10. Pokemon Sun

This game was just...nice, you know? There’s a quote by one Austin Walker from his Game of the Year list a few years ago where he talks about how Fantasy Life was what he needed because it was warm. I think about that a lot.

Pokémon Sun is warm, man. It’s the first Pokemon game in a long time to actually maintain my interest, and while a lot of that is probably related to the fact that I now spend a couple hours on the bus every day, I think more of it is the result of the fact that The Pokemon Company really gave a shit about actually making the game resonate with the world building for once.

Alola is a place. Every inch of Pokemon Sun wants you to know that, and to know what kind of place it is and who lives there and what their traditions are. Even the formerly familiar first generation Pokemon have been transformed by this place. Alola is warm and friendly and traditional and it fucking oozes from every inch of this thing. I love it. Also, my Raichu is a psychic wizard and I hang out with a wrestling cat that dunks fools from the top rope.

Play Pokemon Sun if you want to go on a nice vacation with 801 of your closest friends.

9. Hitman

Where the fuck did this thing come from, huh? You hear a lot about how open world games are a “sandbox” or a “playground”, but I think Hitman is the first time I really felt like a game lived up to that analogy. A sandbox isn’t something huge and expansive, it’s a small fixed space with a lot of shit for you to mess with. That’s Hitman.

On top of that, this game understands the best thing about stealth games can be salvaging a situation after it’s all gotten completely shitted up. Yeah, someone saw me hit that guy with a fire extinguisher, but if I run away and change my clothes into a vampire magician outfit fast enough it’ll throw those fuckers off the scent. Salvageability! It’s so good. Also, if you don’t walk in front of that lady’s camera shot at the start of the Paris level every single time, you’re playing video games wrong and are a casual or something.

Play Hitman if you like playing with toys, breaking them, and then desperately trying to put them back together before their owner returns.|

8. Imbroglio

This is a game where I got Remo’d into playing it by listening to Chris Remo talk about how good it was on Idle Thumbs. And man, he was right. Imbroglio is a Michael Brough (of 868-HACK fame) joint where you get the freedom to build the game board yourself out of ability cards in a deck. It combines turn based environmental survival mechanics with deckbuilding in a way that’s simple, direct, and kind of scarily genius.

And it’s a mobile game! It is the perfect game to slam down in small sessions that make you feel like a complete idiot in record time. When you fuck up in this game it is almost always entirely your fault and you will know it every single time. Why can’t you just stop fucking up? God, it’s like I don’t know what to do with you sometimes.

Play Imbroglio if you have a phone and you want to feel stupid and smart at the same time. Also if you enjoy generating the instrument of your own failure.

7. Tyranny

As I’ve gotten older and played a frankly embarrassing number of these RPG things I’ve started to really pay attention to the kind of capital letters Role Playing I’m doing in each one with respect to the way I’m trying to make the character fit into the world.

With something like Mass Effect it’s all about the kind of Shepard I want to make and the kind of people I want that character to like and love and develop a relationship with. With The Witcher it’s all about how I want to interpret the character of Geralt and my own thoughts and views on him and how he’d handle things, almost like acting.

With Tyranny, it’s all about the way you curry favor with the factions in the world. The good/evil battle is done and a foregone conclusion and the tasks of the game are more about how you place yourself in the emerging hierarchy and how you play favorites with the groups of people around you. It’s serious, oppressive, and CONSTANTLY asking you to consider the big picture, and I adore it. Sure, the combat’s a bit messy and the writing’s maybe not quite as strong as Pillars of Eternity, but damn, this world struck a chord in 2016.

The other thing I love about Tyranny is the fact that reputation and character “affection” meters have been moved away from being a zero-sum game. If I raise Fear with a character it doesn’t reduce their Loyalty. It just raises their Fear. I can have Wrath AND Respect with a faction and it doesn’t wind up reducing my reputation meter with them to an impotent middle-ground. It turns out certain opinions are not mutually exclusive!

Play Tyranny if you like writing, creating a character on the fly within a setting, and things that hit a little close to home nowadays.

6. Dark Souls III

In the end, this might be my least favorite Darkdemonblood Soulsborne game, but I still loved the shit out of it. It’s got a little less weight to it, a little more speed, and a little more narrative, and it really shapes up to be a unique thing while still being a very very satisfying conclusion at the same time.

I will say that I find it leans too hard on the previous games in the series, especially Dark Souls, in a way that is both emotionally satisfying and somewhat disappointing at the same time. As a fan of the series there were certain moments that really rang with the weight of previous games, but at the same time, I kind of liked the almost completely new take on the setting that Dark Souls 2 went with. My feelings on this shit are complicated. Anyway, this game is fantastic still, even if I think it’s not standing quite as tall as its big brothers.

Play Dark Souls III if you like nostalgia, dying a lot, and culmination.

5. DOOM

DOOM is everything I love in a first person shooter, except written in giant bold letters and being skywritten onto the air by a guy driving a B-52. It’s kinetic, it’s loud, it’s stupid as shit and it bursts from every second with speed and mania. On top of that, it does this incredible needle-threading trick of making the levels work both as insane run-and-gun arenas and also honeycombs of secrets to find.

Making good levels is fucking hard. Making good levels that do two completely different things simultaneously and perfectly should be impossible. DOOM is a crazy fucking phoenix of a video game and I still can’t believe it exists but I’m so glad it does. I was hooked from the second I smashed the computer that the NPC dude was trying to talk to me out of. A+.

Play DOOM if you want to live in a world of shit that looks like it was airbrushed onto the side of a van, and also you want to kill all of that shit too.

4. Uncharted 4: A Thief's End

Sometimes I really think Naughty Dog made a faustian bargain somewhere along the way that gave them a superhuman level of prowess in AAA game design. I felt this about the setpieces in Uncharted 2, I felt it about the completely staggering level of detail in every environment in The Last of Us, and I feel it even more about the level of spectacle and, most surprisingly, humanity present in every inch of Uncharted 4.

Uncharted has always been about spectacle, but it often fell a little short when it came to giving us a reason to give a shit about Nathan Drake and all of his falling off of high things. Uncharted 4 goes full tilt in the other direction, not only giving a huge amount of personality to Nathan and Elena (through both writing and facial capture performance) but also introducing Sam and making us care about him, too.

Beyond all that, it’s mostly more of the same, but with the production dialed up to 11,000,000. Uncharted 4 is a goddamn achievement of technical prowess and shows that Naughty Dog really Know Their Shit in a way that is honestly a little frightening sometimes.

Play Uncharted 4 if you want to get really attached to a guy and his family and friends, and then watch that guy shoot a bunch of dudes and jump onto things that will then subsequently fall apart.

3. Destiny: Rise of Iron

Listen. Destiny, just...it’s got me good, okay? It’s got me real good. Rise of Iron wasn’t the tectonic shift in the right direction that The Taken King was, but it touched up some of the rough areas of the game flow of the previous expansion while giving us a really great explorable zone and some remixed old areas to boot.

I haven’t done the raid yet (I know) but the content in Rise of Iron is still pretty top notch outside of that. By and large, it’s just More Destiny, but fuck it, I’m down. Just make Sparrow Racing League a permanent fixture outside of private matches, Bungie. I won’t tell anyone.

Play Destiny if you want to shoot wizards in space. Yep.

2. The Witness

Fucking hell. I’ve never had a game make me feel like an honest to god crazy person quite as much as The Witness did. This shit got in my head in a way that made puzzles jump out of the environment at me in my own actual real life. I never actually finished it or (god forbid) experienced the final challenge outside of video form, but nonetheless, this one fucking infected me like a virus.

Something that I think is extremely important to the success of this game is how quickly and efficiently it communicates the language of its puzzles in an incremental way. It very deftly gets you up to speed on a new concept by gradually iterating on the complicatedness of the puzzles in a way that is like learning new mathematical concepts or language. The Witness has no tutorials. Also, The Witness has like five hundred goddamn tutorials.

While we’re at it, the environment all this takes place in is fucking gorgeous and the fact that so much of it lines up so perfectly for environmental puzzle purposes is staggering. I can’t imagine the kind of ridiculous geometric bullshit went into creating this world. It probably involved a lot of paper models and notebooks. Kind of like my save file in this game.

Play The Witness if you want to learn a new language, and then have to put that language to work climbing a hell mountain of madman puzzles.

1. Final Fantasy XV

Okay, look. I don’t know how this got here either. The story’s kind of a hot mess and the game sort of weirdly feels like two games stuck together with Elmer’s Glue that star the same characters.

But man, this thing was weirdly exactly what I needed exactly when I needed it. The combat feels good (even if it doesn’t always make sense), the characters and their friendship is nostalgic and endearing to me (even when it’s not built on the most solid foundation) and the world really feels alive and full of people who are moving (even when they’re not).

It was all I needed from a Final Fantasy game anymore, really - A fun place to explore, a fun way to do it, and a cast of characters I could enjoy the presence of. Even when things start to get wrapped up in melodrama later on, the game still gives the interpersonal relationships some good time to breathe and it really paid off at the end for me. I’m done with the story, but I think I’ve still got quite a few good hours of broing around and getting lost in dungeons ahead of me. It’s not a bad recipe, all told.

HONORABLES MENTION:

• Picross 3D Round 2

This shit is therapy. I made it through PAX in one anxiety-ridden piece pretty much solely thanks to this game providing me with a constant mental refuge in the form of cute block puzzles. The puzzles are good, they’re varied, and there are a shitload of them. Not much to dislike.

• Dragon Quest Builders

This one gets honorable mention mostly because I haven’t played enough of it yet. Like Picross 3D, this is a great game to just chill the fuck out to. Most of the Minecraft genre has really failed to stick with me, but DQB really provides a kind of structure and purpose to the meandering in a way that gives the whole thing enough drive to finally be compelling. It doesn’t hurt that it’s all incredibly lovingly wrapped in the familiar and friendly tone and look of the Dragon Quest series.

• Puzzle and Dragons

I had a pretty boring job last year and the beginning of this year, and this game was my fucking lifeblood. It’s stupidly convoluted and built on some pretty fucking shaky free to play structures, but it’s pretty easy to get into and once you wrap your head around it, it’s shockingly deep and can keep you entertained for a silly amount of time.

• Love Live: School Idol Festival

See above except replace everything with things that are precious and adorable and the gameplay is a pretty fun rhythm game. Also, I got a UR Nozomi that’s pretty great. The best song is Snow Halation and anyone who says otherwise is wrong.

• Overwatch

This one gets on here by merit of the sheer weight of cultural force it exhibited on literally every single one of my friends on the human planet Earth. I have fun with Overwatch, I love its diverse cast, and I think the game feels great and presents a lot of really varying play styles that are all equally fun to use. It didn’t set my world on fire personally, but goddamn did this thing permeate the culture fast and furiously, and deservedly so. Justice rains from above, motherfucker.

• Forza Horizon 3

Sometimes it’s pretty fun to drive cars real fast. Forza Horzion 3 lets you drive fun cars real fast in a fun place while a British lady talks to you about how cool you are. The story is like Yu-Gi-Oh where a rich guy invites a bunch of people onto his island and then savagely beats them all at a card game, except you’re a racing person instead of a weird card game wizard and you race all the people you invited to death. Also, sometimes those people are weird AI approximations of your actual friends, too.

• Thumper

AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

See, it's a joke, because I have more than ten games here.

...

Here's the list.

11. Neko Atsume

I really, really like cats, okay. This is a game where you put out some food and some toys, and some cute fucking cats show up and do adorable shit in your yard. I don’t even need to go any farther than that. It’s precious and adorable and it made me happy every time I turned on my phone. End of story.

10. Super Mario Maker

This is clearly some kind of time lost love letter to the bored third grade Ben who drew Super Mario World levels in his notebook instead of being an attentive student. It’s the game we’ve all been playing in our heads every time we swear that they should have made a level different, or wondered what it would be like if they made a level that was nothing but spin jumping on spinies while avoiding cannons that shot giant ghosts. The mechanics still hold through all these ludicrous ideas, and it gives you a complete appreciation for just how solid the guts these things are built on are.

And then on the flip side, it’s fun as hell just to make the levels. They turned work into fun! Listen, I am notoriously averse to anything that involves building. I don’t like Lego. I don’t like building shit in Minecraft. I was born with only the power to destroy. And yet even I can’t help but have a goddamn blast every time I’m putting an idea into practice in Super Mario Maker. Nintendo just made everything so infuriatingly joyful that I can’t help but have fun. Bastards.

9. Destiny: The Taken King

God, I don’t know, people. I was one of those people that really enjoyed the original release of Destiny despite its (many, severe) flaws, and so when The Taken King hit and gave the game an actual story and a whole new set of areas to explore, I was a goner.

You’ve heard this before, but The Taken King makes Destiny the game it should be. It gives you meaningful subclass choices, a compelling and fun story, and an actual progression to the campaign missions that feels like it was a thing made by a human being on purpose.

I just love shooting these guns on these planets with this setting and lore, and fuck it, I don’t care about the huge problems the game still has many of. I may not be playing it every night anymore, but man, whenever they put something new in this thing I’ll be first in line to jump back in. Eyes up, Guardian.

8. Splatoon

Splatoon is just pure joy, fun and attitude wrapped up in the only competitive multiplayer game that doesn’t make me angry at myself. It appeals to the part of me that wants multiplayer goals that aren’t just murdering each other; even when I’m severely behind, throwing a bunch of paint everywhere feels right and good and constructive. Look, I put a bunch of green crap on the floor here! I’M HELPING!

Then, as if that weren’t enough, the whole game is wrapped up in this confident attitude of style and “freshness” that makes me feel like even if I totally shit the bed in the game, as long as I’m wearing these fly sunglasses and this rad ass jacket, it doesn’t matter how much of a noobsuck I am. It also doesn’t hurt that no one online can chat at me in the process. Stay fresh, fuckers.

7. Bloodborne

The game that made me finally buckle and get a PS4. I’m a huge fan of Souls games, but when this thing got announced I admit I wasn’t super into the concept. Victorian werewolf horror isn’t really my bag, but I’m such a huge sucker for the gameplay in these things that they could make it about a sphere fighting large multicolored cubes with a bat and I’d still probably put 100 hours into it.

Fortunately (and without giving too much away) Bloodborne’s story proves to be more than the first glance reveals, and winds up being one of my favorite sets of lore in the entire series. Couple that with a really clever reinvention of the Souls gameplay loop by removing the emphasis on absorbing blows and instead focusing on avoidance and aggression, and you’ve got something that embodies all the fun of those games while still being fresh and unique.

It definitely has its issues relative to the rest of the series (build diversity is really backloaded and lacking, and the overall itemization in the game is far less interesting) but fuck it, it’s a Souls game. I’ll be a huge fan no matter what, because the game makes you feel like a god when you manage to bash your head through the worst challenges (looking at you, Ludwig, the Accursed.)

6. Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin

Alright, I cheated a little. Dark Souls II is my favorite game in the Souls series (real popular opinion, there) and while it came out in 2014, this rerelease/repackaging changed and added enough that I’m counting it here.

I could write an awful goddamn lot about Dark Souls II here, but suffice to say that the incredible depth, diversity, and heart of the world and gameplay keeps me constantly coming back to this one in a way that the other games in the series can’t match. It takes the bleakness of Dark Souls and adds a hint of hope and sunrise that makes it feel much more like a game where your perseverance can actually matter and lead to something good in the future, even if you’re pushing that boulder up the hill a hundred thousand times to get there.

And Scholar? Well, it throws in all three DLC segments (probably the best part of the game, to be honest) and also drops in some much needed context to the story along the way. In addition, the revised enemy placements fill the game’s encounter design with a sense of place, giving areas in the game more history through the way in which they’re represented by the types of creatures and how they behave.

I’m never going to stop playing this thing. It dragged me kicking and screaming out of depression last year, and the rerelease this year just reinforced me. I fell in love with Dark Souls and Demon's Souls, but it took Dark Souls II to make a lifer out of me.

5. Batman: Arkham Knight

Listen. This thing was kind of a shitshow on PC, and even when viewed in its best light, it’s kind of heavily derivative of Arkham City. But the thing you have to know is: I played it on PS4 and I didn’t play Arkham City. Which means I’m right there in the narrow field of people this thing is probably ideal for, and boy did I enjoy the hell out of it from start to finish.

The other thing you should know about me is that I sort of love really silly vehicles in games. I liked the Mako in Mass Effect, and I love puttering around on my Sparrow in Destiny. Yeah, the Batmobile in this was kind of tank-esque, but let’s be honest, the Batmobile is always decked out in a billion guns and looks like it handles like an Abrams.

I don’t have a ton to say past that. The game looked incredible and the story was good enough and looked at some interesting aspects of the Batman character in a scenario near the end of his career. I might be the only one who liked the whole package here, but hey, variety is the spice of life.

4. Invisible, Inc.

The fact that I started playing this at all is ENTIRELY Austin Walker’s fault, and I’ll never be able to repay him for it. Klei Entertainment’s turn-based stealth rogue-lite is an absolute master class in decision making gameplay. Every single turn, you’re given all the information you need and are tasked with making a judgment call about how you want to use it in accordance with the risks in front of you. When you screw up, the consequences are often extremely quick and extremely severe, and you’re often able to tell exactly where you screwed the pooch.

In a lot of ways, it shares a philosophy with Klei’s stealth action title Mark of the Ninja. Both games understand that the expression of information is the absolute key of a stealth game: the player needs to know what they’re avoiding in order to make a choice of how to avoid (or eliminate) it. Both Mark of the Ninja and Invisible Inc go out of their way to make sure you know everything you need to in order to realize just how screwed you are.

But this time around, it’s a slow, methodical thing instead of fast paced action, and it’s wrapped up in a really slick aesthetic with a perfect mix of noir and cyberpunk that makes you feel cool as hell even when you’re totally blowing it and getting everyone killed. I’m constantly finding myself considering putting off other games to play more of this one, and I don’t see that stopping any time soon.

3. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt represents a massive leap in scope from its predecessor. But more than that, it absolutely perfectly encapsulates the aspects of the The Witcher series that I’ve always loved the most: a sense of place in the world, and a feeling like every quest is its own poignant story.

Playing The Witcher 3 felt like being told a bedtime story, but the kind of bedtime story that made you think, the kind of fable with a little bit of pepper and darkness behind it that got your mind working at a speed something wholly pleasant couldn’t. It felt like I was sitting down and asking CD Projekt RED to tell me another story about Geralt of Rivia, and no matter what kind of content I was doing, I always left the game feeling like I’d done something meaningful.

I actually literally had to stop playing the game because my open world prioritization mechanism broke down when I realized all of the content was equally great. That’s not an easy thing to, and the fact that CD Projekt RED accomplished it in a game of this kind of scale is mind blowing to me.

2. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

I’ve always been a hell of a Metal Gear fan. The series has always had this perfect mix of character and finesse that has entranced me since the very beginning, peaking with Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater back on the PS2.

This is the part where you’d expect me to say “And MGSV is no different.” But man, it’s incredibly different, and that’s probably what makes it stand out so firmly in my mind. Every Metal Gear game is fun to play. They’re always a great blend of structure and freedom that lets you approach things from any angle. But MGSV feels like the first game in the series that absolutely prioritized the moment to moment joy of the game above ALL else (including, well, the cohesiveness of the story. Uh, whoops?).

Every other Metal Gear has been a singular experience that I rode through from end to end as a joyride and then put down with a smile on my face and a fondness in my heart. MGSV? I’m still playing that shit every night. I’m about 60 hours in and I’m still nowhere close to the end of the story. And I don’t even care! I gotta tie some balloons to some people and go hunt a bear. Metal Gear Solid V breathed life into that series in a way I never expected, and for that, it’s going to be something I keep revisiting for a long time to come.

1. Undertale

“Oh Christ, the Undertales got another one,” you say. It’s cool, it’s cool, I’m not going to sit here and evangelize to you why Undertale will pay off your student loan, reunite you with your lost loved ones and finally make you Diamond in League of Legends.

Instead, I’ll say this: Undertale was like a hug to me. It’s a game that zooms way way in on things like friendship, hope, love, and just being an optimistic little fucker in the face of absolutely insurmountable obstacles. It’s everything I used to be and try my best to be now. And sure, it’s got some pretty clever writing, a fantastic soundtrack, and a pretty clever little twist on JRPG battle structure along the way.

But really, Undertale got in my heart with its warmth and stayed there, and I can’t say that about a whole hell of a lot of games. I’m still thinking about it every day, the way I think about friends I used to know or a place I remember fondly from my childhood. Not playing Undertale anymore is still playing Undertale. That’s not something that’s going to come around very often for me.