My 2015 Game of the Year list

2015 Top 10 Video Games

Preface

So its Christmas time which means: turkey, family, festive songs, and of course top ten games lists. This is a first for me but something that I have wanted to do for a number of years but with being in college I haven’t had time to play enough games. I don’t necessarily know if that has changed, as is evident from the many games from years past on this list. But what has changed this year is that I feel like I have played a lot of games just for the sake of wanting that experience and not because they were critically acclaimed and came out in the recent calendar year. I think that’s what makes this so interesting to me because it is not simply a list of the best games from the year but a list of the games I played to satiate my current video game needs, and how and how well those games fulfilled those desires. That makes this list feel more like a list of food cravings and what I ate to satisfy that need. Also it should be noted that this is more of a no holds review piece where a cite parts, which are incredibly spoilery. So if you are upset by those types of things you have been warned this piece is rife with them so without further ado….

THE LIST!!!

10. Life Line

So mobile games have become way more vital in the gaming industry these days, and while I have tried to play the important mobile games most of them haven’t captivated me. Life Line, while not necessarily the most taxing or time involved game really engrossed me. Part of this was due to the mechanics and structure of how the game worked, where you are talking to Taylor who is stranded on a seemingly deserted planet. This stranded nature of the game led to me being glued to my phone waiting for Taylor to respond to my messages. There was several times where I found myself tuning out class or a conversation in order to respond to focus on Taylor. A lot of this stems from how the notifications show up as text messages and you are selecting preset responses. One gripe I actually have with the game is that I often felt like the answer I selected was different from either the response that was sent or it led to a much different response from Taylor than expected. Overall though this mechanic is really what enthralled me with the game and caused me to experience actual stress, when I was waiting for Taylor to respond in a crucial part in the story. The story telling is really well written and very natural. I sometimes felt like Taylor’s speech was to caviler though for someone stranded on a foreign planet. But when I thought about it I’m sure if I was stranded on an unknown planet I would still try to be upbeat and cheerful. The story is not incredibly long but that is never what I want from a phone game and so this was perfect for me. Also I get so bored with endless runner or overly repetitive mobile games but “Life Line” was always fresh and compelling.

9. Assassins Creed Chronicles: China

So there are a few things about this game that aggravated the crap out of me. Firstly while the running sequences switch up the pace of the game and the first time it occurs is really neat, when they are placed after each third of the story chapters it just feels repetitive and stale. Also when it first occurs the premise that the shipyard is burning is thrilling, but it is rehashed for each fleeing sequence. These sequences are made more frustrating by some of the timing on the running being unnecessarily tight. I repeated this sequence where you had to watch this guard get hit with a falling ceiling over and over while trying to nail: a slide to a stab to climbing up a wall quickly to a point where when I did nail it, it just felt like luck. This sounds like I hated these sequences but these were actually some of my favorite. I just feel like if they were tightened up and not just repeated at set increments they would be incredibly memorable sequences. The last few minutes of the final chase totally kills it, with less annoyingly tedious platforming, canons that make you feel like the powerful assassin you expect, and an awesome final assassination sequence. Just like the repeated running sequences the rest of the stealth platforming similarly has an air of rinse and repeat, and towards the end I was just pushing forward as fast as possible.

But at the same time I kept pushing through it and there was something that just kept pushing me to continue through it. Part of this is related to how much it felt like “Mark of the Ninja,” even though assassin’s creed was not as new or as tight feeling as the former. This does not mean that assassin’s creed chronicles; china feels completely tired and out played, but like a welcome reminder of just how much fun playing as a stealthy killer can be. This is especially in contrast to the main Assassin’s Creed series, which I have completely fallen off of mainly because it just feels repetitive and beat into the ground. The game play of moving from one hiding spot to assassinating a guard to hiding the body to climbing a tower feels fluid and I rarely felt like I couldn’t pull off what I had in mind. The story while not exactly full of nuance or a particularly gripping plot by the end I felt like I wanted to see the next chapter and flesh out another side of the story in a different location. I also don’t completely fault the story because it worked with the length of the game, which wraps up on a really high note at the end just as the systems where starting to feel repetitive.

8. Fifa 15

So This one is both pretty simple and infinitely confounding. Firstly I don’t like sports games and the last one I owned was Fifa: world Cup Korea in like 2000 for the PC and I played that game a ton and then was fine with not playing another sports game, until now. Secondly I don’t think Fifa 15 is the best playing football (I Lived in England for 2 years and so I will never again call it “soccer”… deal with it) game, since I played the demo of Fifa 16 and could tell there were several major improvements. Thirdly and finally there is nothing in this game that is narratively captivating or emotionally enthralling about stealing the ball sprinting up the pitch at top speed trouncing the A.I. on easy by scoring, over and over and over again. And ended up spending a lot of time playing this game when usually I have this urge to rush through a game just so I can crank into the next one.

The answer as I alluded to earlier is remarkably simple; the game is just plain fun. And something about stealing the ball sprinting up the pitch at top speed while beating the A.I. on easy and scoring, over and over and over again that just triggers the slow but continuous drip of sensory enjoyment dopamine that my brain craves. So can I necessarily say that it is only Fifa 15 that provides this or could any football game or more broadly could any sports game for that matter fill the same hole, and honestly I don’t know the answer to this. I think I liked/played Fifa so much because I prefer football to the other sports so in that sense I don’t think any other sports game would satiate me, but for instance if I did like American football or baseball or hockey I think they equally would have been on this list. And really the only reason I can give for why I picked Fifa 15 was that I found it for $10 on ebay. So wrapping up I don’t know that I have many good reasons as to why this specific game made my top ten list or why everyone should consider playing this game, because the way I view or read top ten lists is to glean from the author reasons as to why they enjoyed this game and why I might also. But at the end of the year this game was just plain fun and was something that I could just sit down and unwind with.

7. Tony Hawk Project 8

Tony Hawk was a game that I loved in my youth and I can still remember many of the levels from the first 4 pro skater games by heart. So when I heard that there was a new pro skater coming out this year I was stoked while also cautiously optimistic since tony hawk games haven’t been great in recent history. And then pro skater 5 came out and it looked awful and while I don’t have first hand experience of playing it I have watched enough videos to tell me it looks BAD. But watching Tony Hawk made me want to play a Tony Hawk game so I settled for what I could which is why Project 8 is on my list. No, it is not a great game but boy did it satisfy me and my nostalgic cravings for throwing down the nastiest combo and picking up S-K-A-T-E. Yes, I know by choosing this I’m basically admitting to putting a game on here because it is the lesser of two evils for a skate boarding game which sounds like a copout. But regardless of that I do think there are some notable things about this game.

Firstly I like the more goal/objective nature of this game compared to the traditional Pro Skater format. So I enjoyed finding skaters that are “quest givers” and completing their challenges and this style seems to leads too much weirder and zanier skate boarding antics and I feel that’s what Tony Hawk is all about. The trick system while not as innovative as something like Skate was manageable especially once I looked at the trick list, which allowed me to link together huge combos with ease. The levels all felt spacious and like there were enough places to explore and to perform tricks on. There aren’t a ton of positive things to say about this game which brings into question me putting this on here and at number 7 which basically boils down to “ITS MY LIST GET OFF MY BACK!” and I had a really fun and satisfying experience with this game this year, And I think games are meant to bring you joy and that’s what project 8 did, it brought back my level of joy as a 9 year old kid playing the original pro skater on my N64 and I think that deserves to be recognized.

6. Gunpoint

Gunpoint is just so charming with a dash of innovative gameplay. The core of the game is a puzzle game where you are accomplishing jobs that involve you recircuiting the wiring in buildings to get past guards in order to either get intel or to hack a computer or some other detective type shenanigans. The controls of the gameplay occasionally don’t work as smoothly as expected and aren’t as responsive as is always required. But this only really is an issue in the last few missions, so it isn’t problematic. This points out the key to this game that it doesn’t over stay its welcome. The gameplay is inventive and you reach the limits of the controls right as it wraps up. The story similarly it witty and fresh concluding right as it begins to feel stale and the jokes wear out their “quippy banter” feel. Their isn’t a ton really to say about this game without just laying out all of the story line and solutions to the puzzles besides that it is the perfect length for all of the pieces that make up a well crafted and pleasant whole. A lot of games short or long wear out all of their inventiveness and the last few minutes or hours I’m just bored and forcing myself on to see the credits. Gunpoint never felt like this and that’s why I can feel justified in saying so little while placing it at number 6. And this is kind of the crux of how I felt this year in games, or the games I played, that the things that sustained me without becoming stale or a slog ranked very highly for me. This also links nicely to the statements that I have made about games like Fifa or Tony Hawk that I just had fun playing them and I think that is partially why I wasn’t completely bored by the time the credits played. This contributes greatly to why I decided to write a top 10 list, that I had a great time playing games this year and didn’t, like in some previous years, feel like I was just waiting for a twist or playing just because some critic said it was worth playing. This year really felt special and helped me realize the joy in playing whatever satiates your gaming salivary glands, making not just Gunpoint but all of these games satisfying.

5. Rocket League

This game blew up this year in a big way and was awesome. I played it on PC after everyone downloaded it on PlayStation plus and were raving about it, and they were correct. This game is amazing. I won’t say that this game has stuck with me for a really long time but when I was playing it I was eating it up and it was totally that type of game where you tell yourself “its just a 5 min game what is one more match going to hurt,” and then before you know it it’s 2:30 am and you need to get up early. The key to this game in my opinion is the controls, they are so simple for beginners but there is complexity to be found in things like trick shoots and better ball handling skills. I don’t normally enjoy online multiplayer games at all and I don’t have a ton of friends who play games so I haven’t played any multiplayer games intensely in years but rocket league did it for me because I didn’t really need to converse with others or listen to 13 year old prepubescent vices. Basically rocket league is a beautifully simple game that is just fun and mindless.

4. Destiny (post the Taken King)

Ok, so I feel like upfront I should say I didn’t play any destiny before The Taken King was released. So, I didn’t have the normal day one experience, and I like shorter games as opposed to the MMO/loot grind nature that others expect out of this game. So with that said I REALLY ENJOYED DESTINY! The shooting is just so fluid and snappy. It feels like this perfect amalgam of Halo and Call of Duty. And once I went through the tutorial and the zoom is (L2/left trigger) and the shoot is (R2/right trigger), while (L1/ left bumper) is grenade and (R1/right bumper) is knife special, it was like a light bulb went off and it all just clicked. This control scheme just felt genius but simple at its core and it just worked for the many hours that I played. The game also just looked really beautiful and pretty, and except for the moon all of the planets felt different. Even on the individual planets there felt like unique areas. Visually the character design wasn’t bad but wasn’t something that blew me away. The Taken were the one enemy type, which I just thought, really were amazing and while not super inventive and are basically black wisps. The taken just seemed to strike the right amount of stress when they appeared and captured subtle but distinctive notes of their normal enemy types. The mission structure, except for parts of “The Taken King,” wasn’t anything special and was mainly go and kill till you get to a big bad enemy and kill it and then do it again at another location. And to be fair I haven’t explored all of the strike missions or any of the raids (which I have heard/seen are the most inventive moments), but I don’t have the time to do all of those things and so the time I did get to spend was well worth it and just a good time. Honestly though I don’t know about anyone else but I play games because they are good fun and I LOVE FUN, and that’s what Destiny was just FUN. And while in recent years game story has become way more important to me, this was a time when it was nice just to play something fun and relaxing.

3. Metal Gear Solid V

So there are two major sides to my feelings on this game: the first is that the story is really not great and second that this is one of the best playing games ever made. Firstly the story, which has a lot of the Kojima craziness with vocal parasites and an assassin that becomes a friend and ally after trying to kill you. And then there is Huey, Otacon’s dad who is just as annoying and whinny as Otacon, which is normally fine since you don’t talk to Otacon that many times and the game is only 12 – 16 hours. This game is long and you see Huey a lot and he grates on you the entire time. It is not unusual for me to be a little confused by the story of a metal gear game and need to read a story recap even immediately after finishing them is pretty standard, but I didn’t feel that way when I finished MGS V. I felt like I understood the pertinent information of what was going on and the motives of the characters. I really liked that there was more story in chapter 2 and even how players opened up those story heavy missions. And for context I loved the Metal Gear Solid 2 double middle fingers twist of playing as Raiden while seeing Snake like the whole game. Like loved it thought it was hilarious and amazing even though I knew about it before I played the game. Also it should be said that I am coming to these games years later and have played all of them in a two-year stent. This made the end of the game huge twist something that I loved and despised. I love when Kojima basically trolls his fans but while being one of those fans it just smacks you in the face and is incredibly infuriating. I don’t feel like he earns this one either, I mean he is entitled to make “His” game however he wants, but in MGS 2 the game after the twist is really good and the story is still really amazing. This does not happen in Metal Gear Solid V in which the twist comes at the very end and you discover you are playing this pointless character for 50 plus pointless hours building a pointless base that isn’t even as big as Big Bosses for literally no reason. It was just a wet blanket at the end of replaying a really awesome mission, and I even thought how it was like this Bioshock –esque flashbacks of the truth was really well done and cool. But at the very end the player is just felt let down, which is what you don’t want to happen. So am I completely bummed by the story, sure, but would I play the real Metal Gear Solid 5, YES!!!

The Metal Gear Solid series has been known for having infuriating controls but that all changes with the Phantom Pain. It plays a lot like Ground Zeros but even Ground Zeros felt like you were missing things and couldn’t execute your wishes as easily as necessary. There was never a moment in the Phantom Pain where I felt like I couldn’t do exactly what I wanted, and that is pretty incredible. There was a fluidity to the loop where you would be dropped into a mission and I would proceed to tranquilize everyone and then fulton them out. This loop never gets old because the environment changes, the number of enemies changes, and what the enemies are wearing in terms of armor or helmets changes which leads to the game feeling very fresh no matter how long you have been playing. Also increasing the variety of the game is the number of weapons and buddy choices that allows for unlimited ways to tackle a situation. The missions range from fultoning out an individual, killing an important person, blowing up a vehicle/technology, or a specific set-piece type mission. The set piece missions are all pretty creative and pit you against enemies and in situations where I was gripping my controller way to tightly and concentrating on not getting spotted by the enemy. These few things go along way to over come the lackluster story and make for a great video game. There are also little touches that have always set the Metal Gear series apart from its competition. The Phantom Pain is no different and one example is the cassette player, which allows you to play mission briefings and other story details like codecs in previous games while not taking you out of the action. One of the cassettes that you find is a guy on the toilet with diarrhea and if you play that within an enemy encampment from inside a port-a-potty the enemy wont come near it and will make a comment about it. This is a minute detail that shows the level of craft and care kojima puts into his games, and something most games don’t even think about. Visually this game is no slouch either and while it is set mainly in an Afghanistan dessert and an African forest, it looks really impressive. The visual effects go a long way to accentuate this with lens flares when bright lights are shined at you or when its raining how guards vision is not only obscured but that everything looks like it is actually sopping wet. Overall this is another well-crafted game from Kojima but this time it is not because of the buck wild story and attention to detail but the sheer ease with which Punished Snake controls and the variety with which he fulfills his objectives. But the story shortcomings really hold this game back from feeling like a Metal Gear game like all of the previous installments in the series.

2. Rise of the Tomb Raider

I really enjoyed the Tomb Raider reboot, and thought it was flawed but really good. The graphics were super impressive in part due to building my own brand new top of the line pc. And tress FX while completely distracting, over the top, and unnecessary looked fairly realistic graphically. There was also a great fluidity to the movement and traversal that made it feel like anyone could traverse these huge caverness gaps. The settings were fairly linear, which many critics chided the game for, but I enjoyed this structure. This type of layout appeals to be and I thoroughly enjoyed the set piece action and edge of your seat thrill. There were a few set back though one being the mythical story, which was just pointless and uninteresting. Also Laura takes a beating through the events of the story, which is a bit heavy handed but passable. This escalates quickly when she falls in a pit and is impaled by spikes or if she hits a tree and the branch graphically blasts through her gut. It just felt torture porn-esque, which has never been something I was into, but enough about a 2013 game.

Rise of the Tomb Raider maintained all of the high points of the previous game and cleaned up/removed the parts that were gross or boring. Graphically it looks amazing and there is a moment in the beginning where Laura finds a “tomb” that is covered in reflectant ice stalactites and houses a splintering well-worn Greek ship. From which she learns a new move. That graphical fidelity is maintained throughout and it is not just seen in the major set pieces, which are expected to dazzle. This game is far more open world and due to that there are more quite moments. In one area you are trekking across an iced tundra where a once Russian establishment bustled that is now down trodden and abandoned that holds an eerie vibe. This was conveyed well from the items strewn about preserving the lived in but deserted feeling of the town and the wind whipping through Laura’s hair helped to chill the player to the bone. This level of graphical complexity helped to humanize Laura and the world. Small but critical animations like the hair blown about in a storm (not as distracting or fake looking as tress FX) or Laura wringing out her ponytail after getting wet give a reality and a believability to the character, and these are details other games pass on. As was mentioned the game is not linear like the previous installment and the tropes that come attached to “open world” games usually don’t appeal to me and I just skip them focusing solely on the main story-line instead. Many of these tropes, like optional side quests or numerous types of collectables with 100s to collect are just there for the player to waste countless hours in. Tomb Raider never felt like this and its few types of collectables are in 3 categories: resources, foreign language artifacts, and side story collectables/audio logs. The resources all tie to the upgrade system for the weapons Laura caries. While a lot don’t feel necessary, many, especially the ones for the weapons I focused on felt vital and as if they made a big difference. The language artifacts are tied into the side story collectables, but are a separate meter. So anytime you read/translate an artifact it raises your proficiency for that language, and is tracked by a letter meter, for the language in question, filling up. Some artifacts are gated based on your level in the language but not so many that it was infuriating or like you were locked out of content. The side story collectables were a large reason why I explored so much of the open world, because the storylines that they told were really interesting and provided not crucial information but built the narrative of the world. As I type those words I feel like every other time I have read reviews of open world games where the reviewer is sucked into collecting things and then I try collecting them only to find it completely pointless. Normally I would attribute me liking this to me being invested in the fiction of the universe but I can’t say that I really am, sure I play the games but can’t remember anything really about the previous games storyline. So I think it comes down to this games story being so incredible, it feels fairly believable from each characters motivations to the mythical aspects of this game that just felt more grounded and explained by the lore of the world. This led to me collecting a lot of collectables but I never felt worn out by them and I didn’t end up finding them all but I felt like I rounded out all of the side story arks and was satisfied by them. Along with these collectables there are optional tombs and side missions. I found the side missions lackluster expect that the rewards of them were substantial, but I never felt like I had to complete them to feel justified in what I got, partly due to the side tombs. The side tombs were really fun puzzles that made use of all of the gadgets at Laura’s disposal. They were complex but always felt like there was one kernel of puzzle that never made them overwhelming. Now to the story, that follows Laura’s search to complete her father’s work/search for what is more or less the Holy Grail. So the story isn’t necessarily new but details along with it feel fresh and beckon the player on. I really loved this game and want to go back and tie up a few leftover side quests, which I never do, but there are a few set backs to this installment. One being the controls, especially at first, feel either too stiff or like you are over shooting your target when aiming. The upgrades help to alleviate some of that but at the beginning it feels imprecise in aiming. Also this is not strictly pertinent to Tomb Raider but all sequels, in that why does she always have to “discover” her gear that she had in the first game. Honestly this world-renowned treasure hunter who had been put through torture and constant near death moments last time leaves home on an expedition without a rope…. Like come on be serious. So these things while tedious and nit picky hold this game back from being my game of the year, but is defiantly the game that I would say everyone should pick up and play.

1. Metal Gear solid 4

So I was never a Metal Gear Solid fan and had only briefly ever heard anything about this franchise, until I listened to the Giant BombCast during their 2008 game of the year deliberations. During which they outlined the best sequences of the game and they totally intrigued me and opened me to the series. At the time I didn’t have the money to drop on a PS3 and so I was just content hearing others discuss the series. But eventually I did drop the dough and immediately started the deep descent down the dark dank cave that is MGS. Playing through the PS1 game I understood why people were enthralled by the game while similarly empathizing with every single complaint about the game. The second game further hooked me to the series and I loved the Raiden twist to the story, even though I had already had that spoiled. Also the story in MGS 2 was off the wall crazy and I lapped it up. Which is partially why I was cooled to the series upon playing MGS 3 even though I thought that game had the best storyline of any of the games. And then I played Metal Gear solid 4 not necessarily comprehending or being able to recite verbatim the crazy plot of each of the games. And overall found the series really incredible but only barely deemable as playable. And the fact that I devoted so much time to playing this series regardless of the truly abysmal controls basically solely for the cut scenes and story ark is unheard of for me since most of my life I have skipped cut scenes in order to get through a game faster.

So from the get go Metal Gear Solid 4 was playing to what I loved best about the series: the story, characters, long dialogue sequences, and wild fictitious military operations. While at the same time fixing the game play so that it was bearable and not off putting and also disposing of the whole camouflage and food system that I hated in Snake Eater. Sons of Liberty is just such a complete nostalgia play and since I had played the other games in the series within the last 2 years the nostalgia was fresh but still engrained enough for me to only have fond memories. There are just so many stupid callbacks in this game: with Johnny constantly crapping himself to Snakes only worries being smokes and women. Kojima did an amazing job at wrapping up the story and putting a bow on every last lose thread from the previous installments. And I don’t use that cliché phrase to mean that he did it neatly or like other games with some overarching plot twist that answers every question, but that kojima does what kojima does best and ties it up in some crazy mumbo jumbo about Nano machines, PMCs, AI’s named after presidents, and hypnotized humans with ghost arms that I LOVED! I could not recommend this game to anyone though because it is wholeheartedly a referential conclusion. Every boss is a call back to the previous games, and a hand-to-hand fight with liquid Ocelot on the top of a ship that plays the themes from the previous games and alternates the various fighting styles from the previous iterations and was just a beautiful conclusion to the solid Snake vs. Liquid Snake/Ocelot saga. Like I mentioned this game is mainly a cut scene but unlike other games the cut scenes are incredible and full of dumb kojima tropes. There is literally a two-minute scene where soldiers are just cocking guns, which is only topped by liquid Snake pointing finger guns at vehicles and the vehicles literally blowing up. Metal gear solid has always been about these moments but Guns of the Patriots feels like entirely these moments and they aren’t just found in cut scenes. The most poignant is the grueling moment where solid Snake is crawling through a microwave radiation room and is literally being cooked, as he is moving towards the GW AI. This comes after Snake has literally been shot, burned, electrocuted, and beaten to a pulp. While the scene is driven through button mashing you feel like you are pushing Snake’s life force to power each step and is incredibly tense. This game is in no way perfect and does not play perfect, which calls into question, “ why does it trump MGS V which plays so well.” The answer has to go back to what Metal Gear Solid has always stood for and that is the incredible narrative and amazing characters and the antics that they get into and Guns of the Patriots is 100% that game. Overall when I think of a game of the year it is a game that has the least or preferablly no boring or bad moments and that game this year for me is Metal Gear Solid 4, which when I think about it only amazing moments come to mind.

Honorable mentions

Just Cause 3

So I did not finish this game, narratively, not that that really matters in this Just Cause but is something I think is important. So this is partially why I didn’t put this on my list. But let me be clear this game is AMAZINGLY FUN and makes blowing things up incredibly simple and COMPLETELY satisfying. Honestly the controls are so smoothing and Avalanche nails the ability to zoom into an area by wing suit then yank the ripcord of the parachute and destroy objects by grenades, guns, or grappling only to have them explode in the most beautiful plums of smoke and fire. I played this game right at the end of the year and it was an amazing palette cleanser minus it being a bland saltine cracker. But the other reason I feel that holds this game back from being on my list is that I played it on Xbox One, which is rife with technically issues: frame rate drops and soul crushingly long load times. Now let me be clear games don’t have to be technically flawless to be on my list, I put Tony Hawk at number 7 (which at points was polygonal trash) but Just Cause 3 pushed you to a long loading screen like 100 times to many for me to not excuse it. I echo everything other outlets have said and I don’t want to beat a dead horse about this, since I had such a great time when it is performing as intended, but I not joking made multiple sandwiches, instant noodles, and microwaved frozen burritos during some of the longest of loading times before they were completed. I do plan on revisiting this game in 2016 on PC once I get a new video card and I could see this game doing very well on next years list.

Banjo Kazooie

This is my nostalgia play. It doesn’t have great controls especially camera controls, is a tedious collectathon, and I am sick of turning on the game and having to run to the later stages ... boils my blood thinking about it, while at the same time no game on my top 10 with the exception of maybe Metal Gears Solid 4 gives me the feels like Banjo Kazooie. I have played a lot of this game: I played it on N64 as a kid and loved it, then started it on 360, and now FINALLY beat it on Xbox One as part of Rare Replay. I cant in good conscious put this game on my top 10 list because I feel way to close to the sun with it, the game is honestly like my childhood wrapped up in a gooey charming rare branded package. I ran through most of the stages collecting everything very quickly because they felt like they did when I would play in 1998. And the feeling of finally 100% Rusty Bucket Bay after never being able to as a kid was one of the best feelings of the year for me. So I had an amazing time playing this game, ME, not anyone else which is really what this list is about but still I cant justify putting it on the list because if I think about it and I had played Mario 64 or some other game as much as Banjo as a kid and then replayed it, it too would probably be right at the top of the list for me. Which means that Banjo isn’t at the top of a list of video games for me but a list of top experiences and that’s not what this list is titled.

Digital: A Love Story

Played this at the very end of the year after I wrote my game of the year list so it isn’t going to be on here, but it deeply affected me. So Ill put up a separate piece on my feelings about it.

Looking Forward to Next Year

Batman: Arkham Knight

There was a lot of negativity around this game this year especially the PC version. But I loved Asylum and City and so I want to play Arkham Knight but I haven’t felt a huge push to play it immediately.

Fallout 4

So I have never played Fallout 3 or any Fallout for that matter and so I wasn’t stoked for Fallout 4 but the PC version and specifically with mods sounds like it could mitigate a lot of issues that seem to put me off this game. But for there to be mods you need time to allow for mods to be made, so I’m waiting for it to be cheaper and for the mod scene to flourish because I’m not interested in the clean faces mod.

Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise/ Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts (Rare Replay)

Rare Replay is an amazing value, like honestly probably the greatest video game deal ever, And Bajo Kazooie has sparked my interest in replaying/finishing many of those games. But these two are the ones I want to finish first because I never completed them. For Viva Piñata I don’t feel a real need to play the original and didn’t finish Trouble in Paradise at the time mainly because I played 50 hours of the first and got all 1000 achievements. For Banjo Kazooie if I remember correctly I was basically busy since it came out when I started college.