2018 was a slower, more drip-feed type of year for games. There was plenty of great stuff, but it took a while to find it all. For the most part it felt like an inhale year – a soft reset for a lot of major studios as their production cycles were reset. To that end, it reminded me of 2014 – which is the last time we saw that, in my opinion.
All that said, this year had some real gems and a ton of surprises. I hope you’ll join me as I recount my favorites. My sincere thanks to anyone taking the time to read some of my thoughts about the year in gaming.
Quick obligatory notes:
– This is a ranked Top 10 list with 3 honorable mentions (unranked).
– Each game features a link to one of my favorite pieces of music from its soundtrack. Feel free to listen as you read.
– I’m never able to get to all the games I’d like to by the end of the year. There are always ones that slip through the cracks. I typically like to list up front the games that I had the most interest in that I admittedly didn’t have time to get to. This year, my pile of shame is as follows:
Ashen
Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey
Dragon Ball FighterZ
Far Cry 5
Overcooked 2
Now, on to the list…
Honorable Mentions:
Super Smash Brothers Ultimate – Sora Ltd.
As someone who’s bounced off of every Smash Brothers game post-Melee, I think it says a lot about Smash Ultimate that it was the first to win me back after so many years away from the series.
In a lot of ways, Ultimate is an embarrassment of riches. It brings back nearly every stage from the series’ history for a grand total of 103, compiles some of the greatest music from Nintendo’s archives for an absolutely mammoth soundtrack in excess of 850 songs, and not to mention a ridiculous roster of fighters, 74 in total. And while it’d be absurd to claim that the totality of fighters is balanced, (has Smash ever been?) the fact that so many of them feel viable here, across various weight classes, speeds, and widely diverse move sets, is one hell of an accomplishment — one which, sorry to say, but even granddaddy Melee can’t hold a candle to.
This is also the only time a Smash Brothers game has featured an adventure mode that I’ve found compelling. It encapsulates the core fight gameplay in a rudimentary RPG shell. It’s not especially deep stuff, but it provides just enough connective sinew to the fights, as well as some dynamic modifiers thrown in, such that things never got stale for me. In the fighting game genre, where good single player campaigns remain elusive, Ultimate’s offering was pleasantly surprising.
The thing that I appreciate the most about Ultimate, however, is its combat’s renewed emphasis on speed, as well as how huge the impact of even barely charged smash attacks can be. Hits feel more visceral than ever, and even as the action leans into its out-and-out chaos, that extra oomph makes the big moments both more readable and more satisfying when your blow connects just right.
Sakurai has dropped hints prior to release that this might mark the final entry in the series. Given the rather extraordinary sales figures, this seems unlikely to me. But that said, if it were to be the closing chapter, it’s hard to imagine a better sayonara swan song for this crazy, nostalgia-oozing mascot brawler series than Ultimate.
Vampyr – Dontnod Entertainment
Typically, when it comes to these end of year lists, my bias almost always leans toward games that execute their ideas to a high degree of quality rather than games with ambitious ideas that don’t really pan out. Generally, I err on the side of games that nail what they are going for, so to speak.
Vampyr is going to be my exception for this year’s list. This is a game that I have a hard time calling great, but it is deeply interesting. So interesting, in fact, that I tolerated quite a few rage-inducing boss fights and awkward story twists just to see it all the way through.
In a lot of ways, Vampyr feels like a reaction to the modern RPG. What’s at stake in its narrative is not a whole kingdom’s future, not whether the Earth is overcome by darkness, not whether the galaxy itself is destroyed. It’s about what happens to a few districts of London and its citizens during the outbreak of the Spanish Flu in 1918. Increasingly, I find I am more compelled by games with this sort of localized, specific scope.
Similar to other modern western RPGs, Vampyr presents the player with numerous moral choices to make. However, here those choices are intimately tied to both the main character, Jonathan Reid, as well as to the central character progression and skill trees. Jonathan Reid is both a medical doctor and, as the title would suggest, a vampire. While his primary mission is as a healer for those afflicted with the Spanish Flu, the vast majority of the acquirable XP in the game is locked inside of – you guessed it – the blood of the very people you’re meant to help.
As such, every NPC in the game represents a moral dilemma in and of themselves. Do you fulfill your mission as a caretaker of the sick and destitute of London, thereby facing a game in which you will be under-leveled for almost every fight, or do you instead perform a sick sort of triage on the populace, determining who gets to live and who must die in order to fuel your character’s vampiric abilities? The way the game uses incentives to get the player to actually roleplay the conflicted soul of its main character is a genius way of contextualizing the game world and the protagonist’s role in it. Other RPGs should take note.
There’s a lot of other things at play in Vampyr that I really vibe with. For one, the streets of early 20thcentury London ooze with a sinister and dirty atmosphere that appeals to my Gothic nature. This is made more cohesive still by the game’s soundtrack, full of mournful strings and lo-fi synthesizers, and one of the year’s best. I even dig the combat, which is clearly inspired by Dark Souls – though with far looser controls. It’s a shame this game doesn’t come together quite as well as it could have, but for Dontnod’s first foray into the RPG genre, Vampyr is a unique take and one that I still think about fondly, flaws be damned.
Monster Hunter: World – Capcom
Call me late to the party, but 2018 was the first time I delved into the Monster Hunter series. World was my introduction to the world of Palicoes, Rathians, and sharpening mechanics, all at once. After dropping a cool 100 hours into it, consider me a newfound fan of the series.
Something I didn’t expect but seriously appreciated when playing Monster Hunter World was that it is an RPG where your build is entirely about the gear that you craft. There’s no real skill level tied to your character (save for Hunter Rank, which is simply a number to gate quests). Everything comes down to the gear you’re wearing and weapon you’re wielding, gear which you craft out of the carcasses, fangs, and claws of your previously slain beasts. What this means is that respecing your character can be done at any time, simply by swapping another specialized set of gear. So, depending on the target monster being hunted, you might want your particular set of gear that buffs your speed, stun recovery, and gives you ice damage.
It’s in this concept that the game grew on me considerably as I played. This will come as a shock to no one, but Monster Hunter is a game all about preparation – about strategizing for the hunt ahead of time, because once you’re face-to-face with a shrieking Rathalos, the time for changing game plans is long gone. This has the effect of making every encounter feel much more dramatic, especially when playing online with other hunters.
The stakes are big in some of these hunts – where fights can go on for upwards of 45 minutes, monsters can flee or maneuver into more treacherous terrain, and all the while the party must contend with an extremely scarce pool of respawns. The margin for error gets really minuscule as you get into the late-game encounters, where the game demands that players coordinate to provide each other with openings, healing, and brief moments of respite.
Monster Hunter: World, perhaps more than any game on my list this year, rewards its players for the amount of time they invest into it. The game doesn’t hold the player’s hand particularly well through any of this, but with every weapon combo learned or weak point successfully exploited, the game evolves beyond the sum of its parts. It can get extremely frustrating, even rage-inducing at times, but it always managed to pay dividends down the road.
The first time I got carpet bombed by a Bazelgeuse was absolutely terrifying, the first time a friend and I managed to take one down was euphoric, and to return hours later to absolutely dunk on one – that was a triumph that felt earned.
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