Game of the year is the hardest category to choose and I often think about this throughout the entire year. While there were so many great runner-ups, like there is every year, the one that makes it to the top for me is the most memorable. It’s not a mathematical score of what game received the most awards or had the highest score, but what was the most fun and memorable. A game has to leave something with me and resonate. A game that needs to be discussed and admired and something even revolutionary or groundbreaking.
Resident Evil 2
Resident Evil isn’t just a great remake, but pushes a game further in an already genre defining franchise. Resident Evil 2 is sparking a whole new revolution in remakes and setting a brand new standard and you can’t go wrong with that.
Graphics aren’t everything in a game, but they can still make or break it. Artistically, it can set a game apart from the rest or make one stand out over all the others. It’s not just cartoony, but a game with a unique art style and sense of identity is what you see here.
Disco Elysium
Disco Elysium’s art style is something that makes you stop and look when scrolling through a store page. It’s an art style you won’t forget and keep you entranced during your entire playthrough. The muddy, gritty, and dirty look of Elysium is just spectacular and every background oozes with detail.
Reissue of games has been a hit or miss affair for the last 10 years with some doing a decent job to others completely remaking the game from the ground up. While remakes are more highly regarded than straight-up HD ports or touch-ups, it’s still a great way for a new generation of gamers to experience a classic.
Resident Evil 2
Reissues, HD remasters, remakes, whatever you want to call them, they have been part of our lives for the last 10 years and now we are thankfully leaning more towards remakes of our beloved games. Resident Evil 2 does this better than the rest due to the love and care put into the game. It’s not just a lazily updated game to run on current consoles, but a total from-the-ground-up remake of the game with features to enhance that game for current-generation systems.
The Switch had a rocky first couple of years, but 2019 has seen the Switch coming out swinging as Nintendo’s best console since the Wii. The first party games trickle in nicely, but we are getting many ports and some great exclusives from third-party developers that most Nintendo fans would only dream of having. There were actually a couple of games that didn’t make the list as there were just that many awesome games on the system this year.
The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening
Link’s Awakening isn’t just a remake, but a re-imagining of the soul of one of the most beloved games of all time. That’s a lot of pressure and not easy to do, but Nintendo just seems to have a magic wand they can wave and can do no evil. The game is beautiful, the puzzles are engaging, and the magic is still there even after all these years.
This is always the hardest category for me to pick and I always spend weeks thinking about it. What makes a game better than all the others? Does it have to be revolutionary? One of a kind? Bigger than any other game? Not necessarily. GotY is usually for a game that exceeds expectations and feels solid, structured, fun, and memorable, and just stands out as a whole over any other game. This was a hard year to pick from as there were so many fantastic games that fell under these criteria.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
I’m just as shocked as you are about this. I was on the bandwagon that BotW was overrated, hyped-up nonsense, but after getting a Switch during the holidays and really playing it I started to see just how wrong I was, and how blind all the naysayers are. Nintendo always gets a bad rap for their hardware and using the same franchises for 3 decades, and I get that. However, BotW is something different, something unique and revolutionary for Nintendo themselves. They stepped out of their comfort zone and looked at other popular games that helped influence BotW. BotW has so much going for it, gorgeous visuals, unique puzzle-solving, a vast open world, and so many secrets and things to discover and explore. 30 years of Zelda has all accumulated and is playable in one game. I can’t think of another game that was this ambitious and this well done this year.
Artistic graphics don’t necessarily mean the most impressive technically. They probably won’t push your system to its limits, but instead, provide a fantastic visual experience that you won’t forget.
Cuphead
Cuphead is one of the most visually pleasing games I have ever seen, using early 1900 Disney style visuals with inspiration from cartoons like Steam Boat Willy, Cuphead just looks and sounds like a piece of moving art. This isn’t just the most artistically impressive game this year but in gaming history. No other game out there looks and sounds like Cuphead.
This was one of the strongest console launches I can ever remember. For a first-year, Nintendo pumped out some fantastic games, as well as the strongest third-party support they have had in a decade. The system still has room to grow, but so far it’s impressive.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Breath of the Wild isn’t just a superb open-world game set in the Zelda universe, but it changes the Zelda formula forever. One of the most popular and well-known franchises in entertainment history has just changed everything on the Switch, which is the biggest deal since Ocarina of Time nearly 2 decades ago. It pushes the Switch to its limits, looks gorgeous, plays amazingly smooth, and is so immersive and deep.
Phantom Hourglass showed the world just exactly what the DS was capable of. It looked fantastic, used every single hardware feature, and had well-crafted puzzles and dungeons. Spirit Tracks continues that with trains, more clever puzzles, new weapons, and a longer game. Despite Spirit Tracks holding up to Zelda standards, it does have some flaws that hold it back a bit.
You start out like any other Zelda game, near Hyrule Castle. You’re a train engineer and need to go to the graduation ceremony performed by Princess Zelda. Zelda gets captured by an evil guy, and you have to save her. Typical Zelda and Nintendo stuff. The story is simple and not very interesting, but everyone loves Zelda for it’s clever puzzles and dungeons. Spirit Tracks has plenty of those, but before you dive into a dungeon, you are introduced to driving a train. Like the seafaring adventures of Windwaker and Phantom Hourglass, Nintendo thought it would be nice to do something on land. You can draw your route on the touch screen, and then you can adjust your speed. It’s kind of cool at first, especially when you get passengers, because you need to follow all the road signs, such as blowing your horn (done by pulling a string on the touch screen) and adjusting your speed. However, you aren’t just enjoying the scenery; you will get attacked on the tracks. The Spirit Train is equipped with a cannon to solve these issues, and your train has health. You can also shoot rocks around you for health and rupees.
Once you get into a dungeon you are in the meat of the game. They start out pretty easy with simple puzzles, but they get extremely tough later on. The Phantoms are back from Hourglass; you need to collect 3 Tears of Light in the dungeon to be able to let Zelda possess them and help you out. Yes, Zelda accompanies you in ghost form. The dungeons are multi-leveled. You will need to ascend and descend floors to access new parts of other floors. This back-and-forth was very confusing in Hourglass but is a bit less so here. The dungeons also get bigger and more complex. Toward the 6th and final temple, I had to resort to a walkthrough because I was completely lost. Some puzzles are so obscure that you will never figure them out. The various weapons you get are fun to use, but having to try all of them to figure something out can be frustrating.
Combat is also a bit frustrating. Sometimes the touch controls don’t do what you want. Using your whirlwind, bow, whip, sand wand, and sword is not just for puzzle solving. Some enemies are only weak to the boomerang, while others are weak to the whip. Some need multiple weapons to be defeated, but the menu system is annoying. Let me have a radial menu by holding the weapon icon; don’t make me go into a menu like I’m playing a SNES game. The same goes for platforming. Half the time, I died because Link would jump where I didn’t want him to. The game just gets so hard and frustrating towards the end that some people may not finish it.
At least the boss fights are fun and clever. They make use of both screens and require fast reflexes and timing to defeat. These bosses are just a lot of fun and feel satisfying to fight. There’s another neat thing, which is using the Spirit Flute to play songs. Once you complete a few dungeons, you will start to notice repetition setting in, and the game starts to feel stale. It mainly has to do with having to drive this train so damn much. You have to return the rails by finding rail maps in the spirit tower, which are a whole new set of dungeons. In all, there are 16 dungeons, which is about 10 too many. Not to mention all the monotonous and pointless side quests spread throughout the game, like stamp collecting, rabbit hunting, errand running, etc. I passed all these up because getting around on the train is a major pain. You can warp to other parts of the realm, but you still have to drive a long way to get there. It doesn’t help that there are enemy trains on the track, and sometimes it’s hard to predict where they are going. You can’t reverse fast enough, so if you get hit, you end up starting at the beginning of the map again.
Despite the minor flaws in Spirit Tracks, it’s very enjoyable and charming to play. When you get into the dungeons and dive into them, they feel very cleverly put together and are pretty fun to explore and solve. However, the length of the game isn’t suitable for portable play. Each dungeon takes over an hour to beat, which isn’t set up for quick plays. Any Zelda fan will fall in love with Spirit Tracks, but the impatient won’t.
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Yep! The fact that I forgot about this game until you made a comment proves that.