Another year, another 52 weeks' (well, almost) worth of gaming opportunities. Like in previous years, let us reminisce at our gaming experiences of 2019 and share which games we liked playing the most during this year.

Note that this does not necessarily include new games (since the most of us are here for older titles, wink wink). Whether a game was released in 1989 or 2019, if it impressed you, it is worthy of discussion!

For me, Ion Fury was GOTY. I don't play new games much. but this hit all the right buttons not just in terms of nostalgia, but evolving past several mechanics where improvement was most needed.

Otherwise, gave The Movies a shot, I found it quite a creative title, albeit with a lot of empty space in terms of gameplay between releasing films.

I'm early on with Hedon, it impresses me with hints to older games in its environment design.

Finally, GOG's very recent release of Submarine Titans has me playing that pretty much exclusively the past few days. Such a good game.

I haven't played much this years, because I was feverishly finishing my own game. I did play four games this year that were awesome this year (that I can remember): Slay the Spire, Celeste, Hollow Knight and Spider-Man (PS4). Of these Hollow Knight was my favourite game I played this year.

Of the games released in 2019 that I played (which are only a few) Time Stall is my favourite, but I'm biased because I worked on it.

This year the prize goes to a whole series: The Legend of Heroes: Ao No Kiseki, The Legend of Heroes: Zero No Kiseki, The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel, The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II and The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III. I spent the vast majority of the year on these games.

I also liked Unavowed a lot.

Best game I finished in 2019:

• Valiant Hearts: The Great War (PS4 | 2014)

Best game I finished in 2019 that was released in 2019:

• L.A. Noire: The VR Case Files (PS4 | 2019)

I don't get as much time as I used to playing games and often, I'm playing games on my Pile of Shame (which means games not released in 2019).

Although in terms of hours I played a lot of Battlefield V, it probably wasn't my favourite experience in 2019 (equal parts awesome but equal parts frustrating as well).

With respect to single-player experiences, the best this year was probably Hypnospace Outlaw for me. It just did so many things right and was a right old nostalgia trip down Geocities Lane.

This was followed closely by Finding Paradise (not a 2019 title) but I'm a bit of a fan of Kan Gao's other work (like To the Moon), so it's probably no surprise.

Kathy Rain; a pleasant trip back to point&click adventures - and I only had to look at a walkthrough for a couple of things, which I found acceptable.

Let's see...

Games played this year start to end:

• Jotun
• Regions of Ruin
• The Müll Littoral
• Syberia

Finished this year, but started earlier:

• Eschalon

Started this year, not finished:

• Venetica
• Ascension to the Throne (just these days)

Played, but neither started this year nor finished:

• Neverwinter Nights: Kingmaker (do mean to try one more time to just push myself to finish the Kingmaker campaign these days, would likely be a one-day thing from where I last dropped off, but...)
• Lords of Xulima (Deluxe Edition)
(Plus the odd game of Epic Pinball.)

None will make my favorites list. But to pick the better one from those finished (so including Eschalon), I'll go with Jotun, though mainly, as I say in my review, if taken more as a work of art than as a game.
Out of all of them though, probably Lords of Xulima. Venetica deserves a mention too though. And so do Eschalon, despite the annoyances, and Syberia, for being a very rare adventure game I played to the end, and possibly first one I played at all in some 15 years. Too soon to talk about AttT.

The one game i played from beginning to end this year was: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

For me it was one of the games where i came home after work and was anticipating to continue playing it. This happends rarely anymore, if at all.

And no, i'm not a long time fan. This is the first Zelda game i played. Never owned consoles as a kid (C64->Amiga->PC).

After a disappointing past few years from Spike Chunsoft, AI: The Somnium Files exceeded all my expectations. I have a few very minor issues with how the branched narrative was laid out, but otherwise it's one of the smartest murder mysteries I've experienced in any medium in recent years.

Astral Chain isn't going to end up on any personal "best of all time" lists, but I have to say the dual character combat is extremely fun. It's got my favorite OST of the year as well.

Patrick: The Trails series has been on my radar for a while, but unfortunately I never found a good time this year to get into any big JRPGs. Seeing all the praise it's gotten makes me definitely want to set some time aside for it in the hopefully near future.

Now you've done it. I have been eyeing AI for the whole holiday sale and now I could not resist anymore.

Sacrifice, which I had been looking forward to playing for over a decade, was by a long shot my biggest surprise for this year.

Haven't gotten around to playing a 2019 game I'm afraid. Ask me again in a dozen years or so.

Happy New Year folks! Here are some personal gaming highlights of the year 2019.

• The best overall game: The Witcher 3 (PC) and its two massive DLCs. This is among the best things that ever happened to gaming.
• I was personally surprised by how much I enjoyed beating the following games this year: Horizon: Zero Dawn (PS4), Until Dawn (PS4), Top Hunter: Roddy & Cathy (Arcade), OutRun (Genesis), Undertale (PC), The Evil Within (PC), Prey (2017, PC) and especially it’s groundhog day-like DLC, Prey: Mooncrash.
• The best games re-played this year: Kid Niki: Radical Ninja (Kaiketsu Yanchamaru) (Arcade) and Ninja Kid II (Arcade) – I have fond memories of both these games from my childhood, and this year I tried to beat them with as few credits as I could.
• The hardest beaten game: Super Mario Bros. 2 (a.k.a. The Lost Levels) (Famicom Disc System). After that beating the original Super Mario Bros. (NES) was a breeze.
• The oldest beat/complete game: Flicky (Genesis release, originally a 1983 Arcade game).
• Best co-op games played this year: Broforce (PC) and A Way Out (PC)

Now, I have screenshots and whatnot for all these games (and many more) on my hard drive, but so little time and willpower lately to contribute it all to the site. Damn grown-up life, jobs and obligations; getting tired and distracted so easily… :( I wish you all to have more time for your passion projects and for yourself generally in the year 2020!

I spent a lot of time replaying Fallout 4 & Fallout New Vegas only to stop playing in the summer and never revisit them. They somehow felt less realistic and just did not hold my interest as much as Fallout 3.

I played lots of other games in 2019 but the two that I've played and enjoyed the most are - the solitaire games that come with windows, sort of a guilty pleasure and just right to while away quarter of an hour or so - Adventure Capitalist. I've lost hours, days to this game since I started playing the weekly events. It's a free game, though spending money on booster packs is always an option, and some days I can be up till 3am trying to complete one last goal. I'm kinda hooked on this right now

Since Fallout 4 came out, I feel like you're just copy-pasting the info about you favorite played games every year ;P

That multiplayer Fallout version didn't go so well as they expected, did it? Let's hope to see Fallout 5 sometime soon.

2019 was a slow year for me, but I got to beat some games that were haunting me for a long time.

The top three: Skyrim, Grim Fandango: Remastered and Shenmue. I bought Skyrim in 2014 and only got to install it last year, as I thought (correctly) it would be a timesink. Grim Fandango was a game I played back in the day and got really close to finishing, but I didn't for some reason, so it was nice to finally beat it. Shenmue was a gift from a friend, a grateful surprise. I also started Shenmue II, but couldn't play much, so I'll try to finish it now.