Holy shit, I reread my first draft of this and what a goddamn bore it was. It was me droning on about mundane bullshit. People woulda skimmed all that for sure! Y’all will still skim this crap, but at least it’s more concise and to the point now! One paragraph and done, bitches!

Oh and no spoilers so don't you worry your pretty little heads.

Best Game I Didn’t Actually Play But Watched

Until Dawn

So I’ve watched three full playthroughs of this and I could totally go for more. It’s one of those games where seeing people work out the mystery and come up with their own reasoning for the choices they make is as enjoyable as the game itself, if not more so. Well, I think I just described the appeal of all horror games and why they’re so big on youtube. Yeah well this one’s better than those! Git outta here Outlast and Amnesia, yer old hat!

Game I Wish I Had Played But Didn’t

Octopath Traveler

Only reason I didn’t play this one was that it’s a Switch exclusive. Maybe one day I’ll get to play it, but the Switch doesn’t have enough games I’m interested in to justify buying at the moment. I was burned with the Wii U. Never again, Nintendo! Never again!

Runner-up: The most recent Atelier game that I'm sure I'll get around to in 2019

Most Disappointing

Valkyria Chronicles 4

Ugg… worse than the first one in just about every way and it’s a shame. The villainous Valkyria is cooler, at least? I was never big on Selvaria or whatever her name was. People loved her cause of her tits or something. I dunno. She was stupid. Anyways, 4 is just… the story is all sorts of dumb and some of the later battles really feel cheap and drag on. The chemistry between MCs is practically non-existent, with more effort put into the relationships of side characters. It’s still alright, just not as good as 1.

Biggest Time Sink

Assassin's Creed: Odyssey

I spent over 200 hours on this game and it's officially the first game I've got 100% of the achievements for. I would gladly go back and put another 200 hours into it if there was more to do. Thankfully there will be DLC (and there's the mini-DLCs or whatever) but I'm waiting on a solid amount of em so I can go back and have a bunch of new stuff to do all at once.

Runners-Up: Dragon Quest XI, Monster Hunter World

Best Fighting Game

Haha trick category, I didn’t play any this year! Get rekt! Oh cept for like some Sakura when she came out in SFV… was that this year? I don’t even remember, it was such a brief amount of time and certainly didn’t get me hooked on the game. Anyways, I probably will try the new Soul Calibur at some point when it goes on deep discount.

Best Soundtrack

Octopath Traveler

This year was kind of disappointing for soundtracks, honestly. Nothing really jumped out at me. Hell, the most memorable songs were remixes of Deltarune songs and fanmade remixes don’t really count. I initially forgot about Octopath’s music for the most part. It was nice, but I didn’t feel compelled to add anything to a playlist. It wasn't until listening to it while watching a bit of a playthrough where it started standing out; it needed context behind it to really shine, for me, but shine it did.

Most Unique Game

The Return of the Obra Dinn

Hell, even the name is unique! I kind of feel like the less said about this game, the better; go in blind if you get the chance. All I’ll say is it’s a game where you unravelling a mystery and it doesn’t hold your hand like most mystery games do. It’s worth playing but it didn’t make my top 10 due to the mechanics feeling pretty repetitive and shallow once you unlock the few there are, and that there was more brunt guesswork than I’d have liked (but maybe I just missed some clues and managed by exploiting the system… over and over).

Runners-Up: Gorogoa, The Hex

Best Game I Kept Going Back To

Cities: Skylines

W-w-what?! It’s not Skyrim?! Look. I can only praise Skyrim so much before even I get sick of it! And while I did play a LOT of Skyrim this year, I played just as much Cities and it’s much less of a headache to mod so more of that time was spent actually playing and not just modding! Also, Cities is still getting new content like the new Industries xpac and I hope they keep releasing more as those are always a great reason to jump back in and start a new city.

Runners-Up: Skyrim, Overwatch

Worst Game of the Year

Fallout 76

Kinda cheating since I didn’t play this, but this year I didn’t really play any bad games. So I’m going with a game that falls into a category that very, very few do - a game I not only expected to fail, but actively wanted to see fail and it did, in ways I couldn’t have imagined. Why would I want a game to fail? Because it forebode of terrible things for the future of Fallout and Elder Scrolls. Things like microtransaction stores and “Games as services” and all that shit that no Bethesda fans want from their games. Hopefully Bethesda takes this to heart and does a hard 180, going back to their roots and remembering what makes their games great.

Best New Character

Kassandra

Kass is a badass who has no fucks to give who realizes she’s a demi-god and acts accordingly. It’s such a refreshing change from these godly main characters who kill thousands of people without batting an eye, but give them a cutscene and suddenly they’re having a moral dilemma over stealing a loaf of bread from a pedophile. Kass, on the other hand, will kill anyone for the dumbest reason as long as there’s money (or even if there’s not, half the time). Also, her voice actor did a fantastic job.

Runners-Up: Sylvando, Meve, Dana

Best New Overwatch Hero

Brig-hahano-it’s Ashe

Why yes, I did make this category just out of the bitterness I feel towards Blizzard for how much they’ve abused Brigitte with the nerf bat! Truly, she’s following the ways of the WoW paladin to a tee. All they needed was to give her a bubblehearth and nerf that, too! Anyways, Ashe is awesome. Here’s hoping she doesn’t suffer the same fate.

Best Cyberpunk Game

The Red Strings Club

While we wait for Cyberpunk 2077, it’s only fitting to play other cyberpunk-themed games in the meantime! Although sometimes it feels like there’s slim pickins outside of the big ones like Deus Ex and…. And.. Syndicate Plus? Anyways, there’s plenty of smaller cyberpunk games out there and Red Strings Club is one such game! A short and sweet little adventure game with some bartending akin to Va-11 Hall-A. I’d definitely be up for more such games like this one.

Oddly Lacking Category

Best Story

I'm wracking my brain trying to think of a game that had a stand-out story, and I'm coming up dry. Red Dead 2 would probably take this one home if I had any interest in playing it but I'm not into the wild west so that ain't happening. Most of the games I played had serviceable stories while others had pretty bad stories or dumb twists. I'd probably say Iconoclasts was the best but the third act feels pretty rushed and leaves a lot to be desired so I don't feel right picking that one. Oh well, no best story this year!

Silliest Game

Donut County

I could have also called this category “Best Katamari-esque Game” but that woulda just been silly! Wait… So yeah, you play as a hole that gets larger as things fall into it, as holes do(?) It’s silly, it’s dumb, it’s cute. Everything you want out of a Katamari-esque game! Hopefully they make more and I expect the next game to be called “We <3 Donut County”.

Runner-Up: The Hex

Best Villain

Black

This psycho woman from Iconoclasts is just so deliciously psychotic, but not in the fun way like Jinx or Gaige, no sirree. Black is the kind of villain who will tell you that she's going to tear you limb from limb and then literally do it. I just wish the game was a bit longer so she could have got more screen time and done more villainous things.

Runner-Up: Tobi-Kadachi

Best Game Made by a Friend

Yuletide

OMG you guys have to play this game! It’s like Undertale but at Christmas time! That’s why it’s called Yuletide, get it? Cause it's Christmas themed! Sure it’s short and buggy, and that one puzzle having to collect the colored orbs was a pain, but it’s totally rad! It’s too good to go in my top 12, really. It just wouldn’t be fair for all those other games that tried so hard.

Runner-Up: That one Gamejam game Ossi made with the boxes

Best Tabletop Game

Exploding Kittens

It got a new expansion this year - Streaking Kittens! Only like a few cards, but whatever! Reason enough to count it, so there! Still wish they would use better quality cardboard for the cards, cause that is the ONE game you do not want cards to get bent or scuffed in - even the smalled mark can make it really easy to tell what they are before drawing. I gotta get some solid-backed protective sleeves one of these days.

Top 12 Because I Aint a Part of Your Base10 System, Maaaan!

12. Deltarune

What this? A free game released in the guise of a survey on Halloween? Oh and it was a follow up to Undertale?! It's adorable, it's fun; it’s more Undertale and the world can always use more Undertale. Really only at the end of the list cause it’s more of a demo or a teaser than anything.

11. Warriors Orochi 4

It’s Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors combined! Apparently not as good as 3U but I never played 3U so I wouldn’t know. It scratched the itch and didn’t try to reinvent the wheel and fail miserably like DW9 did. If you just want some ol’ fashion musou action with a shitload of characters from both DW and SW, this game won’t do ya wrong.

10. Dead Cells

I don’t generally like rogue-likes and I’m pretty bad at most of em (even Crypt of the Necrodancer which has music I love, but I just suck so bad at it). But then this baby came along and hooked me enough that I actually “finished” it! On normal, so I’m sure there’s tons left, but I’m still really liking it and will definitely be playing more. Super fun combat, great art, and the sense of progression is good enough that even shitty RNG runs will still give you some souls that can go towards more unlocks (unlike so many roguelikes where such runs feel like a total waste).

9. Iconoclast

A bright and cheery looking exterior hides a daaaark secret! This game’s story will scar you for life! Okay maybe not, but it doesn’t pull any punches. Great little Metroidvania (that also takes lot of inspiration from Mega Man) with cool characters, combat, art and story. Oh and I already mentioned that Black is an awesome villain.

8. Ni no Kuni 2

The fact it’s got an overworld and some Suikoden-lite mechanics is enough to put this on the list. Sure, it’s got one of the dumbest story twists in gaming history, but not like offensively bad, more like hilariously dumb and it’s nothing really all that important, so whatever. I laughed my ass off at the reveal. Good times. Oh yeah, the game is fun, I should prolly mention that, huh?

7. Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana

Yup, Adol is still a pointlessly silent protagonist which will always frustrate me to no end, but this time around, you get Dana, who is a fully fleshed character as a second MC, woo! She’s awesome. Not quite Kass levels, but yeah, she’s great and prolly gets my vote for hottest new character, this year. And yep, like Ni no Kuni, this game is also very fun. Who’d have guessed I’d put fun games on my best games list?!

6. The Hex

Go into this game blind. Just go play it. It’s friggin great. Short and sweet. All I’ll add is it’s from the maker(s?) of Pony Island and if you’ve played that, well then, you might be somewhat primed, but they’re nothing alike. Just that like with Swery games or Suda 52 games, you kinda know what to expect. Okay, now go play it. It’s cheap.

5. Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Lara Croft continues to raid tombs and kill countless mercenaries in her quest for becoming the richest, bloodiest, most murderingest treasure hunter in the world! And it continues to be awesome. Just too damn short. All of these new TR games are too damn short! You have all these open world mechanics and leveling systems and ya barely get to use em, augh! Make a Trilogy remaster of all three games in one with persistent leveling/systems/fast travel throughout em. That’d be amazing.

4. GRIS

Of course there’s an artsy fartsy game in my list! There always is! Or is there? I dunno. Catlady got my GotY one year and that games artsy fartsy, so whatever! GRIS is phenomenal. I daresay it’s a masterpiece in a similar vein to Journey. I don’t really need to say more about it. If you like Journey, you owe it to yourself to give this game a try,

3. Thronebreaker

A Gwent-based game in my top three? Gasp! Well, come on, it’s more Witcher so it should come as no surprise that it was friggin awesome. The writing is just fantastic as are the characters and the narration and all of the different types of puzzles they manage to throw at you using Gwent. Hell, there’s a Bejeweled-type fight in there, so it’s definitely not just ye olde Gwent ad nauseum. Oh and Meve is a terrific MC and a contender for best new character in her own right.

2. Monster Hunter World

You hunt monsters! In a world! Okay, not really a world, so much as a few corralled off locations, but still! Lots of fun, especially with some friends. And this is coming from someone who wasn’t a big fan of the franchise before. I always loved the concept but not so much the execution (especially with most of the games being on handhelds, goddammit Japan, get over your obsession with those things), so it’s great to see the franchise brought (mostly) up to modern standards and on an actual console. Lookin forward to the DLC…. a year from now >.>

1. Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey

It’s Horizon Zero Dawn all over again! Weaker main story but more shit to do in the world and many more interesting side-quests! Oh and so many people to have sex with! Am I biased because it’s a game that takes place in one of the historical eras that’s smack dab in the center of my wheelhouse? You better believe it! As soon as they said it was taking place in Ancient Greece I was like “Hell yeah, where do I sign up?”

But really, it’s mostly about the sex. Byeeeee~