Top 5 Games of 2015

A bit late, but I figured I should write a bit of GOTY stuff.

I try to make Top 5's based on personal experience more than anything else. Mainly because a lot of the time we don't get around to playing games until years after their release, but temporal limitations wouldn't be a fair reason to punish games that are worthy of praise. So just keep that in mind. It's intentional that there are games on my list not from this year.

So. Personal Top 5 game list, not necessarily from this year, and in no particular order:

5. Super Smash Brothers for Nintendo 3DS and WiiU

Realizing this game made my list was honestly caught me by surprise. I've played a substantial amount of every Smash Bros., and never even really had a great affinity for it until Brawl. I can't even really say this one grabbed me any more than Brawl did (I'd even say less, actually, because Smash Run / Smash Tour aren't reasonable replacements for Subspace Emissary to me). The part that made it so outstanding is how much it grabbed everyone around me.

Smash has been a staple of gatherings with friends, at least since Melee. Yet it was always a game that all but the 1 or 2 most into it people would get burned out on it on after only a few matches, if they would pick up a controller at all. For as dedicated and concrete as the Smash community was and is, there was always a clear gorge between those who were into the game and those who didn't care for it at all. And that's not even getting into the fervor within the community itself over whether each game has merits and flaws or if everything that's not Melee should be burned to the ground.

This is what has made Sm4sh stand out to me. That impossible divide feels like it has all but closed up. Those same people who wouldn't even care to try playing in previous games are comfortable picking up a controller and are more than likely even going to actually have fun. I never dug deep enough to have anything more than an awareness of... Wavedashing? L-Canceling? Shine Sparking? Tripping? Curly-Mustasche'ing? Whatever those civil war-causing mechanical minutiae are, so I can't say how those may have been changed in this iteration that has made it more welcoming to casual players. But it's obvious that this was one of their design goals if from nothing else but the initial online choice of For Fun or For Glory. And strangely, the other place it's clear to me is when you look at 8 player mode and all the controller options. It's so brainlessly simple to setup games with 6 people, 2 Amiibo, GCN controllers, Wiimotes, Pro Controllers, and even 3DS's. Everyone is in, everyone is comfortable, the burnout is all but gone. It's at the point where we don't even need to bring other games to gatherings anymore. It's that bump from "a game everyone either loves or loathes" to "a game that everyone at least likes" that landed it on this list.

...I did mention Amiibo there, didn't I?

Let me lay out the best argument I have for Amiibo. The Amiibo I have for Sm4sh are basically all the characters that were considered for but wound up not being my main. So I wound up with 6 of them. I think of them as my backup. More specifically, I think of it as an alternate universe version of the Squads game mode from Call of Duty Ghosts. Load up the 8 player mode, split it into two teams, each team is lead by a human player and a team of three Amiibo. Is that any more enticing? Maybe not. But it feels better. It's knowing that I've worked with these AI's to train them up to fighting capacity. I've spent hours with them, and have watched them go from a confused punching bag to an infuriating rival. It's a feeling that reminds me of the first time I played Pokemon, growing my team and taking on the world. But this time, instead of standing behind my Charizard and having it eat shitty birds for hours, I'm standing across from it and screaming "SHOW ME WHAT YOU GOT!" My computer buddy and I get stronger by beating the shit out of each other. This is why I love my computer friends.

4. Rocket League

Sm4sh made the list because of the kind of splash it made when playing games with people in person. A case where their joy fed my joy. This is not the norm. I'm not a big people person. I would rather play through mediocre campaigns and AI matches, or simply not play at all, than go out and find new people to play games with. Pub matches are a special kind of hell. This is key to the rest of my list. These are all games that were so good, I willingly sought out online matches with randos just so I could play more. Rocket League is that good.

The brilliance of Rocket League is in how it combines elements of simplicity and complexity. Saying it's soccer with car is actually saying too much, since is never comes close to that level of rules complexity. There's nothing that will get you penalized, so you just do whatever you can to get the ball in the net. Such a simple goal wouldn't be particularly engaging on its own, which is why they set it inside the bed of chaos that is a 3D physics sandbox. If this were some kind of traditional soccer game, it would also have some abstract concept of ball control. "this player has the ball," and will continue to just sort of have it until they decide to shoot it away or it's taken from them. Rocket League battle-cars have no such analog. The only way you relate to the ball is to be in it's way at a very specific place and time, and bash into it with fingers cross that it'll actually go at least somewhat in the direction you wanted. It's a soccer game in the same way that Toribash is a fighting game.

Even in the controls themselves there's a decided balance between intent and chaos. Putting double jump into your game is a major step on the path towards control above simulation. Any for of air control is a method for making sure the player can still continue to have agency, even at an unnatural point such as suspended in mid-air. It's one of the considerations for a game's feel, whether you would call it tight, sloppy, or stiff. There's a range of how strong this sense can be in a game, and "multi directional air-juke" puts Rocket League pretty high up. But for as well tuned as the controls feel, they still made the decision to put players in cars. This is a limitation on movement. You can't strafe, boost only works in one direction, and if you land on your roof you have right yourself before you can do anything else. Keep going in the same direction and eventually you wind up somewhere around the control wall of Steel Battalion. But Rocket League takes it just far enough that, with the extra movement ability they give you, pulling off the moves you want is always feels just-out-of-reach-yet-not-impossible.

Soccer is probably the wrong comparison. Really it's a lot more like car billiards. Except there's up to 8 players, and everyone takes their turns all at the same time, tripping over each other. But whether you play it as a chaos-box fun-time or as a 1-on-1 test of who is better at doing this simple feat through complex mean, Rocket League is guaranteed source of edge-of-the-seat excitement. In fact, just like with Sm4sh, far more people got into the game than I expected. Plus it's got a pretty good selection of cosmetic items for playing dress-up with your car, and that gives any game a ton of points in my book.

3. Duck Game

I first learned of and got my hands on Duck Game at PAX East early in the year, and ever since that brief introduction it was a game I was super excited to own a copy of. In many ways it's just another entry in the local-4-player-minimal-competitive-party-game genre (you know, Samurai Gunn, Towerfall, Lethal League, and, oh, I dunno, Sportsball?), but It was one moment in particular that cemented the game in my mind as a must-have:

One level starts off with the 4 players sectioned off to the corners of the map, with a sword and set of armor for each of them. In the middle of the map is an inconspicuous magnet gun. The magnet gun isn't a weapon that deals damage, but instead has a number of other uses. Most relavent to this case, it is able to pick up a pieces of platemail armor, even if a player happens wearing it at the time. At the time, none of the players had any idea that this interaction existed, so everyone had decked themselves out with the presented armor, and as soon as someone picked up the magnet gun by accident, all hell broke loose. It was a glorious moment of "WHAT IS EVEN GOING ON? THAT'S A THING THAT CAN HAPPEN???"

That's what's so mind blowing about Duck Game. Yeah it's a multiplayer 2D deathmatch, but all the pieces in it interact with each other in far more ways than you would expect. At points it feels like Spelunky levels of Domino Rally chain-reactions. Here, let me give you another example:

A player is dumping rounds with a minigun. Stray shots pierce a nearby barrel and it begins to leak oil. The minigun has been firing for so long that it overheats and jams, refusing to fire any more until it has a chance to cool off. Rather than wait, the player chooses to throw the gun down and go look for another weapon. Now the cool part: The minigun lands in the pool of leaking oil, and the overheated barrel ignites the oil into a huge raging fire. Then even more chaos breaks out depending on what players or items are unfortunate enough to be within the area that is now nothing but flames.

It sounds like chaos, and it is. But it's a tractable chaos. Every piece of that chain is visible before it starts, and if you know about the available interactions there are steps you can take to have an ounce of control over it. Plus there are certain spots where there's an extra level of control fidelity that can be taken advantage of. When you hold a grenade, the fire button don't throw it, but simply pulls the pin. This is because there is a button dedicated to picking up / throwing weapons already. Not only does this lead to a lot of suicides the first time someone picks up a grenade, but also a few more interesting tricks to pull. If you can catch them in the window between pulling the pin and throwing it, and bonk them with a heavy enough object, you can make them drop the live grenade at their feet instead of chucking it elsewhere. Or you could even throw a dud grenade as a feint if you wanted. Maybe not the most useful of moves, but that the game is specific enough to allow that sort of trick is the impressive part to me.

Plus there's a button dedicated to quacking. Hold the button and your mouth stays open. Quacking has no function, but you can do it incessantly, and even in certain menus. And for some reason, there's nothing quite as hilarious as the last remaining player quacking a split second before the screen fades out into the level transition. It's the other side of the game. Even though most of it is, much like Rocket League, about gaining skill in controlling an otherwise chaotic space, it also knows it's just a silly crazy thing. It's called duck game. There are "weapons" that are just musical instruments that don't do damage, they just let players jam together. There's a cake tileset. Games have a post-game wrapup hosted by John Mallard. It doesn't take itself seriously, and I think the players get the message that they shouldn't either. Like I said, a major theme of this list is games good enough to brave playing with randos, and randos in Duck Game were never really that bad. Yeah, some will just stomp you outright and they know that's where their skills are at, but even they will hold their fire for a second to jam on some drums mid match.

2. Grand Theft Auto Online

Speaking of rando horror stories, Grand Theft Auto Online is the sort of nightmare hellscape you would expect out of an online world filled with GTA fans. And yet, I've put more time into player infested Los Santos than into the entire story of offline GTA5 proper. It feels bizarre, and saying it out loud seems to paint a picture of a virtual masochist. It's hard to argue, but I wouldn't be this deep in if there weren't something overwhelmingly satisfying in it, right? (...Right?)

I mentioned above with Rocket League that a game gets points with me for letting you play dressup, but that's an understatement. I'm an absolute sucker for it. And GTAO not only has it in spades, but adds a sense of ownership to it all. As I stand on the balcony of my home in the hills, soaking in my cherished view of the lit up skyline of the sprawling city below, I'm happy to know that I've got a closet full of my favorite outfits bought piece by piece from stores across the city, a garage full of cars each customized for a specific job and mood, and even a second apartment down in the city closer to where all the action goes down. Everything I have is my favorite picks out of tons more options of each from across the city. And not only do I have these, but I earned these.

Okay, when first jumping into the game, the activities available aren't ones anyone really cares about. MP deathmatches and races and CTF type stuff. (I'm still a fan of open world racing, but I know everyone else is burned out on it by now. Hah.) But even before you open them for yourself you can jump into to PvE missing hosted by other players. It's some vague story-like stuff, it's the almost raid-style complex and challenging heists, and most importantly it's all interesting setups for exciting action sequences. Hijack a tanker barreling down the highway. Stealth your way into a facility to take out security systems. Steal a VTOL prototype right off of an aircraft carrier and use more jet fighters to escort it back to your hideout. It's the co-op version of SP style missions that everyone was hoping for!

But even outside of the scripted missions, there's a possibility for wackyness that keeps me just wandering around the city. Yes, you're guaranteed to run into players who just have the most expensive armored cars and guns and are just going around razing any players that come into range. But amazingly enough, there are maybe more players who are the opposite of that. Pull up next to someone on the street and start honking, and they very well might just jump in your car ready for whatever ride you're gonna give them. Impromptu kind-spirited bumper car matches. Sitting in a park sharing and eating snacks together. Go to the airport and grab some planes and see who has the bigger balls when it comes to flying under bridges. Or even just Doing donuts on the beach, dumping rounds into the air, and having a good hearty laugh when someone inevitably winds up flipping their car right into the ocean. To me it evokes the aimless, meandering play of kids on a summer's day, which is both unexpected as hell and pretty enchanting.

I think what makes this world work - what gives satisfaction to earning possessions and encourages peaceful unguided play - is a certain set of rules and systems regarding repercussions put in play by the developers. A car truly becomes yours when you purchase insurance for it, because once it's insured it will be replaced. And the replacement will be paid for by whoever was responsible for it's destruction. And not only will the jerk who blew up your car be forced to replace it, but then they're marked with a rising mental state, so other players know he's a jerk. If their mental state gets high enough, they will even have a bounty placed on them, so they are punished by being made a target. Or, if a player is so mad they don't want to wait that long, there are systems in place for them to set a bounty themselves, or even take other actions like hiring muggers, assassins, bodyguards, or bribing police for a window of indulgence to take care of matters themselves. It's a mix of systems in place that doesn't prevent non-stop chaos, but works to police it to a reasonable level with the help of the other players.

A system to keep players responsible and maybe a little respectful is something I don't think anyone expected to exist, or else "GTA Online" wouldn't immediately get the gut response "What!? No! Why would anyone!?" But what it does is cut down on the nightmare, and gives people the chance to enjoy being in and building up some ownership over the masterfully crafted space that is Los Santos. That's really what it all adds up to: Los Santos is just a place that I enjoy being in.

1. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

I'm not a guy who gets angered easily. But the moment when I hit the second / final credit scroll in MGSV is in the top 3 most red-faced, stuttering, wake up cursing in the middle of the night infuriating moments of my year. Maybe I felt this anger stronger than other people because Quiet's Goodbye was the very final mission I did, and there was no more uncharacteristic of a mission to send the game off on. An unavoidable firefight, that you inexplicably get locked into such that it takes away the menu option to return to base. I don't remember how, but I did eventually escape that which was designed to be inescapable, which was actually the more feasible option considering that I had went in with the loadout I used for the rest of the game: Sneaking suit, tranq pistol, and D-Dog only. Going back decked out with armor and rockets made completing the mission possible, but then