I thought I had a great time with videogames in 2018. But looking at my list from 2017, 2018 didn’t
have as much variety or games that were as memorable from what I played. I still had the same thought of “which game
would be considered game of the year for me?” this year. But as it got closer to December, my thought
was “It’s probably going to be Super Smash Bros. Ultimate”. I haven’t had the chance to actually talk
about that game yet, but I still consider it the “Game of the Year” for me.
Top 10 games released in 2017 that I played:
10) Blade Strangers (PC)
This was not a popular game and it wasn’t talked about
much. It’s quite different from most
fighting games, especially from the ones released in 2018. The developers wanted to create a fighting
game that was simplified for a casual audience, but there were so many
mechanics and complex moves you could create from them that it defeated the
whole purpose. I didn’t like how slow
and floaty the characters felt at first, but I got used to it. This game also lacked single-player content
and I didn’t have any friends who wanted to pick it up to play with me
(although I was against recommending it because I didn’t think they’d like it). I probably wouldn’t have liked it as much as I
did if it weren’t for all the familiar characters and guest characters.
9) Dynasty Warriors 9 (PS4)
I realized I didn’t talk about this game much. I finished it, but only because I lowered the
difficulty and cheesed through everything.
The game had a TON of problems and was flawed in so many aspects that it
probably shouldn’t have been released.
However, it was such a refreshing take on the series with new ideas and
a grand design on how they wanted to tell the story that it was difficult for
me to ignore. The whole open-world
aspect with influencing everything around you to be able to make a battle go in
your favor felt immersive and involving was a new and exciting experience for
the series. It won some fans over, but
it upset the majority of it. I see a lot
of potential in this new design and I hope they continue to improve it for a
future installment. I’d honestly play it
a lot more if I had more time, but it requires investing countless hours to
truly experience everything the game has to offer.
8) Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet (PC)
I had bought Sword Art Online: Hollow Fragment and Lost Song
for the PS Vita at this point and wasn’t sure if I should even bother buying
another SAO game. There were a few
factors that made me decide to actually go for it: It doesn’t follow the main
characters and is an original story based around the character you create, it’s
a fast-paced 3rd-Person Shooter RPG, it was cheaper than the usual
retail price ($49.99 for base game, $74.99 for Deluxe edition which game with a
season pass. I bought Deluxe), and it
came with a free copy of Sword Art Online – Re:Hollow Fragment (an HD port of
the first game). So I bought it, played
it like crazy, got the true ending, and still plan on playing more of it later
once the new season pass comes out. It
wasn’t a great game with questionable quality in weapon balance, AI patterns,
requirement for the true ending, variety in weapon properties, design for
multiplayer, etc. It honestly felt like
a mediocre game, and yet I had so much fun playing it (aside from fulfilling
the requirement for the true ending).
Afterwards, I played Re:Hollow Fragment (which was a pain and dragged on
way too long) and bought Accel World vs. Sword Art Online (which I’m still
playing right now), Lost Song (for PC), and Hollow Realization. I was already a fan of the series through
watching the anime, but I became a fan of the games in 2018.
7) Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon (PC)
I vaguely remember that the developers were planning on
making a retro-style Bloodstained game if they reached a goal for the
kickstarter, but it still surprised me to hear news about it anyways. I was a bit worried about picking up the game
at launch since it looked like a 2 hour game that closely resembled classic
Castlevania games. Well I’m glad I did
because I had a blast playing the game.
It was challenging, but a lot easier than the classic Castlevania
games. The variety in playstyle and tiny
little secrets scattered throughout the game was great and proved that it was
still possible to create oldschool NES style games even now. Bloodstained: CotM is one of the best modern
developed, classic NES style game I’ve played.
I’m still patiently and eagerly awaiting the real Bloodstained game to
be released.
6) Dragon Ball FighterZ (PC)
This is the best Dragon Ball fighting game I have ever
played. Everything feels faithful to its
source material and really pleases the long time fans of the series. I really like the Story mode with its RPG-ish
aspects as its one of the main reasons I keep coming back to the game. Combat feels very different from other
fighting games with simplified controls, yet complex strategies you could form
with them. Online play is possibly the
best I’ve ever experienced in a fighting game.
Unfortunately, single-player content feels lacking after finishing Story
mode. I did have a friend to play with
online, which was my main motivation to keep playing the game; however, he
stopped playing due to wrist and finger strain from playing on keyboard. I also don’t know how I feel about the $30 I
put into the season pass. I was hoping
for more variety from the 8 DLC characters, but they were all variations of
Goku and Vegeta. Still, I like hopping
back on every once in a while to play Story mode on Hard difficulty.
5) Warhammer: Vermintide 2 (PC)
I actually picked this up recently with my friends. Having enjoyed the first game a lot, I was
pretty excited to playing the sequel.
Although the core concept is the same, the little changes here and there
made the game feel refreshing. The
overall flow of gameplay feels smoother and faster-paced. Perhaps it’s not a game I should have ranked
so high since I’ve only scratched the surface of the game, but overall I feel
like it deserves its placement.
4) BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle
I was excited, yet skeptical of the game since a majority of
the game’s assets is ripped from their original games and reconfigured for
it. Story mode was fairly short,
somewhat entertaining, but overall not that great. The controls felt way too simplified and I
wasn’t sure if I really liked it. I was
initially disappointed. But then I
played with my friends and everything changed.
I saw the depth and intricacies that lied beneath the simplified
controls and started understanding what kind of experience the developers
wanted to create with this game. With
its large roster of characters and wide array of team matchups, my friends and
I played it a whole bunch. It’s
seriously lacking single-player content to enjoy, so I probably wouldn’t have
liked the game nearly as much if I didn’t have my friends to play with. I’m currently sitting at 92 hours and there’s
supposedly new content teased at being added.
I’m hoping we hear about it soon.
3) Puyo Puyo Tetris (PC)
I wasn’t expecting PuyoPuyo Tetris to be brought over to
PC. I love Puyo Puyo and Tetris. I brought it up with my friends not knowing
they were going to have an interest in it.
So we all bought it and tried playing together. Unfortunately, most of the modes were incredibly
laggy and impossible to play online.
What worked best was a normal match of Tetris between the four of
us. What was most optimal was playing
1-vs-1 Tetris. Puyo Puyo lagged the game
for online play for some reason. It was
with this game that I went beyond casual play and actually tried to learn
competitive Tetris and Puyo Puyo. With
Tetris, I tried to learn setups, tricks, and combos as well and improving my
speed and ability to dig out. With Puyo
Puyo, I tried to learn how to make proper chains and how to be more effective
in building them. It’s more stressful,
but it was a different kind of fun I’ve never experienced from either game
before. I also enjoyed the single-player
campaign, which was cute and enjoyable.
I eventually slowed down and stopped playing after a while, but I am
sitting at 97 hours on the game. I plan
to revisit it and try to learn more and get better.
2) Monster Hunter World (PC)
So PC players had to wait quite a few months before we could
play the game, but it was well worth the wait.
MHW is a lot more streamlined and takes away a lot of what made the
series annoying and tedious and focused on the best points. The graphics is the best the series has seen,
the overall design has a lot more dynamics and flow than ever before, and
playing together with friends is way easier.
The challenges, experiences I shared with friends, and excitement from
playing the game was definitely one of the best 2018 had to offer.
1) Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (NS)
There’s a lot going for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: bring
back every playable character from the series, add in a few highly requested
characters, create a massive adventure mode, and set itself up for some major
hype for an entire year after release with its DLCs. It especially won me over when they added
Simon Belmont to the game, a character I’ve wanted in the series for 17
years. Honestly, Monster Hunter World
should be GOTY because SSBU has a lot of flaws to it. The thing is that I’ll probably be playing
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate a lot longer than MHW in the long run.
SoulCalibur VI belongs somewhere on the list, but I actually
haven’t finished the game yet. I spent a
huge chunk of time making custom characters.
I played a little of adventure mode and story mode, but otherwise I
spent most of my time playing with friends online. SoulCalibur is one of the very few fighting
games I’ve played in these past few years where effort was put into
single-player content. Overall, I
enjoyed what I played this year and a major factor was being able to play with
my friends in a lot of them. A lot of
great games did release this year, but I just never got around to
buying/playing them (for example: Octopath Traveler, Valkyria Chronicles 4, God
of War, Red Dead Redemption 2, Shining Resonance Refrain, etc.)
Honorable mentions: The Disappearing of Gensokyo (PC),
WarioWare Gold (3DS)
I want to briefly talk about mobile games because I feel
like it’s worth talking about.
Dragalia Lost
The game looked painfully generic. Despite that, I gave it a shot and enjoyed
it. I see very little influence from
Nintendo on this game and see most of Cygames’ work in this game. It’s an entertaining game that lacks any real
content and eventually becomes a huge grind/farm fest to improve your characters
to fight enemies with even bigger numbers under their stats. Some major factors that got me to continue
playing were: the music is catchy and addicting, online co-op gameplay can be
pretty entertaining, and some of the stories were pretty good.
StarOcean Anamnesis
Although I haven’t played much of it all year long, I have
to say that mobile games have come a long way with its quality. I really like the overall presentation of
this one.
Shin Megami Tensei: Liberation Dx2
This game’s a bit slow, but it was surprising to see an SMT
game nonetheless.
I was surprised and happy to finally see this game get a
global launch. One of the biggest
reasons why I was interested in playing the game was to get the Hyperdimension
Neptunia units. Gameplay wasn’t
particularly what I imagined and it was honestly somewhat boring with a LOT of grinding and repetitive play just to
progress. I absolutely love the
characters, though. It finally got
around to the Hyperdimension Neptunia event and I had saved up all my resources
for it. I got everyone except for one
character and was well setup for all my other characters. Unfortunately, a problem with the platform I
was playing on erased my game and I couldn’t retrieve my progress as I didn’t
link it to any account. It was
saddening, but I’ll keep the memories of the lovable characters I came across
from playing the game.
Epic Seven
This was one of the other games that got erased from the
platform and so I lost my progress on this game as well. I gave up restarting Azur Lane
GrandChase
This isn’t the first GrandChase game on mobile, and I got
pretty bored of the last one I played.
This GrandChase plays a lot like a classic, top-down RPG much in the way
of Dragon Age with each character possessing 2-3 skills. I was surprised by the variety of characters,
skills, and strategies you could utilize in combat and even more surprised by
how much fun I was having playing it. I
don’t think I’ve play any other mobile game with gameplay as unique as this
one.
Destiny Child
I’m still shocked to see that Destiny Child was launched
globally, but not shocked at all to see we got the censored version. The game has incredible, moving character art
by Kim Hyung tae and music by ESTi.
Unfortuantely, gameplay is as boring as I expected it to be with
real-time, turn-based combat that’s often played through auto-play by
players. Still, it’s cool that we get to
play the game in English.
Top 10 games not released in 2017 that I played:
10) Agents of Mayhem (PC)
I was a little worried when diving into this game. It got mixed reviews and a lot of people
didn’t seem to like it. What really
interested me about the game was that it was a single-player experience, Hero
shooter. I love hero shooters like
Overwatch and Paladins, but they didn’t have single-player campaigns and only
focused on a multiplayer experience.
Thankfully, Agents of Mayhem was a ton of fun and I really liked the
variety of characters from their abilities to their backstory to their
personality and their banter between each other. The one complaint I’d have to give is that it
eventually becomes repetitive.
9) Bladestorm: The Hundred Years' War (PC)
Back when I played the demo on PS3, this game made no sense
to me. It wasn’t a hack-n-slash and it
didn’t do a very good job to explaining what kind of game it was. I eventually took the chance and bought the
expanded version on PC. I learned how to
play the game, how to cheese it, and then got through it. It’s a fun game and I’m reminded of the
history I learned back in school about The Hundred Years’ War, but the game
also unnecessarily dragged on just to progress.
I did enjoy it and even spent an entire day researching and learning
about the real Hundred Years’ War after finishing the game (and how much
liberty the developers took in creating the story for the game).
8) Fire Emblem Warriors (NS)
I liked this game. It
was unfortunate that I played the Wii U version of Hyrule Warriors instead of
the Switch version. Otherwise, I would
have liked it as much as I liked Fire Emblem Warriors. Although it played a lot like most Warriors
games, there was a certain degree of mechanics from the Fire Emblem series that
it still felt kind of like a Fire Emblem game.
It was a bit stressful at times as it’s a bit more difficult than most
Warriors games, but I enjoyed it for the most part.
7) Splatoon (Wii U)
I still remember this game being revealed and I said “leave
it to Nintendo to innovate a 3rd-Person Shooter”. I was surprised by how fun campaign was. It really utilized the many creative
mechanics they created for the game to showcase what was possible in terms of
movement, strategy, and combat. I didn’t
get a chance to in 2018, but I’m hoping to play Splatoon 2 and its campaign
expansion in 2019.
6) Cuphead (PC)
Cuphead was all sorts of frustration and rage while playing
it the first time. But after I completed
it and played it a 2nd time on hard difficulty, I realized it wasn’t
as frustrating since I had a rough idea of what to expect. Cuphead was fairly entertaining, but it’s
probably not a game I’d go back to revisit often unless I played 2-players with
someone. The presentation was wild
though. The art and music was amazing.
5) Metal Gear Solid (PS1 – Played on a PS3)
I finally got around to playing the first game and WOW, now
I understand why this game is such a classic.
Gameplay is a little janky, but the presentation is unreal. The graphics are pretty good for a PS1 game,
the story is engaging, and voice acting is STILL better than a lot of games
now.
4) Rainbow Six: Siege (PC)
I’ve been trying to find a co-op game as engaging and
interactive in team-play as SWAT 4 for the longest time. Although it still doesn’t quite have that
level of intricacies and team play, Rainbow Six: Siege is a great co-op game. Gunplay, movement, tools, strategies, and weapons
all have a refined quality to them that feels so good when playing the game.
3) Guilty Gear Xrd -Revelator- (PC)
I finally got through Arcade
and Story mode. They finally gave us
answers to a lot of questions fans had about the characters and their
stories. The story was a bit slower, but
it was still enjoyable. I like the
additional characters, new mechanics, and MOM mode. This is one game with a lot of replay value.
2) BlazBlue Central Fiction (PC)
I feel like I’ve been playing the series forever, so it was
a bit weird to finally have a conclusion on this long arc. BlazBlue has got to have the best story to a
fighting game out there. I love
everything about BlazBlue from its characters, art, music, mechanics, story,
and humor. I’ve only got through Story
mode and didn’t even play all of arcade mode and the extra mode. This game also has a ton of replay
value. I also like the lore so much that
I was researching the manga, light novels, and other media that related to its
universe. BlazBlue possesses one of the
best stories in videogames that I’ve experienced and I highly recommend playing
the whole series because of it.
1) Furi (PC)
I almost skipped out on this game because it reminded me of
similar games I’ve played. It reminded
me of Hyperlight Drifter and how a lot of critics and players praised it for
its music and boss fights. Although I
enjoyed HLD, I didn’t like it as much as everyone else did. Fortunately, a friend got Furi for me and so
I took the time to actually play it. It
was a little like HLD with difficult boss fights, but without the tedious and
boring exploration. More than that, Boss
fights had a lot of depth to them and combat had more variety and dynamics to
them. HLD’s music was honestly just
atmospheric and I don’t remember a single track. Furi’s music has heavy influences from
Retrowave and Darkwave with an intense and sinister tone that really matched up
the frantic fights throughout the game.
The art style in a lot of parts of the game didn’t quite match the rest
of the game’s theme, but the music was so incredible that I forgave it. Furi left quite an impression on me and I’m
glad I didn’t miss out on it.
Honorable mentions: SUPERHOT (PC), Killer Instinct (PC), Fallout
3 (PC), Nine Parchments (PC), Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition (PC), Front
Mission Evolved (PC), Mighty Gunvolt Burst (NS), Detective Pikachu (3DS)
I didn’t look up much of 2019, so I’m not sure what to
expect. I’m looking forward to Anthem,
Devil May Cry 5, and Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, as far as I know so
far. Even if there weren’t games to look
forward to in 2019, I’ve collected a decent amount of games to enjoy this past
year.
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