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My All-Time Favourite Comedy Shows

I’ve never been someone who watches a great deal of TV, there are a handful of shows that I remain loyal to and will watch whenever a season of it is on but for the most part, TV serves as the background noise of my life, something to have on in the background while I play a game or I’m writing. However, the one genre of TV I find myself frequently enjoying is that of comedy.

There are plenty of Youtube Channels out there that make hilarious content that keeps me entertained, but there’s something about the production and style of TV that provides a level of laughs that I can’t find anywhere else and given that we’ve just gone through the Christmas period, where I’m at home and spend more time watching TV than usual, I thought it’d be fun to go through some of those shows today.

To be clear here, there are no rules in terms of what format the comedy show takes. Sitcoms, panel shows, sketch shows and all the rest are eligible for the list so long as they’re made for TV and are designed to make the audience laugh. So let’s take a look at the funniest of what the land of TV has to offer.

WARNING: EXTREME AMOUNTS OF BRITISHNESS INCOMING

10 – Mock the Week

Ran from: 2005 – Present
Channel: BBC Two
Starring: Dara O’Brien, Hugh Dennis & Various Comedians

I knew I wanted to get one example of the traditional British panel show on here and after running through a couple like Have I Got News for You? and QI I settled on Mock the Week purely because I think it’s the funniest.

Comedians taking the piss out of the news is more or less the backbone of the stand-up genre and Mock the Week took the format brought to the table by Have I Got News For You and revised it to allow for a much more constant stream of laughs. With each episode separated into fairly vague rounds, the format allows the 6 comedians they have on every show to run wild and make a huge variety of jokes on just about anything.

The news from the past week is generally the topic for the most part, but once the comedians finish firing off their quickfire jokes and they start discussing the topic, it’s almost guaranteed that they start to stray onto whatever topic comes into their heads. Then there are the stand-up rounds, where one of the comedians will be given any old topic like Family or Travel and have to do a 5 minute routine on it which gets in a great dose of stand-up comedy as they usually have a selection of the best current comedians on the show. Then there’s the final round of every show, for which the show is arguably the most famous, the “Scenes we’d like to see” round, where all of the participants are given a vague topic like “Unlikely things for a Doctor to say during a check-up” and everyone piles in and does a load of one-liners on the subject which is always hilarious to watch.

Dara O’Brien is a great host for the show, he seems to able to bounce off just about everything anyone says and has generally created some of the funniest moments in the show’s history to boot.

Mock the Week is the best example I can think of for a British panel show because it really does have a bit of everything, pair that with a brilliant host and the finest selection of comedians and you’ve got guaranteed hilarity.

9 – Red Dwarf

Ran from: 1988 – 1999, 2009 – Present
Channel: BBC Two (1988-1999), Dave (2009-Present)
Starring: Craig Charles, Chris Barrie, Danny John-Jules, Robert Llewellyn

Red Dwarf’s a bit of an odd one because it’s one of those shows that are absolutely unmatched when it’s at it’s best, but it spent a good while at a sub-par quality level which has dragged it down and caused it to be considered “overrated” in many circles.

It came about in an era where there was A LOT of Sci-fi, especially in the UK. Doctor Who was just about to close out its initial run and Star Trek was just as big in the UK as it was in the US, so this was a show that looked to come in and tear the genre apart; to point out all the ridiculous stuff and satirise it for all to see. It didn’t satirise it in the modern way though, which is to make it SO ridiculous and over the top that it stops being funny, but instead, it took these satirical ideas and framed them in a show that was able to stand on its own two legs as a decent sci-fi show in its own right.

It didn’t create massive worlds with tonnes of characters, but it was able to create a very cosy universe for itself and put just four very well-rounded characters in it and once that was set up, the comedy followed easily. With the exception of perhaps Kryten, you can’t really put any of the main characters into a box and specifically say that they’re a parody of another character from a different sci-fi show because the writers knew that was a style of comedy that couldn’t hold up for very long.

It’s hard to deny that around ’98-’99 the show took a dip in quality, but come 2012 when the first new series in over a decade aired, the show did something very few shows have ever been able to do before. It came back, just as good as it was in its hey-day. It wasn’t quite as good as it was at it’s best, but the recent series of Red Dwarf are just as well written and funny as they were during the original few series and that’s something that can’t be discounted when looking back at it.

Red Dwarf was a show that took a beloved genre and managed to rip the piss out of it, while still adding to it in the process, not once but twice and I’m absolutely thrilled that it’s still going.

8 – That Mitchell and Webb Look

Ran from: 2006-2010
Channel: BBC Two
Starring: David Mitchell, Robert Webb

Sketch comedy is a genre that’s never gone over all that well on TV, it’s a format that’s more suited to the theatre, or in the modern era, online platforms like Youtube. That doesn’t mean that a great sketch show has never been on TV though, and here’s an example of one.

I’ve always loved David Mitchell as a comedian, there’s something about his delivery style that gets me every time he delivers a joke (we’ll get into that a bit more later) and he’s a lot better than I thought he’d be at portraying the wide variety of caricatures that feature on a sketch show like this one. As for Robert Webb, I’m well aware he’s an acquired taste and I know many people that can’t stand him, but I think he’s hilarious. He has this “couldn’t give a shit” style of delivery that I adore, but he can also play over the top enthusiasm in a hilarious way too, which is fantastic for sketches like the obscure & pointless advert parodies.

As for the content of the sketches, there are so many brilliant recurring features that I could list. Just to name a few there’s: The Quiz Broadcast, Ted and Peter the former snooker players, Get Me Henimore and of course…That’s Numberwang! Even the one-off sketches are absolutely brilliantly written in the way they parody all aspects of British TV, it really is a great collection of sketches that I could watch endlessly.

7 – Futurama

Ran from: 1999-2013
Channel: FOX (1999-2003), Comedy Central (2008-2013)
Starring: Billy West, Katey Sagal, John DiMaggio

Futurama is a show that Matt Groening created just as his other show, The Simpsons, was starting to see it’s quality decline slowly but surely, which is why it’s almost surprising that Futurama ended up as good as it was. Futurama was a show that took the same style of comedy as The Simpsons and set it in a world where they could absolutely anything they wanted, it was like having a whole series of “Treehouse of Horror” episodes.

Much like Red Dwarf, it was able to identify so many sci-fi trends and find a way to repurpose them for the sake of comedy, with hilarious results. The way it presents Robots is great, where they’ve become advanced to the point where they act pretty much the same as humans allowed for a greater variety of both characters and stories as they explore the differences between the two which led to both comedy and heartfelt moments.

That’s what elevates a comedy show like this above so many other sitcoms, it wasn’t afraid to occasionally make you cry. There are plenty of moments in the show that grounds the whole thing in a very human reality – like Fry seeing his Mom in a dream or the tragedy of Seymore that only serves to enhance the ridiculousness of the lobster monsters and planets with stupid names.

I also don’t think it ever declined in quality all that much. It had the odd crap episode of course, but as far as I’m concerned, the final season in 2013 was on the same level of quality as the first one in 1999. This is thanks to the sheer scale of the show, it allowed the writers with any bat-shit stupid idea they had and make it work. You want Leela to write and film her own kids show, only for it to turn out she stole the idea from some aliens she found? Go for it. You want an hour-long epic where the characters get sucked into a game of D&D that then becomes a Lord of the Rings parody? Let’s get it made. You want to have an episode that’s just about Fry looking for a place to live? No problem, and we’ll make it one of the funniest episodes in show history.

Futurama was a show that was so incredibly creative when it came to its comedy and I honestly don’t think we’ve ever seen a show hit its stride quite like it before or since.

6 – Dave Gorman’s Modern Life is Goodish

Ran from: 2013 – 2017
Channel: Dave
Starring: Dave Gorman

I know, it’s a show about a man called Dave on a channel called Dave, UK TV is weird sometimes.

This is a rare example of what is essentially a series of stand-up shows becoming a serialised TV show, entirely featuring a single comedian, but luckily they picked the perfect man for the job.

Many stand-up will tell stories in order to get their jokes out, it’s one of the main features of any routines, but I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a comedian better at telling a story than Dave Gorman. Check out his stand-up show “Dave Gorman’s Googlewhack Adventure” if you don’t believe me, the man can weave all kind of tales while he’s up there on stage and every sentence contains something worth laughing about.

The premise of the show itself is quite simple, he has a slideshow and his voice and he looks to dissect the world we live in and show you why it’s good…ish. The way he goes about it, however, is fantastic, he’s great at the classic style of stand-up bits where he points out all the ridiculous things we accept without even realising it every day; such as game trailers that look to sell the game with “not actual game footage” or how we’re more likely to buy a clock if we think it’s smiling at us (you’re going to have to watch the show to understand that one).

Then in almost every episode, he will do something a bit weird, but hilarious that questions our perceptions of modern life. Like creating a fake music puzzle just to infuriate his friend who’s really good at them; or sending £50 notes through the post in a see-through envelope to see if we can trust the post-service; or my personal favourite, where he put two pairs hamsters in two different cages, one laid with shredded newspaper and the other laid with shredded porn magazines to see if the hamsters with the porn magazines were more sexually active.

Dave Gorman’s Modern Life is Goodish is what happened when a top-level stand-up comedian is at his absolute creative best, with enough variety in every show to tickle your fancy no matter what style of stand-up you like.

5 – Scrubs

Ran from: 2001 – 2010
Channel: NBC
Starring: Zach Braff, Donald Faison, Sarah Chalke, Elisa Coupe, John C McGinley, Niel Flynn, Ken Jenkins

To put it plainly, I don’t like American live-action sitcoms. There have been a couple like How I Met Your Mother and the first couple of seasons of The Big Bang Theory that I’ve thought were alright and Friends certainly has its charm, but they don’t make me laugh out loud like any of the British shows on this list.

Except for Scrubs.

The thing about so many of American sitcoms is that they lean too hard on the silliness, good jokes come from breaking the norm, we laugh because the silly thing is unexpected or out of place, so when the whole world of a show is whacky and ridiculous the jokes don’t seem out of place, so just aren’t as funny. Scrubs understood this and made sure that it was going to ground itself in a very serious world.

A hospital is an inherently serious place, we think of it as a place where incredibly smart people do all they can to help the sick and weak, so what better place to set over-the-top, silly antics? All of the characters in Scrubs feel so larger than life because they’re stuck in this serious, realistic setting that only serves to highlight how absurd all of their jokes and actions are.

What’s amazing about Scrubs though, is that this contrast doesn’t just go one way, it doesn’t just serve to make the jokes seem silly, it serves to make the dark and serious moments have an even greater emotional impact. Just look at an episode like My Lunch for an example of this, the jokes come a mile a minute in this and it always gets loads of laughs out of me the whole way through and then 5 minutes later it’s got me on the edge of tears as it takes the characters through a horrible experience.

Scrubs is a show that understands exactly how to balance those two sides to its world in order to make both of them stand out to the fullest effect. There are plenty of other comedy shows out there that have moments of heart, even some I’m yet to talk about on this list, but none have achieved it quite to the level of quality that Scrubs did.

4 – Would I Lie To You?

Ran from: 2007 – Present
Channel: BBC One
Starring: David Mitchell, Lee Mack, Rob Brydon & Various TV Personalities

Going back to the world of British Panel shows we’ve got a show that I would say has the largest amount of laughs per minute on this list.

The format of Would I Lie To You is very simple, there are two teams each with two celebrity guests alongside David Mitchell on one team and Lee Mack on the other and they each take turns reading out a story about themselves, this story might be true or it might be a lie and it’s the job of the opposing team to ask questions about the story and determine which it is.

Naturally, all of the stories that come out are slightly weird or absurd which makes the interrogation all the more entertaining as the guests being questioned weave a grand tapestry of an absolutely ridiculous story that is so stupid it MUST be true. Mitchell & Mack are always on throughout this show, ready to pounce on any oddity or inconsistency in hilarious fashion, to the point where the show often devolves into an absolutely side-splitting shouting match between the captains who are able to bounce off of each other flawlessly.

The guests are also brilliant at making their stories sound as ludicrous as possible, just watch Henning Vane’s story of how he got onto Interpol’s missing person’s list, or James Acaster’s cabbage rivalry, or literally anything Bob Mortimer has ever said on that show. Rob Brydon does a great job of keeping the show moving and isn’t afraid to get involved in the shouting matches when he wants to, which only makes things all the funnier.

It’s a show that has that sense of fun that telling your mates a story of something that happened to you has, only with the added bonus of seeing that story torn apart by people who make a living being entertaining and funny. It doesn’t do anything special or groundbreaking, it’s just all-out hilarity from start to finish and that’s good enough for me.

3 – Black Books

Ran from: 2000 – 2004
Channel: Channel 4
Starring: Dylan Moran, Bill Bailey, Tamsin Greig

Going to the slightly more obscure regions now, to a show that, the first time I watched it blew me away by how obscenely funny it was.

Dylan Moran’s performance is what makes this show as good as it is, I’ve always loved his style of stand-up and he turns that up to eleven for his character in this show, being constantly loud, abrasive and generally an absolute arsehole to everyone and everything around him. This kind of “don’t give a shit” attitude that his character gives off adds so much to every single joke in the show, giving it this over-the-top feel that I just can’t help but laugh at.

On top of that, the jokes are just extremely well written. They don’t make any grand comments about our society or have some deep emotional meaning, they’re just unapologetically funny. Sometimes comedy for the sake of comedy is exactly what I want from TV and no show does that better than Black Books, every situation the characters get themselves into is relatively realistic, just slightly exaggerated and it brings out the best in each of the characters.

All three of the main characters have very clear roles to play and the performances slot into them perfectly. With Dylan Moran’s character providing the pessimist’s view, Bill Bailey’s character providing the optimist’s view and Tasmin Greig’s character serving as a mediator between the two, the three characters are constantly at each other throats and it makes for some of the best pure comedy I’ve ever seen.

2 – The Simpsons

Ran from: 1989 – Present
Channel: FOX
Starring: Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright, Yeardley Smith

It’s hard to summarise why I love The Simpsons in just a few paragraphs. During its 30 years and counting on the air, it became more than a TV, spearheading a cultural movement in the US, shifting away from the wholesome family style of TV into a darker product that prefered to satirise the modern family values; although people far more articulate than I have already gone into that in great detail (I recommend Super Eyepatch Wolf on YouTube if you’re interested).

This year I completed a task I had set for myself the previous summer to watch every episode of The Simpsons ever, in order. Not counting season 31, which is currently airing, that’s 662 episodes of a sitcom I believe to be unrivalled in its quality, a feeling that was only amplified by the time I had finished watching them all.

The Simpsons is a show that has been in my life almost literally as long as I can remember, when I was growing up (and still to this day) it was on the TV in my parents’ house at least once every couple of days, usually more. It was a show that helped define my sense of humour and also the humour of those around me, I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone over the age of 8 who hasn’t at least heard of The Simpsons and when it comes to the circles I’m a part of on social media, Simpsons’ quotes are pretty much the default setting for jokes.

The first 8 to 10 years of The Simpsons is undoubtedly some of the best television ever produced and while I can’t deny that in the many years since the show has declined in quality – with some episodes that are downright awful – but I think it’s still a lot better than most people give it credit for. While the laugh-out-loud jokes and quotable moments are fewer and further between in the modern version of the show, I very rarely come away from an episode without having had a good giggle once or twice, which is a lot more than I can say for just about any other sitcom I’ve ever seen.

For not only providing me with more laughs than any other TV show ever made, but for helping to shape the sense of humour I have today and being a show that will likely be on the air until the heat-death of the universe, The Simpsons very nearly takes the top spot, but not quite.

1 – Taskmaster

Ran from: 2015 – Present
Channel: Dave (2015-2019), Channel 4 (2020-Present)
Starring: Greg Davies, Alex Horne, Various Comedians

The reasons that I love Taskmaster aren’t as complicated as many of the other shows I’ve talked about on this list. It doesn’t contrast its comedy with touching moments and it doesn’t look to tell any kind of story. Instead, it just takes it personalities, puts them in weird situations and sit back as hilarity ensues.

Taskmaster is a show put together by Alex Horne where for each series they will get a panel of five comedians and set them weird and interesting tasks. These tasks are things like “Knock all the rubber ducks off of the fence as fast as possible” or “Get 11 points” with no indication of how points are scored. These situations on their own would be funny enough, but what really makes this show something special is the fact that the only rules that are set in stone are the ones written on the card, anything else is fair game.

When you have a bunch of comedians who have trained themselves to be quick-witted and creative thinkers, they will always come up with the most ridiculous and creative ways to work around the rules of the task. This inevitably leads to a couple of the comedians nailing it in genuinely impressive ways, while others fail miserably in hilarious displays of ineptitude.

Greg Davies pulls the show together very nicely in his role as the person who judges the performances and hands out the scores, always finding the right way to mock the contestants, leading to some great banter between everyone on the panel. On top of this, despite the fact that the show has been running for 9 seasons, the team behind the show don’t seem to be running dry on task ideas, every new season is just as good as the last one, never dropping in quality which seems like an incredible feat to me.

Taskmaster seemed like a hit-or-miss formula and they knocked it out of the park, no show has made me laugh so hard for so long while maintaining its quality the whole way through its still-ongoing lifespan.

And that’s the list! Thank you very much for taking the time to read this, let me know what comedy shows you, love, either in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo! Join me this time next week where I’ll be running down the best talkers in WWE today!

Game of the Year 2019

2019 has been a bit of an odd year for games. There have been several high-profile releases scattered throughout the year like there always are, but I think that when we look back at gaming in 2019, it will be remembered as the year that set up all the super-hyped releases in 2020.

Despite that – as I mentioned in my favourite old games article – I played more games in 2019 than I ever had in a single year and that is just as true for new releases. While there might not have been much on a massive scale like Cyberpunk or Animal Crossing promises to be next year, there are undoubtedly some all-time favourites for me that came out this year.

Just to clarify, Early Access games will not be included on this list as I don’t think it’s fair to judge an unfinished game, I will instead consider them for “Game of the Year” in whatever year they leave early access. Also, I’d like to make a quick disclaimer that there are some games that I think look brilliant, but never found the time to play. Games like Baba is You and Superliminal are ones that I want to play as soon as possible, so will likely be showing up on my “old games” list at the end of next year.

So join me as I talk about the best of what the world of gaming had to offer in 2019.

SPOILER WARNING

As you probably expected, there will be major spoilers for most, if not all, of the games in this list. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

11 – Cricket 19

Release Date: 8th May
Developer: Big Ant Studios
Publisher: Big Ant Studios
Platforms: Playstation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Windows
Metacritic Average: 73%

It’s ok Americans, you’re excused from this one.

So this one’s probably not one anyone expected to make this list (myself included), but I really wanted to feature it on this list because cricket is a sport that has almost never had a competently made game for it. I had a brief discussion about this with my dad (an avid cricket fan) and we came to the conclusion that the best cricket game up until this point was Stick Game’s Stick Cricket which was a free browser & mobile game made over a decade ago.

While I certainly wouldn’t consider myself a fan of cricket, there are many sports I can’t stand watching that I enjoy playing virtual versions of, so when I saw that the reviews for this game didn’t call it a total crock of shit I was eager to try it out. The first thing that struck me was the sheer level of detail that went into how you approach every match in the game. If you’re in batting then you have to not only consider the basic stuff like the type of shoot you’ll do and where it’ll go but also the little details like where you’re going to position your feet and how you’re going to step towards the ball and it’s a very similar situation on the bowling side.

This year’s world cup final aside, I’ve never enjoyed watching cricket, I don’t find most sports very entertaining, but cricket especially bores me to tears whenever I try and watch it, so imagine my surprise when I found myself reacting with all the vim and vigour you’d expect from a match-day pub crowd while playing a match in this game. Every ball became a nail-biting affair, whether I was batting or bowling and all of that is thanks to the fact that the detailing has allowed for both a realistic and more exciting adaptation of the national sport of these fair isles.

Unlike many of the previous attempts at cricket games, it’s obvious that Cricket 19 had a lot of love poured into it from people who knew a lot about cricket and while there are rough patches that need to be ironed out, this is the first time that I can say there’s a cricket game out there that does the sport justice.

Now we just need a competently made Rugby game and we’ll be set.

10 – Hot Lava

Release Date: 19th September
Developer: Klei Entertainment
Platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux

Hot Lava is a game that knew exactly what it’s audience wanted from it and leaned into it entirely.

The Floor Is Lava was always the ultimate game to play when you were a kid, it combined the rush of doing something you’re not supposed to with the endless desire to concuss yourself that plagues all children of primary school age, but it had a problem, you were never really allowed to have much fun with it. There was only so much jumping between the sofas you could do before your mum came downstairs with a look of horror as to what you were doing to her lovely living room, and playing it during the 5 second moments when the teachers weren’t looking your way on the playground just wasn’t the same. I always dreamt of being able to play the game across the whole size of the playground, I imagined the amazing courses I could set up for me and my friends before I would inevitably slip on the first jump, gently graze my elbow and cry my way home.

Hot Lava is essentially that fantasy…only without that wimpy prick ruining it for everyone.

Mechanically, it’s a fairly simple game. It’s got all the features you’d expect a parkour game to have, where it really shines is in its level designs. The school setting makes for a great feel for the game as you’re bouncing around all over the place, but each level is finely crafted to make the most of its mechanics at every turn. Even levels that focus in on a specific gimmick are able to keep things varied throughout, slowly turning up the difficulty so the game scales perfectly with the player’s skill level. Then, once you’re done with the official levels, there is an ever-increasing number of community-made maps out there which range from the impressively creative to the frustratingly difficult.

I had so much fun leaping from table to chair in Hot Lava, it was able to properly capture that feeling that you always wanted to get from playing The Floor is Lava as a kid.

9 – Trine 4: The Nightmare Prince

Release Date: 8th October
Developer: Frozenbyte
Publisher: Modus Games
Platforms: Playstation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Windows
Metacritic Average: 81%

As I mentioned when I spoke about my most anticipated games for Q4 2019, I talked a bit how I love the Trine series and while Trine 3 was somewhat disappointing, I was still hopeful for the new entry into the series. So now I’ve played it, I can safely say that the series is still going strong.

Ditching the 3D side of the game was definitely the right way to go, as it just didn’t quite work, especially when the potential for level design in 2D was far from exhausted, as this game proved. The level design here was just as good as it always has been, every level feels like a logical progression of mechanics, following the same design philosophies that the 2D Mario games do, only this game plays around with some more complex mechanics that make each level last for about 30 minutes instead of 5, but all 30 of those minutes are engrossing stuff.

The pacing in each level has been notably improved, the team seem to have really nailed the balance that needs to be struck between puzzle-platforming and combat. The game’s combat system is extremely basic, which is why it’s used so sparingly through the levels, which is the perfect way to break up the flow of gameplay, so the whole thing feels more like an adventure and less of an endless series of puzzle rooms.

Speaking of the puzzles, they were as spot-on as always, the game didn’t go overboard with new mechanics this time which allowed for a big variety of puzzles that combine features I was already familiar with, with the new ones that got introduced in a very well-paced manner, so I never felt overwhelmed. The puzzles themselves were fantastically designed, I would never breeze through a puzzle, but I also wouldn’t be stuck on it for ages, most puzzles are designed in such a way to make you think about the mechanics you’ve been given in an abstract way. All of the elements in play react to each other differently, so after playing around with any given puzzle for a bit, that “eureka” moment will finally strike and you’ll be able to progress.

As always, the game looks absolutely gorgeous. Trine understands it’s visual style flawlessly and is able to make just about any environment look absolutely beautiful. Not only do the environments look good, but there’s such a wonderful variety of places that you explore as well, which is a big improvement on the older games of the series, where a lot of the environments could feel a tad samey.

Trine 4 is able to look at its predecessors and remove the flaws while keeping what made it great to begin with, which is such a difficult task, but one that the people behind this game were clearly up to.

8 – Slay The Spire

Release Date: January 23rd
Developer: MegaCrit
Publisher: Humble Bundle
Platforms: Playstation 4, Nintendo Switch, Windows, Mac, Linux
Metacritic Average: 89%

The Roguelike/Roguelite genre is one that I have become truly and thoroughly burnt-out on over the past couple of years. There are so many around the place now that it’s a formula I’m tired of seeing, so it takes something pretty damn special from the genre to make me take notice, enter Slay The Spire.

Slay The Spire looked at the standard Roguelike formula and distilled it down to it’s most basic elements, the rooms you encounter are all very simple, they’re either a fight, a treasure, a quick event, or a shop then it decided that the best course of action would be to slap a deckbuilding, turn-based strategy on the top of it and see what comes out. The result? The most engaging Roguelike game I’ve played in years.

Every battle in Slay the Spire feels tense and to the wire, not because the game is necessarily harsh, but because you’re always reliant on the cards that come your way. It strikes the perfect balance between getting you to think a few steps ahead, while still forcing you to take chances, chances that don’t always pay off. I remember countless times where I’d come up with a plan, but it would rely on drawing the right card at the right time and when it didn’t work it was heartbreaking, but succeeding made me feel like a tactical genius.

The three different decks in the game are also brilliant for allowing you to adjust your play style, without massively overturning the formula of the game. Each character has it’s own unique mechanic that is open to massive amounts of experimentation, which is something I had great fun with. As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t consider myself to be very good at most games, but Slay the Spire had such a smooth learning curve that I felt like I was improving with every single victory.

Slay the Spire is a game that took a genre that I love, combine it with a genre I’m tired of and make something that feels new, exciting and tonnes of fun to play, this is the kind of innovation that I’ve been looking for in the roguelike genre for ages and I desperately hope we see more of it in the years to come.

7 – Katana ZERO

Release Date: April 18th
Developer: Askiisoft
Publisher: Devolver Digital
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, Windows, Mac
Metacritic Average: 83%

One of my favourite things a game can accomplish is to be one specific thing while disguising itself as something else. To explain what I mean by that, let’s take a look at Katana ZERO.

When you star Katana ZERO, the impression I got from it is that it was going to be a fast-paced hack and slash, where you slice your way through waves of enemies feeling like a katana-wielding action hero and while the second part of that statement is true, Katana ZERO is in fact not a hack and slash, but a very clever and high-octane puzzle game.

The goal of each room is to introduce every enemy in the general vicinity to your Katana, usually by separating them from most of their limbs in the process, but if you go charging madly into every room, you’ll most certainly fail almost instantly. Instead, every room in the game is cleverly designed to be “solvable”, with a distinct order and pattern in which you need to show everyone their own spleen before removing their head in what can only be described as a “flourish” of blood. Every time I entered a room, I would instantly scour the whole place looking for the one weak spot where I could start my slicing rampage, running through a mental checklist every time I failed and restarted a room, which gave incredibly satisfying feeling when my master plan was executed to perfection.

What makes Katana ZERO stands out though, is the fact that it has that element of chaos to it. I could make the most ingenious plans ever, but that doesn’t mean I was good enough to pull them off perfectly all the time and that was where the game was at its most fun; when plans went wrong. Once a plan went wrong, it would be easy to just take the death and try again, but I think doing that takes out a huge element of the sheer joy that this game brings you when you improvise. Admittedly, my improvised plans very rarely bore fruit, but that didn’t stop it being an absolute blast when I missed my second strike, which sent me sailing into a room of armoured guards, causing me to panic, throw a firebomb which killed the armoured guards but alerted everyone within a 5-mile radius to my presence, at which point I went on a killing spree, slicing every neck I could lay my eyes on before finally being gunned down.

In addition to that…well…clusterfuck, the game has simplistic but masterfully styled visuals with great uses of colours and effect to create a depressingly beautiful cyberpunk dystopia, a feeling only helped by the brilliant choices that were made with the music, which helped elevate the already fantastically designed boss-fights to epic clashes and nail-biting encounters.

Katana ZERO is a game that strikes that perfect balance between careful & tactical planning and total chaos that makes for an incredibly focused and fun game, all tied together with a clever story that keeps you interested and invested in the world all the way to the credits.

6 – Unheard

Release Date: 29th March
Developer: NEXT Studios
Publisher: NEXT Studios, Bilibili
Platforms: Playstation 4, Windows, Mac
Metacritic Average: 72%

Out of all the games on this list, this is the one that I’d imagine the fewest people have heard of, because this almost passed me by too, so let me explain.

At its most basic level, it’s a mystery-solving game, however, the method by which you solve these mysteries is what makes this an absolutely exceptional game in my view. Instead of searching the scene and interviewing witnesses after the fact, you get to see the 5-15 minutes in which the crime happened, except you don’t get to actually see the details. What you get is a floor-plan view of the building in which the crime took place which you can wander around as you play through the events of the scene and the only tool you have to work out what happened is sound.

You can see the outline of where everyone is at any moment, but you can’t actually see their form, you can only hear their voices. Using this information you must work out who everyone is, and answer specific questions about the crime. I can’t really be more specific without giving away partial solutions to some of the puzzles, but the way in which the game gets you to hear every conversation in a level to slowly fill in all the blanks is so very innovative and clever.

The game typically starts you off in each scenario listening to one conversation that will give a rough outline of what’s going on, but naturally, there are other conversations going on all over the scene at the exact same time and each conversation slowly fills in all of the blanks. In every conversation, you listen to you’ll learn something new about the scenario that slowly allows you to draw everything together and hit that euphoria of the “eureka” moment when you nail your target.

The game makes sure to give you just the right amount of information so that everything you need to know is there, but without explicitly giving you all of the solutions. I found myself taking notes on every level, creating a list of suspects and slowly ruling them out as I went along until the true culprit reveals themselves.

The mysteries themselves are very well thought out, for example, you’ll have to locate a stolen painting and work out who stole it, but there are also a number of fakes that other people have stolen, thinking they’re the real deal and it’s your job to use the conversations around the scene to piece together a chronology of who committed the first theft in order to determine who holds the real painting.

At £5 the game is absolutely worth it for the 5 puzzles (plus 1 as free DLC) that total to about 4 hours of game time. This is one of the most enthralling and unique puzzle games I’ve played ever and it perfectly captures the feeling on solving a mystery, so if you’re into that sort of thing, this game is a must-have.

5 – Beat Saber

Release Date: 21st May
Developer: Jaroslav Beck
Publisher: Jaroslav Beck
Platforms: Playstation 4, Oculus Quest, HTC Vive
Metacritic Average: 93%

I’ve loved VR for a long time and Beat Saber is probably my favourite VR game I’ve ever played. The concept is so simple as it’s just like any other rhythm game, except you’ve got to move your arms to hit the blocks instead of just pressing buttons in time with some music.

This game as a mastery of its sound design, making sure that every slice of a block has an extremely satisfying sound to it, helping to create this cool factor as you slice left, right and centre, even when you know that to anyone watching outside of the headset, you just look to be flailing around wildly. Even the sounds and music on the menus create an intense sense of atmosphere as you stand in what seems to be the most neon warehouse to ever exist.

A lot of VR games that I enjoy are games that I think would still work fairly well without the VR component. While games like Job Simulator and Budget Cuts would need some tweaking, I don’t think the VR element is specifically what makes them as good as they are. Beat Saber is very much the opposite, I’ve never particularly cared for rhythm games, nor am I all that good at them, but when you take that concept and put it into VR suddenly it becomes one of the most all-out fun experiences I’ve ever had.

I don’t know what part of how my brain works causes this, but I am so much better at Beat Saber than I am any other rhythm game I’ve ever played. I’m miles away from being among the best of course, but I can play on the higher speeds and difficulties and not struggle massively as I play and I think the sense of pure fun the game as injected into it is a big part of that.

On top of all of that, it works as an exercise game, but it doesn’t frame it as one. I’ve never got along with games like Ring Fit Adventure or Wii Fit because they make sure to let you know you’re doing exercise the whole way through, but in Beat Saber you just start flailing your arms and suddenly you’re drenched in sweat and have lost about 20 pounds without even realising it.

Beat Saber is a game that realised the massive potential that an existing genre of games could have in VR and made sure to tailor the experience perfectly so that it couldn’t possibly work without it and that is fundamentally what I believe makes a good VR game.

4 – Descenders

Release Date: 7th May
Developer: RageSquid
Publisher: No More Robots
Platforms: Xbox One, Windows, Mac, Linux
Metacritic Average: 78%

I’ve talked about Descenders a couple of times already this year and it’s safe to say that my love for it has not diminished in the slightest.

It was first available on Steam Early Access in February 2018 and I picked it up a couple of months later and since then it’s become my 2nd most played game on Steam at 539 hours, beaten out by only Skyrim and the weird thing is, I’m not even entirely sure why I play it so much. I certainly wouldn’t describe it as an addictive game, but what I think is it’s a very easy game to play.

By “easy to play” I don’t mean the difficulty of the game itself, I mean it’s a game that I’m never “not in the mood” to play. In the way that I play it (very casually), I don’t really have to put much thought into it, so it’s become what I play when I don’t want to play anything. I’m someone who finds it very hard to just sit and watch something for example, so what I will often do is put on something I want to watch on my 2nd screen and then play Descenders, almost in the background, while I watch it.

That’s not all Descenders is good for, because it hits that sweet spot that PopCap games were always brilliant for, where you can play it casually and do fairly well, but also you can spend time honing your skills and mastering the game in order to pull off some incredible feats of skill that I could never even dream of. The procedurally generated nature of the levels means I’m never just “going through the motions” when I play, I can’t just rely on muscle memory to get me through each level I have to learn to adapt to the terrain that’s currently in front of me so I don’t wrap my body around several trees at several hundred kilometres per hour.

It’s a game that has complete mastery over its movement, the bikes feel light and nippy while manoeuvring it in the air and on the ground feels forceful and satisfying. The way you glide down the hillsides, doing jumps and flips and spins the whole gives this incredible feeling of flow that gives you such a rush as your performance in the environments becomes more fluid and streamlined.

Descenders is a game that came together in a way I honestly never would’ve expected in order to make it a game that I’m going to be playing on-and-off for a very long time.

3 – Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

Release Date: 18th June
Developer: ArtPlay
Publisher: 505 Games
Platforms: Playstation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Windows
Metacritic Average: 84%

I’d never got around to playing a Castlevania game before, but they always seemed right up my street, so when I heard there was a game coming out made by the original creator of Castlevania in the style of Castlevania (but not officially called Castlevania because Konami doesn’t like using the historic franchises they own) I knew I had to check it out and I was absolutely blown away by what I found.

Bloodstained constantly keeps you on a journey of discovery. The items, enemies and powers it’s possible to acquire/encounter mean you’re always going to be finding something new and the map itself is packed with an almost overwhelming amount of variety. Every area feels extremely different to the ones that surround it and they’re all just the right size so that once you get comfortable in an area, you’re thrown right into a new one.

The combat system is wonderfully designed, it took a little getting used to, but once I got the pacing of when I should be striking and dodging I had so much fun with it. Every room presented a great challenge and I had a lot of fun trying to work out how best to tackle each combination of enemies that got thrown my way. It nails that balance of enemy design, where every enemy is easy on its own, but when a bunch of different ones are thrown together, it creates a great challenge.

That was also a game that reminded me how amazing boss fights can be, because not since NieR Automata have I had so much fun fighting bosses in a game. They follow that ethos that so many, typically old games do in that every boss has clear and recognisable patterns that are easy to dodge/counter and the skill comes from being able to react to them in time in order to deal out the damage. It’s a game that makes sure that every single failure and death I experienced was because I wasn’t skilful enough in order to pull it off, not because I got unlucky.

Bloodstained makes sure that every room and every enemy teaches you something, not necessarily something about the mechanics, but about what is the most optimal way to fight. This sense of pushing forward and constantly getting to experience new stuff is what pushed me towards achieving 100% completion without even realising I was doing it until suddenly I was 95% there and had to get that last little bit.

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is a game that is constantly pushing you deeper into it using its world & enemy design along with its combat system to enthral you in its world and give you the best Metroidvania experience I’ve had in many years.

2 – Pokemon Sword & Shield

Release Date: 15th November
Developer: Game Freak
Publisher: Nintendo
Platforms: Nintendo Switch
Metacritic Average: 80%

If you’ve followed my blog for any length of time then you were probably expecting to see this on the list somewhere and here you go, number two, it’s becoming a bit of a tradition for Pokemon games actually.

I was very excited for these games more or less all year, I can’t deny that the lack of the national dex was a tad disappointing, but once I had the game in my hands and was playing it, that fact becomes little more than a tiny annoyance that I barely ever thought about.

Firstly, when it comes to the towns and routes in the game, I thought they were absolutely beautiful and captured a lot of different feelings from phases in British culture. There’s Motostoke, the industrial, victorian town; Wyndon the modern-day metropolis that we all know and (kind of) love today and then there were towns like Ballonlea that felt like something out of an old fairy tale. The visuals in this game were bright, colourful and an absolute joy to behold.

As for the Pokemon, while I certainly wouldn’t rank it among the best new roster we’ve received for a generation, It’s most certainly nowhere near the worst. I’ve already talked about the Pokemon I loved the most, but there were a whole host of other new Pokemon added in this game that I really love the look and feel of.

While the story itself was nothing special by Pokemon standards, it was paced quite nicely and I thought the climax was quite a cool sequence, not Ultra Necrozma levels of cool, but cool nonetheless; and I enjoyed my interactions with any character not named Hop or Leon. I also thought the difficulty was rather nicely done, I didn’t exactly struggle at any point, but there were several points in the big battles that I felt were a bit touch-and-go and I was forced to think about what I was doing a bit harder than I usually have to in Pokemon games.

I’m undoubtedly biased towards Pokemon as a franchise, but that doesn’t change the fact that I had loads of fun with this addition to the series. It was a Pokemon game that ticked all the boxes in terms what I need to have fun from a Pokemon game and in terms of visual spectacle, I think it’s the best we’ve seen so far. If the lack of a national dex was the only thing keeping you away then implore you to reconsider because this is still just as brilliant of an experience as Pokemon always has been.

1 – Fire Emblem: Three Houses

Release Date: 26th July
Developer: Intelligent System, Koei Tecmo
Publisher: Nintendo
Platforms: Nintendo Switch
Metacritic Average: 89%

I’d never played a Fire Emblem game before Three Houses and I didn’t even have any intensions to buy it until I did so on a whim in early September and I am so glad I didn’t miss out on this absolutely joyous gaming experience.

The Turn-Based Strategy combat in this game is extremely refined and taps into that part of my brain that games like XCOM and Civilization created that loves deep strategic thinking in games. The usage of middle-aged weaponry (and magic) gives the battles a very different type of strategy to what I’m used to, I usually tend to play quite defensively in turn-based strategies but the need to get up close and personal with your opponents means you’re not afforded that luxury and it leads to some very tense situations that require a deep level of strategic thought to resolve.

Weaponry and classes each unit has access to gives a nice level of variety too, with each melee weapon allowing for slightly different possibilities in combat, alongside the ranged and magic weapons/abilities meaning each unit has to be treated very differently in battle in order to get the optimum performance out of them.

That’s not what made this game so special to me though. That’s not the reason that, as of the time of writing, I’m currently about to reach the conclusion of my 4th playthrough of this 45-hour game. What makes Fire Emblem: Three Houses such a wonderful game to play are its characters.

You play as a professor at an academy where the various future lords, nobles & knights of the land learn their craft, this naturally means you have students and you get to know these students so incredibly well throughout the course of the game. Every single part of every character is dripping in personality and while it’s true that many of the characters are a bit one-note, when there’s so many of them and they’re all constantly interacting and bouncing off of each other, then you don’t even notice.

Over the course of the game, I grew to understand all of the characters and how they operate in the same way that any teacher does when they have the same class for an extended period of time, you get to see them grow and develop as people and I genuinely care about all of them and their progress. This feeds back into the gameplay and combat because it’s not just faceless armies that you’re sending into danger, it’s your students that you’ve bonded with and have a whole future ahead of them and when one of them dies, that failure – YOUR failure – weighs on you.

The game’s branching narrative is brilliantly set up, forcing you to choose your house less than an hour into the game, with only a base-level understanding of the students you’ll be taking under your wing. It was what pushed me to dive right into my 2nd, 3rd & 4th playthroughs because I had to know what happened to all of these characters that I’ve grown to love.

The feature characters for each line in the narrative are very well-developed as well and there are some genuinely brilliantly written scenes in every path. This was a game that understood that the emotional weight of its story came not from the events happening, but how those events affect the characters. Every scene is written in such a way to draw you into the lives of its characters and that level of investment bleeds over into every other part of the game, whether you’re teaching them on their skills or sending them into battle.

Fire Emblem: Three Houses is that perfect mix that captures exactly what made me fall in love with Octopath Traveler last year. Its characters are flowing with personality that never fails to make me smile and the gameplay has a deep level of strategy that I just can’t keep away from and it’s absolutely the best gaming experience I’ve had in 2019.

So that’s it! Those were my favourite games in 2019! Thank you very much for taking the time to read this, please, let me know what games you loved this year either in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo. Finally, make sure to join me back here on Saturday, where I’ll be talking about my favourite comedy shows!

WWE Match of the Year 2019

As we close out another year, it’s always fun to look back at what some of the best stuff we got to see from the previous year was. The world of wrestling had no shortage of great stuff this year, both inside and outside the ring, so I can’t wait to run down these matches that I loved the most.

A quick disclaimer, while I do talk a bit about matches outside of WWE I liked, I didn’t watch enough non-WWE wrestling this year to make a full list, although I intend to broaden my horizons as much as possible next year, so hopefully, that will change in time for next years list.

11 – Tag Team Gauntlet Match – Smackdown 3/26

Perhaps the biggest storyline to come out of this year is Kofi Kingston’s ascension to the WWE Championship for the first time in his career and, trust me, this isn’t going to be the last time we talk about it on this list.

This was a match that came towards the end of his storyline, but is one of the most important and one of the best, which is weird when you consider that Kofi wasn’t even in it. Vince had declared that just two weeks out from Wrestlemania, Kofi had been given more than enough chances to earn himself a title opportunity, so the onus was now on his partners in The New Day, Big E & Xavier Woods to do it for him. They had to face off against Gallows & Anderson, Nakamura & Rusev, The Bar, The Usos and Bryan & Rowan in a gauntlet match and if they won, Kofi would go to Wrestlemania.

The action in the ring was great stuff, but it’s the story and the way it was told that makes this great. Big E & Woods gave the impression that they were fighting with all their hearts and souls in order to give their best friend the opportunity he deserves, amplified by Kofi watching from the back, with a slowly growing number of Smackdown wrestlers joining him to cheer E & Woods on to victory.

The pacing was perfectly done, with New Day getting solid victories early on in the match until disaster struck when The Bar put Big E through a table following their elimination. This led to what may very well be my favourite storyline moment from the whole year as The Usos came out, as Big E laid there and Xavier Woods stood ready to fight alone, before The Usos told them that Kofi had already earned their respect and refused to fight, forfeiting their spot in the match.

The whole final sequence of that match was nailbiting, after being disappointed so many times over the past couple of months it still felt like Kofi getting his shot was impossible, but when it finally happened it was wonderful. The celebration after the fact with The New Day and most of the locker room was one of the most feel-good moments of the year, but it wouldn’t be the biggest for Kofi, that was still to come.

10 – Women’s Royal Rumble Match – Royal Rumble

As a whole, this wasn’t one of the best Rumble matches and it certainly won’t go down as one of the greats, but I still get choked up at Lynch’s insertion into the match and eventual victory, so it’s earned a spot on this list.

The space between Survivor Series and Wrestlemania 35 this year was a very tense time for any Becky Lynch fans. Everyone knew that Lynch was such a huge star by this point that her spotlight at Wrestlemania should’ve been undeniable, but this is WWE and they’ve disappointed us plenty of times before, however, this was the night where it became clear that we were going to be getting what we wanted and it felt amazing.

After putting on a fantastic match against Asuka earlier in the night, Lynch wasn’t originally given a spot in the Rumble match, however, an injury sustained by Lana on the pre-show gave her an opening. I remember being on the absolute edge of my seat as she stood there, desperately pleading her case to Finlay and the moment where she gets the green light and her music hits is the kind of moment in wrestling that’s going to stay with me for a very long time.

The final 10 minutes of that match told a fantastic story that kept the emotional moments coming. There were plenty of tense “almost” eliminations as the match entered its final moments, including a potential injury from Becky that threatened to hand Charlotte the victory, which led to the fantastic line as Becky pushed the doctors away and got back in the ring and screamed at Charlotte, “You’ve taken enough from me, you’re not taking this”.

Everything Becky did in this match was the perfect encapsulation of why we all fell in love with her as a performer mid-way through 2018 and why she’s still THE biggest star in all of the wrestling industry to this day.

9 – Velveteen Dream(c) vs Roderick Strong vs Pete Dunne – NXT Takeover: Toronto
(North American Championship)

Unsurprisingly, this won’t be the last NXT match on this list.

NXT Takeover events are shows that usually only feature one on one (or two on two, in the case of tag teams) matches and it’s understandable why. The kinds of stories NXT tells only tend to work with two people and these singles matches tend to be the overall highest in quality. So a triple threat in this era of NXT in quite a rarity. However, after seeing this match I’d love to see a lot more in future.

The three men in the match are easily among the best pure wrestlers in WWE today and both Dream & Strong have very clear and powerful characters to them as well, so a clash like this was always going to be amazing. This match had everything you’d expect from it, a lot of quick action early on with all three men jockeying for position before things began to focus on technical prowess and great look dives.

The match as a whole was paced to perfection, there was very seldom a moment where nothing was happening as all three men seemed to appear in just the right place at just the right time. There wasn’t a great deal of the classic triple threat trope where one man peters out while the other two fight, instead, all three men were more or less constantly involved in the action that made for a fast-paced match that built and built all the way to the finish.

Speaking of the finish, it was rather shocking and great fun. The camera work was spot on to make me believe that Strong was about to win before Dream quite literally dropped out of the sky to break it up and steal the victory. While this match didn’t tell any kind of revolutionary story, it’s been an absolute blast to watch every time I’ve gone back to it.

8 – Kofi Kingston vs Daniel Bryan vs Jeff Hardy vs
Samoa Joe vs AJ Styles vs Randy Orton – Smackdown 12th February
(Gauntlet Match)

We’ve already spoken a bit about Kofi’s story and now it’s time to go back to when it started.

This was a gauntlet match that took place just 5 days before the Elimination Chamber match between all 6 participants and it’s incredible to think that Kofi wasn’t even supposed to be a part of it. Mustafa Ali was originally set to take the final spot in the match but suffered an unfortunate injury the week prior to this match taking place, so Kofi was brought in as a reliable performer who could get the job done. Little did WWE know what would happen next.

What happened next was Kofi went out to the ring and put on the performance of a lifetime. The match opened with a 25-minute back-and-forth between Kingston and Daniel Bryan, during which Bryan pulled out every little bit of skill and knowledge he had in his body to make Kofi look like an absolute superhero, climaxing when Kofi pinned Daniel Bryan – The WWE Champion – clean. Kofi wasn’t done.

Kofi continued his roll, putting on three more great matches against Jeff Hardy, Samoa Joe and AJ Styles, falling at the final hurdle to Styles after a star-making showing. People had always thought Kofi was deserving of recognition for his 11 years of hard work for WWE, but it was this match that made the fanbase put it’s foot down and DEMAND it. Without this match, Kofi never would’ve had the amazing year that he did and it was an absolutely fantastic bout bell-to-bell to boot.

7 – Shayna Baszler(c) vs Rhea Ripley – NXT 18th December
(NXT Women’s Championship)

A late addition to this list, but a worthy one nonetheless, it’s time to talk about Rhea Ripley.

When Rhea Ripley showed up on US NXT in the summer, it was quite exciting, I wasn’t massively familiar with her stuff in NXT UK but I’d liked what little I’d seen, then not a lot happened with her for a few months. It seemed like she was going to be Shayna’s next big challenger but plans changed and Mia Yim got that spot instead. However, eventually, November came around and more or less overnight turned Rhea into an absolute star.

For one thing, she kicked ass in the build to WarGames & Survivor Series, being put over as the strongest women’s wrestler in NXT time and time again, even beating both Charlotte & Sasha on Smackdown one Friday. Then WarGames came about and she more or less carried the match for her team and came out victorious, the roll continued into Sunday where she put on an excellent showing and won the elimination tag match for her team, the crowd were so into everything she did it was wonderful.

Then this match came about and after spending most of the year feeling like Shayna could never lose that title, I could not think of a better successor to that throne. The Full Sail crowd were white-hot for this match and both competitors made sure to play up to it as much as possible. Shayna is one of the best heels in all of wrestling at the best of times, but when she’s got a crowd like this to play to her performance is transcendent.

The action was a lot of fun too, with both women going back and forth at such a nice pace and the overall flow of the match came together so nicely to form one of smoothest matches I’ve seen in quite a while. Like I’ve said though, what really made this match something worthy of this list was the atmosphere around it, this feeling that a champion who has seemed invincible for so long could finally have met her match created such a tense and exciting feeling to every moment of this match.

It all paid off too, with Ripley getting the win and taking her place at the top of NXT’s women’s division. The celebration after the match with all of the fans in the ring was a nice touch too and it elevated Ripley from a star to a mega-star as far as I’m concerned and I can’t wait to see where she goes from here.

6 – Adam Cole(c) vs Johnny Gargano – NXT Takeover: Toronto
(3 Stages of Hell)

Look, I know it wasn’t branded as 3 stages of hell, but that’s literally what the match was, so I’m sticking with it.

Gargano and Cole had arguably one of the best feuds of the year when it comes to match quality, so I don’t think it’ll surprise anyone when I say that there’s one more match between these two later on the list. This match was designed to be the climax of the feud, so it had a lot to live up to, especially when a large portion of the audience was getting a little bit tired of the feud by this point.

The key to what made this match so great was it’s pacing. In a heavily weapons-based match like this, it would’ve been so easy to go too big too soon and the whole thing would’ve fallen apart, but each stage of the match was filled with callbacks to earlier points in their feud and some great character work. You could feel the energy in the ring as both wrestlers knew they were more or less evenly matched and watching these two brilliant wrestlers trying to outthink each other was such a joy to watch.

The first two stages kept me on the jook just long enough so that by the time the ridiculous cage filled with weapons lowered, I was all in and hyped to see how things ended. From there onwards, things went crazy in just the right way, as each new weapon upped the intensity just enough to that it didn’t kill the pace, meaning I didn’t even notice the slightly slower action and spot set-ups, which are normally the main things that totally kill any weapons match for me.

It was a match that managed to capture all the elements of the Gargano/Cole feud that came before it while still adding to the story in its own right, making for an extremely satisfying conclusion to one of the best feuds of the year.

5 – Daniel Bryan(c) vs Kofi Kingston – Wrestlemania 35
(WWE Championship)

I’ve talked about the beginning, I’ve talked about the middle, now let’s talk about the end.

Personally, this was the match I was the most excited for going into Wrestlemania 35, with the fantastic build and quality of the wrestlers involved – not to mention the fact that I genuinely had no idea who was going to win – I just knew this one was going to be a killer match.

I’ve mentioned it once or twice already, but Daniel Bryan worked his ass off in this match to make Kofi look like the most worthy champion WWE’s ever seen. The two men gelled so well in the ring and it made for an extremely tense match, where Bryan was pulling out everything he could to keep Kofi grounded but Kofi kept pushing back and breaking free.

I was hooked on absolutely every near-fall, desperate to see Kofi win the title, despite the fact that I’m a die-hard Daniel Bryan fan. This was one of those matches where everything came together exactly how I’d hoped it would as all of the story elements came to a head in a technical masterpiece of a match that gave the saga of Kofi’s rise to the top the conclusion it absolutely needed.

I was on the edge of my seat all the way up until the final moment and the celebration after the match was over was perhaps the greatest feel-good moment of the entire year. No matter what happens to Kofi in the remaining years of his career, we’ll always have this moment to remind us that he’s absolutely one of the best of this era and he got his due in the end.

4 – Seth Rollins(c) vs AJ Styles – Money in the Bank
(Universal Championship)

With all of the problems Rollins has had this year, it’s easy to forget that he’s an incredible wrestler, so this match served as a wonderful reminder of that match.

As I talked about during my predictions for Money in the Bank, Seth Rollins vs AJ Styles was the one match that I’d desperately wanted ever since AJ first showed up in WWE and the two men had always managed to just miss each other whenever they came close to facing off. It’s safe to say I was very excited for this match and I was very happy with what I got.

There’s no special story or atmosphere to this match, the story going into it was basically non-existent, this match was just two of the best wrestlers doing some of the best wrestling. Both men were face at the time which meant they held nothing back in terms of speed & offence and that made for a match that was so much fun to watch from start to finish. Neither man stayed on offence for too long and the whole match just kept on rolling through at the kind of pace that I adore from my wrestling.

This was Rollins’ first title defence after winning it at Wrestlemania and it set the idea that this is exactly what his title reign was going to be full of. Unfortunately, he then faced Baron Corbin for 3 months straight, but let’s not focus on that. Let’s instead focus on the fact that one of my personal dream matches happened this year and it was everything I’d hoped it would be and more.

3 – Johnny Gargano(c) vs Adam Cole – NXT Takeover: XXV
(NXT Championship)

That’s right, my favourite match from this trilogy is the only normal singles match of the bunch, I’m sure that’s a real surprise.

While I do think the first encounter between these two at Takeover New York was brilliant, it had some pretty big pacing issues that ultimately meant it dropped off of the end of this list; this match, however, had no such issue.

Much like the previous match, the main reason I like it is very simple it’s just fast-paced pure wrestling from bell-to-bell. What elevated this above Rollins vs Styles though is that there was a substantial amount of story going into this match and with it being the mid-point of the feud, it was able to start taking their story in a new direction.

Cole knew that he and Gargano were equally matched, however, he also knew that getting the Undisputed Era involved only ruined things for him last time around. So instead he had to find a different way to out-think Gargano. This came in the form of Adam Cole seemingly doing what Gargano was expecting him to do and very obviously calling out the Undisputed Era to come and help him, only for it to turn out to be a bait and he stole the title from Gargano.

This was such a clever wrinkle to add to the story and one that saved Gargano for looking like a chump in losing to a guy he’d already beaten once before. Not only was it an excellent match but it allowed Adam Cole to win the NXT title in the most Adam Cole way possible and built the story and spectacle to its peak for their final encounter.

2 – WALTER(c) vs Tyler Bate – NXT UK Takeover: Cardiff
(United Kingdom Championship)

Forty-Two goddamned minutes of top-level wrestling. Amazing.

WWE has told the “David vs Goliath” story many, MANY times before, but I honestly don’t think it’s ever been done quite as well as it was in this match. After Tyler Bate lost the UK titles in 2017, I feel like the fanbase at large generally forgot about just how amazing of a wrestler he was. Thanks to the UK division’s relative lack of exposure for the better part of a year and a half, Tyler Bate seemed to be one of those performers who faded into the background slightly in favour of guys like Pete Dunne and Trent Seven.

Then he came out and had this match and reminded us all that he’s no-one to sleep on. Bate & WALTER have two very different styles but they were able to mesh them so perfectly here to create an epic-length match that never felt dull or like it dragged on at any point. The focal point being in Tyler Bate’s surprising level of strength in the face of a guy as huge as WALTER was such a great tone to set as it meant that myself and the crowd in attendance were on their feet for just about every spot where Bate looked to have hope of toppling WALTER.

WALTER got a chance to show his more brutal side here too, it’s no secret that his chops can cave a man’s ribcage in, but WOW those were some chops. The whole match flowed so perfectly for the whole length, which is something that absolutely blows my mind because it’s something we very rarely see in the modern era of wrestling.

As we’re about to discuss at even greater length, UK wrestling is better than it’s ever been this year and I would’ve loved to see this match in person, however, I was somewhere else that night…

Non-WWE Match of the Year:
Kazuchika Okada(c) vs Minoru Suzuki – NJPW Royal Quest
(IWGP Heavyweight Championship)

I’ve only been to a handful of wrestling shows in my life, but this is easily the best match I’ve ever seen live.

These two men had all the great chemistry you’d expect them to have and those feelings were amplified by the fact that I was watching from about 10 feet away from the ring in the 4th row. I’ve believed for a long time that Okada is the best in-ring storyteller in the business and I think that was absolutely on full display during this match because the two men in this match clearly identified who the crowd was siding with and played into it perfectly.

I’ve never felt more on the edge of my seat than when Suzuki kept almost getting the Piledriver off, I was able to entirely suspend my disbelief for 20 minutes and think that maybe I really was going to see Suzuki win the title right before my eyes. I’m well aware that from a pure wrestling standpoint there were plenty of better matches out there this year (Kenny Omega vs Hiroshi Tanahashi at Wrestle Kingdom 13 and Cody vs Dustin at All Out, come to mind) but nothing from this year is going to beat that amazing feeling of seeing that match happen right before my eyes.

1 – Pete Dunne(c) vs WALTER – NXT Takeover: New York
(United Kingdom Championship)

I’m telling you guys, UK wrestling was REALLY good this year.

From a technical standpoint, I’d put this match on par with WALTER vs Tyler Bate, however, the reason I’m ranking this match higher is because it opened my eyes to a style of wrestling that I previously didn’t care very much for. I’ve never been a fan of the “mat-based” style of wrestling, I’ve always thought it was quite slow, with not much happening of great interest to me. This match proved that I was an idiot for thinking that because slower, mat-based offence can be just as good as anything else that I love from wrestling

I’ve gotten so used to be being enthralled by the flashy, fast-paced style of wrestling that I didn’t realise how a slow, hard-hitting affair could be as good but the way this match played out not only gave me an enjoyable ride but gave me an understanding of what makes it so great. It built slowly, the whole way through, the whole match felt like it was this gruelling back-and-forth fight where neither man was going to let up for a second as they kept hitting each other as hard as humanly possible.

Dunne and WALTER took all of the classic, traditional tropes of these kinds of matches: Constant lock-ups, the test of strength, a big guy beatdown before the small guy comeback; and they executed all of them to perfection. They had me at home and the audience in attendance hanging on every single move, to the point where I heard several gasps from the live crowd when Dunne would suddenly have a burst of offence against the bigger WALTER.

All of this made it so that when the big spot finally came at the end, it felt like a huge deal and it just highlights the fact that throughout the whole match, ever move mattered and every move had an impact.

Not only was this match a technical masterpiece from bell to bell, but it opened my eyes to a style of wrestling that I’d never been able to appreciate before, which is why I think it’s the best of what WWE had to offer in 2019.

So there you have it! Those were my favourite WWE matches (and one from outside WWE) that took place in 2019. Thank you very much for taking the time to read this article, please let me know what some of your favourite matches from this past year were in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo. Finally, make sure you come back on Tuesday where I’ll be ending the year with my Game of the Year list for 2019!

My Favourite Old Games That I Played for the First Time in 2019

Naturally, as December rolls around and the year draws to a close, every site that has anything to do with games that exist on the internet is going to start compiling their “Game of the Year” lists, now I’ll be doing that very soon, so don’t you worry, but before I talk about what came out this year, I’d like to talk about some of the stuff that didn’t.

In 2019 I easily played way more games than I ever have in a year before and as such, I spent a lot of time looking back through years gone-by to see what great stuff I’ve missed and, in doing so, have come across some absolutely phenomenal games in the process and that is what this list is all about. While “old” probably isn’t the right word to describe most of these games (but YOU try to come up with a more concise way to say “Games that didn’t release in 2019”) these are the best games from years previous that I got to experience for the first time this year.

SPOILER WARNING:

It should go without saying, but there will be full spoilers for all of the games I’m going to talk about, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

7 – Dungeon Keeper

Release Date: 16th June 1997
Developer: Bullfrog Productions
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Platforms: Windows, Mac (and MS-DOS, if you’re that way inclined)
GameRankings Average: 92%

For many years, Dungeon Keeper was a game that I’d heard so many people talk about and seen so much gameplay of that it wasn’t until earlier this year when I realised I’d never actually played it. Thankfully Good Old Games was at hand to fix my problem and I soon picked up the game and promptly finished it in two days.

I’d tried my luck with various management games over the years with the likes of Two Point Hospital and Project Highrise, but none of them ever captured my attention for very long, the only game that had succeeded at doing so before I played this was Prison Architect, but when I finally sat down and played through Dungeon Keeper I saw exactly why this genre was one that people had continued to try and add to over the years.

The pacing in Dungeon Keeper is brilliant, both in terms of the game as a whole and each individual level. While it starts off pretty easy, the best levels are ones where you have just enough time to get yourself set up before an onslaught of enemies come your way and you have to be constantly pushing to make sure you don’t lose your ground. You have to manage your time so effectively in Dungeon Keeper that you essentially become a machine running through a checklist of things you need to do before you get wiped off of the map completely. Through necessity, I became hyper-efficient and that level of constant thought and strategising is where games like this get the most joy out of me.

You take this formula and you throw on Bullfrog’s fantastic humour that they injected into all of their games and it’s a game that allows me to experience the intense focus that I love from real-time strategy games while still bringing in the joy of discovery that something like Two Point Hospital lacked.

6 – Subnautica

Release Date: 23rd January 2018
Developer: Unknown Worlds Entertainment
Publisher: Unknown Worlds Entertainment
Platforms: Xbox One, Playstation 4, Windows, Mac
Metacritic Average: 87%

I really wasn’t sure if I was going to enjoy Subnautica going into it, I’ve been burnt out on survival-crafting games for quite a while now, but I pressed forward with Subnautica because I thought the underwater gimmick would add something brand new to the genre and it’s safe to say that I was not disappointed.

The world of Subnautica has such a strange atmosphere to it that kept me constantly on edge the whole game and it was that sense of fear of the unknown that made it such a fun experience for me. Every inch of progress felt like it was a real achievement because I had to fight not only the environment but my own psyche to get there, I found myself constantly having to forcibly remove my nerves from the picture and push forwards into the dark because that was the only way to progress.

To add to this effect, the game is constantly throwing new stuff at you to make sure you never get too comfortable in your abilities and equipment. There were several times where I built up the confidence to push the boundaries of how far I thought I could go, only to get severely punished by a creature I’d never seen before who scared the life out of me before literally forcing the life out of me.

Outside of the atmosphere, the game is beautiful to look at. Something about the art style got the balance just right between the cartoonishness and realism to properly capture the beauty of the bottom of the ocean, even when I was looking around with just a flashlight to show me the way I could look around and see columns of different coloured fauna reaching up to the surface to create an awe-inspiring sight.

Subnautica is a game that takes a genre that’s been done to death in the form of survival-crafting and does something genuinely unique with it, not only in its mechanics but in its world-building and general atmosphere, very glad I gave this one a go.

5 – Shadow of the Colossus

Release Date: 18th October 2005
Developer: Team Ico, SCE Japan Studio
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
Platforms:Playstation 2, Playstation 3, Playstation 4(Remastered)
Metacritic Average: 91%

I went into Shadow of the Colossus with no small amount of hype behind me. This autumn was the first time I ever owned a Playstation of any iteration, which means there was a big library of exclusives that I’m still slowly working my way through to this day, but the first game I had to try was Shadow of the Colossus. Pretty much every critic/Youtuber/reviewer who’s opinions I value has spent at least some time talking about how brilliant this game is, so I couldn’t wait to try it out for myself.

After finishing it, the best thing I can think of to say about it, it that there is genuinely nothing out there quite like it.

Plenty of games give you the opportunity to fight massive monsters, but they’re always so restrictive in how they let you interact with the things. The fights often limit you to a side-on perspective, or just straight up have the fight be almost entirely scripted, that’s not what Shadow of the Colossus does. Not only does it give you complete freedom to tackle each of the Colossus, but it also forces you into that freedom. The game doesn’t baby you in the slightest, the moment when the foot of the first colossus steps into frame, only for the camera to pan up and show you how massive it is was magical, made even more magical when the cutscene ended and, instead of telling me how to fight it like most other game, just left me to work it out myself.

This means that not only is every fight in the game a massive monster that could squish you as soon as look at you but an intelligently designed puzzle that you have to solve so you can climb up onto the thing’s back/head and stab its glowing bits.

The story is minimal, but that absolutely works for the kind of story it’s trying to tell. The game sets you up with an extremely simple premise, kill the monsters and save the lady; seen it and done it hundreds of times. Then, as the game progresses, you slowly get very subtle hints that maybe what you’re doing isn’t necessarily the right thing. The game makes every battle seem like an epic fight, with the music soaring in triumph every time you make your way onto the Colossus’ back and yet when you finally kill them, the music changes to be very sombre, framing the death as a tragedy that you’ve murdered this wondrous creature. This leads up to the genius gameplay twist in game’s final segment, where you are transformed and forced to play as one of these giant lumbering beasts, you finally see just how difficult it is to move and attack as one of them and it makes you realise just how helpless these creatures you’ve spent several hours murdering really were.

The core gameplay concept for Shadow of the Colossus was one that could’ve easily been repetitive and boring, but a combination of satisfying climbing & combat; clever & varied colossus design; gorgeous looking world design and an unwavering commitment to tone elevates the game to something genuinely special.

4 – Final Fantasy XV

Release Date: 29th November 2016
Developer: Square Enix Business Division 2
Publisher: Square Enix
Platforms: Playstation 4, Xbox One, Windows, Google Stadia
Metacritic Average: 85%

Let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way first, Final Fantasy XV is the first and to date, only, Final Fantasy game I’ve played. I don’t know and I don’t really care what the hardcore Final Fantasy base thought of this game, because I thought it was a masterpiece.

First of all, it looks beautiful, almost excessively so. It’s par for the course that in this generation of games, AAA games will look graphically impressive, but there’s something extra in the visual style of Final Fantasy XV that absolutely blows me away with how impressive it is. It’s not afraid to abandon the sense of realism to inject an extra dose of colour and styling into the world. The terrain is shaped in a visually pleasing way, the design of the various creatures in the world is amazingly diverse and foreign, while still maintaining a somewhat realistic feel, even the UI is so tightly designed that it’s able to convey all it needs to while still managing to fit with the aesthetic of the world around it.

The game as a whole seems to take a full-scale RPG like Skyrim or Witcher and shrink it down into a smaller, but more refined experience without losing much from the appeal of the formula. It’s a rare case of a game where I wanted to partake in some of the more repetitive side-quests like the hunts because I was fully invested in both the world and the progression of my characters. On top of that, the feel of the combat was top-notch, the various weapons had a very distinct feel to each of them and whether you wanted fast strikes or clubbing blows, you were guaranteed to get an extremely satisfying feel with every strike and every dodge. Then you add your party, which add a whole new layer to things. Not only does having a group of people around you partaking in the fight adds a lot to the feel of each encounter, but the strategic options each of them offer means I found myself constantly trying to think a few moves ahead to who I was going to use and when, as well as adding to this intense feeling of camaraderie between the guys.

This brings me to my other favourite thing about this game, which is the constant interactions that Noctis would have with his three “royal guards” (best friends) that come along on this “procession” (road trip) with him. The story as a whole was perfectly fine, there were great moments, there were not so great moments, but the interactions between the four main characters was constantly entertaining and engaging no matter the situation. They weren’t just people who happened to be following me on my journey, they were their own people and my friends who had their own things they wanted to do and the game makes sure to show you that. Ignis never ceases to entertain me with his attitude and him proclaiming he’s come up with a new recipe is music to my ears. Gladiolus will occasionally ask you to get up early and come jogging with him and isn’t afraid to call me out on my bullshit. Then there’s Prompto, who is an absolute angel and seeing all of the photos he takes during your activities at the end of each day was such something that I would genuinely look forward to because it added so much to that sense of friendship.

By the time I was done with Final Fantasy XV, I instantly wanted more, more of the combat, more of the characters, I felt like I’d come on such a journey with everyone that I wanted to keep it going for as long as possible, alongside the extremely fun combat system. I just wish other Final Fantasy games were like this one.

3 – Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney

Release Date: 26th October 2001
Developer: Capcom Production Studio 4
Publisher: Capcom
Platforms: Playstation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS, Game Boy Advance, Windows, iOS, Android
Metacritic Average: 81%

The Ace Attorney series is a series that I’ve wanted to try for years, but never found a good enough excuse to bother with, so for years I never played it. Luckily for me, in January this year, the Ace Attorney Trilogy released on modern consoles & PC so now I didn’t have any excuse NOT to play at and I’m very glad I finally got around to it because this game was fantastic.

The Ace Attorney games are able to hit the mark that almost every other game in the mystery genre fail to, which is that making deductions feels brilliant. In so many games that ask you to “solve a mystery,” it never feels satisfying because if you wander around an area long enough, you’ll stumble across the answer, but Ace Attorney doesn’t do that. This is a game that gives you everything you need to crack the case, the testimonies, the mountain of different pieces of evidence and just tells you to go off and work it out.

The investigation phases are a bit frustrating and essentially boil down to a hidden object game, but the court scenes are where this game absolutely shines. Through a combination of pacing, music and dialogue, the game is able to draw me entirely into a scene and put me in the mindset of Phoenix Wright, I spend ages pouring over every word anyone says trying to pull on the slightest loose thread and rip the case open. I’ve sat at my screen agonising for extended periods of time because I just can’t find the hole in the story.

Then I finally do find it and the game rewards you in the best way. The way the music kicks in as you throw your witness’ statements back in their face proving that they’re lying, kicking off a series of back and forths between you and your opponents. The way in which this game tells its story captures the essence of the most dramatic courtroom dramas, I can feel the momentum pulling back and forth as the case flows to the point where any ground gained feels like a huge victory.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is a game that is in perfect control of your emotions at all times, it uses all the tools at its disposal to put you in the exact mindset it wants you to be in, so it can use that to take you on one of the wildest rides out there in gaming.

2 – Celeste

Release Date: 25th January 2018
Developer: Matt Makes Games
Publisher: Matt Makes Games
Platforms: Playstation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Windows, Mac, Linux
Metacritic Average: 94%

So I’m slightly cheating with this one because I technically did play the first level of Celeste when it came out last year, but at the time, I didn’t enjoy it and promptly forgot about it for the rest of the year. I would like to officially apologize for doing that because I picked it back up earlier this year and found it to be one of the most fantastic games I’ve ever played.

Celeste is an absolute master of controlling the difficulty. It’s undeniably a hard game and that’s part of what originally put off, but it’s when you push through that difficulty and carry on in spite of everything that the game is throwing at you that you come to see Celeste for what it is: The most perfectly paced game in history.

Every room in Celeste is designed in such a way that you can almost see the extensive amount of play-testing and tweaking that went into every jump. Every challenge feels so carefully crafted to give you the exact right amount of hope and despair as you throw yourself into it over and over again and their own, every single room is a masterclass in level design. However, the true magic of this game comes from when you step back and look at how the game is threaded together as a whole.

Every single room prepares you with the skills you need for the next, it’ll teach you a technique or idea and you’ll spend multiple attempts getting through it and when you come to the room immediately after, the game asks you to take what you just learned and re-learn it slightly differently to solve a new challenge, which persists chapter to chapter as well, with each chapter giving you a new mechanic to play about with and understand as you go.

The way each level is designed forces you into the mentality of pushing forward in spite of hardship, which is so incredibly clever when you consider the themes and ideas behind the game’s narrative. The way this tale is told of living with and overcoming, anxiety is so beautifully and thoughtfully done, because it’s so low-key and yet feels entirely heartfelt, while addressing a serious mental condition in an insightful way.

When you combine the overarching themes with the incredibly colourful and engrossing visual style and the absolutely mindblowing soundtrack, the game is able to take control of your mental state and align it with exactly how Madaline feels in the story using its level design as the main tool.

Not only is Celeste one of the most mechanically sounds and fun games I’ve ever played, but it goes above and beyond to say something meaningful using those mechanics, something which has stuck with me ever since I finished it.

1 – NieR: Automata

Release Date: 23rd February 2017
Developer: PlatinumGames
Publisher: Square Enix
Platforms: Playstation 4, Xbox One, Windows
Metacritic Average: 90%

I didn’t know what to expect going into NieR: Automata. I played it looking for a fun hack and slash, which I definitely got, but I got a hell of a lot more than that too. Not only would I rank it among my top two favourite games of all time, but I also regard it as the single greatest work of fiction ever written.

That’s a big statement, I know, I played the game back in February and I’ve spent all year thinking about that statement, I’ve rewatched almost all of my favourite shows and movies, replayed some of my favourite games and I compared NieR: Automata to each and every single one of them and I genuinely believe that statement to be true and it’s hard to articulate exactly why.

I think the most basic element of why I love it so much is that nothing had ever stuck with me as long as NieR: Automata has. For a solid week after I reached ending E and saw the credits roll for the final time, I was still thinking about it almost constantly, the game has crafted such an incredible story and raised so many deep philosophical arguments in my mind that I just couldn’t put it away and it’s been like that all year, I keep going back to it, to the questions it asks, to the answers it attempts to give and breaking that down and trying to work out exactly what it says to me specifically.

Outside of those deep thoughts and questions, there is a fantastically paced thriller-action story that kept me enthralled for every single second I played it (and later, read it) every character had weight, purpose and felt real. Every action had a consequence and everything mattered which is just the right word, I’ve played hundreds of games and I love so many of them, but none of them matter to me as much as NieR: Automata does.

I could sit here and talk about how the combat mechanics made it one of the most fun and satisfying hack and slashes I’ve ever played, I could talk about the world was beautifully designed with such a large amount of variety that I wanted to explore every corner, but that’s not what’s really important to me about this game. That’s not why, as I sit here writing this entry, I find myself almost at a loss for words to describe how deeply this game and its story fundamentally affected me.

Over the past few years, the state of the world we live in has genuinely worn me down a lot. I’m not going to sit here and make some grandiose comment about society, but there have been several points during this year in particular where I look at the state of certain elements of our world and just feel this sense of deep despair. Then I look to a story like NieR: Automata, that is set in a world quite literally in ruins and yet, it feels so weirdly hopeful in its tone. It was a game that left me with such a weird cocktail of emotions that I don’t think I’ve ever felt anywhere else, it was so melancholic and downbeat, almost tragic, yet there was an undeniable sense of optimism towards the future.

Those words don’t do that feeling justice, but it’s the best I can do with the words I have.

As a game, it’s damn-near flawless and as a narrative piece of fiction, I genuinely feel that it is the single greatest story ever told and one that I will never be able to forget.

So there you have it! Those are the best games from other years, that I played for the first time in 2019! Let me know what you think of these games or some great games that you found for the first time this year either in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo. Finally, make sure you come back this time next week were I’ll be running down my WWE match of the year!

WWE TLC: Tables, Ladders & Chairs 2019: Every Match Ranked

And with that, the last WWE Pay-Per-View is in the books and…meh.

I just felt a bit deflated watching this show, there were some highlights and I’ll get to those, but at least 75% of this show was just a bit dull. I’ll elaborate as I break down each of the matches, but this is absolutely going to be a show that is well and truly forgotten by the time the new year rolls around.

Let’s take a look at the match then, shall we?

8 – King Corbin def. Roman Reigns
(Tables, Ladders & Chairs)

BORED.

I honestly have nothing to say about this match. It wasn’t even bad in some weird or interesting way, it was just a completely and boringly average match from start to finish. The action was predictable WWE affair and as I mentioned in my predictions, Corbin is not the kind of wrestler that Reigns gels well with.

On top of that, there’s the fact that The Revival have gone back to being Corbin’s lackeys which is fine I guess but given the number of times we’ve seen it this year, I can’t help but not care. Looking back at how Roman Reigns has been booked since his return, it makes me wonder if WWE think that if they have Roman lose basically every feud he’s in all year, we won’t all be mad when he wins the Royal Rumble, because that’s pretty much the only explanation I can come up with to justify Corbin winning this close to Wrestlemania season.

7 – Bobby Lashley def. Rusev
(Tables Match)

BOOOOOREEEED.

Once again, it’s another bog-standard and extremely boring WWE weapons match, that was arguably even further hampered by having to force a bunch of “almost” table spots every 2 minutes. The reason I’m ranking it above Roman & Corbin is that I thought that in the opening few minutes before the weapons came out, these two actually had some pretty good chemistry as two hosses that were trying to destroy each other. Unfortunately it mostly just made me wish we could’ve had a normal match instead of these tacked on gimmicks.

I highly doubt this is the end of the feud though and I think that might be to its benefit since I’d actually quite like to see a regular match between these two as it’s clear they’ve got some heat behind this story. WWE do have a New Year’s episode to stack after all.

6 – The Kabuki Warriors(c) def. Becky Lynch & Charlotte Flair
(Women’s Tag Team Championships)
(Tables, Ladders & Chairs)

I REALLY wanted to like this match, I even watched it back this morning to make sure it wasn’t my tiredness that was ruining it for me, but it just wasn’t good.

It opened really strong, there were some quick spots with the weapons and a nice amount of actions that gave the match a big-fight feel. I especially liked the large amounts of tandem offence on both teams, it made a big deal out of Becky & Charlotte teaming together, which I don’t think had been done nearly enough on TV in the build to this match.

Unfortunately, around-about the half-way point of the match, it just STOPPED. The competitors would take over a minute to set up almost every spot and the resulting spot was never worth it, they stopped literally everything at one point so Asuka & Kairi could have a whole conversation and then fumble around with a ladder for what felt like an eternity. That whole segment completely lost me and the match did nothing to win me back from that point onwards which is such a disappointment, especially when you consider how good the triple threat TLC between Asuka, Becky & Charlotte was last year.

I’m overjoyed that Asuka & Kairi got a clean win and the performance made Kairi feel like a big deal for the first time since coming to Raw & Smackdown, but I didn’t have fun watching this match at all, so it’s got to get a low ranking.

5 – The Viking Raiders(c) vs The OC ended in a double countout
(Raw Tag Team Championships)

Oh. They went for the extremely obvious yet extremely underwhelming options then…FIINE.

Admittedly predicting The Usos to show up here was a bit of wishful thinking, but given what match we ended up getting I feel justified in wanting it. As I’ve gotten used to in recent years with WWE, this match was just fine. I don’t have any problems with it, but I also don’t have even the slightest shred of interest in it.

…At least that’s what I thought until the match ended in a double countout, meaning we’re going to be getting this on the Royal Rumble pre-show next month. So I guess I’ll see you next month when I cover this match again!

4 – Bray Wyatt def. The Miz

So here we have an absolutely fantastic bout of story-telling that we very rarely see from WWE and a match that didn’t quite click for me.

I liked the idea of Bray just letting Miz beat the life out of him, but I don’t think they went about it in quite the right way. The way Bray kept trying to break through but got countered made it seem like Bray was actually trying to get offence in, but Miz was outmanoeuvring him, I would’ve instead preferred it if Bray was voluntarily offering himself up to be beaten up by The Miz. That said, the main story beats still landed as intended and I’d love to see Bray wrestle as the funhouse character more often just to see more of this.

What happened after the match was great too, we finally got the idea that The Fiend really is a separate entity to Bray and things got genuinely creepy when Bray looked up at The Fiend and laughed “Ok, I’ll do it”. I’m not entirely sure why Michael Cole was so shocked by the mallet when it was at least the third time he’s seen it, but that’s beside the point. The return of Daniel Bryan is something I’ll always be in favour of and this feud now feels like it’s got some real heat behind it, so I’m looking forward to the coming month of TV between these two.

Like I said, the match itself was nothing special, but the story was definitely the main focus and that absolutely worked.

3 – The New Day(c) def. The Revival
(Smackdown Tag Team Championships)
(Ladder)

Oh…to be honest, this was one of the few matches I was optimistic about going into the show.

I have no idea why, but this match just didn’t click with me. It ended up similarly to the main event in that it started out well, (very well, in fact, that’s why I’ve ranked it so much higher) but around the mid-point, it just totally lost me. Things started to slow down and I was ok with it, but then there were a solid 2 minutes of Big E wandering around the ring doing pretty much nothing and the whole match just fell apart from that point onwards.

There were flickers of excitement, almost all of which were thanks to Kofi but the finish felt extremely awkward, with Scott Dawson just kind of standing there on the ladder, he wasn’t being hit by anyone and he wasn’t selling, he could’ve easily just climbed the ladder, but instead, he was just stood there doing absolutely nothing. All of this wasn’t helped by the fact that Kofi had to awkwardly manoeuvre himself out of the position he was stuck in on the ladder before he could grab the titles.

This was a match that started off as good as you’d expect between these two teams but the longer it went on the more it dragged to the point where I came away from it feeling glad it was over.

2 – Humberto Carrillo def. Andrade
(Kickoff Show)

How come the cruiserweight title could never get this much time on the pre-show?

With how last-minute and throwaway this match seemed I was not expecting much from it at all, I was expecting about 7 minutes of good, but not great action that served pretty much no purpose whatsoever. What we instead got was a 13-minute match between two guys with great chemistry who made the most of the opportunity that was before them by putting on a really fun match.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s nothing that’s going to set the world on fire, but in a show like this with so much dull crap, I was overjoyed that a match I initially thought nothing of turned into something very enjoyable. I’m not sure what kind of story they’re looking to tell with Andrade & Vega, but I imagine it’ll amount to nothing, much like this mini push they’ve decided to give Humberto, maybe he’ll get to do something cool in the Rumble match.

Still, whether this is the start of something great for Humberto or just a flash in the pan, I’m going to enjoy it while it lasts.

1 – Aleister Black def. Buddy Murphey

So it turns out when you take two really good wrestlers and just let them wrestle instead of forcing pointless gimmicks upon them, it’s actually really good, who knew?

As I think most of us expected, these two gelled really well in the ring. Black’s style of offence has always been very strike-based which was something Murphey was able to bounce off of very well. This match had a bit of everything, from fast-paced action that looked incredibly impressive, to slow and hard-hitting strikes that genuinely caused me to exclaim at a couple of points.

There is the issue that this match had no build to it at all, especially since we hadn’t seen Black wrestle in any noteworthy spot since June, however, I’d be ok with him having a bunch of matches like this if there was any kind of consistency to it. Every time we get a little taste of Aleister Black like this it reminds me how much I love him as a wrestler and I want to see so much more of him; the same goes for Buddy Murphey too if I’m being honest.

So in short, great match, but give me MORE!

And there you have it! Those were my thoughts on WWE TLC 2019, thank you very much for taking the time to read this review, please let me know what you thought of the show either in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo. Finally, make sure to come back on Saturday, where I’ll be running down the best “old” games that I played for the first time in 2019!