Games of the Year 2019 – 1st Runner Up

Moving on from our Top Picks, we are now getting into what people really want to know. Check out our 2019 1st runner up entries to our games of the year.

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes.

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Nick: Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

It would have been very easy to screw this up and make loyal fans upset at how the source material was treated (just look at The Last Jedi). One could argue that fans are going to be too forgiving or too harsh on a beloved series like Star Wars, and certainly Fallen Order had a few rough patches along the way. However, I found the story and characters fascinating, the end sequences were intense and memorable. Between the athletics and combat skills you can acquire along the way, Fallen Order made me feel like more of a badass Jedi than in any other game I have played to date.

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Pierre-Yves: Judgement

I’ve sadly never played the Yakuza series so going into its spin-off Judgement, I wasn’t quite sure what I would find but I had a feeling that I would enjoy it. “Open-World” isn’t quite the word that I would use compared to large environments, but in that environment, you get to look for clues to your investigation, kick the crap out of delinquents and mob minions, and finally, just take it all in while you grab a bite to eat. Working as a private detective, not everything is sunshine and rainbows, but it’s quite the adventure and since then? I’ve been picking up the Yakuza series to play them straight through from 1-6 once the new collection drops next month.

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Robert: Total War: Three Kingdoms

With Creative Assembly’s latest main entry into the longstanding strategy title’s venerable line, Total War: Three Kingdoms brings us to ancient China just following the Yellow Turban Rebellion. With some of the most stylized and stunning graphics I have seen in a user interface, TW: 3K is full of gorgeous animations, from the stunning research tree all the way to the epic and absolutely gorgeous battles. Tie it into a quest-like strategy title with a riveting story and challenging AI and you have a recipe for excellence. Though it is not quite optimized, stuttering aside, Total War: Three Kingdoms is one of the very few games that I never, and I mean never, uninstall from my computer.

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Susan N.: Heaven’s Vault

Another amazing puzzle game makes my runner up, and that is a game called Heaven’s Vault. Players are put in the shoes of a female archaeologist named Aliya. She is assigned a robot companion to help her find out what happened to a missing roboticist. Players travel to different planets through a river in the sky called the Nebula. When players embark on this quest to find the roboticist, they must solve language puzzles. Ancient is a symbolic language that strings together almost like sentences in American Sign Language, which is to say that a sentence would consist of the basics noun and verb. Ancient language in Heaven’s Vault is similar in that it does the same thing. The symbols are representative of the important elements of a sentence but they aren’t always grammatically correct. As a person who loves archaeology, beautiful graphics, a spectacular soundtrack, and hilarious dialogue, Heaven’s Vault is definitely on my GOTY list.

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Richard: Liar princess and the Blind Prince

Liar princess and the blind prince is a wonderfully adorable little puzzle platformer, and were it not for the fact I soft locked myself a few times, it might have contended for first place. The story is cute, if not a little cliché, the art style is storybook style, and the music is rather catchy. Heck, I even managed to get my dad playing it, and he seems to adamantly dislike both video games and anything not north American,  for the most part.

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Natasha: Devil May Cry 5

Haven’t picked up the DMC series since the 4th one. When I heard the gang was coming back I strapped on my best pair of shades and waited patiently. From the moment I watched the opening cutscene, I breathed a sigh of relief. DMC is back, baby! Plus… I’ve missed Dante shenanigans.

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Judgment - PS4 Review

Sega are known for a lot of titles in the past few years with one of the bigger ones being their Yakuza series. Taking things in a bit of a different direction, or so I’m told as I have yet to play any entry into the series, Judgement sees a lawyer turned private eye Takayuki Yagami and his partner works cases in Kamurocho where the Yakuza series takes place. Essentially being the perfect marriage of Shenmue’s exploration and combat mixed in with Heavy Rain’s sleuthing, and I’ve got myself one of the best titles that I’ve sat down to all year.

From the get go, it was clear that Judgement was going to be a hell of a title. The graphics, the sound, the gameplay and the audio. Wow. Able to play in either Japanese or in English which has a stellar voice cast, you’ll be searching for clues, tailing people, interrogating or beating up punks while eating burgers and instant ramen bowls between fights. It’s this mix of martial arts combat and sleuthing that made me think of Shenmue. The open areas for exploration mixed in with plenty of little shops and arcades, I won’t deny that I stepped off the path a few times to get in some Viruta Fighter 5 time with my favorite character Sarah.

Integrating modern technology beautifully, your in game cellphone is part of the experience and not just a convenience for storytelling. Acting as your GPS, you’ll have your cellphone’s screen in the bottom right corner telling you were to go and if you should be watching your back while looking for where to go next. It’ll highlight stores, buildings that you can go into, the above mentioned gaming locations like the batting cage or the above mentioned arcade. You’ll see it all. If you want to see more of the map, you can “flip your phone horizontal” to move around it yourself and zoom in and out.

Side to using the GPS functions, you can also use your phone as the main menu. Inventory management, quest information, the map if you take the long way around, the actual games settings or saving. It’s all present and feels like it belongs as Yagami will always be looking at the device while you are on it. Other elements also come into play making it feel like a part of the overall when your partner sends you a drone’s feed or when he face time’s you.

This seemingly small detail allows for the rest to simply glide forward and in certain cases literally. Yagami is a martial artist who can develop new skills as you get skill points by either finding clues, successfully interrogating someone or by kicking the crap out of thugs either in story or just on the street Akiba’s Trip style. Basically meaning that you can use anything that you can get your hands on.

Starting off with both a Tiger and Crane moveset, you can easily switch between for one on one or one against many. The combat system is slick too which I’ve heard is based off of Yakuza 0. Yagami can block attacks, grapple and throw / punch / kick any opponent that he gets his hands on, dodge around, run up a wall and come back down for a haymaker, and so on. As you get comfortable with combat, you’ll want to start experimenting a bit more which is where your phone comes back into play as you open up the skill app and check in on what’s up for grabs.

Instead of just following a skill tree, abilities are split into three categories. The first are modifications like “”. The second has things like “” while the last has “”. Each of these are not mandatory to obtain but they do make your life easier.

And it’s all of these elements that come together that make for a fantastic experience as they are all present but none of them feel out of place. Judgement does a great job at allowing you to perform each of these styles of gameplay as you move forward so that none of them ever feel like it’s been too long.

Side to all of the beat ‘em up and the cellphone inclusion, it's sleuthing and the dialog that really takes the throne. Because of the well crafted dialog, listening to characters talk and interact is often better than sitting down to an amazing book. During these times however, it happens that questions pop up that you can ask in order to find out more details. Keeping things interesting in this regard, is that if you ask “the right” questions in order, you’ll be rewarded with bonus skill points that you can use to upgrade Yagami. If you don’t get the order right, you’ll still get all of the information, just none of the bonuses.

From there, finding out clues in either a full or a quick investigation is pretty cool. Moving into a first person mode, you can scan your current surroundings, or a picture in your hands, for clue or items that stick out to you. Blood splatters, lack of blood splatters, items in the vicinity that could give you a hint as to what you are looking for like a security camera, all of these help move you forward and uncover clues to what you are looking for. Sometimes these clues lead to easier times interrogating while other times, information from people will make scanning for clues easier because you know where to look.

Judgement is definitely on my game of the year list. The dialog, the gameplay and the visual representation are simply stellar. While it hasn’t been that long with something this heavy in narrative with plenty of gameplay, Judgement just feels like the whole package from the get go and holds on to what makes it so great even hours down the line.

Game Information

Platform:
Sony PlayStation 4
Developer(s):
SEGA
Publisher(s):
SEGA
Genre(s):
Action
Adventure
RPG
Mode(s):
Single Player
Other Platform(s):
NA

Source:
Provided by Publisher

Article by Pierre-Yves

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