1 Lunar 2

2 Skies of Arcadia

3 Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

4 Sonic 1

5 Doom

6 Mario 64

7 Mass Effect Trilogy

8 King's Field II

9 Metroid Prime 1

10 Dune

2016 was a weird year, huh? But at least the games were good! And so here's a list of ten of my favorite of the good games, but a few other lists for good measure.

These Games Continue to be Fantastic

This year I replayed Dear Esther after it's re-release on the PS4 and it continues to be a game I love but also have a hard time recommending. So I'm a recovering alcoholic and certain movies, books, and TV shows really hit a nerve for me that wouldn't have, I imagine, had I not developed that addiction. The movie Shame for example. Though it's about sex addiction, it covers the nature of addiction so well that it unnerved me. I loved the movie and yet never, ever want to see it again. I hadn't had that experience with a game until Dear Esther. I can't say for certain that that was the developer's intention, but my interpretation of the story is from the perspective of an addict. I won't spoil it though honestly I don't know if I could because the game's narrative is just open enough that there can be multiple interpretations. Which I love in all forms of media. So, you see, this game is like a game made specifically for my sensibilities. But, like the movie Shame, I don't know if I could recommend it to most people. But I know I love it.

No analysis needed for Race the Sun or 140. They are just a ton of fun.

I Probably Would Have Liked These If...

I bought Superhot thinking that my 10-ish year old laptop could probably play it. I mean it could play Dark Souls 2, so why not Superhot? Well, it couldn't. Which is a huge bummer because it looks awesome.

Both Dishonored 2 and Final Fantasy 15 look like games I would love. Especially Dishonred 2 because I adored the first game. But, you know, sometimes money is tight and purchasing games get pushed to the back burner. And, well, that's what happened here. Maybe they'll make a different list next year.

Most Disappointing Game

It's the game everyone loves to hate! I don't hate this game and, in fact, at the beginning of my experience with this game I liked it quite a lot. Like seemingly everyone else, I was pretty excited at the concept of this game. But when I heard it was a survival game my excitement went down considerably. I had never played a survival game to be fair but everything I knew and had seen of the survival genre made me think I would hate it. But, I bought it because the concept seemed so intriguing and I really, really wanted to know what was at the center of the galaxy. Again, at the beginning, it was kind of neat. Building up your ship, exploring planets, seeing the boundaries of the game's systems. It was all very interesting. Then the game hits a flow. An extremely formulaic flow. An extremely, completely unchanging, mind numbingly formulaic flow. Every now and again I have the thought "why am I spending so much time with games when there is no real, tangible carrot at the end of the stick?" but usually fight against that thought with "this is my leisure time and leisure time doesn't need to produce a concrete end product", "the experience itself is worth the time investment", etc. etc. But there was nothing I could come up with that could fight that thought when I played this game. After about 10-15 hours of doing the exact same thing with what seemed like no end in sight, I looked up the ending of the game to satiate my curiosity of what was actually at the center of the galaxy. I won't spoil it, but I don't think it's hyperbole for me to say that it might be the worst ending to a game that I've ever seen. I would have rather had seen a black background with white text saying 'congratulations'. They wouldn't have even needed to spell 'congratulations' correctly. If you felt, like I did, that the game's flow amounted to a never ending Sisyphean torture wait till you see the ending. It paints the entire game as a Sisyphean torture. Actually that's what they should have called it; Sisyphean torture.

The Number 11 Game

This game looks awesome, I love the puzzle design, I really appreciate the sound design as it makes the whole experience really peaceful. It's just a nice experience. Until the puzzles start to get really hard and the part of my brain that wants to 100% everything gets really frustrated. I really like this game, but the spike in difficulty for me personally kind of soured the whole experience. That, and the obnoxious and pretentious quotes and videos. I don't really like using the word 'pretentious' because it feels like a word often used to stifle art that is non-standard. But I can't think of another word that better fits my response to those little narrative bits. Still a great game though and immensely creative.

Game of the Year: 2016

10: Ratchet and Clank

9: Abzu

8: Rise of the Tomb Raider (PS4)

7: Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

6: Uncharted 4

5: Hitman

4: Dark Souls 3

3: That Dragon, Cancer

2 Stardew Valley

1: Doom

Before I bought Doom I had heard it described as the Mad Max: Fury Road of video games and I can't think of a better comparison. Fury Road had a story with good characters and a satisfying arc with a fitting conclusion. But the action and style always came first. Doom has a story, a dumb-fun story but a story nonetheless, with memorable characters (they even make Doom guy memorable). But all that stuff is beside the point. It's just fun. You feel awesome playing this game. It looks awesome, the music is awesome, the mechanics are awesome, and it's all just fucking awesome. It's pure, simple fun through and through. If I ever want to feel awesome and tap into my lizard brain for some mindless action this is going to be my go-to game. I mentioned that while playing No Man's Sky the thought "why am I doing this?" crept into my mind and that, at times, that happens with other games? That never, ever, remotely came close to entering my mind while playing this game. I was too busy circle strafing and shooting the crap out of everything.

1) Doom

2) Stardew Valley

3) That Dragon, Cancer

4) Dark Souls 3

5) Hitman

6) Uncharted 4

7) Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

8) Rise of the Tomb Raider

9) Abzu

10) Ratchet and Clank

So I played through the Talos Principle last year and loved it. In part because of the puzzles but also the tone and atmosphere was so engaging. But what stuck with me after finishing it was the story. I grew up in a Protestant Christian family and for my whole childhood attended a non-denomination church. Obviously as a kid your perspective on the world is skewed. What I was taught by my family and at my church created my reality and I assumed everyone else's reality was just the same. I remember when I first went to school and being surprised when people would say that they weren't Christians. Because, at that time, everyone I knew was Christian. I couldn't even conceptualize what that meant. Then my teens happened and they hit me like a brick wall. I hated everyone and everything and the church was just another group to rebel against. I remember being mad when I went to church and they tried to talk to us about the value of Christian music. "They were just trying to make me like them!" In actuality, they had good intentions. They wanted kids to hear as many positive messages as possible to lift their spirits because teenage life is rough and the best way they knew how to do it was to get us to listen to what they considered to be positive music we might like. But it didn't matter because I was an angsty teenager and everyone else sucked!

But as I got older I relaxed a bit and spent less time getting mad at other people and more time trying to figure out what I actually believed. I had still called myself a Christian but didn't know why. I went back to church and thought the messages were positive but I still couldn't put my finger on why I identified with the religion. I think part of the problem was that the Biblical stories I was raised with were told in very black and white terms. When we were taught about Noah's Ark, we focused on the fun stuff. How crazy would it be to have all those animals on that boat? How big would that boat have to be? Wouldn't it have been neat to see it in person! We didn't focus on the genocide angle. We didn't discuss the intentions of God to bring forth that incredible flood. We just took it as it was and moved on.

That's where the Talos Principle comes in.

The Talos Principle is a retelling of the Garden of Eden. Basically. In it you solve puzzles in a picturesque world to further a narrative. The narrative being 'solve puzzles so that you might be given the opportunity to solve more puzzles.' The only catch is that you can't climb a tower. You are tempted by a computer program to fight against the design of this world and do something different. In the end, you are given a choice; climb the tower or exit through two large double doors that had been closed up to that point. If you enter the doors the character dies as a faithful servant to the God of that world and the program, the Garden of Eden, continues on for the next character. If you climb the tower, the program is destroyed and the character exits out into the real world.

What it brought up in me was this idea that I would have loathed living in the Garden of Eden. Yes, it was picturesque. Yes, it was perfect. But I wouldn't have had complete freedom of choice. Christianity, at least, has struggled with the problem of pre-destined fate and freedom of choice for a long time. St. Augustine philosophized the nature of free will a long, long, long time ago. I was taught as a child that God hadn't wanted us to be automatons. We weren't to blindly follow. Rather, we were to use our 'free will' to decide for ourselves, with our heart, soul, and mind, if we were to be Christians. But the conflict is in that I was also taught that the Garden of Eden was perfect and we as a species had messed up when we had fallen prey to temptation. Had we only not done so we wouldn't have ever suffered. But how can we both have freedom of choice but also glorify a reality where choice was limited?

Truth be told, I had cleared up my own personal issues with religion before playing this game and I'm not going to share that. Mostly because it isn't germane to this blog. What is is that this game would have the capacity to bring up this line of thinking in me. That it would even flirt with these concepts is an amazing feat. And it shows the odd ways in which games can teach you more than just better hand/eye coordination.

The last time I wrote about lessons in games I had discussed the lessons I had learned about gender norms and sexuality through my time playing Phantasy Star 1 and 4 as a child. Today, I'd like to talk about a new lesson I've learned, just this night, from a newer game. 'That Dragon, Cancer' is about a Mother and Father's reaction to their son's diagnosis of cancer. The story focuses on struggling through treatment, confusion regarding faith and the internal struggle and the resulting relational problems of the two parents who are responding to the disease very differently. Throughout playing the game, I spent the majority of the time thinking about a recent death that I had experienced. Through playing that game I re-grieved that person's death and found a new way to heal.

I'm not very practiced in grieving. I've performed mental health therapy that focuses on grief for clients and families. But when it's your own grief it's a very different experience. Like the parents in the game, I had gone through a lot of emotions when the person died. Numbing, anger, frustration, existential crisis, sadness, and so on. You name an emotion and I probably felt it. But the logical part of my brain was fighting all these emotions trying to calm them all down. Which led to an internal tornado inside my mind that had me confused and emotionally and cognitively wrecked for months and months after that person had died. As time passed, I had thought that I had appropriately grieved that person's death because my mind had calmed. The emotions had passed and logic was back in place. I was me again. But it was a false front. What I had done was forgotten the pain, not resolved it. 'That Dragon, Cancer' had brought it back up again but it brought with it a lesson. I can't speak to the intentions of the parents of the game but I can infer through my own experience. This game felt like a way to resolve parents' grief. To come to terms with thoughts they had had but may not have liked, to recognize emotions that they may like to never expereince again, and to find meaning in the pain of seeing their son fade away. I realized that I hadn't done any of these things with the person who I had lost. I hadn't learned any lessons. I didn't know all the emotions I felt and thoughts I had had. I had calmed and that was good enough for me. But that was just a lie to make myself not face difficult realities that that person's death had brought to the fore.

I'm not a game developer. Not really much of an artist either. But I can write my thoughts down. So I wrote a letter to that person who had died. Like the parents of the boy in “That Dragon, Cancer” I had decided to come to terms with the good, bad and ugly that comes from death. Like that game, the person who died was only half the story. Death has a way of making a person look at themselves and their life in a way that we rarely do. It leads to some harsh lessons and difficult realities. Lessons and realities that I had ignored but that these parents had not. So I faced them as well as I could. I'm not going to share my letter here because I'm not as brave as these parents. But I will say that I learned a valuable lesson from 'That Dragon, Cancer' that I wasn't expecting. I really respect these parents and I hope that they've found some peace after releasing the game. But I also want to thank them for helping me find peace.

A few years ago I wrote a blog about playing Temple Run with my nephew. What I noticed from playing that game with him was how quickly he learned from his experience watching me play the game. At first, he didn't realize that he could tilt the phone to move the character and so was confused when I moved the phone to the left and right. I explained the reasoning and how it allowed me to progress farther. As soon as he got the phone back for his run it had clicked and through tilting the screen he had made a new high score. He then became an information sponge asking me about all the different games that were on his Mom's phone. This learning happens everywhere for my nephew. It happens when we play catch or when we play board games. It happens when he and I clean up after a meal or talk to other people in the family. It's amazing how much and how quickly kids learn. But what isn't always discussed is how kids might learn from video games. Not just educational video games or games that teach hand-eye coordination and general problem solving skills. But games that teach kids to experience new perspectives or question their own beliefs. I think of games like 'That Dragon, Cancer', 'Life is Strange', 'Gone Home' and other non-traditional games are starting to fill this gap. But for me, I've actually experienced that type of learning from a game franchise that, at face value, doesn't look like the type of series that would concern itself with such themes. The series that I'm referring to is Phantasy Star, specifically the first and fourth entry in the series.

For those that haven't played the Phantasy Star games, they were JRPGs set in a fictional solar system with a mix of a sci-fi aesthetic with medieval weaponry. You know how Final Fantasy 7 mixed swords with technology? Phantasy Star did that in the 80s. The first entry came out on the Sega Master System and stared Alis, a female character out to avenge the death of her older brother. It was such a good game and Alis was a really cool character. I played this game when I was around 4-5 years old and had a blast. The dungeons were engaging, levels were fun to grind (I hadn't reach the point in my life where I was tired of grinding in JRPGs yet), and it looked amazing. But think about what this game was doing and when. It was 1987 and Phantasy Star was an exclusive JRPG for the Master System, aiming at the JRPG kings of the time Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior, developed and published by Sega staring a female character acting out a stereotpically male role; the avenger. She wasn't avenging a sister or her parents but her older brother, the person one would think would be the avenger in this story. She didn't fulfill the role female characters in JRPGs often do either. She wasn't a cleric or a wizard. She was a warrior who fought with a sword. She was the one saving the characters who would become allies. She was the person who would lead the charge against the final boss and be the hero. That's an odd thing in video games and film even now. Think about 1987. The era of Commando, Die Hard, and Rambo. The era where games were still consider the medium of boys living out power fantasies. It was a weird game but in the best way possible and Sega had really taken a chance making it.

Phantasy Star and I had a bit of a disconnect until Phantasy Star 4. PS 2 was neat but way too hard for young me. Probably too hard for old me. I never bought PS 3 eventhough it sounded neat. But I did buy PS 4 because it was critically acclaimed. Rightfully so, it turns out, because it was fantastic. The story was engaging, the graphics were great, it wasn't too grindy (this was when I started to tire of JRPG grinding), and the music! Man alive that music was great. But relating to the topic at hand, it stared a female character named, appropriately enough, Alys. She was a hunter in the game's fiction (basically mercenary) and was training a younger hunter, a young man named Chaz (yes, that name sucks.) Alys is designed to be a gruff and determined person who is world weary but very loyal to her companions. She's respected and feared by the those that know her as she is thought to be, for lack of a better word, a bad ass. About 1/3-1/2 into the game the player fights a version of the final boss and loses. In a cutscene, that boss attacks Chaz who looks to be killed by the attack. Alys pushes him out of the way taking the hit herself. She dies from the injuries and Chaz becomes the new lead character. Again, this series took what is the usual role of women in JRPGs, and fiction in general, and twisted it. Alys was the bad ass, not Chaz. A woman was the leader and mentor, not an older male character. A female character sacrificed herself to save the male character. The female character was the one respected by the other characters of the world. The female character was the one that struck fear into others. Eventhough Chaz would become the lead of the story he never carried that same presnce that Alys had. Again, Phantasy Star had taken what one would think would be normal conventions for JRPGs, and games in general, and spun it.

As a kid, I didn't learn that men and women were equals through my time with Phantasy Star. Rather, I learned that via my parents. At face value, my parents' marriage looks stereotypically middle class American. My Dad works as a construction worker for a large, industrial contruction company. My Mom stopped working when my older brother was born to be a stay at home wife. It was a mutual decision between my Mom and Dad. My Mom would have kept working, and there were times when it was considered when money was tight, but didn't because they both felt that our family as a whole would be better off if she stayed home and luckily my Dad had a really good and persistent job. My Mom and Dad have a real division of labor where each know their value to each other and the family. Neither is subservient to the other. Rather they're a team and take care of each other and our family as a unit. That's what they believe and that's what they taught my brother and I. Inherent in that is that men and women are equal. So when I played the first Phantasy Star it wasn't weird to me that Alis was the lead, that she was avenging her brother, and that she would be the hero.

Then school happened. I went to great schools and they did wonderful work with the kids. They always had the best of intentions but accidentally, through those intentions, segragated 'boys' and 'girls' from one another. I remember as a child in elementary school being shown the 'boy' toys by my teacher when we had breaks from school work. There were action figures, sports gear, and the like. Across from us were the girls with their 'girl' toys. They had Barby, easy bake ovens, and so on. It was like our classroom was split between the pink-'girly' side and the black and blue colored 'boy' side. The school just wanted us to have fun and figured those toys would represent our interests. But they had indirectly programed into our developing minds a distinction between 'girl' things and 'boy' things and ultimately 'girl' roles as opposed to 'boy' roles. Boys play catch. Girls bake. Boys play with Batman toys. Girls play with Barbies. I had played through Phantasy Star 1 before kindergarten started. By the time Phantasy Star 4 had come out there had been this seed planted in my head; boys and girls fill different roles. My parents' marriage was still the same but school and peer groups are powerful forces and they had wiggled there way into my subconscious. Suddenly it became really weird to me that Alys was the hero as in my brain boys had become the stereotyped 'hero'. I was a blank slate when I first played Phantasy Star 1. By the time I got to Phantasy Star 4 only a few years later my slate had been carved and gender norms were well engraved.

Phantasy Star 4 was weird for me initially when I first started because, again, Alys was the lead. But more so because Chaz was such a clown. He was young and brash making mistakes, acting foolishly, and all around not being the male lead my brain thought he should be. That person I was imagining was in turned embodied by Alys. It lead to this odd cognitive dissonance for me. It was like part of my mind knew that men and women were equal but then another, loud and very obnoxious part of me was hung up on gender norms. But Alys soon became my favorite character and gender norms fell to the side. When Alys died it realy hit me because I wasn't expecting it. I was expecting her to be the hero of that story because she so clearly fit that bill. When she wasn't and when she died as she did that admiration of her as a character had turned into hero worship in my then 7 year old brain. She was hero not because she had beat the bad guy, as the Alis in the first Phantasy Star had done. Rather, she was a hero beause she was willing to sacrifice herself to save her friend and student, a male character who respected her as much as I had as a young male player.

Games can be a lot of things. They can be fun and they can be challenging. They can teach you hand-eye coordination and problem solving skills. But I think it is often overlooked at what games can teach players about themselves and their society. Though Phantasy Star was made by Japanese developers, oddly enough, their creation taught me how to look at my own American culture in a different way. It was in small part to be sure. I treat everyone equally, regardless of gender, in large part because of my parents and their lessons along with my interactions with men and women as I aged. But even if Phantasy Star's role in my view of gender was minor it shouldn't be overlooked. In fact, I spent God knows how many words writing about it right here which means it was memorable enough to me that I felt it necessary to share that experience. I think that says a lot. So when I look at games like Gone Home, Life is Strange, Dear Esther and so on I hope that they can become games that teach young players about new experiences and help them question what they think is normal as Phantasy Star had for me.

I'm an introverted man who works as a mental health therapist for an outpatient clinic. Which, I've now come to realize having worked in this field for a while, is not uncommon. But what is actually uncommon is a person in the field identifying as an introvert. For two hours each week I go to a meeting where I, and ten other therapist, meet to do consultation and for us to deal with general office logistics. The second hour is when we do our consultation meaning we spend time discussing clients seeking advice for solving problems we're having in therapy. A common feature in therapy, no matter the therapy, is the role relationships play on the lives of clients. But there is a prevailing view, at least in my small circle, of what is 'normal' and 'abnormal' regarding how we relate to each other and how we try to recharge and recuperate. I can't tell you how many times I've heard 'isolative' to explain a person who prefers to spend large aounts of time alone recovering after a lot of social activity. Or how many times I've heard video games, film and books demonized as too lonely an activity and that such clients who spend 'too much time' with these activities need to 'break out of their shell' and interact with others. In short, in these meetings seem to equate healthy mental health with being outgoing and disordered with time spent alone. Introversion thus is sickly and extroversion is healthy.

So, spurred on by a book I just read called Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking and by my own self-reflection having now performed therapy for many years, I finally said something to the group. But before that, I guess I should first describe what I mean by an introvert versus extrovert. First, introvert is not the same as 'anxious' and/or shy and 'extrovert' is not the same as 'sociable'. Shyness and social anxiety are significant problems based in fear and socialization is based on finding connections to others. Both of these traits can be just as present in an introverted person as in an extroverted person. The definitions for the two aren't totally well sorted, even to this day, but more or less an introverted person is one who is re-energized by alone time while an extroverted person is re-energized by activity and stimulation. An introverted person can do well at a party, for example, but may become overwhelmed if a) the party is too large, b) the party is too loud and intense, c) they are at the party too long, d) etc. etc. etc. Essentially an introverted may derive pleasure socialization but can become exhausted by it and repairs by spending time alone. The introverted person would need alone time to regroup and recenter themselves. It's there personal break so that they can once again become engaged with activity and socialization. Whereas an extroverted person will find the stimulation refreshing and the alone time dull and tedious. Both can be equally as social. Both can be equally as entertaining, exciting and fulfilled. It's just that both require different outlets to re-energize. It's believed that these two traits lie on a continuoum and that it is rare when a person is fully one or the other. I'm more introverted, for example, but I am just as re-energized when I go to concerts as I am when I relax at home alone with a video game or book.

The thing for me is that, as an introvert, I've cultivated a career, a personality, a sense of humor, friendships, leadership skills and so on and so forth. Through introversion I've become happy. It took a while for me to realize it, as the hardest person it seems for a therapist to figure out is the self, but once I came to terms with recognizing who I am, what I am and what my strengths and weaknesses are so much began to make sense. And with that knowledge came ownership, confidence and reconciliation. Through introversion I'm more aware of my emotions, I'm more attune to the emotions of those around me, I can better comment on absurd situations for a laugh, I can better manage people and find helpful solutions to big problems. I don't fret, I don't break under pressure and I always find a way around a problem. Not because I'm a great therapist or supervisor. I'm an introvert.

Which makes it so unfortunate that in American culture, in particular (as I can't truly speak to other cultures), extroversion has been deemed 'normal' and introverts are deemed 'outcasts'. There are exceptions, obviously, but they seem to prove the rule. How many times have you heard 'quiet' used with a negative connotation? 'Quiet' just seems like a politically correct way to say 'strange' and 'different'. Where as 'outgoing' is almost synonymous with 'fun' and 'interesting'. Which brings me back to my meeting. So I stood up for us introverts in my own very introverted sort of way. I quietly pointed out the flawed logic of assuming that one behavior, like spending time alone, automatically equates to a mental health diagnosis, like Major Depressive Disorder. I then used myself as an example explaining how I recharge a lot of activity by spending time alone re-centering myself before I re-engage with friends and family and do not meet criteria for any mental health diagnosis at this time.

You could have heard a pin drop. It was awesome.

Hopefully, what I had said opened up a new perspective to those therapists and reaffirmed the feelings of the therapists that chose to stay quiet and agree with me in their silence. I'm writing this wall of text not to brag (though that moment was pretty cool) but rather to offer solace to those that are quiet like me. Too often I see clients who feel that they are somehow broken because they were told they were 'odd', 'too quiet', 'too shy', 'boring' or any other derogatory term to describe a person who I would characterize as 'thoughtful', 'calm', 'controlled' and 'pensive'. There's nothing wrong with being quiet. Introspection is not a symptom. Introversion is not a disorder.

Now all my introverts slowly nod your heads in silent agreement.

Hey guys, so I've made a GOTY list, checked it twice (hah...) and am posting it here on the forums for those that are so inclined to read it. Keep in mind that my PC is very old and I can't play most modern games on it so that rules out a lot of games. I also don't own a Wii U or an Xbox One. So my games were limited to mobile and PS4 with one exception on the PC. Also keep in mind that I work a lot of hours and so my time dedicated to games is split between work and everything else I do. So where I am in my life has impacted what types of games I play. Also, I've played games for a long, long time and so I'm at a point now with the hobby where I tend to put a premium on novelty and uniqueness over mechanics. I'm also a sucker for atmosphere and tone, always have been, and I've always liked games, and movies and music, that try something interesting even if it doesn't always work. All that said, lets start with the my disappointments before I go into the actual list.

Disappointments of the Year:

Witcher 3

I beat all of this game on the PS4 and boy did it take a lot of effort. On the PS4 it is just such a technical mess. The framerate was rarely good for me (30 fps) and was often poor (sub 25 fps). I had audio glitches, animation glitches, scripting glitches. I didn't much care for the main story and the side stories were only occasionally intriguing enough to see through. I didn't really like any of the characters, I thought the art design was boring, and the combat was a slog. In hindsight, I'm not particularly sure why I stayed with it. I'm happy I played it just so I could have an opinion on it but I can't recommend it. Especially on consoles.

Everybody's Gone to the Rapture

I really, really like Dear Esther. The year it came out it was my #4 game of the year. I thought the presentation was phenomenal, the narrative was great and spoke to me on a personal level and it was fun to explore the environments. Everybody's Gone to the Rapture should be a perfect game for me, then, all things considered. I love atmosphere, I love new experiences and I loved the developer's past work that is most similar to this game. But this game was just boring. It's been said a million times but the movement was far too slow, even with the "run" button, and especially considering the size of the environment. Then the environment is rarely worth exploring. Unlike Dear Esther, rarely does exploring yield more narrative. But even when it does the narrative itself was mostly based around the day to day drama of characters I didn't really know, regarding topics I didn't care about, and so the drama was lost on me. Which is all a shame because the game looks great, minus the inconsistent framerate, the music is beautiful and the voice acting is really well done. It was just a boring, forgettable game that I had really high hopes for.

2015 GOTY

10: Ether One

Yes, this came out in 2014. But it was released on the PS4 in 2015. And it's my list and I'll do whatever I want with it. So Ether One is on it! Ether One, like Dear Esther and Gone Home, largely hangs its hat on the tone, atmosphere and the player's desire to explore the environment. Which is right up my alley. Though, the game does have some pretty well designed puzzles and secrets all over the place what I liked most was the atmosphere and the narrative. The game tells the story of a character exploring and repairing the mind of a client with dementia, via a computer simulation, in hopes that by repairing memories the client with dementia will recover. I won't give it away, but the story itself unfolds as more and more of this client's mind is explored eventually culminating in a fantastic conclusion.

9: MGS V

If I had more time to dedicate to it, this game would probably be higher on my list. But, honestly, I had the same amount of time when I played 40 hours of Bloodborne so maybe that's just a lame excuse. I really like MGS V. It plays really, really well and when everything goes according to plan it's really fun. Even when nothing goes to plan it's fun improvising. I just didn't spend enough time with it to fall in love with it. I think it was because, though a game like Bloodborne can be stressful to a lot of people, I've been playing From Software games since the King's Field games on the first Playstation. So I understand the flow of those games and don't feel the same anxiety other people might. But I feel that anxiety and stress with MGS V. Yes, I can improvise when things go terrible but sometimes, like after a long day of work or during my limited free time during the weekends, I just don't want to. That said, MGS V is a fantastic game.

8: Broken Age

Broken Age is pleasant. I mentioned the long work days a lots of stress earlier, right? Broken Age is one of those games where you can just wrap yourself up in it and all that stress just goes away. It looks amazing, the music and sound design is delightful and it tells a nice little story. This was my 'relax' drug of choice for a while. So that alone puts it on my list. It's also a really good adventure game which is a genre I haven't played in a long time.

7: Fallout 4

I really liked Morrowind. And then I really liked Oblivion. Then I really liked Fallout 3. Then I liked New Vegas a little less. Then I really liked Skyrim for like 40 hours but by hour 90 the love had dissipated. And now I like Fallout 4...but, guys, this design isn't quite what it used to be, is it? I mean it's good. But it's exactly the same. Well, there are differences but I don't really care about those differences. Yeah, you can build settlements but, you know, who cares. Yeah, the shooting is better but it's only gone from poor to average. Yeah VATS doesn't freeze time but, you know, whatever. I'm playing this on the PS4 and it's pretty ugly, the framerate is impacted for seemingly nonexistent reasons considering how pretty shitty the game looks, the voice acting is ok and the main story is fine. I do like this game. I do. I swear. But this is kind of it for me and Bethesda open world games if the next Elder Scrolls and Fallout are just as sloppy and just as similar as this game is to its predecessors.

6: You Must Build a Boat

I drive a lot for my job and when I get to my destinations I do a lot of waiting. And while I wait I mess around with mobile games. Like 10 Million before it, You Must Build a Boat was my go to mobile game for a long time. It's just an addicting game. It's not as novel as 10 Million was but it doesn't really need to be. It's fun, it's engaging and I played the hell out of it.

5: Talos Principle

Another 2014 game I played when it was rereleased in 2015 on the PS4. This is a great puzzle game with a really, really cool narrative. Without getting into spoiler territory I left this game questioning how I would have felt had I been Adam in the Garden of Eden and coming to the conclusion that I would have probably had been miserable. I also had deep thoughts on the nature of consciousness, humanity, and the value, or lack thereof, of free will and choice. Oh yeah, it's also a really cool puzzle game.

4: Until Dawn

This game was fun. Even when things went terribly it was a ton of fun. Yeah, the writing is really dumb and the main story has a million problems and the gameplay isn't very mechanically interesting. But whatever. This game is fun.

3: Her Story

My one PC game! I first heard about this game, probably like a lot of you, through this site and thought I'd give it a shot. So I woke up one Saturday morning, made and ate my breakfast, made a pot of coffee and sat down to try out Her Story. Six hours later I had played the ever loving shit out of this game, was wrapping my brain around the story, and going to Youtube to look up Jody Arias police interviews. The next day I watched the full, chronologically correct and uncut video of each interview on Youtube dying to see what videos I had missed and if my conclusion of the story was correct. What a great, great game.

2: Bloodborne

My favorite game on the Playstation was King's Field II. The three Souls games last generation were some of my favorite games on those consoles and Bloodborne is one of my favorite PS4 games all for the same reasons: atmosphere and the lack of hand holding. I love atmosphere and exploring in games because it allows me to feel fully wrapped up in a game's world. When a game doesn't hold the player's hand it encourages that exploration and experimentation which makes me as the player feel like a living part of that world. Just like the character, I don't know when I play these games what to expect next in the game I just have to explore and discover on my own. All of the From games I've played have excelled at this and Bloodborne is no exception. Plus, the gameplay loop of explore, grind for experience, become more technically sound with the mechanics and beat a boss is really satisfying. Bloodborne isn't as good as the other Souls games to me because of the lack of loot and the simplified level progression but it is still a ton of fun.

1: Life is Strange

Sort of like when the first season of Telltale's Walking Dead first came out, I eagerly anticipated every episode of Life is Strange. I thought the premise was awesome, the characters grew on me, the choices were surprising and, for lack of a better word, ballsy and the story stuck the landing for me at the end. But what makes this game stand out is that is has a ton of moxie. Yeah, there are some technical issues and some of the writing can be a little rough but my God is it a charming thing. Of the games I played this year, this was the game I look back at the most fondly. It was the most memorable and was the most fun I had with a game this year. So it easily takes my GOTY.

Honorable Mentions: Tales of Zysteria, Project Cars, Dying Light, Rocket League

Nostalgia is a hell of a thing. I was born in 1986 right when the NES was huge. And the Master System existed. By the way. My Dad had gotten into games before I was born because my Mom had bought him an Odyssey when it came out originally. He then bought a Colecovision (a system that had better graphics than the Atari 2600 but used the absurd number pad controllers the Intellivision used). After that, because he thought the graphics looked better, he bought a Master System instead of an NES. So, I should have grown up playing a Master System. But, I actually spent all my time playing the Colecovision instead.

For those that have never played an older system, pre-8-bit era, the game design was really different. Most games didn't end and the goal was to get the highest score. The games themselves were really one trick ponies. Pitfall had three to four platforming puzzles and one goal; collect gold. Tapper was about serving drinks to customers before they reach the end of a counter and collect tips along the way. The games were great but they are a far cry from modern game design. They are what one might expect from mini-games in modern games. Then the SNES and Genesis came out.

I went straight from the Colecovision to the Genesis and what a huge difference. Not just technically but in terms of design. Games had multiple mechanics, stories and endings. They were long and detailed. That change led me to dive head first into longer, more detailed oriented games. Games like Shining Force, Phantasy Star and Dune II. I became obsessed with games that required focus over reflexes because, with the Colecovision, nearly every game was reflex based. But the Genesis wasn't exactly a breeding ground for the types of games I really gravitated towards. If I would have had a PC I would have been locked to that monitor 24/7. But, instead, we got a Sega-CD. Which, oddly enough, has more in common with the PC then some people might expect.

The Sega-CD gets a bit of a bad rep as a FMV box. Games like Prize Fighter, the Scottie Pippen game, Sewer Shark and Night Trap set a tone for a lot of games that came out on that system. As a result, those are the games that are remembered minus a few exceptions like Sonic CD and Snatcher. But what people over look are the PC ports that came to the system and the original games that may as well have been PC games because of their design. How many of you have heard of Thunderstrike? Thunderstrike was an action game made by Core Design, pre-Tomb Raider, where the player controlled a helicopter from the cockpit taking out objectives within a mode-7 like 3D environment. The helicopter had multiple weapons, objectives took many forms and there were side objectives as well and the graphics were top notch...for a Sega-CD game. Like Colecovision to Genesis, this was a jump in design that couldn't have been realized to this extent on the Genesis.

What about Dune? Dune is still one of my favorite games because it is just so weird. It was a PC port based, kind of sort of a little bit, on the David Lynch film. Except the story, characters and events are different. Basically they got to use film clips here and there and had the likeness to Kyle Maclachlan. The game was a mix of a first-person point and click adventure with a resource management sim. It was hard, very PC like and minus graphical and sound differences was a perfect port of the PC game on Sega-CD. It was great and offered an experience that would have been so hard to do on the Genesis.

Games like Thunderstrike and Dune pushed what that system and what 16-bit design was capable of. The original Sega-CD games (Lunar, Blast Corps, Soul Star) along with the PC ports (Wing Commander) and ports from other consoles like the MSX (Snatcher) the Sega-CD offered players experiences that allowed for game design and worlds that consoles rarely saw. I remember Jeff saying that a huge number of European developers had adopted the Genesis and the Sega add-ons and I have to wonder if that different perspective is what lead to the change in design language (at least for me as a consumer in the US). Regardless, the Sega-CD was more than a FMV box and did what Sega's second add-on, the 32X couldn't do minus a few exceptions that prove the rule (Metalhead, Shadow Squadron). It pushed the console beyond what it could have been capable of prior to its creation. And, to me, mimics, to a very small degree, the type of design you see in games on current systems and the PC.

But like I said, nostalgia is a hell of a thing. I'm mostly writing this because I found myself feeling nostalgic and went down a youtube rabbit hole looking up old Sega-CD games and was pleasantly surprised by what I saw My memory served me better than I had hoped. Or I'm blinded by nostalgia. Either way, I love the Sega-CD and I'm not ashamed to admit it. And to celebrate my remembered love of that system here is a bad ass song from the Sega-CD version of Terminator that I used to think was the coolest song in the world.

Hey dudes, I wrote a short story and have published it on Amazon. You can find it here if you'd like to check it out. Thanks to @darthorange for helping me edit it and with the title. I'm putting this here and not linking it to the forums because I'm not sure how I can bring this up in a thread without it sounding like self-promotion. But I bet it's ok to self-promote in a blog that isn't linked to the main forums. Or at least I'm assuming that's true. Regardless, there's the link if you want to check out this thing I wrote.