To crib some of the intro from my favourite staff member on here:
For many, including myself, 2016 was a challenging year.
What seems to be have been a wave of aggression and intolerance this year has been punctuated with the losses of childhood heroes, icons and some decent human beings.
Still, this too shall pass, and there's been plenty of positives & new beginnings. I got to visit Sydney, finally made it to Japan, reconnected with an old friend and 3 of my closest all brought kids into the world this year.
Somewhere among all that, I played a heck of a lot of more games this year than usual and it really does seem like the bar for quality shot up dramatically. I agonised to get my list even down to 14, not including so many games I wanted to play and never got around to (Hyper Light Drifter, Hitman, Dishonored 2, Odin Sphere Leifthrasir, Superhot, The Witness, Witcher 3: Blood & Wine, Thumper and so on...).
So without further ado. Video Games 2016.
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Games that would very likely be on the list if I had time to finishstart them:
Games that didn't come out in 2016 but were super rad:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZS5oJ2-MmEU
Games in joint 11th:
Forza Horizon 3 - The closest thing I'll ever get again to Burnout Paradise. Scratched the racing itch and looked pretty while doing it.
Pokémon Sun/Moon - The freshest feeling of the Pokémon mainline games since X/Y. Would probably have played this for 60+ hours if I didn't jump into FFXV.
Dark Souls III - This one was hard to cut. An all-around great Dark Souls game, and much improved on DS2 at least for my tastes.
Street Fighter V - Seeing as we got a copy of this for the office, I played more SF this year than I have since II. And learnt what a 'V-trigger' is. And played more characters than Ken. But still mostly Ken. Shame the trappings outside of the actual core gameplay sucked
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At some point last year it felt like the entire internet, at least the part that goes on about jrpgs, wanted me to play The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky. "It has a slow build up but it's worth it", "It's the best written RPG I've played in years", "it's a long game but worth the payoff". So, I bought it, put it in, played for about 5 or 6 hours and fell off because I didn't think it was going anywhere. "You should pick it back up, it's all about the world-building. It's very slow, but if you stick with it it's very rewarding". So I picked it back up, played another 10 hours and then fell off again. "Maybe the Trails games weren't for me", I thought. "I need a bit more urgency in the battle system and plot to keep me interested". Fast-forward to this year and Trails of Cold Steel. It looked visually more appealing and a slightly more efficient combat system, maybe I could get into it? The discourse is mostly "It has a slow build up but it's worth it", "It's a long game but worth the payoff". A less stubborn me would've realised that I was going to get a similar experience to Trails in the Sky and not bought this. However, the regular stubborn me, who also now found himself living on his own with a lot more free time said "OK LET'S DO THIS". 70 hours later, Trails of Cold Steel is *exactly* how everyone described it. Taken as individual components, ToCS is a decent jrpg - the battle system is solid but not overly complex, the spell/enchancement system is good if not fairly simple, and the main story is very lightweight (up until the last hour or so). However, these things end up being the surrounding trappings to a frankly ridiculous amount of dialogue and world-building. NPCs all usually have 2 pieces of dialogue when you speak to them, which then change the next time you visit them after even a minor story event. Then they change again, and again. Combining this with the absolutely glacial pace of the game - you spend each chapter learning about a town/city/one of your 9 party members - you end up spending 60+ hours just absorbing all of the world, culture and nuances of everything going on around you. And it's all incredibly fascinating & well-realised. I have more attachment to and memory of half of the NPCs at the academy you study at, than I do some main characters in other RPGs. Basically, everyone was right about Trails of Cold Steel. It has a bunch of school anime tropes (for good and bad), some rather cringey moments and a 'main plot' that you never get your teeth into until right at the end, but right now all I want to do is start up Cold Steel II and find out what happens next. I need to know whether Beryl escaped and is still telling creepy fortunes. I need to know whether Lambert is still at the academy and whether Whitcomb the horse is ok. I need to find out Laura isn't hurt because I'll kill any of you that harm my blue-haired lady that wields a Giant Freakin' Claymore. Trails of Cold Steel is a slow paced, dialogue-heavy game that is definitely not for everyone. This year, it was definitely for me.
Ace Attorney is one of those series' where I'll probably play every instalment until I physically can't anymore, and even though it's slowly changed in tone as it goes, I find myself always enjoying whatever wild ride it comes up with each time. While I had high praise for AA5 at the time, I think some of the faults were tempered by the joy in actually getting another AA game. AA6 overall is much stronger than it's predecessor, not really in the gameplay but in it's characters, storytelling and just the experience in general. The localisation is wonderful in it's charm (and puns), the music is as pleasing as ever and tops my 'number of "oh shit" moments in a game' list this year once again. AA games usually do this, but AA6 really made me want to talk about as soon as I finished it. They nailed Apollo and his character arc, the reveal about Dhurke was really well-done, the whole case with Sarge, Datz Are'bal in general, and the super sad resolution to Case 3. One of my favourite moments was having a conversation about how good the puns were, when my friend asked if I'd gotten a particular conversation - and sent me some screenshots. I replied with the exact same conversation screenshots of my own that I'd already taken. I love Ace Attorney.
This is probably the most anime-heavy top 3 I've made in a Game of the Year list, and this game is definitely the anime-est. I didn't expect much from TMS#FE, after the negative humdrum following the Japanese release (plus the English localisation) and the fact it's entirely about the Japanese Idol industry, I wasn't sure if it would grab me before I was nudged into getting a copy. In the end, none of that mattered, and if not for my number 1 this would've been my favourite JRPG of the year. It's bright, wonderfully designed, and stylish-as-heck. I've no doubt that everyone raving would be about it's menus and UI if Persona 5 didn't exist. Nearly all of the characters are likeable, their rendering of Tokyo is neat, the dungeons all have their own aesthetic and the designs (from people, to enemies, to bosses) are all top-notch. I really can't go on enough about how much *style* this game has. The characters all write their signatures in the air before they attack, the special attacks include poses and specific performance animations and some even have entirely unique theme songs when you do them. I haven't even mentioned the soundtrack, full of upbeat J-pop tracks that had me literally singing along at points. I could carry on, with the battle system and equipment levelling system and all that, but in the end it's an excellent JRPG that you can tell had an enormous amount of effort, thought and *style* put into it, which definitely didn't deserve the localisation kerfuffle it got upon release.
I almost forgot about this during my initial draft of the list and consdering that this made me a mortal enemy of my phone battery for a couple of months I can't leave it out. Don't underestimate the power of Pokémon eh? This is a game, while mechanically terrible and often hideously broken, that managed to make me new friends, do a shitload of walking and got a bunch of southerners to actually talk to each other and strike up conversations. For two months this was the biggest thing in the world and reminded everyone that the defining peak of human existence isn't going to be something to do with evolution, it'll be making Pokémon real.
This is another one where other people are going to write a lot, but I've always enjoyed the Uncharted series, mostly for the character interactions and environmental experiences. I'm also the biggest sucker for a good "ancient civilisation builds a locked treasure room and you have to play Mouse Trap to unlock it" idea. While the gameplay aspects have just about run their course on me now, the visuals, character animations/interactions, story and all-around moments are some of the best in the series, especially the ones that subvert your expectations - surfacing from scuba diving, both home-life sections and the young flashback sections were suprisingly effective. There's also a moment in the latter half where Nate drives alongside Elena in silence, while the soundtrack slowly kicks into this solemn orchestral piece that is just really, really cool. The dynamic shifting of the soundtrack in & out of fight scenes is another plus point...actually the soundtrack is just plain great. Oh and that particular part in the epilogue made me grin like an idiot. It's a really pleasing end for Nate's story.
Uchikoshi!!! ZTD is a wonderfully bonkers, flawed-if-you-look-too-closely experience that I'm happy was released. It didn't have my favourite 'oh shit' twist in the series, and for every new, good character introduced (Carlos) it provides a terrible one (Eric), but ZTD *does* have some of the most memorable moments of the three. Discovering the timeline wasn't as originally perceived was a neat 'ohhhh' moment and pressing the button in the shower room was...eww. Converserly, pressing the button in the "DO NOT PUSH THE BUTTON" scene was hysterical. Oh, and D-END 2 was *bleak* as hell and probably one of my most favourite bits of writing in the series. Considering by the time I unlocked it I'd already murdered every character 10 times over, it still managed to hit me pretty hard. It's a neat ending to a series I'd highly recommend.
I ended up really sweet on the previous Deus Ex, and I still think that game has one of the strongest soundtracks and trailers I've ever seen, so from the pre-release footage I kind of knew that Mankind Divded was never going to hit that bar. That said, I did enjoy a whole lot of it. Where the main story took a bit too long to get going (and ended a little abruptly), the side quests stuck out with some really interesting character work and detours from my 'sneak into places and hack/ransack everything' core gameplay. Trying to plan my route without being seen was satisfyingly tense, the world building was very well thought-out (provided you read a lot of the terminals and dialogue) and the final mission was a really inventive piece of level design. Oh and the soundtrack is once again, boss.
In the battle of the watches, Blizzard just pipped it. Others will go on enough about the best parts of Overwatch, but it's been the first competitive multiplayer shooter I've put any time into since...Timesplitters 2? I really don't do competitive multiplayer outside of a few genres, and shooters are DEFINITELY not one of them. Apparently all it took for me to get into one was getting rid of a stats screen so people can't see how much I suck. Also giving me an exploding mech that can fly.
I'm a huge fan of multiple people on the dev team of Firewatch, so this was a game where I had to try really hard to keep my expectations down and keep reminding myself of what exactly the type of game it was prior to release. The art design and envronment of it are fantastic, perfectly complimented by the soundtrack, ranging from light orchestral sweeps to almost minimalistic chord strums that really lended itself to the forest atmosphere. The dialogue particularly between Henry and Delilah was realistic and sharp, and the intro sequence was downright emotional. If the 'revelation' moment in the story had hit a bit harder, this would probably be higher up my list, but as it stands I had a great 4 hours or so with it.
I've not managed to finish FFXV before the year ends, and I'm just coming up on the dreaded chapter 13, but even if it does take a huge nosedive I've spent 35 hours of driving around, doing a few quests, teleporting into giant dinosaur things, eating some of the most ridiculously rendered food I've seen in a video game and have had a pretty fun time doing it. The story is mostly non-existent and the characters woefully underdeveloped, but it helps that while I'm a big JRPG guy, I've never been a Final Fantasy guy, and knowing that they managed to rescue a pretty unique game out of whatever development mess they've been involved in for the last 10 years makes me appreciate it a bit more.
