It felt liberating playing a huge RPG that rewards “cheating” the system, and encountering NPCs and opponents that acknowledge and react to it. Creative play is not only allowed, but encouraged and intentionally made possible by the developers. It gave me the freedom to cheat, steal, kill, or persuade my way with kindness through the campaign with a friend (or three!) just like in D&D. When I was famished for Dungeons and Dragons, Divinity: Original Sin 2 filled that void for me. With the game having its highest-grossing month since launch, it's safe to say Pokemon GO isn't going.anywhere, especially not off of this list. The experiences I have had, the places I have gone and the people I have met because of Pokemon GO are all part of why it is still so special to this day. Few games in history have done as much to bring together communities of the most disparate interests, locations, cultures, etc as much as Pokemon GO has. As Andrew Goldfarb stated last year when we named Pokemon GO our hundredth game, “it is as relevant for what happens outside of the game as what happens in it,” and to this day that could not be more true. The list goes on of all the mechanics and elements that make Pokemon GO a game that’s worth playing every day in 2019. There is even a burgeoning competitive PVP scene which gave Pokemon GO its first-ever appearance at the Pokemon World Championships this year. Events now fill each month’s calendar with new (and sometimes shiny) Pokemon, exclusive rewards and new ways to play the game. Quests (research tasks as they are referred to in-game) have been added that reward items and even special Pokemon. Friendship has been introduced and allows users to now exchange gifts, trade or even battle each other. These additions create an experience that incentivizes users to be more dedicated to daily play without feeling like a grind. In 2019, the game is flooded with a multitude of tasks, activities, and events that can involve anyone from yourself to a large group of people. If you didn’t care about the IP, the game itself was very lacking. Outside of catching the original 151 Pokemon the game itself relied heavily on the nostalgia of the Pokemon franchise and augmented reality gimmick of having them show up in the real world.
When it launched in 2016 it was in a lot of ways a mediocre experience. Pokemon GO in 2019 is a game I shouldn’t care about. Halo 2 remains the gold standard for console first-person shooter multiplayer, despite the fact that it's been 15 years since its release. The maps were almost all memorably brilliant, the match options were vast, and the ranking system kept you fighting night after night to try and move up. Of course, it helped that the multiplayer gameplay was, well, legendary. It brought the party system and matchmaking hopper concept to consoles, instantly making every other online console game look archaic in its infrastructure by comparison. Sure, the campaign didn't so much end as much as stopped, but the shocking reveal of the playable Arbiter and his story that mirrored the Chief's was a twist no one saw coming.įurthermore, and perhaps even more importantly, Halo 2 was the killer app for Xbox Live.
Master Chief taking the fight with the Covenant to Earth was epic, action-packed, and visually stunning on the original Xbox. Few games had more of a buildup prior to their release than Halo 2, and even fewer managed to live up to them in the way that Halo 2 did.