2019, Game of the Year

[S.Peelman]

A bit of a mild year, but still one where I played a couple memorable games. From the poll I only played Luigi's Mansion 3 though, and from the 'other' list I played Super Mario Maker 2 and Mario Kart Tour and Cadence of Hyrule for a bit. Besides those, I played Anno 1800, Mortal Kombat 11, Planet Zoo and this the year of both the great Zelda Link's Awakening and the MediEvil remakes. Besides those I wanted to play Total War Three Kingdoms, because I'm a fan of the series, but at this point I didn't have a computer anymore that would be able to run such a game so I never did.

The remakes I mentioned are great, and are two of my favourite ever games and these new versions definitely did them justice. Like earlier, I won't count them of course, but especially Link's Awakening's remake is of a game that's better than all the other games of this decade combined so there's that. Mario Kart Tour was terrible, the game is basically unplayable on mobile, and I removed it after one session. The tracks itself have been proven to be decent through their inclusion in Mario Kart 8 though. Similarly, Cadence of Hyrule is weird. I don't understand why the rhythm movement thing is 'a thing', and it doesn't click with me. Planet Zoo is good, but it suffered from the same thing Planet Coaster suffered from a few years earlier. I'd actually say Zoo is probably better, and I actually want to be able to build cool stuff, but it's complicated and I don't feel the motivation to learn the ins and outs like I did on older games like Rollercoaster Tycoon in the past. Mario Maker 2 was more of the first one, but better. I felt you could build better levels with it. However like the first game, I lost interest in it when my levels wouldn't get played enough, defeating the purpose.

The remaining three games I played a lot though; Mortal Kombat 11, even the Switch port I have, played great and together with Smash Ultimate from last year caused a bit of a resurgence in my appreciation for the fighting genre. I liked the regular story mode and the 'Krypt'. Luigi's Mansion 3 was a good continuation of a unique series. I completed the game, but was a bit worn out near the end, it could have been a floor or two shorter if you asked me. Still, one of the better Switch games.

Lastly Anno 1800, a city builder in the Anno series which takes the series back to historical setting. I played the game for a couple hundred hours, and ended up with great things. Contrary to what I said about Planet Zoo, I did feel the motivation to learn the ins and outs of this game because it is much simpler to learn. It is a game filled tot the brim with content and much flexibility, but how you build things is more accessible and faster. I didn't care much for the story mode though, because I always use such games as sandboxes, I just want to make nice things. The game has a bunch of add-ons as well, but I have to say, they overflow the bucket of the game's content. If you own and enabled all the extra content , it just becomes too much to handle, too many resources to produce, too little space to produce all of it, and your cities will crumble under their own weight as you will get into a cycle of needing products; needing more workforce; and needing more products again.

Anyway, my vote without a doubt for this year still goes to other for Anno 1800.