Yes, I realize this is late. But I had to wait for Rise of the Tomb Raider on PC. And I'm glad I did, as you'll see. Overall, 2015 was a pretty solid year for me in games. Like most other years though, it suffers from fill-the-last-couple-spots-with-something-syndrome. I'm not entirely sure why that is, because I've been assured by others 2015 was so much better than 2014. It sort of felt the same to me. Maybe even slightly worse? I guess I just have different tastes. 2016 though, that will be one insane year.
Best DLC and Expansions
3. Legacy of the Void (StarCraft II)
Man, this could have been so great. It could have been soooo great. I was very surprised how much I liked this. The campaign was alright. But the thing I really loved about this was the online co-op. Special missions specifically designed for co-op is what Legacy of the Void offers. You choose one of several heroes or the Protoss, Zerg or Teran, each with their specialties and each with unique powers and unlocks as you rank up by completing co-op missions. The missions themselves are tons of fun, featuring mechanics that really require two players to complete them. Unfortunately, this virtually perfect mode comes to an end way too soon. After roughly 5 hours you'll have maxed out your hero of choice and there is no real reason to continue playing. You can level the other ones, but what is the point. You can already complete them at the highest difficulty at this point. I need more unlocks. Give me more unlocks! This game could have benefited from a more elaborate upgrade tree, perhaps with various choices to make or even doing prestige in some form. But after the couple of hours, interest drops. But while it lasts, it is a ton of fun.
2. House of Wolves (Destiny)
There is only one reason this is on here, and that is because it introduced the most fun, most sweaty and most demanding PvP mode I have ever played, in Trials of Osiris. It's 3 on 3 elimination. You get killed, you don't respawn. But you can possibly be revived by a team mate. If all players on one team are dead, the opposing team wins the round. First to 5 round wins, wins the match. If you win 8 matches, you get the highest tier reward that week (it is a weekend PvP event). If you lose 3 matches though, you're out. You have to start a new card. If you win 9 matches without losing a single time, you'll go 'flawless' and are invited to Mercury to open a special chest containing even higher tier loot. I started wanting to get 5 wins every week to get the reward tied to that number, but soon I wanted more. Before long, I got my first flawless victory, which I thought was never possible by me. It is hard to describe what makes Trials so much fun, but the hyper competitiveness of it is definitely the draw. You want that flawless victory. You need it. Often though, you won't get it. And you'll spend your Sundays queuing up Trials matches with some friends and before you know it, you've been playing for 10 hours straight. It's that type of game mode.
1. The Taken King (Destiny)
And the only reason it didn't make the top of the list was because of this. The Taken King makes an already incredibly fun game an actually great game in its own right. There was a ton of stuff to do, 3 new subclasses to play with (one per class), the story was much improved, some much needed UI tweaks, overall balancing, tons more weapons and armor, more events, a new Raid and of course the return of Trials. It helps that the Raid is commonly thought of as the best one they made yet, which I tend to agree with. I had lots of fun completing it every week with our Giant Bomb associated clan Cerberus Wolves. Most of us are currently taking a break though. It's been fun, but after playing it with dedication for months, we can wait until the next big content drops. Which sounds like it might be never? Who knows. The Taken King was definitely worth it and it'll wait for me if I ever want to return.
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On to the best games of 2015.
10. Batman Arkham Knight
It's another Batman game. It was pretty good. Not much else to say. It's not special in any way, really. In fact, because I had the luxury of playing other games at the same time, I never even reached the halfway point of Arkham Knight. For all the raging Rocksteady did on Origins, I expected they'd make a game that would be a whole lot better than it. Turns out it's 'just another one of those'. It just so happens that those games are pretty good, so here we are at #10. The game looks great, and plays well. The Batmobile stuff was a bit forced and needless, but it wasn't all that bad. On a sad rainy day, I will return to Arkham Knight and probably have a pretty good time. Oh, and when I do, I'll skip every single one of the Riddler things because you put like 600 in there. The dick were you thinking...
9. Lara Croft GO
The rebooting of Tomb Raider sure is successful. At least, from a quality standpoint. Hitman GO was a pretty great mobile puzzle game and Lara Croft GO is the same. Except it is even more fun to play than its Hitman counterpart. It's hard to explain why that is exactly, but I suppose it boils down to the design of the puzzles and the solutions thereof. I like a good puzzle game, and contra to my expectations, Lara Croft GO gave me a good 'Ah! Ha!' moment several times during my playthrough. It also helps that the game looks pretty for what it is. Nice colors and pretty sweet animations and transitions. It did feel a bit shorter than Hitman GO, but that might just be because I played it with more dedication. The epilogue chapter is especially good, as it ramps up the difficulty of the puzzles significantly in a pretty interesting way. While it may have felt short, I did feel satisfied and 'done' when I finished all that the game had to offer. There is no real reason to go back to it, but that's okay. I had my fill, it was great.
8. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
This could have been so much higher. The Witcher 3 is a good game in its own right, but there are moments where I can just see the potential it had. For a lot of people, the game is exactly what they wanted it to be. I just had a lot of trouble having fun with the game at times. All the ingredients are here, the execution is just flawed. Take the combat for instance. It's solid in theory, but the wonky animations make it play relatively poorly. The amount of items available is great, but most of them are just near identical versions of existing ones, making them meaningless. The cluttered inventory doesn't help on top of that, to make it a lackluster experience. The skills that are available are interesting, but there is no reason to pick more than a couple of them because of the way skill selection is designed. You're especially punished for this in the 'early' game (the first 30-40 hours) which makes the gameplay monotonous and unrewarding. The Witcher 3 is great at its storytelling and some of its questlines, but that is the only thing it excels at. I really want to love the rest of the game, but I ultimately wasn't having fun with it all the time to the point where I stopped playing. That's not to say the game is bad, it wouldn't be here if it was, but it could have reached #1 and there are moments where I can see it should have.
7. Invisible Inc.
This is better than I expected it to be. Invisible Inc. is a very interesting tactical turn based stealth game with some roguelike elements mixed in. It felt way too easy at the recommended level, but fortunately it offers a lot of incremental difficulty increases on top of that, to the point where I could find a good balance for me. It made the game flow very nicely and difficulty scaled up gradually. I love it when games let me fine tune the difficulty in separate fields, and Invisible Inc. does let you do that. Because the maps are randomly generated however, the environments are mostly uninteresting at best and you can get some pretty crazy layouts that are not that fun to play. Which is unfortunate, because the game is nice to look at visually otherwise. I do feel that one of the underlying mechanics of the game actually work against it, which is that it is a timed campaign. You can only do roughly 10-15 missions before the final mission pops up. I kept feeling like I was only 'just' becoming a strong unit, and then the game ends. You can change this time a little bit, but I never found it to be enough. In that sense, the game would have been better for me if it followed a comprehensive base campaign like XCOM does. I'm sure for others the short-but-sweet nature of the campaign is perfect, but I kept feeling a little unsatisfied by it all. But it's probably for the best, as you soon realize the game doesn't have much to offer if you would be able to continue past the intended time period if you play Endless.
6. Fallout 4
Fallout 3 was amazing. New Vegas added very interesting gameplay systems like Hardcore Mode. Fallout 4 had a lot to live up to. For the most part, it doesn't do that. Fallout 4 is a much more polished and better playing game than the previous ones, but in terms of everything that makes the series interesting, it takes a lot of steps back. When I first emerged from the Vault and started exploring, I was having a ton of fun. The world was new, everything was yet to discover. I found some cool stuff, made some cool stuff, explored, explored and explored. I love exploring in games in general, and it is fantastic in a game like this. Unfortunately, the more I saw of the world and the game, the less I liked it. It's not that anything was bad, it's just that a lot of things that made 3 and New Vegas great were missing here. Where is the day-night cycle? There virtually isn't one. Why do I not receive more experience for a harder setting? I get the same amount as I would on Easy. Why is there no Hardcore Mode? Why are there so few choices in terms of clothing and armor? Along with all these things, some new problems exclusive to 4 also came up. Why is the Settlement building cap so low for instance? Problem after problem arose. The game is more barren than it seems on the offset. I rediscovered Fallout 4 later, by installing mods that address all of these issues. The game is legitimately great to play having installed those now, but there is no excuse for that stuff not being in the game in the first place. Similar to The Witcher 3, this could have made the top of my list.
5. Prison Architect
After being in early access for at least two years, Prison Architect has finally escaped for real. It is worth mentioning that it was probably my best experience with an early access game yet. It was (mostly) functional when I bought it 2 years ago, and I had already gotten 30+ hours out of it at that time. The game was updated pretty much monthly or bi-monthly from that point on, receiving meaningful additions and fixes each time. I didn't play every single version all the time, but I would play it again once every 5 months or so, having a lot of fun with it. It's finally out, and it's still great to play. I played it last probably half a year prior to it releasing for real, and there was a ton of stuff that was new and changed. The campaign is still lackluster, I think, but you'll play this game for its sandbox mode. It's weird how fun it is designing a prison, and installing stuff just to shut your prisoners up instead of being humane. I like how planning is very important, and executing on a plan feels very satisfying. Overall, just a very fun and unique build and sim game.
4. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
In the prologue, you're chased down in the woods by a flaming man riding a flaming horse. The woods light on fire. Later, you attach a balloon to a puppy and shoot him into the sky. When that dog is grown up, he uses a knife to stab people. This game belongs on the list. Besides being awesome, The Phantom Pain is also a mechanically impressive stealth game. It feels fair and gives you plenty of opportunities to remain stealthed in various ways. One tiny mess up won't encourage you to reload the last checkpoint, which is key for making a stealth game great. The strategy layer is actually pretty fun and engaging, if a bit poorly presented. I felt the use of Kiefer may have diminished the story a bunch though. There is plenty of dialogue from various characters, but only a handful of lines from Snake every 10 hours or so. It feels weird. Like more dialogue is supposed to be there, but it just isn't. Some of the upgrades are also way further down the tree than they probably should be, like a proper sniper rifle. But the gameplay in the sandbox is just so sweet, you can't get mad at The Phantom Pain.
3. Bloodborne
It's probably the biggest disappointment of 2015. It's quite easily the worst Souls game developed by From Software I've played. But it's still up this high because it is still pretty good. And a good Souls game seems to be better than most games for me. If anything, my disappointment illustrates how great the previous Souls games were. They all clocked in at #1 quite easily in their respective release years. Bloodborne messes up in a couple of key ways. Replaying the game is not as much fun, because there is only one real way to play the game. You can still mess around with certain builds, but that only means your stats are invested differently. The playstyle of that character remains near-identical. In my review, I believe I described pretty well why I was so disappointed with it. But in short, there is almost no magic to speak of with some 6 spells in the entire game, and Dark Souls II's 250+ melee weapons had been reduced to 15. The melee weapons all transform giving them the impression of more depth, but the lack of being able to two-hand or dual wield soon reveals they have less moves than the typical weapon in Souls games do. There is little to no environmental variety, and the game is far more tolerate of mistakes and poor play to the point where you can get away with a lot more than you should. The lore is there, and it's interesting, and they at least tried to change things up with the setting. It led to me enjoying my time a lot with Bloodborne my first time through, but being disappointed with subsequent playthroughs. Ultimately, it makes Bloodborne just a real good game. Not a good Souls game.
2. Dying Light
Apart from some weird animations and visual glitches, this game is pretty damn fantastic. You have an open world to explore while using parkour to run across the rooftops and avoid the zombies down below. Search for junk and gear to craft items and weapons. The typical fodder zombies are easy enough to kill, but you can get overrun by a group quickly, which makes the parkour all the more satisfying. There are some cool add-ons for your weapons to output more damage or inflict status effects which you'll need to take down the bigger ones. Then, the thing that makes all of it great, is nighttime. I can't remember the last time I actually ran from things in videogames because they would annihilate you. Having Volatiles only show up at night is also pretty great, since unlike Fallout 4, Dying Light embraces nights and makes them pretty damn dark. Volatiles are faster than you are, and in a pure troll decision, the devs made a button dedicated to looking behind you while you run. You know you shouldn't use it, but you do. And it will make shit tense as hell, seeing a Volatile running up to you at ridiculous speeds. I felt at a strong disadvantage at night for most of the game, which was a glorious concept I loved the entire way through. It's worth noting the game has also been well supported. While I haven't checked it out yet, apparently, other players can invade your game Dark Souls style while playing as a Volatile. That's... pretty great. I really wish I had the time to play more of Dying Light. Perhaps in the far future, since 2016 will release amazing games at an insane pace.
1. Rise of the Tomb Raider
Told you it was worth waiting. Tomb Raider (2013) was a great game. It's a style of game I really enjoy, but don't see too often. I like the adventurous overtone the game has. I actually think the combat is pretty good too. Rise improves on literally every aspect of the 2013 reboot. More meaningful tombs to raid, better puzzles, bigger and more interesting environments, stunning visuals, more applicable outfits and a lot more adventure. The only thing that remained more or less the same is the combat. It's not perfect, but it feels pretty good and you are given more than enough tools to handle each situation in different ways. Lara is very capable at dispatching just about everything. Rise adds more materials to be collected from the environment to craft things with, like weapon upgrades, ammo and ammunition pouches. It feels pretty solid, and it eludes to the possibility of a pretty fun survival game. The campaign never really becomes about survival though, which isn't a bad thing per se. But the option to have some more interesting mechanics related to survival in there on higher difficulties would have been cool. The story is actually decent and it wraps up nicely, while leaving a little room for a sequel. The puzzles are all pretty simple, but they are all set in pretty impressive environments and use some fun mechanics to make them interesting. There is a good amount of them too, though a lot of them are 'hidden' behind doors and barriers you cannot access until you acquire the corresponding abilities. Which is fine, since Fast Travel is a thing. All in all, with the exception of the final 2 hours, Rise of the Tomb Raider is just the perfect blend of exploration and combat. It's one of those games where I immediately started a new game upon completing it.
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