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videogametim · 5 years

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The Best (Not 2018) Games I Played in 2018

It’s getting closer to the time of the year where I write my GOTY list, but evidently those aren’t the only games that I played during the past year. I’d like to take some time to gush about some of the games I really enjoyed and had missed until now.

Divnity: Original Sin II

Divinity: Original Sin II has two things it really exceeds at doing, the first of which is a strong sense of creative freedom. In the narrative there are plenty of opportunities to make meaningful choices and lots of dialogue choices to go with them. There’s a whole pile of different selectable skills and character background options that affect dialogue and help cater your adventure to the type of character you are trying to build.

However, where this creative freedom really shines is during combat. There are plenty of battle skills that amplify each other and allow your player character (and party) to be as over powered as you can imagine. For example, one particular combo features two abilities from different classes called Rupture Tendons (a Scoundrel skill) and Chicken Claw (a Metamorph skill). Chicken Claw turns the target enemy into a Chicken that spends its turns running around senselessly. Rupture Tendons is a skill that causes enemies to take damage whenever they move. On top of combinations like that, there’s also a whole host of elemental spells and hazards (Oil, Fire, Poison, Water, Earth, Lightning, ice, etc.) that all work together in some way (e.g. Fire ignites Oil, Water puts out Fire and creates Steam, etc.)

What’s more, while each AI party member has classes they are inclined to build around, you can tell any of them to build however you like if you have a certain build in mind. This really serves to encourage replayability despite the game taking me 100 hours to beat.

With the exception of one chapter in particular that wasn’t much fun, the game never felt like a slog. No area is too big for its own good, and there is plenty of fantastic writing sprinkled throughout. Every selectable party member is very compelling and wanting to see all their stories to their conclusion grants all the more reason to play the game again and try something new.

Rez Infinite

Perhaps the driving force behind me picking up a VR headset this year was Rez Infinite. An HD remake of a psychadelic rail shooter from 2001 with VR support, Rez Infinite was really the game that solidified my purchase of a PSVR as a sound decision.

Produced by Tetsuya Mizuguchi (producer of Space Channel 5, the Lumines series, and this year’s Tetris Effect), music is very much a core part of the experience. Each area’s music has a very different feel from the last and each track serves as a great backdrop to surfing through the cyber world, tilting your head to look around and shoot the enemies and massive bosses that fly at you. Also new to Infinite is the new Area X, which I still find to be one of the coolest VR experiences I have encountered thus far. I highly recommend anyone picking up a VR headset to make sure this game is on their list.

Enter the Gungeon

While still a very recent pickup of mine, I’m absolutely loving Enter the Gungeon. The last run-based/rogue-like/rogue-lite/THAT type of game that I was really into was the original release of The Binding of Isaac, and even that wasn’t on my mind as much as Gungeon currently is.

The gameplay is pretty straight forward top-down twin-stick shooter gameplay with a whole lot of bullet hell, so what really sets it apart is the whole [GUN] motif. Each level is a chamber, each elevator is shaped like a bullet, weapons and items are detailed in the Ammonomicon which you shoot open, your projectile clearing items are Blanks, etc. The sheer creativity present in most of the guns you find scratches that same itch I’ve been missing since Borderlands. I’ve only put about 6 hours into it thus far but I look forward to spending many more.

Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove

This was also the year that I finally got around to playing Shovel Knight and I finally see what all the rage was about. Shovel Knight is nothing short of rock-solid platforming gameplay. Level design features varying degrees of difficulty but is ultimately fair, and most of the boss fights prove to be pretty fun. The world map is very reminisciant of Super Mario Bros. 3 even down to the occasional roaming characters (like THE BAZ) that appear and challenge you if you run into them.

The overall story of the base game isn’t really much to write home about, but this is greatly imrpoved upon in the two expansions. Plague of Shadows, which features the boss Plague Knight as the playable character, has a fun/goofy story revolving around him and his assistant Mona defeating the other characters to steal their essence. It runs as an alternate timeline to the base game and in my opinion the best story of the three, though Plague Knight is unfortunately the most awkward one to play due to the need to constantly pause the action.

Specter of Torment takes place before the main campaign, and has you playing as Specter Knight, visiting each area to recruit all the bosses who fight Shovel Knight in the base game. The story is once again a lot less light-hearted, but Specter Knight proves to be the most fun character to play thanks to certain abilities he can obtain, most notable the abilitiy to grind on surfaces with his scythe.

Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove is an incredible package for anyone looking to grab a fantastic sidescrolling platformer and I’m really looking forward to the King Knight expansion coming next year.

Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep

Perhaps the game that surprised me most this year was Birth By Sleep. I started out playing it slowly over several months, and it wasn’t until I was at the end of the story for the first playable character, Terra, until it all finally clicked for me. After that I banged out the rest of the game in a couple of weeks. Now it easily sits as my favourite Kingdom Hearts game behind KHII.

Like the other spinoff titles so far, BBS has a unique twist on its gameplay and this time it serves to reward experimentation. Your usual command menu is replaced with a rotating deck of equippable abilities that get put on cooldowns, rather than consume MP. This means that I spent a whole lot more time in even regular battles using fun magic and physical spells instead of constantly holding back in order to conserve MP for something more important. What’s more is these abilities can be levelled up and then fused into new more powerful abilities. This was also finally the game I did my first playthrough on Proud Mode, and boy did it not disappoint in making certain later bossfights incredibly difficult and satisfying to defeat. By the time I was done with the game, I was actually a little disappointed knowing that going forward, I probably wouldn’t be seeing these combat mechanics again.

Like most Kingdom Hearts games, the overall story does get a little confusing to follow at times, but it offers a really interesting setting of the worlds before the events of KHI. It also really sold me on the three new characters of Terra, Ventus, and Aqua and I am as invested in them as I am in Sora, Riku, and Kairi going into the rest of the series. BBS does plenty of setup for the events that follow in the previous games and its fun to see the fanservice of certain characters when they were younger.

BIrth By Sleep has really got me invested in Kingdom Hearts again, and I’m motivated to finally start the II.8 collection in preperation for KHIII finally coming out next month.

Conclusion

I’m glad I had a lot of time to play some really great games this year, and I hope to finish the last few games I need to before writing my GOTY list.

#Divinity Original Sin 2 #Rez Infinite #Shovel Knight #Enter the Gungeon #KingdoM Hearts Birth by Sleep

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