Best of 2019
Here is my list for this year! See also the Honorable Mentions.
List items
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One of the best games of the decade, let alone the year. A small handcrafted little solar system jam packed with things to discover and revelations to wash over you. As you discover more and more it all fits together perfectly, like nothing I've ever played. It's profound, how everything comes together so tightly. It is the undisputed GOTY.
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This is just the best Fallout game they've made. I had begun to think the genre just wasn't for me anymore, but they made one that's tighter, more focused, and with really great writing. I was just really enamored with my time with The Outer Worlds, and I hope they make as much DLC as they did for Fallout 3/New Vegas.
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Mario Making continues to be my favorite creative outlet. Testing out ideas, refining them until they're bonafide mechanics, & building them into full levels is rewarding as it's ever been. I'm sad that there's been more burn out among the community this time, but it makes sense. Creating is draining, and this year has been busy. While there are still massive issues with level discoverability, they added a ton to the game, including a single player which is jam packed with damn good levels.
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Personally I found the first half of this game extremely hard to put down. It was extremely satisfying to min max as much as I could to recruit as many students as possible. It was also fun alternating between Persona ass stuff, getting to know all the students, and the turn based strategy. That said, after I had recruited all the students the momentum died for me and I still haven't finished part 2. I want to finish though.
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I think this is the best Pokemon game. Cutting a lot of tutorials helps, but the main thing I think that makes it great is the Wild Area. Usually in a Pokemon game you can only catch so many Pokemon, so you'll be pretty limited in what your team looks like. In Sword however, once you reach the Wild Area a few hours in you can build your team however you like. It creates a much more expressive Pokemon game. Also, there's basically zero grinding now due to XP Candy. It's unfortunate the online is a complete mess, I wish they could've done better there.
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This is a short game and I wish it was about twice as long as it was, but I really enjoyed my time with it. The fixed beat mode in particular made it really accessible for me, someone who doesn't do rhythm games very well. I hope they can do more of this with Nintendo, and that Nintendo takes similar risks in the future.
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It's true that this is a short game and only the first two levels are fun, those two levels rule so much I can't not have it on my list. Ape Out rules! It oozes style, the music works so well, it's simple and satisfying. You should probably play it...
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The world building on display in Control is top tier. It's just pitch perfect, the writing, the feeling, the hilarious little details, all perfectly executed. If only the gameplay was more forgiving, if the checkpoints weren't so bad. The difficulty spikes in Control made me want to stop playing. Considering how engrossing the atmosphere is that's saying something.
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Bloodstained is a fantastic Metroidvania. While I got the Switch version due to Iga not warning Kickstarter backers that version would be busted, I still really enjoyed my time with it. While it looked a lot like a DS game, there still was a ton to love about it. Clever abilities, neat twists, cool areas, quality stuff. However, sometimes the way forward is super unintuitive, forcing you to go to a guide.
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This is just a really great gag game. It's a pretty long game, and for its entire length it kept serving up surprising and funny jokes in the form of golfing levels. While there's a few times where the touch screen controls don't quite work so well for some of the challenges they've designed, and at launch when I played you couldn't listen to podcasts as you played, it was good enough where I'd play it whenever I had time just to get a few levels in.
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