Saturday Morning Gaming: Looking back at 2019

I spent most of 2019 playing games from previous years. Red Dead Redemption 2, Cultist Simulator, (the original) Diablo, Into the Breach, Mutant Year Zero, God of War (2018), Slay the Spire, Spider-Man, and the Batman Arkham games (I’m in the middle of Arkham Origins and I can’t believe how awesome that game was and how well it holds up and I wish there were a PS4 remaster available in hardcopy).

The games from this year were Void Bastards, Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order, and The Outer Worlds. I’m kinda playing Disco Elysium too (and it’s an AMAZING game) but it’s intense and difficult to get into for prolonged periods. It’s exceptionally similar to Planescape: Torment but instead of being a member of the undead who wakes up on a slab and doesn’t remember anything, you’re an alcoholic who wakes up and, at first, doesn’t remember anything. The dialog choices are amazing but… man. It’s an intense game.

The hidden jewel I stumbled across was Glass Masquerade. A delightful jigsaw puzzle game that feels relaxing as heck to play.

I also played a bunch of board games for the first time and they include both Catacombs and The Captain is Dead but the one that blew me away was Crash Pandas and it’s a free PDF. Seriously, I can’t believe how much fun it was. It was fun to the point where I’d say that my “Game of the Year” was that. You need to play it with your group. It’s that good.

I’ve no doubt that my look back at 2020 will have a similar opening statement to the one above: “I played a lot of games from previous years… Batman Arkham Knight, Middle-earth: Shadow of War, Jedi Fallen Order, Ratchet and Clank…” but it’ll also have a paragraph devoted to Cyberpunk 2077 (and, if we’re lucky, a paragraph dedicated to Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2).

All in all, not the best year for video games (I base that on the number of 2018 games I played in 2018 compared to the number of 2009-2014 games I played in 2019) but a good one for tabletop gaming in general.

So… what did you play?

(Featured images is The Flight of Lot by Gustave Doré. Painting is in the public domain.)