The Late Game of the Year: 2019

(At this point, I'm just embracing the lateness. Excuses be damned)

The one constant with these lists is that the pre-amble will never, ever get easier to write. I’m sure it’s in no small part to me constantly writing these two or three months after the year in question has ended, leaving a lot of what happened seeming distant and now unimportant. Really though, it’s the fact that it’s so hard to distil what happened in a whole year of games into a couple of paragraphs before a personal list. It’s not the industry it used to be; AAA games and solo creators doing cool stuff on itch.io might as well be a different medium. 

Personally, what I felt was the age of the current console generation. The PS4 and Xbox One are really showing the creakiness of their joints, with the user interfaces and game performance feeling a little more outdated every day. The Switch, the new kid on the block, continues to impress but didn’t quite have the output content-wise of its first two years. I gravitated back to PC gaming in the later parts of the year and found a lot to like there. I hope 2020, the year that is to be the last for the current iterations of the Playstation and Xbox, proves to be more of a swansong than a petering out. Looking at the release schedule there’s a heap to get excited for.

My favourite thing about the games I played from 2019 was the innovation we’re still seeing. A couple didn’t make this list – Baba is You definitely deserves a shout out – but I feel like the majority of the top 10 either did something mechanically new, or iterated on past instalments in pleasing or exciting ways. Even with the prevalence of games as ‘live services’ and platforms/storefronts jostling for precedence, the outlook is far less bleak than many in the community would have you believe. Hopefully. 

With the onslaught that Covid-19 has wrought upon 2020 so far, it becomes a lot easier to look back on this list with fond memories and look back on embracing the lateness of releasing it as part of realising what the year following it is going to look like. We’re all going to both be inside and need escapism a lot more than usual in the coming months, so if the 2020 releases (understandably) dry up, I hope this list can give you a few options to try you might have missed last year.  To anyone who reads this – thank you, stay inside and be safe. 

Honourable Mentions

Void Bastards

While the appeal of Void Bastards wavers quicker than one would like, there’s plenty to like in this humourous, space FPS version of the ubiquitous rogue-lite. I love rogue style games in all their forms, and Void Bastards looks great, plays smooth and has a satisfying enough loop to sink quite a few hours into. It gave me vibes of everything from Prey to Rogue Legacy to (probably) forgotten cel-shaded shooter XIII. The environments and runs grow to have that familiar but dangerous feel that is essential for this type of game to work. If it was a bit more varied (the ship and enemy types feel painfully limited) and deep it could have been something really special.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

A friend bought this and disliked it so much he mailed his copy to me so I could have a look. While I’m sad he was so turned off by it he wanted it out of his house, it’s doubtful I would have played it otherwise. Bully for me then. 

Before I dive into it, I must mention the technical issues that plague this game on the PS4. It’s not the game itself, but how it interacts with the PS4 hardware. This game essentially requires an external HDD to play online, with huge patches dropping weekly that, due to how the PS4 is designed, require hundreds of gigabytes of space free to install. I’d probably still be playing it if it wasn’t for this, but the weekly deleting and moving of game files proved to be too much of a hindrance to bother with. 

It’s truly disappointing this wasn’t dealt with, as this is the best Call of Duty in a long, long time. I’d found what I’ve played of the Black Ops series painful in recent instalments, and hadn’t found much of anything to enjoy in the supposed good CoD games outside of that particular sub-series. This CoD is good stuff though. The name implies a game going back to its roots (well, as much as going back to your fourth instalment can allow) and it succeeds on that. It’s a rock-solid shooter with an excellent campaign, allowing for all the cinematic pomp and riveting set-pieces a great FPS campaign excels at. There’s a couple of all-time great missions in here. 

The multiplayer tries a surprising amount, and while I mostly ignored the attempts at doing a large scale, Battlefield style open war scenario, the smaller player count modes are tight, focused and a blast to play. There’s plenty of variety and depth if you want it too. In the end, it’s more CoD, but of the type that reminds you of why this series got so huge to begin with.

Children of Morta 

Children of Morta is a dungeon-crawling rogue-lite, with multiple characters and pixel-based…wait, come back! Although I love the format, I’m willing to admit the formula has worn a little thin, with independent game developers going to that particular well so many times I’m surprised there’s anything left. Children of Morta gets by on a curious sense of style – you play as members of a family, with a surprisingly large number of interfamily meetings, drama and events playing out between runs. The cast of characters is strong and diverse, while the game utilises a few clever devices to ensure the player is familiar with the whole roster and uses them when appropriate. The stakes are high, but the moments are small, focused and sweet/solemn when appropriate. The (admittedly grindy) core gameplay loop plays pretty bloody well too. 

Eliza

The scenario Eliza presents to us is remarkably plausible; so much so that after playing it I’d wondered if I’d missed an advancement in the overlap of medicine and the gig economy in the past year. The game centres around an AI therapy program facilitated by a human intermediary, complete with Uber-esque star ratings and badges at the end of each session. Your job is to put a human face on these interactions, and not deviate from the script the AI therapist presents to you. You play as Evelyn, a disillusioned ex-employee of the company that created the AI (and one who had a large hand in its inception) who has recently returned to work, albeit as one of the intermediaries rather than a programmer. It’s an interesting way to present the story, giving the player a lot of agency in how they proceed while getting to experience the therapy sessions – by far the most compelling of the gameplay elements. 

Some of the later ending scenarios didn’t quite sit right with me, but Eliza is a great little visual novel with a keen eye for the movements of the information systems sector, especially regarding start-ups. The art and voice acting are high quality and the writing is thought-provoking. It’s easily worth three hours or so of your time and represents a much more personally appealing departure from developer Zachtronics normal suite of maddening puzzle games (there’s a nice, tricky Solitaire in here, just in case you miss it too much). 

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

What a title. Jedi: Fallen Order clearly couldn’t have been about Star Wars, but Star Wars: Fallen Order obviously wouldn’t involve Jedi (what Star Wars media does?). We’ll just throw it all together, people will call it four different things and we’ll call it a day. Good stuff.

Anyways, this is a good Star Wars game. I’m always up for whatever developers Respawn want to have a crack at, but my expectations were tempered knowing this was their first foray into this kind of game. It’s a surprisingly well-executed Star Wars/Soulsborne mash-up, with nicely balanced difficulty and chunky, visceral lightsaber combat. There’s something very Uncharted in the traversal and cinematic nature of scripted sequences, ramped up by the top-shelf voice acting and pleasantly enjoyable and, for want of a better word Star-Warsy main story.

The biggest flaw, outside of the name and some technical glitches, is that the game is scientifically 300% more fun when fighting humanoid enemies instead of creatures and bugs. Sadly, the latter feel like they make up a majority of what you’ll encounter. The lightsaber duels are so white knuckle and riveting that the rest of the game falters in comparison, but even force pushing your hundredth Stormtrooper off a convenient ledge has a lot more appeal than rolling around bugs and flailing at them between jumps. 

It’s a shame we didn’t get to see what Amy Hennig could’ve done with the license, but SWJ:FO is the best single-player Star Wars experience in yonks. 

The Top Five

5. The Outer Worlds

Is it weird that one of my most disappointing games of 2019 still makes the top 5? Maybe it’s just a reflection of the absurdly high expectations I have of Obsidian, and the sadness I felt at it not living up to Fallout: New Vegas and Alpha Protocol in terms of writing and reactivity. Divorcing myself from the context around its release, it’s not a hard game to like. A rock-solid little space romp with some humorous writing, good voice acting, workmanlike combat and suitably alien vistas to explore. It starts like a house on fire and in no way lives up to that early promise, but it’s the kind of mid-budget production I’d be keen to see more of. 

4. Apex Legends

I’m so glad Respawn got to tool the underplayed Titanfall 2 combat into something this popular and accessible. Apex Legends is the first of the battle royale games to really grab me, and I think that’s simply because it plays the best. The shooting is tight and responsive, movement feels great and they’ve kept the roster interesting enough to make it worth going back to. It has surprisingly broad appeal and considering it’s free there’s no reason not to jump in if you didn’t get around to it. 

3. The Outer Wilds

Undeniably the better of the two very similarly-named titles released close together last year, The Outer Wilds is awe-inspiring, both in the design ethos that led to the final product and in the environments and landscapes within. It’s not something that appealed to me off the bat; seemingly aimless design, thin story and time limits are usually big turnoffs, but after glowing recommendations from people I trusted I dove in. 

And it’s so charming. There’s something so pure about the experience – it takes a lot from games like Subnautica and The Witness, but there’s nothing quite as focused and singular in that little exploration/puzzle-solving/knowledge gaining sub-genre. Your goal is there from the start and can be accomplished within half an hour or so of booting the game up. The time limit comes in the form of a 20-minute (ish) time loop, in the process of playing each one of which you gain nothing except knowledge. This knowledge not only allows you to complete the game, but it also forms the basis of the world-building and story elements within. Even outside the game, what you pass on ties directly into a lot of the themes of The Outer Wilds. 

The ending sequences are a touch too obtuse and it’s still not 100% my ‘thing’, but it’s a wonderful experience, and probably the one I’d most freely recommend of the things I played in 2019. 

2. Disco Elysium

God, where do I start? Where does anyone? I’d been following this game for a little while now, since reading an early Rock Paper Shotgun interview/preview with the creators a couple of years back. I dutifully followed it on Steam and put it to the back of my mind. Then it came out and received mind-blowing reviews, as well as some toxic fanboyism that I hadn’t seen the likes of since the console war days of yore. This game tries a hell of a lot, succeeds at most of it and is somehow the first game developers Za/Um have released commercially. 

So here are two things:

1. The skill system in this game represents one of the most clever and meaningful advancements in RPGs from the last five years.

2. I teared up at a point towards the end of this game, and felt things I completely wasn’t ready for.

Disco Elysium is brilliant. With how late this is, there’s little way you can’t know that by now. It’s also the kind of game you’ll probably be able to ascertain whether you’ll be into from watching a bit of gameplay. There’s definitely gameplay – there’s a remarkable amount of choice, the interaction with skills and rolls adds a real tabletop feel – but you’re in this for the story you create. There are even some plodding backtracking sequences and all too frequent load screens to remind you that you’re playing a modern video game. 

This was a bloody tough top two, harder than any I’ve done since starting this blog. Like I said about the runner-up from last year – it’s a remarkable achievement. Splitting them came down to a gut-feel thing. When I think about the moments that emotionally zapped me to life, it’s number one. When I think about how much of an oppressive slog it can be in terms of writing and atmosphere, it gets pushed down to number two and can’t quite fight its way back up, and that’s a totally personal preference. 

1. Control

Hey Remedy! I remember you! You made a couple of my favourite games of all time! Then you did a cool mystery game that I never finished and a…TV show? Right? It’s good to have you back.

Control has the most focused worldbuilding of 2019; a celebration of the unnerving power of everyday things being a little…off. The juxtaposition of mundane bureaucracy and paranormal, otherworldly events is fascinating and startlingly well realised. 

Your basecamp – The Oldest House – is the physical embodiment (and an archive, of sorts) of all the weird supernatural goings on in the world and the headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Control, which the main character Jesse unwittingly becomes the director of at the start of the game. What follows is an enthralling, mind-bending trip of a third-person action/adventure game, with everything from multiplying clocks, carnivorous fridges and scientists singing inspirational dance numbers driving the narrative along. 

Control has some unforgettable sequences, both visually and in terms of writing, and represents a zenith for a studio that has always shot for the stars, even if it hasn’t paid off a lot of the time. It’s a triumphant good time, positively dripping with atmosphere, and begs to be played.