2019 featured some of the best this generation of gaming had to offer, and Screen Rant's choice for 2019 Game of the Year wasn't made lightly as a result. Titles like Disco Elysium surprised the gaming world with beautiful storytelling and gameplay, while expected contenders like Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare followed through on the hype. Through it all, it was another game that was tagged for greatness that managed to surpass even the lofty expectations that had been set for it through its years in development. Hideo Kojima's Death Stranding stands above the rest as 2019's best game - and one that should be played by fans of any genre, since it challenges what makes a AAA game live up to that billing.
Death Stranding is Kojima's first game since his messy breakup with Konami years ago, and it had the weight of the world placed squarely on Norman Reedus' shoulders during the final months of its development. Fans simply had no idea what to expect from the trailers that had been released over the years, and even the lengthy glimpses at the title that characterized the build-up to launch raised more questions than answers. The mystery and spectacle of the game's development period was something Kojima leaned heavily into, taking opportunities to discuss how Death Stranding challenges genre convention and would be unlike other major releases on this console generation. Even the game's exclusivity status - once for PS4 and PC, then only for PS4, then coming to PC at a later date - felt constantly in flux.
When Death Stranding finally released, it divided critics. Many, including us, praised the game's innovations and pacing, noting that the sum of Death Stranding's parts were greater than the whole. That didn't stop others from justifiably criticizing the slow beginning, the obtuse storytelling, or the at-times repetitive nature of traversing the environment to deliver packages. What critics were seemingly better at agreeing on, however, was the fact that Death Stranding was a wild look into the creativity of a studio that had been founded explicitly to push the video game medium forward. Whether or not it succeeded, Death Stranding became one of those must-play titles that consumers could read into in a myriad number of ways.
For our part, though, Death Stranding definitely succeeded. It's a game that stuck with us long after the final credits rolled. Death Stranding takes the gritty, bleak travels of Sam Porter Bridges and makes it entertaining without losing the impact of each of his actions. Every minor accomplishment feels worth something, and the journey to connect an entire country feels appropriately hopeless in the beginning before it blossoms into something that both the player and Sam believe in.
That's before even considering the fact that BTs are some of the most harrowing encounters in video games, or that characters like Higgs and Fragile aren't oozing charm even when they're at their most stereotypical. It's not that Death Stranding is an inherently perfect game so much as the fact that it's aspiring to be perfect in a way that a lot of titles simply haven't attempted before, approaching the problem of innovation tied to mainstream appeal from a few different angles. They don't all work, but more of them do than don't, and that makes Death Stranding compelling.
There were plenty of other contenders this year that could easily have been awarded Game of the Year. Sekiro's technical prowess was masterful, and was the successor to a genre many felt From Software had already perfected. Fire Emblem: Three Houses may have quietly been the best JRPG of the past several years, and it's replayability makes it extremely appealing to Switch owners. Control's mind-bending level design deserves recognition, just like The Outer Worlds deserves the spotlight for being the Fallout game fans really wanted. Despite all those standouts and many more - 2019 really was a great year for gaming - Death Stranding remains the one that will likely be the most memorable in five or ten years.
Hideo Kojima and the rest of Kojima Productions created something special and, even if it did manage to create a new genre like its creator hoped, it'd not something that seems repeatable any time soon. For that, and for the simple fact that the game was a terse, humanizing affair throughout its lengthy run-time, Death Stranding is Screen Rant's 2019 Game of the Year.
Death Stranding is available now on PlayStation 4. A PC release is coming in 2020.