by frybird
There is already a lot of talk regarding the "Game of the Year", even though there are still possible contenders coming out. Not that it is not understandable, by most accounts 2015 was a great year for video games.
But with the huge load of great AAA and Indie Titles, some games are bound to be overlooked for being just "very good", or just not having a lot of hype behind it.
So here's a list of some titles that may have fell under many peoples radars, but still deserve to be played....and who knows, maybe added to the lower end of ones personal Top 10 List.
Showing 1-10 of 10 items
Sort-of a Sequel to the addicting Sim-City meets Tetris (or perhaps Lumines, more accurately), Concrete Jungle largely expands on the premise by adding a Deck-Building Element, characters with different strengths and skills, as well as competitive modes to it. It takes a bit of the originals simplicity (there's a "Classic Mode" for those who just want to play a prettier Megacities with new Buildings) but makes it a much deeper and ultimately more fun game. It also has a pretty isometric look to it (as well as some very skippable voiceover work in the campaign mode) that certainly does not hurt when spending far too many hours juggling land values and thresholds and things you might never wanted to deal with in a "real" city builder...by which i mean to say, this game is something everyone should try.
Double Fine's generation-spanning strategy game could be dismissed as a poor man's XCom, and while not exactly wrong, it would do the game a great disservice. It may lack the depth and danger of personal attachment of the XCom Games, but the big-picture thinking required to manage your roster of heroes as well as the legacy they leave for the heirs of the bloodline is a fun take on strategic planning that is greatly enriched by the turn based battles against the slowly growing threat of monsters whose unique abilities have painful repercussions in the long run, all of which makes the game stand out as something not to be missed for strategy fans.
Taking the template of transport-management-games like Railroad Tycoon or Transport Tycoon and simplifying it into a Flight-Control-esque puzzle game, Mini Metro is terrifyingly addicting as you create and manage a constantly growing subway-system, beautifully presented as the confusing mess of lines and colors of real-world subway maps.
A bunch of games, like the very lovable Super Time Force, let you cooperate with your (past) self. Extreme Exorcism goes the next step and makes the player his own worst enemy. As you play the Super-Crate-Box-like single screen arcade game, this single screen gets more and more polluted with ghosts of your previous runs, tasking you to kill your most previous self while dodging the efforts you made as him killing your second-most-previous self and so on. It takes little time to get the hang of it, but offers a unique and interesting challenge as it constantly tasks you to outwit your own playstyle while ideally leaving loopholes for your future selves to exploit.
Drifting is fun, and this Gymkhana thing probably is too if it weren't for all the energy-drink-sponsored EXTREEEEMENESS of all of it. Absolute Drift gets rid of that delivering something more sharp and cool and minimalistic reminiscent of Mirror's Edge's great art direction while offering many fun ways of score based drifting challenges for teeths to sink in.
Mixing a Deck-Building-Card game with RPG elements more reminiscent of Pen-and-Paper Roleplay Sessions than videogame dungeon crawling, Hand of Fate also adds a bit of an action game on top of that as if it is deathly afraid one ever gets bored of it. But even without the functional, if not particulary deep hacking and slashing, this game always offers something interesting just around the corner while also featuring a cool presentation as the mysterious card dealer before you creates bits and pieces of a fantasy adventure out of the playing cards while delivering helpful and/or sarcastic quips as he constantly shifts between ally and opponent.
Easily a contender, if not winner for "best game name 2015", the greatest charm of the game lies in the use of the Wii U Gamepad, making this one of the too few games that really make use of the consoles unique feature. Best played with a friend, this puzzle-y exploration game requires steering a piece-of-junk spacecraft across a perilous planet while also juggling the ships power distribution and systems according to the obstacles you come across. As long as communication issues do not ruin friendships, there is great fun to be had. (People who don't have a Wii U who want to get into Cooperative-Single-Spaceship screaming matches might want to check out the similar-but-not-really Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime, another great title with a good game attached to it ^^)
This amazingly ambitious family game project is utterly charming and maybe more importantly, fun to play. A simple, yet fluid and fun time-attack platformer at heart, it also delivers a pretty unique take on narrative, it charmingly explores the mindset of a teenager dealing with bullying and other anxieties in a engaging yet lighthearted way. Definitely worth checking out.
Not quite as charming as Mike Bithell's last game Thomas was Alone i still feel like this back-to-basics stealth game has been criminally overlooked due to the launch of a certain stealth game behemoth shortly after. Very much inspired by MGS1 VR Missions (with an emphasis on the 1), Volume scrubs down general gameplay tropes to clean basics, turning stealth action into bite-size puzzle-like challenges and adding a Level Editor to it that is easily the...second best...this year.
As someone who absolutely adored the first Hotline Miami, this was honestly a disappointment. It tried a bit too much in finding variations to the formula, and took the vague story bits that made for a surprisingly stunning narrative in the first game a bit too literal. Still, there's lots of the feverish, brutal, hectic action that made the first game great, another amazing soundtrack, and even though the different characters and playstyles do not quite measure up to what was before, it still offers interesting variations to the formula. It may not live up to the hype, but that does not mean it should fall to the wayside.