Games include Heave Ho, Circumnavigators, Hercules, F-Zero AX, Sonic Championship, Tetris: The Grand Master 3 – Terror‑Instinct, and Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward.
These games and awards were decided during the Wardcast’s Best Games Played 2019 episode, where we considered any and all games played by the members of the Wardcast in 2018, even if they weren’t released that calendar year.
Have you ever wanted to prove yourself? Grow stronger, faster, more hardened in the face of oppressive odds? Stand against a world of indomitable preditors and show your resolve? Smack a dinosaur in the head with a hammer that’s bigger than you? Because so often, when I hear Monster Hunter getting compared to other games, especially in terms of long-haul difficulty and challenging combat, I see Dark Souls used as its closest kin, with its drill instructor tendencies, berating and demeaning your vain attempts at success.
But Monster Hunter is more like a personal coach — cheering you on, engaging in pre-workout chants and helpful advice, and trying to get you to bring out your best. Previous MonHun titles embraced their PlayStation 2 origins to a fault: clunky movement and archaic UI design proved too large a mountain to scale for most new players. But last year, Monster Hunter: World entered the scene with a promise to deliver on the classic Monster Hunter experience, refined for modern sensibilities. Now with Monster Hunter World: Iceborne, we’ve hit the apex of what this series can deliver, with the most impressive buffet of monster hunting the series has ever seen.
2019 — what a year. A year of ups, a year of downs, but most importantly, a year of new friendships.
Before we close the book on this year and this decade, we wanted to take one more episode to ask our guests from the past twelve months if they wanted to come on to talk about the games that meant the most to them.
This is it: we’ve bickered and bartered our way through the upper bracket, with only Untitled Goose Game coming out unscathed, but once more through the gauntlet we must stride to determine… The Honorables!
Got a question for the show? Join us on Discord or email us at contact@ward-games.com!
These games and awards were decided during the Wardcast’s Best Games Played 2019 episode, where we considered any and all games played by the members of the Wardcast in 2018, even if they weren’t released that calendar year.
Final Fantasy XII was a missing chapter in my life.
I had skipped the PlayStation 2 and all of its associated JRPGs, so I don’t remember any announcements or hype about Final Fantasy XII, nor do I remember anyone raving about it after it came out. It seemed like a forgettable entry in the Final Fantasy anthology, so when it came to Switch, I had an excuse to at least satisfy my curiosity. I expected a pretty mild but typical JRPG. Instead, I was met with a sweeping, engrossing, and wonderfully acted epic.
These games and awards were decided during the Wardcast’s Best Games Played 2019 episode, where we considered any and all games played by the members of the Wardcast in 2018, even if they weren’t released that calendar year.
Three years later, I can’t help but feel like I missed something when I played Undertale. It’s surely one of my favorite games in recent memory — the characters, the story, the jokes all come together in a lovingly tailored package. I drank deep of its themes of love and friendship and felt my stone heart soften.
But I was later informed that there were things I missed. That, on multiple playthroughs, more of the world gets exposed to you. The charming fog gripping the world of Undertale dissipates in later runs, revealing the dark machinations that reside beneath.
These games and awards were decided during the Wardcast’s Best Games Played 2019 episode, where we considered any and all games played by the members of the Wardcast in 2018, even if they weren’t released that calendar year.
Video games can come and go, but every once in awhile you get one that sticks with you forever. I played Outer Wilds at a point where mental health was in a deeper valley than usual, and it left me so profoundly impacted that I didn’t do much but think about it for a week afterwards. The game has a stellar concept — the very definition of “galaxy brain” in scope and execution — and yet so humble amidst its thematic backdrop.
These games and awards were decided during the Wardcast’s Best Games Played 2019 episode, where we considered any and all games played by the members of the Wardcast in 2018, even if they weren’t released that calendar year.
Hypnospace Outlaw is a blast from the past.
But not our past. An alternate past, where people don headbands while they sleep to enter the alternate reality of Hypnospace; where folks collect SquisherZ monsters while they drink Grey’s Peak soda and listen to their favorite bands like Fre3zer and Chowder Man. It’s both eerily familiar and wholly different.
We’ve gone to bat for the games we felt the strongest towards in Best Games Played. Some secured their place in our vaulted list, but others, unfortunately, did not.
You may think that would be the end of their story, but you’d be wrong. Some games will have a second chance at redemption, here in The Honorables, our double elimination honorable mentions bracket! Join us as we reexamine games that didn’t quite make it to the top ten as well as others that we’ve played on our travels throughout the year.
Got a question for the show? Join us on Discord or email us at contact@ward-games.com!
These games and awards were decided during the Wardcast’s Best Games Played 2019 episode, where we considered any and all games played by the members of the Wardcast in 2018, even if they weren’t released that calendar year.
When my buddies and I first stepped into Divinity: Original Sin II, we realized very quickly the magical potential of the multiplayer journey on which we had embarked. And make no mistake, embarking on that journey is much like committing to a Dungeons & Dragons campaign. For one thing, to finish this story as a group requires scheduling play sessions for a potentially one-hundred hour game. But it also invokes the camaraderie — and infighting — of tabletop role-playing games in a way that I have not seen another video game capture. You can play Original Sin II in single player and have a fantastic and distinct campaign, but I want to write about my experience playing with my friends.
