After a woeful 2014, video games came back in a big way for 2015. Whew. That said, if you'd have told me last year that my two favorite games would be a buncha twee, jejune indie stuff over the likes of Batman (which doesn't even rank), Witcher, or especially Metal Gear, I would've fought you in an alley.
But here we are.
This is top-5-of-all-time material here, people. Not since Persona 4 have I so thoroughly enjoyed a video game. More than its story, characters, or music, the brilliance of Undertale is made evident in its reverence for video games.
The closest comparison I could make is Watchmen. There, Alan Moore wrote a story that could only be fully conveyed in a specific medium (comic books). Likewise, Undertale only works as a video game.
Two years later, the promise of the current generation finally arrives courtesy of some Polish guys. The Witcher 3 is the first game since the new consoles released to truly feel like it could not have been possible on previous hardware.
Graphically, Disgaea entered the modern era with its fourth installation. Gameplay-wise, Disgaea 5 makes huge strides towards playability that essentially supercedes the need to ever play older entries in the series.
Vastly improved menus (specifically, finally categorizing equipment) make navigating this game's myriad systems much more manageable. Gameplay is streamlined in a litany of ways that would be way too ponderous to go over here.
Heck, even the story is fun. It's basically a DBZ-esque shonen anime complete with power-ups and alternate forms.
If there's one complaint I'd levy against D5 is that it still promotes focusing on a single super unit to clear maps (Sages). Leveling more than one guy is very, very time-consuming and technically necessary to beat the game's ultimate mega boss. Oh well.
This game started out at #3 on this list until I got to the ending. It fell lower and lower the more I thought about it. A reverse-Life is Strange. I'll spare you the details, but it felt like a wholly and utterly unnecessary inversion of the SSS stuff with Raiden from MGS2. Hated it.
Everything else about this game, though. Oh mama. What a thrill. Of all the games this year, TPP is the most memorable in terms of pure gameplay.
