Every single week we celebrate and commiserate in our Highs and Lows feature, spilling our guts about the best and worst bits of the week that was, or at least the parts we can remember. And now we’re trying to recall the whole year, rounding up the highs and lows of 2018. Below you’ll see all of our high points, but check back tomorrow for the gloomy lows.

 Chris Livingston: Store Wars 

After simmering for a while, I feel like the fuse has been properly lit. It's hard to envision a true competitor for Steam when it comes to selling PC games—and we're probably still years away from one—but more and more challengers popped up in 2018 and that's a good thing. Joining stores like GOG and Humble is the Discord Store and Epic Games Store, and while the offerings are pretty limited at the moment and there's a major lack of features when compared to Steam, they both still managed to score some exclusive deals, and that's an important first step—even if it doesn't feel like it.

I know the addition of new stores and desktop clients is a bit of a hassle for players. It can be hard to stop relying on Steam and we all feel a bit of reluctance to download a bunch of other clients, set up accounts, and especially to hand our credit card info—and as many as there are now, there will be even more next year and beyond. But competition is always a net good, and we're going to be seeing more exclusives in stores like Epic's and Discord's. I know exclusives can be annoying, too, especially if your Steam wallet is fat with trading card cash, and the game you want is only being sold somewhere else. But at least it's not like console exclusives. If a PC game has an exclusive agreement with a certain store, you can still play it on PC! It's not the end of the world and not as restrictive as it sounds.

The important thing for developers is that they're starting to see better deals than Valve offers when it comes to revenue splits, and stores with a carefully curated selection of games (instead of Steam's massive glut) can mean a better chance to be seen by customers. For PC gamers, all these stores competing with Steam, and each other, will eventually pay off in more discounts and sales. First these new stores will fight for developer loyalty, then they'll fight for customer loyalty. Let the great Store Wars begin.

Jarred Walton: Core Wars

The CPU is the main brain of your computer. It runs your OS and most of the logic in your games. A faster CPU can make everything on your PC run smoother, and competition for the crown of CPU champion has been fierce this year. This all started last year when AMD released its Ryzen processors, significantly closing the performance gap that existed between the old FX-series parts and Intel's Core i5/i7 offerings. The battle has raged on in 2018, and become perhaps even more heated—literally in some cases. But I like competition.

This year, AMD released its second generation Ryzen CPUs, headlined by the Ryzen 7 2700X. Not only is it faster than its predecessor, but it dropped the price to $329. Sure, if you have a top-tier GPU, Intel's CPUs might be a bit faster in games, but for reasonable builds (meaning, $500 or less on the GPU), AMD offers the better value by far. And in non-gaming scenarios, the 2700X typically beats the i7-8700K.

Of course Intel had to respond, bringing out its first 'mainstream' 8-core CPUs with the Core i9-9900K and Core i7-9700K. Both are faster than the Ryzen 7 2700X, in games and in general use. However, these 9th gen Intel CPUs likely wouldn't exist without AMD providing much needed competition. Also, the i9-9900K costs significantly more money.

It's not just the mainstream platform getting some love, however. The HEDT (High-End Desktop) enthusiast platforms also received updates. AMD's second generation Threadripper parts doubled core counts to 32-core/64-thread with the 2990WX. Intel responded… with a slightly faster Core i9-9980XE that's still an 18-core/36-thread part, just like the i9-7980XE. Of course the WX Threadripper parts aren't usually the best option, but I love seeing the boundaries move on what we can expect from modern PC hardware.

James Davenport: Book bath

The Witcher 3 is a few years old now. Yowsa. What I’d give to be able to play it for the first time! Not much, honestly. Not going to sell 10 years of my life to a witch or anything, but I found a wild lifehack that just might do the trick: reading. I’ve been tearing through the Witcher books and I’m impressed how perfectly The Witcher 3 manages to express these characters. I feel like I’m questing again, hanging with Gerry while he slashes bellies and says goofy, dry shit. It’s great. The books are also resetting my understanding of the world of the Witcher. There’s so much to Ciri and Geralt’s journey before the events of The Witcher 3, enough to compel me to play it again. There’s about four more books and the first two games before I manage that, but suddenly it’s become one of my most anticipated games of 2019. If you’ve been missing Geralt and pals, or just want something to do over the holiday break, go pick up The Witcher books. Start with The Last Wish, a series of shorts introducing Geralt and Ciri, or hop right into the novels with Blood of Elves. You’ll feel right at home, I promise. 

Wes Fenlon: It's a hunter's world

The highlight of my year has been learning to hunt. Not real animals, lord no: I'm a soft city boy who doesn't want to harm a hair on a poor deer or bunny rabbit's head. But the monsters in Astera? Those I'll gleefully stab, shoot, and capture in electric shock traps (so I can then fight them again in a small arena). It's vicious and I love it. Monster Hunter is one of those series I've wanted to get into for years, because I tend to be drawn to complex, intimidating games that are deeply rewarding once you've gotten over a brutal learning curve. A Capcom action game with complex weapon movesets and dozens upon dozens of varied beasts to fight sounded awesome, but playing that kind of game on a 3DS, or a Wii U with a janky-at-best online system, just never felt worth the effort. When World was announced, I knew it was going to be my in.

And with now nearly 100 hours of hunting under my belt, it's easily the game I've played the most in 2018. I love it just as much as I thought I would, and it's actually the first game I've played that has me logging in regularly for special events so I can unlock a particular sword or armor set. Above all, though, it's been a great multiplayer experience for me: for a few months I was playing with friends almost every night, which was a great way for us to hang out. It's the most fun "social" game I've played in the last year. Few years, even. Special shout out to my friend Steven for showing me the ways of the insect glaive, and Nico for being our monster hunter sherpa. Bring on those arch-tempered monsters!

Tom Senior: Rat’s entertainment!

Damn, Wes took my high of the year. While I still love a good singleplayer RPG or strategy, game, I’ve had the most fun this year playing games co-operatively. Monster Hunter: World is a great example, and I’m so happy the series is on PC—I wonder if the massive expansion due next year will end up in our game of the year estimations once again.

Destiny 2 and Vermintide 2 have also delivered brilliant co-op experiences this year. It can still be hard to get five other people together to go raiding, or even three other people together on an evening to smash up big rats, but it’s totally worth the effort. Vermintide even has a structured campaign that lets you share an ongoing story, and the classes are so varied it’s easy to start again with a new class and a different group of people. While in Destiny I feel like I need to do some grinding to access the cool new stuff, Vermintide is just right there, ready for us to grab our hammers and swords and get chopping again. I can see myself playing a lot of it into 2019 and beyond.

 Andy Kelly: With a vengeance

I’ve already written about the Shenmue re-release in my GOTY personal pick, but it’s easily my high of the year. My review and this article cover why I love the game so much in extensive detail, but what’s important is that the thing has finally been preserved in a form that’s easily playable. I no longer have to fire up the old Dreamcast sitting under my TV and hear that disc drive whirr and spin itself to death. I mean, there’s a charm to playing on original hardware, but I think I’ll stick to PC for future replays.

And, of course, next year there’s Shenmue III to look forward to. I’m wildly (but cautiously) excited about Ryo Hazuki’s quest for revenge continuing in a new game. His English voice actor, Corey Marshall, has been tweeting about the recording process, making this impossible sequel feel suddenly real. But even if it doesn’t live up to the hype, thanks to this re-release It’ll be easier than ever to return to Yokosuka and relive the magic all over again. Is there a better Christmas game than Shenmue? I don’t think so.

Fraser Brown: Tactics on top

It’s been an amazing year for tactics games. It’s only really dawned on me now, at the end of the year, how excellent it’s really been. Big, small, traditional and inventive—we’ve seen them all in 2018, and if your backlog is anywhere as bloated as mine, they’ll be keeping us busy well into next year, as well. 

At the top of the pile sits Into the Breach, a game that seems simple and bite-sized but is actually a devil sent from the depths of Hell to swallow up your life and sanity as you try, over and over again, to avert disaster. It didn’t need to carry the genre alone, though, and was joined by the likes of BattleTech, Valkyria Chronicles 4, Frozen Synapse 2, Mutant Year Zero, Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus and more. And none of them are alike. 

Intro the Breach is a bastard of a puzzler, BattleTech’s a huge mech sandbox, Mutant Year Zero is an adventure-tactics hybrid with a focus on story and Mechanicus sends space archaeologists into dungeons to fight undead robots. These brief descriptions don’t really do the diversity justice, but the important thing is that there are a lot of people out there with a lot of cool ideas about what shape modern tactics games should take. It’s not just that there have been a lot of tactics games, it’s that they’re indicative of a genre that’s agile and experimental and going in more than one interesting direction. It’s exciting! 

Samuel Roberts: Cyberpunk 2077 in 2018

Is it a little too easy to pick a game for 2018's high of the year? Honestly, though, Cyberpunk 2077 felt like the biggest deal when it came to reveals over the last 12 months, with Obsidian's The Outer Worlds getting close, too. The level of detail in the footage above is off the charts—to the point where I don't see how it's ever going to run on those five year-old consoles it's apparently destined for. If you were expecting CD Projekt Red to show you a glimpse of how RPGs could look in four or five years, they provided that. Cyberpunk 2077 felt like an event this year, even if it could be a long, long time before we play it.

I saw the demo in Gamescom days before the reveal was streamed online (glad I flew all the way to Germany for that!). I didn't love every part of the demo—the swear-y dialogue and overall tone might take some getting used to—but I can't argue with how nice that world looks, and the potential of those branching quests. As Bethesda's next singleplayer efforts seem years away, barely being shown through (admittedly exciting) teasers during E3, CD Projekt Red stole the year when it comes to the noisy, gigantic game reveals that I still find fun when I'm in the right mood. 

The Outer Worlds is a new RPG from Obsidian Entertainment, the studio behind Fallout: New Vegas and Pillars of Eternity. It's a first person space romp with stats to assign, dialogue to blunder through, and companion characters to help along the way.  Lead developers Leonard Boyarsky and Tim Cain created the original Fallout together in the 90s, along with other famous PC RPGs like Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines. The Outer Worlds is their first game together in many years, and has been one of our most anticipated new games of 2019. 

In our review, we found The Outer Worlds to be exactly what it set out to be (but no more) with colorful environments, well-written quests, and plenty of guns. It's a shorter game than other big RPGs of the year but is still a fun romp with a personality that's distinctly Obsidian's.

Here’s everything you need to know about The Outer Worlds:

What are the fast facts on The Outer Worlds?

• Length: Expect about 30-40 hours of play time.
• Open world? Not quite. You can choose your destination and pace but areas are split up by loading screens.
• Combat: It's in first-person.
• Who can I kill? Everyone, if you want. Nothing is sacred. There are no "essential" NPCs.
• Platform: Exclusive to Epic Games Store for one year.

The Outer Worlds review

If you're jumping into The Outer Worlds soon, our review is a great place to start. Tom enjoyed the game a lot, citing its writing and humor as particular strong points. "There's a category of games I think of as Saturday morning cartoon games. They lack depth, but they are fluffy and easy to enjoy. As I look back on some screenshots as Pippin laser blasts a poor marauder into a pile of dust, I realise that's what The Outer Worlds is to me. If you meet it on those terms, I think you'll enjoy it."

Here's The Outer Worlds' launch day trailer

To highlight the idea that you'll be able to play as any kind of character you want, the trailer poses the question: will you be a hero, a villain, brawler, assassin or...Moon Man?

Here's an hour of gameplay including side-quests, combat, and dialogue

Chris and Phil both got hands-on time with The Outer Worlds in July, and above you can see edited footage of their experiences. They both completed a few side-quests, including tracking down a missing person, investigating a murder, and helping out (and then stealing from) a drug distributor.

If you enjoy stealth, The Outer Worlds has disguises

During some hands-on time with The Outer Worlds, Chris took on a quest to kill the owner of a factory. To get inside the factory, he wore a disguise: a holographic shroud that let him look like a common factory worker. You can watch that mission above (or here on YouTube).

It's not as simple as wearing some clothes and a false mustache, though—as you move the hologram's power drains, and when it fizzles out you'll be confronted with speech checks from other NPCs. You can read more about disguises here.

Will The Outer Worlds be sold on Steam?

Not at launch. Back in March, Epic Games announced that The Outer Worlds would be an Epic Games Store exclusive for the standard period of one year. It will also be playable through the Microsoft Store on PC, however.

What's the story premise of The Outer Worlds? The setting? 

Your character was on a ship transporting humans to the newly-formed Halcyon colony, a duo of planets on the edge of the galaxy. The ship got lost on the way, which means you’ve been in cryosleep for 70 years. That should be too long for you to survive but somehow, a scientist has managed to awaken you, and he wants your help saving your fellow frozen travelers.  

You can choose to help him or immediately turn him into the corporate authorities (the whole colony and everything in it is run and owned by various corporations) for a cash reward. You can even play both sides against each other. Or, you can just venture off and explore the world from the get-go. The main story is branching and will have multiple endings—the one you see will depend on the choices you make. 

Most of the time, you’ll be on the two main planets. One has been better terraformed and is therefore more populated. The other is wilder, and home to more aggressive alien life. Both are vibrant and colourful, and Wes likened the aesthetic to No Man’s Sky after seeing the game in action. As well as the two planets, you’ll visit space stations and moons. 

Do your choices matter?

You'll definitely have one big choice, as mentioned above, on whether to side with Phineas Wells, the scientist who rescues you from 70 years of cryo-sleep, or The Board. That main choice will dictate which ending of The Outer Worlds you see, similar to Fallout: New Vegas's big decision at the battle for Hoover Dam. 

Other quest choices, co-director Leonard Boyarsky said in an interview with VGC, will be reflected in a series of slides showing how your choices and approach to various quests impacted the future of the colony. 

It sounds like your choices will matter, but more on a minute-to-minute and quest-by-quest basis rather than as part of a grand web of permuted endings. Obsidian is known for its complex quests with various solutions and entry-points, which each have ways for the game to acknowledge your ingenuity (or lack of it), as Obsidian comically highlights in its announcement trailer from 2018.

How long is The Outer Worlds?

With any big RPG, fans want to know how much time they'll be able to spend before they've seen and done everything. Obsidian wants to set expectations for The Outer Worlds closer to an RPG like KOTOR 2 than, say, a Fallout or Skyrim.

Expect The Outer Worlds to be about 30-40 hours long. "We've decided to put our effort into the reactivity and replayability—because of our size and budget, those necessitate a smaller, more tightly-controlled game than a giant sandbox open world where you can run everywhere," said co-director Leonard Boyarsky.

The new "Come to Halcyon" recruitment video is still better than my first job

This clever trailer shows off a lot of The Outer Worlds' environments and opportunities in the form of a Halcyon recruitment video. If the game wasn't already incredibly Fallout-y, the blissful old world bluntness of the narrator and its cynical message surely fulfill the Fallout quota.

Is it an open world? 

The Outer Worlds is not really a giant sandbox. You can’t freely roam around the planets—you’ll be exploring a section of each one at any time, but you’ll be able to go around them at your own pace, and they’ll all have plenty of sidequests to stumble across. You can travel directly between some areas without returning to your home base, a spaceship, but they’ll be split up by a loading screen.

You’ll return to the same areas throughout the game, and they may have changed depending on your previous actions.

To compare it to a past Obsidian game, the developer told Kotaku that "a good bit of context for the approach is to think of what we did in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II, with potentially more ground to cover and explore in each area."

You’ll be able to visit a lot of the world from the very start, but to progress the story you’ll have visit specific locations, and there are also "points of no return," Boyarsky and Cain told Wes. Some areas will have much tougher enemies, and better loot, than others.

You can complete quests in multiple ways 

In typical Obsidian fashion, you’ll be able to solve every quest in lots of different ways. In most, you’ll be able to fight, sneak or talk your way to the end. Main quests have multiple steps to them, allowing you to switch your approach on the fly.

If you want to be a smooth talker, it won’t just be as easy as picking the right stats and perks: you’ll often have to find a particular item in the world, or gather some intelligence about the person you’re trying to talk your way around.

Boyarsky and Cain told Wes that they "don’t know" yet whether you’ll be able to complete a purely pacifist run. 

You customise your character with skills, perks and "flaws" 

You have six main skills—strength, intelligence, etc—that you can dump points into, and each one goes up to 100. Those skills will directly affect what happens in the game. For example, melee weapons will have a damage range, and the higher your melee skill, the more damage you’ll deal. You’ll be able to distribute your points to create different character archetypes, such as one that is good at sneaking, or a firearms expert. 

Your skills will also impact what dialogue options you’ll get to choose and, just like the creator’s previous games, you can choose a "dumb" dialogue option if you have the right stats, which should provide some comic relief. 

For every 20 points you put into a skill, you get to pick a perk. Obsidian hasn’t yet detailed what any of the perks will do, but it should be a chance to further customise your character to fit your playstyle. 

One of the more unique things about The Outer Worlds is that you can pick up optional negative traits, called "flaws," as you move about the world. These relate to specific events: if you’re burned in a fire, for example, you might be given the option of becoming afraid of flames. You’ll be limited in how many flaws you can pick up, but every time you choose one, you also get to pick a perk to balance it out.

You can customise your character’s appearance, too, though the game is played first-person (you'll see yourself in the menu and if you let the game idle).

Your character isn’t voiced, but dialogue is hugely important 

The main character won’t have a voice, but in each conversation they’ll have multiple options to choose from. Some of those options will be locked behind particular skills. You’ll still see them as an option if you don’t have the required stats, but they’ll be greyed out, which might encourage you to change your build, or just to take some drugs to temporarily buff your character. 

You can kill any NPC in the game

Unlike some RPGs, there aren't any 'essential' NPCs in The Outer Worlds. If you see someone, you can kill them, even if they're a quest-giver. There still be ways to acquire thier quest, even if the quest-giver is dead—maybe you can loot their body, or search their residence, or pick the lock of their safe. 

How does combat work? 

Combat is first-person, and weapons will include pistols, laser rifles and sci-fi scythes as well as other melee weapons. You’ll be able to modify your weapons, upgrading them and picking different ammo types, such as bullets that deal elemental damage. You’ll be able to find special "science weapons" with cool effects, such as a shrink ray.

The Outer Worlds will also have a VATS-style "tactical time dilation" mechanic that lets you slow time, and when you use it you’ll be able to see more information about an enemy, such as their remaining health. It’ll let you target individual body parts—although unlike VATS, you’ll always be aiming manually. Targeting individual body parts will trigger different effects on enemies. A headshot might trigger blindness and leg shots might slow them down.

Lastly, you’ll have companions to help you out in combat. They’ll each have different abilities, and you can issue them with basic instructions during firefights (think Mass Effect).

Your companions have unique missions—and can abandon you 

You pick up companions on your travels, and they’ll all live on a spaceship that serves as your home base between missions. You can pick two to accompany you when you leave the ship. If you aren't into the whole companion thing, there will be perks to help you play solo.

They will all have different motivations, which you’ll be able to dig into during Mass Effect-style companion missions. If you do something they don’t like, they might abandon your cause entirely. 

Each has a special ability and different expertise. As well as providing support during combat, they’ll interject in dialogue, and you can call on their skills when you’re backed into a corner. You might ask a companion that has a quick tongue to handle a tricky negotiation, for example.

If you want to make best use of your companions then instead of specialising your main character in stealth, combat or speech you can choose to be a "leader," which is essentially a jack-of-all-trades. Playing as a leader, you'll choose perks that enhance the abilities of your companions.

Here's more gameplay from Tokyo Game Show 2019

More folks were able to get hands-on with The Outer Worlds at Tokyo Game Show 2019. Here's another 20 minutes of gameplay with English dialogue.

Can you romance companions? 

Nope. The developers considered it, but decided against it.

Will The Outer World have mods?

Possibly. Obsidian are open to the idea, but it partly depends on Epic Games, because The Outer Worlds uses Unreal Engine 4. The team is set to have "further discussions" with Epic in the future, they told Wes. They aren't planning to release a modkit at launch.

The Outer Worlds system requirements

Minimum:

• OS: Windows 7 (SP1) 64bit
• CPU: Intel Core i3-3225 or AMD Phenom II X6 1100T
• RAM: 4GB
• GPU: Nvidia GTX 650 Ti or AMD HD 7850
• HDD Space: 40GB

Recommended:

• OS: Windows 10 64bit
• CPU: Intel Core i7-7700K  or Ryzen 5 1600
• RAM: 8GB
• GPU: GeForce GTX 1060 6GB or Radeon RX 470
• HDD Space: 40GB

Notably, 40GB is on the small side of a big RPG in 2019 (meaty AAA games regularly leap over 100GB nowadays). The Outer Worlds is pushing beautiful sights, but its medium size also reflects its medium hardware demands. A reasonably updated PC should be able to run the game just fine.