2015 was a dense year! There was an alarming number of high-quality games (and perhaps a few too many large, long, open-world games) and due to my busy schedule with graduate school, I haven't been able to complete some of the ones that I've wanted to yet. Hopefully I find time to catch up on the games I most wanted to get to. Either way, strong year for everyone involved (although a little more lean on the Nintendo front, compared to Nov 2013-Nov 2014).
There is no game that I enjoyed losing myself in more this year than this one. It’s odd to say about a Metal Gear game, where every game has had esoteric and awkward controls that you deal with to get to the insanity and cool bosses, but the controls are possibly the best in any third person action game to date. Seamlessly marking enemies, instructing buddies to distract or attack, and seeing how much chaos can be wreaked while still pulling out perfect S ranks in missions was all such a delight. I had numerous moments where I wish I had saved a clip of the madness happening around me, and they all make for excellent stories to tell others. It all makes up for the awesome but unearned plot twist at the end and a tonally dissonant and bizarrely violent first mission.
I have every trophy in Bloodborne, including the new DLC content. It managed to terrify me and shake things up, even for a veteran of the Souls series. Still, the lack of variety in environments and in gameplay options, the fairly uniform look throughout, as well as several cheap, crappy late-game areas ended up putting a dent in my overall enjoyment of this game over the previous two games. I did enjoy how it kept me on my toes though and took me out of my comfort zone. Great game. Dark Souls>Dark Souls II>Bloodborne>Demon’s Souls
Arkham City definitely didn’t sell me on the open world Batman formula, but Arkham Knight totally did. I actually enjoyed the vehicle sequences a lot, even if they were overdone and repetitive at times. I liked the tone of the story and where it ends up going overall, and the combat felt satisfying as ever. It was a fitting end to Rocksteady's series, and an impressive one at that.
Okay, I’m truly hesitant to believe the hype from critics around indie darling games ever since Gone Home (the bad lesbian high school romance non-horror walking simulator garbage), but after an hour or so I warmed up to this butt-ugly weird RPG due to its odd and endearing sense of humor, its unique and funny battle system, and the unusual twists it takes based on your choices. It subverts the expectations you’d have coming to it as if it’s a classic 16-bit game, especially with how it treats the option to kill or spare enemies. I really love the soundtrack too, and it has great characters and an unexpectedly interesting story. I don’t necessarily dig the pacifism bent (I find pacifism generally to be very immoral) but the game handles it in its own universe in a unique way as far as how you interface with games. Quite the surprise.
Blindingly beautiful art, silky smooth controls and an excellently high level of challenge make this one a real winner to me. I had issues with the way combat worked (I sort of wish it just didn’t have it at all), and the inability to play the game after beating it to explore and get some last-minute collectibles is a really stupid design decision. Otherwise, I found this game to be brilliant and fun.
Titan Souls gets right to the point: boss battles are some of the coolest things in video games. You are a character with a bow and an arrow. And you can roll. That’s it! You never gain more abilities or more weapons, and there are exactly 19 bosses and then the game is over. There’s some mild puzzle solving to get to some of the bosses, and there is a little bit of backstory there, but that’s it. I love that the game just gets to the point and is super challenging, and I had a blast playing through it and getting the optional trophies for most of the bosses.
Look, I know I might be alone in this, but I’ve never thought to myself “Hey, Mario games are super dope, but I wish I could make my own levels!” I’m the world’s #1 Super Mario fan (see my blog on why Super Mario Galaxy is the greatest thing ever made by humans), but I just don’t care about making my own stuff. At all. However, seeing what other players come up with can sometimes be really fun (or a complete chore) and it makes me appreciate just how genius those designers at Nintendo are in their level designs. I like the tools and options that are available, though in a traditional Nintendo manner the online sharing tools and discovery of levels is absolutely horrific.
Nintendo’s take on a competitive multiplayer online shooter is an unexpected treat. I like the basic turf wars mode most (paint as much of the map as possible in your team’s color before the other team does), and the post-release support has been excellent and all free. I even enjoyed the puzzle-based single player mode.
I never played any of this game in early access, and I came at it fresh. While Nuclear Throne is tough and unforgiving, I find it immediately accessible and replayable in a way that convinces me that I will be coming back to it over and over again over this next year.
This is a finely-tuned, 2D sidescrolling turn-based strategy game that is a joy to play. It can occasionally get REALLY gnarly hard in a hurry, and failure is punished fairly brutally, but there are enough options to tweak the difficulty that it’s not too bad. I like all the robots and the music and general atmosphere of the game. It's quite impressive for a downloadable 3DS game.
[Honorable Mention] An absolute delight to look at and to play. I don’t like soccer or soccer video games, but when you combine it with rocket RC cars and big explosions and crazy upsets…I enjoy playing this game a lot. I just wish it had some more modes that weren’t a sports game! But I intend to get to it and play more, especially online.
[Hall of Shame] I really enjoyed The Wolf Among Us and The Walking Dead, so I look forward to a lighter, more humorous story from Telltale, but I just haven’t gotten around to playing past the first half hour of the first episode yet. I’ll get to it eventually.
[Hall of Shame] The few hours I’ve played of 2013’s Tomb Raider reboot has me wanting to eventually get back to it in spite of strange pacing issues and a very morbid tone. I might just jump to Rise of the Tomb Raider after reading a synopsis and watching a video or two though. MGSV took too long to get through for me to have time to play this game this year.
[Hall of Shame] I’m not sure I get the insane levels of praise heaped on this game (or series) but so far there seems to be a pretty good, engaging open-world RPG to be found within the confines of The Witcher 3. I'd like to understand why people love it so much, but I only have so much time for such dense, long games and it’ll have to wait.
