This year I reached a personal milestone in that I beat over 100 games. Not a lot of them were games from 2015 but I liked a lot of them just the same, so I wanted to give them some love and talk about some not so good games I played as well!

Top 5

5. One Finger Death Punch

Fantastic, fast-paced game with a good ramp-up of difficulty as you progress. Gameplay is left click and right click, but they slowly add new enemies and conditions that add depth and challenge to the game. All the characters are different colored stick figures so it's very easy to tell them apart (not sure how hard this game would be if you were color blind). Simple and fun, a pleasant surprise from Silver Dollar Games who mostly published below average games on the Xbox Live Indie Games store.

4. Rune Factory IV

I've only ever really played one other game from this genre - Harvest Moon 64. I love that game, so this was a very strange and fun game to play. Having the split of combat and farming wasn't that appealing to me at first but I grew to like it and started to plan my days more around exploration and keeping the farming part light. The combat isn't especially deep and the game is fairly easy overall, but the farming part has a lot of layers to it and was a bit overwhelming. I don't have much to say about the context of this game compared to others in the genre but I think it's a worthy addition and worth picking up if you like the genre. It might even be worth grabbing if you're just curious and want more 3DS games to play. Take a look on youtube!

3. Saints Row IV

I wish this game had a better story because the game itself is really fun. Part of the appeal of the last game was that it was a relatively grounded set of characters being thrown into a ridiculous story, and just saying "what the fuck?" throughout, which made it more relatable to me. This game throws all of that out the window and just has the characters flying around in ridiculous world that makes absolutely no sense, but they don't really react as much to their own silly setpieces. The game itself is really fun and I 100% completed it, and the story goes to some weird places but it was just too far out for me.

2. Crypt of the Necrodancer

Awesome roguelike with a unique rhythmic twist. Has a lot of content in it if you're looking for extra challenge, but beating the game with Cadence alone was hard and rewarding enough for me. Great music with a lot of different variations and a way to put in your own custom music as well, so you won't ever get tired of the music in the game either which is really important in a rhythm game.

1. Super Mario Maker

This game is just so good. Playing other people's levels is fun, making levels is fun too. Playing this game with my friend was one of the best experiences I had this year, even though it's a single player game it's just fun to collaborate on making levels and talking about ideas or other stuff I saw in the game some other place. The game feeds itself in a really cool way - when I play levels, it gives me ideas for making levels and when I make those levels I want to get back in and see what other cool levels people are making. The tools they have are great and there's a lot of room for improvement or expansion on things they're lagging behind in (online stuff specifically). It's made me care about user-made content, a segment of games that I previously never had much interest in.

Bottom 5

5. The Last Remnant

I wrote a longer review on Steam, but I'll summarize it here: this game is for crazy people. It is needlessly complicated, to the point that most people recommend you playing with a program that hooks into the game to give you important stats about characters and enemies like what skills they have or can learn. Battling random enemies can be as scary as fighting bosses sometimes. It's very peculiar, and trying to understand the game was almost as much fun as playing it. Six months after finishing it and I'm still not sure if I would recommend it to anyone, but I liked it well enough that I'm still thinking about it. I'm not sure if it should go in the bottom five or the top five games for the year, but it was pretty weird and memorable at the very least, for better or worse.

4. Titan Quest: Immortal Throne

The fact that this game has an active modding community astounds me, considering the base game is such a poor offering to the hack n' slash genre. Most of the game I spent one-shotting regular monsters and then being crushed by bosses. Mid way through act three is where I gave up and started to enhance my character with the TQ Defiler, but I found that most skills and stats added so little to my character that I felt I would have never reached a point where she felt powerful or fun to play.

The setting is ridiculously repetitive, in act four you finally start to see interesting and new places but until then it's mostly desert and plains. They also don't do a lot with the enemies, you mostly fight birds, pigs, spiders and horned demons. Bosses are the only place where the setting of this game shines and they're mostly health sponges that force you to play very defensive which is unlike just about every other game in this genre I've played.

I've since read a lot about the mismanagement of this game and it's a little sad, as it seems really good on paper. I'd like to see this game get a modern sequel where they could (hopefully) do the setting justice and have fun gameplay to back it up.

3. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

I bought into the Skyrim hype around launch and didn't much care for it then or now once I really dug into it. The combat is boring, the story is plain and the idea of exploring a million miles of snow and caves in search of spiders and ice trolls doesn't do anything for me. So I gave myself a large jump, more damage, no fall damage and doubled the character's movespeed. At this point the game was fun for me but it was basically a different game. "Just not the kind of game for me" is what I find myself saying whenever Bethesda releases anything, but I inexplicably think about buying their games for far longer than I typically do with other games. I think it has to do with the idea of the game being far more interesting than the execution.

2. Overlord & Overlord II

The first two Overlord games are almost depressingly at odds with each other. The first game is a large, sprawling open-world Pikmin clone where it becomes very easy to get lost wondering where to go next. Each minion color you unlock has a medium-sized dungeon associated with it, usually a tutorial area showcasing the uses of their various powers. The minions in the first game had personality and the game around it was a little lacking, but had potential. You got useful spells and the overlord felt very powerful (almost too powerful with the best armor), but it was hard to find new minions without grinding, the gameplay was a tad repetitive and I found myself wanting a map. Other than the last couple of bosses being a pain I found the game to be quite entertaining if flawed.

Overlord II has almost the inverse problem. Getting new minions was never an issue and I ended up with hundreds of them by the end of the game. Rather than the short tutorial dungeon, you simply found minions hanging out and then they were unceremoniously added to your horde. They add a lot of new mechanics at a rapid pace and quickly get rid of them completely. New systems like mounts, mind control and more are used to varying degrees of success and in some cases completely forgotten once introduced until the very end of the game. There is a map but the game's more linear so you rarely need it to find your way, it is still a much-needed addition. In the hub world, they added a lot of needless waiting time between moving from map to map, often making you watch lengthy animations involving the overlord do something pointless like sit down or fly away to the next zone before letting you do what you actually want to do.

Even though Overlord II is probably the better game I am more fond of the first. Overlord does too little pretty well, while Overlord II does too much pretty poorly.

1. Pid

I've never been happier to have finished a game. For a platformer, this game has such a ridiculous difficulty curve that often goes beyond unfair and into the "stupid" territory. This game feels like it was made by artists who didn't have someone who knew about game balance, as it looks quite pretty but is frustrating to play. Most of the bosses past the first one are frustrating and offer no checkpoints, the game feels about two hours too long and the game in general is very tough. They rebalanced the game with an easy mode which I didn't play but unless you're looking for a serious challenge I would stick to easy. In the developer's own news post they claim that nearly every room and boss was rebalanced in easy which probably makes the game a lot more pleasant.

Stupid Miscellaneous Categories

Best game every year: Super Mario World

Most fun simulation: Cook! Serve! Delicious!

Most confusing game: The Last Remnant

Most Anime Ending: Fortune Summoners: Secret of the Elemental Stone

Stuff I'm Looking Forward to Next Year

Grand Theft Auto V

Xenoblade Chronicles X

Fire Emblem: Birthright

Thanks for reading, hope your year was good, here's to another great year.