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lxm

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Favourite 2015 Games

A list of my 10 favourite games from 2015

Some close but not-quite games were:

  • Undertale - Some of the best characters of the year paired with a great story and perfectly fitted music.
  • Invisible Inc. - Incredibly smart, turn-based stealth. I plan to go back to this one.
  • Nuclear Throne - The best shoot-em-up rogue-like I've played. A really fun, pick-up-and-play game.
  • Rocket League - Fun to just pick up and tough to master.
  • Helldivers - Absolute blast with co-op but really needs friends to enjoy it.
  • Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 - Probably the best the CoD multiplayer has been in a long time, though I found the single player to be a complete dud after Advanced Warfare.
  • Guitar Hero Live - I never would have expected to buy another Guitar Hero game but the streaming music video portion of GH Live is how I want to play a music game today.

Also: Despite it being one of my most played and amongst my favourite releases for 2015, I left Destiny: The Taken King off this list because it's an expansion and not a full game. That said, The Taken King (and 2.0 patch that came with it) seriously reinvigorated Destiny with some much needed systems and revamps as well as a story that was actually pretty good. I loved Destiny when it released but The Taken King has turned it into a game that is much easier to recommend.

List items

  • Dark Souls is one of my favourite games of all time and for a while, I thought I might actually like Bloodborne more. That turned out to not be the case, but regardless Bloodborne takes a familiar formula from the Souls series and turns it into an incredible new world that takes Victorian horror, adds FromSoftware's brilliant design work and throws in some H.P. Lovecraft. It's unsettling, violent and amazing.

  • The progress each Witcher game makes over its predecessor is nothing short of incredible. While other series make slow iterative progress, CDProject Red has made each chapter in their Witcher series exponentially grander and Witcher 3 turns the series into one of the best open worlds ever made. I do wish, however, that the story didn't feel like it peaked so early with the Bloody Baron questline as it struggled to keep the same emotional impact throughout the rest of the game.

  • I've always enjoyed the Dirt games but thought they were at their best when rallying. Dirt Rally takes the series back to a much more hardcore, sim-like experience where mistakes are punished and overconfidence will send you out of a series early. While that can make for a lot of frustrations—learning and completing a course (or even just a clean hairpin turn) is extremely gratifying and pushes you to improve even further.

  • I haven't really understood what was happening in Metal Gear's story since MGS2 so I appreciated Phantom Pain's greater focus on open gameplay. However I don't feel like they balanced that well with the amazing moments that I've come to expect from the series. Quiet, your sniper companion, is also hamstrung with cringeworthy design decisions that keep her from being the best new character of the year and just make her kind of embarrassing. That said, MGS5 still has the most satisfying stealth gameplay around and knows how to reward you, regardless of how you want to play.

  • Bethesda open world games have—in the past—been a bit of a balance between incredibly immersive worlds and relatively dull gameplay. Fallout 4 brings the shooting up to a more enjoyable point and also includes a world packed full of surprises and cool things to uncover. Unfortunately a lot of the writing isn't particularly memorable and much of it feels a little familiar if you've played a lot of Fallout 3.

  • If Dying Light had been a single player experience I would have enjoyed it, but not necessarily finished it and I definitely wouldn't remember it as fondly as I do now. Allowing the entire game to be played co-op was as smart a decision as deciding to release the game when very little else was on the market.

  • I bought a 3DS specifically to play this and wasn't disappointed. I eventually got pulled onto other games but I still want to go back to hunting monsters and crafting awesome armour.

  • When I first started Until Dawn, I was enjoying the schlocky teen-horror story and characters and 'choose-your-own-adventure' style gameplay. However the further I got the more I was sucked in. Even the characters I disliked from the start were still fun to watch as I did my best to keep them from grisly deaths. Graphically the game straddles the line between incredible looking and the uncanny valley and I wish the framerate was more stable. But overall Until Dawn is surprisingly fun and I'm really looking forward to where the studio takes it next.

  • I still think Arkham Asylum is the best Batman game ever made, but I think Arkham Knight is a solid second (Arkham City didn't blow me away despite being its first open world game). Graphically the game is incredible and though I thought the Arkham Knight villain was a bit dull, I really enjoyed how the Joker was brought back into the mix. Without him I don't think this game would have been nearly as memorable.

  • I got this quite late in the year and haven't come close to completing it, but what I've played takes the already great Tomb Raider reboot and refines it so much further. The writing isn't fantastic but everything else in this game is extremely solid and really enjoyable. Hopefully Naughty Dog are taking notes.
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