Guess what, Burnout Paradise still holds up.

What is even left to be said about this thing? While this probably the third time I've picked up Paradise since it launched, I've put a solid twenty hours into the game so far and I'm only a third of the way to my Burnout Elite license thus far. I'm exactly one trophy away from pulling off my first Platinum, and may or may not have purchased a PlayStation Eye to accomplish this. I've also had some pretty sick experiences online. The community still playing this game is insanely good, to the point where some of the people I've added to my friends list were ultimately removed as their Road Rules times were just way to goddamn good to even touch. I've now got a healthy back and forth going with one or two total strangers. If only this game were still in vogue, or perhaps if I had gotten into this rather than Test Drive Unlimited back in my undergrad days.

But what the hell am I doing playing this old shit? It's Game of the Year season! I should be trying to get myself caught up enough to put in an honest list of my ten favorite games I played (preferable to completion) that were released in 2015. To that end, I am currently playing two vidya from the last eleven months:

• Kirby and the Rainbow Curse (Wii U) - After some experimentation, I realized that a fairly early puzzle that seemed stupidly difficult was in fact easily solved with another object in the level that had slipped my mind. Beyond that trip up, the game has been fairly simple. The challenge stems primarily from hidden side objectives in a level. The game is also in keeping with a lot of current Nintendo games, gating some of the most challenging content as either end game content or a bonus mode. Here, the dedicated Challenge Mode really shines. The game's reliance on tablet controls via drawn paths to guide Kirby becomes a bit of a hindrance in more open levels, where you occasionally feel like you are guiding a drunken pink blob around via well-intentioned rails. Not so in the Challenge Mode, where absolute precision becomes mandatory as you move later into into these levels. You're given four fifteen second puzzles of a single screen to complete, and they'll often throw a wide enough range of goals to accomplish that you'll find yourself fraying by the third or fourth screen. It's rewarding to gold medal these levels, much more so than in the base game. I continue to be miffed that I can't just play this on my television, but it looks and sounds so damn good anyway.
• BOXBOY! (3DS) - Hey, another HAL joint! Call me a sucker for minimalism , but I think this game is fantastic. I'm currently chewing through World 10, and there's another seven worlds until (stop me if you've heard this one before) I hit the more challenging end game content. There have been a few head scratchers in the mix so far, mostly because I'm attempting to grab all of the crowns in a level on my first playthrough. As a taste of things to come, there are optional time and score attack modes available for purchase in the game's shop. You can also buy a few little outfits. I am wearing a cape. I'm in a weird position where I'm more likely to place this on a Top 10 list for 2015 so far, over my beloved Kirby. Is it the deepest game in the world? Of course not. What it is though, is a tight package in transit friendly sized chunks, and it's priced to move at $5. You could do a lot worse if you're looking for a bus game.

I think that's a valid category of games, by the way. It's not reflective of everybody's daily life, but I spend between ten and twelve hours of every work week on a bus. As I am afforded time to read the news at work between tasks, my options to amuse myself are leisure reading and handheld gaming. That I ere toward the latter is probably a good indication of just how far I've fallen as a card carrying college person. And it's not just that a game be portable; that it also be good in bursts is also important. Case in point, I already abandoned Radiant Historia for another day, and the cartridge copy of Shin Megami Tensei IV in my 3DS is probably wondering where the hell I've gone. Meanwhile, I'm enjoying the hell out of Stretchmo and looking at grabbing Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: Curtain Call to occupy my brain while the rest of me is shuttled around the Puget Sound. They're the games I'm playing, and they're capable of being of higher quality than their big console brethren. Someday I'll get around to beating Link to the Past so I can play A Link Between Worlds...

Speaking of driving a drunken blob around levels, I've also been working through the last gen hit Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. It's pretty good. It is strange to play it now in light of the seemingly codified Ubisoft mode of open world game, what with its tower-based map opening and objective icon vomit. I'm still down with the seemingly abandoned modern conspiracy plot, anachronistic though it may seem in 2015. My main knock on the game is that the part where you're actually playing the game and moving around in the world is pretty poor. Lining up tight jumps has this weird Tony Hawk Pro Skater vibe gone wrong, where you stick to rails when you would rather not, and occasionally fail to snap to one as expected. Combat is also this sort of staid thing where I spend most of my time holding R1 and waiting to counter oncoming attacks. Escort and tailing missions are here, and they suck so hard. I'd say that I'm already tired of the formula, but there's something about these games that the history dork in me still finds compelling. So much so, in fact, that I picked up AC IV for the Wii U months ago now and am pretty excited to start it at some point. I was also pushed over the edge by a Kotaku article to pick up Assassin's Creed: Rogue last week. Steve Totilo's review included a quote which really got my mind spinning:

I marveled at how confident the whole game felt and how pleasing it was to play. I was impressed with how rich the whole game was, how its modern sequences packed in jokes and references to other games, how they expanded things by seeming to start new story threads about modern assassins.

Then it all clicked.

Of course Rogue feels the way it does. It’s a late-gen game, and this is the kind of game you get when talented people don’t have to worry about technology and can instead spend their time being creative.

It got me thinking about games like Final Fantasy XII, Kirby's Dream Land 3, Comix Zone, and other late generation games that were impressive on a technical basis, if not their gameplay merits. Rogue probably doesn't belong in the same pantheon as, say, Shadow of the Colossus, but I am down to play a high quality game that is itself an iteration of a well liked entry into a series I enjoy despite its wrinkles.