The State of the Art: Games 2019

I love gaming, but unlike pop culture arenas like TV or books, I generally don't seek out the newest and buzziest titles. I stick with the classics (or spend the entire year trying to catch up with recommended games from the year before). In looking over my list for 2019, I only played four new games (three video games, one tabletop). At least nobody can accuse me of sticking to one genre, as my 2019 video games were an RPG (The Outer Worlds), a choose-your-own-adventure-style mystery (Erica), and... Well, an explicit gay farming simulator (Morningdew Farms). If I had to pick a favorite from among those, Erica would easily take the top spot. It was well-acted and well-written, and as a lifelong fan of both mysteries and FMV games, how could I not enjoy it? Especially given that I controlled the action from my phone, which was novel.

In fact, if there was an overarching theme of the year, you don't need to be a detective to realize that it's Mystery:

Erica (2019)
Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors - The Nonary Games #1 (2017 re-release)
Virtue's Last Reward - The Nonary Games #2 (2017 re-release)
A Case of Distrust (2018)
The Shapeshifting Detective (2018)
Ace Attorney #1 (2001)
Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments (2014)
Murdered: Soul Suspect (2013)
Return of the Obra Dinn (2018)
Everyone's Gone to the Rapture (2015)
Contradiction: Spot the Liar (2015)
The Council (2018)

The next time someone complains that gaming is just a bunch of mindless shoot 'em ups, point them to the list above and explain that every single one of them are won using logic, exploration, and conversation.

Cooperative video games are rarer for me, but Tiddy and I did manage to make our way through Trine (2009) and part of Trine 2 (2011), as well as teaming up in Dungeons & Dragons Online (2006). Cooperative tabletop is much more my speed, and this year brought a lot of fun experiences via Mansions of Madness - 2nd edition (2016), the Path to Carcosa expansion of the Arkham Horror card game (2017), Gloomhaven: Forgotten Circles (2019), Apocrypha (2017), and two campaigns of the Pathfinder card game: Rise of the Runelords (2013), and the one we're playing now, Skull and Shackles (2014). If I'm not allowed to pick my wonderful D&D gaming groups as my favorite tabletops of the year, the honor would have to go to Path to Carcosa. Lola and Sefina almost made it to the end before succumbing to madness!

If picking a game of the year was difficult, picking a favorite game of the decade was simplicity itself. There were some strong contenders from all over the map, from BioShock Infinite to Dragon Age: Inquisition to The Stanley Parable. When all is said and done, though, how could it be anything but Portal 2 (2011)? It can't. Graphics that still hold up today. Challenging but not impossible puzzle design. Writing and voice-over performances beyond compare. A co-op version that is actively wonderful. The cake may have been a lie, but this isn't: This game is perfect.

The choice of my favorite tabletop of the decade was similarly simple, as long as I'm allowed to pick a game family. The Fantasy Flight Arkham Horror series has absorbed countless hours of my life, and I don't regret a single one of them. A couple of the games may be duds, sure, but Eldritch Horror (2013) and the Arkham Horror card game (2016) are such endless fun that they've spun me off into other areas, like reading a short story collection about the investigators and designing a tabletop RPG around them. Turns out trying to prevent the apocalypse is actually pretty damned enjoyable.