by sessh
Rejoice! It’s this time of the year again.
Time to spend time with our families and loved ones, eat an unhealthy amount of cookies and hope that this time around we’ll actually get presents that we won’t have to later sell on Ebay (stealthily of course, we don’t want to hurt anyone‘s feelings and all that).
So you guessed what time I meant by now? That’s right: It’s Christmas season again and so let’s talk a bit about…wait what do you mean we are a bit early for that and I can’t just assume that you are even celebrating Christmas in the first place? I mean come on, who wouldn’t celebrate Christmas? Oh I see, different religions and such - makes sense.
Well, okay then. I guess let’s not talk about Christmas, religion or why we hate that not everyone believes in the same things we do and instead let’s all despise and fight each other over things that really matter and make a difference:
Let’s all compile lists with our favourite games of the year and hate each other for including/excluding that one game that we really love/hate, since that’s just how we roll. (Yeah, I just used that phrase.)
Anyone wanna go first? No? Okay, then I’ll start.
With the intro out of the way (did anyone even read it and is still around?), once again I felt this was a really good year for games and so a simple Top 10 list just won’t do it justice.
*drumsticks*
It’s a GOTY list in blog form, because why not? One which includes not only my top 10 games of 2015, but also the games that didn’t quite make it and some random stuff.
Everything‘s even blocked up in some handy categories, so highlights are quick to find and no one has to read anything they don’t want to. (This took a long time to write, so read it anyway, damn it!)
*sickmetalguitarsolo* And now finally for the main event:
It’s been a strong year for RPG’s once again, so it didn’t come as a surprise to me that 4 of those would end up on this list. But wait, one of them is a JRPG, what happened there? Did we travel back in time about 15 years to when that genre still really mattered? (Note: I love JRPGs.) No? Well, if you say so.
I have 100+ hours on in a single game file on 5 of these games again too, so it’s also been another year of quite long games, and that’s fine by me. Anyway, enough random chatter and let’s just see what the Top 10 actually are, why don’t we?
Showing 1-10 of 10 items
Where do I even start with this game? I was going into this with pretty high expectations, having liked the first game and loved the second and having read the books just before it came out, and not only was I not disappointed, I was completely blown away by it. The Witcher 3 is an amazing accomplishment, in pretty much every aspect and it’s the best game to come out in years and years. The world is huge, packed full of things to do and people to see (or the other way around), well realized and looks just great (even on consoles). All the side activities are fun and worth doing, especially the Witcher contracts. The combat is fun (I’m glad I started out on the highest difficulty though, since the game gets really easy after you reach higher levels).and you are given a lot of options to handle every different situation. The changes they made to the combat system between this and The Witcher 2 are meaningful too, especially the different approach to Witcher potions. The story is well written, expertly crafted and even well acted. Though the main story has it’s up and downs, the side quests and little random things are just so great that it forms an amazing whole. The decisions you make matter and alter things in interesting and often unpredictable ways, which isn’t a given in this kinds of games, because they are often to ambitious for their own goods. Then there is Gwent, the best in game card game next to Final Fantasy VIII’s Triple Triad, and fun enough to maybe even make it big in the real world. Add to all this dozens of free DLC items/quests and a fantastic first DLC addon and you get a game that is simply a masterpiece. My favourite game since the first Dark Souls. The Witcher 3.
Still not as great as the old isometric Fallout games, but definitely the best 3D Fallout to date, Fallout 4 is a truly good game. It features the strongest story (except for the fact that there is no „middle ground“ ending) in any Fallout game to date, something I didn’t expect at all, and also some really memorable characters. (Nick Valentine, Curie, and Hancock are great.) The world is huge and it’s just fun to once again pick a direction and just wander off, never advancing the main story for 30+ hours, because of getting caught up in exploration and sidequests (of which there are many, and quite a few good ones at that). The combat is pretty much the same from previous games, but the shooting does actually feel better, so that’s a step in the right direction at least. The weapon/armour crafting is also fun and at least somewhat meaningful and the settlement mechanics swallowed up way more of my time than I’d liked, even though they are ultimately meaningless. It’s a bit of a shame that it’s once again plagued by loads of technical problems, especially considering that it really doesn’t look much better/different than Fallout 3 or New Vegas, but that’s just a minor hiccup to an otherwise amazing game.
What a mixed bag this game turned out to be for me. It plays amazingly well and is certainly one of the best, if not the best, action game to come out in years (it’s just plain fun to sneak around a base, slowly clearing it of enemies by strapping them to god damn balloons, all the while accompanied by your trusty wolf/dog), but at the same time the story is thin and just not that great, especially for a MGS game (the big twist is also really obvious) and the online component, already weak when the game came out, got patched to be the worst train wreck I’ve seen in a game in forever. (Fuck Konami!) I’d stopped playing for a while after finishing the main story, but before going for the real ending (the grind annoyed me and I had some personal things to deal with at the time) an when I came back to it I suddenly found myself in the red money-wise and 90% of my resources were gone. Fucking fun! I tried to amass it all again, but got robbed over and over and eventually gave up and just watched the true ending on YouTube. This is not how you handle microtransactions/online gaming. Real shame.
This game wins the award for having the title that fits it the most, because this is a really strange game. Something you really wouldn’t think after just playing the first two episodes, but if you keep going, it really goes places. I’ll obviously not spoil anything here (I’ll say this: I chose the ending that most people didn’t), but I really liked all the directions they took the story in and felt it was rather well written overall. (There are of course flaws and some inconsistencies, but who cares?) As a big fan of time travel fiction, Twin Peaks and Donnie Darko I ended up truly loving this game.
There are aspects about Bloodborne that I just love and others I fucking hate. The combat moves and feels great and just is a lot of fun, as are the transformable weapons, but why the hell is their suddenly only one viable build possible? Also why are there so little different weapons and items? Why does every piece of armour basically have the exact same stats? The chalice dungeons are a great idea, especially since they are randomly generated, but they all look the same because of it and are way to grindy. (I really don’t want to spend hours and hours farming items in this game. It’s worse than in an other Souls game.) I like the story, the world, the bosses, it’s general look, but now the invasion mechanics are just broken. Why will I never ever encounter just one single dude and instead always 2 or 3 people? That’s not fun. Overall I still vastly prefer Dark Souls‘ approach.
Catch a riiiiiide! This game turned out to be a hell of a ride, even though I was very sceptical about it before actually playing it. (I burned out on Borderlands and it‘s humour early on in Borderlands 2). Tales From The Borderlands luckily is a whole different beast when it comes to humour and great writing in general. I’d go as far as to say it tells the second best story (after Witcher 3) this year and several of it’s characters (Rhys, Loader Bot, Vasquez) deserve at the very least a mention in the „Best new character of the year“ category. The dual protagonists and hence dual perspectives were a genius idea and I just hope there’ll be a worthy sequel.
I love cheesy, bad horror movies/slasher flicks, so it’s no surprise I also ended up loving Until Dawn. It’s written appropriately dumb and has characters you just want to see getting murdered in horrible ways, so you can laugh to yourself thinking „You deserved it, you idiot.“ The game looks great and the acting, from more or less known actors, is also really spot on so the presentation as a whole is just top notch. Also some of the decisions are either very tough or completely ridiculous, which just fits the games tone perfectly. Hopefully we’ll get a sequel that isn’t just on-rails VR bullshit.
What a great little surprise of a game this turned out to be. Going into this after having seen some gameplay videos I was very sceptical to say the least, but after playing a few games I found myself coming back to it again and again, to the point of it being the only game I played regularly for about 2 months or so. It’s just plain fun to drive around on the wall, explode other people and scream at the TV because your team mates are idiots/that damn ball shouldn’t have flown into the goal like that. I got pretty good at the game, but never quite grasped the boosted flying and eventually fell off as I felt you needed to really nail that stuff for playing at a higher level.
I’ve been a huge fan of the Tales series for years now, it’s also kind of the only JRPG series still going strong (with regular releases and actually mostly good games), so I was rather disappointed with how Tales of Xillia 2 (and 1 to a degree) turned out after the outstanding Tales of Vesperia. Zestiria isn’t quite as good as Vesperia but it at least comes close at times. The combat is excellent (it’s mostly taken from Tales of Graces, so that’s a good thing), the story is okay, the characters are mostly fine (love Rose and Edna) and the equipment fusion mechanic is interesting, albeit really damn confusing. One of the best JRPGs to come out in the last few years.
I didn’t think I’d ever care about an open world Zombie game ever again after Dead Rising 2, but then came this game. The story is laughable, the characters are terrible and the voice acting comes straight out of hell, but who cares? It’s just plain fun to fuck up Zombies with a multitude of different melee weapons (never use guns!) and weird wrestling moves. The parkour mechanics really make the traversal enjoyable too, which is essential for an open world game. Also running around outside at night can lead to some really nice tense moments, something you’d really never expect out of this kind of game.