Celeste is an emotional game, one that uses visuals, writing and music to really invest the player in Madeline’s story. Yet what I think makes it special is that it offers an important message through something that only a video game could achieve: A playstyle. Mechanics are something so unique to the video game medium. Just like great poets experiment and challenge the form of how language is written so too do great developers challenge how we interact with their art and when a developer takes advantage of this, marrying interactivity with conventional storytelling...well, you get something incredibly powerful. Something like Celeste.

A new year means new games. And new hypemachine cycles in which to sell those games, am I right? By now, you’ve seen it all in every game ever released. You’ve read the interviews where developers gush over just how authentic the Perforate 2.0 Engine is in Ace McStab Yo Face 5: Days of our Knives, you’ve watched a trailer where big bold font tells you that a kajillion weapons await you on a hostile planet and something something blockchain. Yawn.

By now, anyone interested in the local esports scene would have heard the story surrounding Orena and Electronic Sports World Cup (ESWC). Earlier this month ESWC announced its African qualifiers for its CSGO tournament and South Africa was a noticeable omission to the lineup. Which is just the tip of the iceberg of this particular story.

2018 may have been a brilliant year for gaming, but here’s the thing: Nobody wants to remember the good times. Instead, we’re hardwired to automatically complain when given the chance, and the year that was had no shortage of absolutely valid complaints. You look back at the last trip around the gigantic ball of flaming gas that gives us life, and there was plenty to hate on.

The Critical Hit gang could wax lyrical about their favourite games of 2018 for years to come, and we certainly will do so with our annual awards that are clearly more important that Geoff Keighley’s upcoming big budget show. Y’know, if you don’t mind an awards show that has the budget of used chewing gum, guest cancellations a’plenty and is being held in the stately location of my kitchen. Top that, Keighley. Today isn’t about our opinions however. We want to hear what you consider to be the best of the best.

RDR 2 is a fantastic tragedy of characters so stuck in their ways that they refuse to accept that things have and are changing, being so rigid in their ideals that they can’t see past the harm they’re doing to themselves and others. Which is super weird because Red Dead Redemption 2 is also a game that is so super dated and stuck in the past that it hurts the overall experience and leaves me with a strong sense of dramatic irony.

It feels like there is nowhere you can go to avoid that which rhymes with Flack Fillet Slay. So why even bother? If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

Podcasts are terrific, because the sheer variety out there allows people to listen in on something that they actually give a damn about. There’s a generation of young talent, magnetic personalities and hilarious voices that deserve to be heard. Heck, at the very least, podcasts are great for filling dead air with some life.