Review
2019 Game of the Year Nominations: The Shortlist, Game by Game
2019 brought remakes done right, long-awaited sequels and a few debuts nobody saw coming. These are the games that made the shortlist, and why each one earned its place.
Choosing a game of the year for 2019 was harder than usual. Favourite series returned with strong remakes and sequels, and several smaller studios released games that outshone the big budgets. The year also confirmed a broader shift: game streaming put powerful hardware within reach of people without expensive PCs, cross-play became normal, subscriptions opened large libraries at low prices, and handheld play kept growing. Few years offered something for so many kinds of player.
The shortlist below is grouped by what each game did best. Honourable mentions include older games that reached their best form in 2019.
The big stories
Death Stranding. Hideo Kojima’s first game after Metal Gear is not for everyone, and it does not try to be. Rebuilding America’s network one delivery at a time, with other players’ ladders, ropes and roads appearing in the world, creates a feeling of connection to strangers that no other game of the year matched. Its story pulls hard on the emotions, and the sense of purpose in each trip feels real.
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. Respawn swapped the power fantasy of earlier lightsaber games for measured, deliberate duels, closer to a dance than a massacre, and it works. The story sits between Episodes III and IV, digs into the aftermath of Order 66 and returns to the series’ central theme of hope. It also introduces a cast strong enough to carry a new series.
Control. Remedy put its fast, physical combat inside a striking brutalist building and a suitably strange story, where each new area is more unsettling than the last. Its mix of play and live-action video gives it a voice of its own.
Writing and role-playing
Disco Elysium. ZA/UM’s debut came from nowhere. Its setting began as a tabletop role-playing world, and that shows in the sheer depth of its writing. It is one of the best-written RPGs ever released.
The Outer Worlds. Obsidian’s space RPG has ordinary combat and some awkward balancing, but its writing, humour and well-built universe recall Fallout: New Vegas with a neon coat of paint. It was one of the most frequently nominated games of the year.
Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age, Definitive Edition. The Switch version of one of the finest traditional RPGs of the decade: a joy from start to finish, with memorable characters and moments.
Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Three main routes, plus a hidden fourth, add up to hundreds of hours of tactical battles and a story with real pull. A strong return for the series.
Dragon Quest Builders 2. Minecraft-style building and survival wrapped in Dragon Quest charm. It surprised many players and could easily absorb a few hundred hours.
Action at its sharpest
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. FromSoftware’s games usually have a charming stiffness. Sekiro drops it. A grappling hook, fluid movement and serious stealth add new layers to the formula the studio created.
Devil May Cry 5. More than a decade after DMC4, the fifth game ties together the stories of Nero and Dante and adds V, built on the RE Engine. It remains the benchmark for stylish action: perfecting combos for all three characters is endlessly satisfying.
Resident Evil 2. The model of how to remake a game: entirely new and deeply nostalgic at the same time. Leon’s and Claire’s campaigns, repeat runs and the free Ghost Survivors add-on make it a large package, and the RE Engine makes the Raccoon City Police Department more frightening than ever, with Mr. X never far behind.
Shooters and looters
Tom Clancy’s The Division 2. Ubisoft Massive built a detailed Washington D.C. and then wrecked it. The game is best with a squad, and enemy scaling makes it easy to help friends at different points in the story. Its loot system offered more to hunt than the first game, though brand sets and the late arrival of Gear Sets frustrated veterans, and the first raid launched without matchmaking. A steady run of updates through 2019 made a strong launch better, much as the first game improved after its release.
Borderlands 3. More of what made the series famous: the art style, a ridiculous number of guns and plenty to do. Its humour has hardly matured since 2012, and some jokes have aged badly, but the game never takes itself seriously. The real game begins after the campaign, in Mayhem mode and New Game+.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. A soft reboot of Captain Price’s story, with a single-player campaign back after Black Ops 4 dropped one. The night-vision missions look close to photorealistic on Xbox One X. Weak spawns, map rotation and weapon balance held back the multiplayer at launch, and a year-long PlayStation exclusive on Spec Ops Survival mode was hard to accept.
Apex Legends. A surprise release that sharpened the battle royale with tight gunplay and distinct characters. Its first battle pass was thin and slow, but the core game challenged PUBG and Fortnite.
Destiny 2. Shadowkeep brought back the Moon and reworked armour, though its loot pools were shallow and reused assets showed. The Season of Opulence, with its Menagerie mode and varied loot, was a high point of the year.
Smaller games, big impressions
Observation. No Code’s science fiction thriller, published by Devolver Digital, unfolds through the eyes of a space station’s AI. Its atmosphere and story earned it a BAFTA Scotland award and nominations at the Golden Joystick Awards for storytelling, indie game and audio. The same studio made Stories Untold.
Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown. Bandai Namco’s return to the skies looks and plays superbly on Unreal Engine 4, with a controller or a flight stick. Its sound design won a CEDEC Award, and it is the best entry in the series.
Untitled Goose Game. A horrible goose, a quiet English village and a to-do list of mischief. One of the most charming games of the year.
Other nominations included Slay the Spire on Switch, Dicey Dungeons, Kingdom Hearts III, Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers, No Man’s Sky: Beyond, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, My Friend Pedro and The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening.
Honourable mentions
- The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015): a game that keeps finding new players years after release, and keeps justifying its reputation.
- Fishing Planet (2015): the free-to-play fishing simulator reached Xbox One and Windows 10 in 2019 with cross-play and cross-save, and gained a premium edition, The Fisherman: Fishing Planet.
- RimWorld (2018), Anodyne 2, Romancing SaGa 3 and Battle Breakers also drew mentions.
Looking ahead to 2020
Cross-play between console families, long requested, was close to normal by the end of 2019, and both next-generation consoles were confirmed: the Xbox Series X, promising backward compatibility on an unusual scale, and the PlayStation 5. If 2019 showed anything, it is that games now reach more people, on more devices, than ever before.