These were my 20 favorite games of 2015. They might be similar to yours or completely different! It also doesn't include two games I played recently: Cibele and Emily is Away. I'm still thinking about Eimly is Away, but I know Cibele should be on this list. IT would be higher than Fallout 4, but lower than Super Mario Maker. Above Borderlands, but lower than Splatoon. It really messed with how I think about this year's games. That's a good thing.
How do I decide when I am satisfied?
That’s the real question around any work of art, isn’t it? Did I enjoy this thing and why? Did I not and why not? How do these things make me feel about myself or the world around me? Was it a fun way to kill a few hours? Did it evoke a powerful response, positively or negatively? Her Story took me 3-4 hours to play through, seeing all the video clips and taking notes on what I saw, and heard, and thought. But I keep thinking about it and questioning my own conclusions and interpretations of an intentionally ambiguous story. It’s a story told and sold well by a solitary actress, Viva Seifert, and an experience I simply can’t shake. It’s without a doubt my favorite game of 2015, a very satisfying year overall.
That’s right, I’ve played 30 and 20 hours on the respective consoles of this one game, and those versions are technically inferior to the PC version I plan to pick up in a year or so once the mod community has really hit its stride and the game’s part of a Steam sale for an obnoxiously low price. If you look even a little bit, you’ll see criticism that boils down to “Fallout 4 is “more Fallout” in the vein of Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, but with worse dialogue options and a confusing settlement building system.” My response to that is “Yes, but I LOVED Fallout 3 and New Vegas, and the settlement stuff is engaging enough to dip my toe into messing around with this new thing.” So call it Fallout More if you want, but when I wanted more Fallout, that’s not a problem. I will admit, Boston (Or The Commonwealth as it’s known in game) is more boring to me that the Capitol Wasteland of Fallout 3 or the promise of the New Vegas Strip. However, the time and place that I was in while wandering the Capital Wasteland, both in game and metaphorically during Fallout 3’s heyday is squarely in the past. I don’t think many places could complete with the glitz of the Strip of the many iconic places found in DC proper. Boston has a golden dome I think is Faneuil Hall, and a The Old North Church, which I couldn’t pick out of a lineup of Old Directional Churches. They did, however, recreate Boston’s greatest landmark, complete with two people sitting at the end of the famous bar – one in a postman’s outfit. There’s also Fenway, a.k.a. Diamond City, where I helped repaint the Great Green Wall. I’m still playing Fallout 3 and New Vegas, and I’ll continue to do the same with Fallout 4 for many years.
The Witcher was a damn near impenetrable PC game with deep systems, complicated combat, and colorful NPC interaction in a low-fantasy setting. The Witcher 2 was a damn near impenetrable PC and console game with deep systems, complicated combat, and colorful NPC interaction in a low-fantasy setting that was improved by impressive post-launch support. Care to guess what makes up the bones of The Witcher 3? What sets The Witcher 3 apart from its predecessors is a more open world, deeper sense of identity in the places you visit, and more accessible combat to compliment the deep and well-written quests. Also, the game is friggin’ gorgeous on whatever system you choose to play it on – I don’t remember sitting and looking at sunsets or weather effects in a game for as long as I have with The Witcher 3. After 30 or so hours into the game, I’m nowhere near completing it but have enjoyed all my time with it, and don’t see that changing even through what I know is a laborious end game. I also don’t feel like I have a good feel for some of the systems, like weapon and armor crafting and use of runes, but I’ll get the hang of it…or won’t and will continue to play as I have been for 30 hours. Finally – there’s a card collecting and battling mini-game named Gwent. I’d be happy with a Gwent spinoff. Please let them make a Gwent spinoff…after I’ve finished the full game.
What a goddam delight. Being a kid growing up in the mid 80s through mid-90s meant playing a LOT of Super Mario Brothers, Super Mario Brothers 3, and Super Mario World. These were the games that created and popularized the 2D platformer and remain the gold standard by which their contemporary peers and modern takes on the genre and judged. Nintendo even realized this by going back to the well for the Wii with New Super Mario Brothers, a 2d platformer that updated the graphics and physics to use more modern hardware. Super Mario Maker gives you the tools to make the Mario levels you always dreamed about from any of those games, limited mostly by your own creativity. The nostalgia hit is strong, but what’s even more impressive is how a game that’s basically a toolset for level creation feels so friendly and intuitive. This is partly thanks to the shared language of Mario that most people coming to the game have, and partly because such simple but clever design existed in the original games to guide us. See a walking mushroom thing, learn you can jump, jump on walking mushroom thing. Hit block, thing comes out of block, get thing, become an improved version of yourself. Recent updates even started to address some initial gripes, like the lack of checkpoints and the inauthentic behavior of power-ups – put a mushroom in a block, it stayed a mushroom instead of morphing into a fire flower if you were already Super Mario – and made baby steps to fixing the game’s biggest problem, which is discovery of user-created levels. Further attention to that and the ability to string together your own created levels into coherent worlds are exciting propositions for the future. In the meantime, I’m going to play some random levels which could range from deus ex Machina self-playing creations to nightmarishly difficult puzzles that have sprung from the minds of people like me who grew up with these games. OF any game on this year’s Top 20, Super Mario Maker probably has the most staying power.
– After last year’s entry in the Assassin’s Creed series, Unity, was terrible in terms of both design and technical issues, I thought there was very little that could bring me back into Assassin’s Creed. Putting out the best game in the series since 2010’s Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood was a good solution! There’s still a lot to do in the world of the animus, but the game isn’t as plagued with map icon vomit as Unity was, as many of the activities feel satisfying, if not meaningful. I’ve spent more than a few hours at a time simply wandering the 1850s London environment collecting beers and posters and opening chests, doing nothing to advance the storyline, and still feeling like I was accomplishing something. The side missions are all presented by famous historical figures like Marx, Darwin, and Dickens, plus you’ll run into Florence Nightengale and Alexander Graham Bell during the main campaign. I did a bit of eye-rolling when I saw EVERY person from that era in one place, asking for help from your characters of Jacob and Evie Frye, but the goofiness grew on me. The use of multiple lead characters was also handled very well, with experience earned for both concurrently, allowing you to level them both up and advance them along the same skills tree, evening out the stealth-focused Evie and combat-heavy Jacob to be more balanced with each other. As I sat down to finish a memory sequence the other night, I found another time rift that took me to a new historical era with more collectibles and missions to undertake. I was initially irritated by the bait-and-switch, but then thrilled by the new setting and by having more to do in a game I was already struggling to finish, but was enjoying anyway. The game isn’t without things I consider flaws – traversal has been made even easier as an obvious benefit to the series, but I do miss the puzzle aspect to climbing major structures in the original game plus the sequel and Brotherhood. Sure, it’s fun to use a rope launcher to pull yourself up to the top of Big Ben, but I would personally rather spend time looking for nooks and crannies to use as hand-holds to shimmy my way to the top, making the gorgeous panoramic view of London presented feel more like a reward. I’m still happy to have the rope launcher and just use it almost exclusively to move horizontally, not vertically. I’m super excited I gave Assassin’s Creed another shot since this year’s entry was simply fantastic.
Do you like Star Wars? This is the best looking and sounding Star Wars game ever. The lack of a single player campaign mode is disappointing, and there have been criticisms about the depth of the game and lack of variation in the number of levels and weapons to unlock and use. However, I don’t want to spend 60 hours unlocking the best gun I need to be competitive in an on-line shooter. I dip my toes into Call of Duty every year, but I’ll never be competitive with high level players. Battlefront is more accessible and perfectly suited for a few short play sessions every few evenings, or a long session over a weekend. This was exactly what I wanted for a Star Wars shooter.
Invisible, Inc is a turn-based tactical game focused more on hacking and stealth than out and out combat. There’s a time pressure added, as each turn brings more defensive systems on-line to thwart your attempt to save a fellow spy or extract corporate secrets and lucre. There’s a roguelike-lite element too, as each of your early, inevitable failures helps open up new options for controllable characters with different abilities to make future attempts play out differently, if not easier. Invisible, Inc is a tense, challenging thriller of a game.
What if soccer was played by cars that could drive up the domed walls of the arena and jump and do sick flips and shit to hit the ball to their opponent’s goal? If I need to say anything else to sell you on this game, you’re already dead inside. Consistent support from the developer in the form of cosmetic DLC like a DeLorean to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Back to the Future and a hockey-like mode are icing on the cake. Play Rocket League.
– Rise of the Tomb Raider is the game on this list most likely to be higher up if I were to revise this in 6 months. I’ve loved every minute I spent playing it…I just haven’t spent a lot of time playing it. Part of that is terrible release timing on the part of Microsoft, as it launched the same day as Fallout 4, the year’s 800-lb gorilla in terms of game releases. Crystal Dynamics builds on the solid foundation of 2013’s Tomb Raider reboot, but creates a semi-open world with meaningful collectibles, the ability to upgrade Lara Croft and tailor your playstyle how you like, and optional “challenge tombs” that are more of the puzzle platforming I miss from another upcoming entry on this list. I plan to finish this off in early 2016, and am hopeful the reportedly poor sales numbers tick up when it’s released on PC in January and PS4 next fall.
I love Borderlands. This presents the base games and all DLC from Borderlands 2 and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel on one disc or one digital collection for the new generation of consoles. I still consider Borderlands 2 one of my favorite games of all time, and this package does nothing to change that. I still consider Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel a wholly unnecessary game with an irritating oxygen mechanic that limits your ability to explore and enjoy yourself like a traditional Borderlands game, and this package does nothing to change that. Whenever Gearbox (who did not develop The Pre-Sequel) decides to return to Borderlands, that new game will probably fall ass-backwards into my top 3 games of that year before I even put it in my console or download it via Steam. I love Borderlands.
This was another game that could have been higher on my list had there actually been less of it. I finished the main story and enjoyed it, even if it did hew too closely to the pattern established in Arkham Asylum and especially Arkham City. The presence of Riddler Challenges, incorporating everything from puzzles to hidden item searching to combat arenas were mostly welcome, but tying completion of almost 300 of them to see a “true” ending to the game is irritating. The much publicized inclusion of the Batmobile was largely a miss for me as well” the car controlled poorly and the tank portions were either overly simplistic or overly challenging; the vehicle sections simply needed another round of balancing, preferably by someone who hadn’t spent years working on the game. While I have little desire to go back to either MGSV or Arkham Knight (although the last bit of season pass DLC for Arkham Knight is getting solid reviews…), I feel infinitely more satisfied with my time spent with the Caped Crusader than with MGS V’s Boss.
I have almost no history with the Metal Gear Solid franchise, apart from trying and failing to play earlier iterations due to obtuse controls and nonsensical expectations of the player. I watched all of the Giant Bomb “Metal Gear Scanlon” series, as fellow newbie to the series Drew Scanlon played through the four previous console titles with the help (“help”) of series super-fan Dan Ryckert. I was dreading giving this a try, but the mechanics were shockingly modern, allowing for conventional third person shooting and sneaking that felt satisfying. The base-building mechanic that encouraged me to approach situations non-violently and use a fulton recovery system to increase the number of soldiers available to me at Mother Base, and their proficiency in research, intel gathering, and other systems, was engaging a created a meta-game I Wanted to engage with even if the story didn’t keep me interested. Then I hit a wall. The same style sneaking missions were repeated over and over with only minimal changes to the setting and tactics I could use. Sure, I COULD have tried new equipment and approaches, but Konami’s real world changes to the in-game economy to move towards a free-to-play model encouraging micro-transactions just put me off the game. I Sit somewhere around 30% completion (with the main story reportedly complete somewhere around 50-60% of the overall completion tracker) and have no desire to revisit this game. It was fun while it lasted.
A disclosure – I backed this on KickStarter at a tier that allowed me to create a House for the game’s lineage system. Again, if I were disappointed, I’d have no problem making my feelings known. The tactical level of this game is top-notch, evoking X-Com in all the right ways but with the added difficulty of not having an overwatch mechanic. Different enemies, when they connect, can also impart status effects that significantly impact not only that tactical gameplay, but the strategic layer, where you manipulate the great Houses of the land like George R.R. Martin, only you WANT your favorites to live. My only gripe with the game is the seemingly random nature of class distribution. You can influence this via the strategy layer, but my most recent play though saw me with only the hunter class or its derivatives not even halfway through the lengthy campaign. While I prefer to play with the ranged hunters, having the option and diverse tactics available by mixing in melee-focused caberjacks and are-of-effect alchemists would have made for a more interesting game, and attempts to acquire those classes and integrate them into my kingdom were not successful. Overall, the game’s a blast and random happenings like my hunters only experience show there’s a million different ways to tackle the challenges presented.
– Yeah, it’s more Rock Band. But I spent a ton of money on DLC for Rock Band, Rock Band 2, and Rock Band 3, had a ton of fun playing those, and all that DLC ports over to the new generation. I don’t know that I would have asked for anything different from Rock Band 4, and I’m just grateful to have plastic instruments back in my life to annoy my neighbors.
– I would have never expected a Nintendo-made first person team-based shooter to make my top games list, in part because I’d never expect Nintendo to make a first person team-based shooter. Apart from it being outside of their development wheelhouse, Nintendo’s on-line infrastructure and account management is poorly managed. Yet Splatoon’s solid shooting/paint splatting mechanics, chill community, and sense of fun in the game made this my surprise go-to early in the year for some quick shooter action.
We’ve had throwbacks to SimCity and a throwback to StarCraft with…StarCraft, so let’s keep the nostalgia train chugging along with a throwback to Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale, and traditional western computer role playing games. Yes, I backed this on Kickstarter, so I hoped it would be good, but would not be afraid to voice disappointment. I’m not disappointed.
The shadow if SimCity hangs heavy over the bottom of this list. There was a time when there was a SimEverything – SimCity, SimFarm, SimAnt, and even SimGolf (which is great!) with each entry taking a different look at building an environment. The team behind Prison Architect asked “What if we took the building and management aspects of a Sim game and applied it to the for-profit Prison Industrial Complex of the United States?” Prison Architect is grim, it’s challenging in multiple ways, and, in its own way, a certain kind of fun.
This was a little title I hadn’t heard much about until right before release, but had a lot of fun with by myself and showing it off to friends on a visit back to Ohio. It’s a video game adaptation of deckbuilding games like Ascension and Munchkin, with some fair to middling third person combat/trap dodging isometric action. I like card collection games, so this made the final 20 cut.
It’s more StarCraft. They messed with unit balancing like they did for the previous two…chapters? Expansions? Releases? of StarCraft II, but they finally focused on the Protoss, my favorite race, and made significant changes to how units are spawned. As great as it is to see Blizzard finish off StarCraft II, I’m just as excited to see what they do with the franchise next, given how well Diablo III has been supported post-launch, and what Blizzard does next in general with one of their major teams presumably free to work on other projects.
This is the game we all wanted when EA announced they were bringing back Sim City in 2013. Then EA made an on-line only, social focused game with build areas too small to create the kinds of megalopolis we had all been dreaming of, plus the servers were broken for a long damn time. Cities Skylines fixes those problems, allows for user mods, and flew under the radar because it doesn’t have the SimCity name and because its publisher also released a game named Cities XXL this year from a different developer that was bad. I feel bad only having this at 20, but it’s being penalized a bit (and a bit unfairly) for merely fixing the sins of the genre’s founding father. Considering my list of games to consider started at 120, 20 isn’t bad!
