Top 10 Games of 2019

Here’s everything I wanted to play in 2019 but never got around to: Sekiro, Indivisible, Disco Elysium, Bloodstained, Mario Maker 2, the Switch port of New Super Mario Bros WiiU, the smol Link’s Awakening remake, Telling Lies, A Plague’s Tale, Devotion, NeoCab, Jedi: Fallen Order, Apex Legends, Luigi’s Mansion 3, Astral Chain, Void Bastards, My Friend Pedro, Total War: Three Kingdoms, Wargroove, Persona Q2, The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan, Valfaris, and like a thousand others I’m forgetting. I only finished the first chapter of Life is Strange 2! Gah!

I bring this up only to point out how weird it is to even try to make a Top 10 List of video games. It did not take that much work to see most of the movies I wanted to see in 2019. I won't call my list from last week definitive, but it's at least vaguely comprehensive. Games, however, are an order of magnitude beyond that. Nobody has played every game. No one website has played every game. It is not only possible, it's likely that your Top 10 lists looks nothing like mine. That's assuming you even played ten games. There's so much vastness in the infinitude that is our digital play spaces, you could abandon the concept of "new releases" altogether. Gaming isn't cheap, and not every has the time. I barely the time anymore. Maybe you just played Fornite or Final Fantasy XIV all year and were satisfied. Put 5,000 hours into your second life as a Lalafell. Enjoy yourself.

What I ultimately mean here is that you can't chase the release schedule. I only came up with this list after cramming the last two months. I beat six games since December and didn't finish half the things I wanted to. The paradise of play we have found ourselves in is beyond all comprehension. If most of my list is JRPGs and puzzle games, that's just how things have to be. It's what makes me happy and keeps me functional as a unit in this capitalist system I have to live in apparently. If my list looks nothing like your list, are we even having the same conversation anymore? Should games even be considered "one industry"? I don't care about Call of Duty just like somebody doesn't care about Kingdom Hearts. Why should both of us be called "gamer" as a catch-all? I wonder.

But luckily, no games seem to be coming out in 2020. 2019 was packed to all hell with new releases. So far in 2020 all we have is a bad DBZ game and Kingdom Hearts III DLC. Everything else is delayed and delayed again. I got plenty of time to finish up Life is Strange 2 and maybe finally work up the courage to play Sekiro. I'd be fine if we just all took a year off and enjoyed ourselves. I have a really big backlog I need to work on.

Top 15 or 30 Movies of 2019

2019 was the year Disney conquered the box office to an obscene extent. The most popular movie of the year was indisputably Avengers: End Game, a world-eater that sucked in all gravity for months. My experience with that movie though was pain. I fell down the stairs on my back just before leaving to go see it. Luckily since my spine wasn’t split in half, so I had the fortune of watching in intense agony. (I’m fine, don’t worry.) Let that be your metaphor for my year at the movies. It's a theater full of fans weeping and cheering. Then I’m in the front row, grimacing and half-conscious, trying not to groan too loudly.

Avengers: End Game did not make the Top 15. It didn’t get close. Despite my injury it was decently entertaining. But it was uneven, was like three different contradictory movies at once, and the action climax looked terrible. Actually, none of Disney’s major blockbusters made it. Only one got even an Honorable Mention. I might have been too kind when I thought Star Wars Episode IX was barely passable. Frozen II was fun but hollow. I didn’t even bother to see the CG remake of Lion King. But the movie that sums up Disney for me was Spider-Man: Far from Home. It was safe, uncontroversial, and proudly unimportant. Why would anybody want to see that movie when last year's Into the Spider-Verse is better, bolder, and braver in every single way?

That's what I'm looking for, ultimately. I want originality. I want ambition. I want a movie that can never be replicated. A unique experience. Those experiences can still be found and even if general audiences just want cookie-cutter, originality might be more plentiful than ever. Foreign films have a better chance of getting a wide release and critical interest. Anime films have a proven audience and are much easier to find. There was room in the schedule for Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese to still do their things. Audiences were there. A classic parlor murder movie was one of the big hits of the fall. Netflix actually released good movies. Will one make the Top 15? Let's find out. And of course, the indie horror moment is as fruitful as ever.

2019 was a year where you could have had anything in the theaters. There was a movie for you. You don’t need to settle for what’s safe and familiar. Even if you just want a superhero movie, you could see over a dozen alternatives, from tiny movies like Fast Color to colorful spectacles like Promare. I've decided I deserve more than just the Disney slate. I wish more of you would decide to deserve more too.