Blog: 2019 in Games

This is my third annual yearly games wrap up and I'm taking a little bit to look at what I played in 2019, what I enjoyed playing in 2019 and how 2019 was in games over all.

The Hooflepuffs, true heroes.

Top Games by Time Played

In total I’ve played 60 different games in 2019 and played for a total of 730 hours. The games I played the least were Starfox, StuntFX and Puyo Puyo, all from the SNES Classics on Switch. Mario Golf: World Tour was in the middle of my pack at just above 2 hours and by a pretty incredible margin I played Fire Emblem: Three Houses for almost 180 hours, more than 120 hours more than the next game.

By play time, my top 10 games of 2019 were:

1. Fire Emblem: Three Houses - 179
2. Super Mario Odyssey - 58
3. Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival - 57
4. Dragon Quest XI S - 48
5. Breath of Fire II - 42
6. Pokémon Go - 38
7. Xenonauts - 29
8. Europa Universalis 4 - 27
9. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 25
10. Fire Emblem: Awakening - 20

Last year I was concerned about how much I played games unintentionally. This year, I think I did a good job actually choosing what to play and enjoying the things I picked.

Fire Emblem: Three Houses is a very, very good game. It’s also a game with a very large amount of content. It has 4 endings and each of those has enough difference that as you play through the game there are enough things to keep it interesting. I played the first play though on easy and the second on hard which was about the right amount of difficulty. I played the third on easy because I was hoping to see more of the game, but honestly found that it dragged out a lot.

I might not have played quite so much more but I managed to get very sick with a nasty flue for most of late August (which screwed up my teaching schedule something fierce). The switch in general and FE:3H in particular are a really nice addition to being so tired that standing and walking to the bathroom is about your daily allotment of energy.

Super Mario Odyssey was also a ton of fun and so easy to pick up and enjoy at any point. I found it didn’t play as nicely on mobile as it does on the TV, but other than that it was always a joy to play.

Mario is never bothered.

Top Games by My Rating

This year my favourite games were (in alphabetical order) :

• Cadence of Hyrule
• Chrono Trigger
• Fire Emblem: Three Houses
• Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
• Ogre Battle 64
• Opus Magnum
• Super Mario Odyssey
• Tetris / Tetris 99

I don’t look back at my scores/ratings from previous years, so this is a subjective view from late 2019. Nintendo certainly gets the bulk of my happy time this year. Cadence of Hyrule is a real delight on top of Fire Emblem, Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey. I’m usually a little more conservative about Ogre Battle 64, but honestly I do love that mess of a game. Tetris continues along, even if I did land on 99 rather than effect 9or any of the others). And of course Chrono Trigger is still one of the very best games of all time.

Puns and boss fights. Although you might want to check it out for the music.

Thoughts

I played a lot of great games in 2019 and I’m generally pleased with what I chose to play and how I chose to play it. 2019 had a lot of really good games in it and having missed out on the switch for a number of years I was able to play the best it had to offer.

I’m looking forward to playing more in 2020. I’m especially excited about Animal Crossing: New Horizons, but I’m sure there are going to be lots of interesting things to play. I’m also putting a lot of effort into organizing my work / play time so that I’ll have the time to regularly sit down and enjoy things without feeling like I ought to be doing something else.

I feel like we’re at a point of excellence in games and hopefully we’ll see more creative and enjoyable games come out this year. I also want to make sure I take the time to enjoy the games which are interesting and the games which stand as a more complete art.

The home we come back to.