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40 of the best: RPS' finest reads from 2019For it is a human number; it is 40
For it is a human number; it is 40
ding, ding
Oh gosh, look at the time! Here comes the Content Ogre now, giving us a merry wink as he rings his bicycle bell. Come on then - let’s hop on board, and see what he keeps in that big, stained canvas bag of his. I hope it’s good articles from Rock Paper Shotgun, and not festering offal!
1. Nate writes a novel’s worth of Dwarf Fortress stories
After Graham made the mistake of asking him to write a diary series onDwarf Fortress, Nate started the year with a tale of seven dwarves and their horrible underground zoo, and kept bombarding Graham with it until he finally caved in and employed him. The series is currently on hold between seasons, but you can read the first twenty three episodes, complete with illustrations, lego dioramas, and an actual novel’s worth of text,in this link.
2. Wot Brendy Thought of The Division 2
Even though he’s now returned from death as alist goblin, everyone here misses Brendy’s features, and particular his reviews. It’s hard to pick a favourite from last year (thispiece on Pathologic 2was a close contender, as well as itsfollowup for whinerson the game’s easy mode), but our choice cut has to behis verdict on The Division 2, which he called “a colourful firing range full of wonderful jerks”.
3. Corey Milne crosses a galaxy in five months
There’s little more gripping than a reporter embedded in the midst of chaos, trying to relay a sense of what’s going on to the folks at home. It gets even better when the reporter in question is among a fleet of 13,000 starships, attempting to cross an entire galaxy. In thisthree part series on Elite Dangerous, contributor Corey Milne attempted exactly that, and it’s every bit the adventure you’d expect.
4. Alice O weighs in on Sonic
5. Alice B writes about gigantic Ancient Greek lasses
Alice writes brilliantly about sexiness, or its absence, in games. Having exploredweird power fantasies in janky bloodgetter Vampire:The Masquerade - Bloodlines, she followed up with this joyfullove letter to the massive ladies of Assassin’s Creed: Oddysey, which features speculation on the kind of woman who could crush you or I “like a toddler squeezing play dough in their fist until it all squishes out the sides between their fingers”. Erotique!
6. Sin’s unknown pleasures
7. John reveals the secret history of RPS
Of course, as RPS gained new faces in 2019, it lost some too. One of those, along with Alec Meer, was the blog’s co-founder John Walker. Before he left he laid a glimmering egg which, when it cracked and spilled words everywhere, revealed theSecret History of RPS, in no less than five volumes. It is, genuinely, a splendid bit of internet history, whether you’re a newcomer or a reader since day one.
8. Astrid’s Metal Goose Solid hypothesis
Before she joined Matthew Castle’s Video Legion, Astrid was a regular contributor to the site - just last year, she producedthis excellent mini podcast seriesfor us, for example. Once part of the Hive Mind, however, she was able to take her analytical talents into the mysterious eighth dimension of video, and began honking out some excellent thinkwatches for theYouTube Channel. We say “honking” because we like to say “honking”, but also because one of her best pieces was this, on how Untitled Goose Game is basicallyMetal Gear, with a bird:
Watch on YouTube
Watch on YouTube
9. Graham buries his friends
When people leave a site, it’s always someone’s job to tidy up after them and say a few words in mourning. At RPS, that person is editor Graham, who has now had to eulogise everyone who hired him, and has taken on a weird sort of Thanatic energy as a result, like a mild, Scottish version of the Undertaker off of Wrestling. Last year he had to tombstone-piledriverAlec,JohnandBrendyinto their ringside graves. But Graham giveth as well as taketh away, as he also wrotethis guide on how to pitch to RPS, which frankly everyone looking to write for us should read.
10. Katharine experiences a frightening chair
Our hardware editor Katharine does a great job of explaining the inexplicable, and bringinga touch of colourto theotherwise forbidding, monochrome numberscape of PC hardware.Sometimes, however, she gets to just have fun - like this time, when she encountered the frankly horrifying, £25,000 THRONOS, a piece of furniture she described as “an envoy from a hellish future where gaming chairs have enslaved humanity”
11. Steve Hogarty writes the paragraph of the year in April
Steve’s Premature Evaluation column, in which he has a look at Steam Early Access games, is always a delight to read. But this entry in April, as the heading suggests, kicked off with a powerful contender for the best paragraph on the site in 2019. Just look at it.Then read the whole piece.
12. Nate spends seven months limbering up for a colossal Garfield shitpost
Once he finally had the keys to the Rock Paper Shotgun CMS, Nate began systematically filling it with bullshit. From thisseries of MS-Paint-illustrated vignettes about Hearthstone characters being dickheads over tiny amounts of money, to these ruminations on the theme of’Halo characters going to the shops', it was a silly year. And that’s not even mentioningCum Hulk. It all culminated, however, in this sprawling andutterly accuratereview of PC games masterpiece Garfield Kart Furious Racing.
13. Alice L becomes a Simsfluencer
Our Alice Liguori, of the RPS Vidbud Corps, really likesThe Sims. Whether it’s making them into mermaids, or buying them enchanted jumpers, or whatever the hell it is the Sims lets you do these days, she’s into it. And now, after a series of videos about the tiny computer people, she seems to be becoming some sort of YouTube authority on them. Even if you don’t like the Sims, it’s worth dipping into Alice’s videos for the sheer, infectious delight she gets from her digital people-farms:
Watch on YouTube
Watch on YouTube
14. Giada Zavarise goes Berserk
One of the things we try to do with RPS is introduce people to things they’ve not really considered before, and this article from contributor Giada Zavarise does it brilliantly. At least, that is, if you’ve not encountered brutal mangaBerserk, or realised its deep connection with From Software’s beloved Souls games. Jump in now, and learn all about “Guts, a big dude with a big sword who wanders a medieval world filled with horrors.”
15. Brendy protects 90 million children online
16. Kat Brewster attacs and protecs
Contributor Kat Brewster writes Priceless Play, a round-up of free games, for us, and 2019 saw it embark on plenty of lovely outings. This one,featuring graveyard swordfights and dinosaur protection schemes, is as pithy and as charming as they come.
17. Alice B gets exiled to the moon
Hey, remember that time Alice got turned into a melancholy witch and stuck on the moon for a whole month, relaying her experiences to us back on earth every day? You don’t??You had best remedy that, immediately.
18. Dave and Ollie teach us the way of the blade
It would be extremely remiss of us to write this list and not highlight the work of Ollie and Dave, our astonishingly hard-working guides writers, who labour all day in the SEO-coloured caverns beneath the roots of the RPS Treehouse tree, to bring knowledge and relief to the googling masses. Quite frankly, the volume of work they put out in 2019 was immense, but two standout moments came in May, when Ollie and Dave both addressed the noble art of battering people into chunks with swords, inMordhauandSekirorespectively.
19. Wot Sin Thought of Eliza
20. Alice O’s love letters to Destiny 2
Our News Editor Alice O insists that she is in no way a features writer - she’s a bit like the chief engineer in a star trek, keeping the news engine thrumming away smoothly while the rest of the crew pontificate and posture on minor alien political crises. While we wouldn’t dare disagree with her, you’d be a fool not to witness the brilliance of her writing onDestiny 2.Just jump in and pick one at random; even if you don’t care for Bungie’s space looter, you’ll enjoy what Alice writes about it.
21. Matt gets competitive
Matt is renowned on the team (along with Ollie) as being “the one who actually, properly likes competitive games”. In November, he had the opportunity to explainexactly why that was - and when it stops being the case. The piece, which tackled chessdads,Team Fortress 2and self-recrimination, was the second installment in our new, high-falutin’Game DNA series, and it was an absolute beauty.
22. John reaches Peak Steam Charts
Much like the blue ghosts in Star Wars, everyone who leaves RPS eventually ends up returning as some sort of ethereal presence. In John Walker’s case, it was oneheckof a haunting, as he continued to supply us with his legendary Steam Charts articles, which were always, definitely, about the top-selling games on Steam. It’s hard to pick a best-of-2019 moment from the (now concluded) series, but thishad to be the moment we reached Peak Steam Charts.
23. Jay Castello covers the Overwatch League Finals
Historically, we’ve not written a great deal about esports, but contributor Jay Costello’s Know It OWL series, on the Overwatch League, was a joyous exception. Naturally,this piece on the league’s final in Septemberwas a highlight, capturing the drama, the personalities and the Doomfists behind the competition.
24. Graham gets to review a game for once
For all his shovelwork, Graham isn’t just our gravedigger, you see. It turns out that when he gets to write about games for once, he’s really good at it. Check outthis piece on Noita, the game that ate the end of his year like a raging, egg-spawned worm, orthis thoughtful piece on Spiritfarer. Our overall pick has to behis review of the much anticipated Void Bastards, which is a cracking example of how even-handed a review can be.
25. Alice B, Nate, Matt and Alice L get exiled to space
26. Matthew reviews Blasphemous
As commander of the 14th RPS Digital Television Squadron, Matthew spends a lot of his time making pained expressions while playing Divinity: Original Sin 2 with Alice L. But sometimes he reviews games too, and this video on blood-drenched pixel horror Blasphemous, was an unholy little treat:
Watch on YouTube
Watch on YouTube
27. Nic Reuben teaches us to talk like fackin future fackin cockneys
Nic Reuben is one of our point of lay contributors, and his eggs are always a joy to crack open - for example, this delightful delve into the localisation ofMonster Hunter: World. June brought with it the nightmarish videogames meat market of E3, and while Matt and Brendy were on the ground for the event in LA, Nic was with our folks at home, manning the pumps to keep the site hosed down with content based on what was coming out of the show. Hands down the best bit of our E3 coverage was this group effort, which Nic spearheaded, that used the debut of footage from Watch Dogs Legion as an excuse toteach readers how to talking like a fackin future fackin cockney. You will laugh.
28. The Cheerer and the Jeerer
29. Nate takes speed and writes about crabs and warthogs
Nate’s not always silly. Sometimes he writes about how simulated economics in zoo games, for example, and how they lead torunaway hyperinflation based on sickly warthogs. And sometimes, just sometimes,he writes about fishing for simulated crabs, while taking amphetamines. OK, itsoundssilly, but we promise it’s not.
30. Sin enjoys a roguelike
31. Alice B shoots an albatross out of her wrist
One of the most sublime articles of the year snuck in right at the end, as Alice B reacted to the announcement of a new BioShock game with the revelation of a shocking but now universally-recognised truth:that an albatross would be the perfect bird to shoot out of your wrist. Prove her wrong. Go on. Yeah, that’s right: you can’t.
32. The Video Team play reviews roulette
Watch on YouTube
Watch on YouTube
33. Matt gets press-ganged into a space war
As well as writing news, features, and the weeklySunday Papersdigest, our Matt produces regular content specifically for our kind, devoted site supporters. In this piece from April, he recounted how a newly-hired Nate, a bit pissed at an EGX party,forcefully conscripted him into an all-too-real space war, and it’s a grand bit of reporting. Alas, only those elegant and generous souls in the RPS supporter programme will be able to read this piece. For the rest of you, why not read Matt’s coverage of independent games festival Feral Vector, held in June, in which (similarly) Natetrapped him in a LARP based on the song ‘The Boys are Back in Town’.
34. Tim Stone lets the comment section control a war
Tim Stone, the contributer also known for the regularFoxer puzzle, is our resident War Game Person, and writes the superbFlare Pathcolumn, which makes fun, colourful reading out of straightfaced, deadly serious games for straightfaced, deadly serious people. In 2019, he took the column back for a spin in one of its most beloved formats, as he invited the comment section to guide his actions through a simulated warzone. How did it go? Find out for yourself, inthe complete Quitting Qatab.
35. Craig Pearson rewrites history
Sometimes, a game is so tepid that you just don’t know what to say about it. In November, when contributor Craig Pearson was faced with the extremely bland Terminator: Resistance, he took a novel approach to the problem. Abandoning the review midway, he took a hard turn off the road andembarked on an elaborate time travel fantasyabout the Terminator games thatmighthave been made, if the game he was reviewing had not existed. It’s a good’un.
36. Alex Wiltshire discovers the mysteries of the planets
In his Mechanic column, contributor Alex Wiltshire delves into the guts of games, talking to their developers to find out what makes their most unusual, innovative or notorious features tick. In this instance, he waslooking at the much-praised groundhog-day-in-space game, Outer Wilds, and asking how creators Mobius Digital created a planet that destroyed itself every 22 minutes.
37. Matt asks if AI can beat internet bellends
Matt does love him some artificial intelligence. Along with philosophy, and defeating people, it’s one of his big passions, and it’s the driving force behind Smarter Than I, his series of articles dealing with the intersection of AI and games. In this series, you’ll find discussion of whether AI can coach you to play a better game of Overwatch, whether it can help eliminate toxicity in online multiplayer - and even whether it can design games.Plug in 2 tha matrix.
38. Heroes of the Brinelands enjoys its 165th Episode Spectacular
39. The Video Team become hitmen
Watch on YouTube
Watch on YouTube
40. Alec returns with a belter on Disco Elysium
The end of the year saw one last showing from a familiar face, as site founder Alec Meer returned with thisextremelyweighty,highly personal piece on Disco Elysium. It’s a great reminder of the kind of work RPS was founded on, and the sort of work we’d like to keep publishing.
ding, ding
Phew! There goes the Content Ogre. I’m glad his sack contained loads of good games articles after all, as some offal would have been horrible. We hope you had a good read - and here’s to plenty more in the year to come. Farewell, until the next time the Ogre comes round.
