As a year of entertainment goes, 2019 had some amazing escapes from our sometimes-shitty reality of abysmally idiotic corrupt leadership and needlessly violent happenings. This is the year of Avengers: Endgame, and the last part of the current Star Wars trilogy is almost here, two conclusions of two massive projects that break my brain to think about. All that said, there were some games that kicked my ass this year, in mostly good ways. My shoutouts here are for games I played in 2019, irrelevant to when the games were released. Being frugal usually means being 6+ months behind release windows. I was late to the party for Horizon Zero Dawn and Spider-Man, which were both two of the most thoroughly-developed games I'd ever played.
VR - I playtested VR for the first time in 2017 and thought that the novelty itself meant developers didn't really have to put thought into games for another few years. I spent the most time in the VR tech demo app, painting in 3d with a very basic brush, and moving cubes around. One of the most memorable moments from that was being in the Death Star hangar with one of those triangular Empire shuttles. The ship didn't do anything, but I rolled a ball down a hallway in a very natural gesture and watched the real-time light shift around as it rolled in and out of shadow. That simple 10 seconds was the most memorable of the whole playtest experience. Thankfully, VR coming to game system meant developers have to make actual games.
Astrobots slightly edges out Super Mario Odyssey for the funnest game I played this year. Both titles are cute, colorful, and aren't painfully difficult to succeed at. Both games had me giggling fun things, and exploration was rewarded with useful currency, even late into the game. Coins in Mario let you shop for outfits, as well as function as lives. In Astrobots, coins go into a capsule toy machine that unlocks in a 3d display gallery. Astrobots has a better soundtrack, and the VR immersion was setup so that the game acknowledged you as the overlord, which establishes camera control as watching your character. This was a great solution to the all-to-common FPS view in VR being one stationary person in a world with a lot of shit happening around them. That tends to make people sick.
Tetris Attack has such an awesome soundtrack that syncs up with the gameplay that it's a sensory delight, especially in VR. The final level, Metamorphosis, combines emotional music with gameplay difficulty so that the experience of beating the game is spiritual. The game knows its audience, and the only hindrance is that headphones into the controller don't work when using VR, so you have to rig something stupidly complicated, since the earbuds in the VR headset are...earbuds, and earbuds suck.
Not VR - It's amazing how the extra steps of unwrapping the cords, positioning the TV and turning on the headset is just too much effort sometimes. Unfortunately, I haven't done any VR for at least 6 months.
What really kicked my ass was Mortal Kombat 11. There are so many multi-million dollar franchises that are either watered down for mass appeal, or taking different directions and alienating old fans who should probably lighten up or go back to the originals. Then, you have the real deal out there that cares what you think, but ultimately is confident in their creative decisions. The movie version of this is Mission Impossible. The video game version of this is Mortal Kombat 11.
Instead of being like Street Fighter or Tekken and not messing with the formula or timing of favorite moves, MK 11 rebuilt itself and is a legit fighting game that happens to have excessive gore. Previous MKs had started to go this route, with MK 9 having 3 fighting styles, and MK X locking it down to two flushed out styles per character. 11 has one really flushed out style per character, with the ability to tack on a limited number of special moves. Most notable is the game's tutorial that educates you about fighting game vocabulary, frame data (timing for moves), and encourages unpredictability. Between this rebuilt fighting system and the MK market being limited to the US, I made very decent progress playing ranked matches online. In other franchises, I would be steamrolled.
The most kickass smaller developer title of 2019 for me was Dandara. This game sets itself apart from Metroidvania games in two significant ways. The first is that Dandara is a Brazilian freedom fighter that was a real life badass. According to Wikipedia, she settled in a city called Palmares, which was made up of Afro-Brazilians who freed themselves and constantly clashed with Dutch invaders. The desire to be free was such a thorn in the authorities' sides that they agreed that people born in this city would be free if they handed over slaves who'd escaped to there. Danara told them to go screw themselves. The character you play uses tools that are themed in expression and power, but the setting is more exploring thoughts and emotions.
The second place this game stands out is navigation: your movement is done by jumping from surface to surface, with gravity and camera angles shifting. This concept could seem a recipe for motion sickness and confusion, but thankfully there's only a bit of the latter. This genre usually has great atmospheric music and art direction, and this game provides both, particularly with the boss theme that hits like a freight train.
The most kickass gaming-related experience was PAX Saturday, AKA SuperGiant Games Day. The day started with a panel of the main developer team talking about their origins. After that, I got to meet their voice actor. Then I got to play the demo Hades, their next release, not yet available for Playstation. I got to meet the lead composer at their merchandise booth, and the day ended with a concert of their games' greatest vocal tracks. This was probably the best day of 2019 for me.
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