Could you please put a space between the period and the titles? Thanks
Thanks, man, I appreciate the catch :)
I’m pretty sure my script is going to miss a title if you put it in a quote box like that. Could you add the game to your main list in your post as well, please?
Ha hah hah. I laugh because when I saw it, I thought ‘cute, but I don’t know if it’s a really good idea, the script may not like it’.
Throwing a few of mine in as a placeholder for now.
- Monster Hunter: World
- Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom
- Marvel’s Spider-man
- Scavenger SV-4
- Into the Breach
- Cultist Simulator
- Battletech
- Bomber Crew: U.S.A.A.F. DLC
Wow, #1 on your list! Please elaborate.
I was thinking about grabbing it in the sale but the most recent news on the game’s steam page is from last July, and it is a message about how the executable triggers antivirus warnings. I thought, ‘not a good sign,’ and moved on.
I played a lot this year, but not too much of things that were released in 2018. A few stand outs, however.
- Battletech
- Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey
- One Deck Dungeon
Yeah Scavenger SV-4 is on my wishlist too, but I haven’t yet convinced myself to pull the trigger. I’d be curious to hear more too.
Did this improve your perspective on the game? It’s free on Twitch Prime but I wasn’t going to bother playing it.
Scavenger SV-4 is an astouding and terrifying roguelike. It’s one of the best games I played in 2018, but I shall never play it again.
If I may:
If you want to play something really unique, this is it.
I mean absolutely no offense to @BrianRubin as he does some wonderful videos, but if you want to play Scavenger SV-4 I wouldn’t watch any Let’s Plays. I would just play it. Kind of like Soma. As for the anti-virus triggers, I haven’t noticed any problems, other than there are a few more Nigerian bankers recently who have important information for me about my credit card. No, seriously, it seems to work fine.
As for why I like it, this is the first game in probably decades that made me feel like I felt when I was a kid and exploring stuff where I had no idea what was going to happen, or even could happen. The presentation is genius: while the graphics are “indie” for sure, they fit perfectly with the theme which is that you have a probe that is sending back sketchy signals! What a great premise to make your graphics perfectly consistent with your story.
The first time [a certain thing] happened in the game, I literally jumped. Not like a jump-scare, but a jump like, oh wow, that was something I wasn’t expecting! What’s going on? Immersion isn’t the right word – it’s more that the game convinces me to cede to it that mental space that I reserve–while I am playing a game–for all the other things that happened to me during the day or that could happen later, that keeps me grounded in right here. It’s a volitional thing on my part, like Sandra Bullock letting go of George Clooney in Gravity. But instead of saving myself, I become George Clooney, mentally floating away, into Scavenger SV-4.
I also like the way it anchors me to a concrete geographical point (my ship) that actually becomes comforting through repetition. Unlike the stupid “wank pod” in Star Citizen, an obviously artificial construct that feels like the complete opposite of what it represents, the ship environs in Scavenger SV-4 become a familiar place that associated with the relief of getting the probe back. Even when I am not making progress, the ship feels like a haven. I’m not sure I have a good example of a similar phenomenon except maybe for Star Raiders on my old Atari 400. I would jump into a sector, and there would be this moment of complete possibility, when I came out of hyperspace. And then the Cylons or Zylons or Psilons would attack me, because that’s all that ever happened in that game. But for some reason, every sector felt really open and new. And then I would jump to a system with a starbase, and I would feel the sense of safety as I pulled up to dock, and then it was as homey as though I were lying down on my parents’ couch.
That’s all nonsense, as Star Raiders was nothing if not a monotonously repetitive game. But for the, I dunno, 12-year-old me, it was just sophisticated enough to be totally convincing. Scavenger SV-4 pretty much does the same thing for the present-day me, some forty years later, or at least gets as close to it as I can recall for a long time. I don’t want to talk any specifics because I really think that would detract from your experience. Buy it, play it, let me know if it works for you. But it is absolutely my top game of 2018.
- Subnautica
- Six Ages
- Into the Breach
It pains me to put anything above Six Ages, the “sequel” to King of Dragon Pass for which we’ve waited so, so long, but Subnautica’s atmosphere is unmatched. What an incredible thing I keep going back to night after night, regardless of my abject terror of the deep.
No. It’s the same game. I actually finished Bomber Crew (take that, Hitler!) but I didn’t get past the first critical mission in the DLC. I just wanted to see what they had done with the B-17, and it worked fine (although there are fewer crewmen than the IRL version) so, yay. I just like the fact that they finally have a Flying Fortress in their game. I also think it’s the fifth and last game I played in 2018 since I still haven’t played Six Ages.
No offense taken at all, just wanted to help sell the game as much as I can (it is on my best of 2018 list after all). But you’re right. Friends, if you can go in blind, do. The surprises – and there are many – will hit harder.
- Assassin’s Creed Odyssey
- Monster Hunter World
- No Man’s Sky NEXT
- Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age
- State of Decay 2
Could you please bold the names of the games for the script?
Thanks!
Done. I thought it was just a stylistic choice by the others since I clearly didn’t read the first post closely enough.
Great, now I own Scavenger SV-4. I hadn’t even heard of the game before this thread, and now I’m hyped because it sounds cool. I have 9 days to figure out if the new games I’m buying because of this thread actually warrant a best-of list-change on my part.
- RimWorld
- Conan Exiles
- BattleTech
- Star Traders: Frontiers
- Sea of Thieves
As always, voting on the year’s best games always reminds me how many great games I missed that year!
The 2018 game release wikipedia article was helpful, but it was missing RimWorld and Star Traders (and I am too lazy to update it).