With the dragons rescued, and the Dragon Realms are at peace for a time. So for now, Spyro and Sparx deserve a much needed rest.

Let us set our sights somewhere else… like the Australian outback. There, a mad scientist duo is hatching a plan for world domination via an army of mutated animals. One experiment went wrong, and that may just be the one that brings their whole plan crumbling down.

We’re going Down Under with Crash Bandicoot.

In case it wasn’t clear, this won’t be the same walk in the park that Spyro was. Crash Bandicoot was infamous for its difficulty way back when. Though the N Sane Trilogy version implements many quality of life improvements, it’s doesn’t change the core level design and layout.

Unlike Spyro, where we could take several hits before eventually dying, Crash is extremely fragile. He has to find masks to protect him, where Spyro starts each new life with Sparx fully charged and ready to keep him safe. But even with a mask, most hazards are related to falls and drowning, which cannot be protected against.

And this is in part due to the vastly different design philosophies around both franchises. Spyro levels tend to be marked by wide open expanses that players are tasked with exploring every nook and cranny of to find every last secret and complete every challenge. It’s less about precision and more about finding the right path to arrive at the destination.

On the other hand, Crash requires significantly more precision in it’s platforming. Timing is critical, as is the ability to judge distances, and one false move will often lead directly to death. Part of this comes from the fact that the first two Crash games predate the first Spryo, and so there were lessons learned in the years since. But even then, there’s just a fundamental separation between the two design philosophies.

This is something I hope to explore more as we progress through both trilogies.

At last, we have arrived at the end of our quest, and every Dragon Daddy has been rescued from their crystal prison. And after a tense, thrilling, and difficult fight against Gnasty Gnorc, we save the day.

But more than that, we managed to find Gnasty’s secret meme collection. No, this is not a joke.

As we’ve talked about repeatedly on stream, the “boss fights” in the first Spyro game are notoriously weak. They feel less like battles against strong opponents and more like extremely light platforming challenges that barely compete with any of the other levels. On one hand, I can appreciate a desire to double down on the design aspects that best highlight the strength of Spyro’s kit.

But then I think about the fact that Gnasty Gnorc is supposed to be the grand finale. He’s the big threat that set us on our journey in the first place. Having him hide behind a couple of nameless thieves, only to run away from us the moment we rise to his platform is just more than a bit disappointing. Despite his immense size and stature, he barely even attacks us.

Thankfully, once we achieve 100%, Gnasty’s Loot is a much more fitting finale. One of the coolest things a Spyro level can allow us to do is engage in free flight, and that level is fully dedicated to it. Even better, they give us the satisfaction of being able to increase our maximum flight height by torching thieves and using the keys they drop to rise even higher. Even better is the feeling of seeing the gem count rise so extraordinarily high.

Definitely a good way to send off our favorite purple dragon for a time, even if it’s only a short time.

The adventure continues! Fresh from our training in the Peace Keepers world, we collect treasure, defeated egg-stealing thieves, and more importantly…

…rescue hot dragon daddies.

Since we completed all of the Beast Makers world in this update, this seems like a good time to talk about the amount of extra detail that the team at Toys for Bob added to this game in the Reignited Trilogy.

Looking at the Reignited Trilogy’s version of the world, the level feels like a real swamp. There are trees and canopies in the background, with little details like stumps and small amounts of grass protruding from the water in the background. Further, while the water itself doesn’t look sanitary, and I wouldn’t want to be in it or drink from it, it has a quality reminiscent of real world swamps.

Even before I took another look at what the original version of this home world looked like again, it was obvious that a lot of work went into bringing in into HD. Seeing it again, what I forgot to what extent the level looked… almost barren. And this isn’t a knock on Insomniac, because this was just the reality of working on old consoles, where memory was such a massive consideration that the exactly location data was stored on the disc had to be planned out. They did everything they could with the resources allotted.

But one can just see how all of the details that needed to be painted in by the player’s imagination are how here, in plain sight. There are a ton of examples throughout the rest of the game, and the trilogy, but this is the most obvious and immediately apparent one.

The artists, animators, and modelers working on this project should be absolutely proud of themselves for what they were able to achieve.

While there were many excellent games that game out over the past year, not every one of them lives up. We’ve got through my list of Highlights for the year, and just as always we too must go through the disappointments of the year in kind.
Every year, I usually find at least one or two games that end up on both lists for different reasons. In compiling this year’s collection, I noticed that this happened with far, far more games than usual, for a variety of different reasons.
As usual, just because a game appears on this list doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad. All it means is that there are significant aspects of it that I feel detract from the overall whole. Further, this list is presented in a completely random order.
Without further ado, the disappointments of 2019 are:
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order
While I can certainly heap praise on this game after playing it with my buddy, Acharky, there’s no way I couldn’t just let it go without addressing the elephant in the room.
It was certainly surreal to see the Guardians of the Galaxy as the first set of playable characters, but that is where my appreciation of the MCU’s influence comes to an abrupt and sudden end. To be blunt, I am tired of every single Marvel crossover product being some variant of the quest to obtain the Infinity Stones, culminating in some final confrontation against Thanos, Ultron or whatever big bad happens to be the primary villain of the MCU. I understand that it has to be this way, because that’s just what in the popular zeitgeist, but the sheer homogeneity and over-saturation is starting to get to me.
But more than that, Ultimate Alliance 3 felt… way too familiar. The last UA game came out way back in September of 2009, nearly a full decade prior to The Black Order’s release in June. We’ve learned much about how to design video games in the years since, even if the specific niche of 4-player online co-op games. I find it hard to believe that we can’t do more than just a series of linear corridors filled with enemies and rudimentary puzzles.
There’s also a sheer lack of quality of life features like how heroes outside the chosen party of four just don’t gain experience in a game with a 36 playable character cast just isn’t acceptable anymore. I shouldn’t have to grind up another character just because I want to try something new.
In terms of online play, Acharky had an issue where because I was the host player, and 3 of our 4 party members were on my profile, he wasn’t able to dynamically swap characters. If his was knocked out, he might as well go grab a sandwich while I use the other 3 to either clean up or die. This is actually a regression from Ultimate Alliance 1 and 2, where we never had this problem.
Ultimate Alliance 3 isn’t a bad game, but I just expect so much more at this point.
Far Cry: New Dawn
After the god awful Far Cry 5, this sequel’s mere existence disappoints me.
Crash Team Racing: Nitro Fueled
If you weren’t following what was going on with Crash Team Racing post-release, you’ll probably be surprised that this is on the list after I gave it so much praise in my highlights post.
I stand behind those words, but I can’t abide by how Activision has treated it. At first, I was excited about the various Grand Prix events, which allowed players to grind challenges throughout the month in order to unlock cosmetic items. Seeing Spyro join the ranks of playable characters through one of these Grands Prix was like a dream come true for me.
As more of them were announced, I began to shift my opinion. Specifically, I was getting tired and worn down trying to keep up with them while also getting enough free time available to play other games and deal with the issues that crop up in daily life. Weak as I am, I even caved and bought a few packs of “Wumpa Coins” to pay for some of the cosmetics I wanted, which became available for purchase after the game came out, reviewers had already submitted their opinions of the game, and the ESRB had already green-lit the box-art.
A veteran of the Overwatch special event economy, I had begun to comprehend what was going on: That this economy was being created to milk the current user base, exhaust them to the point where they feel compelled to purchase enough Wumpa Coins to keep up with the items being released during the Grands Prix.
It’s hard to state how difficult it is to swallow that one’s own nostalgia is being weaponized against them, but thanks the exact state I found myself in, and so I cut myself off from it all and just gave up on all future Grand Prix events.
I’ll likely play Crash Team Racing again, but given how far this version has fallen it’s hard to recommend it to people the way I want to.
Wolfenstein: Youngblood
As a shooter, I had fun playing Wolfenstein: Youngblood. While there isn’t much besides the wide-open Arkane Studios-designed levels and RPG systems separating it from another cooperative first-person shooter, this was a competently designed one of those.
The problem comes from several crucial design decisions. One of them being that even when playing single-player (Note: I still needed to be connected to their servers), with an AI controlled partner, I wasn’t able to pause the game. If I ever wanted to take a break, I had to hope I was in an area where no enemies could get to me, or just quit the game otherwise. Yet, because the game doesn’t have checkpoints, every time the other Blazkowicz sister (read: The idiot AI) used up all of our shared lives, or quit the game, I was sent back to the beginning of whatever section was the most recent one to load. Losing thirty minutes worth of progress to a game over was not uncommon.
On top of that, being an always online game, with daily quests and a progression system, it obviously included cosmetic items and one-time use boosts that can be purchased with a premium currency paid for with real-world money. That currency: Nazi Gold…. because of course it is.
At least they didn’t have the gall to charge full price for this game.
Kingdom Hearts 3
This is going to be hard to write about without getting heavy into spoilers, but I’ll do my best.
Kingdom Hearts 3 has a problem where despite the seeming urgency of the plot at hand, not much of note actually happens until the very end of the game, once all of the Disney worlds have been completed. As a result, there’s a massive pacing issue where once the plot actually gets underway, it goes by so quickly that events that have been building up for years don’t have the breathing room for players to feel their weight.
Beyond that, the Disney worlds are exceptionally hit-or-miss this time around. Some of them, like the Toy Story, Monsters Inc., and Big Hero 6 worlds, do an amazing job at remixing and working within the original source material to create a great story that brings the best out of the Kingdom Hearts original characters and the Disney characters.
Other worlds, like Frozen, Tangled, and Pirates of the Caribbean 3 just blatantly rehash the story of the original movie while shoehorning some tasks involving Sora, Donald, and Goofy that neatly section them off from the actual story going around them. It gives off the impression that Disney is being too precious with its IP and deciding that it doesn’t want to play ball despite being one of the companies most eager to resell and re-brand classic fairy tales while pretending they own the rights to them. I felt embarrassed for Nomura’s sake when I saw that there was a literal shot-for-shot remake of “Let It Go”, with Sora interjecting with the occasional “Is that Elsa’s voice!?” and “Wow! Look at that!” in the brief pauses between stanzas where the performer took a breath.
I’d say I expect better, but this is Disney we’re talking about. They’re one of the worst things to ever happen to IP law and this is completely normal for them. Disappointing, but not surprising.
And if you’ll indulge me in minor spoilers: They did Kairi dirty.
Sea of Solitude

I feel bad about putting this here. A co-worker recommended it to me because they said it personally affected them, but I didn’t get anywhere near as much out of it as they did. Like Unraveled, this was published by EA as part of their EA Originals initiative to fund smaller, more expressive projects.

And while Sea of Solitude does tell a story of a family going through a messy situation through strong visual metaphors and motifs, I can’t help but feel that I’ve seen it all before. At the risk of sounding callous, it felt like playing the “Sad, Artistic Indie Platformer, Version 206”.
Having already played the likes of Papa Y Yo, which this game strongly reminded me of, it takes more than to impress me these days. There’s nothing the game does wrong, but nor is there anything that made it stand out.
Tom Clancy’s The Division 2

To be honest, I forgot that The Division 2 came out this year. I even had a group that I was playing it with shortly after it came out.

I could say I put it on this year’s list for Ubisoft’s pathetic stance on politics in games: That a game whose opening implies only gun-owners stood a chance in the post-apocalypse, and makes the player’s base of operations the White House has no political leanings whatsoever. However, while these facts are true, it would be disingenuous of me to say that I had any significant emotions whatsoever on that topic beyond finding the whole debacle hilarious.
I have no memory of consciously dropping The Division 2. It was more that whenever I even remotely felt the urge to launch it, I felt like there was always another game that deserved my attention more or that I would have more fun playing. And eventually, months later, I uninstalled it to make space for something else in my hard drive… probably Hitman 2 after a content update.
I wish I had more to say, but it’s The Division 2. It’s an Ubisoft shooter. You already knew how you felt about that before you saw it on this list.
Magic the Gathering: Arena

Since Arena is intrinsically, inherently linked to the goings on in physical, paper Magic: The Gathering, their quality will largely ebb and flow together.

And while the Standard play environment has been rock solid for the better part of the year, the recent release of Throne of Eldraine, combined with the rotation, has resulted in one deck archetype dominating all the others, and then another different doing the same after that first one got it’s key card banned. As of the time of writing, enough cards have been banned that the meta is starting to fall back into a healthy place, but I cannot deny that, were it not for my Commander format playgroup, my desire to keep playing might have been thoroughly sapped.
With regards to Arena specifically, it’s also had its share of problems over the past year. The first was the way it handled rotation, with the advent of the new Historic format to allow users to play with cards that had rotated out of Standard. The controversy game from the fact that the Arena team decided to make Historic-only cards cost twice as many resources to craft as regular cards. While they eventually backed down from this change, the fact that they thought it was a good idea at all left a sour taste in my mouth.
On top of that, we’ve seen them double down some of the worst monetization trends of the year. When the option to sell card packs already exists and is fully implemented in the game, it feels like double-dipping to do the same for cosmetics like player icon, card sleeves, and alternate art for the cards I already own. Then I was floored when I logged in to find an additional Fortnite-style Battle Pass system implemented on top of all that. This has become more-or-less the only long-tail service game I play, and even then I can’t help but feel nickel-and-dimed at every opportunity.
It’s the kind of thing that makes me want to quit, to be honest, despite how much I actually love the act of playing Arena.
Telling Lies

For those of you familiar Sam Barlow’s previous game, Her Story, may or may not even be aware that his latest game in that “genre” came out this year. I was looking out for this game, and I didn’t know it was coming out until the day of.

And despite how much obvious care and attention went into it, I don’t think it’s quite as good as its predecessor, for two key reasons. First being that, without spoilers, the “central mystery” was a lot easier to solve this time around. Whether it was by design or by luck, I had already figured out most of the major plot point conclusively before I had even seen half of the available videos. There were obviously small details I was missing, but nothing that changed the context of the story.
Secondly, there’s a crucial UI change that drove me mad after about an hour after I discovered it, and my playthrough was eight whole hours. In Her Story, the base premise is that players are navigating a database of video clips. By searching for a term or phrase, they get back the five clips where that term is used most often. From there, then clue onto new terms that can search up new videos and repeat until satisfied.
The problem arises once a video is selected for playback. Instead of logically starting a clip from the very beginning, they start from the first mention of the term searched. When that first use happens six minutes into and eight minute clip, and the player needs to spend several minutes rewinding it just to make sure they don’t miss key terms or information, that can be exceptionally painful. Doubly so when said player is me and I didn’t realize that was the case until I had already seen an hour’s worth of partial clips.
Since the clips are from webcam conversations this time around, I would have also liked the option to view them side by side to get the full context in one viewing, as opposed to having to search for the other clip in the conversation to get the full picture, but that’s nowhere near as problematic as the other UI issue.
It’s a game I’m glad I played, but a couple of serious UI issues make it more of a chore than I would want it to be.
Death Stranding

“A ‘strand’ is a word that describes a connection between people, but the act of being ‘stranded’ is the lack of said connection. I am a deep and meaningful thinker. Please respect me.” – Hideo Kojima, probably.

It would be beyond simple to just leave it there, or even worse, just spout meme after pointless meme that has become the norm with Death Stranding discourse in my particular friend group. But not only does that do a disservice to the game, it does a disservice to my utter contempt for the worst aspects of it.
The core gameplay is surprisingly fun, and I grew to think fondly of the delivery mechanics, yet I got the impression that Death Stranding was almost afraid that they wouldn’t be enough to pull their metaphorical weight. Any time I found myself in one of the third-person shooter sections, or in a boss battle against a giant tar monster, I found the exercise exceedingly tedious. At no point would I ever call it challenging, nor was I having an even remotely stimulating experience. The same was true for the times I needed to sneak past “Beached Things” to avoid risking my haul.
And if the “quote” prefacing this section was any indication, I was never able to take any part of seriously. When my friends and I all started, I had heard its quality referred to as both “first-year film student” and “stoned at Denny’s” respectively, and by the time I finished that feeling had only grown stronger.
Even if there was more meat to the kind of message the team was trying to convey, it’s often undercut by various layers within the games own presentation. It’s downright distracting to have Sam Porter Bridges, played by critically acclaimed Norman Reedus, to say a bike is so cool that itshould be on Ride with Norman Reedus, or drinking out of a canteen and seeing the phrase “Monster Energy drink consumed” plastered on my screen. Being simultaneously asked to take this third-grader’s view of how “disconnected we all are, maaaaaaaaaaaaaan-ah” seriously while being subject to what certainly feels like crass corporate sponsorship began to wear on my nerves in a way that genuinely surprised me.
I wasn’t one of the people expecting this game to be the next godsend, but nor was I expecting the writing to get this bad. I’m glad I played Death Stranding, but now that it’s done I never want to do so again.
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

This wouldn’t even have made the list if it weren’t for the fact that I played on the Switch. Even discounting the well-known technical issues that plagued that version, I remember having an extremely visceral reaction at the texture work on the character models, especially since it didn’t seem like the game was technically demanding enough to warrant such a downgrade.

Normally, even this should be unremarkable, but the downgrade was serious enough that it caused me some eye strain until I managed to adjust: Actual, genuine ocular discomfort. That’s a sensation that I’ve been lucky enough to never encounter before or since.
Metro Exodus

It makes me sad that I’m so lukewarm on this game after having a blast with Last Light.

The biggest change to the Metro formula are the semi-open levels, since the story has protagonist Artyom and the group he works with escaping the subway tunnels and exploring the world outside of their little hovel.
Sadly, the openness of these specific levels never adds anything to the experience. It felt much like the open-worlds in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, where there were discrete areas of interest and a vast ocean of nothingness between them. I couldn’t help but think that I would be having a better time if that walk was skipped and I just had a loading screen separating me from my destination.
And unlike previous Metro games, I didn’t find myself interested in the story. By the time I grew invested in whatever group of strangers my ragtag bunch of Russian misfits had allied with for a particular section, we were already set to move on and leave them to their fate.
Even when it came to the moment-to-moment gameplay, there were numerous times where I experienced a technical issue that caused me to keep to reload a checkpoint, or the linear section I was in was so poorly presented that I still somehow got lost. While the shooting is competent, it’s not interesting enough to soothe the pain I kept experiencing from all of the little problems I had during my time with Exodus.
It’s such a bummer that the Metro trilogy ends on a sour note.
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And there we go. This was mostly a solid year, but there’s no denying the modern monetization methods detracted from more than a few games I would otherwise have no problems with. Other games just had issues on their own, but by and large, despite this list, 2019 was marked by games that catered to exactly my interests.
Hope to see the same in 2020.

I’ve gotten a little down on MTG: Arena lately, so I needed to inject some variety into my Wednesday streams.

And what better salve for that is there than a session of Slay the Spire. This time, we’ll play as the Ironclad.

I don’t have much more to add beyond my previous post, but I hope you enjoy watching me agonize over choices and then make the wrong ones.

In Magic the Gathering, one of the smartest things one can do is wait until the last possible second to make a move. By being patience, and playing reactively, we can give ourselves the freedom to amend our plans as the situation changes. In addition, we ensure that our spells and abilities are played at the point where they are most effective.

For this reason, I opted to go back to Simic Flash once more. We played this deck once during the Core 2020 season, and though we lost some cards in the rotation to Eldraine, we also gained enough new tricks that the strategy is still viable.

You can check out the decklist here.

Just like before, our ideal is to ensure enough land drops that we can pay UUGG for our most valuable cards, Frilled Mystic and Nightpack Ambusher. Both of these four drops are close to the top of our curve, and each of them are still as valuable for the reason I described in my previous Simic Flash video.

And while we’re lost critical pieces from the previous list like Merfolk Trickster, that were key for both tempo and board presence, we make up for that in other ways. Mainly, in both Brazen Borrower and Wildborn Preserver. Being able to bounce anything with Brazen Borrower allows us quite a bit of versatility, both in forcing our opponent to recast key pieces so they can be vulnerable to counter-magic, or removing key blockers to make our swings safe.

In addition, with the loss of Essence Scatter, we’ve ditched both it and Negate in favor of the more universal Quench. Artificially adding an additional two mana to a spell’s cost can be effectively even in the late game, forcing our opponents off followup plays if not stopping them in their tracks outright. We’ve also thrown in Growth Spiral as a potential early play if we don’t need the mana for anything else, that can help sift through our deck ever so slightly.

And while I like this deck, I can’t help but wonder why it runs Nissa, Who Shakes the World in it’s mainboard. In theory, it seems like it wants to use Nissa’s mana doubling effect in conjunction with her +1 to keep mana open for the hordes of instant speed 2-drops we have access to. However, this isn’t really the kind of deck that wants something that high on the curve, and I almost always found myself gravitating towards a better option. If it works for you, by all means, but I’m likely to change her out for some more counterspells or other tricks.

Being able to wait for our opponent gives us much leeway in how we respond to their plays. The deck does suffer slightly in this meta due to the threat of Teferi, Time Raveler. Most decks play him specifically to avoid being spammed by counter magic, so our first priority will always be keeping him off the board. If we can do that though, our effects way not be powerful, but they can force our adversaries off balance and give us the openings we need to finish them off.

At last, it is once again that time. That time where we look back fondly or otherwise, at the games that have been released this year. Every outlet in games media will soon be consumed by hours upon hours of Game of the Year deliberations, top 10 lists, and other assorted recaps.
I am no different, of course. That said, when I look back at the list of games I’ve played this year, I noticed that it was quite unique compared to most other years. While there wasn’t much in terms of big budget games, the number of niche, mid-tier titles that cater to specific interests really added up to be a profound year. I almost always had something new and neat to play.
Just like in previous years, these are just games I have many positive things to say about, in randomized order. Even if a game misses this list, it doesn’t mean I didn’t like it. Odds are I have nothing much to say on it or just didn’t get around to it. With that said, the first of my 2019 highlights is:

Apex Legends

Apex Legends deserves credit for the ways it rethought and analyzed the Battle Royale genre to create its own niche in that space. It did so with two very distinct innovations:
First, they added character classes. When players drop in with their team of 3, each one of them on that team will choose between one of several different playable characters, each with their own skills and traits. Thanks to that, there’s a degree of customization in the team’s game plan even before the drop onto the map. As for me, I always chose Lifeline for her ability to heal players with her drone and safely revive them behind her barrier.
The other clever design choice was in the “Ping” system, which Fortnite would later go on to emulate. Basically, in order to facilitate play without voice chat, the team at Respawn devised a contextual system where players can hit a single button that will shout out whatever is in the middle of the screen to the rest of the team. Whether it’s a cool weapon, heal/armor kit, a nearby enemy or container, or any of the myriad items of interest, the system does an excellent job of accurately displaying relevant information to the rest of the team.
I had a blast playing Apex with numerous friend groups for quite longer than I usually stick to these types of live games, and not just because of these changes to the Battle Royale formula. The developers at Respawn who built this game also built Titanfall 2, and that DNA is present in every aspect of how Apex plays. While players aren’t wall running and platforming as much as they would be in Titanfall, they are still very mobile, and the gunplay is equally as satisfying.
While the post-launch support left much to be desired, this game was at the Apex of it’s genre for many people, myself included.
The Outer Worlds
As many of you know, I have been disappointed in the output from both Bioware and Bethesda Game Studios for a long time.
Bioware’s output has been on a downward decline ever since EA bought them up. Mass Effect 3 caused an infamous uproar in 2012, and Dragon Age: Inquisition came out to mediocre reception back in 2014. And they’ve not made a good game since, with both Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem being exceptionally poorly received.
Bethesda is in an equally spotty, or arguably worse, situation. The last game from them that can truly say I liked was Skyrim, way back in 2011. While I didn’t hate Fallout 4, the more I reflect on my time with it the more I realize I just wasn’t having as much fun with it as I wanted to. Though I didn’t touch Fallout 76 last year, one just needs to google the name to see all of the many, many, many ways that went wrong.
I tell you all of this so that you realize exactly how badly I have been craving a functional game in this genre. Depending on what is considered a good open-world RPG, it’s been anywhere from 5 to 8 years since the last one of those. This is, until The Outer Worlds came out.
I’m not about to sit here and say that it is a flawless game, because it’s not. It’s anti-capitalist viewpoint comes across as toothless, moraly thin and flavorless as cardboard, but the skeleton of what Obsidian made is exactly the kind of game I have been searching for. What they built is a template from which other open-world RPGs can be created, expanding on their work with Fallout: New Vegas, but otherwise going the established route for the genre.
But I can’t mention The Outer Worlds without bringing special attention to my favorite companion: Parvati Holcomb. Voiced by Ashley Burch, Parvati is one of the fleshed out companions in the game, with a quest that personally affected me. I don’t talk about it much here, but I am asexual, and even in the space of queer-targeted fiction, my sexuality is not often represented. There’s a profound moment in the game where Parvati confides in the player than she has romantic feelings for another woman, but that she’s afraid that her asexuality might complicate the relationship due to past experiences.
That alone was more important to me than I would’ve thought it could be, but then the game gave me the option to say that I am also asexual, and that I understand what Parvati is going through more than she might realize. In a world where I’m so used to the Bioware-style companions that assume if I’m bothering to get to know someone, that I want to have sex them when my relationship meter reaches 100%, being able to openly express my particular sexuality made me pause and just take it in. As I’m writing this, I can the watering of my eye ducts as tears start to form. For whatever its faults, The Outer Worlds gave me that, and it’s something that I wish I could feel more often.
Resident Evil 2 (2019)
My experience with the Resident Evil franchise isn’t the most fleshed out. If it weren’t for a friend of mine, it might even be practically non-existent. He asked me to join him in co-op playthroughs of both Resident Evil 5 and 6, which became my entry point into the series. Later on, I would pick up a VR headset and enter the world of RE 7: Biohazard.
So picking up this remaster of Resident Evil 2, which brought that game’s story and locales into a more modern control scheme via the new RE Engine, was a way for me to learn more about this franchise that I had only been tangentially interested in. On top of that, it was the first game I had performed a blind playthrough of on stream.
And while I certainly stumbled and fumbled my way through it, I did eventually push through and beat Claire Route A and Leon Route B. The game does an excellent job at putting the player in exactly enough danger where they feel like they are just a couple mistakes away from complete failure, but in truth they have all of the resources and abilities they need to succeed if they just think carefully about how they make use of them. It feels good to get to that realization and see one’s skills naturally improve as they complete more of the campaign. The version of me who started that game wasn’t the same me that finished it, and thanks just an incredible sensation.
Daemon X Machina
Were it not for a friend of mine recommending Zone of the Enders, I would not have known how much I enjoy games about giant mechs. Shame that there are so few games that appeal to that specific interest.
Fortunately for me though, this little gem called Daemon X Machina came in 2019. While the story is utter nonsense, I didn’t come to it for that. I came to it to plop down into a giant robot and smash other robots to pieces.
And that’s exactly what I did, upgrading both my machine and myself with cybernetic parts to create my own particular playstyle, focusing on maneuverability and throwing a ton of ammunition out with machine guns and shoulder-mounted missiles. That said, I see another world where I doubled down on Sniper Rifle fire with accuracy upgrades or a tank with a giant sword or mace in hand.
It’s been a while since there was a good one of these, and by god (of the machine?) this was a good one of these.
Crash Team Racing: Nitro Fueled
I’ve never made a secret that I’ve been a long time fan of Crash Bandicoot, being the “PlayStation kid” growing up. Similarly, I played way more Crash Team Racing and Crash Nitro Kart than I’ve ever played of the Mario Kart games. Whenever people came over to my house, or when I went to a house with an original PlayStation, CTR was a regular fixture.
So seeing this game I’ve put so many hours into, one that I replay regularly, brought into modern-day, high resolution graphics, is such a treat. In addition, I can play online with other players, so there’s always a worthy adversary around whenever I’m in the mood to take another shot at it. I used to think that I was good at this game, but going up against the online community has made me step up and learn new techniques that I always knew existed, but never had the patience to learn.
It’s not entire recreating that feeling of getting all the neighborhood kids together to race in a 4-player match against each other, but it’s so close that the memories come back every time I log in.
Bonus points for making my boy, Crunch Bandicoot, a playable character. What can I say? I have a type.
Devil May Cry 5
I already took part in an entire podcast about how much I loved the latest Devil May Cry game (audio balancing issues aside), but suffice it to say that the design team learned a lot since the 4th installment game out, and those lessons can be felt everywhere.
But to avoid repeating things I already wrote in that post, I will say that I was surprised how well the tension between Dante and Vergil was resolved. Furthermore, Devil May Cry 5 does the job that DMC4 failed to do in handing the reins of the franchise over to new protagonist Nero in a believable and honest way.
And with the new Devil Breaker for Nero, weapons for Dante, and entirely new, indirect fighting style for the newcomer V, each of the playable characters bring their own unique flavor of combat, and all of them are polished to a mirror shine. In terms of character-action games, there were few this year that could hold a candle to DMC5.
Slay the Spire
Looking through the list of games that were released this year, I was genuinely surprised to find that Slay the Spire was on it, because it’s become such a fixture in both my gaming routine and in game design circles that I assumed it’s been in my rotation for a longer time than a single year. I even streamed it, albeit badly, as a one-off on my channel.
As someone with an adoration for card games, deck-builders, and run-based games, Slay the Spire scratches multiple itches all at the same time. Choosing one of three characters to start with, the game hands players an initial deck of basic cards and asks them to engage in turn-based RPG battles where these cards represent attacks they can perform. Along the way, they gain/lose cards in the deck, gain new passive skills, and upgrade their character in the hopes of creating a synergistic enough combination of cards and passives that they can obliterate both common enemies and bosses in short order.
Even within the scope of a single character, the number of cards and passives they have access to allow the player to potentially spec in several different directions. Along these lines, my favorite character out of the three is The Silent, which serves as the Rogue/Assassin class. However, there are several different “flavors” of that archetype, including ones that defeat enemies by injecting them with massive quantities of poison, ones that win by debilitating their foe with crippling status effects, and ones that succeed with an almost literal “death by a thousand cuts”.
Combined with the fact that players are given perfect knowledge of what each enemy is about to do on their next turn, there is a ton of delicate decision making that needs to happen on every given run. Every choice, from what cards are or aren’t added to the deck to the sequence of moves the player makes to beat a fight without sustaining much damage, is absolutely tense and crucial. Any one false move can cascade to have long lasting consequences that aren’t immediately obvious. However, like any roguelike or deck-builder, learning from past mistakes is half of the game.
It’s not a bold claim to say that Slay the Spire is an exceptional game in its various genres, and definitely worth consideration if you’re into any of them.
Ring Fit Adventure
As a person who has struggled with my weight and fitness nearly my entire life, I am no stranger to the genre of “fitness games”. I was the kid who bought Dance Dance Revolution in order to play it as a form of daily workout. I had an Eye Toy, and games to play with it, assuming any of you reading this have any idea what that means. And though I never took part in it directly, several of college friends used that smart phone app that made a zombie apocalypse game out of running.
So trust me when I say that while Ring Fit Adventure is no substitute for an actual diet and exercise plan, it is not just some poorly thought out “fitness game”. It is a fully fleshed out hybrid of a body weight fitness class and a JRPG. After strapping a joy con to their left thigh, and attaching the other one to a Pilates ring, the built-in “Ring Con”, I was thrust into a world under threat from the evil, and attractive, bodybuilding dragon, Dragaux.
Any given area had me running an obstacle course by jogging in place, using various exercises like squats (so… many…. squats), along with various presses and pulls of the ring-con to target specific muscle groups to traverse the map and reach the goal. Along the way, I was accosted by monsters and the occasional boss character, which I needed to beat in a “fitness battle”, using a whole array of exercises for attacks.
As a fitness app, the game is great about helping to coach players through proper form, while never feeling judgmental about their level of fitness. In fact, the game is constantly encouraging players not just to keep at it, but also to be mindful of their limits and take breaks or drink water as necessary. And the RPG elements are also solid, with each exercise having its set of enemies that it does more damage to, and area of effect that may hit multiple foes at the same time. There’s also a ton of fitness-themed items, like clothing for armor and fruit/vegetable smoothies as consumable buff/healing items that give players a steady sense of progression. Players also gain experience and level up, obtaining “gains” like extra attack power, defense, moves, and health.
It’s not perfect, as Patrick Kelpick noted in a recent VICE Games post where he wished difficulty could be adjusted per-exercise and not globally, but it is one of the best attempts at a games-as-fitness-tool that I have ever seen, and it’s something I have cleanly added to my weekly routines.
Did I mention that the evil bodybuilding dragon is kinda hot?
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

Thanks to Bloodstained, I have the distinction of being one of the people whose first Castlevania game isn’t actually a Castlevania game. Produced by Koji Igarashi himself, even a newbie like me has enough familiarity with the source material that I can feel the Castlevania DNA in this game, and it runs deep.

And while the game succeeds on that front, that isn’t honestly why it makes the list as a highlight. At least, not entirely. Bloodstained has the distinction of being one of the earliest examples of a Kickstarter game, like Pillars of Eternity by Obsidian and Double Fine’s Broken Age. In the years since these games opened up the space for crowdfunded video games, so many projects have failed after being successfully funded that it seemed like all such projects were fated to be doomed.
So while I certainly had an excellent time with Bloodstained, I’m much more happy for all the people who backed it. To them, this is exactly the kind of game they wanted, and they deserve it.
Hades

It takes a special kind of allure to get me interested in an Early Access title. Normally, I stay as far away from work-in-progress games as I possibly can. For Supergiant Games, I can make an exception. The makers of Bastion, Transistor, and Pyre have thus far always managed to strike gold, so I was willing to trust their judgment that if they’re releasing a game early, it’s in a solid enough state to play.

And I was absolutely correct to place my faith in that team. If I didn’t know any better, the only indication that the game hasn’t been completed yet is that a successful run abruptly ends where the development team hasn’t finished up the rest of the game’s content. Otherwise, it feels like a fully fleshed out roguelike dungeon crawler with an isometric perspective.
It’s been a while since I checked in to see how the game is progressing, but it’s something that I think about regularly. Like Dead Cells from last year, this is one of those games where the story of how it gradually develops will be just as, if not more fascinating than actual product, offering a much needed window into the messy world of game development.
Disco Elysium

Where The Outer Worlds creates a template for RPGs heavily inspired by the games that came before it, Disco Elysium dares to take the genre in a new direction that I found unbelievably refreshing.

In a crapsack world loosely based on, but fundamentally separate from, our own, Disco Elysium opens with your character waking up in a trashed hotel room from such a profoundly drunken stupor that they no longer possess any memory of who they are or what they’ve done. Based on what everyone around him piece together from his erratic pre-amnesia behavior, he is one of the detectives sent to solve the case of a dead body found hanging from a tree in a back alley.
As a fan of detective fiction, this was already a strong enough hook to catch my interest, but the game is so much more than just another detective story. I’ve often heard comparisons to Planescape: Torment evoked in reference to Disco Elysium, and those comparisons are warranted in two ways.
Both games choose not to place a strong focus on their combat, and double down on the more conversational, story-telling aspects of tabletop RPGs. In fact, I’d say Disco Elysium succeeds Planescape in this area. Planescape still adhered to the conventions of the time with the occasional combat scenario, even if those fights could be made exceedingly trivial. Disco Elysium cuts combat out of the game altogether, doubling down on a system of skill checks that affect nearly everything the player does.
And I do mean everything. The player’s various skills act as personalities in their head which coach them through the tasks they undertake during the investigation. For example, if someone makes a blatantly false statement, there’s a behind-the-scenes skill check that is rolled against the Logic stat, and if it succeeds then the personality representing “Logic” will chime in and tell the player that the subject’s statement couldn’t be true. And yet, that doesn’t mean that specialization in a given ability is a good thing. Characters with too many points in logic may start to see patterns and trends where none exist, and every one of the game’s 24 different stats is like that, each with their own pros and cons.
In other words, the drunk detective’s personality, and thus what options the player has access to, are very strongly linked to what kind of person their stats add up to. A player lacking in empathy just can’t console a grieving victim unless external factors and hidden skill check modifiers help them overcome that dearth, or they get fluke into an extremely lucky roll, which does happen. It’s a game where failure doesn’t mean the story is over, it just means that the player needs to come up with another solution that better fits the kind of person they are.
Which leads to the other similarity between Disco Elysium and Planescape: Torment is that both of them have strong themes of self-discovery. Both the drunken detective from Disco Elysium and The Nameless One from Planescape suffer from a lack of self-understanding due to their amnesia, and each of them struggle with that over the course of their adventures. As much as they need to solve their problems, they also need to learn who they were, and hope that the answers therein can help them figure out who they are. Though I can’t say I have ever suffered from amnesia, I strongly sympathize with the desire to learn about and understand oneself for personal reasons, so both of these characters resonate with me on that level.
Any other form of praise I have for this game would unduly spoil the experience for anyone reading this, and I wouldn’t want to do that when discovery is half the fun. Out of all the games on this list, this is the one I’m most afraid that people will forget, relegating it to “cult classic” as it languishes on Steam wishlists. It’s such an amazing experience that it deserves more than that.
Death Stranding

There is… a lot to unpack with Death Stranding. For better or worse, Hideo Kojima is at it again, this time with a new IP. This is one of those games that will absolutely belong on the other list I publish every year, but we’ll save that for when we get to it.

What gives it a spot of the highlights list is that it is a fascinating experience to take it while actively playing the game. Basically, the player is a courier in a post-apocalyptic America, and that aspect of the game is oddly compelling. I didn’t think I would enjoy navigating the terrain to try to make my deliveries as quickly, safely, and efficiently as possible.
Many of the other systems service this core mechanic as well. After a certain point in the story, players are allowed to start constructing objects in the environment that can make the journey from location to location easier. This doesn’t just help them, but other players as well, since they can both see and make use of these same structures. I can’t count the number of times I felt grateful to someone else for creating a generator I could use to recharge my electric truck as I was driving, or building a road/bridge to safely drive over rocky terrain and rivers. And there’s a sort of satisfaction that one can only achieve by loading a truck full of hundreds of kilograms worth of cargo to casually drive to a destination that could once be barely accessed by twenty or more minutes of arduous, on-foot navigation thanks to both one’s own efforts and that of their fellow players.
Death Stranding has so many mechanics to facilitate a spirit of mutual cooperation between people without ever actually communicating with each other. I’ll never know who took a package I dropped off and took it to their destination, or who dumped that final chunk of metals and ceramics into the road I was building to finish it off, but I know that I’m grateful for the way we touched each others playthroughs and made each other’s journey just ever so slightly easier.
Pokémon Sword and Shield

Last year, I played my first ever Pokémon game with Let’s Go Eevee, which is a bit of pseudo sequel/remake of Red/Blue with a partner Eevee and a Pokémon Go-esque catch system in lieu of encountering and battling Pokémon in the wild. While I was no stranger to the franchise, watching a ton of the anime growing up, that was my first direct exposure to the games.

And since that left such a positive impression on me, I figured this would be a great time to take the plunge and give Pokémon the chance that it deserved with the Shield version of the latest installment. As an entry point for a new player like me, this is the best game I could hope for. There are a number of excellent quality-of-life features present in this game, from XP Share to the ability to freely recall any ability that your Pokémon have previously forgotten at any Pokémon Center.
The additional of the semi-open Wild Area, full of powerful Pokémon, 4-player raid battles, and other hidden secrets, is also very welcome. It’s fun to wander a large space and see what new, emergent stories and adventures can occur as I explore with my partner, Cinderace, and our other teammates. Once we get tired, we can set up camp to rest, eat curry, and play around a little.
There’s also something to be said for how the Galar region, heavily inspired by Britain and British culture, turns the classic Pokémon Gym Challenge into something akin to a story campaign in a FIFA game, where the players gets endorsed by the reigning champion and rises the ranks to take his title. Gym battles take place in large stadiums packed with crowds, with the Dynamax mechanic serving as a huge climactic finale to each one as both participants gigantify their Pokémon. It feels like a kaiju battle with attacks so powerful they actually change the weather inside the stadium.
As silly as it sounds, I always had a blast fighting against gym leaders and rivals, all of whom are well-developed and fleshed out characters, on my Pokémon journey. I didn’t delve too far into the post-game, but I liked my time with Pokémon Shield enough that I can be considered a series convert.
Indivisible

Back when they were still in the business of making good JRPGs, Tri-Ace were the proud developers of the Valkyrie Profile series. Inspired heavily by Norse mythology, one of the most unique aspects of that franchise is the combat system, which had each of the four characters of the player’s party assigned to a face button on the controller. By timing the inputs, they could combo each characters’ moves into one another to create a more effect attack, each hit building up the damage multiplier for successive strikes.

Indivisible, the crowdfunded RPG built by Skullgirls developer Lab Zero, takes the core concept from that old Square Enix franchise’s combat system and expands upon it. Each character that can be recruited to the player’s team has an entire movelist, include variations of attacks that can be executed by holding a different directional input along their attack button. Drawing inspiration from the fighting games the studio are better known for, there’s also a super meter than can be expended to either heal the team or unleash even more powerful attacks against enemies, and a system to precise time guards and blocks to avoid taking damage, instead healing and regenerating super meter.
Combined with the number of different playable characters who each have their own fighting styles, and the variations of enemies that each have their own guards and resistances, the game takes measures to avoid the problem Valkyrie Profile had where players would eventually just create the “one combo” that they could execute over and over again ad nauseam. Most players will eventually stumble into the party that best suits them, but even then they need to think about how they approach specific groups of enemies.
But Indivisible doesn’t stop there, also expanding on the 2D platforming sections Valkyrie Profile was also famous for: Blowing up into a full-blown Metroidvania as players acquire more skills and equipment that let them go back to old areas and discover places and items that were previously inaccessible.
Having backed the IndieGoGo campaign in 2015 after playing the prototype, I had almost completely forgotten about Indivisible until the game arrived at my doorstep. As a backer, I can safely say that I’m proud to have taken part in making this game a reality. I loved Valkyrie Profile, and seeing a spiritual successor take flight made the wait well worth it.
Judgment/Judge Eyes

After spending the summer of last year getting completely caught up on the Yakuza franchise, no one should be surprised that I was eager to return to the mean streets of Kamurocho once more once Judgment came out here in the US. When I heard it was also a detective game starring a disgraced defense attorney in the Japanese legal system, I was even more invested.

Launching the game, it felt very nostalgic wandering the map, from Pink Street to Tenkaichi Street, passing by the Millennium Tower. I remember a genuine pang of sadness as my favorite takoyaki stand at the end of Tenkaichi Street from the previous games had closed down, waiting for a new business to fill the void left behind in their wake. Such was my experience returning to the place I had spent so much time last summer.
And yet, no longer was I playing as Kazuma Kiryu, instead taking control of new protagonist, Takayuki “Tak” Yagami. While Yagami also has improbably martial arts skills, especially for a defense attorney, he feels more human both in how he fights and interacts with the city. Rather than relying on brute force, his style utilizes agility and the environment to turn the tide against foes blatantly stronger than he is.
Where Kiryu is a social outcast who tends to exist on the fringes and in the back alleys of civilization, Yagami has a much public face. By the end of the game, I had developed so many friendships that no matter where I was in the city, a friend was willing to help me out by jumping in when hooligans attacked me, or throwing me improvised weapons I could use against them. He feels like an integrated citizen in the city, gradually growing a strong and reliable support network with his peers.
As far as murder mysteries go, I still think fondly to how the case gradually builds and expands in scope over the first few acts, culminating in a finale that genuinely affected me. I wish I could say more without spoiling key moments of the game, but suffice it to say this fan of detective fiction was immensely satisfied with the plot laid before him. Judgment is everything I wanted it to be and more.
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy (and the rest of the series)

I have a confession to make: Although I have obviously heard about the Ace Attorney games, I had never played them up until the remake of the original trilogy came out on Switch and PC earlier this year.

There’s almost nothing I dislike about these games, from the characters to the localization, the cross examination mechanics, and the soundtrack. Everything is presented with such a flare that I couldn’t help but get sucked in to the sheer drama and suspense of it all.
Nothing quite compares to the tension I felt reading through a witness statement and comparing it to the evidence in my possession with CrossExamination – Moderato 2001 plays in the background, reminding me that I’m just a few mistakes away from condemning my client to life in prison, the truth of our case forever lost.
That is, nothing except the follow-up feeling once I submit my contraction, and the music pauses just briefly enough that I’m unsure if I guessed incorrectly… before it changes to celebrate my brilliant deduction. More than any other visual novel series, the Ace Attorney games use their whole presentation to make the player feel the highs and the lows right along with their protagonists, as if they were right there with them every step of the way.
My adoration was of these simple, but effective was so strong that when I started streaming LA Noire at roughly the same time, I couldn’t help but wonder why they bothered with the mo-cap interview mechanics when Phoenix Wright had already created a better system way back in 2001.
And I didn’t just stop at the Trilogy once I had finished it. Afterwards, a friend of mine informed me that every other Ace Attorney game that had been localized in English was readily available on Android and iOS, so I took up my phone and played the rest of the franchise in short order. Not only was it fun to play through all of these games on my own, but also shared it on Twitter and Mastodon and seeing all of my friends vicariously enjoy them once more through my virgin eyes. I began to adore the main cast enough that I even commissioned art of my own fursona cosplaying as everyone’s favorite rival prosecutor: Miles Edgeworth, known for such endless quotable lines like “You are not a clown, you are the entire circus.”
This was, to me, as much a special summer event as it was a series of video games. I love them so much, that if I could wipe my mind of all memory of the franchise, just so I experience it for the first time once more, I absolutely would without hesitation.
The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan

Man of Medan, from Supermassive Games, was one of the two games I played with my friend Acharky on stream this year, and just as an excuse to hang out with a buddy, this was a highlight for me.

But more than that, it took what I enjoyed about Until Dawn and doubled down on that template, serving up an excellent horror story in what is hopefully going to be just the first in an anthology of many.
On top of that, Supermassive seems to have gotten the memo that people play games of this nature socially, in groups where players pass the controllers around to take control of specific characters in the narrative. To that end, they have created ways to systematize those interactions that actually came in handy during our stream session even though Acharky wasn’t in the room with me, by making it easier to delineate whose turn it would be to make decisions.
While the 4-6 hour length may drive many people away, it actually drew me into the game because I was confident that I could play through it over the course of a weekend. Short games are good, and we could always use a few more of those.
Kingdom Hearts 3

Finally, after working with Sam for years on the primer series, in order to prepare ourselves for it, Kingdom Hearts 3 actually came out.

Rather than apply a modern design ethos to the Kingdom Hearts franchise, in many ways this latest entry brings a PS2-era design ethos into the modern-day, which I found oddly refreshing among the tide of live services and games with sprawling open worlds. Playing Kingdom Hearts 3, even absent my attachments to the cast and characters, had a nostalgic bent to it that brought me back to my childhood, when Sora, Donald, and Goofy (always in that order) first graced my 4:3 TV screen back in 2002.
Though it would have been impossible for a sequel of this magnitude to ever live up to the hype, Kingdom Hearts 3 made a good college try of it, and I was completely engrossed in watching the finale of the Xehanort/Dark Seeker Saga. For once, Nomura presented more answers than questions, and even if not every plot point is resolved, there’s a strong enough denouement that I was surprisingly satisfied once credits rolled.
Code Vein

It’s no secret that I have an appreciation for the Souls games and the mechanics they employ. Like it’s own vampiric cast, Code Vein taps into that vein and leeches many of its core mechanics that you are undoubtedly already familiar with yourself. All one has to do is substitute bonfires for “Mistle” and souls for “Haze” and the formula is there.

That said, it’s the differences where it stands out, because there are several big changes that drastically increase the possibility space players have access to. One of them is the class system. Whenever the player increases their character level, they do not increase their character stats. Rather, their stats are primarily determined by their class, known in-game as a “Blood Code”, which is rated per stat on a scale from D- to S+.
Each Blood Code also has a list of skills, known in-game as “Gifts”, which can be acquired and equipped to the character, up to 8 active and 4 passive. By mastering equipped gifts, they can be used no matter what Blood Code the player has active, as long as it has a high enough rank in its prerequisite stats.
Since both Blood Codes and Gifts can be swapped out at any time, this means that players have the freedom to change their playstyle almost at will. In Dark Souls, I have to commit to being a warrior, caster, or jack-of-all-trades. Here, I can try to play as a magician wielding a bayonet and light armor for mobility. If that doesn’t work, I can swap that entire build out for a warrior class, big out a heavy two-handed sword, and dive straight into a melee. And with the ability to master the abilities of different classes, players are encouraged to keep changing their play style, equipping what “core” skills they like best and swapping out the rest so that they can keep building up their kit.
Code Vein also allows players to bring in one NPC partner to fight with them. Having this companion by my side proved to be invaluable assistance, not only for drawing aggro away from me, but also because they could spend half of their health to resurrect me if I ever died. As much as I wished they’d just stop talking, the moment they brought me back from death I forgave them for every single worthless word.
This all combined to create a Souls-like that is noticeably easier than it’s sources of inspiration. That said, it’s hard to express how liberating it feels to no longer be stuck using the same jack-of-all-trades build time and time again just because I want to sample all of the game’s mechanics without playing through it three or four times.
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

Well, that’s a bit of a mood whiplash after talking about blood souls. This is another game that I wrote about twice this year.

Like Code Vein, this does borrow a core set of mechanics from it’s Soulsian brethren. Unlike Code Vein, it does it an entirely different direction more akin to a Tenchu game, also developed by From Software.
In an effort to avoid heavily repeating thoughts previously expressed, I’ll say that what I like most from Sekiro is my experience unlearning the habits that helped me through Souls games and relearning a whole new, significantly more aggressive and relentless paradigm.
And more than just being aggressive, Sekiro forced me to be more tactical in my thinking, using stealth to assassinate as many mooks and guardsman as I can before finally taking on the more challenging opponents around me.
By the end, I had practically become the titular one-armed wolf in how I was surveying the area and planning out my approach before finally making my move, using cheap tricks and dirty tactics to even odds against foes significantly stronger than I was.
Medievil

Medievil takes me back to a very specific period of my life, when I was a kid. My aunt actually introduced me to this game, so I have memories of playing this over at her house during Thanksgiving and Christmas parties that come back every time I replay it.

Seeing it brought back in HD was a special treat, and streaming it was even better, but it’s not a game I could recommend. It was obviously dated even back when it came out on the original PS1, but it’s special to me. And props to Sony for remaking it so that I and exactly seven other people in the entire world could have that experience.
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order

This was the other game that Acharky and I streamed together, since we had done so for the previous Ultimate Alliance titles.

This game is interesting because, when taken in context with the games that came before it, almost serves as a commentary on how the face of Marvel has changed in a post-MCU world. Prior to the movie, it would have been inconceivable that the Guardians of the Galaxy would be the only playable characters at the start of a Marvel crossover game. And yet, here we are in 2019 witnessing that exact same thing.
But just because the MCU is such a heavy influence doesn’t mean that they stick exclusively to that canon. After Wolverine and the rest of the X-Men got ruthlessly snubbed in the last Marvel vs. Capcom game, I figured we’d never see them in any Marvel-related video games ever again, so it came as a relief to see them present, getting a whole chapter dedicated to them. Even the Inhumans, like Kamala Khan, and characters like Spider-Gwen made the roster, and it’s great to see them getting the same love that the popular MCU characters receive.
Ultimate Alliance 3 was the perfect excuse for Acharky and I to get together and geek out about comic book canon for a few hours a week over the course of a month.
Fire Emblem: Three Houses

Fire Emblem: Three Houses is an excellent tactical RPG, but almost nobody actually cares about that part of the game and I am no exception.

What they care about is being a good teacher trying to make the lives of their students better. My memories of sharing a meal with Felix and Bernadetta in an effort to develop their relationship are much more vivid than those of Edelgard ramming her axe into a hapless soldiers rear end or seeing that same, timid little Bernadetta kill a mage for 30 yards away with a clean shot right between the eyes. Not to say that those memories aren’t also vivid, but rather that they were more like icing on my relationship cake.
On top of that, I was genuinely surprised at the sheer quality of the writing in Three Houses. The depth of political and philosophical intrigue between the multiple factions in the plot rival that of the best Ivalice storylines from Final Fantasy. As someone who considers Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions one of the greatest stories ever told in a video game, I do not say this lightly.
Like Phoenix Wright earlier on this list, I had as much fun sharing my experiences with Fire Emblem with my friends on Twitter, participating in the meme culture surrounding it, as I did playing it for myself. I’d say one couldn’t escape the phenomenon, but that would imply I was trying to. I went out of way to follow Fire Emblem meme accounts because I was that invested in the characters of this game.
To end my discussion of Fire Emblem, I just want you all to know that despite whatever you hear, Edelgard did absolutely nothing wrong.
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And so ends a fantastic year in video games. While I wouldn’t say there were many generically good “AAA” video games, this was a time where if I knew you well enough, I could find more than a few titles to recommend just based on your personal interests. If this is any indication of what the future might hold, we should be in for even stronger years to come.

Sir Daniel Fortesque has, at long last, defeated Zarok, resting in the eternal piece of his crypt. For us, that means it’s time to move onto a new adventure.

What better excuse than this would there be to go back to an old, nostalgic game from the PlayStation, and my childhood. A game that I have replayed time and time again, and was remastered for newer consoles merely one year ago.

It’s time to meet hot Dragon Daddies in the Dragon Realms, for we’re playing Spyro the Dragon.

What blows my mind even now, playing the Reignited Trilogy version for the third time, is how much the core gameplay holds up in a modern context. One might expect that a video game that was originally release in 1998 would need something more than “just” a complete graphics overhaul. Which, to be clear, was clearly a major passion project with a ton of care put into it, judging from what I see.

And while that’s not entirely true because right stick camera control functionality and “gem radar” were added to the game, in general the original skeleton is perfectly preserved in all of it’s glory. The hallmarks of an PS1-era platformer, including tons of collectibles and short, yet discreet and sectioned off levels, are here in spades. Yet, it slots perfectly in a modern day context.

The list of verbs never grows beyond the ones we start with, at least in this first Spyro game. They are, and will always be:

  • Jump
  • Glide
  • Flame
  • Charge

In addition, all of these moves are easy to pull off, requiring no more than a few button presses. Ten minutes in the tutorial level should familiarize players well enough with the mechanics that they can take on any given level. Jump over small steps, glide across distances, charge small creature, and flame large ones or ones with metal armor.

However, this does not mean that there’s no sense of escalating challenge. Rather than increase the number of moves we have access to, and the complexity of our control scheme, the challenge comes from increasing complexity in the level geometry. Where the Artisan world had a ton of easy to handle enemies and basic traversal challenges, Peace Keepers introduced more precarious an obtuse glides/terrain, which required more thinking to perform, if not technical ability.

Now that we’re in the Magic Crafters world, we’re introducing more complex enemies and enemy placements, along with terrain that shifts. In addition, the supercharge is challenging us to rethink our previously established paradigms by giving us a way to allow our charge to destroy previously indestructible obstacles.

Our core gameplay remains the same, but with the addition of new tweaks, remixing, and gimmicks to force us to put more thought in how we utilize those central verbs more effectively. You notice that in my play as well, where I’m starting to take more hits and make more mistakes the farther we proceed.

This won’t hold as we move into the sequels quite as much, but we’ll enjoy it while it lasts.

In this post-Oko standard, it’s tempting to believe that Food is going the way of the dodo bird. After all, he was one of, if not the, most important card in the Simic/Sultai/Bant Food decks. However, there appears to be another formula out there for the archetype that has started to make the rounds.

Say goodbye to Oko Food… and hello to Jund Food.

The decklist I’m using comes from MTGGoldfish, but I swapped out a copy of Korvold, Fae-Cursed King for the extra Massacre Girl in the sideboard.


Like many of the current Rakdos Aristocrats decks out there, this deck’s primary goal is to establish the Cat Oven synergy. For those of you who aren’t familiar, that is the combination of Cauldron Familiar and Witch’s Oven. When the cat is ETBs, it pings the opponent for one and gives us one life. Then, using the Oven, we sacrifice the cat to create a food token… which we use to resurrect the cat with it’s ability. This can be be repeated every turn to place the opponent on a ticking clock, with enough incidental lifegain to keep us in the game longer than we’d ordinarily be able to.

Or… if we’d rather have cards than life, we could also bring out the Midnight Reaper. While it cancels out the lifegain from the Familiar, it allows us to speed through our deck to arrive at other pieces we may need to speed up our win before the opponent can catch up to us. Mayhem Devil also makes an appearance in this deck. This gets a trigger for both parts of the combo, when we sacrifice the cat to the oven, and then the food to the cat. In addition, it combines well with not only all of the sacrifice outlets we’re running… but also any sacrifices out opponents are either utilizing or forcing onto us. In a decent board state, the incidental triggers we get off both the these cards can keep our hand full and our opponent’s board clear of threats, since the Devil can deal damage to anything.

Trail of Crumbs is another one those pieces that can net us extra value almost on accident. If we fail to get the oven we need, it can get us an extra food that we can use to resurrect our cat. However, we can also using it to pay an extra mana whenever we sacrifice a food, for any reason, to take one of the top two cards in our deck into our hand as long as it’s a permanent. Since all of the cards in our deck are technically permanents, we will literally never miss, even if it’s just a choice between two lands.

Gilded Goose is another key piece to our deck. It is a consistent way for use to obtain Food, both from it’s ETB trigger and activated ability, which can be useful with a lot of our late game finisher cards, or to bring back our cat for just one more ping. In addition, like Paradise Druid, it’s a valuable way to fix and accelerate our mana, except at the cost of a a bit of Food.

As far as sacrifice outlets, it’s hard to deny that Korvold serves as one of the best at the top of our curve. If we have extra food or land lying around, we can easily trade it away for more power to him and an extra card in hand. Combined with his innate flying abilities, this can be enough to quickly close out a game in a few swings, or turn around a poor turn of events.

Vraska, Golgari Queen also serves as a key synergistic piece on the board. Like Korvold, we can sacrifice extra food or land we have on hand to her for cards and life. In addition, her negative ability is important removal, which we can use in order to get rid of our opponent’s low-cost artifacts, enchantments, or even planeswalkers in addition to creatures. There’s a lot of powerful card than Vraska can easily take care of the turn she comes out, which we might not have any qualms letting her die to take care of. While her ultimate is a long shot, it can easily be used to redirect aggression to her instead of us, god forbid we actually pull it off.

Liliana, Dreadhorde General is not just a powerful curve topper which can single-handedly win us the game, but she is just another synergistic piece to our ultimate game plan. Her triggered ability give us cards every time one of our creatures, like our Cauldron Familiar, dies like Midnight Reaper, but without the loss of life. In addition, she creates tokens to either build up a board or serve as sacrifice fodder to Korvold/Vraska. With her minus ability, she can kill off creatures on the opponent’s board by forcing them to make sacrifices. And while her ultimate is another long-shot like Vraska, it will be enough to end a game, since few boards can keep going when all but one land has been lost.

Lastly, as far as non-Vraska removal is concerned, we have the standard set of Murderous Riders, which you’re probably familiar with. And if the board isn’t going in our favor, we have Massacre Girl to clean up the mess.

What I like about this deck is that every piece functions so well together. Every time we sacrifice something on our board, we get something equal or greater out of it with the number of payoffs. It’s not uncommon to pop one Food token and see several triggers from multiple sources enter the stack all at once. Once the engine comes together, it’s not easy to put a stop to it.

At last, we have finished our great quest. The Kingdom of Gallowmere is safe from the evil clutches of Zarok and his undead army. Despite living life as a charlatan and fraud, utter incapable of defending himself, let alone his realm, Sir Daniel Fortesque has finally “lived” up to the legend, accomplishing in death what he failed to do in life.

Join us in recounting once more the ending of this epic adventure.

So, before we proceed, I have to issue 2 quick corrections.

  1. In the finale, I state that if the player doesn’t have all the Chalices, they cannot reach the end of the game because Zarok’s army will one shot them in a cutscene. While I do remember this, I cannot find any evidence to corroborate my claim. Therefore, it’s entirely possible that my memory is just a fragment of my imagination.
  2. I asserted that there was a glitch with the Ghost Ship level with made it impossible to get the Chalice. This, too, is erroneous. After the stream, I took some time to figure out what I was missing by watching someone else play through the original PS1 level. Turns out, there’s an enemy in the same area as the chalice, which I just missed. I could argue that the camera conspired against me, but bottom line is that I didn’t see them. And with that, I managed to get all of the Chalices.

And in obtaining that last Chalice, I finally show some of my favorite parts of the game. After being berated by the Gargoyles for almost all of the game, it’s such a powerful feeling to see them finally acknowledge us as a hero worthy of the title. And to commemorate our newfound status, the statue of Sir Dan has become stone, solidifying itself along with our place in the Hall of Heroes.

Should the player defeat Zarok after achieving this status, an additional scene is added to the end where Sir Dan is celebrating and frolicking with his fellows at the Hall, which you can see here:

It’s a powerful reward in the form of gratification, and a fitting end to the tale of Sir Daniel Fortesque.

As for my final thoughts, I think the team that set out to remake this game did a great job in accomplishing that task. Many of the problems that I have with the remake were problems I had with the base game with camera angles and extremely punishing platforming sections. If anything, there are improvements in that aspect with the addition of analog stick support and free moving camera in certain sections.

The updated art style and direction also does an excellent job at bringing the PS1 classic into the PS4 era. This is clearly a game aimed towards my nostalgia, and I’m not sure people unfamiliar with the PS1 game will be satisfied unless approaching it from a historical perspective. But for me, it was great to come back to one of my old favorites with a glossy new coat of paint.

Next time, we dig deeper into my nostalgia with more PS1-era platformers, with either Crash Bandicoot or Spyro the Dragon.
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