Best Video Games I Played in 2019
- Celeste (2018)
Synopsis: A young woman suffering from depression and anxiety decides that what she really needs is to climb a mountain. On the way up she comes across a magic mirror, and then things get weird.
Celeste is about understanding yourself, about abandoning an adversarial relationship with the darker parts of yourself (the protagonist struggles with anxiety and depression, but I think the themes of the game are widely applicable), and instead understanding where those thoughts, feelings, and behaviors come from, approaching challenges as a whole person. It’s less self-helpy than I’m making it sound; as someone who struggles with anxiety and depression myself, I never felt like the game was patronizing me or saying that my issues are “just in my head” or whatever (in fact, the game explicitly manifests those issue in physical form). It’s really a great story, and one that many people may find useful.
Celeste is also about understanding that every player is different, and this is where it really sets itself apart from other platformers. The challenge of Celeste is integral to the themes of the game, and this idea isn’t new (Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy is another well-known example from just a year before Celeste was released). But what makes Celeste different is the Assist Mode. This isn’t just a cookie-cutter “Story Only,” “Super Easy” mode. Turning Assist Mode on doesn’t actually change anything immediately. What it does is let you access four tools that you can use at any point in the game to adjust the challenge level as much or as little as you like. The designers understand that everyone’s idea of a challenge is different, so they let people decide that for themselves. And it really is very flexible; you can adjust any of the Assist settings at any point in the game, so if you just need a little bit of help getting past this puzzle you can’t quite manage, you can tweak the game just for the 10 seconds it takes to do that and put it back to normal and play on. There are no penalties to using Assist Mode, and the game doesn’t make you feel bad about it.
It does make you feel bad about not collecting all the strawberries though. You have been warned.
- Darksiders III (2018)
Synopsis: Fury, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, is sent to Earth on a mission to recapture the Seven Deadly Sins, who have escaped following someone triggering the Apocalypse ahead of schedule.
It’s nice to know they still make games like this. Coming off of Arkham Knight, what I really needed was a game with a straightforward story that wasn’t really trying too hard, and fun, adventure-style gameplay. Or at least I know that in hindsight, because that’s what I got from Darksiders III and it was great.
Let’s start with the negatives, just so that I don’t end on it: My one major complaint with the game is about the consumables mechanic. Trying to use any consumables other than the basic health items during a battle was practically impossible, and the imprecision of the d-pad led to many frustrating moments where I tried to heal but then accidentally selected some other item and died before I could correct the mistake. It’s a weird problem to have in a 2018 game, given that every other action-RPG solved it a long time ago by either having a limited number of hotkeyed consumables (e.g. you could have one item for each d-pad direction, and change the loadout as desired) or by just letting you pause the action to use whatever items you want. The fact that they have the main healing ability semi-hotkeyed means they were clearly aware of the problem, but that was not by any means an adequate solution.
Okay, now the good stuff. More than any other game I’ve played in the last few years, DIII made me feel the way I felt playing games as a kid. As much as I like games that try to do big artistic things, it’s nice to sometimes play a game that’s just fun. The story was a neat little twist on familiar archetypes, the mechanics were just varied enough to be engaging, and the combination of semi-open-world exploration with dungeon-crawler design kept me engaged, even when going back to explore previous areas armed with new abilities, and the puzzles were clever without being too clever (or relying on obnoxiously precise execution even when you’ve figured out how to solve it (I’m looking at you Talos Principle)). It didn’t blow my mind or move my soulāit was a little weird, a little familiar, and a lot of fun.
- Gravity Rush 2 (2017)
Synopsis: Lost in another universe, Kat must use her gravity-shifting powers to help her new-found family and try to find her friends and then also other stuff. Look, the story is episodic and kind of confusing and I didnāt play the first game, so I donāt have a lot to go on here.
I’m not big into impulse buys, especially not with games, but this was a rare instance where I picked up a game based solely on the trailer (and the fact that it was on sale), without reading any reviews first. And you know what? It was about as fun as I thought it would be, which is to say, pretty fun. A surprisingly robust game for the price tag, too, and they introduce new areas and mechanics at just the right intervals to keep things interesting. Having not played the first game I have no idea if the story would be less erratic if I knew anything about the previous events, but the themes and emotions the story is based on are so archetypal that I didn’t have trouble following the general thrust of the narrative. And the world is pretty damn cool, a weird combo of magic, steampunk, and sci-fi that’s a blast to explore. The controls can be a little frustrating…okay, a lot frustrating, but the game-over state is forgiving enough to make up for it in a lot of cases (to the point where sometimes it’s actually in your best interest to die and try again.)
So, yeah, surprisingly good game, and a steal at the going price. - Horizon Zero Dawn (2017)
Synopsis: Raised as an outcast, her origins kept secret from her, Aloy finally has the chance to earn her place in the tribe that cast her out and get the answers sheās sought all her life by winning a ritual competition. But just as she achieves victory, the tribe is attacked by a cult bent on Aloyās destruction. And then thereās, you know, a lot more that happens. Like, a lot a lot. Including firing lightning arrows at robot emus, if thatās something you might be into.
I donāt usually do a detailed breakdown, but this game deserves it, so here we go.
Visuals: This game is beautiful. And yes, you already knew that, but it bears repeating. The landscapes are stunning, the animation is fluid (at least the gameplay, cutscenes can be a bit rough), the look of the world is distinct and diverse. Which brings us to…
Travel: Most “open world” games quickly go from exploring the world to teleporting between important points and travelling in real time as little as possible. HZD gives you a world that you actually want to spend time in, both in the look and feel of it.
Mechanics: I’m never quite sure how to feel when a game offers a wide variety of weapons and play-styles, and I end up always using the same three unless specifically told otherwise. On the one hand, it can feel like they threw in a bunch of stuff that ultimately isn’t that useful. On the other hand, it’s entirely possible that I just tend to gravitate toward certain options and ignore other ones, while someone else will play completely differently. So it is worth noting that there are about a dozen different weapons in here, even if most of the time I used the same 3.
In terms of play-style, the game naturally rewards a more tactical approach, with a focus on stealth, precision, and taking advantage of enemy weaknesses. One of the main strengths of the game, at least for me, is that although you get more powerful weapons and upgrades, the combat challenge scales fairly well, so that unless you go back to lower level areas (and sometimes even then) you’re never gonna be able to just casually run in and blow stuff up. Thus, while the combat can start to get a little repetitive (see above), the challenge keeps it from being stale. That being said, if you’re more of a run-in-and-blow-stuff-up kind of player, this game may not be for you.
Task Diversity: One of the main criticisms I’ve heard of this game, and one that’s a problem with many if not all open world games, is that the side quests are redundant and grindy. I don’t think that’s as true of HZD as it is of a game like Fallout 4, for example, where there are endlessly repeatable fetch quests and the same settlements are constantly under attack. There are no repeatable side quests in HZD, and while mechanically a lot of them can start to feel samey, relying in large part on the same underdeveloped “scan for clues” mechanic pioneered by the Arkham games, narratively they’re all unique, and generally have interesting stories to tell and interesting characters to engage with. And there are side quests (one of which I just stumbled on out in the middle of nowhere) that actually affect the game later on down the line, at least narratively, without broadcasting that fact. All in all the side quests always felt worth doing.
Story: Another common issue with open world games is that they put player choice above narrative depth. Which is to say, while they’re might be a lot of cool moments where you get to make choices that affect some part of the narrative, if you take a step back and look at the main story-line, it’s actually pretty thin. This was a huge problem with Fallout 4, and even Dragon Age: Inquisition, which I love deeply and without reservations, has great character moments but a pretty standard “defeat the big bad” story.
HZD errs on the other side of this balance, and I can’t really say it makes for a worse game. The player choice moments, revolving around how Aloy expresses her personality, generally only affect the cutscene they take place in, as far as I can tell, with the occasional minor effect, such as whether a side character shows up later or not. While this can feel unsatisfying, the strength of the narrative makes up for it. The developers don’t let your choices anywhere near the main plot; they had a story to tell and they were going to tell it whether you like it or not. And it’s a pretty good story, too. Itās not mind-blowingāif you’ve read/watched enough sci-fi you can see most of the twists coming (a point the game actually hangs a lampshade on in one of the many (and, dare I say, actually worthwhile) audiofile collectibles)ābut it is well-written, and emotionally affecting in ways I wasn’t expecting at all. And the post-credits scene and DLC provide enough sequel bait that I’m actually interested in where they might be taking this, despite my own idea for how to make a sequel set decades or even centuries in the future with entirely different mechanics. But that’s a subject for a different time.
Conclusion: HZD was arguably overhyped when it came out, but I think it’s more that they hyped up the wrong parts of it, and I don’t think the criticism I’ve seen of it is accurate. I spent 80 hours in this game and I don’t regret a minute of it, which is a lot more than I can say for pretty much any other open world game I’ve played. - InnerSpace (2018)
Synopsis: Okay, gravity is inverted, so instead of balls of water surrounded by air, the worlds youāre exploring are balls of air surrounded by water. Right. Okay. So thereās an archeologist, who’s a boat or something, and it’s trying to find out about the civilization that lived on…in these worlds, and youāre a sentient glider thing that it made to help with that. And then you find some gods, and they give you wind, to help you get out of this universe, ācause itās collapsing in on itself. And, yeah, thatās pretty much it.
A fun little exploration game with a cool concept, interesting worldbuilding, and just enough gameplay to fit the loose narrative and fairly narrow spread of mechanics. The exploration element is strong enough that not being able to figure out what to do next isn’t usually all that frustrating, and there’s a sort of dream logic to figuring out some of the puzzles that fits nicely with the ethereal environment and sound design. All in all, not a bad way to spend a weekend. - Rise of the Tomb Raider (2015)
Synopsis: Lara Croft races against a mysterious mercenary group called Trinity to find an artifact that her father spent the last years of his life looking for: The Divine Source.
A few minutes into Rise of the Tomb Raider, I found myself running and jumping across a crumbling mountainside actually feeling excited and scared, and that’s when I knew this game would be good.
There were plenty of times in the Uncharted games where I experienced similar tension, but, as far as I can remember, it was largely in combat. Rise of the Tomb Raider, by contrast, makes combat relatively easy, because that’s not really what the game’s about. All the most memorable moments of the game pitted Lara against the environment, not against human foes. It’s a great decision to make it clear that the combat is what’s getting in the way of the true heart of the game, which is survival and exploration (relatedly, when combat did get tense was when I was fighting wolves, tigers, bears, further emphasizing the human vs. nature axis over the human vs. human axis). Obviously I have a lot of opinions about open-world games, but if any game should be open-world it’s an adventure game, and Uncharted‘s linearity seems strikingly limited when compared to RotTR‘s not-too-open-but-just-open-enough world.
It obviously has some weaknesses. The Uncharted series arguably has the advantage in terms of puzzle variety, but there were a solid handful of puzzles in RotTR whose solutions made me go, “Oooooh, that’s clever,” and while there were individual mechanics that repeated across puzzles, on the whole they never felt cookie-cutter or redundant. The plot was…average, but got by on its heart, with Camilla Luddington (Lara) and Philip Anthony-Rodriguez (Jacob) both turning in engaging, earnest performances, and the villain-behind-the-villain twist was executed well and turned out to be more interesting than I’d expected. Also, while there were no really game-breaking glitches, I did notice that after getting the climbing arrows, my triple-shot targeting no longer worked consistently, which was frustrating a couple times in situations that were clearly set up precisely to be solved by that mechanic. But now I could climb walls by sticking arrows in them, so…
All in all, this was a fun game from start to finish. It’s obviously tempting to say these new Tomb Raider games are just a mashup of Uncharted and Far Cry, but I don’t think that gives them enough credit (and also kind of ignores how much Uncharted presumably owes to the original Tomb Raider games.) This game put me in the world more than Uncharted ever did, but wasn’t nearly as exhausting as the one time I tried to play Far Cry 3. The first reboot game was good enough to make me willing to play this one, but this one actually makes me excited to play the next one.
But yeah, Uncharted 4 is still pretty damn good.
- Shadow of the Colossus (2005)
Synopsis: A guy travels to a forbidden land with a dead woman and makes a deal with a mysterious entity that if he slays 16 colossi, the entity will bring the woman back to life.
You know what? F*** this game. F*** this game and it’s stupid f***ing controls and s***ty f***ing camera and that stupid f***ing horse and those stupid f***ing geysers and that unaimable f***ing bow and the f***ing innovative design and the f***ing world that’s even cooler for being empty and especially that last F***ING boss and his f***ing fireballs and again with the stupid f***ing controls and s***ty f***ing camera that made me fall half a dozen f***ing times and die twice, and f*** that goddamn ending that made me actually feel something after all that f***ing torture, especially when that stupid f***ing horse came back. This is a game for insane people and I’m never f***ing playing it again, especially not on f***ing “MIRRORED WORLD MODE,” FOR F***S SAKE WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU F***ING PEOPLE.
Honorable Mentions
- Marvelās Spider-Man (2018)
- Nioh (2017)
- Assassin’s Creed II (2009)
Certain of Eventual Failure 