Video Game Round-Up! - December 2019/January 2020

Welcome to a regular Video Game Round-Up! You know how this works now, but this may seem either late (which it technically is because I had to make space for the two Specials) or very early (because you read those two Specials, and it was less than a week since the last one came out), but that’s okay. It’s here, and it’s chock full of games!

If you read my second Special, Video Games I’m Most Excited About in 2020, you will have seen that two of the games on that list were Final Fantasy VII Remake and Marvel’s Avengers, which I said were coming on 3 March and 15 May respectively. Not two days after that went live, Square Enix announced both those games had been delayed, to 10 April and 4 September (!) respectively. And then, three days later, my Cyberpunk 2077 was delayed 5 months, from 16 April to 17 September.

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!

*koff*

Before we get to the games, a quick word about Apple Arcade: I played four games available through this service, and I’ll likely play even more in the coming months (years?), so I figured I should quickly explain it. It’s basically a monthly subscription service that allows you to download/play as many games available on the service as you want. Even better, none of these games have any microtransactions. Most of them are complete games with beginnings, middles, and ends (but not all, alas). It’s a fairly inexpensive service, and you can include up to three other “family members” on one subscription.

Now, on to the games!

Video Game Round-Up! Special! - Video Games I’m Most Excited About in 2020

Even though I haven’t played all of last year’s releases (and even though I literally just started The Witcher III: Wild Hunt (PS4), a game that is five years old), I am still stupid excited for a lot of games coming out this year. So get on the hype train with me as I run down a bunch of games I want to play (and you probably do too)!

I’ve split this up into three categories: games with confirmed release dates in 2020, games without confirmed release dates, but still supposed to come out in 2020, and games without confirmed release dates and probably not coming out in 2020, but I am nevertheless super excited and I hope against hope they do come out this year.

Now, let’s look at some exciting games!

Video Game Round-Up! Special! - Best Video Games of 2019

Welcome to the first of two Video Game Round-Up! Specials! before the next proper Video Game Round-Up! This Special! is all about the best games of the year. There are three sections to this Special!: the first section is a bunch of games that have received a lot of critical acclaim, but I haven’t played yet because I did not have enough time this year; the second section is my honorable mentions of the year; and the third section is actually my top 10 of the year. Basically, I’m gonna make you read about a bunch of other games before I give you my best games of 2019, but I guess you can just skip all the way down there if you want.

Now, on to the games!

Video Game Round-Up! – November/December 2019

Welcome to another Video Game Round-Up! This is a bit late because I mostly wrote it on a Word doc on my laptop and then kept forgetting to copy-pasta it to FB. Whoops.

Before we get to the actual games I played this past month, I wanted to talk about various games that were announced during Sony’s latest State of Play, Nintendo’s latest Indie World, and the Video Game Awards.

Video Game Round-Up! - October/November 2019

Welcome to another Video Game Round-Up! This is five days late because work and writing both got pretty busy. As Facebook still hasn’t made the notes function available on mobile, I can only work on these things on a PC (aka at home and at work). Those extra five days let me play another three games, though, so this Round-Up is extra long at 11 games total!

Also, my video game talk at the Singapore Writers Festival went really well! Many people have complimented me, and I am super relieved because I was super nervous before going up and thought I was gonna mess it all up! But I totally didn’t! Yay for me!

Now, on to the games!

Video Game Round-Up! - September/October 2019

Welcome back to Video Game Round-Up! I only played five games this month, but I finished four of them, so yay! I spent most of the month writing (we are so close to finishing the thing we’ve been working on basically the whole year, I can taste it), and I read the excellent Blood, Sweat, and Pixels by Jason Schreier, an amazing book about video game development. I learned that it’s basically a miracle any time a new video game comes out.

There were also some exciting Sony news: the PS5 is confirmed for Holiday 2020 and should be backwards compatible with at least the PS4 (though apparently they haven’t quite figured it out yet). Also, my fingers are still very crossed for backwards compatibility for all previous PlayStation games so I can play X-Men Legends (PS2) again, and Fallout: New Vegas (PS3) for the first time. In less good news, the PS4 no longer supports Facebook integration, which means I won’t be able to post my in-game photos of large stone faces in games. Boo!

Finally, I will be giving a mini-lecture at this year’s SWF about video game narratives! Full details here, and if you’re around at 8pm on Saturday, 9 November, then come hang out! I’ve written the lecture, and it is going to be pretty great, if I do say so myself. I guarantee* it’ll be awesome!

And now, on to the HONK! I mean, on to the video games! :D

Video Game Round-Up! - August/September 2019

Hello everybody! I’m back with another Video Game Round-Up! I didn’t get a chance to play too much this month as I spent most of it writing and doing other writing-adjacent activities (like editing and going to a conference), but I have something to announce: I will be doing another video game talk at the Singapore Writers Festival! You can find out more here, so if you’re in Singapore on Saturday, 9 November, come by and hear me talk about video games! It says that the session was “conceptualised by SWF Youth Curators”, but you don’t actually have to be a “youth” to attend. I checked already. However, I definitely have to keep to the allotted 45 minutes this time (30 minutes for lecture, 15 minute for Q&A), so no going over for an extra long session like last time :P

Now, on to the games!