An Epilogue to the Video Games of 2019: Our Highlights
As we wrapped up 2019, our staff members wanted to discuss our favorite games from the year. We agreed on some categories that allowed us all to highlight the treats that 2019 brought our way, and we will be saving our personal Game of the Year picks for a separate article of their own. There’s a general sentiment online that 2019 was a quiet year for gaming, lacking any true heavy hitters. You’ll see from our staff picks below that there was a lot to love last year. Check back Friday for our staff members’ Game of the Year list.
Best Dressed: Dante (Devil May Cry V)
Written by Marcos Carmona
From his inception in 2001, Dante was a product of the video game horror genre’s marriage with heavy metal music that hack and slashed the Devil May Cry video games into his image. And his image was sick. Nowadays Dante is an old name in video games and much like the genres that inspired his design, Dante shows his age in Devil May Cry V. Dante wears his signature red leather jacket that has begun to fade and is noticeably worn, especially at the sleeves which Dante now rolls up. Underneath is a simple black henley shirt untucked from his black leather pants, held up by his thick black belt and followed by his big brown leather boots. His forearms are bandaged and on his hands he wears gloves because you can never have too much leather. Lastly, he wears some of the most recognizable weapons in video games: his twin handguns, Ebony and Ivory, and his signature magic sword, Rebellion. All of Dante’s attire and equipment show signs of wear and tear, all of it is old, and that’s because it’s all Dante.
Devil May Cry V gave us this new image of Dante that in text would make him sound weary and tired. But in motion and practice, this image helped drive the fact that Dante has been doing this job for over eighteen years at this point and never slowed down. He’s been rocking this look for as long as his hair has shone white. Still, even with some greys, Dante rocks his image with ferocious vigor and continues to rack up those style points to a constant SSS.
Best Environmental Design: Control
Written By Flora Eloise
Control was the first game I played with full ray tracing enabled on my PC and it completely changed my expectations for what game environments can look like with its stark lighting and reflective textures throughout. That being said, pure graphical fidelity alone isn’t what earns Control the top spot in this category. The developers at Remedy devised The Oldest House – a brilliantly confusing, alienating, imposing, and impressive feat of architecture – to house supernatural caverns within an otherwise austere but mundane office building. Unlike any game of this era, Control’s environment leans into this architecture in a way that makes the building itself feel supernaturally charged and alive – almost conscious in the way it responds to your interactions.
The absolute highlight of Control is the environmental destruction that results from your interactions in the game. Jesse Faden’s telekinetic powers ravage the otherwise orderly office spaces, scattering files and papers, shattering glass and denting concrete, and weaponizing furniture as destructive projectiles and defensive shields against enemies. Without the environments in Control, the smooth and intuitive combat wouldn’t be possible. Thanks to the expert world-building and environmental design within Control’s single building, The Oldest House, some of the most satisfying gameplay experiences of 2019 are at your fingertips.
Whether you’re flying around in hectic combat with The Hiss, zipping your way through abandoned office spaces to your next mission, or sifting your way through carefully scattered lore amongst the game’s varied setpieces, Control always looks excellent. It captures an uncanny sense of place which confuses the boundary between the mundane and the unexplainable. Some of Control’s best environmental designs are actually tucked inside optional sidequests, housing hidden locations and menacing bosses that could only exist within the space that The Oldest House provides. And some environments, like the towering room that houses indoor sequoia trees, are simple but breathtaking to behold. It’s a game that, like the incredible Ashtray Maze sequence towards the end, keeps opening up the more time you spend with it. Unlike any game environment I’ve spent time in this year, Control still houses mysteries that may remain insoluble forever.
Best Level Design: Resident Evil 2’s Police Station
Written by Ben Vollmer
If we do not know fear, then we have no comfort, either. Resident Evil 2’s “Police Station” is everything done right when it comes to level design. It’s a small, intimate place to explore. That smaller scale allows for the formation of a bond between the player and Resident Evil’s zombie-infested environment. Visiting areas once is often not enough, as there are layers to each space. Secret items and useful shortcuts are laid out in such a way that the thrill of reward must always be carefully balanced against the danger of death. Is an extra inventory upgrade worth a potential encounter with Mr. X?
Resident Evil 2 leverages its police station with a carrot at the end of the stick. Safe rooms provide a momentary respite from the dangers of the station, and those moments really pop as a result of their scarcity and the frequency of danger that exists outside of them. Some of the best moments of the year came from just barely outpacing Mr. X as his footsteps pound in the room behind you. Similarly, the tight level design allows for the game’s extraordinary sound design to really stand out. Locating footsteps from above, below, or in a room to the left or right was paramount to success. The intimacy of the police station is a horrifying delight we won’t be forgetting anytime soon.
Best Character: Clifford Unger (Death Stranding)
Written by Andy Webb
A military father forced into the Stranding gets lost somewhere on a never ending, torrenting beach, and then uses it all as fuel to get back to his child. Being a father didn’t make him scared. It made him brave.
Clifford Unger is perhaps the most gripping, moving character in video game history (kudos to Mads Mikkelsen). As memories of Cliff unfold throughout Death Stranding, he is presented as a terrified father and loving husband being pushed closer and closer to the edge. At times it even seems as though he’s teetering on the fence, unsure of his sanity. On his beach, however, he is a fierce, menacing military general commanding undead troops. His unflinching resolve is expressed through his calm demeanor and piercing gaze. His face contorts and twists in each scene as he descends into that resolve with one objective in mind: taking back his BB. Cliff stops at nothing to make it back to his child. It is his unbridled honesty – true to himself at all times – that affixes his heart to his sleeve while we bear witness to his unfolding tragedy. Clifford Unger is grace, menace, resolve, guilt, fear, love. He is a father.
Best Score: Sayonara Wild Hearts
Written by Marcos Carmona
When I look back at a video game’s score I am rarely able to recall a piece’s name as I’m humming its melody. Yet here I am, singing along to Daniel Olsen’s “The World We Knew,” clickety-clacking away on my keyboard, trying to catch each letter into one of the electronic pop beats reverberating through my funk. The process is long. Each sentence averages about a song. I won’t dare say how long this has taken me. I’m loving every moment of it.
Sayonara Wild Hearts’ score feels like the very inverse to how video games usually handle their scoring. Most game development treats the score as an accompaniment to the game itself, because that has been the usual romance in the production relationship. Sayonara Wild Hearts tosses that normativity out the window, and from the top down, molds the game itself around this pop album that absolutely slaps. Each moment of impact in the game happens because it is what the music demands at that very moment. In “Heartbreak V,” the music is rippling, open, and unsure of itself, creating a sea in the level which I have to steer through. Creeping through the whispering ostinato is the bass, pumping, beating, evoking, hinting. Whirlpools begin appearing, the sea gets violent, and then an immediate direction is taken. The music found its ground, eliminating my own. The music is running, seamlessly leading into the next song, “Transonic Gravity” which carries that emotion through to the end of the game in “Dragon Heart.”
Sayonara Wild Hearts’ score grabbed my hand and dragged me through this musical album that not only begged me to keep pace, but familiarize its beat. The relationship the game has with its score is not just fresh, but deeply attractive. Only after one playthrough was I ready to once again get lost in its resplendence. Wild Hearts Never Die.
Most Fun: Untitled Goose Game
Written by Barry Irick
“Fun” is a very subjective term. Players are going to find different genres, let alone games, fun. But among the 2019 releases, one game stands above, focusing purely on a concept that would be universally found ‘fun’; being an asshole. No creature represents this better than the goose.
Untitled Goose Game gives you a variety of tasks to complete, such as “rake in the lake,” but these are merely the punchline. Your goal is to create the set up for the joke, a form of comedy that isn’t very common in gaming and a lot more ‘fun’ than you would think. Even when you fail, there are bound to be hilarious consequences for your actions. Later on in the game, you’ll go out of your way to mess with anyone you can, just because it’s possible. A notable example is a package outside of a door; there is no progression related to this item, but every player I have ever watched decides to move it somewhere else. This is a game purely for fun, and it succeeds with a satisfying “HONK.”
Most Innovative: Death Stranding
Written by Andy Webb
Death Stranding thrives in the space between theory and practice. It is definitively neither, existing not only as lofty concepts and not only as gameplay but instead comfortably in the middle. It offers a deliveryman premise and then expounds on that premise by making nearly every mechanic directly affect it. Traversal becomes the theory and each mechanic becomes a sort of practice within that theory.
What makes this more innovative is how well it is wed to the narrative. Or rather, how well the narrative provides complex theory about the mechanics, becoming itself a feedback loop of its own concepts. The themes of connection and the meta commentary on immediacy and foresight are reinforced by the items, equipment, and technology that in turn make up the gameplay. It is not often that a game can have its cake and eat it too.
Best Art Style: Luigi’s Mansion 3
Written by Ben Vollmer
Luigi’s Mansion 3 really feels like it had Nintendo’s attention. Not only does each of the seventeen floors have a tremendous amount of detail, they all feel wildly different from one another. One floor is filled with movie-set props and film equipment, and another is covered in plantlife and jungle fervor. It really is a tremendous feat, because Luigi’s Mansion 3 is a “horror” themed game at heart, but it fills that theme with color and life in a way that other games in the genre could really learn from.
More importantly, however, is Luigi’s design. When wandering the halls of “The Last Resort” hotel, Luigi will shiver in his boots or clatter his teeth. He will jump in fright when a ghost catches him by surprise. These animations all take place inside of the context of gameplay, and help give Luigi a sense of life that has only ever been important enough for his red-capped brother. Without a doubt, Luigi’s Mansion 3 is one of the most detail attentive games in years, and deserving of our spot for best art style.
Best Writing: The Outer Worlds
Written by Ben Vollmer
It’s not just the level of detail that exists in The Outer World’s script that is impressive, it’s that each character has seemingly endless conversation depth. Two separate playthroughs of the game will lead to the same scenario having two entirely different dialogue trees. Perhaps most importantly, each character feels like they own a voice, no matter how you choose to navigate conversations with them. For instance, Parvati (a companion character) will always be unassured and overly kind, but that kindness may reveal itself as disappointment if you say something rude to her. Similarly, you can help her find a bit of confidence by giving her praise. The outcome leads to two entirely separate, but equally plausible, versions of the same character.
The overarching story feels just as complex. There are several different ways to play The Outer Worlds, and the context with which you play it will lead to entirely different results. This is one of the few games in existence that derives replayability based on its writing alone, especially because each line is just as well written as the last. The consistency and wit of The Outer Worlds, alongside its massive scale, make it the epitome of good writing in video games.
Thank you for reading. Your Patreon support keeps our community entirely Ad free.
