The Top 5 Games We Played in 2018

After the knockout 2017 release schedule, many of us thought 2018 would be a quiet year of recovery. Instead, it was stuffed with far too many excellent games for any one person to play. Some games stood head and shoulders above the competition though, and we want to take a moment to praise our most beloved titles.

This year, we’re featuring top five lists from Ryan Whitwam, David Cardnal, and Grant Brunner. Not everyone here prioritizes the newest releases, but these lists will give you a good idea of which games meant something to us in 2018.

If you enjoyed a game that didn’t make our lists, feel free to give it some love in the comments below. After all, 15 slots aren’t nearly enough to cover all of this year’s superb releases.

Ryan Whitwam’s Top 5

Just Cause 4

I’ve been a fan of the Just Cause games for a long time, and I’m aware there are some issues with the latest installment of the series. Still, Just Cause 4 is the best blowing-stuff-up simulator I’ve ever experienced. Like all the previous games, Just Cause 4 is unapologetically fun and nonsensical. I love ripping fuel tanks out of the ground with balloons and launching them at enemies with tiny rockets. I love parachuting onto a jet as it streaks by in order to hijack it. I especially love flinging enemies a hundred meters through the air with a grappling hook. Just Cause 4 is just fun. (Buy on Humble Store)

Pokémon: Let’s Go

I was slightly too old to become fully immersed in the Pokémon craze as it swept North America. So, the first-gen Pokémon are the only ones to which I have any emotional attachment. That makes Pokémon: Let’s Go on the Switch a perfect way for me to enjoy Pokémon again. It’s a loose remake of the original game with a few Pokémon GO tie-ins. I don’t agree with all the changes, and the menus can be clunky, but catching and battling Pokémon is still a blast. I didn’t even touch another game for several weeks after Pokémon: Let’s Go launched. (Buy on Amazon)

Dead Cells

I don’t usually like roguelike games, but Dead Cells sucked me in. I hate it, but I love to hate it. This is a “Metroidvania” side-scroller with retro graphics and modern flair. You start in a dungeon and have to fight your way out through an ever-changing maze of levels crawling with danger. You will die a lot, and you always start over at the beginning when you do. However, you can slowly unlock new weapons and items that make you a bit more powerful each time. The limited progression mechanics help sooth my inevitable rage when I get splattered by a trap or unexpected foe, and the tight gameplay keeps me coming back. (Buy on Humble Store)

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey

I feel torn about the latest installment in the Assassin’s Creed series, but I can’t deny it was one of the best games of the year. I miss some of the stealth elements from older AC games, but the combat in Odyssey is fantastic. It’s an absolute delight to explore ancient Greece, and I appreciate the inclusion of some of the piracy mechanics I grew to love so much in Assassin’s Creed 4. The gameplay is good enough that I sometimes forget that Ubisoft is trying to get me to drop more money on microtransactions every five minutes. I also have some issues with the storytelling, which is unreasonably ham-handed at times. Still, it’s the best Assassin’s Creed game in years. (Buy on Humble Store)

Diablo III: Eternal Collection

Diablo III is not a new game, but it’s new on the Nintendo Switch in 2018. It’s the same dungeon crawling experience that launched in 2012 with all the DLC bundled together. Diablo III has character classes to suit every play style — wizard is the only correct decision, though. Blizzard knows how to keep you engaged with lots of loot drops, leveling, and new enemies to defeat. It’s still one of the best action RPGs available, and it runs well on the Switch. (Buy on Amazon)

David Cardinal’s Tops 5

Forza Motorsport 7

While Motorsport 7 isn’t new for 2018 (and it was on my 2017 list), that doesn’t mean it hasn’t changed. Forza has elected not to try to pump out an entirely new version this year, but scads of new vehicles have been added, as well as new types of racing like the Experimental Drag Racing feature. The visuals are still plenty impressive, and you have a lot of flexibility configuring the driving experience from an almost Mario Kart like extreme to a fairly sophisticated simulation of actual vehicle dynamics. (Buy on Amazon)

Civilization VI

Civilization is just about the only game I can play for multiple hours. However, I’m usually gaming to chill out, so a lot of complex background and rules make my head hurt. So many of the impressive upgrades to Civ’s sub-systems were lost on me, but the upgraded graphics are tons of fun on my 4K monitor. To tip my hand, my favorite part of Civ is beating the tar out of Barbarian encampments and neighboring City-States. It’s especially fun when the battles are animated. So I’m a sucker for the visuals of Civ VI and the improved help system that assists me in surviving the portions of the game that I’m too impatient to actually learn. (Buy on Humble Store)

Napoleon Total War

Back before wargames had moved to computers, I was an avid board war gamer. I still have a collection of my favorites from the 70s, like Napoleon at Waterloo, Panzerblitz, and the one I learned on, Avalon Hill’s Afrika Korps. This year I decided to check back in to see how closely I could recreate some of those experiences on a PC. One of the first games I found that combined battle and theater level strategy with realtime motion and animation was Napoleon at War. I love the fact that it includes both land and naval battles, and found the maritime battle animations particularly fun. Naval battles, in particular, were always difficult to simulate in turn-based board games, and a lot less fun to watch than on the computer screen in realtime. (Buy on Humble Store)

Ultimate General: Civil War

Partially motivated by a family trip to re-visit many of the famous battlefields of the Civil War, I scouted around for a digital version that allowed me to re-enact them. Coincidentally, this one showed up as a gift from some thoughtful family members. Like many games now, you can play it at many different levels from individual battles all the way up to orchestrating the entire war from the top down. As befits my style, I was more interested in the battle simulations, and found them quite compelling. It was great to be able to see the wall used for defense, or the hill that was charged, during the day, then play out those experiences that evening — although always sobering to think about how bloody and tragic those campaigns were. Compared to the rigidity of hex-grid-based board games, the fluidity of real time direction of troops across carefully-modeled terrain is pretty exciting. (Buy on Humble Store)

Forza Horizon 3 and 4

If you’ve ever wanted to drive a vintage Jaguar through walls and hedges at high speed, and come out the other side, this is the game for you. There is something to be said for a game where you get points both for “clean driving” and for “wreckage.” It is more a fantasy escape than a racing sim, but there are tons of cool cars, and interesting worlds to explore. As a fan of previous versions of Horizon, I was really looking forward to H4, both because of the UK setting and of course yet more goodies. However, I’ve found it hard to get it to work well with my Thrustmaster TX wheel. I’m still looking for settings that feel like real driving, and the game insists on throwing up menus asking me to push “Button 23” or various other numbers that are totally different than the standard mappings — and from using the same wheel on H3. I’m looking forward to getting that sorted out and just-plain enjoying the game. (Buy on Amazon)

Grant Brunner’s Top 5

Florence

This mobile game came out in February of this year, and I still think about it every few days. What appears as a motion comic on the surface is actually a story-focused game that uses its mechanics to convey emotions in a way I’ve never seen before. There are barely any words to be found, but Florence communicates constantly. The jigsaw-like way that conversations are handled, the physical act of competing over shelf space, and the soul-crushing aspects of working while you’re unhappy are impactful in a way I never expected from a phone game. (Buy on the App Store or Google Play)

Donut County

Donut County is based on a tweet from a parody Twitter account, it leans heavily on internet humor, and the primary character is an asshole raccoon. Needless to say, nothing about this game should work. Instead, it’s an incredibly charming puzzle game that will force a smile from anyone who gives it a chance. The tone and gameplay mechanic can certainly be separated, but the clones pale in comparison to the real thing. (Buy on Amazon)

Yakuza 6: The Song of Life

These past few years have been wonderful for Yakuza fans in the west. We’ve received a flood of subtitled releases, and the appearance of this year’s Yakuza 6 is our first taste of Sega’s Dragon Engine. Kiryu’s final journey was definitely entertaining, but much of my personal enjoyment revolved around wandering the streets of Japan in first-person. I desperately want to make the trip half-way around the world, but I’m afraid Yakuza 6 is as close as I’m going to get anytime soon. (Buy on Amazon)

God of War

I was part of the chorus of voices poo-pooing the idea of yet another God of War title, but Sony Santa Monica proved us all wrong. This clever soft reboot doesn’t toss any of Kratos’s legacy, but delivers a different experience on every axis. Kratos is much more than a simple rage delivery device this time around, and his relationships with those around him have depth that we’d never have expected. And while the combat system doesn’t bare much resemblance to the PS2 games, it does the series proud with an entirely new conception of what it means to fight against the gods. (Buy on Amazon)

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey

I’ve liked most AssCreed games, but I’ve never loved one until Odyssey. It’s exceedingly clear that Ubisoft saw what CD Projeckt Red was doing with The Witcher series, and used their many resources to push Odyssey to become much closer to a full-on RPG. Melissanthi Mahut’s performance of Kassandra is top-notch, we’re rewarded handily for exploring the beautiful Mediterranean landscape, and the tidal wave of content is more than a little overwhelming. I’m forty or so hours in, and I’m sure that I’ll sink in dozens more in the weeks and months to come. (Buy on Humble Store)

Continue reading

NASA: Asteroid Could Still Hit Earth in 2068

This skyscraper-sized asteroid might still hit Earth in 2068, according to a new analysis from the University of Hawaii and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

MSI’s Nvidia RTX 3070 Gaming X Trio Review: 2080 Ti Performance, Pascal Pricing

Nvidia's new RTX 3070 is a fabulous GPU at a good price, and the MSI RTX 3070 Gaming X Trio shows it off well.

Nvidia: RTX 3000 GPUs Will Remain Hard to Find Into 2021

There's no hope for a near-term improvement in RTX 3000 GPU availability. Shortages will likely continue through the end of this year and into the beginning of 2021.

SpaceX Starlink Beta Could Expand As Soon As January 2021

SpaceX has been launching Starlink internet satellites for the last 18 months or so, and all they managed to do for most of that time is tick off astronomers. However, the first users have been able to log onto SpaceX's Starlink internet service, and their impressions are good. This is just a small beta test, but SpaceX is apparently planning a wider test early next year.