re-released on Switch, 3D World has skyrocketed into the S Tier of Mario games in my mind. It is just a great platformer that has clever level design and brimful of charm that comes from the incredible soundtrack and the lively visuals. My Brother and I got to play a few levels together in co-op and it were some of the most fun we had with any game all year. I haven’t been very keen in playing the Wii U lineup on Switch until 3D World finally came out and absolutely loved my time with the main game.

But this portion is really for the bonus expansion that came with 3D World and that’s Bowser’s Fury. Basically, they took the 3D World engine and created one large level named Lake Lapcat and all sorts of mini levels to create a miniature Open World Mario game. Each little area has their share of Cat Shines to collect and the more you collect, the closer you get to unlocking the Mega Cat Bell. Each of these areas re-use power ups, gimmicks and bosses from 3D World to give Mario familiar yet new challenges to get more Cat Shines. Those areas you once were at before will have some alterations to give the player new objectives. However, Bowser won’t snooze it out as a very huge and ink coated Bowser will awaken occasionally to murder that Plumber to one helluva metal track. But that Mega Cat Bell will get Mario to grow gigantic and go Cat Saiyan on Bowser which really makes the scale of Lake Lapcat feel petite as Cat Mario and Bowser have a Kaiju fight. Or get a Cat Shine and Bowser goes back to sleep. I had so much fun playing this that I was determined to get all 100 Cat Shines before the end of the year and loved what I played. I wish there was more than 100 Cat Shines personally, but Bowser’s Fury is a terrific experiment for 3D Mario that I hope is built upon in the next big 3D Mario title.

Favorite Moment: I mentioned how the player can get a Cat Shine to stop Bowser from Lashing out. But honestly my favorite moments from this game came from trying to clear one level to get a Cat Shine but if I was too late to get one, I had a back-up plan. There’s these Bowser Blocks where Bowser destroys them for Mario to get a reward, typically being a Cat Shine. If I knew where the blocks were and saw the rain come in, I was like “Oh hi Bowser. Nah it's all good just breath fire here where these blocks are and you can go back to sleep. Thanks pal!”

#5 Hitman 3:

The first time I played Hitman 3 this year actually came from my brother getting the free Level pack that included the original Cat Burglar Tutorial mission and the Dubai Map on his PS5 before he moved. I spent a good chunk of time playing the Dubai map itself but once my brother bought Hitman 1 and 2 we were able to finally experience the magic of ICA murder. We had such a great time lining up our assassinations on our targets whether it be by story mission or improv and couldn’t help but laugh from what dumb assassination tactics we completed. I have soft spots for taking out Silvio Caruso with the explosive golf ball and getting Dawood Rangan to fly from a malfunctioning fan.

Then came Hitman 3 in its entirety which I picked up on EGS at half price AND a $10 coupon. Yay. While I don’t think all of 3’s maps are all time greats, many of them I’d say are up there with the very best. Dubai is a good intro level and I loved getting the curmudgeon Carl all pissy before I set up my kills on him. Dartmoor has been constantly compared to Knives Out for good reason as it’s a huge British Mansion where there is a murder mystery that Agent 47 has the option to solve. But Dartmoor has so many possible death traps for 47 to toy around in that it makes for one of the most replayable maps in the series. Berlin has Agent 47 as the hunted and he must kill any 5 assassins within the parameters of a Berlin Night Club. Mendoza was also a huge highlight being a large wine party and the traps that can be pulled off there are rather gratifying. Killing Yates in a giant, electric Wine puddle after he was going Joker on his vineyard employees was sweet. I wished I like Chongqing and the Mountain Train more as I found both to have some neat ideas to change up the Hitman formula but in practice weren’t winners. Chongquing though I do want to credit for its story missions having interesting ways to take out the targets. But for one of them “COUGH, HUSH” I found it really annoying to do the exact process to get the kill right. But overall, I finally know what makes playing the World of Assassination so special. You can terminate the 1% with explosive rubber ducks and that’s always funny.

Favorite Moments: First multiple moment segment. For Favorite Story Mission is the Murder Mystery at Dartmoor as 47 takes out a hired detective to fill in his shoes and find out who killed Alexa’s brother. Gathering evidence by asking suspects and going into rooms to find clues makes it feel like IO could make a killer Mystery game if they so desired. If successful 47 gets both objectives on a silver platter. My favorite kill was in Berlin where I chucked a clothes iron to knock an Agent into a nearby lake and he drowned. I’m a sucker for blunt object kills.

#4 The Forgotten City:

We have my personal “Game that came out of nowhere” Award winner. I only heard about The Forgotten City on the week it got released and I heard it was a time loop adventure game set in an underground Roman City. The setting alone was enough to give this game a try on Steam. Little did I know that The Forgotten City conquered my playtime in the month of August.

The Forgotten City is a time loop game that values the player’s time and knows to make sure quests from past loops don’t need to be redone. Every time a new loop begins, the player is always greeted with “Uhhh, Salve Friend” from Galerius, the local farmer who after the players who will do what the player tells him to after a quest was completed. Every item obtained from each past loop carries over to the next loop to reduce any redundancy, which is super nice. The quests themselves are require you to help this small community of Roman citizens with quests which are simple yet cleverly done. Some of them have a concrete solution such as thwarting an assassin sent to kill one of the residents. Other quests are more open ended such as getting medicine for medic Lucretia so she can cure Iulia. There’s an option to make enough money and buy the medicine from scumbag Desius. But I just stole it and after my second attempt, I escaped the clutches of the Golden Rule. Speaking of which, I forgot to mention that the Golden Rule is the Key to the Mystery of this underground city. Once you speak to Magistrate Sentius, he tells you about how this city is peaceful by force because it’s under this spiritual law that turns everyone into gold statues if any 1 person commits a sin. But the act of sinning on your own can be exploited in your favor if smart about it. Each quest also threads into uncovering the mystery of this city and makes the journey of uncovering this central mystery very fulfilling. Its commendable that I have The Forgotten City ranked this high because this was originally a Skyrim mod and I’m someone who simply doesn’t vibe with Bethesda style RPG’s. Didn’t like Skyrim nor New Vegas when they came out probably because I hated the combat in those games. Yet this former Skyrim Mod clicked with me. It's not perfect as like those Bethesda games there are some weird glitches and hiccups that occur. I also got 2 of the endings including the final one which I’m not 100% hot on now after hearing some valid critiques of it. But it was still satisfying to reach that ending and despite its faults, I still look back at that ending fondly. If you love Time Loop style games or maybe have an interest in Roman History, The Forgotten City is a slam dunk.

Favorite Moment: Spoiler tags will be up for this.

#3 Psychonauts 2:

This year I really wanted to get a PS5 to play something like Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart. I’ve enjoyed the Ratchet series and getting a new game on the PS5 would have been awesome. But I never got the console so with me getting Game Pass, I noticed Psychonauts 2 was another colorful 3D platformer that received high praise. Despite not playing Psychonauts 1 at all, I dove into 2 with Game Pass and this is my Game Pass Game of the Year. Its also a major money saving victory for me as I played Psychonauts 2 on a service that I pay $9.99 a month for vs. Buying both a PS5 and Rift Apart which would have costed me more than $570. Also some of Ratchet’s voice cast is also in Psychonauts 2 with David Kaye being both Clank and Ford Cruller and Armin Shimerman is Dr. Nefarious and Augustus Aquato.

Psychonauts 2 is one of the most imaginative platformers I ever played. Every time I entered a mind to see what kind of level I was getting into I was enthralled with what crazy themes Double Fine cooked up. From a psychedelic Rock level that’s themed after the 5 senses and is accompanied by a ball of light voiced by Jack Black to a Bowling themed 1930’s city occupied by germs that are dreading for their doom from a giant Spray bottle. It is truly a joy to watch how all these levels are designed and even seeing what those minds say about certain characters in the game. Even when Raz isn’t in someone’s mind, The Mother Lobe hub and its surrounding areas are rich with story and side content. Raz can find a bunch of collectibles for worst intern Norma just to get his clothes back or catch up with the rest of the Aquato family. While there were a few instances where the platforming felt a little off, the controls are tight for the most part and it felt good to traverse in game. Raz’s starter psychic abilities such as Telekinesis and Pyrokinesis were a kick for combat and solving puzzles. But his new abilities really stood out such as Mind Connection which is basically a grappling hook that Raz uses to reach far away areas or to Scorpion harpoon enemies near him. The Time Bubble was also great to slow down speedy obstacles or to make fighting those dastardly Panic Attacks easier. Also since this is a Double Fine joint, the writing is superb as I got constant laughs from the characters but got very emotionally invested in the story. Psychonauts 2 is a triumph in game design and storytelling. Knowing that Double Fine is owned by Microsoft, it feels like the acquisition helped this game reach the best possible state. Oh and a fun fact, for back-to-back years my #3 GOTY has a character named Oleander in it. Them's Fightin' Herds has this Oleander and Psychonauts 2 of course has Morceau Oleander.

Favorite Moments: My favorite level has to be Compton's Cookoff, or going by its Game Show name Ram It Down! Where Raz enters Compton Boole’s Mind and it ends up being a cooking game show hosted by a puppet goat version of Truman Zanatto. Raz has to help Boole by using the food-based audience members for special dishes and needs to put them in different stations to prepare each ingredient properly. The level itself is a genius depiction on how Compton feels pressure from society to do something right or else he’ll be judged for any fault he and his work may have. But it was also a great level where it tests Raz’s abilities to get these dishes made by grabbing sentient food ingredients who really want to get boiled, sliced, fried or blended just to participate in a game show. Plus Goat Ford Cruller going “Slightly Better Than a Mouthful of Nails” always gets me. While we’re on the Booles, my favorite line came from the best intern Sam Boole. She can be found making Pancakes at the diner in the Questionable area and after Raz asks where she learned how to make Pancakes she says “Prison”.

#2 Metroid Dread:

My experience with the Metroid series is very limited. I played Metroid Prime for a small bit and embarrassingly enough, I dropped it after I couldn’t get through that one Giant Beetle mini boss very early in the game. I also played Zero Mission on GBA and while I personally liked that more, eventually my dumb kid brain got “Metroid Lost” and I stopped playing after not knowing where to go. Fast forward to 2021 and for the first time in 17 years, a Brand new 2D Metroid comes to a Nintendo System. It feels amazing to say that I have beaten a mainline Metroid game now and Dread kicks ass in nearly every conceivable way.

Dread is maybe the best pure gaming experience I had this year. The movement feels amazing where even before Samus gets her power ups back, she’s zooming through corridors and cliffs at a lightning pace. Felt like she didn’t need the Super Rush upgrade immediately. The combat is excellent as it starts fun by mild in variety where its either shoot enemies or parry them to get large refills of health and missiles. But as Samus gets more power ups, the more exciting the various possibilities are for taking out enemies and bosses as well as applying those weapons or tools to find countless secrets in the map. Speaking of the map, I was worried that I would have the same Metroid problem that I had with Zero Mission where I would find a wall and not understand how to progress, but that never happened in my playtime with Dread. I thoroughly enjoyed the pacing of Dread and how unlocking new tools helped find new routes in old areas. Dread delivers on making Samus feel more and more unstoppable as the player progresses. I was enthralled to see a reoccurring mini boss that gave me lots of trouble early on ended up being basic fodder as Samus got more upgrades. Dread is also home to the best collection of Boss Fights I played this year as each boss had their own unique challenges, but their patterns were accessible to learn and were really just difficult enough to be tough but fair bouts (or at least I found that to be the case). Though of course the huge new addition to the Metroid series in Dread are the E.M.M.I. sections. These areas seem to have a mixed reception as some feel those sections were outright unfair at times (the Water E.M.M.I. portion was annoying that’s for sure). But I was into the stealth/horror approach that these sections added to mix up the high-speed run and gun action that there was in the standard game. I’m not only happy that I beat a mainline 2D Metroid, but this was an unexpected yet fantastic comeback for the series. With Prime 4 still seemingly in development, the Metroid series needed a 2D comeback as well and Mercury Steam delivered on making not just one of the best Metroids, but one of the best Metroidvanias out there in the current market.

Favorite Moments: One standard gameplay moment I loved was basically whenever Samus got the Omega Stream and Blaster. It always felt good to finally get the weaponry to take out the persistent bots. Lining up the shots was immensely enjoyable by turning the game into a puzzle and figuring out which areas in the map gave Samus the best advantages to take out the E.M.M.I’s face shield and then outright kill ‘em. Favorite overall moment is spoiler heavy, but its basically beating the final Boss. Raven Beak is the primary villain of Dread and there was a huge build up to Samus’ confrontation with the Chozo General. Fighting Raven Beak was exhilarating where he tests Samus at her max potential (or even more if the player chooses to collect all the missile, health and power bomb containers). Raven Beak has 3 phases and while a few repeat some attacks, each phase provided its own quirks for the player to study and see how to evade his attacks effectively as well as find his weak points. There was a point where I thought it would take me 20 tries to beat him, but it was on my 8^th try where he went down. Not to mention that ending where Samus yells in denial against Raven Beak’s demands and getting the Metroid armor is one helluva great moment.

Before I reveal my #1 game of 2021, let me briefly talk about a little game from 2018 called Wandersong. This is a game that stars a cheerful bard who uses the power of song to solve many different characters’ problems. There’s a grander story on how the world is ending because the goddess of the Bard’s world wants to have a fresh start. The Bard with the help of a witch named Miriam is determined to prevent that from happening by trying to learn the titular Wandersong to preserve their world. It was a game that oozed in creativity in how it implemented its singing mechanic in various ways. The mechanic itself was an eight-direction wheel and using the left joystick is where you direct the Bard to sing in multiple pitches. The Bard can be seen performing in a concert and had to follow the leads of their band members by pointing the joystick in the same direction as them. In some levels the Bard could manipulate the environment by mimicking the tune of a bird and if they do, the bird will be happy and help the Bard jump higher. There’s even a portion where the Bard and a group of coffee loving Pirates sing together and their collective singing has the power to transport their ship through the sea. Yet it was very underrated when it released and it barely got much buzz. I mock myself for ranking it #6 on my 2018 GOTY list and having Octopath Traveler higher rated even though I much prefer Wandersong these days.

So what does Wandersong have to do with number 1 GOTY? Well the same lead developer of Wandersong Greg Lobanov was also the lead developer for my favorite game this year. Both games also share the same Sound designer Em Halberstadt and the sound design in both games are impeccable. It’s a game that I got immensely excited for when I saw its announcement, but it was a game that managed to exceed my high expectations of it.

#1 Chicory: A Colorful Tale:

Lobanov, Halberstadt, and their team of composer Lena Raine, artist and animator Alexis Dean-Jones and environment artist Madeline Berger launched a Kickstarter campaign to get Chicory funded back in 2019. Full disclosure, I helped back this project at $35. Chicory came out of nowhere for some people since it didn’t get much pre-release buzz but it was a title I very much looked forward to. I’m glad to report that Chicory like Wandersong before it is a lovingly made game where it takes a unique mechanic (drawing and coloring screens) and figures out how to keep that mechanic fresh when applied to various puzzles or gameplay elements. Heck Wandersong lets the player sing while talking to NPC’s and Chicory allows the player to draw and talk at the same time too. But even without comparing the 2 games, Chicory on its own is one of the most creative and unique games I’ve ever played and the experience of playing Chicory will be one that I’ll remember for years.

Chicory is charming immediately as the game asks the player what their favorite food is. I picked Prime Rib and from there the name of the cute painter dog I controlled is called Prime Rib. Every other cute animal NPC is named after a food within the large map of Picnic Province. Chicory as a game lets the player color in or draw how much or whatever they want and everything they draw will stay on the map unless the player erases it. Want to draw a picture of Homer Simpson drooling at the sight of a nearby donut shop (which in game the NPC’s call donuts Holeys)? It’s possible. It's also a game that values what the player creates. There are side activities such as designing a T-Shirt for a local café and not only can Prime Rib wear that shirt, but a few NPC’s will wear that shirt that I designed too. I absolutely love it when games give your own creations merit when characters wear something the player designs. Chicory however is more than just a giant coloring book as its designed like an NES/SNES era Zelda. It uses an overhead camera angle and there are a variety of dungeons that throw in a new gimmick that utilizes the Magic Paintbrush distinctly. Whether it be a gas bubble that blasts destructible objects once colored or drawing a path for paint hungry bugs to follow and for Prime Rib to ride on. It’s astonishing to see the mileage the dev team got from incorporating 1 gameplay mechanic into so many puzzles. Although if stumped, there’s no shame in calling in-game Mom and Dad for hints. There are even boss fights which provide a decent bullet hell like challenge and change up the puzzle solving formula. After defeating a boss Prime Rib’s bond with the brush grows stronger and new traversal upgrades unlock. From using glowing paint in dark caves to swimming in the paint Splatoon style, every brush upgrade felt meaningful and delightful.

I also need to praise Chicory for its music and art direction. This is the second 2021 OST done by Celeste and Minecraft composer Lena Raine. Like Moonglow Bay this year, Raine delivers on providing a varied but incredibly memorable soundtrack that I plan to listen to for the coming years. Major highlights include Dinners, The Big City, Grub Deep and Probably Ancient Evil. The aesthetic has a great monochromatic look that feels like a living coloring book. The way the characters react to your drawings as well as even seeing a flower grow after its colored is adorable.

But the characters and story deserve the upmost praise. Chicory is full of memorable NPC’s such as Beans the Cat who needs help getting lost kittens back to the Lost Kid Daycare and 4 of them are her children. In return Beans will give Prime Rib furniture to make room for the daycare and doesn’t care where you put it as she says “I ain’t the Cops”. There’s also Pickle the Fox whose texts bubbles are always in lower case letters and wants to be the wielder if you put a good word for them. *wink* Going into the main plot it's about the mystery on why the color has vanished and Prime Rib doing what they can to bring serenity back in Picnic Province. Though initially Prime Rib borrows the magic brush to help the current wielder Chicory the Hare temporarily. However, Chicory herself is dealing with burnout being the Wielder so she hands the honor to Prime Rib after P.R. tried to return the brush. Through these interactions with these characters, we learn about their own struggles that are extremely relatable. While Prime Rib is enthusiastic at first, they quickly learn that being the Wielder is drenched in so much responsibility. NPC’s are requesting Prime Rib to do things such as restoring an Art Museum’s missing art collection or delivering mail. All of this overwhelms Prime Rib and the high responsibility as well as questioning their lack of artistic experience causes P.R. to develop Imposter Syndrome and self-doubt. The way the game portrays Prime Rib in this state connected with me immediately as I’ve had moments where I’ve doubted myself on if I’m the right person for a task or more. I also got attached to Chicory as she wasn’t giving herself enough credit for her lovely art and I’ve been overly critical of myself and don’t always recognize the good my actions have done. Yet there is still an uplifting but real message of what a creative or any person may feel. It’s normal for anyone to feel sad or doubtful about not meeting their own or someone’s expectations. But no burden should limit what any artist or anyone can produce or do as whatever good intended creation or action has value. It is also important to talk to someone about how they’re feeling and getting the support needed can help them take steps to feeling better. The way it connects the lore of the brush, the character’s emotions and what is causing corruptions in the world is smartly done and the ending got me emotionally.

I know I broke my 1-2 paragraph rule for the #1 game, but Chicory is a truly special game that I wanted to gush about. It combines so many gameplay ideas from so many different games to somehow form its own one-of-a-kind experience. Its also a game that I had the pleasure of 100%-ing, which I rarely ever do. Plus the game has a very special reward for anyone who 100%’s it which I won’t say anything in particular. The only other game I’ve ever 100-ed is Contradiction: Spot The Liar. This is yet another amazing game from Greg Lobanov and his team and I can’t say I enjoyed any 2021 release more than Chicory, A Colorful Tale. It is 100% my GOTY.

Favorite Moments: Oh shoot. I still have this to do. Well for this I’ll do 2 moments where the Spoiler Tags are up.

There is one NPC that I saw often named Peppermint, who is a sweet little bird with glasses that is a humongous fan of Prime Rib’s work. Peppermint is even one of the NPC’s who wears the Café shirt. But the best Peppermint moment comes from when I greet them in their hometown of Brekkie. Earlier Peppermint was seen gushing over an art piece I did at the Art Academy where the prompt was to draw a cute creature and I drew a picture of my pet Boston Terrier Sam. Once I got to Brekkie, Peppermint shows me their own take on my Boston Terrier Art. It looks a little messy and is black and white since no other character can draw in color. But I was overjoyed to see the game memorize my own art and the fact that its fanart of my own fanart of my dog is wonderful! Peppermint is an angel.

Another moment of mine something I did in the game, but then the follow up action was something I did that mimicked a story beat in the game itself. So in Chapter 3, Prime Rib will find Chicory outside the Wielder Tower trying to paint a picture. Prime Rib suggests that Chicory can draw them, and Chicory agrees. She asks Prime Rib how they are feeling emotionally and what their favorite color is and then Prime Rib must draw a picture of Chicory so they can see the pictures of each other. Once completed, both reveal the pictures and Chicory is touched by Prime Rib’s portrayal of her. Yet she critiques her vastly superior picture of Prime Rib until P.R. stops her and says it’s amazing and they love it.

It’s a very sweet bonding moment between these two characters. However, the moment after this was something I did within the game which led to a real version of what happened in Chapter 3. Later in the game, Prime Rib arrives in a Pizzeria (or Slice Shop since NPC’s call Pizza Slices) and I had the urge to draw two portraits of the android duo from Cook, Serve, Delicious 3, Whisk and Cleaver. I drew the two androids on both sides of the shop and while I thought the depictions weren’t perfect at first, they were close enough and I felt obligated to share this pic on the CSD Discord. I posted the image on that Discord and my one of the things I said was “So yeah, this picture is an ok attempt at recreating Whisk and Cleaver with these emojis” as the art was based on Discord Emoji versions of the two characters. Afterwards the lead designer of the CSD games Chubigans responds saying he loves it and thought it looked incredible. So literally at that moment, I was Chicory where I initially didn’t think the art was super amazing looking. But Chubigans was Prime Rib where he was flattered by the art and adored it anyways. That portrait moment from Chapter 3 teaches an important lesson in art. Sure a piece of art may not be exactly how an artist wants it to be when making it versus how they envision it. But if the recipient is overjoyed seeing the art and appreciates the thought put into the work, that is what ultimately matters.

It has been well documented on how terrible of a year 2020 has been for many people. But this write up won’t really go into details 2020’s issues to avoid sounding frivolous and I’m going to write of some positive aspects of 2020 for me personally.

I started 2020 with a bang. I got tickets to the Outback Bowl (An NCAA bowl in Tampa, FL) as Christmas gifts for my family to see my brother’s Auburn Tigers take on the Minnesota Golden Gophers right on New Year’s Day. Auburn lost the game but we still had a great time. It was a year where I kept it close with my group of friends and we spent time either via ZOOM calls playing Jackbox games or in person. Also one very exciting thing for me this year is that I got a new used car! I got a 2020 used Kia Optima and it drives like a dream. I even went on a deep sea fishing trip and fought an epic fight to bring a shark to the surface of the water and then let it go. Lemme tell you, catching a shark may be the greatest workout out there. As you can tell I live in FL. That about sums up the exciting moments in 2020 for me.

I spent my free time trying to bond with my friends and family whenever I could as well as use video games and other forms of media to burn off some steam. Although the big gaming phenomenon for me was on the board game side as I played plenty of different board games with my family (yes, I am lucky to see my family since they live very close to me). Had countless nights playing games such as Carcosone, Rummikub and the actual overall Board Game of the Year, Ticket to Ride. A board game that got so addicting within the family that we got 2 versions of the standard game and one European variant. Back to video games, I only got to play 12 2020 game releases, and a little bit of a few old games such as Civ 6 on Switch and Star Wars Episode 1 Racer. Despite my list of 2020 titles being low, I still had an amazing time with most of these games. In fact, a couple of these games I spent over 100 hours playing. While I did get a chance to play some pretty significant games from last year, I also managed to find some lesser-known titles that I feel deserve some great praise. 2 games will simply be honorable mentions because I only played a little bit of those while I played enough of the top 10 for me to rank. Also be warned because this is a long read about my top games (especially the top 3 getting rather lengthy). So without further ado, here are MocBucket62’s favorite games of 2020:

Honorable Mention 1: Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout

I gotta be honest. I played this game super late in the year and it seems…just ok? I understand the appeal of game show battle royale but I just don’t think I’ll be hooked playing this game and will only boot it up on special occasion. Also this is secretly the 2^nd best Mediatonic game of 2020.

Honorable Mention 2: A Total War Saga: Troy

Man I have a strange relationship with TW games. I loved games like Rome and Medieval II and got this for free on EGS. Its not a bad TW game from the little I played and you can improve your heroes XCOM style. But I just felt more obligated to play other games in 2020.

10. XCOM: Chimera Squad

Much like TW Troy, we have an entry to another legacy strategy franchise that I adore but felt alright about the latest game. And that game is XCOM Chimera Squad. XCOM Enemy Unknown is without a doubt one of my favorite games of all time. The journey I took to take down the aliens and leveling up my best units while tragically losing them is an experience I’ll never forget. Then there’s XCOM 2 which for whatever reason I haven’t spent much time on but SERIOUSLY need to get back into because I can tell that game makes some huge strides in gameplay from EU.

I have put some time into XCOM Chimera Squad this year and while I’m not into everything that the gameplay does, I’m glad that an experimental spinoff like Chimera Squad exists. The game takes place after the events of XCOM 2 where you are trying to maintain peace in a city that has humans and various alien species such as Sectoids and Mutons co-existing. You control a squad of super cops ranging from various species and you are tracking down the culprit of a bombing that killed the city’s mayor. As far as the gameplay, it is some classic XCOM gameplay but with some big twists. I started every battle with a breach where you need to place certain units in different entrances that gives them perks and/or disadvantages. If say a door cause a unit to be disarmed after entering, I made my medic Terminal through the disarmed doors because she could just heal surrounding units. But afterwards its back to good ol’ fashinoned XCOM fighting as I took cover and d the percentages of shooting enemies. Though turns are done on an individual unit basis (you and AI) rather than being a side-based turn system. I personally found these new systems interesting at first but wasn’t a huge fan of these as I played more of the game. I prefer the classic side-based turn system where all my units do their actions before the aliens do and set up some big traps for them before they spot my crew. Plus you get established characters into your crew rather than randomly generated soldiers and frankly I found the agnets’ personalities mostly bland and prefer making stories with my own random or created soldiers in battle. Although I love that this game lets you play as different species that were once rivals in a story campaign and I do hope XCOM 3 lets you have playable Sectoids, Mutons, and Snake People in the future. Base building has been simplified to just maintaining order in your city, researching new and leveling up your agents which is a nice change of pace compared to how complex base building got in the past games. Again, I would much rather play XCOM 2 than play Chimera Squad, but I’m glad Firaxis threw some darts and tried to do something different w/ the XCOM formula.

9. Resident Evil 3

I have a confession to make. This is my first ever Resident Evil. I know that Resident Evil is obviously a juggernaut in the horror genre of gaming but I have been so scared to play a horror game because I’ve been such a huge coward for so long. However, I told myself “Hey you’re a grown ass man, why don’t you try out a Resident Evil and see how you handle it.” So I picked up 3Make on a Steam Sale because I heard it was short and wanted to play it as a 2020 game to try. Oh and I picked up RE2 which I seriously need to play and got these games also because a close friend of mine is a huge RE fan so I thought of him when playing 3.

Now overall how is 3 as a game for newcomers to the legendary horror franchise? Quite a good first title for some RE Rookie like myself. I really enjoyed the assist mode that this game has as whenever you aim your gun at zombies, it auto aims at their heads and they typically go down in 2-3 shots (I hear they’re more bullet spongey on higher difficulties). Plus the game lets you get an assault rifle first thing which is a really nice perk. Got to mow down more enemies with that thing. Plus I really enjoyed my time playing as the two characters. Of course, playing most of the game as Jill Valentine of RE1 fame and she is trying to escape Raccoon City while also fleeing from the big ugly Nemesis who is oh so obsessed with taking down his favorite “Star”. Plus Jill has all sorts of fun weapons to use from pistols to eventually shotguns and grenade launchers. Then there is Carlos who while I never played the original RE3, I did look up Carlos’ original portrayal and this modern version is way better. Also Carlos is way more attractive than he has any right being, just saying. Though Carlos’ arsenal of weaponry is far more limited than Jill which was a bummer. Again I can’t say that I’m a PS1 RE3 expert but I did research reviews of this remake after I beat it and I did wish Capcom did put more effort into what could have been in this game. As I learned, the Clock Tower portion of the original game is well remembered by fans and that is somehow cut from this game. When Nemesis is chasing you, his presence completely altered how I played since he’ll dash in front of you or just want to show off his gross tentacle. However, it felt like much of Nemesis’ encounters were scripted and I wish there were more time of unscripted Nemy gameplay like Mr. X in RE2make. I didn’t find RE3 all that immensely scary too. I got some scares such as a Gamma Monster pushing on a locked door to try to get Jill but later gave up (I actually yelled seeing that). But the general vibe I got though felt more like the movie “Predator” where it got spooky somewhat but mostly felt like a Macho Bad Ass Action game with lots of cursing. Overall I still really enjoyed my time with RE3 and will forever think of it as my 1^st Resident Evil. Now time to install RE2Make.

8. Murder By Numbers

Now this is a game that has a funny story with my playtime. This was originally my “Play before a big title comes out on March 20” game and while I played more than halfway thru it before March 20, I didn’t touch this game for a long time. Certainly there wasn’t anything horribly wrong with the game itself. It’s just I was so engrossed with that anticipated game that I spent a good chunk of the year solely playing that title (which you’ll see later in the list). However, Murder By Numbers got a 2^nd life this year for my playtime as it became my “cooldown game” after putting in some time with another game that you’ll also see later because the core gameplay loop of Murder By Numbers was a calming contrast to the tense loop of the other title. All that said, I’m very happy I got back to finish Murder By Numbers and see thru this really clever hybrid of genres. And this right here is the real best Mediatonic game of the year.

Murder By Numbers is a mix of both visual novel/Phoenix Wright style detective games with picross puzzle solving. You play as Honor Mizhari, a co-star of a 90’s Detective TV show who after being surprisingly fired from her role, slowly becomes a real detective after she encounters a mysterious floating robot named S.C.O.U.T. Both work as a duo to solve crimes as Honor will ask suspects or witnesses about what they know and get more intel from conversation or showing evidence. In order to obtain that evidence, S.C.O.U.T. will analyze an area and when he finds evidence that becomes a picross puzzle. You are filling in the squares when appropriate to form these images that become clues to the case. One of my favorite incorporations of picross were the hacking mini games where you hack into a computer but for the hacking to succeed, you need to clear a wave of mini picross puzzles within a time limit. I have heard from many picross experts that this game’s puzzles were too easy and there could have been more quality-of-life tools for the picross gameplay. While I do wish the developers added maybe one or two more assist tools, I found the puzzles themselves to have the right amount of challenge where they challenged my mental process and I took the time to understand where to place the squares but never found the puzzles impossible to solve. One touch I like was whenever you correctly fill in a line, S.C.O.U.T. will smile to give you feedback that you did something right.

Also what’s worth mentioning is that this game excels in presentation and characterization. The character designs were done by the same artist as Hatoful Boyfriend as the character designs are clearly very anime but with a 90’s Hollywood coat of paint. It certainly told me it was in the 90’s when the cast name drops Luke Perry and Bette Midler. The music is nice as the composer is Masakazu Sugimori who worked on Ace Attorney, which yeah if the art didn’t give you Phoenix Wright vibes the music will. Murder By Numbers is loaded with all sorts of memorable characters. You have characters such as K.C. who is Honor’s gay, British best friend that is very open about his sexuality and has close ties to the drag community in LA. But it’s never played for laughs and the entire game’s cast accepts K.C. for who he is. You also have Detective Cross who is the hardass, Lt. Gordon look alike detective that gets incredibly annoyed with Honor’s early attempts at crime solving. But he becomes more trusting of Honor overtime and even reveals his past being more connected to Honor’s family than expected. I just wish that this game would at least get some form of voice acting to help make me get more engrossed with the story, or even have some voice samples. Otherwise you’re going to read lots of text w/ bop sounds. Still, Murder By Numbers really surprised me with how well it incorporated Visual Novels with Picross to form a compelling detective mystery game.

7. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2

I never got to play any of the original THPS games myself when I was young. But I did watch my cousins play THPS 2 on the PS1 when I was over at their house and see them pull off tricks with…SPIDERMAN?!?!?! That blew my mind as a kid seeing Spidey do Benihanas. The only form of either game I got to play was the Game Boy Color version of 1. Which mind you aren’t anything like the super well regarded GBA versions done by Vicarious Visions (who also did these remakes) but was an overhead racing game on skateboards that sprinkled in tricks that you can land during your race. So yeah, I never got to play a proper TH game until Underground on the Gamecube yet I was cautiously optimistic about these remakes since Vicarious Visions already nailed it with the Crash N Sane Trilogy and they already worked on THPS before in some capacity. So to very little surprise, they killed it.

Though Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 was something that I needed to get used to at first. When I played the demo of THPS before it released I struggled to get much air or land many combos going at the base speed. Then I forgot that I can hold down the Ollie button to gain more speed and that was already a game changer. The two games are separated as tours where the levels from both games are groups as tours and those are where you can play on those parks and get high combos, collect SKATE letters or do another goal to your pleasing whether its grinding on SFPD cars or collecting subway tickets in New York. The skating has been tremendous as you go around and grind or kickflip to build up meter and then use the special meter to go for all sorts of special moves for higher scores. I’ve lost count of how many 900’s and Darkside grinds I’ve done. Plus this game adds far more to the originals than one would expect. For one, this game has revert which was crucial to THPS3 in helping extend combos and that was a life saver for me for competitions. There is an expanded soundtrack added so you can listen to fitting new songs such as Can I Kick It by A Tribe Called Quest before or after the necessary listen of Superman. The game has all the skaters from the first 2 games back as well as current skaters such as Lizzie Armanto and well, Riley Hawk (one of Tony’s Kids). But for me, I stuck with a couple of ol’ favorites. I beat the THPS 1 tour as the Birdman himself and relied on his big air stats to earn some golds and high scores. For the THPS 2 campaign I used Kareem Campbell whose far different in that his style is more street focused and he was good for grinding as well as getting some Ghetto Birds off a jump.

Now I will say I haven’t dived into the multiplayer of the game and while I still intend to drop in once, I feel I’ve seen what Online Multiplayer for THPS is from that GB playdate where parks rotate and different game modes rotate within that park. I have toyed around in seeing what people have created in custom parks and I’m impressed. Hey somebody made a pretty faithful recreation of Peach’s Castle from Super Mario 64 and the City Escape Level from Sonic Adventure 2 (Crush 40 not amongst the new bands in THPS 1+2’s OST though). I would maybe rank this game higher if I did try out the online multiplayer, felt obligated to create a skater and/or not feeling I had to grind (heh) to clear all the tour goals as one skater just to see their skate tape (I know, I can see those on Youtube). But overall I think it’s safe to say that after the disastrous THPS 5 and those peripheral nightmares, Tony Hawk is back baby!

6. Spiritfarer

Spiritfarer is the coziest game about dying ever made. You play as Stella, a mysterious girl whose accompanied by her pet cat Daffodil to take over the role of the titular Spiritfarer from Charon himself. While the setting may seem grim since you are taking over for the ferryman known for transporting the departed on the haunting River Styx, the world itself is rather nice and colorful. The realm is a very pleasant looking purgatory where you sail across this ocean and embark on multiple islands as if the world was created from Studio Ghibli. On these islands is where you pick up the spirits who are departed humans who aren’t ready to ascend to the afterlife yet. They also take the form of a spirit animal or fungi and you are tasked to do errands for these spirits until they are ready to accept their fate and go to the Everdoor. In my time caring for the spirits I had a variety of activities to do as both to kill time and help manage the passengers. You can go fishing and use fish as one of many key ingredients for cooking food for recipes (and feeding your passengers will be key). You will need to cut wood and forge metal ingots in order to help build both more facilities on your boat as well as temporary homes for the spirits. The boat will start off small but over some hours it’ll transform to a huge ship that will hold all sorts of facilities needed to perform these tasks. There is a whole lot of activities to do to manage your boat itself and the passengers’ happiness. Heck there’s even activities on the water that are triggered by the spirits themselves such as asking you if you want to catch lightning in a bottle or mine ore off sea dragons. Don’t worry, all of this sounds dangerous but none of these obstacles can hurt Stella and most of these were fun diversions that rewarded me with good resources. This game is surprisingly a Metroidvania in some fashion as once you get spirits, you earn their obols and use those to give Stella new traversal skills such as floating and those can be used to go to previously inaccessible parts of isles.

I need to talk more about the presentation of Spiritfarer because it’s one of the best looking 2D games I’ve played with some solid music and narrative to boot. The animation is full of life and I never got tried of seeing Stella anxiously awaited what she cooked or seeing the spirits’ walking animations. For character designs on top of the Grade A Spirits such as Gwen and Gustav (The reindeer in the above picture and the owl w/ the violin respectively), you’ll meet NPC’s that are full of life such as Albert the shark shipwright who’ll tell you Dad Jokes whenever he can and chuckle all day over them. The music itself is very calm which matches the cozy tone of the game as rarely the music gets intense. Unless you are fishing for a large fish like Bluefin Tuna and you get a fast paced fiddle song. But the music will not be afraid to take some somber turns when applicable. Going back to the spirits, you’ll find lots of different personality that are onboard the Spiritfarer’s ship. You will get to know about the spirits from the errands that you do for them and granted you may not like them all as some may come off as abrasive or stuck up. However, everyone felt distinct and the more you help these spirits, the more you learn they were in fact humans who had real life issues. While you may find someone like Uncle Atul being a happy yet active frog who will eat anything you give him, after doing his requests you learn more about his past and let’s say things took a left turn tonally. Being invested in these spirits will come to a halt as they will need to go to the Everdoor, but it is good to know that I at least helped them get some closure on whatever has troubled them before saying goodbye. I was sad saying goodbye to spirits such as Alice, Summer and Stanley personally.

Spiritfarer is not a game for everyone as the sim/management elements may get too repetitive. I myself eventually grew tired of some of the activities late in the game and there were some late game requests that were optional but asked a lot of the player. I also had moments where the game gave me requests when my ship was to underpowered to access parts of the map. “I know Uncle Atul you want to eat Fried Chicken! Can you wait until my ship can reach the island where I can get the last ingredient?” But if you are looking for a chill sim than Spiritfarer is a high recommend from me. It’s a beautiful and relaxing game that let’s you care for different spirits who want to resolve any issue(s) they may have before properly ascending to the afterlife.

5. Ori and the Will of the Wisps

Going from one the most beautiful 2D games I’ve played to one of the most gorgeous games I’ve played that uses 3D models but is on a 2D plane. I never played Ori and the Blind Forest and certainly aim to rectify that soon. But I picked up Will of the Wisps in December on a Steam sale because I wanted to play one more significant game before the end of the year. Unlike Fall Guys which I got much later in the year, I was hooked on Ori the moment I booted up the game and was in awe of nearly everything I saw.

Will of the Wisps like Blind Forest is a Metroidvania as you explore the land of Niwen which Ori had found himself on after he was on a flight with his friend owlet Ku and a storm separated the two. Once Ori lands on Niwen he is determined to reunite with his lost friend Ku, doing tasks to help the inhabitants of the Niwen and protect the land from an imminent threat known as The Shriek. Once you get exploring, you’ll witness one of the best Metroidvanias out there. The game makes it clear from the get-go that combat will be a big focus. While a temporary torch is the starting weapon, you’ll eventually get your 1^st real weapon soon after. Its literally a light katana that Ori can swipe up to 5 times and it did me wonders in the early game and for boss fights (more on those later). You can get more weapons from discovering ancestral trees or finding the combat expert monkey Opher who will give you new attacks in exchange for spirit light (game’s currency) and then toy around and see which builds you like best. Pro tips, get the hammer and upgrade it so you can use aerial down slams that summon spikes on the ground. Also get an upgraded spirit star so it can pause and land more hits on an enemy for increased damage. Those two were my jam. The sense of exploration feels tremendous as skills are acquired that are helpful for searching every nook and cranny. The Bash is great for reaching higher up platforms after you bash a projectile away. Burrowing also feels so go to use when moving in the sand and even get a speed boast from dashing in or out of the sand. I dug how often Ori rewarded me for my curious exploration from collecting spirit shards (which give you perks like having more health or triple jumps) to combat shrines that if successful let you use more spirit shards. A real sense of increased power and strength came from me navigating the map and finding these new attacks, skills and more health around Niwen. Will of the Wisps does an excellent job dividing the tense moments between chases and boss fights. The chases have now put Uncharted on notice as you have direct control by testing the traversing skills you have obtained as I used bashes or grappling hooks to escape the hazard rather than simply running away or using QTE. The Bosses themselves are the right amount of difficulty where I experimented on which builds work best and I died a plenty, but there’s no lives and the game will quickly load to a checkpoint. And finding the right build on the boss feels oh so satisfying to use.

I can’t just leave this Ori talk without talking about the game’s visual design, music and story. There’s an incredible mystique to how the game looks as the character models are 3D but everyone has a wonderful painted look to them where it really looks like a painting in motion. The models are also companied by the game’s nice and various environments ranging from the bug invested burrows of the Mouldwood Depths to the vibrant and aquatic Luma Pools. The lighting is some of the best I’ve seen in any videogame and compliments the majesty of the strong visuals. Also there will be a handful of moments where you will see The Shriek interact in the background of the level which are simultaneously haunting but a thing of art. The OST is fantastic as the orchestral music perfectly fits the mood of the game and got me to seek out the OST after my playthrough. Dashing and Bashing became a late year song in my rotation. I will not spoil the story, but it took some serious turns that got me emotionally invested in a way I didn’t expect and the ending took me by surprise. It even manages to make you feel sympathetic for the Shriek once you learn her backstory. It made me care for the creatures in danger and read the text of the NPC’s to get more educated on the L-ORI-E. …Sorry…that was terrible.

I’m very thankful I got to beat Ori and the Will of the Wisps before the end of the year. It’s an excellent and gorgeous Metroidvania that is available on any system expect for Sony Hardware. Frankly this game would rank higher if I didn’t play it so late in 2020 and really went for 100% it.

4. Animal Crossing: New Horizons

So this is the game that I spent a good chunk of the year playing while delaying my time w/ games like Murder By Numbers. Like for many people, Animal Crossing came out in the right time once the pandemic really hit overseas. It’s a game that broke records for my personal playtime as I spent a hefty 250 hours playing it. Much of that time I spent playing ACNH was decorating my island named Nuthatch (named after the bird) much like as if it was my house. Very early on I stacked a bunch of fish and bugs outside the eventual museum before it properly opened, but once I started building bridges and getting access to different areas of my island, I went to town (literally) designing stuff on my island. I made a Football Field with non-other than the face of video game football in the center, John Madden. I built an outdoor pizzeria and BBQ restaurant to give the residents of Nuthatch some fine and various cuisine to munch on. I was also determined to collect and buy any instrument I found to make a megaton music stage that would cater to anyone’s taste in music. Also for months I got into two things that are key to any Animal Crossing enjoyment: Fishing and catching bugs. I’d check out a list of fish and bugs that were going away at the end of a month and what was going to appear the following month. I’d always donate a bug, fish and fossils too to Blathers 1st to make sure the museum has its fill of many key attractions. But I caught multiples of a rare creature to get models of those bugs and fish from my pals Flick and C.J. to help decorate my museum entrance with exhibit statues as well as make some bank off of other captures. June is also the best month for fishing because of all the sharks, arapaima and dorado to catch. That’s fact. Not to mention the amount of positivity I got from seeing my residents. Started off with some all timers having Phoebe the Sisterly Ostrich and Rod the Jock Mouse as the 2 OG’s. But soon I got a few more residents that were great such as Margie, Deli and my cranky duo of Octavian and Admiral. Usually made sure to at least speak with them once a day or give them gifts. Animal Crossing was a burst of sunshine and calming gameplay that I surely needed and got my money’s worth playing as it broke my Switch hour count record at 250 hours total.

…SO HOW IS THIS NOT GAME OF THE YEAR? LET ALONE JUST NUMBER 4?!?!?! Well, like most people who played Animal Crossing I eventually dropped of the game around mid August. I felt pretty satisfied with the personal construction/decoration projects I had for Nuthatch Island and had no desire to make anything new. While I was for a time on full on hunting mode for those bugs and fish, I eventually burned out on those daily activities. Plus things got worse when even I who tends to have a patience for tedious activities even grew tired of constantly crafting bait to try and catch fish that I never caught. Sunfish were apparently common according to AC Twitter but those suckers were elusive as hell in the Nuthatch waters. I also never caught a Hercules Beetle, the rarest bug in the game. Plus the whole act of crafting eventually got on me as I do wish Nintendo would let players craft more than 1 piece of an item at a time. I felt like the game did a poor job handling the random visitors when maybe they could have given weekly spots to others. Considering how big of an update the art wing was, it felt bizarre to reserve Redd as a special visitor who may or may not show up in a week when I’d wait months to see him again. With my patience for Redd running out and eventually dropping the game, my Art wing remains rather puny. Finally, while I enjoyed how kind the villagers were eventually they kept saying the same thing over and over and that got tiresome. Sure they may say something new for a seasonal event but sorry Phoebe, I don’t need to hear your dinosaur mortgager dream for the 1000^th time.

But despite my complaints on Animal Crossing and how my playtime waned overtime, I can’t deny that this game played a huge role in my gaming play time in 2020. The appeal of building my island the way I intended to felt amazing and my fruits of labor eventually paid off big time. I got the Fossil Wing in my museum completed from both my own digging and from the help of other AC Island Reps. Seeing my island transform from a camp tent isle covered in weeds and your base fruit (mine were oranges) to a flourishing town with infrastructure of my making is incredibly special. Not to mention paying off Mr. Nook’s debts to get the biggest house possible sure was nice. To be fair this game has had some nice updates ranging from diving in the ocean to collect deep sea fish to using your custom designs as fireworks. ACNH has also brought some of the most joy I’ve had playing with my brother online. Going to other people’s islands for Turnip sales was a nightmare, but either visiting my brother’s island or letting him come over was so much fun as we either did fishing contests, exchanged DIY cards or furniture and showed off our island attractions. This probably would be my GOTY if I never dropped it but I still believe ACNH deserves a high rating on my personal GOTY list. Also let it be known that the Island of Nuthatch is the AC capital of Ska:

So what beat out Tom Nook and Isabelle?

3. Them’s Fightin’ Herds

What might be the biggest surprise of 2020 for me, we have a fighting game that stars ungulate animals that was in early access since 2018 but reached 1.0 on April of this year. TFH started life as a My Little Pony fan fighting game that got some traction in 2012-2013 from competitive fighting players but got cease and desisted by Hasbro. Lauren Faust who created the Friendship is Magic iteration for MLP helped the team afterwards by making original character designs. Then the team even launched a successful crowdfunding campaign that gave the project life. Typically, I play at least 1 fighting game a year and took this on a sale after seeing Ben practice for it for EVO. If you can look past the origins of the game, its art style and the small roster of characters, Them’s Fightin’ Herds is an incredible fighting game that should be set as a model for what an ideal modern fighting game should be. Its also become my new favorite fighting game out there, to my surprise.

What do I mean for an ideal fighting game? For one, this game has one of the greatest tutorials in a fighting game out there. The tutorial is divided up into 4 sections which are basic maneuvers, advance techniques, the systems within the game and Combos. It excels with easy-to-follow instructions for both veteran and causal FG players on how each character plays, how to use magic which can be used for counters and enhanced moves and even gets meta and breaks down the game’s frame data. You even get some rather hilarious commentary from your tutorial teacher/playable ungulate Oleander. What also makes this game so solid is that it has one of the most inventive story modes for a fighting game out there. Though it isn’t finished as only 1 chapter is out there and more chapters will be added for free when ready. But in that one chapter you play as Arizona the calf who becomes “Champeen of the Prairie” and vouches to take down these shadowy predators that threaten all ungulates. Oh and Ari is my overall main because she’s a good beginner character who can lasso similar to Scorpion's harpoons in MK and can cause earthquakes by stomping. From there you explore a 16-bit RPG like overworld where you can talk to NPC’s but also do platforming challenges that test Arizona’s mobility options such as super jumps and dashes. There’s also dungeons infested with predators where the mode teaches you how to counter these predators’ fighting styles (wolves for instance specializing in aerial pounces and you using anti-air attacks). You can even Paper Mario hammer the enemies by stomping near them and fight them while they are stunned. The boss fights also go beyond what you’d expect a fighting game to do as they range from Giant Cobras who fight in the background to other playable characters that use techniques that they can’t do in a regular match. One of them was Velvet the Reindeer who in her final form summons a blizzard she hides in and launches icicles. Jerk. Oh and Velvet will laugh at your corpse after an icicle hits. The story chapter was an amusing breath of fresh air for the genre and I would take it any day over something like the DBFZ story mode which not even the charm of the DB cast could save its easy slog.

What I talked about was mainly where TFH shines in Single Player content, but what kept me coming back for more was its wonderful online play. There are classic lobbies and private match options in the game, but much of my time spent online was joining the Pixel Lobbies. You have a sprite avatar of one of the 6 playable characters and there’s surprisingly amount to do in these lobbies. You can choose to fight someone causally or do shrine fights which is basically “last person who wins is the champ and lets see if the next person in line can win”. Also in the Pixel Lobby you can acquire salt from finding salt chests (which can be fought for) and use that salt to buy cosmetics from vendors Cashmere and Cap. Currently I have a Cardinal on top of Arizona so I’m “The Arizona Cardinals”. Although another way to get salt is thru a mode hidden within pixels lobbies called The Salt Mines. Players explore a mine to collect salt but also fend off waves of predators from story mode that increase in difficulty as more players clear waves. After 15 minutes the game tallies who collected the most salt and whoever does transforms into a heavily armored grappler Bear. Its designed for the Bear to be OP and chases down the remaining players, but the Bear is beatable. I managed to beat the Bear once and it was exhilarating to land the final blow.

But going back to where I had the most fun, it came from simply finding someone to fight causally which the netcode is GGPO that made for some amazingly smooth online fighting that more fighting games need to implement. Now I am not this top competitive TFH player and still need to master some harder techniques with Arizona. But I still have a great time playing this game on a weekly basis. Sometimes I’ll fight against someone who is on my level by hour count but also fight against somebody who has put far more time into the game. I had sessions where I’d lose to these more experiences players over and over while watching their advanced combos wreck me. But somehow I used the tech I knew and soon broke those streaks and won. Those moments were consistently electrifying. There is so many stories I can pull from my time playing TFH online. One time I nullified an Oleander super by doing a light stomp and then proceeded to beat that Ollie with Ari’s rushdown combos. There was one moment where my XBOX 360 controller died (I don’t use that anymore) and was up against a Tianhuo player whose aerial attacks are bad news for Ari’s ground game. But I resorted to the keyboard and somehow after I landed a lucky air grab I managed to finish that Tianhuo on the ground. Now I’m discovering winning techniques with Paprika, an Alpaca whose way too loving and will launch broccoli at you. Haven’t touched Pom much since she’s the game’s most complex character, but I salute those who have mastered the serious arts of puppies. BTW Pom is a scared lamb who summons dogs to fight. There were some many thrilling moments of me playing this game online which made for frankly some of my favorite online gaming experiences…ever. That’s saying something as both someone who will causally play 1 fighting game a year and for a genre where online has been mostly miss because they use delayed based netcode which is prone to lag (I had little to no lag when playing this GGPO fighter).

Them’s Fightin’ Herds is a prime example of not judging a book by its cover. The origins and cutesy exterior may be a turn off for many, but deep down is a triumph in the fighting game genre with easy to learn gameplay that’s hard to master combined with excellent netcode that deserves more love out there. Oh and go listen to the OST by Stuart Ferguson and Whitetail. It slaps.

2. Hades

I have never played a Supergiant game until this year. Believe it or not, I never checked out any of Supergiant’s past work and wish I could have but never found the time to do so. I also like Roguelikes alright but have varying opinions of some. I thought Wizard of Legend was sort of a slog to play even though I hear it got seriously improved, I liked Dead Cells a lot but never loved it and thought Into the Breach was both an excellent roguelike and turn based strategy title. I also never touched Hades in its Early Access form on the EGS so I entered Hades fresh on Switch. That said, I can safely say that Hades not only stands as one of the greatest Roguelikes I’ve played, but also one of the best indie games I’ve played period.

As the son of the titular God Hades named Zagreus, he is determined as hell to escape his home of the Greek Underworld. The controls for this dungeon crawling roguelike were tight as I was able to slay enemies in large sums while also dodging their attacks. There’s a good enough variety in the weapons for people to play with and see which runs you are most successful with those weapons. For me the Heart-Seeking Bow was my favorite with the Stygius Blade, The Shield of Chaos and Twin Fists in the next highest tier. In the escapes the Olympian Gods assist Zag who want him to join them on Mount Olympus. Their assistance is a huge game changer as they will give you boons that provide the attacks, dodges and Zagreus himself perks that can add to some very devastating builds to crush Hades’ security. I like so many people loved getting the Divine Dash from Athena but also An Artemis attack on the bow made for some long distance crit work of foes. Appropriate for the Godness of the Hunt. With this game being a roguelike no room is the same in a run and they’ll always be a different collection of enemies, different mini bosses or sometimes different forms of bosses in the middle and end of one of the Underworld floors.

Though Hades is a game that starts off as challenging and as expected, I died a lot early in the game. However, death isn’t treated as a negative as each run (failed or successful) adds to the overarching story of the game. Papa Hades will always scold Zagreus after he dies but you’ll get supportive conversations from folks such as Achilles and Nyx and if you happen to have nectar on you, give it to those in the House of Hades to build up relationships. Cerberus will usually be there to see you and one of his heads will take head rubs despite Hades’ insistence to “Cease coddling the dog!” The further I got into a run the more I learned about the story and learn why Zagreus wants to leave his father’s domain and got more educated about the Gods (Chthonic and Olympian) and the overall cast. It felt nice that even failed runs had economic value as I got to complete many housing projects using the resources I collected from my runs. My housing projects ranged from reopening the House of Hades’ eating quarters to building beneficial stations that can be found in a run to even giving Nyx flowers. All the darkness I collected was essential in making Zagreus himself strong before starting a new run. You bet I stocked up on Death Defiances.

Hades is also a technical marvel for an indie game. The dungeons have gorgeous hand drawn backgrounds that give ancient Greek mythology some major pa-zazz in style. While the levels are 2D Zag, enemies and NPC’s are all 3D yet their polygons fit the 2D environments perfectly. You’ll see hand drawn portraits of the cast when you speak to them and get ready because many of these characters are, so, freaking, hot. The voice acting is also amazing as you get some great performances from the whole cast of characters from Logan Cunningham’s various performances of scathing (the narrator) and boastful (Posiedon) characters, the bitter badass-ery of Megarea (Avalon Penrose) and the NYC goon like voice of my favorite training partner Skelly (who is also voiced by Darren Korb the voice of Zagreus boyo). Speaking of Korb, he killed it with the OST. This isn’t Korb’s 1^st rodeo with a Supergiant OST obviously, but I was really enamored with the tracks that combined Greek instruments with metal rock as well as some excellent vocals from Ashely Barrett. I spent a good 15-20 minutes for the 1^st time staying in Eurydice’s home hearing her sing and unlocked a few songs for my man Orpheus to play.

I was hooked to this game for weeks and loved my time with it but had some doubts if I was ever gonna clear a run. I had lots of trouble with the Elysium boss(es) early on and when I reached the final boss I thought I couldn’t succeed. But by finding the right builds I defeated the Elysium boss(es) regularly and it felt wonderful to finally take down the last challenger and escape the Underworld. As I finally cleared a run, I felt gratified that I reached Greece but learned quickly that I couldn’t put down Hades just yet. I knew I had to clear more runs and test out other builds that would help me reach the surface again. One of my favorite builds was using the Aspect of Demeter for the fists and using the drunken attack killed foes swiftly on top of the special which lets you multiply 3X the special effects after landing 12 punches (Ares’ Doom was handy here). I did switch to God Mode temporarily since I wanted to see the main story but returned to standard mode after gaining confidence that I can do normal runs. It was all worth it to finally reach a satisfying conclusion to what was a great tale that smartly connects the gameplay with the overall plot. Hades is a phenomenal, if not dang near perfect video game. It is probably the best designed game on my list, but funny enough it’s is not my GOTY. No that honor goes to a game that’s a sequel to a series that debuted in the late PS3/360 era where America’s future ain’t great but you’re doing the best you can.

1. Cook, Serve, Delicious 3?!

Heh, made you think it was something else huh? The 3rd installment of the Cook, Serve, Delicious franchise take the high pressure cooking gameplay on the road as you cook from a Foodtruck after Terragon Tower from CSD2 got bombarded by artillery, which was where your restaurant was. Sure this game was officially released last year in October in a 1.0 state, but it was in early access starting in late January. Also perhaps you didn’t notice, but a fun fact about my top 3 games are that they all entered an early access state before launching in 1.0 in 2020. Quickly I saw that CSD3 was a tough but addicting game. While I never got to play the previous CSD games, I know those had a different format where you cooked meals for customers while working a long shift. Here in CSD3, the food truck format takes you onto set levels across the USA and each level is separated in stops. The player can cook a certain number of foods in holding stations based on the customers’ demand before arriving as well as cooking some special order foods in prep stations to keep you busy if the HS foods are cooking/done. Get ready to serve that food quickly and exactly how the customer wants it too. When they ask for a Torta and ask for G. Meat, Avocadoes and Tomatoes, don’t accidently press the button for Beans (B) which is close to Avocadoes (V). America isn’t looking so good in 2042 as certain states have either become nuclear warzones from the series’ Blue War (CA, NY, MN and LA) while some have flooded (OR, VA and FL which brings me fear of staying in FL in 2042). You the chef is cooking in a food truck not only because of their restaurant being annihilated but because a couple of Androids named Whisk and Cleaver see that the chef is still alive and convinces them to build a business on the road. Whisk also finds an invitation to the Iron Cook Speedway and that’s when you decide you and your team should head over to the nation’s new capital of Nashville, TN to prove that the CSD truck is the best food truck out there.

I’ve already talked a bit about the format of how CSD is formatted. However, there is so much more to this game that frankly never has a dull moment and manages to think of fresh challenges for you as you progress. Again you can select levels where they are set in days in American towns and each day has a set number of stops. But there is a wide variety of food to make as well as each level having its own themes for you to cook. Unlike CSD2 though where working shifts at other restaurants give you a set menu, you can choose which food you want to cook. Say you have a level where its theme is “The Leaning Tower” which has Italian and French food. Early on I opted to go for Ratatouille and Lasagna because I love making those but wasn’t ready for Cannolis yet and went with Spaghetti instead. Another factor that will spice up the gameplay are food truck attacks where establishments from CSD2 have their own vehicles and will do anything to make your day worse while Cleaver fights back. Food Trucks attack once per level and some early FT attacks are The Deep which will gun down a HS Mad Max style. Later trucks get real nasty as a truck like Firekickers will hit you sideways and empty out all your HS food after working so hard to get that food ready. F Firekickers BTW. Even though CSD3 is accurately categorized as an arcade sim, it surprisingly feels like the greatest food truck RPG ever made. After beating a series of levels, you may earn a medal based on how well you did (Bronze, Silver or Gold) and will be rewarded with crumb coins and improvement parts as you level up. Crumb coins are used to customize how the interior of the food truck looks and buy new foods to add to the menu which you can practice before buying. The more expensive the food the more complicated it is to make but also the more rewarding since getting higher level food right gives you more money and experience. The improvement parts give you a great sense of progression as you can use these parts to acquire new tech such as more Holding and Prep Stations, cooking more food in a HS and even cancel those pesky FT attacks.

My journey to Nashville was accompanied by a great presentation package, which yes I know I’ve done lots of presentation paragraphs in this blog but CSD3 deserves one too. The music was outright some of the catchiest OST’s I’ve listened to all year by Jonathon Geer. He had a great selection of tunes that were pleasant but peppy tunes using Ciphered Spanish lyrics to start your day cooking such as Chakalaka. But whenever you reach the final stop a more intense song such as The Poutine Prince play to match the tone of nearly completing the day while facing some hectic adversity. While CSD3 isn’t the most technically advanced looking game, the art direction was enjoyable. From the character designs and interior truck art to the scrumptious food I made this game has some great 2D art. You even get some solid writing from looking at the bio of the foods which while not always accurate to that food’s history are still chuckle-inducing reads. In between levels you even get some deep lore about the world of CSD and Whisk and Cleaver and learn that they’re more than just simply your assistants.

This game’s campaign and me approaching it are some of my favorite playthroughs I’ve even had. CSD3 has the single greatest button input of the year where on PC you tap the CTRL Key to autoserve any ready meal and a waterfall of smiley faces will roll down on the left side of the screen. Though not every food is like that as I made no-autoserve foods that require a 2^nd step of completion. These were foods that I got overwhelmed making at first as foods like Hot Dogs and Eggs Benedict have these ingredients I needed to type correctly and serve while other customers waited and lost patience. Though this is where CSD’s Chill Mode came in handy as even though this mode won’t reward you gold medals, customers have infinite patience and I took my time to slowly practice getting better at cooking no-autoserves. After doing chill mode, I found that when getting deeper into the game I was starting to get enough practice and cook some of those no autoserve more efficiently. There were times where I told myself “I’m getting gold here in Texas using the King Potato!” which are giant baked potatoes that are some of the hardest foods and after a few tries, I got that gold medal. By challenging myself I found that I was mastering the harder foods and soon foods like King Taters, Sushi, Hamburgers, Pho, Deluxe Nachos, Ramen, Roulade, Calzones and Gazpacho became regular choices for my menus. I got really hooked on this game so much so that I saw through the ending getting to the Iron Cook Speedway. The ICS is a worthy last destination as those levels have special orders come in blistering fast in your Prep Stations and the game will launch multiple FT attacks without any defense. But after a certain amount of tries, I managed to collect gold in most of those levels. I felt an amazing sense of accomplishment getting the gold medal on the final level which was an accumulation of me simply getting better by challenging myself to cook foods I once relied on Chill Mode for and thinking of strategies of making those dishes quicker.

But on top of how much of an amazing game CSD3 is and how I saw through that campaign, CSD3 has an undisputable argument on why it should be my GOTY. It’s a rare argument that any video game can have, but it’s also my GOTY because it rejuvenated my interest in cooking by seeking out recipes for foods I never made/heard of before. I mentioned earlier that CSD3 has a vast selection of cuisine and many of these foods were international meals I just learned about thru it. It also encouraged me to cook these foods in real life. In this year where we had a pandemic that altered the restaurant industry, cooking food at home become more important. I made food such as Ayam Goreng, Croque Monsuir, Kachumbari, Rote Grutze, Japanese Crepes, Chakalaka, Khachapuri and so on for myself and my family. Nearly all of them had delicious results! I have a whole twitter thread that recaps what I’ve cooked from the CSD menu this year.

Anyways if it isn’t obvious, I absolutely love Cook, Serve, Delicious 3 and its without a doubt my Top Game of 2020. It was an incredibly addicting experience and something that inspired me to practice an essential life skill.

2019 was certainly...a chaotic year to end the 2010's decade on for much of the world. For me however, it was a pretty nice year with some cool highlights. I got to visit my brother in Brooklyn, NYC and we had a great time exploring all of NYC. I got to meet some new friends through the Meetup app and have gotten together with them countless times this year. Also as far as gaming goes, I got a brand new PC gaming laptop for Christmas 2018 and I got to play some games that I wouldn't on the Switch. Some of these games ran super well (XCOM 2, Obra Dinn, a certain game that's on my top 10 list) and some ran like Poo or couldn't run at all and I had to get a refund on those games (Trials Rising Beta ran at 20 FPS on PC somehow and I tried to played Sekiro 3 times and it never worked well at all). Though even though I have a PC Gaming Laptop now, the Switch had an incredibly strong year of exclusives and indies that it still managed to be my primary gaming device. Without further ado I'll get into my honorable mentions of the year and then get into my top 10 games of 2019. Though be warned, because my top 5 is gonna look pretty unique compared to most people's top 5's. And I get pretty descriptive of my top 5 too.

Usually I've posted about my favorite old games of 2019 on these blogs, but instead I made a list going into detail about the old games I played in 2019. Here's the link.

Honorable Mentions:

• Tetris 99: What's wrong with me? This game should be in my top 10 too. Its an amazing take on Tetris by turning it into a Battle Royale. Well here's the thing. I was super into this game at first, but I bounced off of it as whenever I kept playing matches, I noticed I wasn't getting any better and so many people were taking me out within the 80's and 70's range. I know there have been updates since the launch, but I weirdly had no motivation to see the updates. Its not you Tetris 99, its me.
• Card of Darkness: An Apple Arcade game I got late in the year. And MAN THIS IS A HARD GAME. Especially considering the very child like and innocent artstyle, this game is willing to beat you up early one as you try to survive a map full of enemies and you need to find Swords to beat the enemies while reducing the damage you take and hopefully get some potions to heal.
• Mortal Kombat 11 (The Switch Version): So I'm clearly in a bad spot with this game because I had to choose between getting the Switch version or the Steam version, and NetherRealm hasn't been the best with PC Ports). Clearly this game runs best on PS4 or XB1. I picked up the Switch version because I bought into the hype of it running at 60 FPS. It certainly does run at that framerate and that's nice, but man I should have known this version was gonna be ugly as sin. Why does unmasked Scorpion and Sub-Zero have sparkly hair and beards? I mean, they did the best they could to port it over but it ain't pretty. Anyways I got to enjoy the story mode and practiced with Jax for a while, but the grinding system of the towers and the horrific looking Krypt kept me from wanting to play anymore and I dropped MK11 after that. Which stinks because it should be in my top 10 because it came out on my Birthday!
• Sayonara Wild Hearts: This is certainly an audio-visual experience that I recommend to anyone who loves Pop Music and neon-colors. The developers nailed their premise creating a playable pop album and each level throws in some new gameplay mechanic to keep the experience fresh. Its not in my top 10 because while I enjoyed the experience the first time, I had no desire to go back and get a gold rank save for the car drifting level. And while the music serves its purpose incredibly well with the game, I'm not a Pop music aficionado and never felt like listening to the game OST on my off time. I also wasn't a fan of the abstract storytelling as I know its about a woman overcoming a breakup, but are the other masked folks representing the woman's personality traits and her fighting these masked people is actually her being hard on herself? Still, I highly recommend playing through this on Apple Arcade, Switch or PS4 if Pop Music and STYYYYYLE are your jams.
• What the Golf?: Another Apple arcade game that I didn't quite finish before the end of the year, but a game I plan on beating in 2019. Its one of 3 Apple Arcade games I have right now and this game is basically just what it miniature gold and Warioware had a baby? Its definitely a hilarious little game that I want to play more of, but I'm with Jeff that some of the Crown challenges in this game get so tough that they become a chore to complete.
• Grindstone: My favorite Apple Arcade game and one that I haven't finished yet either. I just love being able to strategically cut a few creeps in order to creating a big line of creeps to clear. Building up longer chains also feel very satisfying especially when its long enough to clear jerks, thieves or gravestones that have ghosts turn creeps into skeleton enemies. Not to mention there's a surprising amount of depth to your approach to the puzzles as you can craft weapons such as variety of arrows to bring into battle as well as different costumes that give you perks (like the princely outfit that reduces the chain number to clear royal slobs). Its certainly a game I want to beat next year, but fell short on my list.

Without further ado, here's the actual Top 10 games of 2019:

10. Untitled Goose Game:

I raised Mallards when I was younger and when I heard that there was gonna be a game where you can play as a deviant water fowl ruining the days of people, I was sold immediately. I wasn't playing as a jerk Mallards and perhaps that would elevate the game's status higher, but I still had a great time playing this silly stealth puzzle game. Untitled Goose Game applies these stealth gameplay mechanics for some genuinely funny slapstick humor. You can aggravate a groundskeeper so much that he'll try to hammer down a "No Goose zone" sign, but if you Honk at the right moment, he'll hammer his own thumb and then fall over his exit garden door. You can steal a lady's Goose garden statue, untie the bow on the statue and then pretend to be the statue as the lady ties the bow on you only to then honk to scare the daylights our of her. Not to mention the presentation is top notch with it looking like an interactive painting as well as the piano music playing to the tone of the situation you're in. Also oh man those Goose animations are "Chef's Kiss". Its a game that you'll need to get used to with the controls as I don't think it controls perfectly all the time, but I still got invested in clearing these dastardly puzzles ruining the days of all these British Villagers.

Though while I did raise ducks, the goose in this game reminded me more of my parent's new Boston Terrier puppy because she's a monster. She steals toys from her big brother Boston. She has stolen food and doorstops. Heck one time I brought her to a microbrewery to see a friend and I tied her leach to the table. But somehow she sneakily got loose and ran over to another table to see a husky and then flopped on her back in awe of how much bigger the husky was. Don't worry, she's taking obedience class.

9. Cadence of Hyrule:

No. I refuse to take the time to type the game's full title. Its always gonna be Cadence of Hyrule to me dang it!

Anyway, I never really spent that much time with Zelda games other than a good chunk on a GBA re-release of the NES original, a little bit of Link to the Past and 10 hours of BOTW (I know, I'm a weird person for not being super into Zelda). I also liked Crypt of the Necrodancer, but the super hard difficulty early on scared me from wanting to playing more of it. This game felt like an ideal match where I still had that satisfying rhythm gameplay of but put in a classic overhead Zelda gameplay style where you are exploring a fully fledged map with different regions and enemies. Also like Zelda you are clearing puzzles and areas to get more upgrades such as Heart Containers and even collect a plethora of items from classic Zelda games such as Bows and even Bombchus from Ocarina of Time. There are dungeons too and they definitely can get tough like Necrodancer's, but I found these fairly more accessible. Heck I found this game overall more accessible as after a few tries early on I felt like I got a real groove going getting some satisfying rhythm chains moving and attacking to the beat and then feeling bummed that somehow my beat would go off. It goes without saying but the remixes of classic Zelda tunes are great! Especially how they're handled going from some sick guitar licks in battle within Gerudo Valley to then getting a chill whistling tune when all the enemies are cleared. Also bravo to Nintendo for taking a risk and let a talented indie developer make a spinoff for one of their biggest franchises and hitting it out of the park.

8. Baba is You:

Baba is You is possibly the most ingeniously designed game on my list. Its an incredibly clever puzzle game all about switching the rules of the puzzle as you have short sentences that establish the attribute of what certain characters, items and environments might have. Heck if the puzzle allows you to do so, you can change your own role in the puzzle as you can go from being the titular Baba to becoming a Rock or even become the walls that once blocked your path and even move around as said walls. Heck are some jellyfish in the way of reaching a flag? Well if you see a sentence saying "Jelly is Sink", you can push a word into the Jellyfish and open a path. Heck sometimes you can change the goal from the flag to something entirely different.

Its a game that stuck with me early in the year as I was constantly amazed with the sheer amount of creativity the puzzles showed off. However, once I got into the post ending puzzles, I'm was starting to feel kind of dumb for not knowing the solutions. I did get some after a good number of trail and error. But a good majority of them were starting to get too much for my own brain. That said, its a game that I'm eager to get back into since it has such a great premise and while its not my top game of the year, its definitely one of the best "thinking man's" games I've played. Plus this game might be in the running for best 2019 game of 2020 now knowing that developer Hempuli Oy is planning to release a level editor.

7. Wargroove:

Wargroove is essentially Advance Wars but set in a fantasy setting and has hero units with special abilities. I was someone who really enjoyed those games back in the GBA-DS days, it was nice to see someone take a crack at the formula since Nintendo has put Advance Wars alongside IP's like F-Zero, Mother and Punch-Out in the island of inactivity. Wargroove is a surprisingly content rich game for a game that's only 20 dollars as you have your main campaign of battles to clear as well as side mission that can take hours to beat. For most of the campaign you are Mercia, the daughter of a deceased king of the Cherry Stone kingdom and as she plans to avenge her father, tries to warn other kingdoms of the Felheim threat, which is a kingdom made up of skeleton fighters, vampires and loud mouthed Frankenstein commanders. The other kingdoms also happen to be a plant based civilization and desert Japan. Wargroove was one of my first addictions of the year as I carefully learned how to move specific units and how to lure enemies into certain traps where certain units I had to eliminate the opposition. There's definitely some AW like tactics here as certain units can defeat others (Anti Air units such as alchemists can take out Dragons) but each unit has unique critical hit conditions such as knights doing a critical attack after moving 6 tiles. The game has more original ideas with the heroes using Wargrooves to turn the tide such as Mercia healing units within her radius. But going further on the content, there's also an arcade mode if you want 5 quick battles against enemy AI, a puzzle mode where you need to clear a task within usually 1 turn and even have the ability to make your own battles and full fledged campaigns.

6. Super Mario Maker 2:

I've said this before, but I didn't get actively get back into gaming until getting a Switch in 2017. So I definitely did not have a Wii U to experience the magic that was Super Mario Maker. Thankfully Nintendo announced earlier this year that there is a sequel to SMM coming to the Switch in June and Man this game was an absolute delight to play and make. I managed to make 4 levels in this game and weirdly enough, I got a very tranquil feeling inside me when just creating these Mario levels. I can't say any of my levels were hits and some of them ended up being much more difficult than what I originally thought, but I was happy to at least create these levels and see how I did as a first time Mario designer. But this game is packed with all sorts of content. The Story Mode is a good introductory tool to show off what kind of crazy contraptions you can come up with within your level. I remember that one level where you couldn't jump to be an absolute killer but its neat that an objective like that can be established in a custom level. Not to mention all the new features added to the game give creators more chances to create some bizarre levels from the On/off switches changing occupying blocks into empty spaces to the return of that pissed off Sun from Super Mario Bros 3. Well, that sun has 3 truly angry forms and one annoyed form in the objectively worst style NSMBU. Not to mention the SM3DW style is a breath of fresh air that changes the way level designers can make levels such as driving in cars and apparently Bullet Bills can hurt other enemies. There's also so many neat levels made by some great designers ranging from jumping challenges relying on Banzai Bills to choosing the picture that's different from the rest.

But in all honesty, my favorite level has to be my brother's level called Metal Goomba Solid. Its a level that pays homage to the original MGS as Mario must sneak through Shadow Moses Island through different stealth sections and then confront Liguid Goomba in a climatic battle involving Metal Gear Rex. Its honestly a great level that utilizes stealth in so many smart ways and feels incredible true to its source material. Its so good it got the attention of Nintendo Youtuber Beardbear and posted a playthrough of the level. Though I hoped he actually failed once and one particular feature in the level which mimics what happens when you get caught by a soldier in MGS.

5. A Short Hike:

This is a game that entered my list VERY LATE in the year. Its a game that came out in August but I didn't really give it a try until seeing one Patrick Klepek gush about it on twitter. I decided to buy it and its fairly cheap for an indie game too as its only 8 American Dollars on Steam. Let me tell you, if the Merrian Webster dictionary had a picture to associate with the definition of Pleasant, which is giving a sense of happy satisfaction and enjoyment, a picture of A Short Hike would be perfect for the description.

A Short Hike is very much what its titled as its a short game where you are a bird named Claire in a Animal Crossing like setting in a park. You go to this park that your Aunt May works at as a Park Ranger and are encouraged to walk around the area. You are awaiting a very important phone call but the only place in the park that has any phone reception is summit of the park known as Hawk Peak. You can simply try to go up to the Peak and get that salient phone call Claire is waiting on if you want. But you'd be robbing yourself of the nice, wholesome experience this game has to offer. Throughout the game one of the main collectables you acquire are golden feathers, which serve as a stamina meter for Claire to either fly higher when she's gliding (the controls while flying feel so good) or climb mountain walls. You can find these by exploring the park or by doing some fun and friendly things for NPC's which is honestly the best part of this game. You might find an aspiring artist who's traveling around the park trying to paint the best picture of the environment for an exhibition but doubts it'll be good enough to impress a contemporary artist she looks up to. You end up being very encouraging to her and after being so nice she'll give you a golden feather as a way of thanking you. You can also go fishing which actually is the best fishing of 2019 as you launch a lure into rivers, lakes and seas and then catch different types of trout, bass and even crayfish and then exchange the fish to get money. There's even the hot new sport Beachkestball which is the ultimate game of cooperation as you hit a beachball with a stick and keep a rally going with a partner until the ball hits the beach. Plus all the writing is very endearing and charming that you honestly wouldn't want to skip any of the dialogue even if its all spoken by animal people. Not to mention the visuals are lovely as they go for a Nintendo DS like art style with a low-poly/pixel-ly look but the warm art direction and atmosphere makes it look beautiful. And the music is rather soothing and done by composer Mark Sparling.

A Short Hike is basically the video game equivalent of a bowl of New England Clam Chowder or a Cheesy Chicken and Broccoli soup for those who don't like Seafood. It shouldn't take long to finish, but you want to slowly enjoy the experience and see and taste everything. Also like eating soup, you'll feel warm and comfortable inside playing this game.

4. Luigi's Mansion 3:

Going from a game that can serve as an actual virtual vacation to a game that's set in a vacation spot (or so Luigi and friends think) Luigi's Mansion 3 was one of my biggest surprises. I liked the original Luigi's Mansion on the Gamecube, but always got stuck on certain parts of the game whenever I booted it up. I don't have a 3DS so I never played Dark Moon. But here we are with the third installment of the series and its one of the best Switch exclusives to date. Luigi, Mario, Peach and a bunch of Toads get invited to a luxurious hotel for vacation and when they buy into the hotel's assumed shawkiness, it turns out its a trap by King Boo and hotel manager Helen Gravely and they successful put everyone except Luigi into picture frames. Also Hot take, King Boo is a superior Mario villain than Bowser. King Boo has an undefeated streak on the red plumber yet Bowser hired a Dark Souls Dragon to take Mario out in Odyssey and still failed.

Anyways the game takes the combat of the series into a new direction as you still can flash lights at nearby ghosts that are after you, but after you freeze them and the vacuum them into the poltergeist, you can now slam them to reduce their health. I heard the slam got repetitive in some reviews, but I found myself really liking this mechanic as you can slam ghosts on top of other ghosts for combos and even throw them into breakable tables, which btw because of that Luigi's Mansion 3 is the best wrestling game of 2019. Congrats! But also what makes this game so good is that the sense of exploring the hotel is just lots of fun as you are encouraged to look throw every nook and cranny to find all sort of secrets. This time with the help of your gooi-fied version of yourself Gooigi, who can access certain paths Luigi can't by walking through Metal Barred doors in the vein of the T-1000 as well as give Luigi a Poltergeist boast if the suction of one isn't enough. As you explore these areas you'll find some clever puzzles that hide either gems or a boatload of cash and Luigi will make Bill Gates look broke. Plus this game is just oozing with personality as the game starts off with hotel floors that feel at home with actual hotels such as a suite floor of rooms and a dining hall, but you later encounter wackier floors themed after movie sets and Ancient Egypt. The animation and visuals on Luigi's Mansion 3 might top Mario + Rabbids Kingdom battle for perhaps the best looking Switch Title to date. The ghosts have unique animations based on the floor you're on and Luigi himself has never been more charming. Don't listen to what some people say about the bosses, because the boss fights in this game are some of the absolute best I've fought against in any game in a while. Namely the highlights for me were Amadeus Wolfgeist, Ug the Caveman and of course, Captain Fishhook. Luigi's Mansion 3 would be my favorite Switch exclusive of 2019...had it not been for a another game that I'll get to later.

3. Later Alligator:

You know what's another game that has tremendous animation, has a hotel, ghosts and starts with the letter L?

Later Alligator!

Many GB users might know this game best from that one quick look Vinny shared with Alex and Dan last year of those goofy Gators and mini-games, but weirdly enough because of that Quick Look I got the game myself and absolutely loved my time with it. The story is that a nervous alligator named Pat thinks his family is trying to rub him out by hearing there is this "Event" that they are planning and thinks the event is a hitman planning on assassinating him for doing something wrong. You are hired by Pat to talk to his friends and family to learn more about the event. You ask them who they are, what they know about pat and the event but the last question you don't get any info on until you clear a mini game of their's. If you saw the quick look, you'll remember Slick Mickey's card game scheme mini game and Tall Jared phone repair/ghost exorcism mini-game, but there's so many other great mini-games in here. One of my favorites is helping Pat's Dad operate his way-too-complicated grill that has different attachments such as a tv and an athlete gator running on a hampster threadmill and you need to deplete any fire or sparks the grill has. There's another where you see what appears to be a gator-ized version of the RE4 merchant, but he's actually an artist who wants to go to liberal arts college and you need to detect the differences between original artwork and his takes on classic art. The art itself is gator-ized versions of classic paintings such as one based on A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Gratte. Plus this game is chock-full of best moments. One of which is at the Unsavory Part of Town and when you walk into an alley, there's a sign that says "Girls, Girls Girls", but when you enter it its actually a lecture hall ran by a history professor passionately talking about the historical legacy of female figures such as Rosalind Franklin (the woman who discovered the structure of DNA) and legendary American poet Gwendolyn Brooks.

Not to mention this game's presentation does so much for me. The animation is beautifully done by animation studio, SmallBu Studios who is famous for their Baman Piderman series as well as guest animating some Adventure Time Episodes. The music is absolutely terrific as it hits all sorts of jazzy notes but also some cutesy notes and even has a song that sounds like its out of DDR. All the music was done by 2Mello who if you happen to be reading this, dude congrats! Your music has now been apart of my back-to-back indie games of the year (Celeste last year for that one remix, and now Later Alligator). The dialogue in this game is the absolute best and funniest I've seen in a game for a long time as Vinny was right. Its hard to nail humor in a game and it just does it in such an earnest way that it and the cute animations make the humor soar. Not to mention you get to learn more neat info on characters you previously met by talking with other gators. Remember Joanne the cool Pinball lady from the Quick Look? Well she happens to be in a gay relationship with social media influencer Tin Lizzy. It also has 3 different endings and I witnessed them all, feeling especially happy seeing the final ending unfold.

Is Later Alligator as smartly designed and as complex as Baba is You? No. Is it as content rich as Wargroove? Not really. But its the indie game that I enjoyed the most this year and that's why I have it ranked super high on my list! Congrats to SmallBu and PillowFight for their work!

Also Pat is the most precious boi of 2019.

2. Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown:

To honor Dan Ryckert and his Air Force Gator books, we're going from Gators to the Air Force (or an Air Force from Strangereal).

This game right here is the most forgotten game of 2019. Ace Combat 7 first came out in January 18, 2019 which was a week before heavy hitters Resident Evil 2 and Kingdom Hearts 3. The PC version came out on the first day of February and despite the good reviews, AC7 was mostly forgotten in GOTY discussions. This game wasn't in the GB GOTY deliberations and it also got no attention in outlets like IGN, Gamespot, Destructoid and so on. Pretty much everybody forgot about this game EXCEPT ME!

In fact, I'll never forget playing the first level of AC7. I flew up and followed the initial orders of flying towards a bomber and taking it out. But then I felt like just freely flying around the skies in my jet. The game had these gorgeous visuals that essentially told me I was really missing out on the higher end consoles this gen. I was in absolute awe when I was flying through the skies and even saw precipitation fog up the screen while I flew into the clouds. It was all so breathtaking. ...Then as I left the clouds I was directing my jet into a body of water and I nosedived to my death. Eventually beat it on my 3rd try.

So to be clear, I have never played an Ace Combat game until this game and it caught my lose interest as an arcade-y flight action game with a Metal Gear Solid-esque story to tell. Frankly I was not expecting to get this attached and enamored with this game this year. Its a game that while it'll sport aerial dogfights that the series is known for actually has a surprising amount of varied missions throughout the game. One mission might have you stealthily fly towards a landmark (in this world's case the Space Elevator) while avoiding the enemy's radar's. Another mission might force you to be equipped with a secondary weapon that's designed to destroy ballistic missile sites. There's even a mission where you'll fight in a lightening storm laced valley and the lightening will make your radar temporarily go off. Its a game that manages to keep things fresh mission by mission but it'll require you to be properly prepared. You'll have access to the aircraft tree which after earning points from past missions you can use to afford new jets, weapons and upgrades to make you jet perfect for the mission before the sortie. Of course your jets will also have bullets to shoot as well as primary missiles too, and it never gets old launching two missile weapons at a TU bomber and then using the missile cam to see your one-two punch devastate that bomber. SO GOOD!

But I also need to talk many other features of Ace Combat 7. The game's story is of course set in the fictional world of Strangereal and a new war starts between the nations Osea (US analog) and Eursea (European Union analog). The focus on certain characters start off as a bit unclear as many early cutscenes focus on the Scrap Queen, a female mechanic stationed at Osea's 444th Air Base during the Lighthouse War that you don't see in the main game missions until much later but her role within the story (and the story itself) comes full circle. You even learn about legendary pilot Mihaly Dumitru Margareta Corneliu Leopold Blanca Karol Aeon Ignatius Raphael Maria Niketas A. Shilage (that's the man's full name) and why he is still flying at his age. As for in-game you are Trigger, an up and coming pilot of the Osean Air Force who does fairly well in early mission but he and his squadron discover that the Eurseans are starting to create Drone jets to substitute humans and make these automated jets the future of aerial combat without human causalities on their side. However in one mission you are blackmailed for killing the former president of Osea in a dogfight, thus sending Trigger to an expendable convict squadron and needs to stay alive to get pardoned as well as witness more insanity in the Lighthouse War. Its a very crazy MGS story that even has its own Metal Gear like war machine known as the Arsenal Bird. It was a story that I made a complete 180 around and really enjoyed seeing the fictional politics of the Lighthouse War play out.

And I can't leave Ace Combat's praises without praising its soundtrack because DAMN, this game has the best OST of 2019. No Questions. Its a soundtrack that sells the climatic moments of the game incredibly well and it boasts an incredibly variety of different genres. When you play Charge Assault (the 1st mission) there's a sense of triumph and wonder that sells the moment of Trigger first fighting in the Air Force and him successfully eliminating the Eursean threat. A song like Mimic has more of rock flavor as it starts off with some killer drums and then hits all cylinders with Guitar, Bass and Piano (Mimic is a song that's in the DLC for AC7). There's Magic Spear which amplifies your mission of taking out ballistic missile sites by combining horns, guitar and orchestral sounds to have you more motivated. And Last a OH SO NOT LEAST is Daredevil. Its a song that plays during your final confrontation with the Arsenal Bird and as you listen to the music, moments in this song play based on how you're doing in the fight and when you get to 3:15 of the song in the game, its one of the greatest "You're almost there, just keep fighting to win" pieces of music I've ever listened to. Its a truly incredible soundtrack and credit goes to Keiki Kobayashi, Mitsuhiro Kitadani and others for composing such brilliant work.

So yeah, you can tell this game made me an Ace Combat fan! Hopefully Bandai Namco can re-release the PS2 Classics on Steam or hopefully have Project Aces make an eighth installment. Also hopefully they'd give Aces a lot more time because crazy enough this game's development started in earnest in December 2017. Its a literal miracle Ace Combat 7 even exists.

1. Fire Emblem: Three Houses:

So yeah, apparently my two favorite games of the year happen to be anime games. With Fire Emblem becoming the overall winner. Also yeah I know having Fire Emblem as a #1 game isn't all that rare after talking about how weird my top 5 was gonna look, but this game was without a doubt my game of the year.

As for my experience with the franchise, I spent a considerable amount of time with the 2003 GBA game which happened to be the series' debut outside of Japan, but I never got to finish it. I also played Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn for a little bit since I borrowed it from a friend, but for some reason it froze on me during the second battle. I was certainly excited to play a new Fire Emblem since I'm a big fan of turn based strategy games (though this game is more of a strategy-RPG), but I was not expecting to be this hooked to Three Houses. I chose the Golden Deer btw and don't regret that choice whatsoever.

As far as the battle system goes, the game actually gets rid of the weapon triangle from past games where sword beats spear, spear beats axe, and axe beats sword. It does take away some depth in some strategy, but you will still want to think about where to place your characters considering the units their up against. I turned Hilda, the delicate flower of the Golden Deer into an armored knight and she was perfect for mowing down enemy Myrmidons and Thieves whose swords couldn't pierce through her armor. Having Archers like Claude and Leonie were perfect for one hit K.O.-ing those annoying Pegasus Knights or Wyvern Riders from making devastating flanks on my troops. There's even a new type of weapon, gauntlets. These are perfect for good punch bois like Raphael who are building their punch skills to become Brawlers, Grapplers and even War Masters. Also new to Fire Emblem are Gambits which are troops of soldiers that can either do nearby attacks, rolls explosive barrels to a nearby unit or even give allies perks such as moving more spaces. Besides the last gambit mention I didn't use gambits early on besides taking out Giant Beasts, but they become much more useful in the post-time skip when you can use them to make a group of enemies freeze for a turn so they wouldn't come in and demolish your own troops. Plus besides playing the main story battles that progress the story, you even have side battles to help you party grind to level up without feeling dull as well as Paralogue missions. These missions are character specific and sometimes will reward you with legendary relic weapons that massively increase the stats of the right character (Marianne and her Blutgang did wonders). The battles made me deeply consider ever move to the point that I made sure to use those divine pulses to undo any blunders I made. If I felt really unhappy with how the battle was going to the point that it looked unwinnable, I wanted to restart the battle to get a clear slate and try new tactics out to win the battle.

As good as the tactically gameplay was...I found myself much more drawn to the cast of characters in this game as well as the story in itself. I managed to put in 110 hours in the Golden Deer Route alone.

Well, that and also help Marianne get out her depression and she became the person that I married post time skip. Marianne is so pure and needs love. Also to get the ideal epilogue endings that I wanted because of how much I enjoyed certain pairings' supports such as Petra/Ignatz and Lysthiea/Felix. Which all of this leads to the most addicting element of 3 Houses and that was exploring Garreg Mach and playing professor sim for the classes. As you explore Garreg Mach you can chat up with either your own students, school faculty or members of the 2 houses you didn't choose. You can increase support levels with other students by either giving them a reply in a conversation they'd like or do activities with them from giving two people (in or out of your house) meals or even throw a tea party for someone and you play a mini game to pick conversation topics that character would like. Since for some reason I can't post my twitter video of my first Tea Time with Raphael, I'll just post a link here because its just hilarious. You can even recruit other students from different houses and you do so by either working your skills up to impress a student (Felix with Sword) or build up a B Support with these students to get them interested which is how I got Bernadetta and Petra. You can even build skills of students through classes and you choose student and manually help them build up skills for a weapon, mount type or magic to help them get from one class to a better one. And it was all worth it to get Lysthiea to be a magical tank Gremony. But going back to supports, I never skipped any of these at all because I got to learn so much about the characters. You may see Marianne at first be this faithful but sad student who only finds peace being near animals and thinks she'll be a burden to others. But if you have her with the right people such as Hilda she can express happiness in later supports and she won't feel like a walking curse around others knowing people do care for her.

Fire Emblem Three Houses is a game rich in content as while I only played 1 route, I'm eagerly thinking about what to do on my second route doing NG+ for either the Blue Lions or the Black Eagles and see their side of the story. But I don't know if they're gonna top the Golden Deer with my ragtag team of misfits and helping Claude get his dream come true. Which is end the continent of Fodlan's xenophobia due to the rules of the Church of Seiros and alter the Church's rules to allow Fodlan to see the rest of the world while letting other civilizations know about the different kingdoms and people of Fodlan. As you can tell, I was completely enamored with this game from typical FE battles to the sim elements of being a professor at Garreg Mach and being lasered focused on the game's lore learning about the grander story to legitimately caring for my students and faculty members in my party. The pay off of even seeing these characters develop post time skip was excellent as well and overall made for my most enjoyable gaming experience of 2019.

Welp, 2018 is almost over. As far as how 2018 was when compared to 2017, it certainly doesn’t seem to have as many significant titles as the past year. Certainly this year we got games with amazing receptions such as God of War, Red Dead Redemption 2, Marvel’s Spider-Man, Monster Hunter World and so on. But it feels like the grand sum of 2018’s catalogue of games won’t be a memorable as 2017 where we had Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Odyssey, Nier Automata, Horizon Zero Dawn, PUBG, Cuphead, Persona 5, Resident Evil 7 and many more games that garnished amazing receptions and changed the landscape of the video game market to this day. Weirdly enough, it’s a bit telling the most popular game in 2018 is a game that started in Early Access from 2017 (Fortnite).

Of course I don’t want come off too harsh on 2018 as I think on its own its a very strong year for the industry. Certainly PS4 and XBOX 1 owners got to enjoy some amazing 1^st and 3^rd party titles. Coming from a Switch owner, it was a let down year from Nintendo as their first party output had loads of enhanced Wii U ports and there weren’t that many entirely new Switch games from Nintendo this year. Thankfully the indie scene for the Switch (and overall this year) was amazing as most of my time was spent playing great indie games. Not too mention third party support is also getting better for the Switch and there were a few solid 3^rd party games that I really enjoyed. Sure if I had a PS4, it would be great to get a chance to play games like God of War, Hitman 2, Spider-Man and Tetris Effect and those titles would greatly affect the list I currently have. However, I’m still very happy with the list I got and can say from experience these are my 10 favorite games from 2018!

Though quickly before I get into the top 10, I want to make some quick shoutouts to some old games I played this year. Last year I had my own write-ups on these old games and why I enjoyed them so much. This time to save energy, I’m going to just have a bullet list of old games I’ve played and a little note about each. So here we go:

• Steamworld Heist: Secretly one of the best Turn Based Strategy games out there. Its like a 2D XCOM but you are in control of your aim, not a random %.
• Gorogoa: A beautiful and innovation puzzler. Would have been in my top 2017 games.
• Sonic Mania: A good Sonic game finally. Also would have been on my 2017 list.
• Breath of the Wild: Need to play this more, but I respect the heck out of its design and the freedom it gives the player.
• Hollow Knight: 5 hours in and would have played more of it had it not been for one of 2018’s games.
• DOOM: Early, but seems good on Switch
• Mario + Rabbids: Also super early but it seems solid.
• Lumines Remastered: I may not have Tetris Effect, but I have the precursor to it and Lumines is dope.

I’ll also bullet note 2018 games are basically honorable mentions:

• Wizard of Legend
• Jackbox Party Pack 5
• Crossing Souls (This one I got super late and still playing)
• Mario Tennis Aces
• Donut County
• Bloodstained Curse of the Moon
• Shapeshifting Detective: OK, this one I want to talk about a bit because its technically #11. The ability to transform into different suspects to squeeze out essential info to solve a murder is novel. However compared to another FMV game Contradiction, getting info by pretending to be the suspects is just not as satisfying as spotting a lie where it feels good to call out the suspects’ fallacies. Though the performances from mutual Contradiction actors Rupert Booth and Anarosa De Elizaguirre Butler are great as well as the rest of the cast. Its certainly worth a shot or two (there are different murderers in every playthrough) just to see the story and the cast's endearing performances. Though a special shout out goes to Esmonde Cole for his portrayal of the smooth but creepy Zak Weston.

And without further ado, here is my top 10 games of 2018 which consist of games I played on the Switch except for one.

10. Dragon Ball FighterZ:

Weirdly enough I was never much of a Dragon Ball fan and I’ve casually enjoyed the Marvel 2-3 style of tag fighters. Wasn’t expecting this game to make it onto my list (or even come to Switch before E3) but here we are. I have the game that stars 4 Gokus and 3 Vegetas in my top 10. Arc System Works certainly know how to make some lookers as they applied their graphics engine from the Guilty Gear Xrd games for Dragon Ball. The iconic anime transitioned perfectly from 2D to 3D while still maintaining the Toriyama art style. Not to mention the game feels very accessible for a tag fighter as you can land auto combos at ease and be able to land supers frequently. This was all done on Joy cons too, which work surprisingly well. Certainly the best way to play this game is online multiplayer as you bring your best team and see if you can best your opponent. I’m not good at this game. I’ve lost almost every single fight I’ve fought in yet I still had a blast playing. I’ve only won 2 online games total. One was on a nail biter where I chipped away at a win by Dragon Rushing a Goku with Vegeta. I used a light combo to earn the KO with a sliver of health left with everyone else knocked out and it felt amazing!

DBFZ would be higher if its story mode was much better. I don’t mind the actual story as I enjoyed watching the cutscenes and found myself enamored by Dragon Ball’s English voice cast. But man, the gameplay part is a drag. Having to constantly beat up fodder clones gets tiresome and the fact that the game will have you do tutorials at the start of some matches over and over made it worse. Despite my qualms with Story mode, Dragon Ball FighterZ is still a great fighter and hopefully licensing won’t kill it in the pro scene.

9. Mega Man 11:

Remember Mega Man? A classic Capcom franchise that got its birth on the NES that many people had been clamoring for a modern entry for years now? Well Mighty No. 9 was supposed to fill in the gap back in 2016 and MAN…that is one of biggest PR and gaming fiascos ever. 2 years later, Capcom decided F it, you Mega Man fans will finally get a modern game. It won’t have 8 bit graphics like 9 and 10 but rather a new visual style where its 3D graphics on a 2D plane. Guess What? Capcom did the Blue Bomber justice. All 8 stages for the robot masters are memorable as they have strong level design that’s perfectly themed to the masters’ gimmicks. Each also have some classic Mega Man challenge that will get some people stirred up, but will remind long time MM fans of the classics. It even changes things up with the Gear system, which while some claimed it was unnecessary; I actually found the system effective. Speed Gear is a God Send for having to speed past obstacles (Torch Man’s creeping fire wall NEEDED that Speed Gear) and the Power Gear complements Mega’s weapon arsenal if used smartly. Speaking of which, while the Metal Blade from Mega Man 2 remains the best Mega Man weapon, almost every weapon in this game (excluding that crappy Acid Barrier) has a strong case being on a list of top 10 Mega Man weapons. The Block Drop was my favorite as it can take out enemies far away within the screen and even decimate mini bosses or Spiner Joe Walkers swiftly. The Tundra Storm is also great as with the Power Gear it can clear a room of enemies but it eats lots of juice. I even managed to beat the game 2 times with the first being on Casual difficulty and then Normal to get more of a challenge. Mega Man 11 is a nice return to form for the super-fighting robot and hopefully Capcom can build on 11’s pros for an improved sequel.

8. Dead Cells:

It’s weird with my connection with Dead Cells. I haven’t been able to beat it nor I’m not sure if I’ll get good enough to beat the game in any run at all. Yet I find myself revisiting the game over and over mainly because of how much fun it is running around as some animate corpse killing undead armies. Dead Cells is definitely one of the best feeling games I’ve played, as the combat feels so fluid. It always feels satisfying when you get a speed boost after garnishing a streak of kills on any poor zombie or archer that got crushed by either a back stab from an Assassin’s Dagger or from a stomp attack. Plus all the weapons and traps are so much fun to toy around with. You might do ok using a Blood Sword with a Cross Bow-O-Matic that causes bleeding or an Oiled Sword with a Wolf Trap and Fire Grenades to scorch foes at higher temperatures. You progress through each level by collecting money from your victims and use whatever weapons you buy or find on your way to the next stage. You’ll also get cells, which serve as the most important source of economy as they can unlock perks such as improved healing flasks, new weapons and mutations that you use to alter your approach of clearing a run. Plus the daily challenge is certainly a frustrating but a nice addition to the game as you can really test yourself to see how far you can go before some stupid Slashers spot you and slice you to death. Plus replay value is high as you can explore new levels in new runs to find Runes that also enhance Dead Cells Guy in the current and future runs. Dead Cells is not an easy game and you will die a lot. However the way it handles progression is very satisfying as you maintain any runes from past runs and gain access to the weapons and mutations you unlocked. Even if I haven’t perfected a run, I’ve occasionally came back for more just to unlock new stuff and see how far I can go.

7. Yoku’s Island Express:

Perhaps a game that couldn’t be more of a stark contrast to Dead Cells. One is an action roguelike (some call it a metroidvania but I disagree) where you have to kill hordes or enemies on a 2D plane to slay an evil leader or you die. The other merges pinball and metroidvanias into a colorful and adorable marriage of genres and you can’t die. Yoku’s Island Express is one of the most unique games I’ve played, as you are a chipper Dung Beetle named Yoku who becomes a mailman for this tropical island. Problem is that there is a demon called the God Eater whose consuming the souls of the Gods that power the island. While the job situation appears to be stressful, this is actually quite a chill game. As you try to save the island, you explore the island in a metroidvania manner but much of the time you’ll find yourself inside a pinball table that the island has a rich supply of that is smartly interwoven with how you traverse the land. There’s also little penalty in failing a table as you’ll lose some fruit (the game’s economy) and then you try again. You need to find the 3 cheiftains of the island who can help save the remaining god, but you are also doing your job delivering mail to the locals in the meantime. Yoku travels the island with a white sphere that’s attached to him and flippers will fling around the ball to collect more fruit or help Yoku explore the map. It’s been awhile since I played pinball, but the pinball physics in Yoku feel spot on. Also the game has some fun upgrades ranging from a party whistle that can break objects that hold fruit (best upgrade of 2018) to a slug vaccum that sucks in explosive slugs and you can use their explosions to launch Yoku onto a higher platform. It’s certainly not a long game to beat, but I was at 50% when I beat the main story and did plenty of side quests and activities afterwards. Yoku’s Island Express is a charming game with lovely artwork, characters and music. But it shows how talented a studio like Villa Gorilla is by creating such a strange combination of genres and excels at mixing those 2 into an outstanding gem!

6. Wandersong:

Going further on charming, colorful indie games that are very lax in design but somewhat intense on story, we have Wandersong. This is an adventure and music game hybrid where you are a bard and have a dream where you’re told the world is ending, and he is not the chosen hero to fulfill a prophecy to end the current universe and start a new one from scratch. Even if you’re not the chosen one, you are still determined to save the universe not through strength or guts, but through the power of song in a joyous but fairly easy adventure. Its very much an adventure game on a 2D plane as you will talk to numerous NPC’s to learn about them and do quests that will feel reminiscent of Point and Click adventures (minus the pointing and clicking). But the singing mechanic is crucial and it gets lots of mileage throughout the game as you use the right joy con stick to move in 8 directions with different pitches. You can sing in a pattern to scare off ghosts that are haunting a town. You can create songs on you own to help shopkeepers sing a marketable jingle. You can even sing out responses in conversations or just sing to someone as they are talking to you. The singing itself can be crucial for platforming-ish puzzles such as using singing to get a plant to grow and help you reach a far away ledge. It’s astonishing that there’s such a variety of ways the singing mechanic is utilized throughout the game. Not to mention the game has a colorful Paper Mario atheistic with adorable characters and witty writing throughout your journey. Combining all of these elements together made me feel like I was actually playing a musical or moreso a play. You are enjoying the music and the singing of the bard but you actually get quite invested in a game where its message is to stay positive to fix problems, even if things are looking grim in the grand scheme of things. Its truly one of the most criminally underrated games of 2018 and I say if you like adventure games as well as music games, Wandersong is worth a look.

Oh and two more things. One, for a game that specializes in song, the soundtrack is quite good. Secondly, it has a dedicated dance button for the bard to perform various dances at any time. More games need this feature.

5. Octopath Traveler:

I’m someone who has little to no experience with JRPG’s. I’ve certainly played a lot of Pokémon when I was young and got into turn based strategy games and Tactical RPGs on the GBA such as Advance Wars and FF Tactics Advanced. But I can’t say I’ve dived deep into many JRPG’s until I played Octopath Traveler. This is a gorgeous game for the Switch where it evokes a classic SNES JRPG look with sprites walking around in a 3D plane that makes this game look like a pop up book. Not to mention this has an incredible soundtrack that really puts OST’s from other SE RPG’s (DQ 11) to shame. Man, Decisive Battle 2 w/ Tressa and Grandport are so good. But thankfully the gameplay was what got me hooked due to the job system and the combat. I started with H’iaant the Huntress as her initial job has her do special bow based attacks and provide team perks such as increased aim (and she alone can attack enemies with captured animals). She and the other party members can get a second job and I gave her the Cleric job for her to heal a battered team. The combat itself is plenty of fun as each enemy and boss has their own weaknesses. You need to test out which weapons and magic are strong against those enemies to break their shield and stun them and then decide to buff your team or finish off the foe. The path actions are also really fun ways. They can give you advantages such as having Theiron the Thief take a chance to steal a strong weapon or have Tressa the Merchant buy that weapon in a noble manner. Sometimes they can be used to learn about the NPC’s such as Alfyn’s Inquire action. Also each character has talents that can make the experience more enjoyable. Cyrus’ “Study Foe” talent determines one weakness of a group of enemies before the battle begins, making things a little easier. Now I heard people were disappointed with the lack of interaction and the individual stories not being all that memorable. I agree there should have been more party member communication besides the optional banters, but other than certain chapters (Tressa’s chapter 4 was a wet fart of a plot conclusion) I rather enjoyed my time playing through many of these individual stories. It made for optimal short play sessions from 30 to 90 minutes. Weirdly enough this is also my most played game of 2018 as I’ve clocked in 60 hours and beat 3 individual stories. Some JRPG experts will scoff at my playtime but I don’t care. I think that despite its flaws, Octopath Traveler is a fantastic RPG for newcomers and veterans of the genre.

4. Super Smash Bros Ultimate:

What can I say? I love Smash Bros. I’ve enjoyed playing this series with family and friends since it started on the N64. While this Smash Bros might be missing modes from past games (No breaks the targets? AND NO BOARD THE PLATFORMS STILL!?!?) I’d say this still lives up to the Ultimate title. This game brought back EVERY. SINGLE. SMASH. CHARACTER. FROM. EVERY. ENTRY. Those madmen brought back freaking Pichu from Melee! They got Snake to return from Brawl! Everyone is actually here! Plus the game offers its own new characters ranging from the tricky but powerful King K Rool to the whip and ax wielding range of Simon and Richter Belmont. It also has 103 stages from Smash’s history and countless amounts of music from different game franchises. It even has a surprisingly fun single player mode with World of Light. This mode has you fight a series of puppet fighters that each has a spirit of non-playable characters with specific references to that NPC. One of these fights could be against a Ken fighter with a Dan spirit and Ken will constantly taunt at you. You can even unlock these spirits and use them in your favor when fighting. I can finally have Kirby, Rabbids and MGS together at last by having Kirby as my fighter but attacked with a Rabbid Kong spirit and a Hal Emmerich support spirit just to get a beam sword.

But Smash Bros shines as always with Multiplayer. Smash has always been a game my brother and I have played since its start in 1999 and this interaction has some fantastic options. You can still play local Smash fights with Stock, Time or Stamina modes (but c’mon, Stock is THE MODE) but the new multiplayer modes add so much more to the multiplayer. Smashdown is awesome to play as a specific character once and then move on to a new person so you aren’t force to stick with your main. But Squad Strike is my favorite as you pick a team of 3-5 characters and take out your opponents King of Fighters style and force your foe to fight as someone else after one character is KO’d until one team wins. It’s a great reminder on why I’ve loved the Smash Bros series since I was young. While some modes are missing, this game lives up to the “Ultimate” moniker and its certainly been a game my brother and I have played nonstop once again.

3. Return of the Obra Dinn:

Here it is! The one NOT-Switch game that cracked my top 10. But for real this is one of the most unique and meticulously crafted games I’ve ever played. Return of the Obra Dinn is a game where you are an insurance adjuster and you see that a lost East India Trading Company ship named the Obra Dinn has been sighted near England. You are tasked to find out what fines need to be determined on the 60 man crew of the Obra DInn. However, some worse stuff had happened to that crew 5 years after it left England and you have a compass that lets you time travel to a victim’s exact moment of their death. Here you have to study the cause of that person’s death, who that person was by name and job title and who or what killed them. From the first corpse you see, this turns into a very intricate puzzle game where you need to study almost every detail of the scene of the death to find out who died at that moment and how. You need to study the area of where they died. You need to examine the lines of speech before you get to the scene of death to see if you get the name of the victim or a witness of the death. It’s also highly recommended to listen to the voices of these people as this ship had many different people from numerous countries and sometimes they could speak their native language or speak in an accent. There are so many details to analyze while you are figuring out the fates of all 60 people on this ship that has gone thru literal Hell. Plus the way it tells its story is very unconventional, but effective as it shows you one of the major climaxes of the tale very early on. Heck, you’re given a book where you determine the fates of the 60 people and the first body you find dies in the final chapter of the book. Plus this game has an incredible sense of style as it’s a 3D game using 1-bit graphics that is meant to evoke classic 1980’s Macintosh gaming. The Music definitely doesn’t sound like a 1980’s Macintosh game, but the score has a nautical and haunting sound to it that it soon becomes music that won’t leave your head. Though don’t come into this thinking it’s a horror game because you will witness plenty of gruesome deaths, but you are never in danger of being killed yourself. Still, Return of the Obra Dinn is one of the smartest and masterfully designed games I’ve ever played and highly recommend it to anyone who loves detective or puzzle titles.

2. Into the Breach:

The best roguelite game I’ve ever played and also one of the best strategy games ever. It’s also a really good puzzle game if you treat the layout of the 8 by 8 tile grid like a tile puzzle game. Anyways, Into the Breach freaking rules. Its got such an addictive gameplay loop where you have to use a set of 3 mechs specialized in different forms of combat and defense, clear a set of islands and see if you can destroy the hive of the building hungry Vek to save what’s left of civilization. Unlike most other strategy games where the objective is to kill all the enemies, you need to prioritize saving the buildings to keep the power grid up. You’ll need to figure out how to keep the buildings safe by not only killing any Vek, but pushing them away from their target since the Vek always choreograph their attacks for the next turn after their initial attacks. There area also Bonus objectives that aren’t mandatory, but you’ll get rewards that will help you in a run you’re trying to compelte. Plus your mechs are extremely versatile in doing this job depending on what you use. The Electric Mech was my favorite as that with the building chain core can chain all the Vek (and allies if in the chain) near buildings and can decimate the Vek while the buildings are unharmed. The Jet Mech is also good for just dropping a bomb on an enemy and smoke dispenses to cancel attacks. There are plenty of different Mechs and teams to choose from and are worth the experimentation on which teams you like the most or even customize your ideal squad of 3 mechs. Plus the pilots play an important role of leveling up as they could give mechs more health or increase grid defense (which is uselessly incredibly low). Pilots also have their own skills that can change up the strategy and approach to the missions you undertake, such as Camila Vera’s immunity to the Vek’s webbing and she can attack in smoke. Vera and the Electric Mech are like Grilled Cheese and Tomato Soup and so is Archimedes in the Spartan Mech. The gameplay loop is so engrossing you’ll never get sick of common missions like defending trains or island specific ones such as the RST Corp.’s Terraformer mission where you use a Terraformer to turn grass into desert that kills any nearby Vek. Many playthroughs can really tense and you might have to leave it to chance to see if you have one last chance. One playthrough of mine had 2 turns left on the final mission and I cleared or pushed away all the Vek except for one alpha scorpion. I had to end my turn and hope the pylon would resist the scorpion’s attack or the Vek win and in that rare moment it resisted! I managed to take care of business on the last turn and saved the world in such a lucky but earned victory. I haven’t been this enamored by a strategy game since XCOM Enemy Unknown and I certainly think Into the Breach is worth your time!

1. Celeste:

Where to start with this one. The funny thing is I’m not that well versed in Splatformers and tend to play less intense platforming games like Super Mario and Ratchet and Clank, but I latched onto this one throughout the year. Celeste is a game about a girl named Madeline who wants to climb the real world mountain in British Columbia, Celeste. The mountain is more than just actually climbing it, as it’s also a journey of Madeline trying to overcome her anxiety issues that have plagued her for most of her life. Totally not something that can happen on the actual Celeste Mountain, Madeline has a dream where she explores this eerily Castle and her self-doubtful and pessimistic side manifests into a real being and does whatever she can to convince Madeline that she's not a mountain climber. That sounds ridiculous, but it makes the story work as a tale of someone who’s fighting herself over accomplishing lofty goals and Madeline’s tale is never delivered in a ham fisted way. But what makes this tell of overcoming anxiety effective is the gameplay is designed to accommodate the story. Celeste is a hard game, and there’s an old lady who warns Madeline of how she’s not ready to see things on Celeste Mountain. She’s right as the levels are filled with death traps that are going to require a good number of experimentation for you to pass. Deaths will tally quickly. You might get stuck in one room and you might start doubting yourself if you don’t have the patience. But the game is such a joy to play despite its difficulty as the controls are very tight but your moveset is simply just running, jumping, climbing and air dashing. You’ll also find lots of level specific gimmicks that make the levels fresh such as the space blocks you dash into in order to fly over a pool of spikes. Later on there are thwomp looking blocks that you dash at one side and they go against the direction of your dash for you to reach a different area. Not to mention this game’s presentation is top notch. You get cute artwork of Madeline and the small cast of characters in this game such as selfies of Madeline and her photographer friend Theo. The music is just phenomenal as it fits the tone of what’s going on in the story but also its an OST that I can't keep count of how many times I've listened to in 2018. Go listen to Confronting Myself and the Good Karma Mix of Celestial Resort and thank me later.

As much as I enjoyed my play through of the base game, me completing the B-Sides and C-Sides made me love this game on a whole new level. These are far harder levels as they throw in more difficult ways of you to navigate through. I spent my time with the B-Sides from April to September while bouncing off different games. But throughout the year I wanted to beat these levels as a goal for me to achieve a difficult task. It’s certainly not as daunting as climbing an actual mountain, but I mostly never get into “Hard” portions of games and yet I wanted to beat the B-Sides. I got stuck in certain rooms more often than in the main game's levels which all felt easy after playing these. Sometimes I put assist mode on B-Sides to get through some brutal rooms, but I still got the thrill of clearing these levels after so much trial and error.

Than there are the C-Sides, which are much shorter than B Sides but have very hard levels nonetheless. I decided to take on chapter 1, 2, and 4’s C-Sides and yes I died over hundred times on those levels, but I shocked myself by beating all of those in one day. I kept going and managed to actually beat all of the C Sides (without assist mode mind you), but chapter 7 is the toughest. In fact, chapter 7’s C-Side is the hardest video game level I’ve beaten. The last room is where you are going to fail plenty as you have double dashes but you have to dash through a sea of blue spikes with either jump boards or dash diamonds scattered around the level to replenish your dashes. You also need to time your dashes impeccably because the spike canals are narrow and one off timed dash is a death. It took me a total of 3 days to beat that level as I’ve tried to figure out how to conquer it. First day I got as far as the middle of the room and then stopped. Next day I got farther but still didn’t beat it. After dying 1521 times from those 3 days, I took a brief break. Afterwards I got back and I managed to beat the final room of that C-Side in one run (and I didn’t fall for the falling ledge part too). The old lady shows up and she sums up the efforts of beating the game and this level perfectly saying we get attached to our struggles. Funny thing is I almost failed at the very end. I accidentally dashed off the cliff but dashed back up to the cliff. Then I tried doing 2 upward right dashes to the heart but only got my dashes replenished by touching it. Then I dashed up and right missing it again, got the dashes replenished and then finally got the heart. Interestingly enough, my struggle with that level is symbolic to Celeste’s message in general. When you are trying to achieve a tough task, it won’t be a cakewalk and you’ll likely make mistakes. You’ll probably get anxious too and you might doubt yourself on whether you’re actually capable of achieving the goal. But as long as you keep going and reassure your frustrations with yourself, you are capable of being victorious.

Celeste was already one of my favorite games of this year at that point, but not many games had me compelled to complete its hardest levels like this game did. Beating these C-Sides really elevated Celeste as one of my favorite games of all time. Alongside the beautiful music, lovely artwork and a touching story, Celeste is a platformer masterpiece and I don’t regret all the hours I spent on it!

A recurring problem with video games is that certain games tend to be revealed or announced way too early. Normally this is when the publisher and/or the developer makes an announcement for an upcoming game, whether it’s a new IP or a new entry in a series, and the game comes out 3-5 years after its initial reveal. Kingdom Hearts 3 is an example where it got announced 5 years ago, but it is expected to release this year (we’ll see). It’s a problem because these games tend to be announced way ahead of they’re development schedule and are in a work in progress. It forces an interested customer to wait for years for the final product or giving them doubts about the game coming out at all.

One game that was often ridiculed for possibly never coming out was Cuphead, which was revealed in an indie sizzle reel at Microsoft’s 2014 E3 conference. It grabbed everyone by surprise for basically looking like a playable 1930’s cartoon. Yes this game finally came out last year, but it made for a very painful wait for those who were incredibly eager about it. There is another indie game that was revealed way back in 2015, but I’m dreading it has a similar Cuphead problem of being revealed way too soon. Its called Freedom Planet 2, a sequel to the Kickstarter funded Freedom Planet that maintains the original’s sense of speed, 2D platforming and focus on combat that was revealed in 2015. Now since we’re in 2018, I’m still waiting for a full release of the sequel to one of my favorite indie games. I’m going to go in depth to compare the similarities I’ve noticed with Freedom Planet 2 and Cuphead’s too soon reveals as well as how both developers have updated their games before their release. Though let me make it clear that this comparison is between a pretty mainstream indie hit in Cuphead and a sequel to a cult indie hit that will likely develop a niche audience when it releases. There’s also some differences between the two games’ development cycles and cross promotions each game has in other titles that came/are coming out before Cuphead and FP2.

How both updated interested customers (Cuphead):

So as many of us remember Cuphead’s reveal, it was a rather unceremonious disclose for a game that had quite a distinct artstyle that hasn’t really been done in video games before. As I said earlier, Microsoft had a sizzle reel of all these indie games that were planned to arrive on the XBOX One. You saw some notable titles like Mighty No. 9 (back when people still cared for it), Superhot, Rivals of Aether and Inside. But it was Cuphead that caught everybody off guard from the montage. The reason was plain and simple, it appeared to be a playable max Fleischer cartoon set in a boss rush mode format, and it had people dying to play it. We wouldn’t here much about Cuphead until the next E3, where this time is was one of the indies that was pushed front and center as the Studio MDHR developers Chad and Jared Moldenhauer talked about their game. Then they showed a brand new trailer that revealed more footage of Cuphead fighting bosses as well as the game's plot, where both Cuphead and Mugman lose a bet to the devil and must collect the souls of the devil's debtors in order to be spared. Then it promised for a release date of 1936, which really meant it was planned for 2016 but they played with the 1930’s theme by saying it was coming out in ’36. Then we get to 2016 and many people were expecting to play Cuphead, but it never came out in 2016. At E3 2016, Cuphead was in its third Microsoft show but got similar treatment to its initial reveal where it was just included in an indie sizzle reel again. A little more footage was shown and it had a playable demo in 2016 (also in 2015) as well as learning it would have platforming levels. However, we didn’t get any confirmed date for 2016. Soon they announced a delay for 2017 and some people were relieved that the devs were taking their time to complete Cuphead. Others felt annoyed that despite seeing this game over and over at E3 that maybe it was never coming out. People feared that Cuphead was certainly a beautiful looking indie to showcase but maybe this turned into a Scalebound situation where development was too hectic and then somehow gets cancelled. People were even mocking Cuphead for being a constant E3 attendant as if its stuck at Microsoft’s E3 shows and never get a final release date.

Then at E3 2017, another Cuphead trailer was revealed. Already it was being mocked as a visually stunning game that would never get an official release by streamers who watched Microsoft’s conference live. Then at the end of the trailer, we finally got a release date of September 29, 2017. People were still hesitant if the game lived up to the promised date, but it did. Cuphead did come out on the XBOX One and Steam on 9/29/2017 and after all these years of being a showcase title at E3, it finally came out as a full fledged video game. Turned out the long wait was worth it as it got rave reviews across the board and won countless awards from different publications. Awards include best graphics, best indie game and best XBOX One game. It even sold over a million copies within 2 weeks, making it one of the biggest critical and financial success stories of 2017 video games. It was a game that probably shouldn’t have been revealed so early in 2014 as it got plenty of people to wait an incredibly long time for the official release. Perhaps the wait would have been less excruciating if its initial reveal was set in 2015. But despite the long pause, Cuphead lived up to the promise of being an artistically crafted game that replicates cartoons from a bygone era while also providing a tough and fun run and gun experience that’s similar in the vein of Contra.

Freedom Planet 2:

So what does Cuphead have to do with Freedom Planet 2? Well in terms of direct connections, not much. Both game are relatively different to one another. Cuphead is a hand drawn action side scroller that has countless bosses to fight as well as a few platforming levels in between the boss fights and it’s an original IP. Freedom Planet 2 is a sequel to Freedom Planet, which pays tribute to Sega Genesis classics like Sonic the Hedgehog, Gunstar Heroes and Ristar but uses those components to form its own identity. The first game is an incredible platformer that has very unique puzzles within the levels and plenty of its own tough and amusing boss fights. The sequel is looking to build on what the first game got right as well as correct any errors that rubbed some people the wrong way (long levels being shortened, boss life bars, etc.). But the parallel I find between the two games is that both have a very similar development cycle where they tend to update any interested customer with a substantial update on a designated time of the year and both have the problem of being announced way too early.

The first game came out on Steam (PC, Mac) in 2014 and then got a Wii U release a year later. While Freedom Planet was delivered to backers of the title and got a little bit of attention in 2014, it seemed like it had its lunch consumed by Shovel Knight, which that became the nostalgic tribute game that became a big hit that year. FP did get more publicity thanks to the Wii U launch and eventually specific Youtube channels gave it more exposure by having Let’s Plays of the game. Even though FP got a stronger fan following a year after its release, not many people were anticipating a sequel. But low and behold on Christmas Day of 2015, GalaxyTrail dropped a surprise announcement trailer that they were in fact making Freedom Planet 2. Even though the trailer was simply an anime styled animation describing the game’s story, there was lots of information released about FP2 afterwards. One of which is that the game has a drastically new art style than that of the first game, as the cast looks way different than their Sonic inspired counterparts in FP1:

Also there was all this information about some new gameplay components, such as being able to land parries on enemies, using items to give your characters buffs and having a revive system where when you lose a life, you can mash all the buttons to get back up to gain temporary invincibility and a sliver of life while finishing a level or a boss you almost beat. They even managed to get Christian Whitehead (from Sonic Mania) on board to work on the game’s physics. Also the game was originally targeting a mid-2017 release.

Ever since that first trailer, there weren’t any huge updates on FP2 until December 2016, where it launched the first of the character specific trailers starring the main protagonist of the series, Lilac the dragon lady. Basically this trailer showed off what you could do with Lilac while traversing through the levels and her abilities like using her dragon boost both on the ground and in the air. Then weeks after the Lilac trailer, we got trailers for other characters such as Carol (a motorcycle riding wildcat), Milla (Basset hound that can shoot green blocks as projectiles) and a new playable character Neera Li, who was a mid boss in FP1. Neera Li might be the most combat oriented as she has a variety of ice themed attacks, but is slower than Lilac and Carol. Then eventually Galaxy Trail announced that there is a sample version of the game that you can download on the game’s webpage for anyone to try (more on this later).

Afterwards unless you went on Galaxy Trail or Stephen Diduro’s (head of Galaxy Trail) twitter accounts for getting new sprite animations or dev log updates, not much was updated about FP2 between January 2017 (Neera Li Trailer) and Dec 2017. Then on December 19, 2017, there was a brand new trailer that showed off more levels, new attacks for the characters and a new game mode called the Battlesphere, which provide the player access to a variety of challenges. There’s a Ratchet and Clank-style arena mode where you fight off waves of enemies. One of them is a boss mode that can let you fight 2 or maybe more bosses at the same time. There’s a race challenge where you have to speed run through the level. Finally, there’s the Home Run mode, where you character literally rides on a giant baseball that’s hit by a humongous bat and the ball will destroy any targets to get a high score. Sadly no date was revealed for the game so now people like myself still have this anxious wait for FP2, but the game does look even more amazing with every new trailer we get.

So FP2 is similar to Cuphead in that both follow a pattern of choosing a specific time of the year for the developers to give any interested customers a new trailer to reveal new footage and promote the game. For Cuphead it was E3 that was its big time to shine as for 4 years, it was very prominent in Microsoft’s E3 shows. Galaxy Trail makes December its huge month for Freedom Planet 2 as for 3 straight Decembers; there has been at least 1 new trailer for the title. Also I don’t want to make this article seem like I’m begging for Galaxy Trail to finish FP2 as fast as possible and I want them to take their time in finishing FP2 in the best state. However, maybe they should have announced FP2 later so the wait wouldn’t be so long. Now has FP2 been ridiculed of never coming out? Well there have been a few people who've made snarky questions to the developers regarding the issue on twitter, but that's about it. Keep in mind that the Freedom Planet series is NOWHERE near as popular as Cuphead. The first game developed a niche fan following and the sequel should be successful enough to do the same, but don't expect FP2 to sell a million copies within two weeks (though I'd love for it to be a mega hit). Not to mention while the trailers won’t tell you the release date, Galaxy Trail’s website states that FP2 is planned for release in either Q1 or Q2 of 2019. Again, take your time to make sure the game is in a great shape and don’t rush development. However, it seems rather odd to post that on your webpage and not put that info in your most recent trailer. That way fans of FP1 can at least have a better idea on when this game is coming out. While Cuphead promised a date and then delayed it until 9/29/17, at least Studio MDHR seemed more vocal about when their game was going to release. Galaxy Trail stated that they targeted a 2017 release, but they never proclaimed 2017 as the official year of when FP2 comes out.

Differences in how both developers (and others) promoted their games:

Now when I’m drawing the parallels between both games’ development cycles and timing of announcements, the way both have handled the anticipation and promotion for their titles are vastly different. Cuphead had its game promoted in some rather bizarre ways before release. In the XBOX One version of THPS5, you could customize a skater by having heads of characters like Cuphead, Mugman and the Sunset Overdrive trailer guy. Yes weirdly enough, 2 years before Cuphead came out, this indie game got somewhat of a marketing push from a AAA game. You’d think maybe Studio MDHR was pumped that their characters’ heads showed up in a Tony Hawk game, even if THPS5 sucks. In Cook Serve Delicious, there was this Battle Kitchen DLC that promised 24 indie characters that you can feed at your restaurants, one of which was Cuphead himself. It was certainly nice for Studio MDHR to know that other games wanted to promote their game in some way by having Cuphead and Mugman show up for cameos in others games.

Though for Studio MDHR, the pressure was seriously on them to deliver on their game. With Cuphead being shown for 4 straight E3’s at Microsoft’s conference, it was being touted for the longest time as one of the great indie games you can play on the XBOX One. So I believe Microsoft probably did what they could to support Studio MDHR, but they certainly wanted that game out to improve digital sales. Not only that, but Jared and Chad Moldenhauer, had plenty of real life troubles that were tied to Cuphead’s development. Shortly after E3 2017, Chad and Jared revealed that after E3 2015, they were ready to fully commit to delivering on what they promised with Cuphead as well as take into account of some feedback, like requests for 2D levels. Sadly in order to achieve these goals, they had to quit their jobs and remortgaged their homes so they could expand on the team. They initially had a cut scope game planned with a 3 man development team that soon expanded into 20 people. They made a huge gamble in increasing the scope of their game to not only nail the 1903’s cartoon aesthetic, but create a quality video game. So before release, you’d think everyone at the development team was nervous about the games’ launch and whether it would get good reviews that would push sales. Thankfully as Cuphead sold 1 million copies within 2 weeks, the gamble paid off.

To my knowledge, nobody at Galaxy Trail is under any financial pressure where they quit some other jobs or remortgage their homes to focus solely on the development of FP2. There also isn’t any first party publisher that’s making FP2 a flagship indie that they can play on their console as the game is planned to release on Steam (PC, Mac and Linux) first and then consoles. Galaxy Trail tends to make these announcements on Youtube and their twitter accounts and they are certainly catering to their fanbase, but only a few major publications like Destructoid get word of a new FP2 trailer. Lastly, the only cross promotion I’ve seen for FP2 is that Lilac is a playable character in the upcoming Indie brawler, IndiePogo. She’s based on her FP1 design, but she will have her FP2 outfit as a skin. Though I don’t recall seeing Lilac or Milla's heads as customizable options in an AAA game. Galaxy Trail has had a rather different path in promoting their game than Studio MDHR and other developers did for Cuphead.

Now again back in 2017, Galaxy Trail did release a sample version of FP2 where you play only one level, but it lets you play as all 4 of the playable characters. You also have different difficulties to play the game as well as customize an item layout to implement your strategy to beating the level. You can either equip items that can aid you like using elemental shields or make it intentionally harder such as using brave stones that have negative attributes but you get rewarded with more crystals if you get past the level unscathed. Galaxy Trail has also updated the demo with new features from giving characters new attacks to including a photo mode where characters can do goofy poses. It’s an incredibly fun demo that establishes a good feel on what the final game should be: A fast-paced, combat focused platformer that improves on many components on the original with lots of content. Not to mention while Galaxy Trail has had this demo at PAX South shows, you get just get it online or on Steam for free, which is super nice. The only way for you to play a demo of Cuphead before release was at E3 or PAX, but no free demo was released to the public. If you have any interest in FP2 at all, I’d highly recommend picking up the sample version if you haven’t already.

Conclusion:

Yes the promotions and development cycles between Cuphead and Freedom Planet 2 have their differences. However, both do have a similar problem of maybe being announced too early and forcing anybody interested to wait years for the final product to come out. For Cuphead’s case, it was worth the wait as critics and the public were very happy with the final product and became one of the big hits of 2017. Even though we’re likely going to wait in 2019 to see FP2’s official release, there’s no doubt in my mind that it will be one of the best indie games of that year. It probably won’t be as big as Cuphead since that got a big E3 push for years and its art style helped sell the game. FP2 has a neat, 32 bit Sega Saturn sprite look, but it’s an art style that doesn’t stand out as much as looking like a 1930’s cartoon. Plus it hasn’t been shown at E3 shows to help its marketing. If anything, FP2 should be a huge improvement over an already great game that will develop a strong cult following. But man, the feeling I get for waiting on FP2 is a lot like those who waited on Cuphead, because having to wait between Christmas in 2015 to early 2019 is a hefty amount of time. It honestly would be a less painful wait had Galaxy Trail maybe announce this in 2016 and then show off those character specific trailers to hype up FP2's release. If anything Galaxy Trail, you teased the first FP to come to the Switch, so get a dang dev kit to port it over to hold us over!

Dragon Ball FighterZ has been making major waves in the fighting scene and for good reason. Arc System Works created a 3v3 fighter starring the cast of the Dragon Ball series that feels more like a spiritual successor to Marvel vs. Capcom 3 than Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite ended up being. While Arc Systems is known for creating technical and complex fighting game systems, this seems to be its most accessible fighter yet as people who aren’t too into fighters are having a blast. This is probably wise to make it accessible considering that Dragon Ball is what I consider to be one of the few “mainstream” animes out there. But one reason why the game has gotten so much attention is because of how dang good it looks. Building on what the developers created in the Guilty Gear Xrd series, Arc System Works created yet another beautiful fighter that looks almost identical to Dragon Ball Super. The graphics are polygonal, but you could easily mistake the look as 2D if you saw pictures and clips from a distance. Arc System Works put the time and effort to nail the look of the Dragon Ball franchise and masterfully transitioned a 2D anime into a 3D format.

As much as Dragon Ball FighterZ looks just like the anime, its actually not the first game to adopt an iconic animated series from 2D to 3D. I’m probably the only person on the planet to say this, but I’ll say it anyways, “You know what Dragon Ball FighterZ’s graphics remind me of? Those old Spongebob Squarepants PC games from 2001-2002!”

“Huh?” That’s probably what many of you are thinking right now after I typed that quote. To clarify, there were a couple of Spongebob video games that were exclusive to PC that attempted to transition the 2D look of Spongebob into a 3D, cel-shaded format, 17 years prior to Dragon Ball FighterZ mastering this art. The two games; Operation Krabby Patty and Employee of the Month, are actually completely different to each other and you probably never heard of them because they were games aimed towards kids ages 7-11 like me at the time. However, they both had these pre-rendered, cel-shaded cut scenes that tried present a Spongebob cartoon in 3D. While neat for its time, they…haven’t aged well. Actually some of the pre-rendered footage probably never held up anyways. But it tried to do something that Arc Systems is being praised for this generation, and that is changing a 2D source material into a polygonal look while maintaining the source material’s art style.

So as weird as this sounds, I’m going to evaluate Dragon Ball FighterZ as well as these two Spongebob PC games and see how well they mimic their franchises look in 3D.

Dragon Ball FighterZ:

Whatever I’ll type for Dragon Ball FigtherZ has basically been said already, but Arc Systems really killed it in essentially creating a 3D Dragon Ball anime. All the characters look incredibly identical to those of the show(s) and manga. Many of the animations the used match how the characters power up or attack like throwing fireballs in the Manga and anime. In fact, they even went as far as recreate notable moments from the different Dragon Ball Sagas. Admittedly I was never much of a Dragon Ball fan growing up and seeing footage of this game makes me want to watch all the different sagas. What would probably be best to show off this is to put the Jump Festa trailer for Dragon Ball FighterZ, which compiles a bunch of big moments from Dragon Ball and are animated in Arc System Works’ sweet, wonderful engine:

Perhaps the best thing about the graphics is that its not just the cut scenes that have these graphics. That’s just how the game looks period. In the 3v3 fighter, you can see your favorite Dragon Ball characters (in the roster) duke it out on what looks like a fantastic, hand drawn fighter at first. But the character models are in fact 3D and are fighting on a 2D plane. They even change camera angles to show off the fact that these models are 3 dimensional whenever somebody does a launch attack or a special move. The impressive graphics to this game is definitely one of the key reasons why more people are replaying FighterZ. They certainly want to have practice and find out which 3 characters are best for their team. However, they have to be delighted seeing these characters land their attacks and specials in all these awesome animations.

What’s also worth noting that there is a story mode that has all these cut scenes in between the fights. The cut scenes are similar to how they were done in Guilty Gear Xrd where it really was like watching a 3D anime. Some people may not like how choppy the animations may look in the cut scenes, but that’s also the point. Anime has always had this type of style in animation and one of the reasons that makes it stand out when compared to other forms of animation. Plus Dragon Ball fans are going to love the callbacks and jokes the characters give to one another during the story. From what I can tell, the tale itself has Android versions of the heroes and villains are trying to take over the world and the Z Fighters and bad guys are trying to stop the invasion. Also Goku has amnesia at first? What’s different between this and Guilty Gear is that you actually have some fights to play around with while GG just told a story with no gameplay. To showcase some of these story cut scenes, here’s a series of clips where Cell burns everybody with insults:

Bandi Namco knew exactly what they were doing when they got Arc Systems to make a new Dragon Ball game. B-N own the Dragon Ball video game license and have developers with strong fighting game pedigrees like Harada and Project Soul. However, they clearly saw what Arc System Works did with Guilty Gear and hired them to make an amazing looking Dragon Ball fighting game that looks almost just like the anime. ASW has mastered making gorgeous anime fighters that will fool you in thinking they’re 2D games, but are actually polygonal.

Spongebob Squarepants Operation Krabby Patty (OKP): The first of these Spongebob PC exclusives, it was released in 2001, published by THQ and developed by now defunct Florida based developer Awe Games. If you want a quick resume of what Awe Games is known for, they’ve made other Nickelodeon based video games and a series of Agatha Christie point and click adventure games. Operation Krabby Patty was a mini game collection where you had 5 different mini games that are based on activities that Spongebob does in the show. There’s a mini game based on Jellyfishing. There’s one on boating school. There’s even a mini game based on the “Hooks” episode, so the fan service is decent. Yes there are only 5 mini games, but there are two different episode plots similar to how a Spongebob episode is formatted that rearranges the order of those games to play. You also get to play as different characters based on the episode, but there aren’t really that different to one another. Plus because this game is aimed towards young kids, its dirt easy and even as I kid, I just played through it both episodes once or twice and didn’t touch it again.

But onto what we’re really talking about here and it’s the cut scenes. For 2001, AWE Games definitely tried what they could to literally recreate Spongebob in a cel-shaded format. However, its honestly indicated that this might have been rushed and also the base engine has aged like a freckled banana bought from the grocery store. Here’s all the scenes if you wish to see, well, some zealous smut let’s say:

So yeah, did you see Plankton get turned on by the developer’s logo? Funny right… Yeah okay that was a strange and lame joke to throw in before seeing the majority of cut scenes. So as you can tell, there were some super rough spots in OKP's footage. If the base engine wasn’t cringey enough, you had moments where Spongebob had a rather stoned look whenever he was suppose to sound excited. When he was saying his trademark “IIIIIIIIII’M READY!” catch phrase, he has those sleepy eyes when he should look exhilarated. Also in Squidward’s dream, Squidward is laughing at Patrick after he trips and falls, but his face doesn’t animate like its laughing but rather stays still. Squidward even unreasonably looks at the viewer with a scary dead look just for an excuse for him to collide with a pillar without him looking. I mean, 10 year old me was sort of into this at the time because I bought into the fact that this did look like the show, or at least at first. But even then I noticed the weird, faulty animations like Spongebob’s weed eyes and well, the unsettling animations of many of the characters. Also the in-game mini games don't look much like the cut scenes. You might get a few enemies or NPC’s that have the cel-shaded look, but the playable characters don’t maintain their pre-rendered versions in the core gameplay. Its not like Dragon Ball FighterZ where there’s a consistent look between the cinematics and the gameplay. Operation Krabby Patty’s in game character models were actually more accurate (and less scary) recreations of the Spongebob Cast and those pre-rendered graphics are only in the background of the levels.

I want to emphasis the fact that for a small, PC exclusive Spongebob game that got little to no marketing in 2001, I commend the developers for trying to recreate Spongebob into the 3D space, especially in ’01. However, the game’s cut scenes just look poor as certain animations don’t match the character’s emotions and it’s just haunting to watch now. And while its unfair to make this comparison to poor AWE Games’ work since they were a smaller studio, Final Fantasy 10 came out in 2001 as well. Now that was a game in that year that revolutionized how pre-rendered cut scenes should look.

Spongebob Sqaurepants: Employee of the Month:

THQ and AWE Games had another Spongebob PC exclusive that released a year after Operation Krabby Patty. It was Employee of the Month, which was a point and click adventure game set in the Spongebob universe. Story is Mr. Krabs gets two tickets to a theme park called Neptune’s Paradise and then decides to give them to Spongebob as a reward for being employee of the month at the Krusty Krab. Spongebob invites Patrick to join and Spongebob goes through all these point and click puzzles to get to Neptune’s Paradise. You know what, I remember this being an alright adventure game. Its not a genre defining experience like Grim Fandango nor as good as more comtemporary adventure games like Thimbleweed Park. However, for an adventure game set in the Spongebob cartoon, it was a lot better than it had any right being. Or at least I really enjoyed as a kid, but then again I was kid. It apparently got nominated for best adventure game of 2003 in Computer Gaming News, only to lose to a game called Uplink.

That said, the same cinematic engine used in OKP came back with a vengeance in Employee of the Month. Though I need to give credit where credit is due by saying there are major improvements in the cut scene animations when compared to the previous game. Spongebob is much more expressive in this instead of being a mostly sleepy eyed figure. In fact, many of the characters’ facial expressions match the dialogue they’re saying this time. Some of those expressions are, frightening, but they are still better than OKP. There’s also a few instances where some of the animations actually nail the look of specific characters. Its definitely no Dragon Ball FighterZ where the attention to detail is so near perfect that the almost look like the characters from the show, but they don’t look bad. I have to give props to AWE Games for actually taking the time to improve the quality of the animations in their pre rendered cinematics.

Even if I’m praising the developers for improving their cut scenes, they are still far from perfect and at times are still jarring to look at. There aren’t as many in cut scene glitches as OKP, but they are still present. There’s a particular scene in the game where Sandy Cheeks has a rocket ready for Spongebob and Patrick to get to Neptune’s Paradise. Not only does Spongebob have squinting eyes for no reason, but the camera turns to Patrick and he literally turns into Baraka from Mortal Kombat. Patrick’s even twitching his eye for a brief second. That scared me as a kid and makes me wonder, did AWE Games intentionally put that there to frighten the kids who were playing this or was that just a major oversight that they didn’t fix? Also that picture of Drunk Spongebob with Larry the Lobster that you saw earlier, that was from Employee of the Month. Here are the cut scenes for this game if you want to see (Go to 20:03 to see Baraka Patrick):

Admittedly, I feel a little bad about bashing AWE Games' 3D takes on the Spongebob cartoon. The reason why is because I can sense that with Employee of the Month, the developers actually cared a lot about their animations. I can’t find a link to it now, but I remember there were behind the scenes videos you could unlock while playing the game and saw how these pre-rendered or in game graphics were made. They even went as far as use the cut scene engine to recreate an early Spongebob Squarepants logo where all the characters are huddling around the show's title. I get the sense that the developers were actually pretty excited about their engine and the developers told themselves, “Wow this technology is great! We can create a Spongebob cartoon in 3D!” Sure it was ambitious for its time and their second game made big advances after how jarring the first game was. But ultimately these are only somewhat fascinating to go back to to see how this developer used the technology to recreate the cartoon and doesn't completely hold up as one of video game's greatest pre-rendered cutscenes. Especially compared to what Arc Systems is doing with their games currently.

Brief Comparison and Conclusion:

I mean, it’s a no brainer. Dragon Ball FighterZ is the best looking game of the 3 and also the one that best replicates its 2D source into 3D. Arc Systems clearly had the advantage in the first place since they were able to master this engine back in 2014 with GG Xrd, 12 years after THQ published Spongebob Sqaurepants Employee of the Month. Also its telling that Arc System Works certainly cared big time for FighterZ and had both the budget and the talent to make sure the attention of detail was spot on. The characters look great, they have sweet animations and the game might have some of the greatest production value to a licensed video game ever.

The old Spongebob PC games made by AWE Games should get some recognition for trying to do something that ASW is currently being praised for because OKP predates Dragon Ball FighterZ 17 years ago. However, while the animations look better in the second game, the overall engine just feels very arcane and nowhere near as polished and clean as ASW’s latest fighter. Plus think about those weird animations in the Spongebob games and how they might look in Dragon Ball. What if Vegeta looked all droopy eyed when he performs a Final Flash? That wouldn’t look right would it? That’s how I felt whenever Spongebob in OKP was excitingly shouting something despite having a sleepy-eyed look. But perhaps the folks who were at AWE Games have moved on and maybe got better with their graphics design in other games. Maybe they got better and soon got hired by Arc Systems to work on the graphic code for FighterZ. Kidding, but again the former AWE Games folks are hopefully on to better things.

What a year 2017 was for video games. Many are drawing comparisons between 2017 to 1998 and 2007 as people are seeing it as one of the best years for video games ever. It’s honestly been such a good year for video games that it even got me to get way more invested in video games again. In case of anyone is wondering what I mean by my last sentence; I’ll admit that I haven’t really been super active in playing video games in this generation. I’ve been a faithful Giant Bomb follower since 2011 and by the time it reached 2014, I started to slowly move away from actively playing video games. I’d still go on the website a watch quick looks and watch premium videos because I love Giant Bomb and I still wanted to get caught up on video game news. However, I never felt super compelled to buy an XBOX One or PS4. Last year however, I decided to finally get a Steam account and purchase a couple of games that I felt like I’ve been missing out on. Also in November, I finally decided to say screw it and bought a Nintendo Switch.

This year to me felt like a re-awakening in my interest in video games. This year is being championed as being one of the best years in video games and honestly I wasn't going to miss out. Full Disclosure, my top 6 games and top old games were played on either the Nintendo Switch, Macbook or IPhone. So don’t expect any major game releases on the PS4, XBOX One and/or PC on here such as PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, Cuphead, Resident Evil 7, Nier Automata, Persona 5, Horizon Zero Dawn and Wolfenstein II The New Colossus (I’m eyeing that Switch version though). Actually, don’t expect many AAA titles to be listed. All that said, I still adored my time playing the games I got to play and have no regrets buying any of the listed titles. Without further ado, here are the lists. I’ll start with a list in no order of old games that stood out to me and then get to the tiered list of my Top 6 games of 2017.

Some Old Gems:

Contradiction: Spot the Liar:

I don’t I need to add much to this game, right? I mean, we all saw what was effectively a Contradiction Endurance Run (Or Let’s Play) back in 2015 when Vinny played through all of the game through the quick looks and Premium videos with Alex and Austin by his side. OK, for those who aren’t in the know, Contradiction: Spot the Liar is an all-video Adventure game where you play as Inspector Jenks, a British Detective who is assigned to investigate a death of a college student, Kate Vine. The murder site is a small village and Jenks has to interview a list of suspects in order to solve the mystery.

Ever since I saw Vinny play through Contradiction, I have long desired to play the game myself. Certainly one of the reasons was the games’ charm with the game using FMV for teh cutscenes and gameplay. Ever performance the actor brings to the story is over the top, but also incredibly endearing. Contradiction is also like most point and click adventure games in that you can can collect items that can be used to access new areas or used during interviews. But another reason I wanted to play this was to test out the Contradiction mechanic, something that isn’t really seen in most adventure games with the possible exception of the Ace Attorney games. Honestly, this mechanic is way more satisfying than I expected. Being able to look back at your past responses while interviewing suspects just to call out your suspect for inconsistent answers feels gratifying. One Contradiction can get you closer to solving a murder mystery and seeing the reactions can not only get you more evidence, but the performances by the actors when they’re called out for lying is the icing on the cake. Seeing characters like Ryan and Paul Rand, the family in charge of the village’s business college program called Atlas, react nervously to you pointing out their fallacies is one of my favorite moments of video game dialogue. Even if you’ve only seen the Giant Bomb videos for this game, I still recommend playing it to experience solving the mystery on your own.

Grim Fandango: Remastered:

I bought this game when it was 75% on Steam and man, I totally see why Grim Fandango is such a beloved adventure gem. It tells the compelling tale of Manny Calavera, who leaves his travel agency job to find a former client who accidentally got a bad package in a 4 year journey to the Aztec underworld while also discovering the corruption tied to his old job. Artistically there really is no other game like Grim Fandango as it masterfully blends the style of Film Noir with the Aztec belief in Afterlife. The game also has some of the best audio in any game I’ve ever heard. From the soundtrack that contains South American folk music and big band music to what might be the best voice acting in any video game (Sorry Uncharted) Grim Fandango is a delight for your ears. Because I played this on my Mac, I only played this in the Original Graphic Mode so it could run at a steady 60 FPS, but its nice playing the game as it looked back in 1998. The gameplay itself is also pretty fun as its always super rewarding to figure out a puzzle that moves the story forward. Though I’ll admit some puzzles were too infuriating to the point that I had to look up videos to solve them. Still, I enjoyed Manny’s venture and understand why many people point to this as one of the reasons why 1998 was the best year in gaming.

Medieval II: Total War:

Again, I own a Mac, not a PC. There was a time when the Total War game series was maybe my favorite game series out there. I sadly don’t have the desire to put the money into getting or building a strong gaming PC to play the Warhammer: Total War games, but I’m fine playing the old Total Wars on Mac. Rome TW is one of my favorite games of all time as I absolutely loved finding ways to conquer different settlements to expand the Roman Empire and it also made me much more interested in Ancient History. I didn’t play as much of Medieval II, but I wanted to revisit it on Steam and you know what, if you have the patience to play a Total War game you’ll love it. Normally with any Total War, the big draw is the campaign where it combines Civ-like Turn based strategy by moving armies, diplomats and other units across the map to achieve specific missions while combining real time battles. But for me, the fun I had was simply with its Custom Battle mode, where I could create any insane Medieval Battle I wanted. That mode is like the Strategy equivalent of Super Mario Maker. You want to see who’d win in a fight between English Knights and Aztec Jaguar Warriors in Egypt covered in snow? Sure. What about a battle that’s strictly between Moor Camel Gunners and Timurid Elephants in a Castle siege? That’s possible. Being able to create your own alternate historical battles to me is one of the reasons that I not only enjoy Medieval II: TW, but why the I believe Total War series rules.

Freedom Planet:

Freedom Planet is a tremendous love letter to Sega Genesis games. The sprite work is certainly inspired by games like Sonic the Hedgehog, even though I believe the game use 32 bit sprites rather than 16 bit. The music itself doesn’t sound like a Genesis game, but is still super catchy in its own right. The gameplay also takes some cues from Sonic having loops and jump pads, but also blends into combat elements of Treasure action games like Gunstar Heroes. FP’s levels might be too long for some, but they are still extremely well made that include different gimmicks. One level might have you run around in a casino/mall hybrid full of slot machines and dance floors and the next might have you board 3 enemy airships to stop a bombardment on your vessel. FP encourages the player to either speed run the level or let the player take his/her time to explore the level and find multiple paths to progress as well as finding secrets. Also it has great replay value since you have 3 distinct playable characters. Lilac is great for those who want to speed run the game, but there’s Carol whose a motorcycle driving cat that can ride up walls and ladders and there’s Milla who throws green blocks like they’re SMB2 turnips. All of these characters allow you to approach levels a little differently and their move sets are incredibly fun to use, especially for the fierce boss fights. This game is so good even the swimming controls are pleasant. If you’re interested in playing FP, I recommend Classic Mode to strictly play the levels. There is an Adventure Mode that adds a story and fully voiced cut scenes in between the levels, but don’t expect Grim Fandango quality from FP’s cinematics. The only benefits I can think of for Adventure Mode is that you can cause bloopers in the cut scenes and characters have different idle animations in the levels. Freedom Planet is an excellent 2D platformer and now I eagerly await its sequel in 2018.

Rocket League (Switch):

I thought about including this onto my best of 2017 list because for the Switch, this is a 2017 release. However, Rocket League debuted on other systems in 2015 and because it’s a port of a 2-year-old game, it belongs in the old game section. Still, I have finally exposed myself to the exciting, mobile ball handling greatness that is Rocket League! Panic Button ported RL on the Switch and did a decent job porting it over. In handheld mode the graphics look a bit muddy, but it still runs at 60 FPS and the controls feel very tight. If you ask me, Rocket League looks light years better in docked mode. It’s also nice to see this version have the various play modes besides such as Hoops, Hockey and other modes that spice up the package. But the core mode of Soccer is addicting and is the main draw of the game for good reason. Playing against computer A.I. is good practice to get used to the controls. It’s also great if you want to take all the glory and try to hit that ball into the goal and then get promptly rewarded with the ball exploding. There’s a wondrous feeling when you accelerate towards the ball, get the first touch and jump at the right angle to knock in a perfect goal within 2 seconds. But honestly, Rocket League stands out for the multiplayer and my brother and I have been constantly competing with each other in one-on-one games. The last time I recall having hotly contested matches in a local multiplayer game w/ my brother was in Super Smash Bros Brawl. Rocket League is without a doubt one of the best sports games of this generation and as a Switch owner, I’m happy w/ the port.

My Actual Top 6 of 2017:

6. HQ Trivia (IPhone):

Should this game count? I think so. Its an app where you and countless other app users play an online trivia game hosted by none other than the Scott-ster, the Scott-2018 New Year’s baby, the Scott Rob Roy at 9 pm, Scott Rogowsky. It’s a pretty simple game where you try to get 12 questions right in a row to win an amount of money depending on who else got all the questions correct. Do the best you can on the trivia, but the key reason to play is for Scott himself. He’s incredibly charismatic and adds so much character to the show that even if you get eliminated, its fun to see Scott present the questions and go over the answers. The other hosts are fine, but Scott is HQ Trivia. This little app is pretty basic, but its fun to go in and see how many questions you can get right.

5. Thimbleweed Park (Mac):

As you can probably tell, me playing Contradiction and Grim Fandango got me much more fascinated in point and click adventure games. I’ve honestly haven’t been this interested in the genre since I was young and played Putt-Putt. Also Thimbleweed Park is the only 2017 game that ran incredibly well on my Macbook. Thimbleweed Park is an adventure game where a murder occurs in a town and two FBI working together to find the murderer. There's also plenty of other strange things that are happening in the town of Thimbleweed Park as you have 3 other playable characters that have their own mysteries to solve. This was a game crowd funded on Kickstarter back in 2014 and was developed by Terrible Toybox, led by adventure game veterans Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick. TP is both a solid homage to classic LucasArts adventure games as well as a fresh gaming experience. The game looks like a natural evolution from Maniac Mansion as the character designs take inspiration from the said game but with a more polished look. TP also brings in a very quirky sense of humor that both makes fun of the 1980’s and has some fun 4^th wall jokes thrown in too. As a game, it manages to make an old system like the SCUMM inventory system new again by letting you hold an infinite amount of items and perform actions from talking to NPC’s to using items to solve puzzles. There are also some contemporary game design decisions that allow TP to be more accessible for those who don’t play many Adventure games. These include a map to let you fast travel and an objective notepad to keep in track on what puzzles and goals you’re suppose to accomplish. If you are fan of the genre and/or have a soft spot for classic LucasArts adventure games, I highly recommend Thimbleweed Park.

4. Battle Chef Brigade (Switch):

This was a game that sort of came out of nowhere for me. I saw Ben play it on UPF and seeing that it combined 2D Brawler combat with Match 3 puzzles seemed really interesting. Plus by concept, the core game is a fantasy themed version of the Iron Chef TV show but you have to hunt monsters and forge plants to create a meal to impress a line of judges. Battle Chef Brigade was a game I never knew I wanted, but it turned out to be an amusing and unique hybrid of genres. There’s a story mode where you play as a girl named Mina Han, a chef who leaves her family’s restaurant job to pursue her dream to join the Battle Chef Brigade. The Brigade defends their world from monsters and hunt for their ingredients to create cuisine that feeds the society. Plus the dialogue is pretty lighthearted as you meet a bunch of characters that for the most part, act like good sports when you defeat them and some become your best friends (Ziggy’s rad). The combat itself lets you land melee combos on the monsters as well as using magic projectile attacks to fight from afar. The puzzle aspect is more intense as you put your ingredients in a pot and each ingredient has a mix of Earth, Fire and/or Water gems and you have to line up 3 similar gems to improve your dish. Perhaps my favorite part is seeing what your dish looks like, as seeing you win with a a dish like a BBQ Dragon Shank feels fantastic. There are some light RPG elements with not only the items and combat skills you can buy, but the side jobs you take in between matches in order to make more money. Pro tip, get the Slow Cooker if you want a high scoring dish! BCB also has additional modes like Break the Dishes, a time trial mode where you bash a # of dishes as fast as possible and a puzzle mode where you have to arrange the gems in a certain order. The mode I’ve been going back to is the Daily Cook Off, where you are challenged to cook a dish with a random assortment of items and skills and make the best dish w/ what you’re given. Overall BCB is absolutely worth a try as it surprising blends two widely different genres in Beat-em ups and puzzles into one satisfying title.

3. Golf Story (Switch):

I was maybe one of the few people who knew something about this game before it released. I saw the first trailer to Golf Story back in May and it truly looked like a sequel to Mario Golf for the GBA in which it had a Golf/RPG hybrid campaign. Golf Story definitely delivers on the premise where you play as an unnamed protagonist who has a childhood dream of becoming a professional golfer. He gets away from his personal issues in life such as a divorce and goes on a fun yet zany path to fulfill his dream. How zany is it? Well what other golf game lets you fight an army of skeleton minions by hitting golf balls at them? You can also play golf in a snow-covered course. That’s how wacky this game gets. The golfing itself is relatively simple as it uses the Mario Golf two button system, with the first button for distance and the second for the aim. You can also have precision shots to aim at a particular part of the course. Even with basic mechanics it feels exhilarating whenever you get a very rare Albatross or Hole In One. Plus the RPG progression feels rewarding as you level up, you can improve your power, accuracy and slice and earn cash to buy new clubs. But one of the main draws of Golf Story is the plot and dialogue as its an over the top comedy. There’s a moment where you’re helping your coach with a date by distracting his guests with herb picking while your coach overcooks a roast in a microwave because he doesn’t know how to cook and tries too hard to impress. Gold Story is the type of Sport/RPG mixture that aren’t often released these days and for a first game by Sidebar Games, its nails the combination of genres.

2. Steamworld Dig 2 (Switch):

I have never played the first Steamworld Dig nor have I been much of a Metroidvania type of person. I was deciding between this or Sonic Mania as the next Switch game to purchase. Ultimately I chose Steamworld Dig 2 because it was on sale and heard that this is a better Metroid than Metroid Samus Returns. Turns out I made the right decision because man this is one well-designed video game. Steamworld Dig 2 has Metroid style exploration but blends in elements of Dig Dug as you are finding yourself digging deeper and deeper into different mines to collect ores and clearing objectives. It’s an oddly relaxing yet amusing experience as you dig for collectables. You play as Dorothy, who’s on a quest to find her friend and protagonist from the first game, Rusty. As Dorothy searches for her pal, she can explore the mines to again, collect ore to sell and earn some money. You can even go into secret rooms to find artifacts and cogs. Artifacts can help you unlock potential perks you can choose to upgrade while the cogs activate those perks whenever you are digging. There’s a really strong balance between you collecting ores and being rewarded with cash and using it to get the upgrades you believe will serve you best. The main story is pretty short as I beat the story missions in 6 ½ hours, but there’s still some many places to explore to find secrets that its worth going back to 100% the game. You also find different weapons and tools in a Metroid style room and these utilities ranging from the sticky bomb to the jet pack all felt simultaneously enjoyable and handy to use. Steamworld Dig 2 certainly made me a fan of the franchise and has me intrigued with Image and Form’s other titles.

1. Super Mario Odyssey (Switch):

What essentially became the reason I bought a Nintendo Switch. I love this game so much that I bought it twice; first time for myself and the second time were to give as a Christmas gift. Super Mario Odyssey is a masterfully crafted 3D platformer that utilizes the focus on exploration to its fullest. In every kingdom you go to, there are countless secrets to find where you can find more moons. Its an extremely rewarding game that awards the player for seeking out all the nooks and crannies in the kingdoms with a moon. Plus all the kingdoms have a ton of personality ranging from the Metro Kingdom that’s inhabited by photo realistic humans to the Seaside Kingdom, which contains a sea filled with Sparkling Water. Some moons may be a little too easy to obtain, but there are still lots of challenging tasks just to get one moon. Plus the capture ability is a real game changer letting Mario control enemies, inanimate objects and NPC’s. You can capture Cheep Cheeps to make swimming in the game the opposite of a drag. You can become a slab of meat and jump around while maintaining Mario's trademark hat and mustache. You can, yes, capture the mind of a human for the sole purpose to direct an RC Car. The captures also add to the exploration of Odyssey as they can permit Mario to access new areas to get a moon. Though don’t think the captures are the only elements that stand out as the core platforming is as good, if not better, than the best 3D Mario games.

Not to mention the game pays fun tributes to Mario’s history. The 2D sections add a nice change of pace that applies OG SMB art and mechanics to collect more moons or get to different points of the kingdom. There’s also appearances from Mario characters that haven’t been utilized in past Mario games in years. Bringing Pauline from Donkey Kong back as the Mayor of New Donk City is really clever and considering how many times Bowser has kidnapped Peach, Pauline knows security MUCH better than Peach. She’s canonically the lead voice for the best video game song of 2017 too! Going further on the music, the soundtrack has a great mix of new original songs and remixes of classic Mario Tunes. Ben's right though, Steam Gardens has superb music!

Though one mode that I had too much fun with was the photo. From the filters to all the different camera angles, there’s a lot of mileage in taking really dumb yet amusing pictures. I have over 200 photos in my Switch album and the grand majority of those pictures come from Odyssey.

Super Mario Odyssey is the best 3D Mario I’ve played and could be tied with Super Mario World as my favorite Mario game. The game is joy incarnate and it oozes with charm ranging from those captures to dressing Mario up in any outfit you want. There's no doubt in my mind that when we look back at video games in 2017, Super Mario Odyssey will be one of the prime examples that defined 2017 as one of the best years in games ever. Now I need to go get Zelda and other quality exclusives since I'll admit I'm still a little behind.

On December 7, we are about to have The Game Awards, or TGA’s, broadcasted online and people will see which games win certain awards. But perhaps the real reason why people turn in is not so much the awards themselves, but for the world premieres that Geoff Keighley tends to hype up. This year in particular Keighley has announced that there will be 13+ world premieres at this show. There have been some solid reveals in the past ranging from the Uncharted 3 during the Spike Days to the Psychonauts 2 crowdfunding announcement. People are starting to get eager about what the premieres are this year. Though one reveal that Keighley already confirmed that we’ll get World Premiere footage for the desert map in PUBG. I mean, it’s a big deal for PUBG players to finally see this desert map in action. However, the fact that one of the reveals Keighley is pushing is a map might get people’s expectations in check thinking we may get more world premieres for DLC rather than actual game announcements. While I'm expecting a fair amount of DLC premieres, I think there’s still some room for some monster game announcements as well as some meaty gameplay footage for some big 2018 games. Here I’m going to make 13 predictions on what game, DLC, remasters and ports and gameplay footage reveals I think we’ll get at the game awards. Also I'll update on this blog to see how right and wrong I am (I'll probably be mostly wrong, but we'll see).

DLC:

Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle will reveal a new DLC pack with Rayman as a new playable hero: So first things first, this DLC is going to be announced when Kingdom Battle wins best strategy game. Normally the Game Awards do this by giving one the awards to the winner in a rather unceremonious way. Then they transistion to a World Premiere that's either tied to the game or with the game's publisher/developer. Honestly I’m sure all the other strategy nominees are quality games, Kingdom Battle ended up being this strange crossover that got massive attention and frankly I think its a lock to win Best Strategy Game.

As far as the DLC itself, this was actually leaked back in late November, but it wasn’t too descriptive on what it was going to include. It did state there would be 16 new weapons, 8 new challenges, 5 co-op missions and a brand new world with a new playable hero. When this serviced, people were predicting characters like Wario, Waluigi, Rosalina, Daisy and even Pauline as being one of those potential new heroes. As much as I’d love any of those characters to be playable, I’d think they’d have a Rabbid variant and the DLC mentions 1 new hero. The character and world I see is not even Mario themed. Instead, I think we see a Rayman crossover out of this with Mario and Rabbids going to Rayman’s universe. It’s plausible since Rabbids started off as Rayman characters but they spun off into their own franchise and honestly it would be a missed opportunity to not have Rayman and Mario in the same game

Destiny 2 DLC: I was going to say this was going to be another one of those DLC announcements after a certain game wins a award. However, looking at Destiny 2’s competition in the categories its nominated for, I’m not so sure if Destiny 2 will bring home any awards. It will lose best multiplayer to PUBG and maybe lose best action game to Cuphead. Maybe it wins best audio design? Either way, I think we’re going to get some new Destiny 2 content revealed in some fashion. I’m not sure what the content will be if its going to be additional single player content or a new multiplayer mode. I just have a sneaking feeling we’re going to get Destiny 2 DLC announced at the Game Awards. If not, PSX would probably be the likely place for it.

Assassin’s Creed Origins DLC will be FF15 themed: So this is getting some suspicion from players that have found something hidden that hints at DLC. Players have found a secret room that hints at potential DLC that might be tied to Final Fantasy 15. The room has some squares on the bottom of a wall that look like the squares from the SquareEnix logo. Not to mention there are Egyptian engravings of FF15 characters like Noctis. Then if you walk through the wall in front of you, there is a blue dungeon that leads to an empty alter. However, people are speculating that once the DLC is complete, it gives you access to Noctis’ sword or other Final Fantasy weapons. All this talk about an AC/FF crossover may come out of nowhere for some, but if this is leading to FF15 inspired DLC, this isn’t the first time these two franchises crossed over. FF15 had a Assassin’s Creed themed festival where you can have AC themed mini games and missions so it makes sense that AC would get FF content into its game soon.

Legend of Zelda BOTW DLC Pack 2 Release Date: So Nintendo confirmed that the second DLC pack for BOTW is suppose to come out around Holiday season in 2017. If Nintendo wants to make up their own word, they should release another trailer for the DLC pack at the Game Awards. This might be another trailer that will come from BOTW winning one of the awards (Maybe for Best Switch game) We’ll see more footage than what we saw in the E3 Direct and finally get a release date. In fact, I think this will be one of those trailers that will have a “you can get the game NOW” messages. It might be available after the show, but this would be a good way to end the wait for Zelda fans wanting to play the second DLC pack.

Game Footage of Already Announced Games:

Anthem will reveal some more gameplay footage: Oh EA, you could really use some positive coverage right now huh? 2017 might very well be EA’s worst year not only in this generation, but perhaps ever. First Mass Effect Andromeda was a buggy and poorly acted disappointment and then they closed Vicseral, the makers of Dead Space. Later NFS Payback was underwhelming and now Star Wars Battlefront 2 has gotten in so much trouble with microtranactions that it got the attention of both the government of Belgium and the state of Hawaii for possibly condoning gambling with a Star Wars theme. Oh and the beta for EA Sports UFC 3 is suppose to be another microtransaction/loot box mess according to .

Anthem is probably the best thing going for EA right now. Its being developed by Bioware and it’s a new IP where its an online multiplayer role playing game. It lets players take over mech suits called Javelins which all have different weapons and have jet packs that look fun to control. We haven’t seen anything from this since E3 and I think at some point, this game will get extended gameplay footage to be revealed. Perhaps we’ll see what the multiplayer interface would look like and see an expedition between 2 players but in a different world. We saw a jungle environment in the E3 gameplay reveal, so maybe a desert or snow environment instead?

Psychonauts 2 will get new footage: Its been 2 years since Psychonauts 2 got announced and fans who loved the original did what they could to crowdfund the sequel. Its been a while since we’ve seen anything on this game and honestly, I think the time is right that we’ll get a new trailer at the Game Awards. It won’t be a full on gameplay reveal as I think we’ll see a supercut of some of the game’s cutscenes seeing where the plot has gone since the events of the original. However, we’ll see gameplay as we’ll see what knew psychic tricks Raz can do ever since the original. We’ll also see what the “mental worlds” will look like and give Psychonauts fans a release date for 2018 to end the trailer.

Hey guess what? We’re getting another Death Stranding CG trailer tease: Geoff Keighley has confirmed that Hideo Kojima and Guillermo Del Toro will be at The Game Awards to present one of the awards. Not to mention that there are Twitter pictures of Hideo and Mads Mikkelsen spending time together. It could just be Hideo sharing pictures with him and Mads, but people are getting exciting hoping for more Death Stranding footage. You know what, I think we’ll see more. I don’t know if we’ll see any actual gameplay since the game itself seems far from even being 40% complete, but we might get a new actor reveal in another bizarre trailer.

Red Dead Redemption 2 will get a meaty gameplay video: Hey remember when Rockstar announced RDR2 for 2017? Well they decided to delay it until 2018 which surprised nobody because Rockstar games never meet their initial release date. We haven’t seen any footage of this in a while and I feel Rockstar should have something in store either for The Game Awards or PS experience. I think its more likely to be The Game Awards where we’ll see a 2-5 minute gameplay reveal as well as an official release date for when it coming out next year. I can see this being shown if RDR2 wins the most anticipated award. Also seriously Rockstar, Spring 2018 isn't that far away. Rockstar PR are normally masters at hyping up audiences for their upcoming games. I'd be shocked if RDR2 isn't shown off at all either here or PS experience.

Remasters/Ports:

Blizzard will announce porting one of their games onto the Switch…and it will be Hearthstone: With the Switch being such a runaway success, it has gotten plenty of third party developers/publishers to show support. Bethesda has shown massive support with Skyrim, DOOM and Wolfenstein II on the way, EA has released FIFA and even Rockstar released L.A. Noire onto the Switch. Blizzard is one of the few big developers that hasn’t released anything yet, but I think we get a reveal for one of their games going over to the portable home console. As their first Switch port, they’re going to bring Hearthstone over.

On one hand, I think many Switch owners would hope for something higher profile like Overwatch heading over, and the hearthstone announcement could disappoint some. I can even write a whole article itself on how much sense an Overwatch port on Switch would make. Lower the graphics for the system, amiibo support for Nintendo themed costumes (Dedede Reinhardt and Wario Roadhog would be the best), maybe a Nintendo guest character like Samus or an Inkling if Blizzard is willing to play ball. But Honestly I don’t think Overwatch will get ported on the Switch and instead, Blizzard will port Hearthstone over. It makes perfect sense porting a mobile card game on a system that lets you play games on the go. Hearthstone would also make the first Blizzard game to be on a Nintendo console since Starcraft 64. Yes Blizzard has not been supportive on Nintendo’s hardware for years, but I think Blizzard will be willing to test the waters by porting Hearthstone over and see how that version sells.

Shenmue 1+2 Remastered Collection: A very small amount of people are wondering if we’re going to see Shenmue 3 at either the Game Awards or at the PS experience. We did get a, well, emotionless trailer of Shenmue 3 earlier this year, but I don’t think we’ll see anymore footage in 2017. As a way to make up for the lack of Shenmue 3 news, I think the time is right for Yu Susuki to come out on stage or give permission to Keighley to announce a Shenmue 1 and 2 HD Remaster collection. Listen, knowing what we saw of the Endurance Run of the first Shenmue, I don’t think this is an entirely good idea to Hd-ify one game that’s a hot mess. However, it makes perfect sense to announce this to hype up Shenmue 3 and perhaps give this generation of gamers a chance to play these games that are deemed by some people as classics. Of course, this would only happen if Sega allows it.

Actual Game Announcements:

Soul Calibur 6 will be announced after Tekken 7 wins best fighting game: Honestly looking at the fighting game award this year, there may be 5 nominees but its really between Injustice 2 and Tekken 7 for the award. So here’s what I’m thinking, they give the Best Fighting game award to Tekken 7 and then Harada will hint at another classic 3D fighter of Namco’s that will return. This then cues a short, 30-second CG trailer with Siegfried and Nightmare fighting each other and we get a voice over saying “Soul Calibur 6!” There’s actually been some leaks going on about SC6 that is it planned to be announced at some point whether its going to be the Game Awards or E3 next year. Honestly this is the show for Namco to announce SC6 since Sony recently stated that Namco is going to be a No Show for PS Experience. But honestly, I think they show an announcement trailer at The Game Awards and then some footage later in 2018. We'll probably get guest characters on the way, but that will be too early to reveal. If Injustice 2 wins, then we won’t get the SC6 announcement and instead get footage of TMNT in Injustice 2.

A New Indie game will be announced: This one is admittedly vague because I don’t know what studio is announcing what in particular. I do think that we’re going to see a reveal of a brand new indie IP at the game awards from a pretty prominent indie dev. Whether its Digital Devolver or Yacht Club, I think we are going to see something new but no particular release date will be shown. If I have to be super specific, I'll say Digital Devolver will show a rather outragous new game where you play as a commando alligator and its like Metal Slug but aesthetically is a mix of Talespin and Natural Born Killers. It will be called Chomp-mando. Wait for me to be super wrong with this one.

New Super Smash Bros for Switch or Deluxe version will be announced: Nintendo was giving away free tickets to the game awards to any lucky fans out there. This could be a hint that maybe either BOTW or Odyssey is going to win GOTY, but it could just be Nintendo being nice to its fans by giving them a chance to attend the show. Plus I think Nintendo is giving away tickets because they might have a special reveal ready for the show. The potential DLC announcements aren’t gonna be enough. Some people are saying Metroid Prime 4 will show up at the awards, but I think that title is still so early in development that they’re waiting until next E3 to show Prime 4 off. I gut feeling tells me there is going to be a new Smash Bros game that will be announced for the Switch. OK, maybe not an entirely new game because I think it might be Smash Bros for Wii U Deluxe. Still, its been rumored for a while that Smash Bros is coming to the Switch and I think if there’s anytime to announce a new Smash or an upgraded port, it might be the Game Awards. The game will probably show familiars like Mario, Link, Kirby, Marth and the Villager fight each other, but I’m thinking we’ll get some new character announcements like an Inkling, Spring Man from Arms and/or a third party character (maybe Snake returns).

Say what you will about Super Smash Bros, whether it’s a fighting game or not. If there is something that is undeniable about the series’ legacy, is it has created a local multiplayer experience that feels unique to its own. Its already a big draw amongst Nintendo’s IP’s because it has an increasingly large roster of either Nintendo icons or other game characters battling each other to no end. But the gameplay is what gives Smash its identity as a blend of a fighting game and 2D platforming. People have claimed Smash Bros is responsible for creating the genre platform fighters. Each character has a distinct fighting moveset that they can use, but the stages are normally set up like a platforming level rather than a traditional fighting game arena. This gives players opportunities to explore and even use to their advantage. There’s also an emphasis on beating up on the opponent because while there’s not a health bar in default Smash, you can pound on your rivals for a higher % to create a better chance at knocking them off the stage. Of course there’s items if you want to create some chaos, but you can always disable those if you’re not in the mood for an assist trophy like Waluigi hitting opponents with his tennis racket. But overall what makes Smash such a distinct game is that it pits Nintendo and other well known characters in a free for all fight to see who will survive in a platforming/fighting game hybrid. Other AAA titles have tried to capture that Smash magic like PS All Stars Battle Royale and the Japan Only Dream TV World Fighters. But many have failed to replicate the same experience that Smash delivers to Nintendo fans.

While AAA games haven’t live up to Smash status as platform fighters, Indie developers have been hungry to create their own takes on the genre for years. Whether they are borrowing gameplay elements of Smash itself or putting their own ideas in, many different Indie studios have either produced their own platform fighters or have games that are currently in develepment. Some are simply trying to create their own Smash Bros gameplay wise, but others are throwing in their own ideas to the genre to make their games stand out. I’m gonna take a look at many different indie platform fighters, released or not, and looking at exactly how they play compared to amongst themselves and to Super Smash Bros.

Lethal League:

The first game on this article is perhaps the most different to Smash out of all the games that will be included here, but it definitely has hints of Smash in its gameplay. Developed by Team Reptile, Lethal League actually started out as a flash game, but soon eventually got an official downloadable release in 2014 on PS4 and Steam (Windows and Linux). It’s a multiplayer fighting game where its set in a futuristic urban setting and players could choose between 6 characters. The goal is to hit a ball at the opponent within an arena. The match keeps on going until the ball knocks out someone and then the next round starts. It’s like Smash by allowing the player to freely explore the environment by walking and jumping around. The big difference is the ability to slam the ball to use it as a projectile and the opponents can hit the ball back if they time the counter correctly. Anytime the ball is hit, it goes faster bouncing around the arena and will continue to bounce until someone falls victim to a hit. It feels like a game of tennis with the continuous ball hitting, even though its taking inspiration from batting in baseball. Each player has a life bar for each player and it keeps going down whenever someone gets hit.

Lethal League is widely regarded as some of the better local/online multiplayer games to come out this generation. It takes elements from others games to create its own satisfying formula mixed in with an artstyle that looks like a long lost spinoff of the Jet Set Radio series.

Indie Game Battle:

OK, this game is the antithesis of Lethal League. When Lethal League took minor inspiration from Smash and included its own combat system to make itself feel distinct, Indie Game Battle didn’t try to make itself feel special. This was an early access title on Steam created by Blob Game Studios that was meant to be the indie answer to Smash Bros. Many elements from Smash Bros were used in this game such as the percentage-hit system, the 2D platform stages, summoning round shields and even similar launch attacks. There was even a character that had a carbon copy of Kirby’s inflatable mid air jumps. Though with it being an early access title, you’d think they would add new modes like an adventure mode or online to this, right? Turns out there were very little additions done for this game as the only new things added were new characters and stages. Sometimes they removed characters from the game as well and there was never any fixes on the A.I.

Now what about the roster? With this being an Indie Smash like was there any big name indie characters that gave the game a draw? Well, eventually it got characters like Dust from Dust: An Elysian Tail, Captain Viridian from VVVVVV and the Goat from Goat Simulator. But those are probably the best-known characters I can pull because mostly everyone else was either a character from a little known Blob Game or from other indie games that have small followings. Also this title eventually got canned for getting hate as a Smash clone and for the developers not providing the necessary changes in its early access cycle.

Rivals of Aether:

Ben Pack provided a great quick look about Rivals of Aether as well as covered the game's updates in the most recent West stream. But if you want to read about it here, sit down. Developed by Dan Fornace, Rivals of Aether is a platform fighter that takes some inspiration from Smash Bros from the hit percentage system to the fact that you have to knock your opponent off the stage to win. But what makes it different from Smash is one, the characters are all unique and Aether actually has its own story mode and two, there’s a greater focus on stage control and you can’t block and grab opponents. For the stages, Smash’s stages have always varied in size going from Battlefield and 64 Dreamland to Hyrule Castle and New Pork City. Rivals of Aether has relatively small stages that pressures the player to control that space whenever possible. Also, being prohibited to perform blocks and grabs forces the player to be on the offensive rather than playing a defensive game. Not to mention Aether has a mode called Abyss Mode, which is like Multi-Man Brawl in Smash where you fight countless enemies, but also incorporates horde mode elements by giving players specific challenges and tasks to the hordes of foes you face.

Plus with the exception of Ori from Ori and the Blind Forest being a guest character, the roster is rather small but full of unique characters with their own movesets. I mean, Smash doesn’t have a 4 legged Orca who uses puddle teleportation, do they? Does it have a rock beetle that can summon stone pillars from the ground? What’s also worth noting is that this game was in early access back in 2015 but is officially out now. So the developers have taken the time to get feedback from players to improve the game.

Brawlout:

Much like Indie Game Battle before it, this is an Early Access Platform Fighter that isn’t shy of taking elements from Smash Bros. That definitely seems like the intention of this game as the developers want to create their own take on the genre. However, they have told sources that they are trying to strip out the superfluous elements of Smash Bros to give it more of a fighting game. There are no items in Brawlout and it doesn’t sound like developer Angry Mob Games has any intention to add them in the future. Also you can’t block attacks with a shield and instead must learn how to dodge or counter attacks to give yourself a shot to stay alive. Like Aether, the stages are small but only one of them has any stage hazards. It’s also like Aether in that it stars an original cast of characters, from a luchador frog to a walrus that fights with a penguin as a companion. They also have a guest character in the Hyper Light Drifter being playable, but everyone else is original. Also if you can tell from the gif, this is a polygonal Platform Fighter rather than a sprite based one compared to Rivals of Aether.

EDIT: Brawlhalla:

Whoops, this one slipped under my radar when I was originally writing this article. Well, now its time to give some attention to Brawlhalla. Developed by Blue Mammoth Studios, Brawlhalla is a free-to-play platform fighter that was first shown at PAX East in 2014 and later went into an Open Beta in 2015. The game officially came out 4 days ago on STEAM (PC and Mac) and PS4. Like some platform fighters listed on here, the goal is to knock someone off the stage. But unlike Smash or even Rivals of Aether, the damage system isn't displayed as hit percentage, but rather the icon of the player going from white to red. As the character icon gets more red, that make the opponent easier to knock off the arena. There's a standard free-for-all mode in Brawlhalla, but the game has plenty of unique local and online multiplayer modes such as 1v1 Strikeout, where one player picks 3 characters with one stock each and arranges an order for their team and faces off against another team of 3 fighters. There's also plenty of different custom multiplayer modes too, such as Brawlball which is like football but it normally composes of two teams of 2 and each team must run the football to the opponent's end of the field.

Brawlhalla currently has 34 characters, or legends, that are playable and each can start off a match with 2 primary weapons out of 10. Weapons range from Katars which are best used for melee combat to a Rocket Lance which can let players traverse across the stage. Weapons can also fall into the stage and they can also be thrown at opponents to knock them off. Players don't have to fight with a weapon as they can choose to be unarmed and use attacks that all characters can perform. To me, Brawlhalla seems like the opposite of Brawlout where the weapons are a MAJOR focus in the combat. There also seems like a complex movement system as players can perform up to 2 dodges on the ground and in the air, they can either perform 3 jumps, an air dodge or fall faster, like you would in Smash. I feel kinda silly leaving this out earlier since this game has over 53,000 reviews on STEAM, hence that this game is popular.

Icons: Combat Arena:

There have been some interesting developments surrounding this game in particular. This is being made from the people behind the Project M mod for Brawl. For those who don’t quite know about Project M, it’s a mod that is meant to make Brawl play more like Super Smash Bros Melee. Why? Melee has been the ideal game in the Smash series for competitive play and when Brawl came out, there were a few things that made Brawl feel less competitive. Melee was a faster game that drew competitive players to this iteration above others. Brawl also had less of an emphasis on combos and included things like tripping which would happen randomly to startle someone whenever they were walking. Project M was made to bring back the faster paced action of Melee within Brawl’s engine and make Brawl a more competitive game. The mod also has things like skins for specific characters that you couldn’t get in vanilla Brawl as well as changed movesets, such as Wario fighting more like he did in the Wario Land games.

Wavedash, the new name for the makers of the Project M mod, is making Icons: Combat Arena. Judging by simple screenshots, it appears to be a separate game from Smash with visually distinct environments and characters. But if you see the trailer, it kind of looks likes a blatant ripoff. There’s a sword character whose moves look virtually identical to Marth’s. There’s a goat guy who literally has Fox’s Up Smash and dash attack. It feels like this could be to Melee what Paladins was to Overwatch, a game maybe taking too much inspiration where characters play too similar to another source. Hopefully this won’t be the case since this game is far from done and maybe the developers can put more originality to the character’s move sets. But we’ll see what the future holds for this Free to Play platform fighter.

Crowdfunded Darling 1- Bounty Battle:

Believe it or not, there where not 1, but 2 platform fighters that recently got crowdfunded. Both of which are taken inspiration of Smash’s roster by creating a fighter that has an all star cast of indie video game characters. The first of these that I’ll break down is Bounty Battle. This is a game being developed by French developer DarkScreen Games and was funded on FIG. As far as the roster goes, its a pretty respectable selection of characters. There are characters that come from franchises like Guacamelee (Juan), Darkest Dungeon (Crusader), Axiom Verge (Trace), Owlboy (Otus), Psychonauts (Raz) and others. Sure some people are complaining about the lack of other indie characters like Shovel Knight of someone from Hotline Miami, but overall I’d say the roster top to bottom is pretty decent and will likely get updates before the game is out. Though this needs to be stated: Jay and Silent Bob, who you might know from almost every Kevin Smith movie, could be playable. Why? Well there was a Jay and Silent Bob game FIG campaign that got funded last year, so like Friday the 13^th, another Indie game based on movies?

Now what about the gameplay of Bounty Battle? Is it a direct Smash clone or does it have its own ideas? Well it’s a multiplayer game up to 4 players where players are encouraged to rack combos on their opponents until their health bar goes down. The stages themselves seem to be more like PS All Stars stages where there are platforming sections, but they all feel pretty compact spaces and judging from alpha gameplay, you can’t launch somebody off the stage. Plus there is an emphasis on resource management where you can earn a source of currency called Bounty Points, which are rewarded to you for landing combos or destroying enemies. You can then use those Bounty Points to summon Minions, which seem like they are like the PokeBalls and Assist Trophies in Smash, but with you having more direct control. Lastly, the developers are promising a pretty meaty package as Bounty battle will come with a Challenge Mode and Story mode. This game managed to only get funded over its goal of $30,000 without reaching stretch goals. However, bounty battle looks like a promising platform fighter by creating a Smash like roster for Indies but having its own ideas for combat. Its slated to come out anywhere. PC, PS4, XBOX 1, Switch, Mac, you name it.

Crowdfunded Darling 2: Indie Pogo:

This game was actually funded a week ago on Kickstarter (not on IndieGogo despite the name). If you are reading the title right, its actually quite explanatory to what this game’s gimmick is. Indie Pogo, which is currently developed by Orlando Dev The Lowe Bros., is a platform fighter starring a bunch of indie game characters that are constantly jumping around. The constant jumping mechanic is by far this game’s most interesting factor since it forces players to not stay still. You’re constantly on the move and this makes you much more aware of your surroundings because you’ll never know when your enemy will attack. The stages themselves ranged from being compact to open spaces and the objective is to beat up your opponents until their live reaches zero or if you can knock them off the stage. The movesets of the characters appear to be relatively simple where each character has their own unique attacks and a special attack. It got funded with over $41,000 with a $25,000 goal and only reached 1 stretch goal, but it’s a PC and Mac game for now with no plans to get to consoles at the moment.

As far as the roster goes, here's the link to the roster (not final). I can't put it here for some reason so here's the list of characters:

• Tesla Kid (TeslaGrad)
• Zorbie (Titular character of his game)
• Captain Viridian (VVVVVV)
• Fishy (Shutshimi)
• Commander Video (Bit Trip Series)
• Lilac (Freedom Planet)
• Blockman (The Blocks Cometh)
• Orcane (Rivals of Aether-heh, a character from one Platform fighter is in another)
• Jack the Reaper (Titular character)
• Shovel Knight
• Stardrop (Stardrop Blaster)
• Velocispider (Titular character)
• Downwell guy
• Penepole (The Next Penelope)
• Voltar (Awesomenauts-yes I know the roster shows 3 of them, but the developers have said Voltar is the one they're leaning towards)
• Octodad (Octodad: Dadliest Catch)
• Dust (Dust: An Elysian Tail)
• Gunvolt (Azure Striker Gunvolt)
• Bullet-Kin (Enter the Gungeon)
• Kick (Divekick)

Now the first thing you might notice is that this game has a mix of characters from franchises that have developed fan followings over the years and some characters that seem to come from little know IP’s. Here’s the thing with IndiePogo’s development: It was initially revealed last year on Steam Greenlight and back then the roster was mainly made up of mobile indie characters (Stardrop Sprint, Zorbie and Velocispider), and VERY little known Steam or Windows Indies (Next Penepole, Jack the Reaper and Shutshimi). Eventually its got some attention for its core gameplay mechanic of constant jumping and soon the developers were able to negotiate with other Indie devs to get more notable characters like Commander Video, Lilac and Shovel Knight in there. Then when the Kickstarter finally got started, the developers were having polls letting people vote for Indie characters they want in the game and that’s how characters like a Bullet-Kin and Kick got in. The devs have also gone out of their way to ask for permission from other developers to see if their characters could join IndiePogo (how Octodad joined They have talked with developers like Derek Yu (Spelunky), Chucklefish (Stardew Valley) and Psyonix (Rocket League). Yes you are reading this right, they are trying to get a Rocket League car playable in IndiePogo, and I’m all for it. With a roster that is far from complete, it seems like the devs are trying to create a roster that contains some notable Indie characters as the main draws while including obscure characters to give them some exposure and perhaps help those games become more popular. I mean, Bounty Battle is doing the same for games like Rad Rodgers and Super Comboman.

Also weirdly enough, I’m finding myself more intrigued by IndiePogo than I am Bounty Battle. While I think top to bottom Bounty Battle has a more recognizable roster, I’m actually more drawn to the character choices of IndiePogo. As someone who’s greatly enjoyed Freedom Planet and Divekick, I love the fact that Lilac and Kick are gonna be in the same game together. Also the constant hopping mechanic has me really curious to see how that translates to actual gameplay, and lucky gaming youtube channels who got the demo early seemed to enjoy it. But we’ll see how the public perceives both IndiePogo and Bounty Battle when those two come out?

Now if either developer for Bounty Battle or Indie Pogo is reading this now, there is one character I really want to be in either game. He's obscure in most places, but is beloved here at Giant Bomb. I'm talking about this man:

Honorable Mention: Runbow:

So there's a reason why I don't really talk about this one. Yes this game has an all star lineup of Indie Characters and yes it has platforming in it. But its really more of an indie platform racer than a platform fighter. Still, it will be acknowledged as sort of being like Indie Smash but if it Smash was a 2D Platforming racing game.

In conclusion, its really interesting that many indie developers are trying to have their own take on Smash's fighting game formula. Of course games like Lethal League and Rivals of Aether have incorporated some unique ideas to successfully make their own game stand out from Smash in certain ways. Though hopefully games like Icons don't join the leagues of Indie Game Battle of being blatant knockoffs. It will be really interesting to see how Bounty Battle and Indie Pogo are received since both have some interesting ideas while they're both trying to create "THE ULTIMATE INDIE COLLABORATION FIGHTER".

About four months ago, Nintendo held a press event where it not only provided details for the now released Nintendo Switch, but revealed some new games for the system too. One of the games that caught everyone by surprise was Super Mario Odyssey. The game appears to go back to the gameplay style of Super Mario 64 and Sunshine where the levels are enclosed worlds and Mario is open to wander these levels to complete trials anyway the player desires. One thing that caught many viewers off guard was seeing Mario run around in one of these levels, New Donk City. The city is inhabited by realistic humans in a realistic setting that made for a stark contrast to not only Mario levels in the past, but Mario himself to regular looking people. Viewers made either 2 comparisons: one would be making comparisons to Sonic Adventure and/or Sonic ’06 when Sonic the Hedgehog walked around in human environments. The other comparison is a clip from one Simpsons Treehouse of Horror episode where Homer enters a 3 dimensional world from a wall of his home and through shenanigans, accidently goes into the real world. As I watched the reveal I was shocked to see Mario run around with realistic humans. However, I thought back to when Mario had hung out with regular looking humans before. Did we all forget about the Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe transforming into Mario to get to the Rio Olympic ceremony on time? Was it not Mario who was a referee for some of Mike Tyson’s fights?

Leading up to Super Mario Odyssey’s release, I'd like to start a potential series on Mario and friends' history interacting with other humans, realistic looking or not. This article is gonna focus in on both the Mario sport spinoff games and other sports titles that Mario and Company appear in as well.

Mario Golf (and other Golf games with Mario):

Mario has quite a long history with golf even before Mario Golf became a franchise. His golfing days actually got started in the days of the NES. One game that some claim star Mario is the NES game simply titled Golf. This NES title has you play as a somewhat chubby, mustached golfer who also seems like the only character in the entire game. Many have claimed that this is Mario himself, but I just don’t see it. Sure the character has some features that resemble the plumber out of the Mushroom Kingdom, but he looks a little too realistic and tall to actually be Mario.

The real debut of Mario’s golfing career was NES Open Tournament Golf, where Mario and Luigi are rocking some pro-American outfits (even if they are Italian). For other humans that are in this game, Peach appears to be Mario’s caddy, but there’s another blonde woman who’s Luigi’s caddy. It turned out that in official art, they redesigned this lady’s appearance to look like Princess Daisy, but was Daisy originally a blonde? There is one more human that we see in game where he gives the player the run down on the course as well as lets you pick your character. His appearance matches up with the style of how Mario and Luigi are designed as he too has big eyes and a big nose like the Mario Bros. Although the game appears to take place in the real world as courses are called the U.S. Open and the U.K. Open, so a cartoonish take on the real world?

The first game to be called “Mario Golf” was Mario Golf for the N64. Take a look at the roster screen for this game. You have your main stays for Mario spinoff games such as Peach, Yoshi, Wario, Bowser and so on. But do you see anything else strange about the roster? Who are these people?

Why are they golfing with Mario characters? I have an interesting theory as to who these characters were actually supposed to be before they were in Mario Golf. The developer of this game is Camelot, who is responsible for developing the first Hot Shots Golf game for the PS1. If you look at the character designs of the first HSG to the original characters in Mario Golf, they don’t look all that different. I believe these were either rejected character designs for the first HSG or planned characters for Camelot’s vision of HSG 2. Simply put, once Nintendo bought Camelot from Sony, these not HSG characters found their way into Mario Golf with Nintendo’s permission rather than an actual HSG game. What is weird is that the courses all appear to be within the Mario Universe, yet you have these random humans show up.

There was also Mario Golf for the GBC, where it had a single player mode where you create your own character and build that character’s stats up like an RPG to be the best golfer out there. You compete with other characters in order to unlock them, but many are original characters or not HSG characters. Though Mario himself is the final boss and he’s praised throughout the campaign as his golfing skills are on par with Tiger Woods (Pun not intended). The world itself is pretty cartoonish with essentially every character being human and the courses have Mario references to them. For instance, if you hit a golf ball into water, there's an animation where a Blooper will pop out and get mad for hitting the ball at him.

There was also Mario Golf: Advance Tour for the GBA which was very similar to its GBC predecessor. You have a few Mario Characters that are playable, but there’s also that single player mode where you create a character and build that character up. That game also lets you play against the human characters from the first portable Mario Golf. These people have more of an anime appearance when compared to that one golf guide from NES OTG. However, it can be argued that these are what other humans looked like in the Mario Universe.

Mario Tennis:

Mario Tennis on the N64 was different to Mario Golf in that the cast was all Mario characters and there were no HSG looking humans in sight. For original characters, it brought the world Waluigi for better or worse. However, you could get some different characters from Mario Golf on the GBC and with a transfer pack. Guess what, they’re human and sort of have an anime appearance. So while Mario Tennis for the N64 was meant to have a cast entirely made up of Mario characters and has courts that are based in the world of Mario. Yet the GBC version of the game is almost an entirely different story.

The GBC Mario Tennis was like the portable version of Mario Golf in that you got a small number of Mario characters in the initial roster, but you have a similar single player campaign. You customize your character’s skills and build that character up to be a better tennis player. You also play in an area that is far away from the Mushroom Kingdom and play against and unlock different human characters throughout the game. You can play either singles or doubles in the campaign and the ultimate goal is to play good enough tennis that you get invited to the Mushroom Kingdom to take on Mario in a game of tennis.

There's also a GBA game called Mario Tennis: Power Tour, which was again, very similar to the GBC game. You have your share of Mario characters and original characters to play as, but the story is a little different. You play as a student of a tennis academy, but there are masked challengers that come in and defeat the champions of the academy. Determined to seek their true identity, your character builds themselves up by beating every other student and get good enough to find and face these masked tennis players. It actually turns out that Mario and Friends were the masked challengers, and you have to beat them at the end.

I can say what I want about how these characters don't quite match the Mario aesthetic. But again, at least Camelot established a consistent art style as to what other humans looked like in the Mario Universe. Then suddenly Mario interacting with other humans got a whole lot weirder in the late GC era.

Gamecube Versions of EA Sports Big Games:

Before I go further, there needs to be some context that has to explain this segment. During the PS2/XBOX/GC generation, the Gamecube was the only console to not support online multiplayer for their games (unless you count Phantasy Star Online). With the GC not letting customers play games online, third party developers felt obligated to add extra content in their GC titles. This was clearly meant to give GC owners an incentive to buy their titles and make up for the lack of online play. For example, the GC version of Mortal Kombat Deception was the only console game that allowed people to play as MK’s most iconic boss characters, Goro and Shao Khan.

Now how does this relate to Mario? Well, EA Sports Big wanted to make up for the lack of online multiplayer by literally including Mario, Luigi and Princess Peach as playable characters in two of this games. These are games that feature either real people or realistic people within each game’s roster. They’re both set in the real world…Why did no one reference these games in the Odyssey reveal?

The first of these was NBA Street V3, which was the third installment of the NBA Street series. The Gamecube version had Mario and friends as a playable team called Nintendo All Stars. You can look at this gameplay clip to see how uncanny the Mario Bros. and Peach look when playing basketball against real NBA players. Yes, there’s a game where Mario and Kobe Bryant can go toe to toe in a game of hoops! They even have their own court that uses art that is inspired from the Mushroom Kingdom, but the court looks pretty realistic. Plus, the audience for this court are not Toads, Koopa Troopas, or any other species that resides in the Mushroom Kingdom. They're just plain ol' looking humans.

The other EA Sports Big title was SSX On Tour, the fourth installment of the SSX series. EA got the same Mario characters from NBA Street V3 into this title to have them crave up the most pragmatic looking snow environments for its time.

I can understand why EA got these characters into their games because they wanted Nintendo’s biggest icons to be linked with the GC versions of these titles. It also sends a firm statement that this is what you’re getting on the Gamecube. But at the same time, its just bizarre seeing Luigi stand next to somebody like Kevin Garnett. Maybe if it was NBA pros of SSX characters dressing up as Mario characters (which is also strange), that might work better. The fact that Mario characters are outright playable in this mostly realistic games is odd. However, its evidence that Mario has had contact with realistic people long before we saw Mario in New Donk City for the first time. What’s stranger to me is that Mario wasn’t playable for the Nintendo published snowboarding game, 1080 Avalanche. Or the Nintendo published NBA Courtside on the GC.

As a bonus, the GC version of Fight Night Round 2 had its own Nintendo exclusive content. One of which was unlocking a fighter that’s supposed to resemble the SNES Punch Out design of Little Mac, but its such a horrifying character design that it makes Jeff in EA Sports UFC look natural (Actually, UFC Jeff is uncanny but in a good way). You can also unlock Super Punch Out from the SNES in Fight Night Round 2 though, which is cool. Speaking of Punch Out…

Punch-Out:

This is another Nintendo series that a couple of Mario characters have made cameo appearances in before. It’s nothing new considering that Mario is often referenced in any other Nintendo IP like Kirby, Animal Crossing and Pokemon, but it was one of the first to do so.

Most noticeably in Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out, Mario playing the role as the referee is one of the most memorable cameos that featured the red hated plumber. As everyone knows, Mario is the referee for every bout Little Mac is involved with starting to the Minor Circuit w/ foes like Glass Joe and Piston Hondo. Then its on to the Major Circuit fighting stalwarts like Don Flamenco and Bald Bull and later to the World Circuit featuring rematches as well as new fighters like Mr. Sandman. Of course, the real grand finale is fighting Mike Tyson, which is considered by many to be one of the toughest boss fights ever. Remember, Mario and Mike Tyson were in the same virtual ring together. A real boxing icon and a cartoon plumber! Not to mention that the other boxers you fight are from real world countries (except for King Hippo). Like NES Open Tournament Golf, Mario has traveled in the real world before as he had a short-term career as a boxing referee. Also in Punch Out for the arcade, Mario, Luigi, Donkey Kong and DK Jr. all appear as spectators in the crowd.

Punch-Out on the Wii was the only other game in the series to feature a Mario character to make a cameo appearance. Mario didn’t return, as the referee and Tyson had no chance to return as the hidden boss fighter. Instead, the developers got permission to use a different character to fill in Tyson’s shoes as both the hidden and toughest boxer of the game, and that was Donkey Kong. It was also a very overconfident and smug DK at that.

Sure, you could argue that DK family has been around humans before with supposedly Cranky Kong being the original Donkey Kong in the Arcade game kidnapping Pauline. But this time he’s fighting actual people in a boxing ring live in front of a human audience. Plus throughout the fight he's dancing in front of you, blowing kisses and even adjusting his hair. All of these cocky moves are bait moves for Little Mac to try to punch the tie wearing ape, only to miss. If DK beats you, he'll abduct Little Mac out of the ring as if he's Pauline from the original Donkey Kong game. DK is a pretty predictable guest character within the Nintendo universe to put into Punch Out, but this is quite a funny portrayal of him making him this smug boxer that knows he's gonna pound Little Mac.

It was originally planned that Princess Peach was gonna be a secret boxer for the Wii version of Punch-Out, but the developer Next Level Games dropped the idea thinking it would out of bad taste to have the player beat up a women. Good call. They even had plans to include other Nintendo characters into the game, but instead stuck with DK as the one guest character and wanted to expand the series' roster of characters instead.

Quick Notes on other Mario Sports Games:

• There's the long running Mario and Sonic Olympic series where it does take place in real world settings, but all realistic humans are replaced by Mario and Sonic characters. What happened to mankind?
• Mario 3-on-3 Hoops is a Mario Basketball game for the DS that had a plethora of Mario characters, but also had a Ninja, White Mage and Black Mage from Final Fantasy as other playable humans. It also had a Moogle and a Cactuar since Square Enix made this game.
• There was a NES racing series exclusive to Japan called Famicon Grand Prix where Mario was prominently featured in the advertising. He was also playable and raced against supposedly other people.
• The Mario Strikers and Sluggers games pretty much include characters in the extended Mario universe.
• Mario Kart has had Miis since the Wii and has Link, Animal Crossing Villagers and Inklings as human/humanoid characters in MK8 Deluxe, but that's it.

Conclusion:

Looking back at these different games, Mario has had, well, an interesting history in meeting different people. Mario has in fact interacted with the very best pros in the NBA during the 2005 season as well as ride through some mountain trails in SSX On Tour, but I don't think Nintendo fully acknowledges those games' existence. Perhaps Punch Out is an extended Mario franchise considering characters from the Mushroom Kingdom have appeared in the series' titles from its Arcade roots to the latest release. Camelot had a relatively uniform art style displaying how other humans were depicted within the world of Mario, even if those designs may or may not have been intended for a Sony IP. But with Super Mario Odyssey on the way, the developers probably just thought of rebooting the idea of how other humans are depicted in Mario and decided to make them appear down-to-earth, but Mario and Peach will stay the same. Plus Odyssey appears to have different worlds that have their own art style, so the realistic NDC is just one of the artistically unique levels in the game.