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project343

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Best of 2015

Honorable Mentions:

  1. Fallout 4
    When the honeymoon period ended, Fallout 4 plummeted to the bottom (and eventually off) my list. There are simply too many fundamental mechanical, narrative, and design flaws to warrant a top-10 spot. But boy that 5-40 hour wanderlust period was excellent.
  2. Invisible Inc.
    I feel like Invisible Inc. is a necessary studypiece in game design school. It's a bit reminiscent of Splunky in the way that it's a perfectly scaled experience that has clearly been refined over years. Every element is essential, satisfying, and thought-provoking... all in a genre mash-up that we haven't seen much of before: turn-based stealth.
  3. Starcraft 2: Legacy of the Void
    Narrative isn't why Legacy is on here (because it's typical Blizzard horseshit). Legacy is a bountiful package with tons of top-tier singleplayer missions, and some really great new modes. Of note, the cooperative mode really stood out to me. Comp stomps were always my thing, and they've found a way to make them much more replayable, and tied some really solid progression hooks in there.

The Shame List:

  • Pillars of Eternity
  • Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
  • Shadowrun: Hong Kong

List items

  • Undertale is the sort of game that could only be made and helmed by a single individual. It is uncompromising in its vision and ambition, but restrained in scope and scale where it most benefits the experience.

    From the core broad-stroke concept of an RPG without necessary violence, to the meta-commentary on how players approach choice-based RPGs, to the writing treating every single monster with the utmost humanizing respect--Undertale does it all. It's the sort of game that rewards player prodding, experimentation and analysis with some of the most rewarding narrative feedback.

    It made me laugh, cry and want to come back again and again to see if I could find something new and fresh. And it always came through for me.

  • Tales from the Borderlands is the best Telltale game, bar none. Where most other series relish in heartbreak and loss, Tales says "fuck it," and gives you a narrative experience loaded with badassery and comedic flare. You love your time in this world so much that you can't help but fall in love with the cast of characters, and when the drama heats up, there are moments of genuine anxiety and grief.

    I think the studio-wide effort to pump out as many loosely-interactive narrative experiences as possible may be burning out the developers and writers at Telltale. Tales from the Borderlands, by contrast, is a marvellous display of passion.

  • The at-a-glance core Bloodborne experience is some of the best third-person action out there. The aesthetic experience is a haunting, messed up treat; the kill-or-be-killed savagery to the combat pace is exhilarating; the enemy and boss design is absolutely top-notch. Hell, the lore and nuggets of narrative are the best in the series.

    The reason Bloodborne isn't higher on my list is because it whiffs the long-term landing. The build variety isn't there, the player vs. player experience isn't there, and the blood vial and bloodstone economies aren't there.

    The result is a game that is an incredible thirty-to-sixty hour experience that doesn't have the legs for additional play-throughs or long-term single-character play. That said, the initial run start-to-finish run through the game is absolutely the best in the series. It's an aesthetic, narrative and visceral treat.

  • 2015: the year full-motion video somehow made a resurgence. Her Story is arguably the best of these experiences, and is the natural evolution of the choose-your-own-adventure book genre. Man, it is such a fresh little experience. The most fascinating thing about Her Story is that FMV is essential to the experience, and interactivity is essential to the experience. It is a game that marries 'game' and 'video' in such a way that both--despite being such radically different and opposed mediums--are necessary.

    Is it one of the best 'games' I've played this year? Not at all. But it's one of the most memorable interactive fiction experiences I've ever had. I will never forget my experience with this 'game'(?).

  • I haven't quite figured out why the Witcher games are so impossible to get into. I mean, Geralt is a pretty fucking stale protagonist. The world of the Witcher is also missing a lot of the grandiosity of most traditional fantasy--it sometimes even feels a bit like a bunch of Polish folks trying their hand at historical role-playing. There's also a density to the world and mechanics that may put some people off initially.

    Whatever the reason, I've really struggled with the series in the past, and the Witcher 3 was the first in the series to grab ahold of me and not let for for some 50-70 hours. Too many GOTY lists will go on about the usual stuff you'd expect to hear about the Witcher 3: how great the game looks, how dense the world is, how devious gwent is, etc..

    Those are all valid praises, but I feel like the part of Witcher 3 that stands out for me is the tone that this particular entry has, and the vignette-style series that you come across while adventuring across the land. This game has the highest quality sidequest writing in any RPG that I've ever played. It's awe-inspiring that you can have a writing team writes the best content of the year, but also writes as much of it as it does. What pulled me across the world was not exploration, or the promise of progression... it was the idea that I may find another character with a history and story to share. It's a remarkable accomplishment.

  • The 2013 Tomb Raider reboot, in my mind, did three main things to set itself apart from the rest of the franchise: it brought the series back down to earth tonally, it established a new Metroidvania progression structure with loose open world elements, and it pushed survival mechanics and themes. It struggled with an overuse of brutal quicktime events, underused its briefly-introduced survival mechanics, and really failed to make anything meaningful happen narratively.

    While Rise of the Tomb Raider may struggle remedying the latter failure of its predecessor, it is the quintessential excellent video game sequel. It looks gorgeous, it plays beautifully, it refines the necessary and removes the unnecessary.

    Beyond nailing being a sequel, there is one thing that I found utterly enthralling about Rise of the Tomb Raider: it's pacing. The game has an incredible ebb and flow: pushing through dense and intense linear sequences to open up more of the game map, then getting lost in open world challenges, collection, and hunting--levelling up, unlocking new weapons, and getting yourself better equipped for the next chunk of combat-heavy sequences. As the more aimless gameplay starts to lose its appeal, you find yourself drawn to the next linear narrative push. Structurally, this game is a masterclass experience. That's why it's on the list.

  • Ori is supposed to be a cute little, child-friendly painterly stroll of an adventure. That's what all the trailers sold the experience as. Boy was my interpretation wrong.

    Honestly, the art is what pulled me to Ori, but the top-notch platforming and puzzle solving experience is what lingers with me. When you're moving at lightning speed through some dastardly-designed deathtraps, you don't have time to appreciate the art. It fades away in the background as being an incidental aspect of the experience. What remains is the best 2D platforming experience of the generation (so far).

    Ori clearly wins the award for 'most deceptive game of the year.'

  • The Life is Strange: the game of highs and lows.

    High? The core mechanic of time-manipulation in a narrative game is extremely novel. The game also has a masterful series-wide pacing with distinct episodic themes that marry beautifully with gameplay-relevant additions (Episode 2 boldly showing you that you have limits to your powers, for instance).

    Low? Some really forced-witty, cringe-worthy dialogue. It's as if the writers used Juno as a reference point for young adult exchanges, then missed that mark by several kilometres. Some scenes and dialogue sequences also need some serious editing (going on 30-40% longer than they should). I also feel like the entire second half of the final episode really misses the mark--treading too far away from what makes the series so endearing.

    Taken together, you have a beautifully memorable experience that could not leave me more excited to see a refined, honed Season 2.

  • Barring 2014's Unity, every year seems to feature an Assassin's Creed game on my list, and they're typically featured toward the bottom of the list. The series just sort of 'works' for me. It's a third-person, straightforward collect-a-thon that has a lot of satisfying mechanics and rarely frustrates. It's basically the yearly Fall game comfort food.

    It's been an incredible year for gaming, and as such, I'm sort of shocked that an Assassin's Creed game managed to make it into my list with the quantity and quality of its competition. That should be a testament to how well Syndicate succeeds at what it's trying to do.

    So what does it nail? The characters and tone are lighthearted, jovial and completely endearing--an essential aspect of the formula that Ubisoft tends to forget. The 'new gameplay hook' (pun intended) lets you grapple past a lot of the more mundane aspects of the series like crossing streets from an elevated level and reaching the tops of buildings. The new levelling structure, lack of tutorials, and lack of gating makes freeform exploration so satisfying--you are now immediately playing, in whatever location you want, with player-defined difficulty. The assassinations are now these delightfully designed, open-approach puzzles that, while a tad too easy, reward player agency in some shocking ways. Finally, the audiovisual experience is top notch: the gameplay performance is excellent, the Austin Wintory soundtrack is incredible, and the cinematic and narrative bits are beautifully presented.

    Good job, Ubisoft. You won me over again after Unity.

  • The Mario Maker package is theoretically incredible.

    The level creator is ridiculously intuitive and comprehensive. I don't even understand how they've streamlined it to this degree. Every aspect of the UI has been refined and polished with every bit of Nintendo charm that they could manage to pump into the experience. Their execution on this aspect of the experience is almost flawless. The initially-limited set of tools is a real bummer though; I have so many ideas for great levels, and I can't make them yet. But that's a short-term problem.

    The promise of an infinite number of Mario levels is only 'theoretically' incredible though. I started playing Mario Maker in late December and, even months after release, far too many of the levels I've been seeing are automated. On the average 'Normal' run through the 16 levels in 100 Mario Challenge, I see 4-5 automated levels, and usually 1-2 automated music levels. Of the actual levels that I get to play, roughly 70% of them are dogshit. So usually I see 2 worthwhile levels in the 16 level package.

    This sounds like nonsensical ranting in a top-ten list, but it's exemplary of why Mario Maker is on my list, and why it is where it is. It deserves to be a top-10 game for what it tries to do, but the experience just isn't there yet. I want to have more fun with it than what I'm having, but I see the brilliance on the horizon.
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