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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
