What Games Came Out in 2019?
Last year saw a plethora of big-name games release, despite suffering from hefty delays. From the punishing Dark Souls reboot Elden Ring to the large open world Breath of the Wild-style game Frontiers, many games were met with mixed reactions.
This year, however, has seen several high-profile games pushed into next year. Luckily, we still have some excellent looking games to look forward to.
The Callisto Protocol
Taking place on Jupiter’s dead moon Callisto in 2320, The Callisto Protocol is a sci-fi thriller about a cargo pilot who winds up being incarcerated at Black Iron Prison run by the United Jupiter Company. Once there he must escape whilst also parsing the secrets of the facility and fighting for survival against an advancing horde of flesh-twisted mutants.
Whilst it teeters towards straight up action as the game progresses The Callisto Protocol is very much survival horror at its core. It’s a genre which hasn’t been particularly well represented in video games of late. It’s a genre that relies on slow, methodical combat and tense set-pieces which are genuinely creepy to play through. In The Callisto Protocol combat is a blend of up close melee attacks, gunplay and a gravity-based weapon. It’s a formula that works surprisingly well, even if it does end up feeling like a carbon copy of the excellent BioShock. Despite this, it’s still an extremely enjoyable game to play.
A Plague Tale: Requiem
As the sequel to 2019’s A Plague Tale: Innocence, Requiem is a more-than-worthy followup. It explores themes of blood disease, the Inquisition and hordes of plague-carrying rats in a world where the de Rune siblings are forced to make moral choices on their journey through 14th century France.
The gloomy fantasy adventure focuses on Amicia and her brother Hugo who struggle with a blood disease and the uncontrollable powers it has cursed him with. The game’s bleak tone and rat-infested stealth takes players through a twisted, violent world that demands your attention.
Unlike its predecessor, Requiem does away with directed stealth in favor of open spaces that feature multiple paths of progression and a more expansive selection of tools to navigate them. This change may appease gamers that still view linearity as a bad thing but it also slows down plot advancement and makes the experience feel less fluid. Fortunately, it doesn’t stop Asobo Studio from creating a truly cinematic journey.
The Quarry
Developed by Supermassive Games, the studio behind Until Dawn and The Dark Pictures Anthology, The Quarry offers up an interactive drama horror game that riffs on the summer camp gone wrong subgenre. Players control nine camp counsellors who must survive the last night of their stay at Hackett’s Quarry as they are hunted by supernatural creatures and blood-soaked locals.
Like Until Dawn, The Quarry offers plenty of options to customize the player’s experience, including a dedicated accessibility menu. Here, players can change the speed at which QTEs occur, switch button mashing for directional actions to holding inputs, use aim assist, and even add color blind settings. In addition, a Movie Mode allows players to sit back and watch the story unfold without any interaction, allowing them to experience a version of the game that ends with everyone either living or dying.**
As Dusk Falls
A dusty motel in a remote corner of Arizona might not seem like the most likely setting for a game about family drama and heists gone wrong, but debut studio Interior/Night uses the setting to create a narrative adventure that stands out from the crowd. With a script that deftly explores themes of inherited hardship, incredible voice acting, and a bounty of pause-worthy choices along the game’s elaborate branching paths, As Dusk Falls is an instant classic.
What’s more, unlike other choice-driven games such as Until Dawn and The Quarry, As Dusk Falls doesn’t let the player get away with anything, as all choices have real-world consequences and can change the course of the story in significant ways. Even the smaller choices can be game-changing, with the option to say something the wrong way in a heated discussion potentially ending in a death sentence.
It also allows up to eight players who own the game to play together online or locally, allowing them to vote on decisions and create banter and arguments that could alter the story in unexpected ways.