But combined with a charming visual style and an amazing soundtrack, and Celeste is already in the running for one of the best games of the year. It's not so dissimilar to last year's Getting Over it With Bennett Foddy in that regard. In doing so the player learns that defeat and endurance can pave the way to courage and self-acceptance. Celeste's themes are conveyed primarily through its difficulty and the simple act of mountaineering.

Celeste is a Super Meat Boy-like platformer where you climb up a mountain. Platforms: PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC, Linux, MacĬeleste is a powerful reminder of how video game mechanics, I'm talking pure gameplay, can translate into emotion. If its inevitable expansion builds on the core game in the same way as Shadowrun: Hong Kong did, BattleTech could truly be something special. Its missions tend a little too much toward simplistic kill 'em all affairs, but its in-depth customization and well-realized universe make it a winner for tactics fans. It revolves around taking missions, making money, and buying new mechs, but where it shines is its RPG layer, which requires you to make some tough decisions while placating your crew and the banks. BattleTech is a giant robot tactics game that follows a player-created protagonist who falls in with a mercenary group after a devastating betrayal. Billed as a new entry by the original creator, it was developed by Harebrained Schemes, the same studio responsible for the well-received Shadowrun. Mechs are back in a big way thanks to BattleTech. But as of June 2018, these 12 games have stood out to us the absolute most, and lingered in our hearts and minds. By the time we do our Game of the Year deliberations in December, it's likely that some things on this list will remain, and others will fall to the wayside. As bleak as 2018 has often been, video games have persistently been a bright spot in the darkness.Īnd so, we've come together as a team to share our favorite games of 2018 so far.

We've experienced the perils of fatherhood with Kratos, gone Super Saiyan a dozen times over, hunted monsters with friends old and new. We're officially six months into 2018, and while it isn't as insane as 2017 was at this point last year, it has still been a pretty solid year for video games. Some content, such as this article, has been migrated to VG247 for posterity after USgamer's closure - but it has not been edited or further vetted by the VG247 team.

This article first appeared on USgamer, a partner publication of VG247.

Big game 2018 time