2015 has been such a great year for videogames. I knew that there would be some big AAA titles coming this year. But I didn't expect the indie scene to hit so hard. I didn't expect FMV games to have a revival. And I sure didn't expect RC cars playing soccer.
Below are a bunch of 2015 games I really liked, ranked as best I could.
Here's some bonus awards:
Exhausting, exhilarating and immersive, Bloodborne is the second Souls-type game I've played and the first that I managed to finish. I didn't want to take a break and then never come back to the game, like I did with Dark Souls, so I had to force myself to play a little bit every day or two, just to keep that train moving... It was stressful but every bit worth the effort. Its very rare that games can give me this level of challenge without feeling unfair and cheap. I'm really glad I didn't quit this time. I felt drained and exhausted at the end, but I had climbed the goddamn mountain!
While I did prefer Dark Souls, Bloodborne provided enough tweaks to the experience to make it feel fresh. I loved exploring Yharnam trying to find my way through the city. I loved the way the story was hidden in plain sight and left up to the player to figure out. I loved the combat, the exotic weapons and the horrific monsters.
In a weird way, Bloodborne and Dark Souls really bring back the feeling I had when I was six years old and playing the original Legend of Zelda. Just the sense of being confused, out of my depth, but still excited to make my way through this virtual world and figure out its mysteries. And like Zelda 1, there are certain things that seem to make almost no sense whatsoever, but that somehow becomes part of the charm.
At first it seemed crazy for me to rank this game so high. Its pretty simplistic right? Its just cars and a giant soccer ball. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense.
As far as multiplayer games go for me, this is one of the biggest. Its the most fun I've had with multiplayer since at least Halo 3. Its the PS4 game where I earned my first platinum trophy, but keep coming back for more. Its a game I'll be playing off and on for many years to come (or at least until Overwatch comes out). At some point, the perfect physics, perfect controls, the great community and the tremendous replayability of the game just put it over the top.
For the first 50-60 hours of me playing this game, I was fully convinced it was the GOTY, and the best MGS game ever, and the new GOTG up to this point. I loved everything about it, the cinematic intro, the perfect controls, the brilliant emergent gameplay, adapting to the mission situation fluidly and naturally, phenomenal graphics, the tense dramatic cutscenes, managing my army, etc, etc. It seemed perfect.
Then I hit the first ending. And it was around then that I started to notice how the game wasn't quite finished. I was still enjoying it but as I kept running across the same locations I'd seen before over and over, doing filler missions and side ops, I decided to mainline the rest of it.
Then the last three story missions came hard and fast. Mission 43 was incredible. Mission 45 was mostly OK. But the finale, Mission 46 was so half-assed, it felt like a slap in the face. It really did sour me on the experience.
So that's why one of the greatest action games ever made didn't get my top spot. I fully expected it to be my game of the year, right up until the last few hours. Its still an amazing experience that I would recommend whole-heartedly to just about everyone.
I really admire the way that Klei Entertainment tries to do something completely different with every new product they make. After they had a hit with Mark of the Ninja, I'd have figured that they would just make a bunch of sequels and really drive that concept into the ground (kind of like Telltale), but they keep taking creative risks and this time it really paid off for them.
When I heard of the concept "Turn-based tactical stealth rogue-like" I thought "That looks great on paper but they probably won't pull it off". I figured this would be a rough proof-of-concept sold as a full game, like so many other weird indies. But this turned out to be the real deal. The gameplay is tense and exciting, it did a great job of teaching me the basic mechanics, it looks great graphically, and there is a TON of depth and replay value. At some point the game just became too stressful for me, but I'd love to find time to come back and beat Expert mode (maybe take on Endless mode too).
I love me some Metroidvanias. And it turns out that I love them even more when they have tight responsive controls and are filled with intense platforming challenges. And I love them even more when they are drop dead GORGEOUS.
Once I started playing Ori, it had a tight grip on me and it would not let go until I finished. The design of the world is intricate and tight, like all the best in the genre. The platforming gameplay was tough and very satisfying. And the story was very emotional and beautifully told. I almost teared up at the end!
(As of December 11, I'm "only" 30 hours in. For now its at #6.)
The Witcher 3 is a colossal, staggering achievement for the medium. Its also a game that I kind of hated for the first 15 hours. Its grown on me, but I still have very mixed feelings about it.
Lets get the negatives out of the way first: There's a lot of complex crafting, magic and level-up systems and I have a hard time caring about any of them. Geralt's basic walking movement just feels WEIRD, I've never seen anything quite like it. And I don't love the combat, on any difficulty. I tried to play on the higher difficulties for a few hours, then decided I'd drop down to Normal. That was sort of easy for me, but at that point I felt like I was either going to play TW3 as a "content tourist" or I just wasn't going to play TW3.
Which brings us to the good: The content of this game is incredible. The world is massive and there's seemingly no filler. The side-missions are like well-written short stories dotted across the landscape for you to discover. The main story so far is very satisfying. The graphics are possibly the best I've ever seen (I'm playing on a mid-range PC). Just riding my horse through the landscape and existing in this world is a pleasure. The choices you make seem to have real consequences. Every time I sit down to play The Witcher 3, I feel "full" and satisfied by the time I get up.
So, its a huge world that feels deep and human and real, but I dislike a lot of the gameplay. And I'm maybe 1/3 of the way through. That makes this a hard one to rank. I've put it at #6, that feels right for now. My opinion will probably be very different whenever I finally finish.
(OK, now its 12/28 and I'm 42 hours in. I think I'll still keep it at #6.)
(1/25/2016 - I just beat it. I'm not gonna change the list now, but I kind of wish this was a few spots higher. The combat never clicked with me the way it did other people, but this was probably the best open world I've ever experienced.)
I haven't felt like this much of a wuss in YEARS. Seriously, even though the stealth gameplay sections weren't all that hard, and there weren't all that many enemies, I was pretty freaked out. There's something about the atmosphere in SOMA that really did a number on me. I almost quit a couple times but managed to stick with it.
SOMA was more than just an atmospheric horror game though. The story really fascinated me from start to finish. Not just the main plotline, but several areas have their own story that I could piece together for myself as I walked around and explored. The story told in SOMA isn't just "good for a game" its a great story for any medium.
Oh my God, what a trip this was. I'm a little shocked at how much I enjoyed it. This game isn't perfect, and I actually despised it for most of the first episode. It seemed hokey. But at some point during Episode 2 or 3, I realized that the story had gotten its hooks into me, HARD. It has so much goddamn heart that whatever problems I had eventually ceased to matter.
My feelings about the finale are still... complicated. I'm not sure if they stuck the landing or not. But the overall experience is something I'm not going to forget for a very long time.
What can I say about Downwell? Its a $3 game. It has permadeath and other rogue-like elements. Also, its perfect. The controls, the challenge, the combo system, all of it is perfect. Its a small simple game, that was seemingly polished and polished and polished until everything felt just right. It kept a tight grip on me, staying up late for "just one more run" right up until I finally beat it.
(NOTE: You really should play the PC version on a controller with a good D-pad. The phone controls never felt right to me.)
I loved JRPGs when I was a kid, in the SNES era they were my favorite genre by a wide margin. But as I got older, the genre got further and further away from what I wanted. The last big one I enjoyed playing was FFX, over ten years ago.
When I started to hear about Undertale, it seemed like a fun throwback with some new wrinkles like the Mercy system added in for flavor. And it was supposed to be short, which was honestly a big plus for me.
But Undertale turned out to be more than just a nostalgia piece. Its a game that managed to really surprise me multiple times, in ways I never could have seen coming. Its tremendously inventive, and the writing was genuinely funny and heart-warming. And I know there's plenty of stuff to discover if I ever decide to go back for a second playthrough.
This is the direction I wish JRPGs would have gone in. Less of the 500-hour epics with skinny anime dudes! More games like Undertale please!
You know its been an amazing year when a game like Axiom Verge can't even get a spot in the Top Ten... If this had come out in 2014 it would probably be my #1.
A very satisfying experience, Axiom Verge does everything it can do to look, sound and feel just like a classic Metroid title, but also puts its own tweaks on the formula to make everything feel fresh. A lot of the powers you'd expect in a Metroid game have been swapped out for something completely different, yet still intuitive. The soundtrack is fantastic and it was tremendous fun to explore this bizarre alien world.
I mean, this is barely a game, even for Telltale. Its 10% interactive, at best. But goddammit, I fell head over heels in love with these characters as the series went on. I'd kill to get another season of this.
Its kind of bare-bones for a $60 package. It doesn't feel as feature-complete as MK9 did. But MKX is still a really, really good fighting game for both pros and casual fans. It looks so goddamn good, the X-ray attacks are still freakin' amazing, the gameplay feel great, and for a fighting game its surprisingly easy to just pick up a controller and start having fun.
If I didn't suck at fighting games, I'm sure this would be a lot higher. As it is, I got pretty good with two characters (Erron Black and Kung Lao), for like a week. Then I fell out of practice.
I do miss a lot of the bells and whistles like tag-team mode from MK9. And the story really didn't do it for me this time around. But man, do I love me some Mortal Kombat.
This game is, by far, the best $1 I spent all year. A retro-style racing game for mobile with a ton of content. But regardless of its platform, this is a great racing game, period. I'll double-dip for sure when this gets ported to Steam or PS4.
I mean, this indie multiplayer game never had more than a few hundred players. But for the first month or two it had just enough players for it to be my chill-out-after-work game. A very stylish game, it looks great, sounds great, and plays great.
Another solid point-and-click adventure game from Wadjet Eye. I loved the look of it, and the story really grew on me as it went along. Even the puzzles were pretty good!
Its a short experience, but really unique. I greatly enjoyed my time with it.
My biggest disappointment of the year is still a pretty good game with a killer soundrack. It just doesn't come close to the original in my eyes.
My 2nd most disappointing game of the year is still a motherfucking Batman game from Rocksteady Studios. The story was a mixed bag overall, but the high points were really high. The Batmobile fights were repetitive and overused, but cruising around the city felt great. The Batman combat is nothing new but still better than all the imitators. And the graphics are among the very best on the PS4.
While I can't exactly say that I enjoyed playing this game, it does have a certain something. On the one hand, it has a lot of what I like to call "Adventure Game Bullshit Puzzles" (PROTIP: Use the wet towel on the furnace to make it explode!) and the main plotline didn't do a lot for me. On the other hand, the lore/backstory was really intriguing and the atmosphere was top-notch. Its worth a playthrough if you have a strong stomach. I wouldn't call the game scary myself, just really grotesque.
