Some Games I Liked From 2018’s First Half

My personal favourite game of the year for 2018 was Yakuza Kiwami 2.

Amazing how short this can be when I skip all the preamble, huh?

Regardless, welcome one and all to the other side of 2018. Love it or hate it, it was an interesting year for video games. There was a slew of stellar indie titles, some absolutely incredible high budget games from big triple A studios that were purely single player or console exclusives… and there was a continuing, unrelenting downwards spiral into a late-stage capitalist hellscape which saw more backlash and discussion from gamers than I’ve ever witnessed before despite all that.

Single player games got better, multiplayer games didn’t (for the most part), fan-favourite company goodwill was squandered, burned, and ultimately lost, and we’re all starting to feel quite bitter and jaded of the whole hobby.

With all of that in mind, I’d still like to draw attention to some of the games that I quite enjoyed throughout 2018, which I’ve picked from a list of game releases I found on Wikipedia. The list proved too long and unwieldy to fit in one article, so I’ve split it based on the first half of the year with the latter to come around Soon™.

I don’t plan to draw it out or make a spectacle of it like the hideously late Delfies, though I will draw special attention to and write at length about my favourite game that I mentioned up there afterwards. Instead, I’m going with the abridged format: no more than 2 or 3 paragraphs on each game, and the only criteria was that they released from January to June and I played and enjoyed them. Let’s begin.

Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth – Hacker’s Memory

The first game on my list was one that I didn’t expect to love nearly as much as I did. I’ve liked Digimon since I was a kid, though never to the extent that I did Pokemon, yet many of the games such as last year’s Next Order didn’t seem to hit the right spots to interest me. Well, Hacker’s Memory did.

It was clearly developed on a budget and has that cheaply made “PS4 port of a PS Vita game” feel, as well as reusing many assets from the first iteration of Cyber Sleuth. Even so, it was a solid if somewhat basic JRPG with a surprising amount of emotional weight to and philosophical heft in its story and themes. I played it from beginning to end with little interruption and enjoyed the vast majority of it. I hope to see more games of its ilk soon and am keeping a close eye on 2019’s Digimon Survive as a result; there’s a lot of potential for greatness here.

Subnautica

The pinnacle of “indie game on Steam’s Early Access doing it right”, Subnautica finally launched early this year. While I still haven’t finished it fully, what I did play immersed me (quite literally) in a beautiful underwater world where I genuinely enjoyed exploring and trying to scavenge what I needed to survive and ultimately thrive. The story was well delivered and while I desperately need to go back and finish it all off, what I did play was more than enough for me to rate it highly and recommend it to most.

It also stood as a testament of what the Early Access process should look like, rather than just the “get money and run” cash grab it so often tends to be. They updated it regularly, changed things based on feedback, were clear in their goals and timeline and we were left with a very solid end result that is still getting more content soon. Take note and follow their example where possible, devs.

Monster Hunter World

I mean, need I say anything about this? Pretty sure everyone has spoken about how good this one was, and there’s a good reason why it got RPG of the Year at the VGAs. They’ve taken the oft loved and highly respected Monster Hunter series and trimmed the fat, leaving a lean and meaty experience for us to chew on. It looks great, plays solidly, and is immensely fun. I ended up buying it twice, because in the end I simply couldn’t wait for the PC release and got the PS4 one, then picked it up on PC finally to play with my local friends.

It isn’t without its flaws, of course. Much of the trimming of the fat did leave the game feeling a touch easy and light on long-term content at times. Much of the appeal of earlier games was needing to farm for specific gear pieces and requirements in order to best the next challenge, but World was streamlined so much that one good high rank armour set could carry you through 95% of challenges without much variety. Even so, not needing a wiki open to truly know what you’re doing and just making the downtime swifter so you can get to the heart of the game makes it a great addition to the series regardless. With luck, the upcoming expansion will only add to that and give something to really challenge us.

Shadow of the Colossus (remake)

A great and formative game that I adored, remade in beautiful modern visual polish and performance into a game that I… well, adored a bit less, but still highly respect and have deep-seated love for. The attention to detail of the remake in preserving everything about how the game plays and handles means that it remains as unwieldy to control as it did originally, and I’ve gotten so much more used to modern movement and control schemes that it was a rude reawakening. You can argue the pros of disempowerment of players all you want, but it goes too far down that path that it ends up solidly in “frustrating or even bad design” in rare times.

But those are rare times. When it works, it works wonderfully and is a spectacle all of its own. It’s a beautiful game and I enjoyed playing it, so much so that I made sure my podcast partner James played through it with me. I’ll link to that sometime in the future when that’s all properly set up, but in the meantime, current generation gamers who weren’t around for the PS2 now can and absolutely should experience this gem.

Dragonball FighterZ

I have always loved fighting games, but I have very rarely actually put much time and longevity into them in order to get good and properly learn them. I’m far too much the kind of player who consumes lots of games in rapid succession rather than sticking with and trying to master the select few titles over a long period, so I’ve often just been someone to play them briefly and then watch tournaments or highlight reels. DBFZ was no different, but the time I did spend playing it saw me grinning like an idiot.

Simply put, this is one of the most visually striking games ever made. Every frame and detail has been rendered with such loving regard for the source material that it has put every other Dragonball game ever made to shame. It’s beautiful, it’s quick, and it’s a simple to learn hard to master approach to fighting games that meant I was having a ball and feeling capable even when getting my ass kicked. This is what a licensed adaptation should look and feel like.

Northgard

Emerging out of Early Access, Northgard plays like a slower and more focused, town management centric Age of Empires game. Armies and warbands will rarely ever reach the point where they number in double digits, and instead you spend much of your time meticulously claiming your territory and harvesting the resources available in the most efficient manner to keep up the skirmishing and expansion.

It’s absolutely not for everyone, even hardcore RTS players, but as the kind of empire builder I am? It suited me very nicely and was right up my alley. I still routinely pick it up and play rounds of it to this day, though admittedly few games ever reach the conclusion simply because I’ll often try something or be reckless and then restart or come back later. Even so, it does what I want it to do and I’m glad it exists.

Super Robot Wars X

51 Chapters of turn-based strategy RPG animated in this gloriously detailed fashion, with all sorts of giant robots from all across anime and gaming represented. Nuff said.

Super Robot Wars has always been my jam, and now that they’re being localised (even if it’s occasionally questionable Southeast Asian English machine translations) for my enjoyment, I’m going to be there even more readily. Looking forward to Super Robot Wars T in 2019 quite a bit.

Dead Cells

One second, I need to copy someone’s else review of this game for my own use real quick… Okay, that joke is a bit meta, don’t mind me.

A contender for one of my favourite games of the year, this was another indie game emerging from the Early Access trenches in exquisite and well-developed fashion. A roguelite game with aspects of Metroidvania permanent progression, Dead Cells is one of the most fun and frantic action games I’ve played in forever. It encourages you to use your abilities rather than hoard them — still a real rarity to this day — by pitting you against challenging enemies and demanding that you use whatever you’ve got. Even so, a friend of mine has gotten to the very end using only the downward kick that you have by default, so the real requirement to succeed is simply skill and memorisation.

It’s quick, fluid, really nice to look at and always gives me something to push forward to and work on. It manages to hit that “difficult but fair” balance that has me hitting replay and trying again rather than just giving up in frustration. There’s always something more I could have done, and whether I had good luck with gear or not, I’m still having a blast and relish the next attempt. This is a damn good game that I heartily endorse.

Ni no Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom

Perhaps the most underwhelming of the games I’ve listed in this article, I still felt the need to address it because I did sit down with it and power through to a nearly 100% completion in the first month of its release. The original NnK was a flawed but fun JRPG that stood out among its peers due to it being co-developed by Studio Ghibli and wearing their art style and general sense of story and world on its sleeve. NnK2, by contrast, feels more playable but has far less heart. If the first was a Studio Ghibli game developed by Level 5, this was a Level 5 game trying to mimic the Studio Ghibli style, and that becomes apparent to anyone playing it for any length of time.

Even so… I enjoyed myself with this game. It hearkened back to many classic JRPG elements and references that simply don’t get utilised anymore, with city building and side character acquisition that made me sigh wistfully for a new Suikoden game. The action was fluid in both regular battles and army battles, even if it ultimately was a pathetically simple game to overcome and had less depth than some of the first Tales of series games, let alone the more recent ones that it was clearly reaching for. The story was cute enough, even if it was largely forgettable and lacked any real impact or punch until literally the final chapter.

I probably won’t remember Ni no Kuni 2 far into the future — in fact, I kept even forgetting that it came out in 2018 at all — but to say I didn’t enjoy it and to exempt it from the list would be a lie and a disservice to what it did right. Sharpen up some of the concepts here and come back again, and you have a JRPG that I’d be all about.

God of War

The original God of War was an interesting and well executed tale that drew from and heavily mirrored the classic Greek tragedies. In fact, had it not done so well and left it at the events of the first game, it would have been a really poignant take on that style… but it made money, so they made more games, and the message was lost. How, then, the original creator managed to take what Kratos had become and somehow wind that down and make it a far more focused and intimate game of character development and growth as a father still completely blows my mind. There’s a reason it got Game of the Year at the VGAs, and it was solid contender for mine as well.

A beautiful world, an incredible story with great characters, some really interesting looks and takes on Norse mythology with the lingering remnants of the Greek stories left in Kratos’ wake, some really impressive technical achievements in regards to the camera… it’s a damn fine game. The combat is really fun and the exploration and puzzles well balanced and entertaining. There are problems or nitpicks I could make with the combat that keep it from reaching the real highs of the genre or even really matching the earlier games in the series, but as a whole rather than the sum of its parts, God of War is stellar.

I can’t wait Thor the sequel… heh.

Frostpunk

I like my resource management city builders, and Frostpunk was an interesting take on that concept. The world is freezing over rapidly and much of civilisation is buried in snow, so I’m now forced to try and keep as many people alive as possible while the winter gets worse and the landscape more barren. It’s tough, it’s a tricky juggling act, and I enjoyed myself with the time I spent on it.

Ultimately, I feel it was a bit lacking in scenarios and game content, though I did pick it up after a couple of updates rather than at launch so that bothered me less than most. It also forced the ethics and morality of the situation quite hard, and while I get the angle they were going for, it ends up just feeling too much like “modern 20XX sensibilities in a completely different and alien situation”, which really doesn’t translate as well as it could. Nonetheless, it’s a fun little game and I enjoyed myself.

Battle Chasers: Nightwar

Continuing the theme of beautiful animated and designed visual takes, Battle Chasers is the continuation of a comic by legendary artist Joe Madeira that manages to perfectly encapsulate that style in game form. It’s a reasonably well designed and entertaining RPG that plays quite nicely, though what really stood out to me was that it was a game I Kickstarted a while back that ended up exceeding what I really expected it to be. Mighty Number 9 this ain’t.

Granted, I didn’t end up finishing the game as it did eventually get to a point where there was a bit of a grind I needed to overcome, and it fell at a busy time of year that saw it get swept under the rug. Still, every time I see it in my Steam list I smile a little and remind myself that one of these days I need to go back and tackle it fully.

Into the Breach

Despite a number of really great titles in 2018, Into the Breach is my favourite game of the year that doesn’t have Yakuza in the title.

The entire conceit of the game is it being a turn-based strategy with time travel elements in both plot and gameplay. Every enemy takes their moves and then displays their intended actions for you to see, knowing their line of fire, intended target, how much damage it will do and so on. The trick, then, is that your turn must be spent countering this and preventing or minimising the damage to your units, civilian structures, or mission critical objectives.

You have a variety of different units with different abilities and movesets, many of which rely on repositioning allies or enemies rather than just outright destroying them. Oft-times, the most powerful abilities you have cause so much collateral that immense care and planning must be taken. It plays out more like a puzzle game in which you have to navigate the situation to the best of your ability, and still keep some of your resources on hand to deal with the increasingly mounting threats both in each mission and then each campaign. With a lot of variety and randomness in drops and unlocks as well as a huge variety of playable units and combinations, this is frequently a game that I just pick up and play a round of, only to lose whole evenings to.

Special Mention: Dynasty Warriors 9

To close out this list, I provide a game that differs greatly from the general celebration of gaming that I have on display here. Coming out in February, I bought this game in conjunction with my Monster Hunter World order to save on shipping, assuming that as a musou title it’d be a safe bet. I got plenty of playtime out of most Warriors games and spinoffs, so surely even if this one wasn’t shaping up to be great from general previews, I’d still have fun with it… right?

No. No I did not.

For all the great games I played from 2018 and earlier last year, and for all the excellent times I had or titles I was glad to place in my ever growing collection and backlog… Dynasty Warriors 9 was not one of them. In fact, it is perhaps one of maybe two or three games in the thousands I possess that I genuinely, absolutely detest and wish to have my copy sold or even destroyed.

I hated this game. It was so bad, so unenjoyable, so barren and broken and unfun, that not only did it make me not want to play it ever again, but it even retroactively impacted my enjoyment of the entire musou subgenre. Since playing that, any attempt to maybe scratch the itch and play Fire Emblem Warriors or Warriors Orochi 3 saw me last maybe ten to fifteen minutes before putting it down in frustration and disgust. I don’t know how it managed to do that with games that I previously liked, but it did, and so there we go. I don’t want to play those games anymore.

I felt the need to close out the article with this because, again, 2018 was a fairly interesting year in both good and bad ways. The next half of this list will go back to talking about the really good games, as well as delving more deeply into my personal game of the year in Yakuza Kiwami 2. But with all the other increasingly bullshit things that happened in the industry and the sheer rampant greed and anti-consumer actions being undertaken, it serves as a grim reminder of what I serve to educate and stand against even while relishing the good times that video games provide me.

So in short, all bar the last of these are great games that I highly recommend, but Koei Tecmo can fuck right off. I’ll write up about the second half of the year soon. And while there were more games that I probably played and enjoyed in this time that I might have forgotten, I’ll try to give a nod to those too. Peace!