 So it's another one of the year's slow period for games, which means I've been scrounging around for things to make a video about. I've been replaying all of the Souls games in a row, aside from Demon's Souls because Sony is too stupid to just re-release it on the PS4 and take my $60, and I've been playing Doom on Nightmare difficulty, and finally I've been replaying Fallout 76 in an effort to do another look at it now that the outrage has finally died down. That'll almost certainly be my next video by the way. But meanwhile, it's time to look back at 2019 in games. Last year I didn't do a Best of the Year video because I don't get any views on the positive videos and because I honestly didn't think there really were enough great games to bother with. This year, there were way, way too many excellent games. So many that a top 10 was just totally impossible. So many that I spent like a bunch of time debating with myself about whether I should make three short videos of the best shooters, best RPGs, best Indies, etc. But in the end, I just wrote down all the games I considered excellent and let it rip. So without further ado, 2019, one of the best years in recent memory, after the logo. I suppose a word on format is in order? I'm not going to drive myself nuts trying to objectively numerically rank games that were all great. But I'm also not going to say I thought they were all equally good. So as a cop-out, I'm going to list them in a row in ascending order but say that the actual rankings are hazy. I don't really believe, for instance, that number 11 is significantly better or worse than number 10. What follows is a rough attempt to rank the year's top games in my not terribly humble opinion. Here we go. Number 19, Hades. Hades is still in early access and it's changed up quite a bit this year as it moves closer to what will probably be a late 2020 release. The developers have added new items, moved its interesting story forward, and added a new level boss and some weapons. They've also significantly worked on gameplay feel by addressing many of my concerns. The long cooldown after each dodge has been removed and weapons and skills rebalanced. When I played this game early this year, I was sure it would end up as one of the best but this has been just an absurd year in games. It is an epic exclusive but if you like roguelites and you like supergiant's previous games, you will probably like this. I went back and played it recently and it has gotten consistently better in a variety of ways. I made a whole video about it from earlier this year if you want to get like 40 minutes of description about the game. Even in its current state, it's a great value and features the best story, acting, and probably art of any roguelite ever. And it is just very fun to play. With so many games to buy this year, it would have been very easy to forget about Hades. If you're looking for something to play now, pick it up. Otherwise, keep an eye out for when it finally fully releases sometime next year. Even in its unfinished state, I put like 45 hours into it and had a total blast. 18. Dead Cells. Dead Cells released a couple of years ago and it was one of my best games of 2017. But it's received consistent updates, patches, and small DLCs and in the last year a lot has changed. Enough new stuff has been added and the game is still so damn good that I thought it deserved to be mentioned. In its current state, Dead Cells is just about perfect. In my video about it, when it was still in early access, I made a bunch of suggestions about how the game could be improved and over the last two years nearly all of those things have been either implemented or perfected. Build synergies have been fully realized. Stats and weapons were retuned across the board and the sheer size of the world has nearly doubled since that video back in the day. Dead Cells is pretty much a game that never disappoints. If you haven't played it since its early access days, coming back now will feel like a game that has been completely polished. And there's one last DLC coming in the beginning of 2020. It'll be their first paid DLC and at $5 is a great chance to give money to one of the best indie titles in years. Dead Cells is a perfect example of a game that's easy to pick up at any time and captures the easy replayability of the early days of home gaming. I played about 10 hours in the last couple of days after having not touched it in months and it kept me totally engrossed. One of the best drop-in drop-out games since Binding of Isaac, it's also just a perfect fit for the Switch. So if you haven't bought Dead Cells, I mean, you're crazy, but you might want to get it on the Switch. I have always been a person who values gameplay above all else. And as such, action games are generally my favorite titles. Still, every so often a game will grab me despite having simple gameplay systems. Gris, or Gris, I don't know, I'm going with Gris, is fairly light on mechanics or puzzles, but it's not totally bereft of them. It has more gameplay than something like Journey, for instance, while keeping a similar focus on moving through its beautiful world with just enough in the way of platforming, puzzling, and progression to keep the experience fresh all the way through. And its music and art are so spectacular, it manages to get onto your skin and just keep you playing. One of the most beautiful games in years, Gris uses a minimalist design to create a sense of mystery and wonder that'll stick with you long after you are done playing. If you enjoyed Journey, you will enjoy Gris. Valfaris is literally the polar opposite of Gris, where Gris wows you with beauty and simplicity. Valfaris explodes gore all over your face while a pummel's you with a metal soundtrack in the style of Slayer. Valfaris is basically Contra, but better looking, longer, harder, and much, much gorier. The game features just a ridiculous array of enemies and at times rage-inducing levels of bullshit difficulty. Though it attempts to balance this by providing checkpoints every three minutes through a system very similar to the one that was used in Shovel Knight. One of my only criticisms is I think it's debatable whether this level of difficulty serves the design. Valfaris could have toned it down enough to allow for less frequent checkpoints and the game would almost certainly have both flowed better and made for less infuriated cursing. Despite issues with the difficulty and some problems with stiff controls, the game features amazing art, kick-ass levels, a shitload of great boss fights, and dozens and dozens of unique enemies with unique attacks, as well as a large arsenal of guns and swords to find and upgrade. This game is not for everyone as it is legitimately punishing at times. But if you were at a point in your life where you can be trusted to not throw your controller through your monitor, you should absolutely pick it up as it's one of the year's best indies. I threw my controller, but into the couch, which is right behind my computer. It did hit my dog, but he almost certainly deserved it for peeing in the house at some point. 15. Amid Evil Speaking of indie games that try and recreate an old-school gameplay experience, Amid Evil is basically dusk, but with a light fantasy magic skin. Your guns still behave like guns, but they're staffs or swords or wands and shit. With barely any story to speak of and very little even in the way of world-building, Amid Evil instead puts most of its effort into recreating the winding levels, keyfinding, and circle strafing of Quake. With a great art style, as well as a bunch of really well-designed levels, enemies, and bosses, Amid Evil was one of the year's best shooters and stands as an example of a game really stripped down to its core components. Movement, exploration, gunplay, and enemy design. If you need to have a story or lore or a goal beyond killing everything and finding the end of the level, then Amid Evil is probably not your cup of tea. But if you kind of prefer that your shooters be good at being shooters more than anything else, then you will more than get your money's worth from Amid Evil. If Humble ever offers this and dusk together, it'll be a must-buy. And for your information, it does have controller support, but it is quite a bit harder if you play like that. I eventually gave up trying to play it on my TV with Steam Link and just used a mouse and a keyboard and I had a much better time. 14, The Division 2. I never ended up making my Division 2 video. And you know why? Because there was only like a few paragraphs of stuff to really even say about it. Its story is as bad, helped probably a lot worse even than the first game. Its characters are hilariously forgettable and cliched and it didn't change all that much from the first and certainly didn't compel me to become a daily player or anything. But it absolutely did provide a really great 30 plus hour campaign full of interesting locations, good missions and seamless matchmaking for most of the stuff that needed it. The map and mission locations are vastly improved from the Division 1 and its general pace of play felt just as tactical as ever. It still had things that annoyed me like its insistence on dropping loot on you every 30 fucking seconds so that you can never even settle on a loadout for two missions before something better dropped, but that's the way these games all work. Nowadays, as a Looter Shooter campaign, the Division provided a few dozen hours of snappy combat, a great-looking map and a bunch of really well-designed levels and missions. I didn't like love it, love it, but I liked it, liked it enough to call it one of the year's best releases from both the production and value standpoint. 13, Destiny 2. Destiny 2 didn't release this year, but it did release a surprisingly large amount of stuff this year while making big changes to its publishing, its economy, progression, and loot systems. Destiny 2 did a lot right this year and it also shat the bed many times this year, including its miserably bad new armor fail point O system, its terrible microtransaction armor ornament system and its fairly disappointing Shadowkeep expansion. But despite all that, Destiny 2 remains one of the world's best FPS games and easily amongst the very best live service games around, which means it had to at least make its way onto the list. I can't leave a game I played hundreds of hours in 2019 off my best game of the year list. That would be stupid. 12, Resident Evil 2. I would never put a remaster on a list of best games of the year, but the re-release of Resident Evil 2 was not a remaster. It was an entire remake from the ground up that was truly logable. The remake managed to keep the fear and survival horror intensity of the original while grounding it in a post-Resident Evil 4 gameplay feel. This highly ambitious recreation of an all time classic ended up having the perfect blend of action, terror, and infuriating inventory management. In a year as stuffed to the gills with excellence, it'd be easy to leave this off, but it was without a doubt one of the best titles released in 2019. Hopefully Capcom realizes that they can make new games just like this and they'll be successful. If you didn't end up picking this one up when it released, I highly recommend you give it a shot. It's not only just a really great game, it's a super interesting look at how games have changed over time. Resident Evil 2 makes like zero concessions to the player. It is full of frustrated wandering and backtracking and obtuse inventory management and actively discourages using the weapons it begrudgingly gives you. Playing makes you realize just how much Google has changed the gaming hobby. I had to force myself to not Google solutions and when you do that, you realize how different it is to have the answers to any inconvenience right there in your phone. Buy it, play it, and don't use Google. 11, Devil May Cry 5. DMC5 kinda came and went really quickly, didn't it? There was no controversy around it in it. It wasn't praised as some kind of masterpiece either. It was just a really good video game with excellent combat, fun levels, great bosses, and a ridiculous, almost impossible to understand story. I mean, I'm not a big fan of the series so I don't have no idea what's going on. Another in a long line of fantastic looking games released this year, DMC5 may not have been something you'll remember for the rest of your life, but if you missed it and you've got nothing to play this month, you could do a hell of a lot worse. Above all, DMC5 felt competent. There were no annoying contradictions in design and the game never felt like it was confused about what it was. And its smartly designed, smooth progression, tight combat, and a crazy amount of combos and moves gives the action a surprising amount of challenge and depth. It kinda gets lost in what was just an insane year for games, but DMC5 was very, very good. Number 10, Sekiro. As time has passed, I have come to believe that Sekiro is the second worst of the From Souls titles. And there are days when I think I like Dark Souls 2 better, but the worst or second worst From game is still one of the best games of the year. I am disappointed its RPG systems were kinda bungled and muddled and I think its early game and boss difficulty is just fucking stupid. And I thought its levels just weren't nearly as good as the other games. And I am positive it'll be replayed less than any other as evidenced by the fact that I've replayed all the others this summer, except Sekiro. Finally, its insistence on reusing bosses and enemies like three to five times each annoyed me a lot, but even with all that stuff to bitch about, it's another excellent game in the series. If I wasn't such a huge Souls fan, this game would almost certainly have ranked higher, but as someone who's played all the other games between three and 10 times, yes, I have played Dark Souls 2 three times, there are enough things about the game that disappointed me to make it a kinda tough one to rank. It is without a doubt a wonderful game. But unlike the other games on this list, I don't judge Souls games against other games. I judge them against themselves. And Sekiro, while being excellent in relation to other games, fall short in relation to other From Software games. So in a way, I was disappointed with Sekiro personally, while still firmly believing it was one of the year's best, just not the very best, like Bloodborne or Dark Souls 3 was, or Dark Souls. Number nine, Rage 2. Sorry, no, fuck that, I'm not gonna apologize. I will explain, but I won't apologize. Does Rage 2 have kind of a boring, samey world? Yes. Are its characters bland and lifeless? Yes. Is its story basically pointless? Yes. Is it designed like all those other open world games that I am constantly turning my nose up at? Yes. I still loved it. All those things can be parts of a great game, and Rage 2 would have benefited from being better in all those areas, but Rage 2 also came with some of the very best FPS combat I have ever played. In the same way I fucking love Bulletstorm, despite its idiocy, I love Rage 2, despite its mediocrity. Unless you're giving me narrative like Edith Finch or The Stanley Parable or Mission and World Design like The Witcher 3, gameplay will always matter most to me. A game can't be hurt by having a great story or wonderful mission design, but Rage 2's combat was so damn good nothing else really mattered. And the game did have other important things that set it apart like a fantastic progression, upgrade and weapon system, spectacularly good movement and tools and enemies that were fun to fight. I can tell a great shooter when turning the difficulty way up makes the game more fun. Turn the difficulty way up in Wolfenstein 2 and the game becomes much less enjoyable. Cranking the difficulty to max for Doom or Rage 2 makes it a blast. I still do think that Rage 2 would have worked better as a linear shooter just like Doom. Carefully crafting levels and having a less open-ended mission structure would have benefited it. But its combat was so incredible. Even with all its flaws, it still was one of the year's best games. And finally, I will say here what I said in the review. Every single complaint you can make about Rage 2, you can make about Far Cry 5. The only difference is that Rage 2's combat is actually fresh and exciting and totally unique where Far Cry 5's combat is the same as 4 and 3 and really 2. Number eight, Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order. It is possible that my reaction to this game was deeply affected by the game I played right before it. I am willing to admit that. I finished up Death Stranding just in time to get into Jedi and it felt like a breath of fresh air. With a combat system that's pretty excellent and a story that, despite its middling descriptions in the gaming press, is actually pretty fucking great. Fallen Order is the best Star Wars game since KOTOR and the best action Star Wars game ever, period. With a really clever and smartly designed mix of souls, Metroidvania, and Uncharted, Jedi Fallen Order is like a perfect blend of casual experience and skill-based action game. On its hardest difficulty, it could get somewhat frustrating because the mechanics really aren't tight enough to fallidia souls like, but it is the first casual game I've ever seen that uses a souls formula in an action-adventure title. I fucking love it. I sincerely hope more games use the souls combat system because it is still criminally underused. I probably won't replay this game anytime soon, but I played the shit out of it when I got it and I finished it in no time flat. An absolutely wonderful product and one of the year's very best. Great story, great levels, great combat, great exploration. My only gripe was that the progression could have been deeper and more fulfilling, but again, Star Wars games have always been games for casual players and when viewed in that light, Respawn's entry is as good as it gets. Number seven, Control. Control is one of the harder games to peg this year. I feel like I could have put this 18th or third and been able to defend it. From a strict mechanics point of view, Control is extremely inconsistent. At times it could feel downright brilliant and at other times like kind of a mess. Its story was highly subjective in that it gives the player very little to go on. Its weird loot and upgrade system felt literally pointless and actually made the game less fun as I found myself spending a bunch of time with it even as I fully realized it didn't matter. It was more of a distraction than anything. And its checkpoint system and horrendous map left me very, very, very angry fairly regularly. But damn, Control just kind of sticks with you. Its gameplay is good enough to keep you going and its movement system always felt excellent. But more than anything else, its world, level design and art direction were just spectacular. One of those rare games that has you regularly stopping and admiring how amazing it can look. Its destructible environments and physics never stopped making me say wow and floor entries and video and audio logs were some of, no actually the very best I have encountered since the original Bioshock. Control feels like it needs a sequel to really perfect what its combat was reaching for. But its world and levels were absolutely perfect while its writing kept me consistently intrigued and thinking. It is easily Remini's most ambitious game yet and managed to mix the best of all of their games into one weird, sometimes frustrating, but always compelling stew. Six, Borderlands Three. Yeah, I got this sixth or fifth or fourth or third I guess. Listen, Borderlands Three's combat is the best the series has ever been by like 3,000%. Its levels and maps are almost perfect and that they're neither so big they're annoying nor so small there's nothing to explore. Its guns, skills and bosses are quite easily the series best. The graphical upgrade was actually impressive with lighting and textures being vastly improved while still keeping the cel-shaded art style that is crucial to the game's tone. And most importantly, its minute to minute gun play allows the game to finally take a spot amongst the best shooters around. All that stuff is top notch game of the year type stuff. So why only sixth? Because the story sucks badly and I'm not talking about the humor here. Borderlands One wasn't really all that funny and while Borderlands Two did have an awful lot of humor it certainly wasn't Saints Row or anything. I don't have a problem with its referential humor. My issue is that the moment to moment context provided to players in three is the weakest the series has been. Where the previous games had missions and quests that always managed to surprise you or delight you or keep you interested in finishing the quest to find out what happens. Here you feel like you're playing an homage to previous games rather than an entirely new story. There is only one character and quest that even comes close to Tiny Tina or Mal the robot who wants to be a human. Ice T as Bailex and AI trapped in a teddy bear was genuinely fucking great stuff. So awesome I demand an entire Ice T DLC or I will be mad. But that was the only quest and character that really felt like it was cleverly written. Everything else was either boring or felt like fan service and its villains were just hilariously, toxically awful, just miserably bad. So annoying they made me just mute the game on several occasions. It's important to remember something. Borderlands and Borderlands Two were huge hits despite very poor shooting and movement mechanics. The actual gameplay and offer in those titles was at best slightly below average. Those games became classics because of a loot system that was completely innovative for a shooter and because the world and characters and story genuinely affected people and kept them playing. So when you improve every single thing about performance, graphics and gameplay but get worse at world building and lore and characters and story, you end up with a great game that can stand on its own mechanics and loot but also a flawed game that missed on its potential to be in all time great. Still, an amazing game, just a shame it couldn't capture the brilliance that was in the characters, story and mission design of Borderlands Two. And now for my controversial top five of 2019. Number five, The Outer Worlds. The Outer Worlds gunplay is pretty average to below average. Its world is actually kinda small and disjointed and its RPG mechanics really are not all that deep. But The Outer Worlds makes up for those shortfalls with the best writing of any major studio game of the year, bar none. With excellent social commentary on everything from politics to economics to religion, philosophy and relationships, The Outer World is a fully realized universe full of interesting people, questions and issues. With gameplay more than good enough to carry it over the finish line, The Outer Worlds feels like a triple A game made on a double A budget. But it is at the same time basically exactly what it set out to be. A smaller, tighter, cheaper Fallout 3 with improved shooty bang bang. The Outer Worlds greatest achievement is showing that the Bethesda formula still works if you pay as much attention to the talking and questing as you do to the shooting and looting. And it ends up being one of those rare games that leaves you feeling like the best is yet to come. Nearly everything outside of the spectacular writing and story can be improved upon but it is all more than good enough even as it is. I am super duper psyched that Microsoft is now fully behind Obsidian and very happy to hear there'll be DLC coming next year. I hope dearly that they plan on making a Fallout New Vegas-sized Outer Worlds 2. And I actually still do hope they do a slightly better job in the shooting and RPG stuff but even as it is, it was easily one of the year's very best games. Four, The Surge 2. Crazy, right? The Surge 2 over Sekiro? What am I, some casual, cuck-new beta? Listen, dude, the further I get from it and after playing it a second time, the Surge 2 is fucking excellent. How can I possibly have the Surge 2 as a better game than Sekiro? Well, by combining a Dark Souls 1 style interconnected open world, a ton of excellent weapons, armor and drones and a huge variety of well-designed enemies, the Surge 2 is the very, very best non-from Souls-like ever released. I deeply hope it sold well because I cannot praise enough how much I loved this game. It may not be perfect but it is damn close. The Surge 2 features a far faster and more fluid combat system than the first game and it's more reminiscent of Bloodborne than Dark Souls which makes it a joy to play at all times and it improved every single thing that needed improving from the first game. It's surprisingly large in size and scope and it nails that elusive and almost impossible to describe thing. Moving your character around in the Surge 2 just feels good. Yes, it has some bullshit like all Souls games but it is amazingly polished and smooth all the way through. If there's one game from this year, I'm likely to play five more times, it's the Surge 2. If you like Souls games and you missed this, you need to play it. If you're interested in Souls games but have never tried one, the Surge 2 is a great place to start. Easily one of the year's best titles. Number three, Remnants from the Ashes. There's not one full-on triple A title amongst my top fives. I just realized that as I wrote this sentence. I don't know whether that says something about the state of triple A gaming or just how tired and cranky and bitchy I've gotten over the years. Anyway, Remnant from the Ashes is decidedly not a triple A game. Its graphics are good but not great. Its animations are inconsistent. Its story is pointless. Its lore is patchy. But Remnant does something pretty great. It takes the Souls formula and tweaks it more than any other game other than the brilliant Souls and Sanctuary. The idea of a shooter Souls like sounds great until you think about it. How can you mix the tense, rhythmic, animation and dodging-based combat of Souls with, you know, guns and shit? Well, Remnant does that and it is fucking awesome. By having a large variety of enemies with simple animation-based attacks and ranged attacks with travel time, Remnant keeps the most important part of the Souls experience and blends it in a way that feels fresh and downright inspired. Remnant is another game from this year that demands a sequel with a bigger budget. Its levels, world, enemy and boss design ranges from good to amazing and it features a truly excellent progression system that combines passive stat increases and powerful perks with a variety of kick-ass weapons and mods that can be found in the world through exploration or ripped off of the corpses of bosses. The game keeps most of the things that makes the Souls-like satisfying. A strong weapon upgrade system, bonfire checkpoints and skills-based combat. But it also makes important concessions to newcomers to the genre. Like, dying doesn't cost you anything but frustration and time. A much more linear game progression that doesn't require trial and error or a Fextralife article. And an easy, anytime drop-in co-op that makes it possible to get past any part of the game that might be pissing you off. I didn't do too much co-op, but when I did, it was awesome. I found that it made the game totally different. It takes it from a slow-paced Souls game to a fast-paced Souls shooter hybrid. That alone gives Remnant tremendous replay value before even accounting for its unique procedural campaign generation system. Remnant accomplished all of its important parts and systems nearly flawlessly. And the places it falls short were things that, while hopefully improved in a sequel, are not core to the experience, like lore and world-building and story and facial animations and stuff like that. Remnant has been very successful on Steam and I hope it's been a hit for Gunfire because it is one of the best double-A games I've ever played. Gunfire deserves all the praise for taking a genre that still needs more games and going beyond something like The Surge or Neo. Instead of just making the best Souls like they could, they made an entirely new Souls-like experience. If you are looking to get games you might have missed this year and you did not play Remnant, you absolutely should. They've recently announced that the game is done well enough to make some DLC and I cannot wait to play it. It'll give me the push I need to roll a new campaign. Number two, Risk of Rain 2. I am a huge fan of Roguelite games. Binding of Isaac is one of my most played titles ever with over 700 hours. I loved Enter the Gungeon and Nuclear Throne is one of my favorite indie games ever. I have played and enjoyed nearly every single Roguelite title of the last five years, including the really excellent Risk of Rain 1. Risk of Rain 1 was a side-scrolling 2D pixel-art Roguelite with an amazing indie rock soundtrack and a conical amount of particle effects. The game's main conceit was that it gets harder as time passed. Each level started with you placed randomly on the map and you have to kill enemies and buy upgrades and find the exit. When you found the teleporter, you spawned the boss and moved on. This central mechanic of balancing the need to find items to improve your build while managing the linear progression of difficulty as the timer ticked up made for a totally unique take on the genre. Still, as good as it was, it was still a very, very niche title. Its full commitment to old-school pixel art narrowed its audience to only the most devoted Roguelite weirdos like me. When I first saw that Risk of Rain 2 was going to be a 3D action title, I actually was a little nervous. I wasn't sure how much we could expect from the studio's last game looks like this. Well, Risk of Rain 2 is easily one of and arguably the very best Roguelite game ever released. Hapu Games has managed to carry over all of the essentials of Risk of Rain 1 and just give you more and better. Movement and combat is tight, fluid and responsive. Animations and art is top freaking notch. Enemy and boss design is amazing and the sheer amount of items makes every run feel pretty unique. Risk of Rain's system of letting you get the same item over and over to increase its power level leads to some hilariously powerful builds. Its assortment of characters are each totally different providing completely different gameplay experiences and each of them feels viable and fun even if I had two or three favorites. While the game remains in early access, it is a complete and working game, well worth double the price it's asking. I have already put over a hundred hours into it unlocking all the characters and many of the skills and skins for each. As it stands now, there is no end to each round. You just kind of keep going until the enemies get so powerful they kill you instantly. But I've had some runs that went two hours when I've gotten super lucky but most probably go from 30 to 45 minutes on monsoon difficulty. In a future update, there will be a final boss added that completes runs and sends you back to the beginning. Hopefully though, they will keep an endless mode because there's something incredibly satisfying about getting to a point where you are nearly unkillable. I don't think any collection of games is complete without Risk of Rain 2, it is that good. I recommend it on PC because many of the characters use ranged attacks that work best with the mouse and the keyboard but the console release was also excellent aside from the menus being clearly designed for a mouse. Also, the multiplayer is great. If you get it, friend me on Steam and hit me up if you see me playing it. I am plenty the welder on Steam also, plenty space thus place welder. Number one, Metro Exodus. Metro Exodus was an epic game store exclusive. It also launched with a ton of very annoying Eurojank bugs. But after you get past your anger at the epic store thing and now that the game has been totally patched up Metro Exodus' true excellence can be fully appreciated. From purely an art and level design standpoint Exodus is one of the most gorgeous games ever created. It is constantly just straight up aweing you with its beauty and creepiness. Its story is both simple and powerful while also having a pretty surprising amount of depth in its political, philosophical and religious statements. I have heard all the complaints about its sluggish movement or its only decent stealth but I just totally disagree. Metro fully immerses you in its world. Moving through its levels feels like you are there. With a simple and effective HUD and its real time upgrading crafting and the fact that you use an actual map and compass Metro truly makes you feel like Archium exploring a rotting apocalyptic waste or dark winding tunnels filled with horrible spiders. It takes one of the very best corridor shooters that had a unique blend of FPS and survival horror and makes it semi-open world without losing its core feel and tone. It is quite the achievement in design philosophy. Metro has always felt like one of the rare series that makes you truly exist in its world. Every system feels crafted and thought out to make you feel like you are scavenging and exploring to get by. Exodus keeps all the things that made the previous games cult hits and improves all the things that held it back from being hit hits. Its gunplay is excellent as far as I'm concerned and the slow progress towards unlocking and upgrading your weapons by finding them in the world felt seamless and rewarding. With a few maps that are each large enough to require exploration but small enough to not piss you off Exodus basically becomes the perfect open world shooter. It is far cry five but every system actually matters and the story is actually worth paying attention to. You don't blindly follow quest markers. You discover points of interest with your binoculars. You don't check off a list of crappy fetch quests. You have one main objective and can either do or ignore any number of realistic feeling encounters and unmarked quests on the map. Exodus doesn't bog you down by explicitly demanding you fill up a reputation bar and because it doesn't have any of that bloated pointless garbage it achieves a nearly unparalleled level of immersion in a shooter. Playing far cry never stops reminding you that you are playing a Ubisoft game. Playing Metro often stops feeling like you're playing a game at all. Instead you're living in its world. It is a nearly perfect game and the best open world shooter ever made precisely because its maps are big enough but still manageable because its story actually works and because it only has the systems it actually needs. Going to a yellow exclamation point on the other side of the map isn't fucking exploration. Scanning the horizon with your binoculars and making your way through the bushes to a beast oil tanker only discover a hidden NPC that is. Exodus was easily the most impressive total package of the year. The best looking game the most smartly designed and one of the best stories you'll ever get in a shooter, man. It took a series that was great but clearly low budget and made it just great. Just fucking great. All right. I'm actually excited to do this Fallout 76 video because man, it actually could have been a really good game. Anyway, I'll see you all in the new year. Thanks for coming. My videos don't get a ton of views but having almost 640 subscribers is pretty cool. My goal had always been to get to 1000 and I'm almost 64% of the way there. So thanks to all you who forgot to unsubscribe. Happy holidays. Bye.