It's time for the end of year ranking for the games I've played this year!
My 5 favorite games I've played this year are...
What a weird list, but given that it's been a weird year for me personally (severe health problems, unexpected move, stressful job), maybe I shouldn't be surprised.
Wow. This is literally Borderlands -- with all of its art style, its history, and its humor -- brought out where it can shine, and may even be better as an adventure game than a FPS. Borderlands can even be Borderlands without having guns in it, and that's pretty f'ing rad.
Although this isn't the full game and I literally finished the episode the evening before Dec 31, I'm moving it to the beginning of 2015's list. If I don't, it'll be a strong contendor for the #2 spot in 2014, and it seems too premature for that...
Update 09/18/2015: Episodes 2 through 4 were amazing. I can't wait to see where this crazy ride ends!
Update 11/31/2015: Amazing ending to one of the best games of the year. Good job Telltale!
Jazzpunk has been sitting on my to-play list for quite some time. It's a weird blend of off-beat humor and exploration -- my only complaint is that by the time I started to get wrapped up in its weird wonderful little world, it was over. At ~2.5h, it's an easy digest, and something I'll probably run through again some point in the future.
...Which I just did the day after. Awesome game that only got better on the next playthrough.
I played the hell out of Elite: Dangerous already. I don't have a timer on it, but it has been my go-to game for the last few months now. I'm just tossing this on the list because it's easier that way. :D
Update 9/18/2015: This continues to be on my list. I haven't had much of a chance to play lately, but when I do, it's for hours at a time. It continues to be one of my favorite games, potentially ever.
Played a bit, loved the music, but it's pretty barren, even for what it is. I'll keep trying it on and off to see if it captures more of my attention.
Not sure where/when(/why) I picked Goat Simulator up, but it's a blast for a couple of hours. I don't see myself playing much more than I already have, but it's a fun little diversion.
...or more accurately, The Last of Us DLC - Left Behind.
I never was a fan of TLoU. I played through the campaign, but I didn't enjoy playing it. The combat scenarios can be brutal and unforgiving. The story, however, was fantastic.
That level of story telling continues with Left Behind, and although I'm still not a big fan on the combat mechanics, the increased focus on story telling and exploration more than makes up for it. And although there are a few combat scenarios that still pop up, many of these have the ability to pit zombies vs. hunters (or vice versa) -- these scenarios are actually quite a bit of fun.
Really glad I checked this out, and at 2-3 hours, it's not that big of a time commitment.
Interesting little title... the controls are incredibly frustrating -- although that's the point -- but it's just long enough that it doesn't overstay its welcome. I've heard that there have been several patches to reduce some of the more frustrating parts of the game, which is good -- the control is infuriating at times, but hilarious because of it. A game like this shouldn't frustrate you any more than to help drive home that point.
I liked it enough to play through the two small expansion scenarios though, so that says something :D Oh... and that theme song is still amazing.
What a fantastic puzzle game. Although it's a little short at 1.5-2h, it's easy to get lost in its beautifully realized world. Very glad I finally got around to playing it.
Update 01/24/2015: I played through it again just for kicks, and then played The Forgotten Shores. The latter adds another helping of the levels 9/10 difficulty in the main game -- there are some great levels in there, so be sure to pick it up as well if you like the main game.
I haven't had time over the last few months to play alot of games other than Elite Dangerous.
That is until The Witcher 3 came along and I easily sunk 100+ hours on it.
Here comes a game that I've never played any of the previous entries in, and ended up enjoying it as much as some of my all time favorite games. The easiest comparisons are to Bethesda's Oblivion, Skryim, and Fallout 3 -- but in some ways, such as the story telling, characters and action -- it is significantly better.
Highly recommended for a more mature audience.
<Update 7.23.2015>And then I sunk like another 20 hours into it. Great game.
Thank you Sony for this free PS4 upgrade. It was wonderful to play Journey again.
I'm not a big creator, but it's fun messing around with the tools and playing through levels. I can see coming back to this on and off for a long time.
Finished Nov 4 2015 -- Until Dawn is an interesting beast. It's arguably no more than a _very_ well produced Telltale-style adventure game, focusing on simple exploration and quicktime events. It's also incredibly well produced -- the graphics, animation, and acting are superb -- except the places where it's not (particularly around the story and script).
Welp, just managed to sneak this one in -- given that it's only a couple of hours long, it's probably not surprising that I started and finished a run of this on New Year's Eve.
I haven't played a MGS game in a long time. The original (on PC) ranks very highly in my games of all time list. I dabbled with MGS2 on the PS2, but I didn't play any more than the original ship level. That's it. Over the years I wanted to play MGS4 since I heard so much good about that game, but never got the chance to.
Although I usually play a game for story, given that these games are crazy anyways and hearing how good The Phantom Pain is, I figured I'd give this a shot to see if it was for me and to get used to the controls (which I assume are pretty similar between the two games given the common MGSV designation).
It was, generally, pretty fun and is about the right bite-sized portion for my general disdain of stealth games. Let's be honest, I've never been a stealth game fan. Most stealth games are brutal when the crap hits the fan, but Ground Zeroes is much more forgiving. For instance, the slight slowdown in time to react when you're caught is a nice touch, and is a wonderful balancing for the removal of the vision cones in previous games.
I'll probably play one more round -- hopefully a bit better than my terrible first round! -- and then jump in to The Phantom Pain.
This is probably the first time I've had the same game in my list twice, but I was right -- I think this is my favourite game of all time, and is the de-facto game that I go to to play.
I'm not saying this is the best game of the year or the best game of all time. That would be crazy -- it's a B-tier game. No publisher would have picked this game up on their own, it's far too ambitious and is the poster-boy for agile game development.
But what it lets me do is something that no other game before has let me do -- own my own spaceship and wander the stars. I don't want to just play a dogfight simulator. I want to have a ship, and make my own way through the galaxy the way I want to play. I want to land at a starport, figure out how the commodity system works, maybe throw in a couple of missions, and then go through the stars to go to a new station or planet and make some cash. It's not moment-to-moment twitch and I appreciate that -- it's highly relaxing and almost therapeutic.
As I get older, I find typical games to be far more stressful then in years past. Given an especially stressful year with health problems, an unexpected cross-city move, and a challenging job, there is something amazing about being able to be in a completely different world and wander at my own pace.
Thank you Frontier for putting this out, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it develops in the future.
