Welcome back to our game of the year feature, Gaming Respawn’s Game of the Year 2018 Part 2. If you haven’t seen part 1, you can check it out here. Now, let us continue with the rest of our GOTY list.
Samantha Brown
Detroit: Become Human
For my personal choice of game of the year, I have gone with none other than the beautiful Detroit: Become Human. When the game was released, I had the amazing opportunity to review the game, and I am so happy that I did. I gave the game a 10/10, and I stick to that score to this day.
Detroit: Become Human is a decision-based adventure game that makes you feel like you are controlling the characters in a new high-budget film. The game was released on the 25th May 2018 and is only available to play on PlayStation 4. It was developed by Quantic Dream and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. If you do not already own this game, I definitely recommend it.
What I love about Detroit: Become Human is the amazing storyline. You alternate between three characters and determine how their individual stories pan out from the decisions you make. I felt a huge emotional connection to the characters. There were times when I was grinning from ear to ear and other times where I found myself tearing up. The graphics definitely help you build a connection to the characters because they are visually stunning and left me in awe. The best way to describe this game is by calling it an emotional roller coaster.
Another great thing about the game is that if you make a decision and don’t like the outcome, you can always go back and re-do that specific part of the story. This gives players the opportunity to find out what would have happened if they chose a different path. If you mess up and one of your favourite characters dies, which can certainly happen, you can always save them by completing that chapter again. However, I would definitely recommend that you do not backtrack the first time you play Detroit: Become Human. The main reason I say this is because you should suffer the consequences of your actions at least once.
I found no issues with the game in terms of loading or glitches. There is also an android that lives within the game’s menu, and she will interact with you regularly and welcome you back when you have taken a break from playing. Detroit: Become Human is a game I will keep playing for a very long time.
Will Worrall
Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden
This has been a tough year for picking the best game. There have been so many huge releases, from God of War to Spider-Man to Red Dead Redemption II, and this has made picking a ‘best’ game a tad difficult. Personally, I was torn between 3 games. Spyro Reignited Trilogy was so nostalgic and perfect that it was up there as far as personal favourites went, and then, of course, we had the stunning Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age, which reinvigorated JRPGs.
In the end though, there was something of a surprise waiting for me at the end of this year. Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden ended up being the perfect game, at least in my opinion anyway. It’s a strategy game set in a dark, post-apocalyptic world, and the final linchpin that truly made it the best was its heavy focus on stealth.
I love stealth. Some of my favourite games over the past decade have been stealth-focused titles, like the Dishonored series and Styx: Master of Shadows. Finding a game that so perfectly married brutal difficulty and a dark, creeping style of gameplay was just like Christmas come early. Not to mention it’s all based on a tabletop RPG, a game type I am also an avid fan of. I can’t wait to try it out next time I get a group of players together.
The number of hours I’ve so far spent creeping around a group of powerful enemies and slowly picking off stragglers before ambushing the main force with a bucket full of grenades have been innumerous. I know that I’ll be spending a lot more time in the shoes of the giant walking, talking, top-hat-wearing duck and his giant pig friend. I for one couldn’t be happier. Now, if only they’ll hurry up and release some more expansive DLC, then my life will truly be complete.
Rebecca Prouse
Detroit: Become Human
My personal choice for game of the year is Detroit: Become Human. My selection is actually heavily based on games that have managed to successfully bring me out of my comfort zone. Typically, I’m a fan of fighting games, but this is one of the few adventure games I was genuinely excited to play. Of course, I’ve played Beyond: Two Souls and Heavy Rain, but Detroit: Become Human blew them both out of the water.
I really appreciated the character-driven story, with all of the characters resonating with me in one way or another. Not only that, but it featured a version of science fiction that wasn’t too far in the future, so it wasn’t a particularly unforeseeable setting.
I found that because of the many choices there were to make that this is a game you can come back to again and again. It’s not going to be a game that you only play once because I found that I just wanted to see exactly what would happen if different choices had been made. In the first playthrough, you don’t know what will happen – so everything’s a shock. But it’s not done in a way that makes you feel like you’re forced to binge it to get all of the endings.
If I wanted to go back to the game at a later date, I could do so, and it wouldn’t be a massive problem. However, playing it all in a short amount of time would ruin the game for me a bit. I would worry about the decisions regarding the characters as I find that they’re all likable but not in a way that will make you feel guilty for killing any of them off by mistake.
Overall, Detroit: Become Human is a game that I’ll return to so I can keep finding out how the characters would fare in different scenarios because even one decision could change how the ending would play out. Therefore, I recommend this game to anyone who wants to try it as it’s accessible to even the most casual of gamers.
Anthony Pamias
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
My game of the year has to go to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. The last Smash game I played was the N64 version – yep, I know I’ve been missing out. Once I got Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, I couldn’t put it down. Even though I need way more time with it and to get better at playing it, I am enjoying and loving my time with the new Smash game.
This is one of those games that you can pick up and play anytime, anywhere. When I play this game, I forget about everything else and just focus on the battle, which I find relaxing. I love fighting games because of this reason. Plus, given that it is on the Switch, and you can take it with you and play it anywhere, I give it more brownie points- it’s so easy to bring it with you and battle your friends. Even though I haven’t played any of the other Smash games on GameCube or Wii, I like how they added more characters to the series – love that Cloud can fight against Link, Mario, and others from Nintendo franchises; never thought I’d ever see Cloud be included in Super Smash Bros. I love how Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is an homage to Nintendo and gaming. Plus, a number of costumes have their own origins.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate can easily be considered the biggest and best game in the series, with 74 characters to choose from, 108 stages, 1,300 spirits to collect and a single-player adventure mode that has plenty of hours of content (took me about 30 hours to beat it, but I did die a lot). As you can have up to eight players battling against each other, this is a fun game to play at parties and competitions. Unlike other fighting games, like Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, and Tekken, the characters in Smash Bros. don’t have health bars, which makes the Smash games a unique fighting game series.
Dom Richards
Red Dead Redemption II
2018 has come and gone fast. It seems to be something we all say every year, but it really has gone remarkably quick this time around. I look back on 2018 and the list of games released is just insane. Another thing we seem to keep saying every year is that this is the best year in gaming history. Well, someone would be hard pressed to argue that 2018 hasn’t been the best (so far) with the sheer amount of quality we’ve had. It was hard choosing my game of the year for 2018. I’ve played an awful lot of games this year, and a lot of bloody good ones. There is one, though, that stands above all the rest. I had the pleasure of reviewing this title for Gaming Respawn, and it is something I am still playing regularly now. It’s a game where its depth astounds me still, even after nearly two months of solidly playing it. I am, of course, talking about Red Dead Redemption II.
Red Dead II is not only my top game for 2018, it may well be one of my top games of all time. Rockstar have proven time and time again that they are the masters of the open-world game. Red Dead II’s world is simply incredible in terms of looks and what it allows you to do. Only the truly special open-world games can distract you from completing the main storyline/quest, and Red Dead II does just that. It’s a game where you are allowed so much freedom! Want to play the main missions? Go for it. Want to explore the Wild West? Saddle up, partner, and off you go. Fancy hunting? Shoot, you can do that too. You can even just spend your time getting drunk and playing poker! It’s crazy just how much there is to do in Red Dead II. And the best thing of all? It is not daunting in the least. With the amount of content in Red Dead II, you would assume it would seem like an endless task and that it might put you off (my constant struggle with Ubisoft’s open-world games), but that is not the case at all here. Red Dead II perfectly paces out tasks and missions to never make you feel overwhelmed with what you have to do. It’s just perfectly paced, and that is the word that best sums up Red Dead Redemption II: perfect.
There you have it, our personal Games of the Year for 2018. Agree with our choices? Leave a comment below. Don’t agree with us? I guess you can still leave a comment, just be respectful. Happy holidays!