What is your 2018 Game of the Year? A Gamer's Lounge Community Question
2018 was a year full of some amazing games. From God of War to Red Dead 2, we’ve had our fill of epic stories. Right now a lot of us are pounding through battles in Super Smash Brothers Ultimate. And yet, a lot of games have flown under the radar. There are many great games that may have not had the budget to spend on advertising. On top of that, there are games we might consider our personal GOTY despite it coming out a year ago or earlier, simply because we just got to it or it’s so long and epic we haven’t reached the end yet. We posed the question to our Gamers Lounge audience. A little less turnout this time, but if you want to help give more substance to the next article hit up our Facebook page and join in!
Dan: My personal game of the year has been the same for several years now. The never sufficiently damned Kerbal Space Program. Like Civilization before it I just can't stop. According to steam I'm beyond 2000 hours in game and still climbing.
For this year the winter would be Phantom Doctrine, a cold war spy Thriller with turn-based combat reminiscent of XCOM. It has some major flaws but like KSP once I get interested it's hard to stop.
For Runner up I would also nominate Stellaris, the gigantic and sometimes boring 4X space Empire simulator. Like the others I just can't stop, every time I do they release an update and I get sucked in again.
Ryan (me!): In terms of games I played this year, I am voting for Final Fantasy XV. It's not the best game I've played, nor the best in the series, but I think it's good to play the long game in chunks. With the family, I never got more than an hour or two once or twice a week to play it, and I just finished it before the new Royal Edition came out. I picked it up and will be revisiting. Visiting this world in spurts prevented me from really seeing the repetitiveness and bland parts others would point out. It's a highly detailed and rich game.
Here on the site I've done 70 review articles so far in 2018! My #1 review game is likely God Wars: The Complete Legend. I love the Final Fantasy Tactics-esque gameplay and the portability of the Switch.
I haven't gotten to play any of the big names yet, but I'm probably putting the 2018 GOTY as a tie between Red Dead 2 and Spider-Man. Both of those seem right up my alley with rich stories, though Spider-Man may beat out RDR with it's quicker pacing. I'll have to play them and see!
Robert: God of War, but FFXV left the biggest impact on me. Waited what seemed like half my life for it and when it finally arrived I didn’t want it to end so I did every quest I could. Spent so much time in that world.
Despite all the flak around it, it’s good to see Final Fantasy XV get some props. It isn’t perfect, but it was still quite the ride. I wonder what Square Enix will do with the next title in the series?
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