Games of the Year 2019 – 2nd Runner Up

Continuing on from our 1st Runner Up, we come to the category of 2nd Runner Up. Check out our 2019 entries to our games of the year.

Estimated reading time:  5 minutes

Nick: Mortal Kombat 11

The story is just as ridiculously zany as ever, but the cast of characters and the continually rotating collection of towers with oodles of unlockable content has this game in my regular rotation still today. New characters, rare golden vaults and new gear / skins keep things relatively fresh as well. I only just recently unlocked the last part of the Krypt, which is a mini-game all unto itself and one of the best things to hit Mortal Kombat in a long time.

Susan N: Satisfactory

My second runner up for game of the year is a game that is still being improved, but it's by Coffee Stain Studios, and it is called Satisfactory. Simply put, it's a factory builder that allows friends to join (up to 3 other players) for some crazy shenanigans. In the world that players start in, there are creatures that can either be hostile or not, but it's up to you to discover which. I've spent a ton of time between my single player game and a couple multiplayer games in Satisfactory and I absolutely love it. When I started playing it to review the game, I was rather impressed with its graphics and development. When it was launched to the general public, players were able to join up with some of their friends, but the devs allowed us access to everything they had. After looking at the roadmap, Satisfactory will have a full story to go with the game, and I'm excited for it! I can't wait for more features and items to be added. It may be one of the very few open world games I will ever play, but it is worth it. Definitely check this title out! 

Pierre-Yves: Phoenix Point

This literally came down to the wire and I'm more than happy to have played Phoenix Point as it's everything that I've ever wanted in a squad based strategy RPG. You can split your forces to go to multiple locations, you can blow up walls and ceilings or floors to drop your foes, your forces JUMP OVER THE DAMN BARRIER instead of having to walk ALL THE WAY AROUND. Finally, the systems that support all of this for combat and exploration are extremely intuitive with both keyboard and mouse as well as a controller. I feel like it'll take a long time before anything de-thrones this one for me.

Robert: World War Z

Many of you might go "Huh?" when you see this but please, hear me out. World War Z is a 4-player cooperative zombie horde game not unlike the zombie juggernaut series, Left 4 Dead. Sure there's no story (a shame, too, given the fact that the novel of the same name is a must-read) and character progression is really weird, but the action is where it really wins out. From the poisonous hazmat zombies to the hulking brutes to the run-of-the-mill zombies, every aspect in game is meticulously designed and extraordinarily well-crafted. Add to it that World War Z is one of the few cooperative multiplayer games out there and you have a bubbling kettle of goodness.

Richard: River City Girls

I'll admit I wasn't initially interested in picking this game up, but JaydaNyx got me to play it, and I immediately rethought that stance. It's a great beat em up with a retro feel that doesn't replicate the old school poor design choices, the pixelated graphics are super nostalgia inducing, the characters are hilarious (kyouko is the best), and you get a dab as an attack. Nuff said.

Natasha: Fire Emblem: Three Houses

I was happy to finally play an FE game on a home console again. Since the Wii version was my last experience on a bigger engine it left a bad taste in my mouth. But, lo and behold, Nintendo has spit out a very beautiful and fun game, that wasn't on a handheld. If only I was able to marry everyone off like in previous titles... it would have made number 1 for sure.

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Warhammer Chaosbane: Tomb Kings – PC Review

Warhammer Chaosbane: Tomb Kings by developers Eko Software and publisher Bigben Interactive/Nacon—PC review written by Pierre-Yves with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

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After a few rounds in Early Access, Eko Software and Bigben Interactive’s fantasy based Warhammer Hack & Slash Chaosbane finally hit full release over the past summer. Surprisingly coming out only over six months later, the first expansion has become available changing up a few elements to the core style for the better. Creating a much smoother gaming experience as you run across the desert tomb raiding, it’s time to once again save the world from impending doom.

Available from the main menu to dive right into, the events of Tomb Kings take place after the end of Act 4 of the original story. Magnus has been saved, crowned Emperor, and it was time to follow an expedition out into the middle of a god forsaken desert which soon goes sideways. Doing what you do best, you take out your weapons and you start slaughtering anything that comes near you.

I’ll be up front in that Tomb Kings doesn’t exactly fix the “what’s next” issue that Chaosbane had on launch. While you once went into an area, completed it, went back to the hub and then came back out, you now have one wide open area instead of several mini instances. Having replayed the entire original campaign with another character before diving into Tomb Kings fresh, it was a nice change of pace to have to actually do the footwork instead of just diving into one portal or entrance after another to get back to the slaughtering.

Tomb Kings is designed as a single area with several points of entries into the surrounding tombs. To get from any one point to the other, you’re going to need to run there. It doesn’t take that long but at the same time you do appreciate the core campaign’s portals maybe just a little more as there are no town portals. With new enemies and an increasing difficulty though, the grind of experience points feels natural as long as you didn’t super jack your weapons making you wonder if you shouldn’t up the difficulty a little bit.

This leads me into another observation. I hadn’t actually loaded Chaosbane since finishing up my original review and playthrough back over the summer. Being gifted another code for Robert and then buying the Magnus Edition for Richard for Christmas, we started new characters to go through the original campaign as they hadn’t played and I noticed several new adjustments for the better that carry over to Tomb Kings. While the core skill mechanics are all the same, God skills seem to have gotten a bit of an upgrade. Now having God skills from both the original campaign and Tomb Kings, you can now just use points to gain the rewards and undo them as you please. You don’t need to pay with gold and fragments anymore allowing for you to much more easily set up your various playstyles.

Summary

So mixing in some of the old with the new, and always available to bounce back and forth, Tomb Kings adds a couple new hours to Chaosbane acting as an Act 5. While it doesn’t fix what do you really do next after you finish the campaign and the expansion, it’s still a good dose of quick fun for new and returning players alike.

Score: 7.5 / 10

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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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Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey – PS4 Review

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey by developer Panache Digital Games and publisher Private Division—Sony PlayStation 4 review written by Jim with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

On paper, Ancestors sounds like a good idea. Start as an ape and then evolve your way to become more human-like. It sounds like a pretty cool concept for a game we don’t see often but does it work out in the end to make a fun game?

For reasons, I won’t spoil you, starting off as a child ape alone and scared you need to find a place to hide. This game does not hold your hand and you will hardly know what you’re doing until you’re lucky enough to stumble upon it. Once into hiding, you are switched into an adult who must find the young one that you hid by using your senses of smell, hearing, and sight which all play a big part in the game. With very few tutorials though, you will hardly know how to use them.

After finding the child you get to carry it around which plays an important role in this game. First, as you play you can unlock new skills, but, to use them you have to use points you only get by carrying around the young. A problem I found was it had me wondering why would you be carrying around a child in a dangerous place when you can leave them at your encampment with others. Even 10 million years ago it seemed like they should be smart enough to know how to protect their young.

As I said before, there are very few tutorials so after finding the child you can do and go almost anywhere you want. There are goals the game gives you, but its more of a guideline than anything else as you have to learn just like your character does. Your character must pick up and examine everything for the first time to know what it is. Pick up a branch and look at it and learn it won’t hurt you. Pick up fruit and see that you can eat it but is it safe to eat? Like most survival games you need to eat, drink, and sleep to stay alive. Now the thing in this game is your body is not used to lots of different kinds of foods so eating meat will get you sick making the screen, music, and sound all get fuzzy for a bit and this will keep happening until you evolve to be able to handle it.

There are lots of wildlife in this game that will hunt you and at the start, before you learn to make any kind of weapons, all you can do is dodge. Now I thought I was doing it right but each time I dodged I always got hurt netting my character a broken bone or a gash that started to bleed. Later on, I found out that there was a little chime that sounds for timing and if you time it right, you will getaway. It did an awful job at telling me what I had to do I ended up messing things up a lot until by chance I heard the sound at another part of the game. You can also try to fight back when you are being attacked if you have a weapon of some kind. I was lucky enough to have a sharpened stick so I gave it a try only for the game to tell me that sometimes it won’t work and the stick will break leaving me defenceless again. I wish it would have said that it may fail before I tried so I would have just dodged instead. Trying to attack back is done the same way as dodging only you press the analog stick in a different direction.

Another thing you can do is get other animals to attack each other. I once unknowingly led a boar to a huge snake and it attacked and killed the boar. Now, this was pretty cool the first time I saw it but it was done in a cut-scene. Most of the time I am fine with games with cut-scenes but in this one… well after it happens you can see the dead animal and the alive one is ready to attack you again instead of eating its kill. What’s the point of using this as a strategy if all it does it delay the game by showing a cut-scene. Every time you die it also shows one and at one time I was standing near a waterfalls edge and the death cut-scene played of my ape falling and dying. If this was a glitch I know it hasn’t been fixed as there have been no updates to the game since it released.

Emotions play a role in the game but mostly it’s fear. If you wander someplace new you will get scared, the screen will distort with fangs and other things popping up until you examine and know what lots of things are and then you must find a spot which seemed to be a white spot but I wasn’t sure as the game wasn’t very clear on what I was to do and then you conquered your fear for that area.

As you learn everything above, you can start to communicate with the other apes at your camp and have them follow you to copy what you do. You can also move where your camp is but I was only able to find one safe place while I played. You will also need to find mates for everyone by grooming which is done by a hold of a button and letting go when there’s a chime. Once you groom them a few times they will become a mate and then you can make babies which allows you to continue to evolve and grow. Besides children and adults, you also have elders and you can switch to any of them if you are near them. The children are scared of everything making them hard to play as but you will be forced to if you’re carrying them and die. They can also be killed so be mindful of them. The elders will die in time as all things do when they get old.

The game itself looks good and the first few times a newborn came into the world I couldn’t help but say awe. It is not a big-budget game so don’t go in expecting AAA graphics but they are nice to look at. The sound and music are also good and lean towards an African style while the sound of animals in the distance sound wonderful even though the apes do make too much noise at times.

Summary

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is a fun game to experiment with but if you get frustrated easily I wouldn’t recommend this. For anyone looking for a challenge or fans of survival games, this will be right up your ally!

To me, the game is worth a try for the experience but that doesn’t mean it has no flaws there as there are a few of them, but at the same time, the game can be very rewarding.

Score: 6 / 10

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Paranoia: Happiness is Mandatory - PC Review

Paranoia: Happiness is Mandatory by developers Black Shamrock, Cyanide Studio and by publisher Bigben Interactive—PC(Epic) review written by Pierre-Yves with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

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Remember citizen, success is mandatory. Failure is treason. Happiness is also Mandatory.

Paranoia: Happiness is Mandatory is an interesting blend of ideas in the vein of a top down third person isometric RPG. Being first in the line of a series of clones, as you don’t remember anything like you apparently should, you’re told to listen up, do as your told and walk within the lines. Anything outside these lines is considered treason and if you take it too far? Well they’ll just kill you and move onto the next clone in line. As long as you still have clones left to come back as.

Paranoia is bonkers. But in a good way. Being named team lead, you and three other trouble shooters will have to go out on missions in order to do, well, whatever you’re told. With my journey starting off on a literal cleanup mission where the previous crew were all left in a bloody mess, I had to essentially escort a super large version of Mo from Wall-E to clean the floor and reassure it that I would keep it safe from harm. Yeah. Even the robots are paranoid, and for good reason as once we got back I went from a mere 15% traitorous to a whopping 50%. I didn’t like my teammates. I didn’t like them one bit.

That said, this is exactly where Paranoia shines as you REALLY need to be careful about what you do and how you do it. Being sent on missions from the master control unit, you get to choose three people to tag along. Each of these people have their own specialties that can be either extremely useful or quite useless depending on the situation. Having a happiness officer for example is pretty useless in a firefight, but when investigating multiple murders and questioning witnesses and suspects, it comes in handy as they’ll bring a person’s happiness to a level where they can actually be reasoned with.

Where you need to be careful with the above however is that, the only person “on your side”, is you. How you talk to other people, what you do while out on a mission, all of it is being watched by those with you and they will gladly throw you under the proverbial bus if it makes them look good. There are chances to maybe get them to go along with it, but that will entirely depend on your clone’s reasoning abilities. More often than not? They’ll tell and then you’ll have to decide, do you go for once more mission? Call it quits and terminate your clone for a new one? Or, do you walk outside of the lines of your current access restrictions and have the termination force sent after for you an epic firefight? Choice is yours!

There are a lot of things that are told to your early enough but they may not make sense right away. One of these is the fact that I was told that I had a red access level clearance. This literally meant that I could only ever walk inside of the red lines. One step outside and my treason level rose by seven or eight percent. Once you’ve crossed it’ll won’t keep going up so you may as well try to do whatever once you’re over the line, but if you keep crossing by poking your toe repeatedly over? 100% comes very fast. So adding that to whatever your teammates say about you, it really doesn’t take long before you’re facing termination in one way or the other. Thankfully though, you have a storage box.

This box is perhaps one of your only saving graces. For every mission, whether it’s for cleanup, investigation or interrogation, you receive a voucher for the vending machine that gives you a gun, some ammo, and some sort of happiness which acts as health boosters. Once the mission is over and it’s been reported to the central computer however, those fancy everything including everything that you picked up while on mission gets taken away. So before any of that happens, you have a box, with limited space, to stash things into. Health items, guns, ammo, the “basic” stuff that you’ll need if you’re going to find yourself in a firefight for having hit 100% treason. It keeps between clones as well, because let’s be honest, it’s YOUR box.

Paranoia isn’t perfect though. It has some issues that come out to play both in terms of gameplay and performance. There are a lot of little things that may not be covered, or be covered properly making you wonder exactly that you are supposed to do next. This happened when I mopped the floors with everyone that tried to attack me but couldn’t open a damned door because I didn’t know how to hack it. I had done what was needed to hack it but I couldn’t see what was needed to actually perform the operation. Turns out, I just had to switch tabs inside of the vending machine… yeah that was a bit of a facepalm, but if you don’t know? You’ll be looking for a while.

The other thing is that there’s at least one game breaking bug that I hit and it basically stopped any and all progression. Paranoia, to keep you on your toes, is autosaved after anything you do. So when I went to bed and then my mission status didn’t update past the, go to bed to start the next day, that was it. I tried re-loading, killing off my clone and spawning a new one. Nothing. I had to restart from scratch but at least that time was faster because I knew what I was doing. Or at least knew how to do what I should be doing.

Summary

Overall though, if you’re a fan of RPGs, loads of dialog, cheezy yet well thought out retorts and just some good old fashioned fire fights between clones and robots? Paranoia: Happiness is Mandatory is worth looking into and remember, trust no one. Report everything. But most importantly, remain happy. Happiness is mandatory.

Score: 7 / 10

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Games of the Year 2019 – Top Picks

Starting off out of the gate, our Top Picks 2019 are here, so without further ado, here are our staffs picks for their Game of the Year of 2019!

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

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Nick: Fire Emblem: Three Houses

The way the off-days are spent is a bit Persona-like, but I don’t consider it a bad thing when mixing elements from two of my all-time favorite franchises together. The branching story and the way you can develop your characters adds significant replay value, and the presentation and story are all top-notch and make diving back into this RPG/Tactics/Simulation game an absolute joy. Easily my most heavily played game of the year.

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Pierre-Yves: Dragon Quest Builders 2

Crowning one title over another over the course of the year takes a lot to do to make my top pick. With plenty of excellent choices both mechanically and narratively, Square and Omega Force’s second entry into the Builders universe just stole the show for me. Having made plenty of strides from the first Builders title, the world building of Dragon Quest Builders 2 just felt easy to get into, pick up and drop when needed and above everything else in class, easy to fix mistakes with both early and late game tools. Adding in a whopping RPG story worthy of the title Dragon Quest? Dragon Quest Builders 2 is something that I still have yet to put down.

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Robert: Rebel Galaxy Outlaw

What is perhaps one of the best space games of all time, Double Damage outdid itself with Rebel Galaxy Outlaw, so much so that I do not know if they would be able to top it. From the utterly fantastic music and sound design to the gorgeous Cowboy Bebop-feeling ships, to what is easily the most comprehensive and detail ship customizer in existence, Rebel Galaxy has it all. On top of that? Stunning story, great voice acting, and an open universe that allows you to live out your wild west space cowboy fantasies. It is literally perfect.

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Susan N.: Whispers of a Machine

Those of you that read my review of Whisper of a Machine would know that I absolutely adore the game. It is an indie point and click mystery game that has you playing an augmented human detective named Vera. Throughout gameplay, as players make decisions on how to approach situations, their will gain additional augmentations that correspond to their playstyle. I found Whispers of a Machine fascinating because it follows Norse mythology for those augmentation paths and it made me question my own beliefs about my beliefs on AI. It is a fantastic indie that I highly recommend to any gamer that loves a mystery with some twists

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Richard: Monster Hunter Iceborne

If you were to ask me how much time I’ve put into the monster hunter franchise as a whole, would have to say well over 4,000 hours. Yes, that number is accurate, no, I don’t regret it. The iceborne expansion is exactly what I needed from monster hunter world. It brought in g rank (or master rank now), I got my favourite creature the zinogre back, and it’s been all around a great experience, except maybe that first rajang hunt, but I expect those to go poorly by this point.

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Natasha: Resident Evil 2

I gotta say this is one of those remakes where I’ve gotta give it a nice, slow, appreciative, clap. RE2 was the first game that plunged me into my fear of zombies as a child, but now that fear is my motivator. I was able to use that adrenaline to push through and I came out with one of the best horror game experiences in a while.

That’s it for our Top Picks of 2019! Stay tuned for our 1st Runner Ups!

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