Yo here's a list of games I enjoyed.
Honorable mention since it's hard to rank and only on itch.io so I dunno if it qualifies for Giant Bomb's wiki: Joy Exhibition by STRANGETHINK. I spent so much time just chilling out making some weird ass paintings.
Here's one of my personal favourites:
Undertale is a game that I'm amazed one person made yet paradoxically is a game that only a single person could have made. It's such a cohesive game, blending a supremely well realised story and world with inventive gameplay mechanics and some real surprises that do things I've never seen before in games. Undertale's soundtrack has been stuck in my head for months now, as has almost every aspect of the game.
The Witcher 3 is so insanely well-crafted in almost every aspect it puts every other modern RPG to date to shame. Every little nook and cranny has some lovingly crafted aspect (only noticed a single repeated cave system in the world). The storyline is among the strongest and most affecting in video games with the choices you're presented with feeling both realistic and dramatic, especially to Witcher veterans.
Wild Hunt's one of the few games where I've stopped what I was doing and just looked around for minutes at a time because it's such an audiovisual colossus, untouchable by many other games. Every little character is animated to an extent that feels very believable and authentic.
It's surprisingly free of open-world jank too, with NPCs only occasionally telling me about how having two swords is blowing their mind multiple times while vibrating. The combat is great but doesn't have enough depth to last the 50-100+ hours of game. That said, you eventually become all but walking god so it's no big deal.
Flywrench is a sublime experience. Everything about it feels so good and completely natural. Everything about this game speaks to me on a base level in such a way that I just can't help but be enamored. From the soundtrack to the game's dope as hell aesthetic to even the gameplay loop is satisfying in a way many games aren't.
MGSV is like Far Cry 2/Crysis was made by an insane person. It has many shortcomings, but how perfectly its gameplay is executed is unlike many other games. It has both a breadth and depth to its gameplay options that sustains it for its insanely long playtime.
A multiplayer masterclass. This game essentially came out of nowhere, boosted by its launch with PlayStation Plus and captured the world by storm for a few weeks. Rocket League has a purity to it that lets it be understood easily, even with some crazy deep mechanics. The fact that it's fun even if you're terrible at it is always a good sign.
An absolutely fantastic Metroidvania. Every aspect of it is sublime from the beautiful art and soundtrack to the precision platforming and modern progression. Add in some supremely fun abilities and it's just a joy to play.
Downwell's design is nothing new, but it's how it weaves its influences together that makes it special. Nothing is extraneous, and the game is extremely well balanced in its difficulty that lets you improve on your own merits and develop your own playstyle.
It's reminiscent of Spelunky in a variety of ways, but Moppin truly understands and distills what made that game great. The result is some of the most intense fun I've had this year.
Grow Home seems like a small crew took to breaking down a 3D platformer and trying to figure out how they can apply the framework of the games they enjoyed as kids into a modern context. And it's largely succesful! The game is weirdly beautiful, the procedural animation is wonky in the best possible way and it's just plain fun to traverse the world with your silly robot.
The most fun I've had with Call of Duty in years. The campaign is so incredibly weird I can't help but enjoy it. The changes to mobility and the addition of characters with abilities make the multiplayer much more dynamic.
It's still the same base game but even the meta-progression and cosmetic unlocks feel rewarding in a way that Call of Duty hasn't in quite a while.
As far as art-installations-as-games go, Panoramical might be one of the best ever. The combination of effects synthesizer and interactive visualiser is so compelling, it almost induces a meditative state as you slowly move each of the nine XY pads around, seeing what you can come up with.
I really wish there was more content, because what's there currently is just superb in every aspect.
Life Is Strange manages to weave a compelling story in a genre I've largely given up on. Its characters, while maybe overwritten, do feel authentic and empathisable. It falls into story clichés with its twists and turns but I feel that it earns them and leans into them earnestly enough that makes it fun to watch play out.
A well made metroidvania that plays to and against the expectations of the player with its unique set of abiltiies. Axiom Verge plays well, with some finnicky controls as you unlock more abilities.
The world of Sudra has some fantastic atmosphere, aided by the superb art and sound design that conveys a foreign, ravaged landscape in a way that can be quite unsettling at times. That said, the story's kind of nonsense but intriguing enough.
This is one of those games that feels impossible when you first start, but after a few hours it clicks and you feel like a drift god. I love the aesthetic design, and the developer teases Absolute Rally which I'll be there day one for.
The follow up to Hexcells? Yes please. I regard Matthew Brown's expertise in crafting puzzles highly, and SquareCells doesn't disappoint in the slightest. A more traditional take on the Picross formula, Brown introduces a new mechanic that changes the way you parse puzzles and allows him to withhold information. It's not especially long but it gets quite hard.
Regency understands what makes a card game good. Instead of pure skill, it's about using technique to manage and mitigate luck. While playing the game you develop rules and heuristics in your head to achieve the best possible result. Eventually it all becomes automatic and second nature. It's kind of brilliant and engrossing (I beat the game in 9 hours over 2 sittings). The set dressing is kind of just there and the story's not interesting in the slightest but that's okay.
Perfect to zone out to, Mini Metro is a beautiful exercise in spinning plates. What starts seemingly simple mutates into a complex beast, threatening to devour your entire city's transport infrastructure. You always start confident you can handle whatever the game throws at you but your hubris ultimately ends stretched too thin and crumbling like a deck of cards.
I spent too much time fixing my lines aesthetically and not how they flowed. I'm an awful conductor.
Indie lords Vlambeer have crafted yet another intricately designed action game. Nuclear Throne is so much fun in the moment that I forgave it for being quite 'short' when I beat it in 3 hours of playtime. There's a lot of replayability of course, and the moment to moment action is exhilarating.
I do wish Vlambeer would make a game that felt like more than a distraction but they're so mechanics focused I imagine that's not what they're aiming for.
There's not much to this odd alien gardening / god game, but it's so weirdly captivating as you try to spin plates keeping species from going extinct. Eventually my planet became a spider and roach infested hellscape, which I took as my cue to stop playing.
Read Only Memories is a solidly written adventure game with a great audiovisual aesthetic that does more than simply pay homage to 90s visual novels.
The story is intriguing and while I do occasionally have some issues with the game's tone in spots, it does feel very fitting for how San Franciscans will speak 50 years in the future.
Extremely novel, Her Story is so unique I hope games don't attempt to clone this whole hog. While I honestly didn't find it super memorable or revelatory, the mystery kept me interested for long enough which some well-executed moments.
A fiendishly hard and mind-bending puzzle platformer. Circa Infinity is really beautiful and tightly tuned, though I tend do quit this game in frustration quickly. The great soundtrack does help keep you going though.
Cibele as a game is nothing. As a piece of interactive art it's quite interesting. Some of the writing can be a bit hamfisted but it does come across as genuine. There's a voyeuristic aspect to what Freeman's presenting through excerpts of her real life and this deeply personal nature makes me feel conflicted inside. It probably helps that I can see a lot of myself in some of the situations that Nina presents, and it was actually legitimately hard to get through some spots.
Asking $9 for just over an hour of gameplay is maybe a bit hard to swallow, but it's worth checking out if the story of first love by way of MMO could resonate with you.
How do you make a sequel to 2012's most left-field game? It's a hard question and I think Dennation did admirably. You're never going to recapture the magic but Hotline Miami 2 is a sequel that's weird as fuck. Some of the design decisions are questionable but it's a solid enough sequel. Soundtrack's pretty alright too but if anything I'd say there's too many tracks on it, ends up diluting it a bit.
A short, free and funny walking simulator that continues in the great subgenre of "Exasperated British Narrator" comedy. Amstell puts in a solid performance and you can't complain with a free game even if it feels like they're screaming "Hey, remember Stanley Parable? We made that!"
Dead At Sea is a game that realises its tight limitations and scope, crafting a world that makes you not really care about those particulars. Its text puzzles, while sometimes a bit obtuse and brute force-y convey a pretty interesting murder mystery with mostly charming writing and audio-visually it ticks all my boxes. I saw the ending coming a mile away but it's still a fun romp.
Yes, this game is just Shadow of the Colossus but with one hit kills. I don't necessarily think those two design concepts work in tandem all the time—the system of one hit kills detracts from the majesty that SotC presented and these boss battles deserve—but it works over its fairly short 4 hour play time though. The world's beautiful and I think the isolation and emptiness works as you traverse it.
... Can we stop putting Souls in the title of our games now though?
A puzzle game that's just okay. The controls never felt quite intuitive, and some puzzles near the end are frustrating (please test your games against colourblind people). The narrative is quite interesting and deals with some serious topics, though the more comedic elements didn't really click. Aesthetically it's beautiful though, and the soundtrack from FTL's Ben Prunty is lovely as always.
Despite obviously being a very personal project, I found Beginner's Guide deeply inauthentic. There's some interesting moments and I enjoy the presentation quite a bit, but the overall story felt oddly put together to me. It asks interesting questions with a structure that should appeal to me, but it just didn't and I can't figure out why.
I'm not a big fan of this game. I love Uplink but Hacknet has, in my opinion, too many poor design choices and feels quite rushed if you ever look below the surface.
That said, decompiling the game and looking at the source code to see why I wasn't getting this broken Steam achievement was a pretty fantastic moment this year!
