Gaming wise this year my only goal was to build a new pc which could play all the newest and shiniest games at 60fps/ 1080p. Growing up with a PC and using it as my primary video game system throughout my teenage years meant i have missed everything about not having my own PC; from fiddling about with settings and files, playing with a mouse and keyboard, and the ability to mod pretty much anything. That's not to say i don't like console gaming, the awesome exclusives Playstation and Nintendo offer, to the simplicity of a game just running (Most of the time), console games offer plenty in terms of choice but just didn't itch that PC gaming scratch.
Having not built a computer for nearly a decade, with only just replacing parts here and there on my last system i was somewhat hesitant, but hey, what's the worst that can happen! A few video tutorials later and research on parts i decided to splash out on this build. Within a couple weeks all the parts arrived, a GTX980, i7-4790K, 16GB Ram, 256GB SSD, Water-cooling, and a few other necessary parts. A couple hours later and it was up and running, the relief i felt the first time I pressed the power button and it turned on without any hitches was a good sign for the year ahead. Within a few months the itch to upgrade my old peripherals was too much, a new monitor, and keyboard were imminent. 1440P Acer G-Sync running at 144hz was a present to myself for my birthday and a Razer Blackwidow Chroma keyboard purchased on the cheap due to a misspelling on ebay by the seller. I can categorically say the whole process was worth every penny!
Everything was put in place for an awesome 2015 in gaming.
PC gaming and RPGS go hand in hand, so what better way to start the year than with Skyrim. A game I'd criminally overlooked for years, a game i had always intended to play but another game always took priority. 80 hours, two weeks later, and with a big smile on my face i had finished it. The only thing that disappointed me was the lackluster main story, that after hundreds of hours of intriguing side quests going back to the main story felt trivial and cliched. Along with Skyrim i managed to finish Fallout 4, another Bethesda game i loved even through all of its flaws, Dragon Age: Inquisition, which looked beautiful but i felt it lacked any depth of gameplay compared to the original, and potentially my favourite game of all time, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.
Surprises this year were Dead Rising 3, Sunset overdrive, which i just had an immense amount of fun with. The game i never knew i wanted, twin peaks-esque Deadly Premonition. And my favourite game released in 2014, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor.
Games completed in 2014 (26), games completed in 2015 (34). Seven of the games being released in 2015 (Games in bold)
10/10 - The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
9/10 - Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, Dead Rising 3, Shadow of Mordor, Fallout 4
8/10 - Deadly Premonition, Alien Isolation, Portal 2, Super Mario 3D World, Watch Dogs, Wolfenstein: The New Order, Assassins Creed: Black Flag, InFamous: Second Son, Sunset Overdrive, Batman: Arkham Knight
7/10 - Remember Me, Splinter Cell: Blacklist, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Assassins Creed: Unity
6/10 - Bayonetta 2, Evil Within, Mad Max, Bastion
5/10 - D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die, The Order: 1886, God of War 3, Wolfenstein: Old Blood, InFamous: First Light, Jazzpunk
4 an Below/10 - FarCry 3: Blood Dragon, To The Moon, Never-ending Nightmares, Gone Home
I picked carefully the games i thought i'd enjoy most in my 2015 Backlog, but to my disappointment i'd only recommend 6 of the 14 i managed to play. In descending order, Until Dawn, Assassins Creed: Syndicate, Bloodborne, Tales from the Borderlands, Grow Home, and MGSV. Even though i'd recommend MGSV I was slightly disappointed in it, i just couldn't get into a rhythm when playing it, and the story didn't grip me like i wanted it to. The other 8 games were either mediocre, darn right painfully written or dull to play. SOMA and Halo 5 had their moments, and would have gotten my seal of recommendation with minor improvements to gameplay. The other 6 being, Massive Chalice, Broken Age, Her Story, Undertale, Oceanhorn, and Life Is Strange.
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Best game i have ever played! I've never been as invested in a game then i have with Geralt at the helm. From the story, to the characters, to the gameplay, every aspect cohesively complemented one another. No game came close this year. Platform: PC Date Completed: 3rd August 2015 Time Taken to Beat: 97h 18m Rating: 10/10 2015 rank: 1 2016 rank: 1
Not during one point of playing Ori did i feel like it was a chore to play, every moment was a joy. A combination of beautiful aesthetics, tight gameplay, great level design, and enchanting music to tie the whole experience together. It has everything i want from a game. The controls and gameplay are tight and varied, with deaths always feeling like your mistake rather than the game gaming you. My only gripe is the save feature became trivial towards the end as you have so many soul links to play with. Visuals are simple yet striking and do a good job in creating atmosphere and contrast between background objects and objects you can interact with. A story, if incredibly simple is told well enough without feeling cliched, leaving me with a slightly knotted stomach. And finally the soundtrack which i felt myself stopping to listen to at points, reminding me of games i played in my childhood. A game in which i felt pure enjoyment throughout while reminding me of my childhood deserves recognition. I'll now have to try all those other metroidvania games i've missed out on! Platform: PC Date Completed: 6th October 2017 Time Taken to Beat: 10h 4m Rating: 9/10 2015 rank: N/A 2016 rank: N/A 2017 rank: 2
Through all the things Fallout 4 does wrong, i still feel just as part of the world as i did in 3 and New Vegas, there's still something about the post-apocalyptic world that gets me. Shame about the poor main story once again from Bethesda. Platform: PC Date Completed: 14th December 2015 Time Taken to Beat: 72h 16m Rating: 9/10 2015 rank: 2 2016 rank: 2
Biggest surprise of 2015 is having this game in the top 5. I never liked games with similar mechanics in the past, David Cage's Heavy Rain, and Beyond Two Souls. This game just clicked with me from the beginning, i never knew i was a sucker for the teen slasher genre. Platform: PS4 Date Completed: 22nd February 2016 Time Taken to Beat: 7h 42m Rating: 9/10 2015 rank: N/A 2016 rank: 3
An Assassin's Creed game with some personality and improved gameplay. Assassins's Creed games that take themselves lightly are always the best, the overly convoluted story in the past games has pretty much been put to the back with allows for a light hearted romp in the victorian era. Probably my favourite in the series alongside Black Flag, If only Syndicate had ship combat! Platform: PC Date Completed: 26th January 2016 Time Taken to Beat: 24h Rating: 8/10 2015 rank: N/A 2016 rank: 4
Hauntingly beautiful and brutally difficult. Bloodborne's attention to detail creates not only striking visuals but creates a world and an atmosphere that you want to be in (Not live in). The change of combat compared to previous souls games rewards attacking rather than slow patient gameplay, this change felt like a progressive evolution for the series, making it hard to go back to the previous games with methodical and slower combat as in Dark Souls 1 & 2. If only the frame rate was higher, 60fps would be a game changer. Platform: PS4 Date Completed: 31st October 2016 Time Taken to Beat: 27h 01m Rating: 8/10 2015 rank: N/A 2016 rank: 6
Too much Bat-tank. I found it such a weird choice for rocksteady to use the batmobile so much in Arkham Knight, i guess since they spent so long making it they felt they needed to use it, those parts were the least enjoyable sections of otherwise a great game. The gameplay was what you came to expect from a Batman game, and with a interesting story in tow the whole package was a positive one. The broken PC port which caused pretty much everyone on the PC a problem was negligible in my case. Platform: PC Date Completed: 3rd November 2015 Time Taken to Beat: 40h Rating: 8/10 2015 rank: 3 2016 rank: 6
I only played one run through and 6 hours of Invisible Inc. but I enjoyed every moment I had with this stealth turn based strategy. I feel it smashes it out of the park in regards to gameplay but I felt it need more of an overarching base update system similar to XCOM that allows a longer campaign with more risk. Gameplay is simplistic but incredibly well done. Sneaking, and hacking your way around enemy base’s in order to open safes to gain credits or install augmentation to your character. While utilizing a computer operated AI that can hack firewalls etc… Each move you take is under the pressure of a countdown clock that will increase the security every few moves. This leaves the player with the conundrum of to go for more loot or exit the level safe and alive! The more risk the more reward. The randomly generated levels mean you’ll never know where items or enemies are located in the levels, which gives the player a fine balance between having to cover as much ground as possible with the threat of an enemy lying in wait. Augmentations and programs are essential later in the game once the enemies Increase their security. The progression you make in the early game leaves you feeling rewarded for taking those risks! A very fun stealth game that I wish had a little more XCOM in it Platform: PC Date Completed: 3rd February 2018 Time Taken to Beat: 5h 55m Rating: 8/10 2015 rank: N/A 2016 rank: N/A 2017 rank: 7
I had a few false starts with Dark Souls 2, maybe my first 5-7 hours were the most frustrating part of the game. The problem i had with it was i was trying to play it like Bloodborne, dual-wield, dodge every enemy attack and then counter with a flurry of quick hits. I was playing the game very wrong! Once i started using a shield my outlook on this game changed drastically, going from the brink of giving up to having fun learning the intricacies of combat. My Overall was one of ups and downs, with more downs then i wished there was, making Dark Souls 2 the weakest game in the series. The slower and less intuitive combat compared to Bloodborne and the horizontal nature of the level designs with less inter connectivity compared to Dark Souls 1 left me with that 'What If' feeling. 'What If' they had fine tuned the combat, so hit boxes weren't so loose, 'What If' they took a little more time to design each area or just had less areas so they could concentrate to make those areas special. All these 'What If's' mean't i didn't feel the need to invest anymore time to complete the DLC once i'd completed the main story line. Platform: PC Date Completed: 25th July 2017 Time Taken to Beat: 40h 39m Rating: 7/10 2015 rank: N/A 2016 rank: N/A 2017 rank: 7
The past year I’ve played Ori, Guacamelee!, and Axiom Verge, and I can well and truly say this genre of Metroidvania or 2D action adventure has been a previously untapped genre for me. While I don’t think Axiom Verge hits the heights of Ori or Guacamelee, it is still an enthralling game that rewards some experimentation and adventure. I didn’t really start gaming until the late N64 period and beginning of the Gamecube period, so I don’t have that nostalgia people hold for the original Metroid, and Castlevania games that have so influenced the Axiom Verge. I feel that may be the target audience Axiom has aimed at, trying to recreate that initial feeling of wonder people had while exploring as Samus in Metroid or Alucard in Castlevania. Where I think it fails however is in trying to accurately create something similar rather than create something more modern and unique that takes inspiration from these classic rather than trying to recreate them. This game is flawed where other modern Metroidvania games are not! The art style goes from areas that are drab and unmemorable to other levels with colorful and finely crafted environments, this miss match of consistency makes it feel like two separate games. I wish more was done with the cool Robot creatures. I couldn’t explain the story as I just felt like a jumbled mess with a main character that doesn’t have any character….Music feels natural and syncs nicely when in combat allowing the player to get in the zone Gameplay is forgettable! I stuck with a few useful weapons and ignored the rest as I could just cheese most enemies that get stuck on the environment. Combat works well when fighting some of the bosses, yes all you need to do is recognize the patterns and dodge the same bullets at different speeds but it felt satisfying after the engagements. A solid pixel art action adventure that just doesn’t do enough to compete with other similar games of the genre Date Completed: 26th March 2018 Time Taken to Beat: 12h 08m Rating: 7/10 2015 rank: N/A 2016 rank: N/A