This content was originally posted in early 2019 on my Twitter account, @Capshot18, and may have been edited slightly to better fit this site's formatting.
I realize I've been a bit glum and vague on here lately, but I'm in a weird position of having a lot of unfortunate personal stuff going on in my life that I don't feel super comfortable talking about, but I would also feel weird if I tried to completely ignore it here.
With all that being said, I've spent a lot of time trying to distract myself with various games/movies/shows over the past year and in the process of doing this I've experienced a lot of great stuff, so I thought I might as well try to highlight some of the things I liked.
It seems like everyone was doing their "Best ____ of 2018" lists about a week ago, but I still felt like chiming in with some of my favorite stuff I got to last year.
I watched a lot of movies in 2018, but I think these were my favorites:
10. Game Night
9. Paddington 2
8. Avengers: Infinity War
7. The Night Comes for Us
6. A Simple Favor
5. Searching
4. Sorry to Bother You
3. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
2. Annihilation
1. Blindspotting
I realize a "Best Games of 2018" list seems even more out of place now, well over halfway through January, but I wanted to finish that new Red Dead before I settled on a list and that game is super long. Like, way too long. Anyway, I'm done with it now.
10. Batman The Telltale Series: The Enemy Within
Before Telltale imploded they put out a second season of their take on Batman. Because they didn't need to worry about upsetting an existing canon they were willing to take creative liberties with the source material and by doing so made sure it still felt fresh.
9. Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu
While there ARE some significant changes to the way random battles work that I think I like, I think the reason I enjoyed this as much as I did was because it was the first Pokémon game I've played since 2008 and it hit all of the nostalgia buttons I needed it to last year.
8. Dead Cells
I don't play many roguelikes because I tend to get frustrated by them easily, but this has some genuinely fun moment-to-moment action that made me want to keep going back to try for a better run. I'm still very bad at it however.
7. Hole Down
You know that moment in any brick breaker game where the ball gets stuck at the top of the screen and just goes ballistic for a while? This game is a constant stream of moments like that.
6. Florence
This is a game that manages to convey the arc of a relationship almost entirely without text. While I may have finished it in a single morning, it delivered on some strong emotional beats during that short time and I highly recommend it.
5. Just Cause 4
While some of the major additions that were touted for this one feel a bit overhyped, the game fixes a lot of the issues I had with its predecessor and I had a really fun time exploring Solís. I didn't like it as much as Just Cause 2, but it's better than Just Cause 3.
4. Red Dead Redemption 2
A tragic story about change mashed with a bombastic murder-game mashed with a slow survival sim. The three sides of this game don't always mesh incredibly well but individually they're all EXTREMELY well crafted. I just wish Rockstar respected everyone's time a bit more.
3. Into the Breach
Most strategy games I've played deal heavily with calculated risks and the "fog of war" but this one doesn't. By giving you all of the information you need to tackle a problem, the only limiting factors to your success are your patience and ingenuity.
2. Metal Gear Survive
It's not really a Metal Gear game and it's not much of a survival game but, whatever it is, I like it. Once I got past its inarguably rough start and got better at managing the game's systems it became a lot of fun. The story also goes to some WILD places by the end.
1. Marvel's Spider-Man
Between gameplay that captures Spider-Man's agility and a story that shows how destructive Peter Parker's dual identities can be, Insomniac really gets to the heart of what makes the character great.
Another day, another overly-long, way-too-late list. Thanks to sales and an ever-increasing backlog of games-I-feel-I-should-play I also spent some time with games that came out before last year. Because I enjoyed coming up with summaries earlier, I thought I'd do it again here.
10. Spider-Man: Web of Shadows
The combat in this may be pretty simple, but the web swinging gives a sense of speed that not even the Insomniac game fully captures. Also, this game has Moon Knight in it. MOON KNIGHT. Who doesn't love Moon Knight?
9. Battlefield 1
The First World War has always felt like an under-discussed subject in the US, so seeing a big-budget game attempt to tackle it was novel, even if it was in a heavily dramatized and relatively simplistic way.
8. Burnout Paradise
I'm not sure I ever forgave Criterion for making the shift to an open-world. Losing tightly crafted tracks in favor of theoretically diverse generated routes meant no single route was as finely tuned, and that made it easy to get lost. Despite all that, it IS still Burnout.
7. Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands
This game plays like Ubisoft's take on MGSV and even if this is rough around the edges that similarity alone makes it worth seeing. The stealth isn't as great but the shooting's more fleshed-out, and it does a better job than that game of making the open-world feel lived in.
6. Mass Effect Andromeda
I'm certainly not the first person to have complaints with this game but by the end of my time with it I realized I'd grown attached to the crew of the Tempest. The combat's better than it's ever been and the story starts to get really interesting, but then it ends.
5. Life is Strange: Before the Storm
It feels weird recommending this with the way the voice acting situation panned out, but there are moments in this that are just as effective as moments in the original season. There are also parts of this story that hit especially close to home for me, so I may be biased.
4. Far Cry 2
There are certain people who talk about this game like it's some kind of holy relic, and at times I see where they're coming from. There is a sheer hostility to the world of this game that is second to none, and it's still gorgeous ten years later even on a low-end laptop.
3. Dragon Age: Inquisition
While I have many of the same problems with this as I did Mass Effect: Andromeda, this one actively embraces the canon established by previous entries and manages to upend things in a few genuinely exciting ways. I'm excited to see where this franchise goes next.
2. XCOM 2: War of the Chosen
Despite the fact that the performance on the PS4 is rough and inconsistent this is an amazing game. There is a constant push-and-pull, an uphill struggle against ever-increasing threats, that managed to keep me on my toes right up to the end.
1. Dead Space
I've always heard positive things about this but I was surprised to find out that it still held up all these years later. Between the UI, the sound design, and the core combat mechanics, every part of this game is just superbly designed.
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