Hey has anyone noticed that this was a really good year for video games? Who knew! Here’s my top ten from a wild year, and only half of them are first-party Nintendo titles!
10. WarioWare: Move It!
You give me a WarioWare game and I’m going to at LEAST like it. Even with one of the more disappointing entries – like the previous Switch title Get it Together – there’s such a fun mystery of what dumbass thing the game is going to make you do next.
The difference between a good and great WarioWare game lies in whether or not you see yourself playing it beyond that first stretch of discovering all the minigames. Move It not only has a ton of great motion-based minigames, it also has some surprisingly robust multiplayer modes. One of which is basically a Mario Party but with even more random bullshit, which is impressive. There aren’t many Switch titles that are as well suited for making yourself a group of slightly-to-severely inebriated friends laugh and look like jackasses. It’s a game that I can see myself pulling out for random play sessions years from now.
9. Dave the Diver
If WarioWare is a barrel of hundreds of microgames, Dave the Diver feels like a handful of…I don’t know, bigger than microgames? I thought I had an analogy I could work with there but it fell apart. Anyway, this “indie” title feels like several disparate games that come together into one surprisingly coherent package. The loop works great – go scuba diving and collect fish, then head to the restaurant at night and serve up some sushi. It gives you that “okay, one more round” feeling that makes for an ideal plane game.
Eventually it does get a little overloaded and overlong. I kind of fell off after it kept adding systems twenty hours in, but the scope and depth of the game is really impressive. Maybe I’ll get back to it at some point in the future, but for now I’m just glad I had it to help me time travel through numerous flights in the back half of the year.
8. Alan Wake II
When I was four or five hours into Alan Wake 2, it was tentatively sitting at my #2 spot on this list. There were several reasons for that – the annoying light mechanic during Alan sections, the story that spirals past the point of coherence, etc., but there’s no denying that Remedy created something special here. Numerous games in the studio’s catalog are referenced or deeply interwoven into the story in a way that feels additive. They’ve always played around with in-game FMV elements, but it’s never felt better or more appropriate here. For all that “We Sing” has been referenced, performed on stage, and praised in the months since release, it’s still impressive to see a moment that’s so, so different than anything seen in a game before.
It’s not a perfect game, and it’s one that dropped several notches for me by the end, but Alan Wake 2 is memorable in ways that the large majority of big budget releases only wish to be.
7. Mortal Kombat 1
I think many (including myself) expected MK1 to be more of a hard reboot than it was, but this “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” approach is hard to be mad at when it’s this good. Mortal Kombat has always been known more for its style, characters, universe, and controversy than its fighting mechanics, but the new Kameo system really helps it appeal to genre fans of various ability levels. I’ve never been some Evo-caliber fighting game fan, but a well-timed juggle into a Kameo attack always makes me feel like I did something right.
Netherrealm also included a great mix of franchise favorites with some of the most gruesome fatalities ever. It’s wild that after this many games and hundreds of fatalities, this series still manages to shock with its disgusting and hilarious animations.
6. Super Mario RPG
Nostalgia played no role in my enjoyment of this remake. I had played it exactly once, and it was in one sitting during my Guinness World Record setting Mario marathon (back when THEY MEANT SOMETHING dammit). Due to those circumstances, I barely remember anything of the game so I went into the remake with fresh eyes.
Hey, it turns out that Super Mario RPG is great. If more JRPGs were like this, I probably wouldn’t have hated the genre growing up. It barely has any talking, the talking that IS there is charming and funny, and you get to actually do stuff during the turn-based battles. It’s also like 11 hours long. Let’s go back in time and make every JRPG like this.