In between, there’s plenty of combat and exploration, some scheming Norse gods, one very entertaining talking decapitated head, and a deftly-handled dramatic arc of a father opening up to his son. The pair set off to fulfill his wife’s final wish, spreading her ashes from the highest peak. Now he’s a widower, grieving, and unable to do much more than gruffly bark orders at his son. Kratos has grown old, moved north to the realm of Norse mythology, married, and had a son. The first shot of this franchise reboot establishes an entirely new tone, with Kratos wielding an axe not to chop off someone’s head, but to cut down a tree for a funeral pyre for his recently deceased wife. The first three God of War games were very dumb but kinda fun, featuring Kratos, a pissed-off Greek demigod, killing the entire pantheon while being humorless and horny (bathhouse sequences were not infrequent).

The usual caveats apply - I wasn’t able to play every game released this year, there are some great titles that I wasn’t able to include, and taste remains maddeningly subjective - but here are my favorite ten games of 2018. And some truly pleasant surprises stayed under the radar until right before release, like the jaw-dropping Tetris Effect. Defiantly unique PC titles like Subnautica and Rimworld finally hit 1.0 after years in “Early Access” states, proving that devs can work closely with a community without falling prey to design-by-committee. The PS4 hit it out of the park, with exclusives like Spider-Man and God of War both being good enough to justify purchasing the console, especially with prices falling. The Switch has become a place for indie titles to flourish, providing huge audiences for titles like Dead Cells and Into the Breach. Instead, the year continued gaming’s hot streak.įortnite made gaming more culturally relevant than it’s ever been, turning a whole cadre of Twitch streamers into micro-celebrities.

The sheer number of instant classics released in 2017 meant 2018 could easily have felt like a letdown. Photo: Maya Robinson/Vulture and Photo by Rockstar Games

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