Vagrant Rant M o v i e s . G a m e s . M u s i c . "L i f e".

Back for a second round, this list of micro-lists is my chance to live a little and give a few shout-outs that I just can’t fit into other end-of-year posts. There are once again five categories, because that’s nice and neat. Two categories are new to 2019, two return from last year, and one is a modified version of a previous category. Time to clean up some loose ends.

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VR BEST OF 2019 DISCLAIMER

This list represents my opinion only. I am not asserting any kind of superiority or self-importance by presenting it as I have. My opinion is not fact. To agree with me 100% is rarer than an EA game without microtransactions. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.

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Best Third-Party Game Publisher

Capcom

I started this category off last year as just “Best Game Publisher”, but the power of console-owning first party publishers means there’s a lot of overlap with my ever-dwindling console list (which goes live in a few days). So let’s give a spotlight to the publishing companies who don’t have the added motivation of trying to sell a videogame console, shall we?

Despite losing their partnership with Bungie, the Activision half of Activision-Blizzard actually had one of their better years in 2019. They relied a lot on nostalgia, but Crash Team Racing Racing: Nitro Fuelled and especially Call of Duty Modern Warfare went over refreshingly well with fans. Let’s also not forget that they published the GOTY winner at the Game Awards, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. EA had their share of standard EA drama, but because they own Respawn Entertainment, they got to publish the excellent Apex Legends and Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order, so they have to be in the conversation. Somehow. Square Enix had a quiet release year by their standards but still finally put out Kingdom Hearts III, and they absolutely killed it at E3. Let’s not talk about Ubisoft and 2K.

For me it comes down to two contenders this year. Focus Home Interactive roared out of nowhere – sorry, France – to release three of the year’s biggest word-of-mouth gaming successes: Co-op zombie shooter World War Z, plot-driven stealth game A Plague Tale: Innocence, and pirate RPG Greedfall. They also managed to get last year’s Vampyr onto the Switch, and successfully sequelised The Surge. The Europeans deserve a whole bunch of credit for their efforts. But they just lose out to a resurgent Capcom if you ask me, because the former Japanese giant cannot seem to put a foot wrong right now. Not only is their Smash Bros-esque mobile card game Teppen better than it has any right to be, their Monster-hunting expansion Iceborne went some way towards bridging the gap between new and old fans of the series. Also, they might just have the best engine in gaming at this current moment. Devil May Cry V and Resident Evil 2 both manage to look absolutely incredible and run ridiculously smoothly. Both games also absolutely cleaned up with critics and fanbases alike, which is so rare in this day and age. You don’t have to tell Capcom that, though. They have a long memory.
Runner-Up Focus Home Interactive

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That’s right, after a few years of an unchanged formula I am finally mixing things up a bit. The gaming trends list was fun but when I was looking at the viablity of doing it again the patterns of 2018 just looked (depressingly) like more of the same. So I am taking a page out of all kinds of other publications’ books and doing five different lists so truncated they only have one entry on them. Some of these awards are almost specifically tailored to one entry, while others I could probably have made into at least a top five but I only have so much writing time at this point in the year so that would be less than ideal. Let’s give this a try.

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VR BEST OF 2018 DISCLAIMER

This list represents my opinion only. I am not asserting any kind of superiority or self-importance by presenting it as I have. My opinion is not fact. If you actually agree with me 100%, that’s odd, but let’s have a beer. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.

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Best Game Publisher

Sony

This one is a games media favourite and one I’ve always wanted to cover on this blog. While major third party game publishers would usually have a good shot at taking this kind of award (which might usually cover both published games and general media presence), Sony’s own range of PS4 exclusives from their own stable were just too good to ignore this year. They probably would have won this on the strength of God of War and Spider-Man alone, but the admittedly polarising Detroit: Become Human was also a tremendous achievement in its own right. Sony didn’t have the best E3 this year by their standards, but they still grabbed plenty of headlines with their debut gameplay showcase of The Last of Us Part II and Ghost of Tsushima while continuing to prove an old truth – if you want a pile of fantastic single-player games, pick up a PlayStation console late in its life cycle.

Runner-Up Ubisoft

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