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Rufuscrim

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My games of 2015

It was a hell of a year for video games, wasn't it? I haven't done one of these in a few years, but I felt like this year was just so jam-packed with stellar releases that I would be remiss if I didn't at least try to make a Top 10.

Thanks to the previously untapped power that is Video Game Rentals™, I was able to play a lot of this year's hot new jams. Here, however, is a list of big name games that I want to play but did not, to help explain any gaps in my list:

  • Undertale
  • Tales from the Borderlands
  • Cities: Skyline
  • SOMA
  • Galak-Z
  • Splatoon
  • Rebel Galaxy
  • Star Wars Battlefront (I played the beta though)
  • Just Cause 3

I enjoyed a lot of games this year, not all of which could make the list. Shout outs to Until Dawn, Broken Age, Halo 5, AC Syndicate, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, Batman: Arkham Knight and Heroes of the Storm for showing me a good time.

Now without further ado...

List items

  • The Witcher 3 told one of the best, most mature game stories I've ever seen. It is poignant, tragic, and incredibly human. It also makes a strong case that more games should have a playable epilogue that takes place "in medias res" because what an AMAZING way to cap off such a sprawling game and series. (I got the "snow" ending if anyone's wondering.) The swordplay is a lot of fun and a real challenge, with boss fights feeling like suitable culminations of a witcher's work. The world is beautiful and massive and lived in, and Novigrad is probably the best damn video game city I've ever seen. The expansion is a great value and adds an amazing quest line that approaches "Bloody Baron" level of excellence.

    I've been thinking a lot of about just what made this game so damned effective, and I've hit on at least one thing: The Witcher 3 is the antithesis of Bethesda's design ethos in open world game design. In Bethesda games, you can be anyone and do anything and it's a fun sandbox but it inevitably winds up feeling just a little bit aimless. In The Witcher 3, you ARE Geralt, professional monster hunter, and this is reinforced constantly through not only the story and the choices you make, but in the mechanics of tracking, preparing, and killing monsters.

    This game stayed with me throughout the year and I imagine it will for a while yet to come. In any other year, I could see any one of my top 4 games hitting my GotY spot, but this was a year like no other. The Witcher 3 is the best game I've played in the last several years.

  • Nobody makes games like Hideo Kojima. That is both high praise and mild criticism. But for every questionable decision in the game (the FOB crap, the poorly-handled story, and Quiet's... well, you know) there were a half dozen things about it that were incredible and unlike anything else on the market today. "MGS but the gameplay is good" would have been enough, but this... the gameplay is not merely good but exceptional, a new high water mark for stealth action games with a smorgasbord of diverse and interesting systems spinning at all times.

  • A lesson in purity of game design, Rocket League controls and plays flawlessly. This is the first game I've ever played where I actually felt compelled to share moments from it with the wider world. (Being facilitated by the PS4's share feature didn't hurt that fact.) From a raw moment-to-moment gameplay perspective, this is probably the game I had the most (nebulously-defined) "fun" with this year.

  • This was my time playing a "Souls" game, having been turned away by the threat of their extreme difficulty. I guess I had forgotten that with extreme difficulty comes extreme satisfaction. This game wins the award for "loudest exclamations of joy/sorrow" and makes me feel like an idiot for ever arguing against games where animation takes priority. Also a shout-out to the level design, which, were it any tighter, would cause the game to collapse in on itself like a black hole.

  • Scratched my sidescroller itch in a big Metroidvania way this year. I think I may have played this right after finishing Bloodborne, which seems like an appropriate way to prepare for the punishing/rewarding difficulty of this game. It is shot through with gorgeous hand-drawn art and a beautiful score which serve to demonstrate that a little extra production value can elevate an experience from good to great.

  • I did not expect to be as impressed by this game as I was. Even ignoring the downright abysmal writing, which made my physically cringe more than once, this game deserves its spot here. Crystal Dynamics made a beautiful world and populated it with lots of interesting and diverse things to do, not least of which was some actual good old fashioned raiding of tombs! Who'da thunk it! I feel like this game has found the apex of climbing mechanics and how to make climbing sequences diverse and interesting, and now it's all downhill from here. Oh well, they had a good run. At least they can probably still make their already-pretty-great stealth mechanics even better, right?

  • Fallout is pretty fresh in my mind, having just finished the main story as of this writing. (Railroad forever!) The main questline was better than I was expecting, given how little I remember about the story of F3 and NV (something something Liam Neeson something something Roman soldiers?) It remains fun as hell to explore the wastes and the combat is actually competent now. Plus Bethesda seems to have remembered that Fallout is supposed to be funny sometimes! The USS Constitution quest was probably the most I've laughed at a game in a while.

  • I think I almost had as much fun WATCHING people play impossibly hard levels as I did actually playing levels myself. I think this would have been eight-year-old me's game of the year for the sheer scope of what you can create in this game. This isn't at all the game's fault, but spending too much time in the creation tools started to feel like I was working in my off time!

  • I'm still amazed that games like this can get major publishers and relatively healthy budgets. Even the disappointing ending didn't ruin what was a heart(warming/wrenching) and honest story about growing up, growing apart, and growing mysterious time-rewinding powers (as ya do.) The very best moments in Life is Strange turned my stomach in knots. I would also be remiss if I didn't shout out the excellent voice work by Hannah Telle and Ashly Burch who both knocked it out of the park.

  • This game was over far too soon (or maybe stayed around just long enough) but what an experience they jam-packed into this mobile game. I couldn't really get into Hitman Go, as much as I appreciated the aesthetic it was going for. This time around, though, that (improved, I would argue) aesthetic is supported by the cleanest, cleverest puzzle design I experienced anywhere this year.
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