Yeah, for a couple of years, I was the person totaling up the votes for this, and I did it by hand and it was very time-consuming and prone to human (mine) error.
For this year and last year, arrendek went through the trouble of creating a script that can be sent through the forum and tabulate results automatically. All it needs to work is everyone formatting their picks the right way. He didn’t have to put that work in, but it’s awesome that he did it. And the formatting is really easy.
Format:
[Number 1-5 and a dot] [Game Name here with two asterisks before and after the name]
I haven’t played many games released this year. But these are the ones I enjoyed the most by far:
Forza Horizon 4
Diablo 3 Eternal Collection
Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden
Sea of Thieves
Subnautica
Diablo 3, whatever platform it is on remains a joy to play. I obviously also enjoy my Open world / Level up characters for as long as you want type of game. But the 2 story driven single player games I picked are both games I have and am still enjoying a lot, both for the gameplay and story.
edit: Pulling Slay the Spire (my top game), unfortunately, after reading the complaints about it still being early access.
edit2: Slay the Spire goes back on the list as public opinion shifts in favor of its inclusion.
RimWorld To be honest I mostly played it before the 1.0 but now I can vote for it. Oxygen Not Included will get the same treatment when it can be nominated.
Subnautica Great game from start to finish
Kenshi Might be rated higher but a little too new yet
Far Cry 5 Never played a Far Cry before and don’t play FPS but really liked this one, I even loved the ending. Sure the story scenes where they yank you out of the game sucked at the time but looking back it helped break the game up.
Two Point Hospital Could have had a bit more variety but still fun
Depending on how you interpret when to list them, putting them both is an oxymoron. But one of them must fit.
I tend to not buy stuff in EA unless I know someone playing it that says it is ready, but Slay the Spire and ONI are ones I have. I haven’t played much that came out this year, and while it looks like D:OS2 is listable, which I have played, I’m not sure I like it enough to list it. Love the idea of the combat, but sort of bounce off it in practice.
Both I do list are great examples of their genre’s with enough replayability that the icons will be on my desktop for years I’m sure. Replayability is something I look for in those genres, but not say narrative games where you see the story once and done.
I think I’ve only played five games that released in 2018, so I guess they all make the list, in this approximate order: Ok, apparently there were a couple more. I guess ordered by some sophisticated metric combining time spent and enjoyment extracted (aka, semi-random):
Subnautica
The Colonists
Northgard
Dragon Quest Builders
Stonehearth - officially released this year, but purchasable for quite some time
I’d imagine RDR2 would be 1 or 2 if it was on PC. Also there was random mobile pfiffle.
Two Point Hospital
Pokemon, Let’s Go Pikachu
Battletech
Oh, DLC is eligible! I could add American Truck Simulator and Euro Truck Simulator 2 to the list then :D
Slay the Spire According to Steam, I’ve played 302 hours of this. And I’ll be back tomorrow morning for the daily climb. This game has become just an accepted part of my life.
God of War Great combat, pacing, writing and acting, and just the right amount of open world. Pretty much the perfect more-or-less-closed-ended single player story game.
Sunset Overdrive The (glowing) Kotaku review of Red Dead Redemption 2 describes it as “defiantly slow-paced, exuberantly unfun, and wholly unconcerned with catering to the needs or wants of its players.” Sunset Overdrive is the opposite of that.
Dead Cells Not much to add to what everyone’s already said. Another lifestyle game. Here’s a complaint: If I’ve buttoned out of the initial tube drop animation 150 times in a row, just start skipping it automatically.
Earth Defense Force 5 Best couch co-op game of the year. Awesome loot grind and a more enjoyable story than RDR2.
Exapunks Competitive coding pushes a certain button in certain people that Zachtronics now has down to an art. A game about fork() and data broadcast channels, and old hacker magazines and body hacking. Loved every minute, many of which were just staring at the screen willing a more efficient solution to emerge.
Celeste Fantastic 2D platformer with minimal controls (move, jump, dash, grab) that need to be combined in a huge variety of ways, in a series of small, hard, imaginative puzzley levels.
Return of the Obra Dinn I’ve only started it recently, but the first impressions were so strong I had to put it in the top 5. Striking to look at, and a bunch of novel (to me at least) ideas driving the gameplay. (EDIT: Since I wrote this, I’ve completed it and bumped it up from 5 to 3. Superb stuff. As @TimJames says below, it does a very good job of at least making you feel clever. Go in as blind as you can.)
Yoku’s Island Express One of those pinball-metroidvanias you see so many of.
Gris A fairly standard platformer with some light puzzles that also happens to be the most beautiful game of the year. If you think gameplay and graphics are completely orthogonal, and consider yourself to be hardcore enough to ignore the latter when evaluating games, then this isn’t the game for you. Treat it as a 2D walking simulator if you want. But it is just stunning to look at, and sometimes that’s enough.
Beat Saber. I can’t dance, but this game makes me think I can, for short periods of time at least. Very satisfying VR implementation of lightsabres slicing blocks in time to slightly cheesy music. Maybe would have been GOTY if it had official support for custom songs, a la Audioshield.
Bacon - The Game. Mobile one-touch game where you flip bacon onto things. Helped queues in theme parks seem a lot shorter when you need to keep three daughters amused, the value of which cannot be overstated.
Diablo 3 Eternal Collection (Switch) - First time playing Diablo 3 for me, somewhat confusing to start with, a lot of fun and distilled and balanced to the Nth degree, but I couldn’t help feeling it was slightly hollow at the core of it all.
holedown. Terrifyingly addictive Peggle / Breakout / RPG-lite upgrade system on iOS that I had to uninstall in order to get on with my life.
Black Mirror: Bandersnatch. Some parts were very evocative of the whole bedroom coding experience. But not much in the way of replayability.
Is Destiny 2: Foresaken eligible? I guess that question would apply to any other MMO expansions, are those valid choices even though the base games weren’t first released this year?
Rimworld - One of my most favorite games of all time! The labor of love of mostly a single developer - this game tells me a fascinating, brutal story every game.
Slay the Spire - Like digital crack-cocaine. Binged on this one for 120hrs or so before flaming out
Battletech - The game I had been looking for since I was a child. Does a very close representation of the table-top, with satisfying feudal mech on mech violence.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey - I had given up on the AC franchise a number of years back, but was pulled into the good reviews of Odyssey. I’m happy I came back. The voice acting for Kassandra is the best I’ve seen in a video game, and the world is brightly and interesting with fun combat. The game can feel a little ‘samey’ after awhile, but it is really fun. They even did ok with level scaling the enemies! A mechanic I usually hate
Frostpunk - I debated putting Pathfinder here, but I found Frostpunk to be a really fun take a city-builder. While the production chains are simple, the fight against the clock adds a fun new flavor to the brutal environment. Add in a circular design concept, and it adds lots of new elements to a tired genre.
(Edited to remove Slay the Spire. I honestly thought it released a month or two ago)
(2nd edit - I guess Slay the Spire is allowed now? Make up your mind folks - added it back)
