The Best Video Games of 2019

This game has charm for days. Chronologically, Kingdom Hearts III is the 12th game in the ongoing franchise. But it has been rumored and anticipated for close to 15 years, ever since the release of Kingdom Hearts II in 2005.

The story is an abstract meditation on the power of friendship and loyalty; you might be a bit confused if you haven't kept up with the lore since 2005 (and even if you have, you might still be confused!). But the main attraction, as always, are the fully realized Disney worlds, which you get to inhabit, fight, and play in. Among other film properties, you'll get to experience Toy Story, Tangled, Frozen, and Pirates of the Caribbean, up close and personally. 

Early into the game, Hercules tosses you up Mount Olympus, and you fight a massive Titan while riding a flying Big Thunder Mountain Railroad train. It's outrageous, it's silly, and it's completely awesome. There's no turning back after that.

A remake of a 1998 video game made the list. Yes, Resident Evil 2 is not so much a remake as a reimagining and expansion of the original concept. The new game keeps the oddly angled, third-person perspective of the original game while adding some aesthetic touches, like realistic, "wet" gore. What we would give for all remakes to have this amount of love and care placed into them—if love means "designing brains to splatter realistically against walls."

The PC release allowed players to mod games to their heart's content. And some of the best, funniest mods swapped out Mr. X with Thomas the Tank Engine or played DMX's "X Gonna Give It To Ya" whenever the big lug got close.

Over the past 10 years, the Mortal Kombat franchise has evolved. It used to be more focused on splatter and sex appeal than deep, competitive strategy. 

In Mortal Kombat 11, the violence is still omnipresent. But the designers also spent time adding wrinkles to the combat system, making it more balanced and eSports friendly. 

The message is received, loudly and clearly; moving forward, Mortal Kombat wants its players to take it seriously. This ethos extends to the expanded tutorial mode, which shows players the frame data for the various moves. Now, you can go into a practice arena and test out your punishers and combo launchers, before logging on to multiplayer to take on the world.

You have to be a bit of a masochist to get the most out of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. This game is hard, sometimes fiendishly so. And therein lies the trick; the game developers believed in their game's depth and quality. They trusted that rather than turning a player off from continuing further, the game's difficulty would challenge players to continue exploring, continue trying, and continue honing their skills. It is the path of most resistance; most games are so concerned with pushing your dopamine buttons that they'll avoid any sort of frustration. And Sekiro is consistently successful at treading the line between challenging and impossible.

You are a Shinobi bodyguard and assassin, and as the game's title might indicate, the shadows are your friend. There's lots of vertical movement in Sekiro; you'll skulk on the rooftops and leap down onto your unsuspecting foes. And if you get spotted? You won't be able to hack-n-slash your way out of the problem. Deliberate moves and thoughtful combat always win the day.

The skinnier, less-celebrated Mario brother gets another big moment in the spotlight. This time, instead of exploring a ghost-infested mansion, you're exploring a ghost-infested hotel. Your flashlight/vacuum cleaner weapon, the Poltergust G-00, has been updated with new bells and whistles, including an area-of-damage ability to slam ghosts on the ground.

The premise—find the hotel elevator's missing buttons, and ascend to the top floor to rescue your friends—is stock 'damsel in distress' stuff. But no one plays Mario games for the storyline; one plays it for the sharply tuned, clever gameplay. In Luigi's Mansion 3, the gaming innovation comes in the form of Gooigi, a slime-composed Luigi doppelganger who can squeeze himself down storm drains and through cages. You use this mechanic to solve puzzles; Luigi does one task while Gooigi accomplishes a different, second task, which causes a chain reaction. These are the best moments of the game, when you feel impressed at your own cleverness and compelled to continue exploring.

The Fire Emblem franchise is based on two central ideas; finely tuned, turn-based RPG gameplay and "perma-death." if your mage dies, she's dead for good, and you'll have to complete the rest of the game without her. It emotionally hurts like hell, especially since you've spent hours upgrading and nurturing her abilities.

Fire Emblem: Three Houses does away with some of the perma-death stakes by instituting "Divine Pulse," the ability to rewind time a set number of instances per battle. It also institutes a Hogwarts-esque "house" structure. The central hub of the game is a school, and you are the head of house and teacher for a number of students, who either prosper or fail under your tutelage. One of the first things you do in the game is to choose a house: The Black Eagles, The Blue Lions, or the Golden Deer. Each comes with its own unique students and storyline. You spend your weeks between battles buying supplies, conversing with your students, joining them in the dining hall, and honing their abilities.

Three Houses has a surprisingly moving narrative (you have four different branching paths to choose from), charming dialogue, and refined battle mechanics. It is a standout entry in an acclaimed franchise.

This is the best Star Wars game we've seen in years. 

It's hard to make a Jedi a fun, playable character. Make him too weak, and the game ceases to be a vicarious power fantasy. Make him too strong, and you become a logic-defying space god, which takes the stakes out of everything. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, set between the events of Episode III and Episode IV, splits the difference, and casts you in the role of a Padawan who's in hiding, thanks to the Jedi Purge. Your Force powers, currently repressed, come back to you in the form of flashbacks to when you were a child, training with your Master.

Fallen Order has incredibly detailed planets to explore and a late-game appearance by a classic character from Star Wars lore (beware of spoilers), making it the perfect appetizer for impatient Star Wars fans; Episode IX drops on December 20.

There are numerous "darkest timeline" space Westerns released every year. But The Outer Worlds stands out as one of the most polished games of its type. It's a satire, first of all, which means it doesn't fall victim to the brooding self-seriousness this genre often stoops to. The characters' relationships are relatable and warm. The dialogue is selectable, which customizes your experience further. And the missions are approachable in a multitude of ways: computer hack your way in, shoot your way in, or sneak your way in. It's up to you.

Set in an alternate timeline, in which Teddy Roosevelt never became U.S. President, The Outer Worlds takes place in a solar system where mega corporations are colonizing planets. It's classic dystopian science fiction, stewed to perfection.

The haunting ambience of Control makes sense when you realize that the same developers behind Alan Wake and Max Payne designed this. Creepy, hyper-stylized, and genuinely upsetting, Control is the rare third-person-shooter that stretches the conventions of its type.

Control combines traditional shoot-and-cover mechanics with your character's latent, emerging paranormal powers. You can control (hence, the title) and launch household objects with your mind. You can levitate. You can mind control your enemies for brief periods. This all takes place in an office building, which creates a weird dissonance between the mundanity of your surroundings and the superhuman powers you're learning to use.

It takes nerve to make a game like Death Stranding, which appears tedious on its face. But just as the mundanity and the indignities of life in Red Dead Redemption II deepened the Arthur Morgan character, so it goes for Sam Porter Bridges in Death Stranding. You feel his loneliness as he trudges across the ruined, lonely terrain of a formerly prospering America, loaded down with packages he must deliver, and networking between the last survivors of an apocalyptic event. Your mission? To "Make America Whole Again."

If that seems a bit on the nose, remember that this is a Hideo Kojima game, a work of fiction by the man who also directed Metal Gear Solid and its widely heralded sequels. This game, like those others, is saddled with both his brilliance and his indulgences: cinematic storytelling, hours of cutscenes, and philosophical moralizing on purpose and existence. And of course, the narrative twists are a given; they are part and parcel to what the "Kojima" label has come to signify. 

What is more accolade-worthy? The creation of something that is conventional and seamless, or the creation of something that is overly ambitious but flawed? Death Stranding was "divisive," with some players heralding it as a groundbreaking accomplishment, and other players deriding it as an interactive movie, or even more dismissively, as a glorified walking simulator. 

Art is subjective. And regardless of where you fall in the debate, it's important to have the discussion in the first place; it is through intellectual debate and analysis that developers will continue to evolve and stretch the definition of what a video game can be. 

The gaming industry should celebrate attempts to innovate, lest we get more of the "same-old, same-old." In Death Stranding, Kojima created something that will be talked about and discussed, in venues beyond those of gaming publications, for years to come. It is an attempt to do something more. And flawed though it may be, it cannot be denied for its lack of ambition.