POLL is YOU: Thirteenth Coint and Plick results (best games of 2019)

i guess i played less than i thought this year but was more tuned into 'games media' given that the list of things i didn't play here is longer than the ones I did:

WOULD LIKE TO HAVE PLAYED SO I COULD VOTE FOR

71 - Katana Zero - 3 points / 1 Vote
33 - The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa - 20 points / 2 Votes
25 - Void Bastards - 25 points / 1 First-place vote / 1 Vote
23 - Sayonara Wild Hearts - 29 points / 2 Votes
16 - Return of the Obra Dinn - 32 points / 2 Votes
14 - Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night - 35 points / 2 Votes
13 - A Short Hike - 35 points / 3 Votes
12 - Hypnospace Outlaw - 35 points / 1.33 First-place votes / 2 Votes
7 - Death Stranding - 81 points / 1 First-place vote / 6 Votes
6 - Fire Emblem: Three Houses - 82 points / 1.5 First-place votes / 6 Votes
5 - Control - 85 points / 2 First-place votes / 4 Votes
2 - Baba Is You - 109 points / 1 First-place vote / 7 Votes

and Astral Chain, I guess, I just bought that, on sale on the Europe Switch shop rn fyi --

WOULD HAVE VOTED FOR
43 - Ape Out - 10 points / 1 Vote
such a good game: seems to apply an older-generational ethos to modern control standards, which I liked a lot; it depends on dual analogue and shoulder triggers, but it has a narrower list of verbs than some 8-bit games. if you prefer the NES version of ‘Vampire Killer’ to any done on a computer with a better sound chip then you should play this

40 - Disco Elysium - 12 points / 2 Votes
this slaps but it’s just barely a videogame. probably the most fun I had reading an RPG setting book this year, though

21 - Tetris 99 - 30 points / 4 Votes
I played this for an hour at a friend’s apartment the day it came out and then I went home and cancelled my Nintendo Switch Online membership and put my Switch in a box underneath a lot of other things

17 - Dicey Dungeons - 30 points / 1 First-place vote / 3 Votes
masterclass in how to do kitchen-sink design—rock solid core mechanic and then every breakable version of it implemented on top.

WOULD NOT HAVE VOTED FOR

10 - Slay the Spire - 39 points / 5 Votes
kind of the opposite of what i just said about Dicey Dungeons

1 - Untitled Goose Game - 109 points / 1.33 First-place votes / 9 Votes
never before has the experience of playing a game been so close to the experience of watching its trailer

39 - Resident Evil 2 - 14 points / 2 Votes
a layer of ugly modern triple-A gloss on the skeleton of a bad game, all its period charm destroyed. also the environments have foot high barriers you have to walk around which is surely unforgivable in 2020

11 - The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening - 39 points / 3 Votes
a layer of ugly modern double-A gloss on what was previously the best Nintendo game

69 - Cat Quest 2 - 4 points / 1 Vote
get out

always enjoy your writeups, thomp!

oh i voted for slay the spire too i think quite high up. some of the best turn-based rpg combat there is, combined with roguelike mechanics and deckbuilding.

link's awakening remake was unfortunately not much of an improvement on the original game which i didn't rate very highly either but it'd been ages since i'd played it so i figured i'd give it another try. it had a lot of quality of life changes for the better but the combat in 2D zeldas is still very awkward and the puzzles were rarely very interesting.

bloodstained was ok but underwhelming, kinda castlevania-by-numbers rather than castlevania at its best and certainly didn't live up to symphony of the night. it was much more linear, played even more awkwardly, ugly graphical style etc.

particularly enjoyed thomp's tetris 99 review. Ape Out looks great as well.

My votes, in no particular order:
Sekiro: I loved this. i mean really it is *just* a very well done combat mechanic. i think there's always been part of me, ever since i was little, that while i enjoyed computer games, felt the gap between the necessary formal abstraction between game combat, say, and the principles that you know would have to govern any real world activities: that is to say, a sense of equivalence between your reflexes and ability to respond immediately contextually to an equally matched, or more powerful opponent. maybe 'real world' here is wrong, maybe i mean 'in films' and the 'play associated with films' (particularly action films). Necessarily in a game of course these are always matters of managing a formal set of responses. I now think games that are aware of and play on the formal abstraction of the world's constraints in different and obvious ways are better and ultimately more enjoyable (Michael Brough <3) , but there's still an arcade bit of me that loves when these mechanics are subsumed into 'film' type scenarios.

A lot of has been made of the way fromsoftware projects' combat has progressed: dark souls: shield up, hit box, roll, retreat, shield up. bloodborne trying to get round that, by allowing you to recoup health by attacking within a short time frame of being hit, to sekiro's conversion of stamina into a defensive capacity visibly shared and depleted both by you and your opponents. this leads to incredibly intense and reflexive combat, a combination of attack and defence, considerably favoured to defence. The precision with which this is all accomplished is exceptional, which was really brought home to me when I tried to play Fallen Order

i mean, really it's pretty much the same, in its closest analogy, with getting into the zone in games like Defender, or Gridzone (Geoff Minter's finest). The fact that it's associated with exciting sword clashing sounds, a wider feudal japan setting, and some very good boss fights (yes the Guardian Ape fight is hilarious and justifiably well known, but the first Genichiro Ashina fight - well I guess the second - at the top of the fortress was just fantastic). I mean, in some senses, it's fairly limited like all fromsoftware games, and lacks the more cryptic mythology, that does so much for Bloodborne (a better game imo). But the sense of achievement from advancement, and the fact that the balance between just getting better at it, and griding/collecting things to get you OP, is a lot more geared to the first than the second, produces a sense of overcoming the game as much through skill as through repetition.

The Outer Wilds: someone mentioned upthread that the control mechanism was pretty disorientating, which was my first response, but i think led this being my favourite game. it feels very *manual*, getting up to space, and finding where you need to go. a continual and quite charming sense of discovery, where death is both frustrating and doesn't matter. omg the planet with the f'ing tornados on it though give me a break. Through Sekiro, this game and to Death Stranding, it's interesting how much representations of *tactility* and 'realistic' control in environments, have mattered to me in these games.

The Outer Worlds: so i also really liked this? for reasons that don't seem entirely obvious to me now, it was the closest I'd felt to playing in an episode of, say, the first season of Altered Carbon (that is *not* to say this is a traditional noir cyberpunk environment - OW is quite lurid and bright - but because of a sense of detection and continually new encounters you're not sure how to manage). I think the game's strength is in its distinctive characters and ambiguous/ambivalent decision trees. after initially feeling that, say, compared to the open world of Fallout 3, it was too constrained, that structure ended up providing a good framework for the actions and fighting that takes place within the game.

Death Stranding: Amazingly tactile walking, batshit Hideo Kojima OTT storylines and acting, and never got bored of the moments where you work out where you've got to go, look up at the distant horizon, and see the long black strands and grey clouds of time fall in the distance, before you hitch your backpack up on your back again, check you've got the equipment you think you'll need, and start clambering and slipping over the landscape towards it. Didn't expect to enjoy it at *all*, was expecting it to suck. It was ace.

Sorry, I've been really laboured here. i'm not really used to writing about computer games, but i have enjoyed some this year. Outside of this Obra Dinn, and always Cinco Paus, were probably my most played. Oh also i spent a load of time playing sonic racing on my iPhone, which totally sucked.

Fizzles, since you will appreciate it, I want to brag for my partner: she has the 12th highest score in cinco paus (2239 em 50 jogos) and plays it all of the time. I voted for it as non-2019 game of the year just because of the degree it dominates our lives

holy mother of god. that’s a score.

yeah, it's insane. it's strange to say, but when i think back about this time of my life, cinco paus is going to be there. it's going to be hilarious if i end up on a deathbed trying to explain cinco paus to my confused family and friends of whatever year it is. "...and....there was a brough-like...cinco paus...those treasure-stealing frogs...they were the bane of her existence...auuuugh...but that's a roguelike for you....uuuugggh....that's a broughlike...aaghh" death

i really need to give outer wilds some more time. i explored only a planet or two before death stranding came along and interrupted my progress.

gratified to note im still in the top 50 on Cinco Paus. I was top ten in 868 hack back in the day and I have achieved nothing since.

i need to get a job again so i can buy a ps4 and play death stranding and sekiro but once i have a job again i won't have free time to play death stranding and sekiro

the eternal adult gaming struggle

that's why i just cracked open my copy of Asura's Wrath from 2012, no joke

same here thomp except all I want is P5 The Royal

oh, that one too, shit

i just played through a short hike and yes, i would have absolutely voted for it

Another one

Coint & Plick 2020 - ILX's best games of the year - NOMINATIONS (Deadline: February 26, noon Eastern)

VOTE NOW

Coint & Plick VOTING thread - best games of 2020 (also campaign here) DEADLINE: MARCH 13