My Top Five Games of 2016

A quick note about the format of this article: I'm not someone who plays every new game that comes out in a year, and I believe in highlighting the worth of easily-forgotten older games. For this reason, my GoTY lists don't focus on the top five games released in a twelve month period; I base them on the best five games I played for the first time in the year. Here are 2016's games in purely alphabetical order, expect mild spoilers.

Batman: Arkham Knight

Arkham Knight is a AAA game with very AAA flaws. It's mechanically crowded, confused about how to tell a story without grinding gameplay to a halt, and it attempts to expand its series with elements it was not built to contain, but it grew on me. More than any other Arkham game, it brings out variation in what is one of the best action-adventure combat systems designed to date. There are also some real treats in the art design. Rocksteady add some flash and colour to the otherwise grim Gotham, and I'm a sucker for the Halloween decorations spattered around the city. Highlights include playing mind games with goons using the Voice Synthesiser and simultaneously fighting as both a dour, weighty Batman and a quick-witted, agile Nightwing.

Cities: Skylines

Cities and towns make for engrossing video game subject matter. They're sophisticated enough to have systemic depth built around them, but they're also familiar and constructed to accommodate peoples' lives, meaning a city simulator doesn't have to feel dry and inhuman. Skylines leans away from the novelty bells and whistles of games like SimCity (2013) and just trusts the city simulator as a concept to work, letting you build locations that are satisfyingly ordered but human and alive. Skylines provides tools both for those who want to feel productive and those who want to feel creative and is a compelling example of the way in which seeing your city sprawl outwards in this genre produces a very tangible representation of your progress.

Firewatch

If it's unclear what exactly Firewatch was from press reports or even its Steam store page, it's because the game is so careful about how and when it tips its hand. It could beat you over the head with this tragedy of a dementia-stricken wife and the husband who's seen her wrenched away from him, but it doesn't. It burns slow, and it misdirects you so that the lessons about death and responsibility sneak up on you. Once they make their entrance, it barely feels like you have proper time to consider them before the game is over, but this emulates the true-to-life adult experience of time passing too fast and us going down unintended roads when we try to escape our duties. The grand, majestic sorrows of games like Life is Strange or Shadow of the Colossus contribute so much to the medium, but the humble, contemplative sorrows of games like Firewatch mean something significant in their own right.

Tales from the Borderlands

I think few video games have flirted with comedy and done it well. It's common to find lots of developers trying to bring an element of humour to players' adventures by chasing after hokey jokes or oversaturating their games with winks and nods to other genre fiction. Tales isn't that. Instead, it's like some beautiful cross between Archer, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Fiasco. The characters are full and distinct with clear motivations that give the episodes constant forward momentum, and the game walks this careful tightrope between being silly and serious, allowing those two traits to nurture each other rather than pollute each other. Its comedy is not just funny; it helps ease you into more emotionally intense moments in which you realise how much you care about the well-being of these goofballs.

Undertale

In a medium that is often violent and cynical, frequently for the sake of it, Undertale shines as a beacon of positivity. It's a highly inclusive game, laying out a world of impossibly diverse characters but telling us that no one in it is unworthy of love. Men, women, straight, queer, heroes, villains, underlings, bosses, shy people, or confident people, everyone is treated with equal care and respect in the eyes of Undertale. It's an incredible achievement in itself, but Toby Fox takes it one step further by not letting the game's optimism prevent it from being a vehicle for substantial criticism. Undertale delivers the much-needed message that exhaustive consumption of every tiny bite of a game can be destructive and communicates it in an effectively chilling way if it needs to. It can be one of the happiest games there is or one of the most outwardly condemning towards the player. There are also few other game OSTs that can hold a candle to Undertale's.

And that's it for this year. Honourable mentions go to Burnout Paradise: Big Surf Island, Destiny, DmC: Devil May Cry, SOMA, and The Beginner's Guide. Thanks for reading.