It is time for the 2019 Quarterlies! Vote for Quarter to Three's Best Game of 2019

Games
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Happy New Year to y’all.

The Quarterlies are the Quarter to Three Year-End Awards for Best Game of [the year that just ended]. Last year the awesome @arrendek ran a script that basically did all the work for us, while we just reaped the benefits. Kind of like Quarter to Three’s version of feudalism, except the serfs were a script, so no one got hurt. Let’s do it again. Here are the rules:

Rule 1 : Just list your top 5 games of 2019. @arrendek’s awesome script will keep track of them. Put your picks in order* (see below), so that this is a weighted choice. Your first pick will get 5 points, your fifth pick will get one. Popularity will be aggregated to come up with a final set of winners. Please provide commentary on your picks if you are at all inclined to do so. I will quote them in the wrap up for the winners.

Rule 2 : Any game–console, PC, mobile, etc–released in 2019 is eligible. Early Access games are eligible if they were “released” (whatever that means–showed up for purchase I guess) in calendar 2019. Boardgames are fine. Tabletop RPGs are fine. If it’s a game, it counts, as long as it was first “released” in 2019. (Sorry, no “these are the games I played the most in 2019, even though some came out in 1998.”)

Rule 3 : Revisions to your original post are fine. Revisions as subsequent posts are not fine because the script will only pick up the first one. Only your first post with votes counts, so don’t make a new post to change your votes. Don’t separate your list into multiple posts.

That’s it! OMGLOL

Voting closes at 21:00 Pacific Standard Time (America) on Sunday, January 12.

(*)HOW TO VOTE

[a] All in a single post, you must post your votes on separate lines, with a number next to the place in your list you are assigning it. Please put a period and a space between the number and the bolded title.

[b] Bold your choices.

[c] You can put other stuff in your list, including discussion/explanation (which is encouraged) and stuff like platform but please do not bold anything other than the name of the game. Don’t even bold the platform, like (PC) . Here is an example from @jsnell that works great.

For reference, the “Year in gaming” article on wikipedia has been used before to clarify what was released in the calendar year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_in_video_gaming

Get voting!

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You can find the results HERE

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  1. Remnant: From the Ashes
    A game that applies the Souls formula to a shooter and succeeds. Mechanically very solid and as they say “the shooting feels good”. Easy co-op but completely playable solo. Continued developer support adding adventure and hardcore modes has me still popping in to play from time to time. Marred slightly by some difficulty spikes (fucking Corsus!) but my personal favorite game this year.

  2. Death Stranding
    Effectively a AAA art game. Audio and visuals are top notch, some of the best in game performances of the year, Mads specifically is excellent. A game primarily about traversal, succeeds in making it interesting and engaging. The online component, an evolution of From Software’s messaging system from the Souls games, is well implemented adding a lot to the experience where players can not only leave messages via signs but also items and more importantly structures and tools that help you navigate the world. Finding a well placed ladder, rope, bridge, zipline or even abandoned vehicle is a real joy. The story is nonsense, but if you can roll with it the game is a somewhat unique experience.

  3. A Plague Tale: Innocence
    In some ways I think of this as this years Hellblade. A smaller in scope game with really high production values. As such it’s somewhat linear but at the same time introduces new mechanics and slight changes in gameplay over the course of the game.

  4. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

  5. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

I could reorder the bottom three and still be happy but that’s what I’m going with for now, there’s a few other games that were in contention (for example RE2 remake, Control). As always and for everyone there’s some stuff that might have made it that I simply haven’t had time to play.

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Thanks for the kind words, Brooski. :D

The script is being polished up and worked on and should be working again tonight folks. :)

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I reserve the right to change my list if someone points out a game I forgot about!

  1. Slay the Spire
    According to the wiki page, released January 7 (I was shocked it was 2019). Amazingly accessible, addictive, and challenging. Seems to me it’s either spawned or invigorated a new genre of games, the card based dungeon exploring roguelike.

  2. Disco Elysium
    An RPG unlike anything else. Crazy, imaginative, unique. Most of the action takes place as internal monologue, but it’s fascinating seeing the world through those facets. Plus, what other game gives you the chance to kill yourself within 5 minutes of starting the game?

  3. Death Stranding
    A game that seems, on paper, to be really pointless. But there are multiple layers to it, and it’s not just a vanity project by Kojima.

  4. Control
    A great story, an appealing main character, and cool psychic powers.

  5. A Plague Tale: Innocence
    Takes a simple idea (escort missions) and turns the setting and the story on its head. Slick!

Honorable Mentions in no particular order: Planet Zoo, Oxygen Not Included, Children of Morta, Outer Wilds, The Outer Worlds

Edited to fix formatting.

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  1. Rebel Galaxy Outlaw - Confession: I didn’t play enough RGO to know if it deserves this spot. But I’m hoping it does! I’m just really grateful that someone made another Privateer! Yay! I will play it in the summer of 2020, and get to see if it really deserves this spot or not.

  2. DiRT Rally 2.0 - I know it seems really retro in 2019 to be impressed by physics and racing games, but if you’re in the right car, and you’re in the zone, there’s just nothing that beats this game for pure driving pleasure. I’ll probably never do this in real life, but man, it is such a pleasure to drive past your own limit in this game, or more accurately, where you think your limit is. And as you get better, that limit keeps increasing further and further. The game pits you against better and better AI times, and somehow you keep overcoming them. You are one with the machine. The gravel and dirt and asphalt provide infinite ways to lose control, but as you get better, you cling to that control with a desperate mixture of zen and despair.

  3. Resident Evil 2 Remake - I’m still only in the demo area, but I can already tell the amount of care and detail that went into crafting this experience. Unlike the original Resident Evil games, in the remake I’m not always thinking about the controls, which always took me out of feeling any immersion in the game world. Here the controls are fluid and intuitive, so when a zombie lunges, I actually lean back in my seat trying to get out of the way. When I have my flashlight out, I’m actually trying to lean in and make out what’s coming down the hallway. I have a feeling this is what the Resident Evil games were meant to be all along, not frustration generators that made you wonder who designed the controls.

  4. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order - My first Star Wars game as a Star Wars fan! It’s not perfect. Besides the bugs and the performance problems and the load times (most of which was all fixed in patches as I got further into the game), it never quite hits any emotional highs the way something like Prince of Persia 2008 or The Last of Us does. Nevertheless, this was a really nice game that I enjoyed a lot. It’s tough, but never Dark Souls tough, it’s fun to explore the environment in it, and the puzzles are never too frustrating. Overall I miss playing well crafted single player adventures like this and I wish we had more of them.

  5. Lonely Mountain: Downhill - Another physics based game! This time about riding a bike down a mountain. I love that I don’t have to be in the mood for something easy or hard or whatever. No matter what mood I’m in, I can fire this up and start playing and go down the mountain while I listen to a podcast or some music in the background. Depending on my mood, I can play it safe or really push it. I can go exploring for shortcuts, or I can try to go really fast on the paths. It’s a simple pleasure, but a great one.

Runner Up: Grim Dawn: Forgotten Gods - Another year, another great expansion from the best ARPG of all time. My only real problem with Grim Dawn is that whenever it gives me a reason to go back, I have to try to disentangle myself from its allure eventually. After all, I’ve got other games to play, movies and tv shows to watch, and books to read. I can’t let the pleasure of theory-crafting characters and the visceral pleasure of destroying hordes of enemies entice me into a single piece of entertainment all the time!

Honorable Mentions: The Outer Worlds, Ape Out, Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair, Gears 5, Forza Horizon 4 Lego Speed Champions, RAGE 2, Crackdown 3.

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In 2019 I only played a few games that were released in 2019.

  1. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order - great game.

  4. Borderlands 3 - Decent. Playing it with the wife and we’re maybe 1/3 through. I’m tempted to start a second playthrough solo, but, eh.

  5. The Outer Worlds - A decidedly mediocre game. I walked away from it twice before I finally finished it.

Not a great year for games.

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  1. Control
    This is Remedy at the top of their game. Storytelling is great, visual design is amazing, overall ambiance is fantastic, and Remedy still loves their mirrors and televisions. It helps that the gameplay, while simple, feels and plays great.

  2. Outer Wilds
    Games as evocative as this one are few and far between. Outer Wilds nails the feel of exploration, though, and the musical cues before the sun goes nova (and the audible silence when it actually does) only bring home the pungent sound of inevitability.

  3. Disco Elysium
    No game I could think of deserved to be compared to Planescape: Torment… until Disco Elysium arrived. It’s not quite the same thing, though - Disco Elysium is its own thing, boldly modelling the inner workings of the human mind in an innovative and eerily accurate way, leading to insightful and often hilarious results.

  4. Devil May Cry 5
    Nothing is so joyfully over the top as Devil May Cry 5. It knows how ridiculous it is and it revels on that. The result is one of the most fun and relatable games I’ve ever played; the fact that the gameplay itself is deeply layered and yet accessible only helps, and so does the most charming and sexy PCs and NPCs in the history of action games. Move away, Bayonetta, the king is back. ;)

  5. Code Vein
    Anime Dark Souls, while an accurate description, fails to fully graps what Code Vein is all about. And it is about giving the player choices, making a Dark Souls-like game accessible and flexible and (mostly) fun without being overwhelming (and without hating the player or embracing the “git gud” mentality). Level design could be better, but it’s more than adequate. Gameplay is more nuanced than it feels at first, and the world is evocative in its own way. It’s not Dark Souls, but it builds upon the general concepts from Dark Souls (and games like God Eater) to build its own thing. Probably my favorite “soulslike”.

Honorable mentions: Slay the Spire, Oxygen Not Included, Eliza, Darksiders Genesis, The Surge 2, Thea 2, Yakuza Kiwami 2, Sekiro.

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  1. Disco Elysium
  2. Judgment
  3. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
  4. Control
  5. Outer Wilds
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I’ll have to think a bit on this, but there’s plenty of good options for all the platforms I have: PC, Switch and my pine table.

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  1. Outer Wilds
    It feels like nearly every game has an element of exploration, but there are still painfully few games that really capture the feeling of true exploration, not just wandering through a space created for you to play a video game in. Minecraft manages it with its procedural generation, but Outer Wilds is different. It’s a carefully designed world–carefully designed not just in space, but across 22 minutes of time! What Outer Wilds does is makes all that space (and time) meaningful. Together the solar system tells a story about itself, its distant past, and its future. This game is so special. I think I want to go play it again.

  2. One Finger Death Punch 2
    As a sequel, this can’t be the revelation that its predecessor was, but OFDP2 is even more overflowing with generosity and surprises than the original, which is saying something. I love EVERYTHING about this game… Except the stereotyped Asian sensei voice, which they really should jettison.

  3. Observation
    I hope this is just the beginning of games that create gameplay by introducing new interfaces to the player to explore and understand. I’m not sure the central conceit here makes a lot of sense–why does the computer that runs the space station actually need to use the interfaces of the station? But whatever. The story is intriguing, the puzzles are (almost always) enjoyable to solve, and I felt they even stuck the landing, which is hard with a cerebral sci-fi game like this.

  4. Eastshade
    Almost forgot about this game, but I think I’ve gotta put it in my top 5. Open worlds are wasted on combat-heavy RPGs and action games. Eastshade lays out before you a varied world where just about every direction you look could be a landscape painting. So it’s a good thing you can paint it! They should have done more with the painting mechanics, but nevertheless the game had a lot to explore and some fun secrets to find and I thought it was delightful.

  5. A Short Hike
    I actually started this once and didn’t care for it. I had to come back to it after it had a wider release and started to get a lot of buzz. And then I realized not just how delightful it was, but also how well-designed. The level design is perfectly put together to work with an elegant advancement system (earning feathers to fly higher) and to provide secrets and surprises all over the place. This game is a perfect little package.

A lot of runners up this year: Cricket Through the Ages, FAR: Lone Sails, Stillness of the Wind, Fit For A King, Dicey Dungeons and a host of Apple Arcade games–Mini Motorways, Assemble with Care, and Overland (although I played it on PC).

Games I wish I had more time with: Disco Elysium, Baba Is You, and Plague Tale

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  1. Devil May Cry 5
  2. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
  3. Unity of Command II
  4. Slay the Spire
  5. Astral Chain

I didn’t play anything else that was good enough to make the list.

Wait, are we counting Slay the Spire this year after we also counted it the last two years? I need an official ruling!

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We opened the pandora’s box of allowing EA titles for a couple of years now, but there’s no way we should disqualify a game in its actual release year just because it was nominated in previous years. That’s my opinion at least.

My January games to try so far, so that I could perhaps change my votes: Outer Wilds, Devil May Cry 5, Slay The Spire, Remnant: From the Ashes. All of these are on Game Pass.

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  1. Divinity Original Sin 2
    The single best RPG I am ever playing. Everything in it is challenging, fascinating, exhausting. Excepting for the inventory management, the Switch version is incredible.

  2. Virtua Racing
    The Sega Ages release sent me back into a retrogaming extravaganza I am totally caught in.
    It’s also the best game in its genre, for featuring such an exaggerated catch-up mechanic it feels fair/unfair to everyone, and everybody eventually forgets about it.

  3. Wildermyth
    The single best RPG I would have played this year if I hadn’t played Divinity Original Sin 2.

  4. Death Stranding
    As played by @Jason_McMaster. A really chill and funny experience for the dozens of hours it went on. Special prop to jonez and his incredible ultimate cheer.

  5. Langrisser Mobile
    A great companion for most of the year, although they ruined my favourite aspects of the game eventually. It still took way longer than most F2P games to become a wreck, and it never bothered me with IAP.

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  1. Control
  2. Disco Elysium
  3. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order
  4. Slay the Spire
  5. Tetris 99
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FYI, the formatting you’ve used won’t work for the vote tabulation script, since the posts aren’t being formatted as a list. You’ll need to change them from looking like **1. Slay The Spire** to looking like 1. **Slay The Spire**

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Whoops! Fixed! Thanks for the heads-up.

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Thanks for the reminder. I took it off of last year’s list so I could use it this year.

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Slay the Spire is not only eligible this year, it is eligible every year. Just like sh1t bonerz.

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Man, I looked through that Wikipedia list and I own five four games that released in 2019. I’ve only played one two of them.

So, um, this:?

  1. PixArk
    A kinder, gentler Ark but still not feature complete when I was playing.

(I have now completed the Outward tutorial! Aaaaaand refunded.)