My Look Back At 10 Games in 2015

by blackblade500

When I was thinking about this list of games for a Top 10 list of the year of 2015, I looked back on what certain games made me feel, and how my playing of these games changed my perspective of what games could be, and how diverse this medium already is and what it could become. These ten games are ones that I took time out of my busy school and work schedule to play and enjoy the diverse exper...

10. Olli Olli 2: Welcome to OlliWood

I never rode a skateboard, I never have really played a skateboard game like Tony Hawk or Skate, so when Olli Olli 2 came out on PS4 for free via PS Plus, I almost did not download it. I then remembered that Alex talked about the original one and offered very high praise for it. I decided for the low price of nothing that I would give it a shot. Not only did I give it a shot, I played that game to completion, and I drove myself to try more and more complex moves and to find all of the secrets. More than that, the competition between myself and a friend of mine over high scores and times and trying not to ever touch the ground kept me coming back after I would have left. After about 20 hours, I feel like that game really filled a void early on in the year where noting was catching my attention, and this game caught it and did not let it go for a long time.

9. Emily Is Away

The first time that I saw this game was Kinda Funny's Greg Miller and Tim Gettys were going to do a lets play of the game, and after about 5 mins of that video, I stopped and went to itch.io to get it. As someone who did not use AIM ( I am 21 for reference, Facebook was my AIM), I appreciate the way that this game takes the concept of talking over a instant messenger, the feeling of talking to someone that you like in a romantic-ish way and the nervousness of those conversations is spot on. As I was playing this game, I would fall back to a time when I was 16 and talking to a girl over Facebook, and I how I acted in those situations. In the 45 minutes that it took to boot up and finish this game, I was completely bought in on the story that it wanted to tell, and a key point of that is the fact that you have to type to make the answers you select to appear in the response box (though you could just hit the same key over and over again). While there is not a lot there, there was enough to make me think about the game way after I had finish it

8. Splatoon

If you had told me that I would being putting a Nintendo made shooter on my GOTY list, I would have called you crazy. Yet here we are and Splatoon is not only on my GOTY list, it is my favorite shooter of 2015. I went out on Black Friday to buy the Wii U bundle that was on sale. It came with Splatoon and Smash Brothers, and because of Splatoon, I have never touched Smash Brother at all. I have been a pretty active with Call of Duty and Battlefield in the past, my friends and I would all get it together and play till we got burnt out. Splatoon gets rid of that feeling, I never feel like I am burning out on Splatoon. I play a 5-10 matches every couple of days, I buy some fresh clothes and weapons, and I cover everything with ink. It gets rid of the importance of shooting other guys, which i am not very good at and gives me an objective to complete. I always feel like I am contributing to the team and I never feel like i am letting my team down. Also this game has some of the best style and tone of any game that I played this year.

7. Madden NFL 16:

Madden and I have had a long history, between the years of 2002 and 2010, I bought Madden every year, and would play it for countless hours, trying to lead my Broncos to the Super Bowl. Then we had a falling out, I started playing a more of a variety of games as I got older, and I got sick of the lack of innovation in Madden. I then started playing FIFA and that became my sport sim of choice. This year I decided to give Madden another shot as the reviews came in pretty positive. I have been completely sucked back in, from the Draft Champions mode, which you draft 10 player cards for your team, which then gets filled it for the rest of the team's roster, you then go online or against the computer and play till you lose, then you repeat the process. For someone who does not line all of the Ultimate Team at all, it provides a great alternative. Along with the old time sink that is Franchise mode, playing as a coach, doing all of the player personnel things like the draft and schemes, and scouting computer generated college players. All of those things made Madden and I reconcile for the time being and Madden NFL 16 might be my favorite madden in a long time.

6. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

Now I am going to warn you before I start talking about MGS V, I had not finished it, I am around the 25 hour mark, yet I have played enough of Big Boss's latest adventure that I definitely had to put this on my list. This game is mechanically incredible, but not too hard to pull off the more advanced mechanics, it makes you fell pretty badass. Each time that I would come into a base like place, I would just sit and scout out the enemies and their patterns, I would get D-Dog to go and find hostages. I would try to sneak around and find a way to get in and out without anyone seeing me. Most of the time that would just blow up in my face, and because the mechanics of this game it made it easy to switch from stealth to full out shootout in seconds. Add that to the AI of the enemies, for example if you shoot a lot of guys in the head, they will start wearing more helmets or if you go do missions primarily at night, they will wear night vision goggles to make it easier spot you. If the story up to were I am at was not on the weaker side, this might be higher on the list, but never the less this was a hell of a game for Kojima to leave on.

5. Super Mario Maker

I feel like I am a pretty creative person, but one things that have never appealed to me were level/map editors in games, most are super complex or require watching tons of tutorial videos. Super Mario Maker is none of that. I have the knowledge of the Mario games in my head, and it helps build on those by giving me the keys to take my knowledge of the mechanics and do whatever my hearts content with them. So not only is this game convinced me to take part in its creator, there are and endless amount of (good and bad) Super Mario levels for myself to indulge into. This is the only game this year that I will go to sleep, dream about a level that I could make, then wake up and go make that level. Also this game has led to some of my favorite video content this year: Mario Maker Mornings. Patricks video series not only is very entertaining, but also provides me a way to see some crazy levels that I might not see otherwise. Nintendo could have messed this up pretty bad, but not only did they not, they surpassed expectations, and made me buy their console.

4. Rocket League

Another game that I had first heard about on Kinda Funny, which they praised the beta of the game. I then went and signed up for their beta, and every since then I have had so much fun with this game. Fro the feeling of the first time that you score a goal and the ball explodes and the horn goes off, I was hooked. This game is the definition of easy to learn, but hard to master. My friends and I would get together in the 4v4 mode and talk strategy and try to run plays, while trying to master the art of making the car fly. While I have slowed down playing soccer cars, my summer was mostly dominated by this game, and when DLC drops for it, I always make it a point to go back and play some. This game is just pure fun and I am excited to see where it goes.

3. The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt

When I finished this game, I thought it was my GOTY, and while it is not, Witcher 3 is one of the best open world RPG's I have ever played and makes me sad that this is the end to Geralt's story. Including the Heart of Stone DLC, I have played 200+ hours of this game, traveling across the lands of Velen, the simple town of White Orchid, and the isles of Skellige hunting for Ciri, and while on the hunt for her, I encountered so many interesting people, from the Bloody Baron, to the tricky Crones, to the powerful families of Skellige, to the Wild Hunt, every place I went had some kind of story or character for me to interact with. Along with the abundance of side quests, which in the opposite of Dragon Age: Inquisition, felt full and complete of interesting plot points, not just filler. The monster design is something that is very unique and beautiful in a creepy sort of way. The most important thing that this game did was get me emotionally invested into the relationship of Geralt and Ciri's relationship with each other, that relationship made Geralt a easier character to get invested into, which is something that I struggled with in Witcher 2. This game makes improvements on many aspects of Witcher 2, it looks incredible, and has a story that that is deep and made me continue to play it, even when I did not have the time to.

2. Her Story

When I first started to play Her Story, my thought was that it was something that I could look at and tinker with but not invest serious time into. 3-4 hours later that day, I had a notebook wear I kept words that she kept coming back to written down so I would not forget them. I made sure that I tagged every clip with metadata, so If wanted to come back to a specifically clip, I could. ( Side Note: I work with metadata for videoclips at my internship, so it is like I am playing Her Story in real life!)

I think what kept me going through this game was the fascination of knowing every little bit of the mystery surrounding this woman and what happened to her husband. While some parts are definitely a little far fetched, this tapped into a part of my brain that is obsessed with Law and Order/ Dateline/ Jinx/any mystery and I was compelled to see it through. I think that this is something very cool that Sam Barlow did here and I can not wait for whatever is next project is.

1. Life Is Strange

Not only is this game my favorite for this year, it is one of my favorites games that I have ever played. There were times where I would have to pause the game, as I could feel tears rolling down my face in reaction to what was happening on the screen. From the end of episode 2 where I saw that Kate wanted to take her own life for the way that she was treated, to the joy of being a good friend to her and convincing her that it was not worth it and to come down with me. Or what about the end of Episode 3 where Max tries to make things right for Chloe and save her dad from the fatal car accident, only to learn that she can not stop the inevitable, that time will gets its victim not matter what, and learning that Chloe was the new victim, how heart crushing it was to see the camera roll up slowly on Max's face as she sees this alternate Chloe for the first time. Or when the whole time the game is pushing you into thinking that a certain character is the ultimate bad guy, then the game pulls the rug out from under you and tells you it is this other character that you maybe did not like but would have never have thought he was more than what he was. I love this game for the topics it tries to tackle from cyber bulling, school harassment, family death, suicide, depression, and friendships. While most people had some problems with the dialogue, I found it very fitting of what some of my vocabulary in high school was. The most important part of this game is the friendship of Max and Chloe, the way you watch that relationship build over time is something that I don't think I have ever seen in video games. This game shows that video games can be used in great ways to tell fictional stories and cover very deep topics. After this game wrapped itself up, I immediately jumped online at 3 AM and had to see what everyone else thought about the ending and what were everyone's choices and theories for the universe.This game even made me think of my own friendships. Whether DONTNOD make another Life Is Strange type game or not, I will always cherish the story and characters that this game brought to me, and will always think of the experience that I had playing these five episodes.

Games That I Wished I Had Played This Year:

Undertale

Batman: Arkham Knight

Just Cause 3

Grow Home

SOMA

2015 has been a great year of games, I hope that 2016 can continue on this great path.

Happy New Year!