Well it's about that time my friends. 2019 has basically blown it's load in terms of the game experiences that are coming out this year and we can look safely look back upon the year and reflect on the good and the bad and the utterly disappointing. Personally this year has been a really big mixed bag for me. I was looking forward to a lot of games that just ended up being a let down, not bad games, but not nearly as good as I had expected and hoped they would be.
Anyway let's start by getting the bad out of the way, like ripping off a band-aid.
5. Rage 2 - The first Rage was a really fun game with a terrible story and frankly too short of an experience to give it any real lasting power. When I saw the chaos of Rage 2 coming out, I was personally pretty excited for it because it appeared that they were trying to address the issues people had with Rage 1 directly. Unfortunately what you got with Rage 2 was an even worse story, and repetitive "go loot the bandit outpost" missions in an open world filled with really very little. The game functions and is still a solid shooter, but it's certainly not a great game nor memorable in anyway.
4. Remnant From the Ashes - A 3rd person shooting Dark Soulsy game!? Sign me the fuck up? Then having played the game you can sign me the fuck right back off of this unbalanced trash. A narrow field of view, on top of enemies spawning behind you, on top of bosses that are nothing but horde mode versions of normal enemies, and you get a frustratingly poor 3rd person shooting game. And a game that's even worse for trying to make itself a Souls-like. The concept here was good, but the developers had no clue what they were doing when it came to the game's design.
3. Death Stranding - Oh color me shocked that Kojima's ideas are not very good. People don't seem to realize that Kojima is just not a very good author, let alone game designer. But admittedly he is a pretty fun artist to watch and just see what batshit he comes up with next. Death's Stranding is a game where Kojima was never told "no" a single time during game development. At no point did anyone raise a hand and tell him "Uh sir, you state that you don't want players to fight the bad guys but there is no penalty for doing so." Or "Uh sir, your super natural scary bad guys can be beated by walking in 1 direction removing all sense of danger or urgency." Or "You know people normally don't WANT to be Fed Ex drivers." Death's Stranding is a game in the same way David Cage games are games, you could argue it is an experience but it isn't a game. Especially when you learn that everything that is supposed to be a challenge can actually just be ignored. There is no punishment for killing the human bad guys, there is no danger from BT's really just walk in a straight line and they'll forget about you. What's left is a walking sim that you can remove all challenge from once you get a couple of upgrades, and the rest of it is just going through the motions after that.
2. Ghost Recon Breakpoint - Ubisoft live service dog shit. An unfinished, buggy, dumpster fire of a game that constantly crashes or disconnects you from the single player online experience. You constantly lose progress thanks to whatever bug the game throws your way next. But like Fallout 76, the in-game real money store sure fucking works. Did they really need to release this piece of shit in the same year they released a fairly okay Division 2? Maybe they did it to make the Division look a lot better than it actually is, but at least that game works.
AND THE WORST GAME OF 2019......
1. Anthem - Holy fuck what the fuck happened here. We all thought that Bioware just had a second team on Mass Effect right? Like the main team was on Anthem and Anthem would be good right? Fucking hell we was wrong. There is nothing here. Anthem is a chopped up nonsense of a game. A looter shooter with no lo...............sorry had to load for a second there. A Looter shooter with no loot. A loot game with no character stat screen. A Looter game with loot that is fucking broken! A flame thrower that increases physical damage by 0% for 0 seconds, sign me up! Anthem is a game so bad that almost every lead developer involved quit the company. A bad so bad that their own roadmap was incomplete and they didn't even finish what they had announced. So bad they are apparently going to try and Final Fantasy 14 this ***** and completely remake the game. Fucking WoW.
Honorable shit mention:
Crackdown 3 - Microsoft continues to suck doggy dicks by releasing a once antisipated game that got delayed to hell and then just released out of nowhere. For good reason because the game is utter shit. Nobody knew it came out, nobody cares it's still out to this day.
Well now that we got 2019's vomit out of our mouth. Let's talk about the delightful games that made us forget about the bad times.
5. Borderlands 3 - Now I know that some people could not STAND the writing in this game. The humor is very dated and the villains can be cringe inducing. However Borderlands 3 is a fucking miracle in this day and age. A game from Take Two and Gearbox that is just a video game. No microtransaction bullshit, no pre-order omega editions with bonuses from 10 different stores in which you can buy it from. Just a AAA game that was allowed to be a video game. And it is a damn good video game too. The shooting is great, the loot is great, the guns are interesting and fun to use and provide lots of different tactic potential, the levels are fun (even if the map is ass wank), the bosses are interesting and unique mostly. The game is just a good game. Frankly that's a hard ask these days.
4. The Surge 2 - Deck 13 has been trying to make a Souls-like game for almost ten years now. Apparently 3rd time is the charm because The Surge 2 is fantastic. A highly detailed map that interconnects with all kinds of shortcuts and verticality. Fun and challenging combat with a high variety of weapons to suit everyone's play style. A decent enough story. Really the only complaint I have is that a few bosses feel reused, and the game is rather short my first playthrough was less than 10 hours which is pretty damn short considering I died constantly. If I got good I bet a normal playthrough would only be 4-5 hours.
3. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - Speaking of Souls-likes here is a game that is the next big thing from the souls people themselves. It's not a souls game, it's hard, but it aint a souls game. Sure it has most of the trapings of a souls game. But......okay it's a souls game with a new spin on combat. That's really it though. The story is still that strange obscure mental puzzle, the level design takes the Souls level of depth and interconnectivity and adds a grappling hook so that you can also explore the sky. The combat takes a bit of getting used too because there was no way that people weren't going to approach this game like a Souls game at first. But it turns out that stealth and becoming a master parrier works really well. Hell this is a better stealth action game than anything Kojima ever made if you ask me. The biggest downside for this game is that there are NO gameplay options. You play this game exactly the way it WANTS you to play and you either get used to that or you die. The lack of combat variety holds this back, but as a straightforward stealth-em-up, it's pretty fucking great.
2. The Outer Worlds - Yes Bethesda has done it again, a first person shooter RPG with in depth writing and dialog character options that let you take the game in all kinds of crazy directions, color me shocked that Bethesda has yet again done what they've been good.....errr....hold on a second. Oh wait yeah turns out Bethesda is a piece of shit company and Obsidian had all the talent for this kind of game all along. Bethesda just makes unfunctional broken piles of discarded spunk. The Outer Worlds is great, great writing, wonderful character options, great RPG-elements, and pretty fun combat. Though the combat is probably the weakest link it is still good enough to see you through the game. What got me most about the game is how every stat you level has applications everywhere. If you want to be a cunning linguist, you're silver tongue can actually make the enemies fear you in combat. And being a strong shooty man helps you scare people you talk to into doing the thing you need them to do without the fighty bits. The way they seem to have thought of everything or at least tried to account for everything is just impressive. This was the game that finally made me like FPS-RPG's and I just hope Cyberpunk 2077 is on this same level.
1. Resident Evil 2 (remake): I haven't played the original RE2 since it came out on PS1, but it was one of my favorite PS1 titles hands down. I fucking mastered that game, getting the S+ ranks in every mission so I could play the secret levels as Hunk and Tofu. All I wanted was the Remake to give me that same fun experience again. Well REmake2 gave me exactly that, on top of a pair of shitfilled underwear because this game scared the fucking shit outta me. Not the jumpscary Five Nights at Freddys thing, but the geuine "holy fuck X is coming. where is he? FUCK FUCK! GAHHH!!!" fear that I didn't expect. This game is the shinning example of how to do a Remake correctly. Capcom could have just made it a shiny version of the original game and called it a day. But instead they truly remade the experience. The over-the-shoulder camera and the sheer cinematic quality they gave the OG cutscenes just shows how much they actually cared about doing this game right. Resident Evil 2 Remake is the best experience I've had in gaming in 2019.
Well that about covers it for me. There are some clearly missing games that I didn't mention here, mostly because they weren't good enough or bad enough to fit in either category. Games like Jedi Fallen Order, Kingdom Hearts 3, Mortal Kombat 11, Bloodstained Ritual of the Night, all were solid games that just didn't wow me one way or the other. Kingdom Hearts 3 might be notable in the disappointment category though as I heard that fans weren't super thrilled with what they ended up getting this time around.
I'm curious to see what you guys all think. Do you agree with my ranking? Disagree? What are your top and bottom 5 of the year. I genuinely would like to know, and this year please don't just list your games, tell me why you put each game where you did. Let's talk about what and why we liked or disliked our choices.
Anyway let's start by getting the bad out of the way, like ripping off a band-aid.
5. Rage 2 - The first Rage was a really fun game with a terrible story and frankly too short of an experience to give it any real lasting power. When I saw the chaos of Rage 2 coming out, I was personally pretty excited for it because it appeared that they were trying to address the issues people had with Rage 1 directly. Unfortunately what you got with Rage 2 was an even worse story, and repetitive "go loot the bandit outpost" missions in an open world filled with really very little. The game functions and is still a solid shooter, but it's certainly not a great game nor memorable in anyway.
4. Remnant From the Ashes - A 3rd person shooting Dark Soulsy game!? Sign me the fuck up? Then having played the game you can sign me the fuck right back off of this unbalanced trash. A narrow field of view, on top of enemies spawning behind you, on top of bosses that are nothing but horde mode versions of normal enemies, and you get a frustratingly poor 3rd person shooting game. And a game that's even worse for trying to make itself a Souls-like. The concept here was good, but the developers had no clue what they were doing when it came to the game's design.
3. Death Stranding - Oh color me shocked that Kojima's ideas are not very good. People don't seem to realize that Kojima is just not a very good author, let alone game designer. But admittedly he is a pretty fun artist to watch and just see what batshit he comes up with next. Death's Stranding is a game where Kojima was never told "no" a single time during game development. At no point did anyone raise a hand and tell him "Uh sir, you state that you don't want players to fight the bad guys but there is no penalty for doing so." Or "Uh sir, your super natural scary bad guys can be beated by walking in 1 direction removing all sense of danger or urgency." Or "You know people normally don't WANT to be Fed Ex drivers." Death's Stranding is a game in the same way David Cage games are games, you could argue it is an experience but it isn't a game. Especially when you learn that everything that is supposed to be a challenge can actually just be ignored. There is no punishment for killing the human bad guys, there is no danger from BT's really just walk in a straight line and they'll forget about you. What's left is a walking sim that you can remove all challenge from once you get a couple of upgrades, and the rest of it is just going through the motions after that.
2. Ghost Recon Breakpoint - Ubisoft live service dog shit. An unfinished, buggy, dumpster fire of a game that constantly crashes or disconnects you from the single player online experience. You constantly lose progress thanks to whatever bug the game throws your way next. But like Fallout 76, the in-game real money store sure fucking works. Did they really need to release this piece of shit in the same year they released a fairly okay Division 2? Maybe they did it to make the Division look a lot better than it actually is, but at least that game works.
AND THE WORST GAME OF 2019......
1. Anthem - Holy fuck what the fuck happened here. We all thought that Bioware just had a second team on Mass Effect right? Like the main team was on Anthem and Anthem would be good right? Fucking hell we was wrong. There is nothing here. Anthem is a chopped up nonsense of a game. A looter shooter with no lo...............sorry had to load for a second there. A Looter shooter with no loot. A loot game with no character stat screen. A Looter game with loot that is fucking broken! A flame thrower that increases physical damage by 0% for 0 seconds, sign me up! Anthem is a game so bad that almost every lead developer involved quit the company. A bad so bad that their own roadmap was incomplete and they didn't even finish what they had announced. So bad they are apparently going to try and Final Fantasy 14 this ***** and completely remake the game. Fucking WoW.
Honorable shit mention:
Crackdown 3 - Microsoft continues to suck doggy dicks by releasing a once antisipated game that got delayed to hell and then just released out of nowhere. For good reason because the game is utter shit. Nobody knew it came out, nobody cares it's still out to this day.
Well now that we got 2019's vomit out of our mouth. Let's talk about the delightful games that made us forget about the bad times.
5. Borderlands 3 - Now I know that some people could not STAND the writing in this game. The humor is very dated and the villains can be cringe inducing. However Borderlands 3 is a fucking miracle in this day and age. A game from Take Two and Gearbox that is just a video game. No microtransaction bullshit, no pre-order omega editions with bonuses from 10 different stores in which you can buy it from. Just a AAA game that was allowed to be a video game. And it is a damn good video game too. The shooting is great, the loot is great, the guns are interesting and fun to use and provide lots of different tactic potential, the levels are fun (even if the map is ass wank), the bosses are interesting and unique mostly. The game is just a good game. Frankly that's a hard ask these days.
4. The Surge 2 - Deck 13 has been trying to make a Souls-like game for almost ten years now. Apparently 3rd time is the charm because The Surge 2 is fantastic. A highly detailed map that interconnects with all kinds of shortcuts and verticality. Fun and challenging combat with a high variety of weapons to suit everyone's play style. A decent enough story. Really the only complaint I have is that a few bosses feel reused, and the game is rather short my first playthrough was less than 10 hours which is pretty damn short considering I died constantly. If I got good I bet a normal playthrough would only be 4-5 hours.
3. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - Speaking of Souls-likes here is a game that is the next big thing from the souls people themselves. It's not a souls game, it's hard, but it aint a souls game. Sure it has most of the trapings of a souls game. But......okay it's a souls game with a new spin on combat. That's really it though. The story is still that strange obscure mental puzzle, the level design takes the Souls level of depth and interconnectivity and adds a grappling hook so that you can also explore the sky. The combat takes a bit of getting used too because there was no way that people weren't going to approach this game like a Souls game at first. But it turns out that stealth and becoming a master parrier works really well. Hell this is a better stealth action game than anything Kojima ever made if you ask me. The biggest downside for this game is that there are NO gameplay options. You play this game exactly the way it WANTS you to play and you either get used to that or you die. The lack of combat variety holds this back, but as a straightforward stealth-em-up, it's pretty fucking great.
2. The Outer Worlds - Yes Bethesda has done it again, a first person shooter RPG with in depth writing and dialog character options that let you take the game in all kinds of crazy directions, color me shocked that Bethesda has yet again done what they've been good.....errr....hold on a second. Oh wait yeah turns out Bethesda is a piece of shit company and Obsidian had all the talent for this kind of game all along. Bethesda just makes unfunctional broken piles of discarded spunk. The Outer Worlds is great, great writing, wonderful character options, great RPG-elements, and pretty fun combat. Though the combat is probably the weakest link it is still good enough to see you through the game. What got me most about the game is how every stat you level has applications everywhere. If you want to be a cunning linguist, you're silver tongue can actually make the enemies fear you in combat. And being a strong shooty man helps you scare people you talk to into doing the thing you need them to do without the fighty bits. The way they seem to have thought of everything or at least tried to account for everything is just impressive. This was the game that finally made me like FPS-RPG's and I just hope Cyberpunk 2077 is on this same level.
1. Resident Evil 2 (remake): I haven't played the original RE2 since it came out on PS1, but it was one of my favorite PS1 titles hands down. I fucking mastered that game, getting the S+ ranks in every mission so I could play the secret levels as Hunk and Tofu. All I wanted was the Remake to give me that same fun experience again. Well REmake2 gave me exactly that, on top of a pair of shitfilled underwear because this game scared the fucking shit outta me. Not the jumpscary Five Nights at Freddys thing, but the geuine "holy fuck X is coming. where is he? FUCK FUCK! GAHHH!!!" fear that I didn't expect. This game is the shinning example of how to do a Remake correctly. Capcom could have just made it a shiny version of the original game and called it a day. But instead they truly remade the experience. The over-the-shoulder camera and the sheer cinematic quality they gave the OG cutscenes just shows how much they actually cared about doing this game right. Resident Evil 2 Remake is the best experience I've had in gaming in 2019.
Well that about covers it for me. There are some clearly missing games that I didn't mention here, mostly because they weren't good enough or bad enough to fit in either category. Games like Jedi Fallen Order, Kingdom Hearts 3, Mortal Kombat 11, Bloodstained Ritual of the Night, all were solid games that just didn't wow me one way or the other. Kingdom Hearts 3 might be notable in the disappointment category though as I heard that fans weren't super thrilled with what they ended up getting this time around.
I'm curious to see what you guys all think. Do you agree with my ranking? Disagree? What are your top and bottom 5 of the year. I genuinely would like to know, and this year please don't just list your games, tell me why you put each game where you did. Let's talk about what and why we liked or disliked our choices.
