The Fuchsia crew use their sinister left hands to play some games. Nanners and Kay plunge back into Minecraft. Conman checks out part-RTS/part-TTB game Age of Wonders: Planetfall, admires the voice acting for John Cena in WWE 2K19, then drags Brady into some Counterstrike after rage-uninstalling Apex Legends. Brady investigates some supernatural weirdness in Unavowed. Kitty continues makin’ Marios, Aaron plays through procedurally-generated metroidvania Chasm, and Kay takes time out of her spaghetti trail around Minecraft to ride elevators with Conman in Wolfenstein: Youngblood. This one was (kind of obviously) recorded some time ago, but two months in the Audacity oven couldn’t improve the audio quality of some of the voice tracks. Sorry for it sounding a little rough!

It’s back to business as usual for Fuchsia. Nanners plays hot new titles GTA V and Borderlands 2. Kitty serves as Aaron’s guide through the nine circles of Hell in Dante’s Inferno. Brady switches between building zombie survival colonies in They Are Billions to building a kingdom full of job opportunities in order to collect love points in Dragon Quest Builders 2. Jon wrestles with the pacing and final boss of Bloodstained. And there’s just a brief discussion of Super Mario Maker 2 that only takes up roughly half of this episode.

Seriously, could no one hear us this entire time? Jon, Aaron, and Brady recap the games they’ve been playing since February. We talk Destiny 2 raids, Russian survival simulators, and old women shouting “Kill those murderers dead!” over and over again.

We did it. We made a list. Listen to it and agree, or don’t. That was 2018 games, we are on to these 2019 games now, so it doesn’t matter! 10. Destiny 2: Forsaken 9. Tetris Effect 8. Overcooked 2 7. Red Dead Redemption II 6. Celeste 5. Into the Breach 4. Monster Hunter: World 3. Dead Cells 2. Marvel‘s Spider-Man ™ 1. God of War

Time to really make some cuts and have some fights. We trim the list down to our ten and get ready to do some ordering. More Malört is drank.

In 2018 I made the statement “Well, at least making a list is easy since not many good games are out yet this year.” At the time I was half joking, hoping that we’d have a light year and that making this list would be less difficult. That didn’t even up being the case and we got a strong line up of good games. Here are a bunch of games that I really enjoyed this year. *Just a quick note, some of my games are missing screenshots due to an incident with my PS4 eating a USB stick. This will be rectified eventually. Let’s start by talking about my categories. Most feels: Return of the Obra Dinn Ouch. This is a hard one to write since I can’t fully express how this game made me feel. The graphics gave me a real sense of nostalgia for the early 90s edutainment games I played as a kid. The sound design and voice acting gave me goose bumps at times. This game felt more real in many ways than any other this year just do to the atmosphere it could create. Biggest disappointment:  Sea of Thieves Heading into a storm. So I want to start by saying, what is their isn’t inherently bad. This game is just very thin. The sailing, the weather, the water, and the instruments all lead to the best sailing game I’ve ever played. The fighting, the mission design, and the game play loops just don’t cut it. If they add enough to this game it could be great. Until then it’s just not worth my time. Funniest: CHUCHEL Everyone hear seems to be having fun. I don’t know with this game. It just made me chuckle a lot and it’s fun. Prettiest: God Of War The sparing use of color, the creative environment, the excellent enemy and ally design. It just looks great. Most addicting: Far Cry 5 America Let me start by saying; the story telling is bad, the plot is dumb, and the characters are often terrible. The game play, for me at least, is fun, and I enjoy playing this a lot. After beating the story I started a new game plus run through and played a good deal of the user created content with Brady. Best early access game: Deep Rock Galactic I really like this game. The missions, even though you only have 4-5 types feel different enough due to the perceptually generated level structures. The classes work well together, and the weapon handling is good. This is an excellent 4 person coop game. The one that got Away: Hitman 2 I did it again. Another excellent looking Hitman game came out, and I just missed it. I’ll try to do better in the future. Of Course, I’ll Rebuy that!: System Shock: Enhanced Editon System Shock was the first first-person shooter I ever played. I played it in 97 or 98 while in middle school after finding a copy at Sam’s Club for 98 cents in a bargain bin. I have always enjoyed that game, and I really wanted to go back since a full remake is in the works. It’s still fun, and I plan on beating it. Shame: PubG I already said a lot about PubG last year, so I’ll keep it short. I had to uninstall this game, just so I’d get to other games.

It’s that time where we sit down with a large list of games and slowly whittle it down. Join us as we make some early cuts in part one of creating our group top ten list.

Aaron returns to us with talk of Destiny and pins. Kitty talks about what games can be with Florence. Conman finds a Battle Royale he doesn’t hate. Kay wonders why she’s playing Monster Hunter and Nanners Plays every game. We also talk about Anthem and how it seems fine.

The year was 2018. Video games released. Some were good. Humans attempted to sort them by order of greatness. This is such an attempt. 10. Gris Gris is a beautiful 2D platformer exploration game. There is no dialogue and yet it manages to tell an emotional story through puzzles, discovery, and color. It takes about 4 hours to play through the entire game so there is no reason to skip this gem. 9. Octopath Traveler Finding the right attacks to break enemy defenses made sure combat in Octopath Traveler was always interesting. Experimenting with the dual class system introduced some fun combinations. Sadly every chapter for each character was an isolated story with the same structure so it was lacking some of the traditional JRPG character bonding I look for. 8. Red Dead Redemption 2 Despite the tedious systems and overly structured story missions I enjoyed my time with RDR 2. The game is very pretty, has excellent voice acting, and it’s always fun to do cowboy stuff. I liked finding out what’s next for the gang and it definitely filled in bits of story from the first game which was a nice touch. Exploring the games vast systems like hunting and bounties were some of the more interesting parts for me. 7. Ni No Kuni II Ni No Kuni II is a charming JRPG that also manages to combine elements of strategy games and world building. The story is interesting while also being a little off beat. The real time combat is a bit simple but still fun and engaging. The graphics are gorgeous. All around it’s a game that tries to do a lot and somehow manages to accomplish most of it very well. I recommend increasing the difficulty as it can be way too easy otherwise. Plus the harder difficulty rewards you with even better loot. 6. Subnautica Subnautica quickly became one of my favorite crafting survival games. It does such a great job managing the exploration, risk, and reward loop. The joy of exploration keeps you going and as soon as you craft that next impressive thing something bigger shows up and puts you back in your place. For a survival game it actually has an impressive story with plenty of mouth drop moments. 5. Far Cry 5 Far Cry 5 was not without its share of issues. However I had a huge amount of fun playing through the campaign, both solo and co-op. The setting felt unique and made for a crazy but still interesting story. The gun play feels great and you can get into some real shenanigans with all the vehicles. The aggressive animals never ceased to make me laugh each time they came out of nowhere to maul some poor civilian. The game even has a built in level editor and a lobby system to play through user generated content which was like a cherry on top of a delicious sundae. 4. Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey I’m a sucker for Assassin’s Creed games even with the trend of the newer ones going heavy on the RPG elements. The Ancient Greek setting was interesting and it was fun to do quests for historical figures like Socrates and Aspasia. The mercenaries system felt like a cross between the wanted system in GTA games and Shadow of War’s nemesis system. I also enjoyed hunting down cultists by first unlocking clues about them. Overall I think Origins is a more cohesive game but Odyssey was still a blast to play. 3. Dead Cells Dead Cells was a perfect blend of roguelike and metroid...

Night in the Woods After the group’s rave reviews of Night in the Woods, I decided to give it a try. I was expecting a walking simulator at best with some cute graphics and what we have come to call “feels”. I was pleasantly surprised to find a game rich in humor, relatable characters, and a world I still want to go back to. Casual gamers can skip the fluff and complete the main story in about 8 hours, but I highly recommend enjoying the journey- stop and smell the Pastabilities. Every recurring character is worth having daily conversations with. The world of NITW also has its own slang and mythology. I’ve spent a large amount of time in Schuylkill County, PA, and watching the changing faces and places in (town) was the perfect familiar, Coal Country-town elegy for me to escape to during the garbage fire that was 2018. Writing this has made me want to play it again. Overcooked 2 My husband and I have put 60 hours into this silly little co-op game. To put that in perspective, I probably do about 1 1/2 hours of real cooking per weekday. I could have made, like, 40 *real* meals in the time we’ve spent on this. No regrets here- Overcooked 2 is more than a cash-grab sequel. It’s a genuine improvement with new controls, recipes, kitchens, and everything else you could want. It’s also had several rounds of free DLC. If you derive  any satisfaction from teamwork or time management, give it a go.  Crawl Finally, a game you can be bad at and still have fun! I picked up a controller to try Crawl during Extra Life because we needed a 4th player. 2 hours later, I didn’t want to give that controller up. 3-on-1 is a tough structure for a game, but Crawl feels balanced. It’s not impossible for the starting hero to win, and it’s equally feasible that someone else will possess the body at a critical moment to go to the final boss battle. If you’re good at rogue-lites, you’ll probably have a good time. If you’re not, you will likely have an even better time turning yourself into a chair, buzzsaw, or flamethrower.  Super Mario Party Everyone hates Mario Party. I get it. What started as a really fun, mostly skill-based franchise quickly devolved into “participation stars for everyone”. Every title after 3 got more bloated with items, candy, excessive dialog, and dynamics that made no sense (why would everyone want to be in one car??) Super Mario Party for the Switch is a return to form. It has multiple game modes, including a fun co-op adventure, but the basic game has been pared down to its original elements. It’s the game I’ve been waiting for since about 2005. Stardew Valley Once again, word of mouth got me to sit down with a game I didn’t expect to like. I’ve played several farming/ town simulators, including some of the best-loved (Animal Crossing, Rune Factory), and they just don’t hook me. I’m not a completionist, and I don’t like monotonous gameplay with minimal story. Luckily, Stardew Valley isn’t a game that demands the player take any specific approach. You can play for the story, or play until you have every in-game achievement to restore the community center. Or, you can be a weirdo like me and see how far you can get in the game without livestock, and only befriend the weird gamer girl and the crabby old man. The graphics are delightful, the music is soothing, and the farming was entertaining enough that I played for about 13 hours.  Star Ocean 5: Integrity and Faithlessness Star Ocean 3: Til’ the End Of Time is one of the most underrated JRPGs out there. It has a strong story, a more active battle system (think Tales of Symphonia) than the sta...