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criacow

ABC always be writing game of the year lists

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Game of the Year 2015

This is my third year in a row doing this, and I'm always surprised as I make the list -- yet again I start by going "gee, I didn't play much this year," and then before I know it I have ten to list.

List items

  • In one of the opening scenes, the main character has everything go wrong in class, steps out into the hallway, puts her earbuds in (which causes the title theme to fade in), and floats through the hallway to have a panic attack in the bathroom. I've never identified with a high-school story more in my life. Immediately hooked, and then wow, this Went Places. So many of my favourite moments in video gaming in 2015 came from Life is Strange--and what a brilliant follow-up to Remember Me, with its beautiful setting and awesome lead and .. straight up awful gameplay. Whatever DONTNOD does next, I'm here for.

  • Dude. -Yes-. So this might have come out on Ouya in 2014? Like, Giant Bomb and Wikipedia differ on this point. But I'm calling it 2015 because it came out on everything else this October, and I'd never heard of it until then. Cyberpunk adventure game with excellent writing and queer stuff and everything else good? Sign me up.

  • It's 11:05pm on December 31, and I just finished the second ending of Undertale. It's still 2015, dammit, I'm moving this up. I think I need more time to really express my thoughts on it, but: great characters, interesting story, excellent music. Less sold on the actual mechanics, which were sometimes brilliant but sometimes felt like they got in the way. This is a really neat and unique thing, and it's absolutely worth seeing through. (It'll take you about 6-9 hours to see both endings.)

    Original: I'm still fairly early on in Undertale, although I've watched huge parts of it in video. There's some real cleverness to this and I like what it does, but it's yet to really grab me. I'll probably regret this placement later, but for now, feels about right.

  • It's everything I hoped it would be. I feel like one of the GB Extra Life guests (Samantha Kalman, I think?) summed it up best when she said she wished all game dev tools were this easy. This is one of the first kits like this that I've actually made and 'published' things in--and more than that, countless hours of fun playing other levels. I feel like I'll be poking at this for a long time to come.

  • What a neat thing, and what a well-told story. I played it twice -- once as you're 'supposed to', finding about half the videos and filling up pages in a notebook with tree diagrams, random sentence fragments, and lots of question marks and scratchouts. Then, feeling done there, I went back and used one of the tricks to watch the whole video in order. I don't know how many games of this sort I'd be interested in playing, but I sure liked this one.

  • This quickly became my 'I have five minutes to fuck around' game for most of 2015. I'm still playing it. I still haven't completely beaten it, either. It's just...so...good. I just keep coming back.

  • It's so cute, and the card mechanic is clever. It's not a game I play for long periods of time, but it's fun to jump in and do one quick dungeon crawl here and there.

  • A short, fun adventure game / hacking game. It was pretty straightforward and the story pretty standard, but I really enjoyed my time with it.

  • This was a fun little puzzle game. It's not very long, and it doesn't overstay its welcome, but it's neat for what it is. A couple of my implementations were straight up gross (especially when I went and found surprisingly clean solutions afterwards and then was sad at what I'd made), but hey.

  • Fun fact: everyone you know is an idiot. Or at least, that's how you'll feel playing this. Even when it's your fault, it's VERY CLEARLY their fault, OBVIOUSLY, THANK YOU. There was just something wonderful in the frantic feeling this game creates. Oh, and that fucking alarm clock. Fuck that thing.

  • Honourable mention because The Taken King. Just when I thought I was out, etc. etc. I was actually out for about ten months and then this damn thing got me again for a few hundred more hours. I have a 319 Hunter and I'm not even ashamed. I FINALLY think I'm out again (man, fuck SRL, what a piece of shit) but the next drip of new content might change that again.