Russell's Odd Awards of 2019

Game I Most Regret Not Playing

Disco Elysium

Since I play a new game every week, you’d think it would be tough for me to miss a game I really want to play, but having a full-time job means my time is quite limited. So that means if a game is going to be too long, I know I can’t see enough of it in one week to properly review it while also setting aside time for frivolous things like eating and sleeping. This is how I end up having to pass over games like Disco Elysium, which boasts a 30+ hour play time, which is a real disappointment because I liked what I saw of the game. For those who don’t know, Disco Elysium is a detective RPG wherein players are an amnesiac detective in a very depressing city. The aspect that interested me the most was that the players skills, such as Empathy and Reaction Speed, are fragments of the protagonist’s psyche and speak to the player in situations where that skill is relevant. Hopefully at some point during the holiday season I can get some free time to solve crimes and have conversations with my capacity for seduction.

Best Party Game

Magequit

It’s possible that some of my readers don’t get together with friends and cluster around a TV to play video games together, but if you’re someone who does have I got a game for you: Magequit. In Magequit, four to 10 players each take command of a wizard battling through nine rounds of free-for-all or team-based deadly magical combat. As the rounds progress, players will gain new spells from a limited draft selection, building bizarre repertoires of spells across many elements. My favorite aspect of Magequit is the chaos. Between the high player count and the myriad ways the spells interact with each other, each round is a mystifying, hilarious kaleidoscope of arcane forces, but thanks to the evenly paced distribution of new spells and simple control scheme, the madness of Magequit never feels insurmountable. Even if you don’t have a regular group of friends that get together, thanks to internet play and Steam’s Remote Play Together feature, Magequit is wonderful alone or with friends.

Dirtiest Trick to Get Me Into a Game

Little Legends

(League of Legends - Teamfight Tactics)

I used to play a lot of League of Legends. There were days I would play game after game, flushing hours down the drain. Eventually I quit, alongside most of my friends. Unfortunately, Riot Games, creators of League of Legends, is backed by a billion-dollar company staffed by shrewd business-people and skilled psychologists working on ways to pull in new players and pull back relapsed players like me. This year, they unveiled the Little Legends, characters tailor-made to grab my heartstrings like reins and lead me back into the clutches of League of Legends. The Little Legends are the player avatars in League of Legend’s new side-game Teamfight Tactics and they are some of the cutest creatures to ever walk the digital world. What shows the potency of the Little Legends is that I don’t really like playing Teamfight Tactics, but I play it about five times a week. The game itself is fine, it’s low-stakes and low-energy, but the real reason I keep coming back is my adorable baby ram-dog.

Phone Game I Spent the Most Time On

The Alchemist Code

If you’re reading this then chances are you know my fanatical opinion about Final Fantasy Tactics. So unsurprisingly, I was drawn to The Alchemist Code thanks to the similarity to has to my beloved Final Fantasy Tactics. In The Alchemist Code, players field units on a grid-based battlefield and use a variety of skills learned through different jobs to defeat the enemies. I enjoy this game because each character has three different jobs they can learn, such as archer or knight, and the different skill sets can be equipped together to form unique combinations of skills. Unfortunately, getting access to new units and the items necessary to let them level-up and access all three jobs require players to spend gems, or real money, to play a slot machine and hope they get the characters and items they want. On top of that, many female characters have outfits and stories that are pretty out-dated, but lately they seem to be getting away from that. I’m not saying The Alchemist Code is the best phone game, just the one I played most.

Release That Surprised Me The Most

Shenmue 3

I never played either Shenmue or Shenmue 2 and it was probably five years after the release of the sequel before I heard about either of them. But once I did start hearing about these two games, I almost never heard anything good about them. More recently, as I’ve begun consuming more video game industry media, I’ve begun to hear more but yet almost all of it is still negative. I sometimes hear that it was a pioneer for quick time events, game settings with entire towns populated by characters that had their own daily schedules, and open-world settings filled to the brim with optional side quests for the players to do. But to make sure I never forget the power of a motivated fan base, Shenmue 3 raised over $6 million through Kickstarter and received additional funding from Sony and developer Deep Silver, all leading to the release of the divisive and long-awaited third installment of the series nearly 20 years after the release of Shenmue 2. I don’t plan on playing Shenmue 3 but it’s genuinely impressive to me that it was made.

Most Anticipated Game of 2020

Yakuza 7: Like A Dragon

To date, the only game in the Yakuza series that I’ve actually played is Yakuza 0, but just that game was enough to make me a fan of the series. There’s no other game out there where you can go from being a highly dangerous street brawler beating dozens of criminals single-handed to running a successful real estate business managing dozens of stores while stopping to win magic shin guards from the local arcade’s batting cages and helping a dominatrix learn to be confident all in one afternoon. What intrigues me most about Yakuza 7 is that, for the first time, the game will be moving away from the traditional real-time combo-based combat to a parody of classic turn-based combat from series like Final Fantasy. In teasers released for the upcoming game, this was shown with the staple “summoning” ability, classically used to call down giants of fire or ice spirits, will instead be used to summon a swarm of exceptionally violent crayfish to attack foes. Oh, and also you can get a literal missile launcher while riding in go-karts.

Best Game of 2019 That Didn’t Come Out In 2019

Minecraft

Not everything that’s new is good, and not everything that’s good is new, which is why it’s important to me to look back at the games I played this year that were good but happened to come out before 2019. And strangely enough, the pre-2019 game I had the best time with was the decade-old Minecraft. Created by a singing Japanese A.I., Minecraft was released in March of 2009 and has been a smash hit ever since. A lot of people like Minecraft for a lot of different reasons, but personally I love how flexible the game is. Setting aside all the rules changes, difficulty settings, and mods that can be applied, there are so many things a person can do in Minecraft to make sure it’s the most fun for them. Just a few months ago, a friend of mine started a new multi-player server for Minecraft, which is why I’ve been playing it recently, and it was wonderful to see how many different ways my friends and I went in the game. While some built huge monuments, others built complicated and impressive machinery. I, on the other hand, decided to make a hotel in the sky, and any game that can let so many people have so much fun in such a variety of ways deserves recognition, especially after a decade of continued updates.