Before diving right into my game of the year list for 2019 I wanted to reflect a bit on the games that I played this year.
I’ve finished 31 games this year, compared to 32 games in 2018. The average score I’ve given during the year has been 3.2 which means that this has been a good year. Better than the last.
Year of Platforming
This year I’ve played lots of platforming games, more than usual. I got really into Nintendo platform games like New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe and Yoshi’s Crafted World. On the Switch I also played The Messenger and Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap. On PlayStation 4 I’ve played Iconoclasts and 198X, not to mention Celeste.
It has really been a year for platforming. I think it might be much due to Nintendo Switch is such a good format for it.
Games as a Service
This year was the first when gaming subscriptions really took hold. Myself I jumped on the PlayStation Now bandwagon and dipped my toes into Apple Arqade.
PlayStation Now is a service where you pay a monthly subscription and you get access to 600+ games. It is famous (or infamous) for streaming PlayStation 3 titles, but the real value I find is downloading PS4 titles to my console and playing them locally. For the money it is incredible value and it has reduced the number of games I buy significantly.
Apple Arqade is pretty much the same concept. When you pay a subscription fee you can download a number of games to your iPhone or iPad. This way I played Sayonara Wild Hearts and it worked pretty well. By the end of the trial period I didn’t think I got enough value out of it to keep my subscription. Mostly the issue is that the mobile games doesn’t interest me enough.
World of Warcraft Classic
World of Warcraft returned as it was when it all began 10 years ago and it became a huge hit. All servers where overloaded with players that wanted that urge of nostalgia. Me and my wife setup our computers next to each other and went out adventuring like we were ten years younger. It was nice and we had fun.
The game is very much like you remember it with its strengths and weaknesses. The grind is real, and I don’t really have the time or patience for it anymore. Yet everyone has grown up and become more polite. This community has been the kindest and most mature community I’ve experience in online gaming so far. Probably because everyone is 10 years older, have jobs, kids and responsibilities. When the server was overloaded and everyone started playing people stood in queue to kill one of the first mobs; grouped up and self organized to make it as painless as possible. That would never have happened 10 years ago.
My wife lost interest after level 15 and I lost interest after level 35. My son keeps playing, finding satisfaction in this world he never experience before. The clunky graphics doesn’t bother him at all, so we keep the Battle.net subscription until he loose interest.
The Elephant in the Room
One review has been very absent from me this year. I’m a huge FROM SOFTWARE fan as I’ve completed platinum trophy of all their previous titles before Sekiro: Shadow Dies Twice, but something made me not click with this game. I think it was much too similar to Dark Souls 1 which is my least favorite in the series.
I played up until Genichiro Ashina, at top of Ashina Castle and then I quit. I believe that I could have forced myself through this game, but I was not having fun and I put up playing it because I didn’t want to. That resulted in me playing nothing at all for a few months because I also had a hard time moving on.
Sekiro is a game that I intend to come back to, but most likely not in 2020 but rather as a preparation for FROM SOFTWARES next title: Elden Ring.
Expectations for 2020
I don’t have any expected games for 2020. I do have a long backlog as usual with games I’ve bought but not played.
I will get to two platforming games, Ori and the Blind Forest and Hollow Knight which I already own on the Nintendo Switch. I hope to get to Beat Saber on PlayStation VR at one point.
I have promised myself to return to Dragons Dogma and finish that game, now that I’ve gotten the remastered edition for PlayStation 4. I will also finish playing Prey, Luigi’s Mansion 3 and I’m going to play my first God of War, to see what that’s about.
The thing I look forward to the most is the release of PlayStation 5 which I will preorder to get it on the first day. I’m really hyped to start playing games in 4K and see what new VR experiences this powerhouse of a machine will be able to accomplish.
That’s it! I’ll be back with my Game of the Year list at the start of next year. Until then, happy new year!
Replay 