Deathbat's Highly Biased 2019 Shoppers Guide to Gaming Part I

The problem with writing a shopping guide on a non-monetized blog that is as much a personal exercise in writing for fun as it is for promoting anything out of the goodness of my own heart is that practically anything I advise will always necessarily imply a "YMMV" following it. For example: I happen to think that Terminator: Dark Fate, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, Deadly Premonition Origins and The Mandalorian are all fine sources of entertainment. Stellar or for everyone? Well, remember: YMMV

That said.....here are four things you should think about when shopping for that gamer out there, or heck, just for yourself:

Books worth Grabbing
Eberron: Rising from the Last War is actually a really good D&D book and you should totally get it. Preferably with the amazing alternative cover art. If you're not in to D&D then you should also look at Shards of the Broken Sky for 13th Age, a fantastic campaign in the 13th Age world, running from levels 1 to 7. Or for that matter, take a trip to space fantasy land and check out the invaluable new Character Operations Manual for Starfinder, with new classes and options for players.  And of course, if you haven't seen Pathfinder 2nd edition yet, you should! More on that later though.

Portability
The Switch Lite is a cool gadget and worth owning if you are the least bit in to decent handheld, on-the-go gaming experiences. If you have some young tyke or old whippersnapper who might also appreciate a portable gaming experience, this is a no-brainer. Just remember to get an SSD card to go with it! The 32GB onboard memory fills up fast.

Once you have it, if your tastes are like mine then you should grab Deadly Premonition Origins, Assassin's Creed III Collection, Asphalt 9, Astral Chain, Pillars of Eternity and the D&D collections for Planescape: Torment, Icewind Dale and Baldur's Gate I and II. Also, check out Legrand Legacy, a worthy retroclassic RPG.

Free to Play King
The best free to play gaming experience on PC currently is Destiny 2. I will argue this objective, holy truth at this point. Sure, Warframe is out there, but that's sort of like comparing Star Trek to Star Wars, if Star Trek is Destiny 2 in this scenario and is about immortal space wizards fighting alien cults in a post-utopian apocalyptic solar system, and Star Wars was Warframe, a game entirely about Guyver-like bodysleeves who are also sort of immortal fighting alien cults in a post-singularity apocalyptic solar system. The main differences are one makes its microtransactions weird and hard to benefit from and the other makes its microtransactions even weirder, harder to benefit from and expensive as $#!*.

Past the Breakpoint
Despite its issues, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Breakpoint is actually a lot of fun, and much better on PC than PS4 (I run into almost no glitches or bugs at 4K on ultra settings on the PC). The graphics at this setting are so impressive I just can't stop treating the game like a beautiful forest/mountain excrusion sim punctuated by moments of intense violence.

Or, you know, you could go play CoD: Modern Warfare with all the sheeple. I will probably get MW as well when the price goes down at some point so I'm not one to gripe.

More advice to come! I plan to rant and rave about all sorts of things from this year now that my work life is calming down and I am finding more time to actually think.