I’ve never been the biggest Elder Scrolls fan but some stuff stuck with me with the other versions of these games; The sense of exploration, character building and the story. The combat always felt a bit too random for me, so I went with the ranged options - or just trying to diplomacy my way out of most situations. Elder Scroll Blades on mobile devices is the distilled essence of walking along linear maps to try and accomplish cookie cutter quests while doing a ton of combat. Not my cup of tea, even if as far as mobile first person games go, this wasn’t terrible.
The first CSD game was pretty great, a ballet of specific key presses in the correct order punctuated by the sting of frustration one feels when they made a mistake while playing an unforgiving game. I had a less good experience with the iOS version but I still fondly remembered the first game. Fastforward to a couple of weeks ago when I started playing the second one and wow does this sequel build up on the original game in fun ways and with very addictive new level structures and hooks. It’s one of these rare games that I review for more than a few hours because I just want to keep playing, Cook, Serve, Delicious 2 is simply amazing and I’m super excited to see what comes next in the franchise.
Spaceplan is a strange but interesting story-based idle game that uses idle gameplay only as a story conduit where you are in a spaceship and need to figure out what happened to the universe by using the power of potatoes. Starting with small solar panels and ending with massive canons shooting energy-creating drones down at planets, I found the actual act of playing the game took too long and that it wasn’t super fun idle mechanics. Otherwise I was pretty curious where the story could go so that kept me going, but ultimately the ending also left me unsatisfied.
Hyper Light Drifter is a more action-oriented zelda-like where you explore a large world, fighting through difficult challenges in order to figure out the secrets of the place you are in. With a really kickass visual style and a good mix of challenges with rewarding exploration, I thought I’d be way more into it than I was in the end. I had some trouble with the controls and the difficulty of some segments of the game that ultimately left me frustrated. It’s a shame because I managed to tough it out for about a quarter of the game.
Almost A Hero is half an idle game, half a free RPG that combines mechanics from idlers with a surprising amount of depth; I wasn’t sure what I was getting into - since mobiles RPGs are pretty hit-or-miss for me, but this one was great! I probably would’ve stuck with it for way longer if I didn’t want to go down my list of iOS games to play. With a ton of things to unlock, a very generous currency progression and some interesting game mechanics that unlock themselves after a long while, Almost A Hero is real neat.
I can see the brilliance in Return Of The Obra Dinn, a first person puzzle game that puts you in charge of identifying all passengers of a boat just returning to port, figuring out how they were killed, and who - or what - caused their deaths. With a novel framing of being part of an insurance company and doing all of this for insurance reasons - using a mystical watch that lets you see the moment of death of any corpse - you navigate the four levels of the boat, watch death scenes, re-watch them, try to figure out who’s who and - if you’re not me - piece together things on your own. I had an okay time with this game that turned sour the moment when I had no new scenes to view and was left to my own devices. I just couldn’t figure anything out, so I resorted to cheating. But this is not the only way this game can go and I still recognize how brilliant it is, I just couldn’t get through the whole thing by myself.
There sure were plenty of good games in 2019, I’ve clocked endless hours on some PS4, PC, 3DS and Switch titles, even going in the triple digits for some of these games. Remakes and remasters were a plenty as well, but I had a great time, gaming-wise, in 2019. On a more personal side it has been a year of change and internal turmoil, but I still had these ten great games - and more - to get my mind off things. Here are my top ten favorite games of the year, because these lists are fun!
Mario Kart Tour continues the series of my disappointment with Nintendo mobile offerings of late; Great production values mired by subpar gameplay and insufferable microtransaction-laden mechanics everywhere. I gave it a shot to see what the game was like, but when I got hit by a requirement for me to replay some of the previous levels, I decided it was enough. I didn’t have a great time with the game itself, so everything around it just felt like adding insult to injury.
Steamworld Dig 2 might be a known quantity, but it’s a great game regardless. I almost knew exactly what I was getting into when I booted the game up - and besides a few interesting ideas thrown in, I was exactly right - but that sweet loop of exploring mines, finding materials to sell in order to buy upgrades to allow you to do the same thing over again was just the thing I needed. I don’t exactly remember the original Steamworld Dig, but this one is just better in every point and a great game you probably should play.
Donut County is some sort of reverse Katamari Damacy where instead of trying to build a large ball out of stuff, you’re mainly trying to use an increasingly bigger hole in order to grab everything in each level, solving puzzles along the way. I had a great time with it and loved its style and charm. Some of the gimmicks were a bit annoying, but ultimately nothing prevented me from completing the game.
Moon Hunters is a neat story-focused roguelike action RPG where you investigate the mysterious disappearance of the moon, potentially with three of your friends, by battling monsters, buying upgrades and making decisions by talking to NPCs and increasing certain traits that allow you different actions later on. The core of the game is fairly short - I could finish most runs in an hour - but I kinda wish it could’ve went by quicker. The good bits were really everything related to NPC interactions - and the upgrades and RPG mechanics were quite nice as well - but the battle and exploration of the world was a bit tedious (and made up the bulk of the game, so it kinda became a problem after a while).
Pokémon Masters is another mobile gacha offering from Nintendo and it just disappointed me, much like Dr Mario World (and Mario Kart World as well). In it you go through missions and fight with some iconic pokémon trainers from all over the lore. To do so, you recruit them in your party, upgrade their skills, complete missions and mash through a lot of dialogue. This game has a ton of production values, but ultimately still results in a product that feels shallow, unbalanced and exploitative.
Borderlands 3 is the fourth entry in the borderlands franchise; one which I enjoyed a lot in the past. I was on the fence about this new one - whether to get it at all, for instance - because of controversy surrounding people involved in making it, but ultimately I nabbed it during a pre-order sale; I had to know what they would do to the Borderlands recipe to make it update it to 2019s standards, I wanted to know if I still enjoyed that game of game and also how they would tone it. After playing about half the campaign (I still want to finish it at least once) I can answer these questions. They didn’t update it, I still enjoy that kind of game but with diminished returns and the tone is still horrible.
Pokemon Rumble Rush is a neat little action RPG where you explore different islands with different sets of Pokemon in order to meet the requirements to get to the next fight and win it in a set time. Your critter mostly moves on its own, but you can dodge and attack by tapping the screen and you get special moves and gear that you can upgrade after a while. I had a good time with it, although it was pretty grindy after a while and I didn’t have much time or patience for that. The upgrade system was a bit meaningless as well, but it’s probably because I couldn’t get too much of the grind.
I have to admit I’m a bit unsure about this review; Twilight Struggle is a board game released in 2005 based around the cold war, but I’ve never played that game. On the other hand, I found this computer version quite difficult to understand and even if after a while I kinda got into it, I’m a bit perplexed how to go about it. Would it be fair for me to review the board game part of this steam product? Should I only review the ‘videogame’ part? Is that even possible? If I were to review Monopoly on the Wii, do I only talk about wiimote actions or do I go about explaining what I like and don’t like about Monopoly itself? I think I’ll talk about the board game ‘Twilight Struggle’ but also the video game. It’s not bad! Not my cup of tea (I’m not a fan of competitive games) but a real neat one regardless!
I was pretty excited to try Dr Mario World, Nintendo’s mobile entry in the Dr Mario franchise, even tho the core mechanics were pretty different from the usual game. I really tried getting into it, but ultimately couldn’t, I found it to be a really bad free to play game with gameplay that didn’t make sense at all for me. I lost enough times on early levels that I ran out of stamina and had to stop playing almost immediately. Still, it’s a cute little Dr Mario themed product if you can get into it and they clearly put some effort into interesting character design.
Velocity 2X is a space shooter/platformer where you move through a space drama by running and shooting in a few environments, alternating between the two different gameplays. You mainly do this to complete four objectives per level - beat the level quickly enough, get enough crystals/survivors and get a high enough score, all of this feeds into an XP system that ultimately just allows you access to more levels. I first tried playing this on a keyboard and really couldn’t, but even with a controller this game suffers from the ‘rub your belly and pat your head at once’ syndrome, there’s just so much to do that it’s quite difficult to do everything correctly and it quickly becomes frustrating. I tried to give it a chance, but at some point the game introduced one mechanic too many, and I stopped.
I had a good time with the first Nonstop Knight game, a little automatic dungeon crawler where you’d fight a bunch of enemies in a diablo-like fashion, collecting money and experience, gear and new skills, pets and other trinkets to get stronger and clear more and more dangerous challenges. I decided to give the new one a shot and I’m kinda unhappy with the things they changed, making it a more aggressively micro-transactionned adventure where ultimately, playing more won’t give you any progress and that feels real bad.
West of Loathing is a delightful Western-themed RPG made by the Kingdom Of Loathing folks - a browser game that I’ve played for years - and I had a great time with it. It’s not perfect - I had some issues with the difficulty in the endgame and some puzzles alongside the infinite inventory clutter you quickly acquire but it was overall an amazing little RPG (which took me about 7 hours to complete) that I would recommend wholeheartedly to pretty much anyone.
Magic the Gathering: Puzzle Quest is an interesting concept; You use MtG cards to defeat enemies but instead of tapping lands to get mana in order to cast spells, you match gems on a board to get mana that goes to the use of your cards. Mana costs are now colorless and you can swap which card you’re going to play next. Instead of having a bunch of creatures on the board, you can stack identical monsters together - and there’s a limit of 3 types - and you’ll attack your opponent each turn with your available summons. The core concept is pretty cool, but it’s just a free to play mobile game with terrible monetization that made me hate it almost instantly.