Games of the Year 2019: Astral Chain was the year's best mess Eurogamer.net If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy. Games of the Year 2019: Astral Chain was the year's best mess Lappy it up. Feature by Martin Robinson Editor-in-chief Updated on 31 Dec 2019 36 comments Over the festive break we'll be running through our top 20 picks of the year's best games, leading up to the reveal of Eurogamer's game of the year on New Year's Eve. You can find all the pieces published to date here - and thanks for joining us throughout the year! Video games are messy things, and Astral Chain might be one of the messiest yet. How do you even begin to describe a thing like this to the uninitiated? Perhaps you start with the story, which is as grounded as this Switch exclusive ever gets: you're a cute cop caught in a story that's part Hong Kong police procedural, part supernatural thriller and totally batshit through and through. Yeah, maybe that's not the best entry point - Astral Chain tilts towards the most excessive of anime excess. So maybe you start with the action, a fantastical extension of PlatinumGames' well-honed formula that goes some fascinating places. It's a nitro-fuelled Nier: Automata, a turbo-boosted Bayonetta where you're counter-attacking and dodging with all the grace you've experienced in the studio's other titles. Except Astral Chain is more than that, picking up the baton discarded by the cancelled Scalebound by being built around the bond between your character and their barely-tamed beastly sidekick. It's a curious thing in the hands, effectively giving you a big skipping rope to stretch out and trip stampeding bosses, or to tie up smaller fodder. It gives Astral Chain's combat a flavour of its own, and sometimes you're convinced your other half has a mind of its own as your Legion snarls, snapping away at the edge of its tether. What I love most about it, though, is how it's a direct lift from Namco's 1983 arcade game Libble Rabble, one of Pac-Man creator Toru Iwatani's lesser-known creations. What fluency PlatinumGames has in video games' past (I was lucky enough to visit their Osaka headquarters last year, a typically tidy and nondescript studio space save for one corner where a mess of consoles past and present sit amidst a ragtag collection of classic games and curios, all clearly played on a regular basis), and what genius Astral Chain shows in weaving that history into the studio's formula with such fluidity. Oh and that's just one small part of Astral Chain's own wicked weave, a game that counterbalances its own absurdity with some surprisingly assured world-building, and one whose action excesses are met by moments where your cop character engages in everyday civic duty; picking up trash or simply rescuing a stray cat. How exactly do you make sense of all that? I'm not entirely sure you can, because Astral Chain, like so many video games, is an absolute mess. It proved, though, that there's no more elegant mess than that made by the masters at PlatinumGames. Become a Eurogamer subscriber and get your first month for £1 Get your first month for £1 (normally £3.99) when you buy a Standard Eurogamer subscription. Enjoy ad-free browsing, merch discounts, our monthly letter from the editor, and show your support with a supporter-exclusive comment flair! Support us View supporter archive More Features Digital Foundry Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090: a new level in graphics performance The Digital Foundry video review - and how the new GPU champion delivers for 4K 120fps gaming. 14 Feature Evercore Heroes wants to wind people up the right way "There's less rage at them, because they didn't end your fun." Feature What games get wrong about horses And what they could do about it. 34 Feature Shout out to all the Overwatch supports - where would we be without you? Merci. 55 Latest Articles Digital Foundry Sennheiser's legendary HD 599 open-back headphones are just £70 at Amazon in the Prime Early Access Sale Comfortable with neutral sound and a wide sound stage. Preview Football Manager's new Console edition is the best you'll get without a PC Getting Touch-right. 1 Splatoon 3 Amiibos will be out next month Ink-coming! 3 Fans think Phil Spencer's shelf is teasing the Xbox Game Pass streaming box UPDATE: Xbox confirms old Keystone prototype. 61 Supporters Only Premium only Off Topic: Take a minute to appreciate Cookin' with Coolio's incredible scallops recipe. What a great book. Premium only Off Topic: Reading City of Glass in comic form "Where exactly am I going?" Premium only Off Topic: Il Buco is a transporting film about a really big hole Underlands. Off-Topic Netflix handled Sandman brilliantly It was Dreamy. 9 Buy things with globes on them And other lovely Eurogamer merch in our official store! Explore our store