Mister Jack

Well the year is pretty much up now and everything worth mentioning has released, which means it's time to determine the picks for the 2018 game of the year. I expect to see a lot of cowboys on here, but maybe I'll be surprised. Now here's my picks to start. GAME OF THE YEAR This was a really good year for games, especially on the PS4, so I really had to think about what my personal favorite was. Monster Hunter World might not be as ambitious as Red Dead Redemption 2 or as polished as God of War, but dollar for dollar no other game this year gave me more hours of entertainment than this one. I've sunk 500+ hours into Monster Hunter World at this point, and hunting with friends is some of the best multiplayer fun I've had in years. I can't wait for the expansion to drop. RUNNER UP If I picked my game of the year based on what title had the best show of quality, it would be God of War hands down. I debated between this and Spider-Man, but Spider-Man did have a few dumb side missions and stealth sections that brought it down slightly, despite being excellent otherwise. God of War was engaging throughout. Kratos' development as a character is fascinating to witness if you're familiar with the older games, and the combat is nice and heavy without also feeling clunky or cumbersome. That's not even getting into how beautiful everything looks or how the whole game is polished to a shine. If you're wondering why Red Dead Redemption 2 isn't here, it's because that game felt a little too ambitious for its own good. It's a truly wonderful game, don't get me wrong, but for every two or three things it does right, there's one blatant flaw that brings it down, and said flaws are things that continue to bedevil you the entire time you play the game, making them impossible to ignore. I love the story and the characters and being an outlaw is a ton of fun but oh my god why do I have to slowly pick all these herbs and why does the fast travel suck so much and god damn it the bounty system is so frustrating and these horse rides take forever and why does a game so devoted to realism arbitrarily prevent me from buying new guns. I would still recommend RDR2 to anyone, but I'd also tell them to brace themselves for a bit of a slog.

Gifts count, yeah?

Sometimes I feel like Sonic could probably be a great franchise again if they just took it away from Sonic Team.

The trailer feels like they're trying to ride that Guardians of the Galaxy gravy train but that doesn't really work for Hellboy.

Yeah I don't really have much to say about why Into the Spider-Verse is good that hasn't already been said so I'll just mention things I personally liked. Also, this is the best portrayal of Miles Morales to date. That's definitely worth mentioning.

Why does getting killed online erase all of your pelts from hunting? FUCKING WHY?!

You can get Full Throttle Remastered for free on GOG right now.

Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle I picked this up a while back and got a little over halfway through it before I set it down and just never got back to it. I am pretty sure I'm getting Smash Bros soon, so I figured I should try to scratch that off of my Switch backlog. It's pretty decent, although the difficulty can vary wildly depending on your team layout. It's never as hard as XCOM, but there were some fights where I really struggled until I changed to Mario/Rabbid Peach/Luigi, after which I steamrolled through most of the obstacles in my path. Frankly, there is little reason to use anybody besides these three. Mario is required, but Rabbid Peach is the only real healer you have and Luigi can get up to four shots in one turn with the proper skill upgrades. With that kind of team, the only thing that will give you any real trouble is the bosses, particularly the final one. I also have to mention that the boss of world 3 is great, easily the funniest and most memorable part of the game.

That poor lady

Holy shit this looks so bad. It's going to be the film equivalent of the Hindenburg.

How long until Geralt is revealed for Smash Bros?

Two castles. The first is 100% and the second is another 100%. For some reason, the second castle has slightly more map squares than the first despite being an inverted clone, which is where the extra .6% comes from.

Knocked out the platinum for Castlevania Requiem, which is Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the Night combined. It's not a super hard platinum, honestly, aside from getting through a whole level in Rondo without taking a single hit and getting 200.6% completion in Symphony, but Symphony is one of, if not my number one favorite game of all time. I've beaten it three times this year alone, but I like finally having a trophy list for it.

HOLY SHIT!

Where'd you find a robot cat?!

Apparently this Epic store isn't going to have user forums for their games the way the steam store does. Instead they're going to use a ticketing system. I can see why they went this route since steam forums are frequently a shithole, but I can't imagine users are going to be happy about this.

Honestly, if you no-life the game you could probably get it in a couple of weeks, but I wasn't that devoted. I needed to take breaks from it whenever I got burnt out. None of the trophies are especially difficult, but the platinum does require all of the following: Six max level characters One max level hardcore character, which means no dying allowed 500 bounties completed Max level legendary items in every equipment slot 100 treasure goblins It takes a while to do all of that. Funny thing is that I am pretty sure I also own the PC version of the game on my Battle.net account that's currently gathering dust, but I never bothered going back to it since the console version of Diablo 3 is objectively superior. It feels weird to say that.

I finally did it...after two years of playing the game off and on, I finally got the platinum for Diablo 3...I'm free...

You can get Iconoclasts for free right now. It won't show on the PlayStation 4, but if you go to the website from your computer and buy the free PS Vita version from the online store then it will also give you the PS4 version.

Name one live action anime adaptation that Netflix didn't completely screw up.

How does it feel to know you will never have as much fun playing RDR2 as this guy?