Game of the Year 2015
When confronted with one of the best years in video games in nearly a decade, you have to whittle down a list to 10 games you loved in the year. Here's my (not perfect, totally debatable) list:
List items
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Rare is the game that makes a player feel an emotional connection or resonance with its characters. Even rarer is a game that focuses on the intimate relationships between women or from a woman's perspective. Life is Strange is the best game of 2015 because it not only accomplishes these rare feats, but because it dares to let the player second-guess themselves. The time travel mechanic, which allows Max to travel through different conversations, subtly plays with the player's expectations. Slowly, the player realizes that they aren't necessarily using the power to learn about the wealth of well-realized characters in this story; they are also using it to craft the relationships of those characters, and affect their lives broadly.
Though the ultimate resolution of the story may not stick the landing for everyone (it did for me), Life is Strange still tells an incomparably gripping tale of high school drama and relationships and stands at the forefront of a strong class of video game narratives.
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When you spend over 140 hours with one game, you begin to question your sanity. Did I do this out of obligation, obsession, or worse yet, a concerning preoccupation with clearing out quest logs? Or did I do this because this game's writing, narrative, characters, and world design sucked me in and never let go?
Fortunately for my sanity, it appears to be the latter. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is the culmination of the open-world RPG formula, with better writing and deeper, richer characters than virtually every one of its peers. The combat is forgettable (or worse, frustratingly thin), and the voice acting is certainly hit-or-miss, but the narrative bounces buoyantly among a bevy of different stories. The global stories are dense with lore and consequence, and the smaller, more local stories are absolutely tantalizing for the revelations about the world of the Witcher they unveil. CD Project Red has crafted a masterpiece, and it's only a matter of time before we see the lessons other developers draw from this special game.
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How much rocket-powered car soccer did I anticipate playing this year? Very little. How much did I play? Well over 80 hours. That's a testament to the best-designed multiplayer game in almost a decade, and the most addictive design I've encountered in quite a while.
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This game is a hot mess. On one hand, it's a singularly great example of interactive game design. MGSV is loaded with diverse mission objectives with innumerous, completely variable ways to tackle each mission, a control scheme that feels intuitive and incredibly responsive, and a wonderful variety of different weapons and items to try out. On the other hand, its story is a hot piece of trash, barely justifying its overly-serious nature, one of its characters is essentially an objectified symbol of misogyny in video games (i.e. that rain scene), and the game is marred by micro-transactions and poorly-conceived systems that provide the player no tangible or enjoyable reward. It's at once frustrating and fulfilling, and perhaps that's a fitting goodbye to a series that has often been defined by that very thin line between the two.
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A masterclass in video game design, Super Mario Maker is a gateway of possibilities. It's only downfall: it's hard to stick with it when you're kind of tired of Mario.
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A thoroughly-enjoyable return to form for the point-and-click adventure genre.
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Music rhythm games are like a fling I have every so often: incredibly satisfying, but very fleeting. P4D has an incredible collection of remixed Persona 4 tracks, a somewhat-interesting tale of the distance and callous treatment inherent to young celebrity, and as much Nanako as you could possibly handle. Though it is far from the most complex in its genre, it's rare to find a music rhythm game this enjoyable.
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Like Far Cry 4, Rise of the Tomb Raider is a great example of the two-year cycle of iterative design. Story and narrative cohesion are better, the gameplay is more varied, and the combat is just a bit more engaging than its predecessor. That being said, Brad's crazy, this thing has nothing on Uncharted.
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David Cage, direct your attention to this well-executed narrative. It's campy, it's stupid, and it's engaging in a way that I never expected.
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More like Yoshi's Handicrafts Zen.
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