As 2018 wraps up, it's time for a period of self-reflection: amid all the wacky adventures of the past 12 months, which games did we miss? There are always too many great things to play on PC these days. Below, the PC Gamer writers talk us through the games they wanted to play in 2018 but didn't, for one reason or another.
Let us know your suggestions in the comments below. Hopefully we'll conquer that pile of shame before more great games start releasing months from now. Oh wait, the Resident Evil 2 Remake is out in January. And a million other games are out in 2019. Oh well...
Tom Senior: Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
Pillars of Eternity 2 is sitting in my Steam library completely untouched. Installing has felt like a daunting prospect all year. It's huge, I still haven't played Pillars 1, and I keep getting distracted by huge games like Assassin's Creed Odyssey. I like to think I'll crack into it this Christmas, but to be honest I'll probably just play Hitman to test myself against Phil and Samuel's best times. Failing that, I want to build an Artifact deck that doesn't fail 100 percent of the time.
Samuel Roberts: Monster Hunter: World
I was torn on whether to play the PS4 version of Monster Hunter or wait for the PC release, and it turns out I did neither. Now my colleagues have stopped playing the game, I might've left it too late to enjoy MH: World in co-op, but I do plan on booting it up at some point.
I want to see what these cat dudes are all about. That's a good enough reason to want to play the game, right? I didn't play Deadfire either, but then I haven't played the original Pillars of Eternity. Too many games. I blame the time-eating Into the Breach for these particular oversights.
Wes Fenlon: Yakuza 0
Yakuza 0 is one of many, many games released in 2018 I'd like to play, and will probably get around to before I die, maybe, hopefully. Okay, so Yakuza 0 has actually been around for a couple, but it came to PC in 2018, and I still haven't played a single game in this series. It's one of those cases where I just know I'll love it, and then I'll probably want to play all of them, and where will I find the time? I know that's no excuse. Someday I'll befriend a chicken and do whatever the hell serious gangsters do in their spare time.
James Davenport: The Witcher and The Witcher 2 (not from 2018, but I want to get through 'em)
It grows, the lumpy thing. I leave little tins of catfood near my pile of shame and they're gone in the morning. I don't know what to do. Maybe I could start by playing The Witcher and The Witcher 2. I think I'm on my way though. The Witcher 3 is a great game, but I don't love it nearly as much as most. That's probably going to change on my upcoming second playthrough, James busting the experiential door down with all The Witcher books spilling out of his ears. I'm doing the thing and reading the books. They're great. Nothing genre-busting, but some lovely character work in a horrific sociopolitical landscape. Also: monsters. Read 'em before the Netflix series so you can be the ultimate ass: 'The books and games are better than the show,' etc. Anyway, I'm going to break those Witcher games wide open with all this new context, just you wait and see.
Jarred Walton: Many games
I didn't finish many games this year, though I at least played most of the big names. And yet, after I just declared my love for D&D and RPGs growing up, I often can't find the time to delve into the modern releases. Pillars of Eternity 2 is also on my list, along with The Banner Saga 3, Kingdom Come Deliverance, Final Fantasy 15, and more. Truth is, I don't even want to try and start some of those.
Philippa Warr: Wandersong and Unavowed
I don't believe in the pile of shame, they're just options for the future and I refuse to feel bad. BUT, of the games which arrived in 2018 Wandersong and Unavowed are the ones I'd really like to carve out time to play soon. Wandersong because it sounds utterly delightful, and Unavowed because... well, I'm not sure I have a single reason I can point to. It's more that it keeps coming up in conversation—colleagues circle back to it, it pops up in list features, I see people mentioning it in comments or on Twitter. There's nothing specific that made me think "this game will suit me", it's just a gentle swell of appreciation that's piqued my curiosity.
The last game on my list is Pillars of the Earth, which is based on the novel of the same name by Ken Follett. I'm not eager to play it in the same way at Wandersong and Unavowed. That's because I played the first episode back in 2017 and I want to wait for the right mood to strike in order to sink into the remaining chapters. That's the pleasure of my backlog—it's stuffed with games which are awaiting their moment.
Fraser Brown: Yakuza 0, among others
All of them? If I didn’t review it, there’s a pretty good chance I didn’t finish it. But I’ve also been playing a lot of games that you don’t really finish, like Warframe, World of Warcraft and Overwatch, none of which are even 2018 games. I’m not as enlightened, but I think Pip’s got the right idea. It’s so silly to feel guilty about not having time for a game. A lot of them, I don’t really care that much about finishing, but there are a few I’d still love to spend more time with.
I really enjoyed Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus and Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden, so I’d like to finish them once I’m done with BattleTech’s expansion. I’ve always got time for more tactical romps. I went back to the start with Hitman when the sequel came out, so I’m very much looking forward to going through all the new levels. Those are just the recent ones, too. Oh yeah, and I only just started playing Yakuza 0. I’m going to be busy in 2019.
Joanna Nelius: Vampyr
Vampyr has been on my list of games to play since E3 2016. I've admired Dontnod and been into vampire lore for a long time, so I was instantly drawn to Vampyr's story and the gameplay when I first heard saw it, especially the entire concept of seemingly innocuous choices leading to disastrous consequences. Then its official release date came and went, and I've been resetting reminders on my calendar to buy it for the last six months. It went on sale a few weeks ago, and I finally bought it—and it's still sitting in my Steam account with zero minutes of play time, but I did install it. Maybe I can stop singing holidays songs long enough to let some darkness into my soul.
Phil Savage: Pillars 2 and Assassin's Creed Odyssey
Like Tom, it's Pillars of Eternity 2, which, like Tom, is because I still haven't played the first game. Still, I've been looking for something chunky to dig into over Christmas, and a Pillars of Eternity double bill sounds like the perfect distraction for those moments between eating too much cheese and drinking too much alcohol. At least it does until I get tired of being asked to read and make tactical decisions and decide the outcome of some moral dilemma, at which point I'll just turn off my brain and enjoy my other missed game of 2018: Assassin's Creed Odyssey.