The Top Ten Games I Played This Year

Unlike 2015, I just didn't have enough time or desire to play through enough of 2016's games to write a list solely dedicated to this year's releases. Instead, you get a list of the best of what I did play.

Unfortunately, the list feels a bit forced this year, more because of my growing detachment with games in general than any real fault of the games themselves. This was going to be the year I bought an Xbox One, but made the very adult decision that I just don't dedicate myself enough to games to warrant a whole new system. That said, I'm really excited about the potential for the Switch and look forward to seeing what its lineup is like.

Sparse. We know it'll be sparse. But still... I hope anyways. All right, enough pre-amble. Have a great 2017, folks!

List items

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  1. Watch Dogs 2

  I liked the original Watch Dogs. The problems people had with Aidan Pierce didn't seem to bug me as much, and I thought the concepts were fascinating, if slightly underwhelming in execution.

  Watch Dogs 2 fixes the problems of the first and crafts greatness out of the experience. The protagonists - a small group of optimistic hackers looking to change the world for the better - are charismatic as all get-out and I genuinely want to see the cast back for a third go around. The villain isn't a typical mustache twirling Evil Dude, but more subtle and strikingly original. He's someone I wanted to see go down in the end, and how that eventually happens is a pretty great way to end the game.

  The open-world stuff could have used just a bit more variety, but what's here is entertaining simply because the representation of San Francisco and its surrounding area are so much fun to traverse. I'm not really familiar with San Francisco, having only been through there once, but it feels like they've nailed the heart of the area at least as a fictional version of itself.

  This is just a really well-crafted, polished game with a lot of room to grow going forward. I'm stoked to see what Ubisoft does with a third iteration.

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  2. Hitman

  Hitman is an amazingly flexible game. I'm usually terrible at stealth-focused games like this, so I waited a damn long time to purchase this one, thinking I'd wind up having to put it down after a few frustrated hours.

  It didn't turn out that way, thankfully. Once I got the hang of the game's feel and controls, I surprised myself by being mediocre at Hitman - and then as I slowly progressed through the game's levels, I found myself actually moving somewhere just north of mediocre. Maybe not good, maybe not even great, but I'm passably decent at Hitman and I'm damn happy about it.

  This is mechanically the best game of 2016, almost without compare. You could argue Overwatch is also on that level, and I'd be fine with that. But from the main menu to the execution of a long-planned hit, this game feels well executed (get it?) on almost every level.

  The only complaints I have, and what ultimately kept this from my number one spot, is that a couple of the levels just don't have the replay factor of the rest of the game. Whatever season 2 brings us, I hope the level design team takes a good long look at what worked and what didn't. If they do, season 2 will almost certainly be on my top ten next year too.

  I should note too that while this doesn't affect my ranking of this game on this list, Hitman also did a fantastic job of bringing my dad and brother together in a way no other game really has. It was a lot of fun watching them figure out their plan of attack on each level, spaced out across several months.

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  3. Overwatch

  Overwatch is the most accessible FPS I've played in that I don't actually have to be good at shooting people to be helpful. In fact, I've made Play of the Game n absolutely stupid number of times just for throwing down shield boosts and defensive turrets for my teammates. The modes tend to be a bit repetitive played in long chunks, but with ten minute sessions here and there, it's terrific. I do hope they make some of the fonts in the menus and box-opening scenes a bit easier to read, though.

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  4. Dead Rising 3

  Yes, that number says 3, not 4. I finally had a chance to play Dead Rising 3 on a nice computer.

  I have severe criticisms about the pacing and general difficulty of the first two Dead Rising games. Being constantly on the clock to get things done, combined with bad controls, a frustrating UI, and an infathomable save system designed by Japanese lunatics were all bad design decisions. You heard me. The "quirks" you like so much about those games? Bad. Bad bad bad.

  Dead Rising 3 fixes every complaint I had with the originals, and despite having the weakest protagonist of the games so far, I wanted to see it through to the end. I've still yet to do that, but I'm relatively close and looking forward to it.

  This is a polished Dead Rising that's actually fun to play rather than brutally punishing for stupid reasons. That's enough to tell you whether or not this one's for you, or if you should just keep going back to the busted-ass, terribly paced, brutally bad original or its better sequel.

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  5. I Am Setsuna

  I am Setsuna is a throwback RPG produced by Square and given a nice coat of paint. The key design philosophy of Setsuna seems to be "back to basics," and it pays off tremendously. I adore the hell out of the turn-based combat and the relatively safely written main characters. It's not a game that takes chances on its plot, setting, or characters, but the backbone of it is exactly what I want out of an RPG and I hope like hell we see this game launch a thousand more in a similar vein.

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  6. The Talos Principle

  While there are some infuriating extraneous puzzles that require pixel-hunting-esque eyesight, Talos Principle's primary gameplay elements make for one of the best traditional puzzlers since Portal 2. The stroy, played out in audio logs and computer screens, is also pretty fun to follow as well.

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  7. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

  Mankind Divided unfortunately shoots itself in the feet with a bland introductory level and the eye-rolling cliche of having its protagonist be stripped of all his powers almost immediately. But once you get beyond those problematic areas, there's a terrific hub world to explore. Mankind Divided would have been much higher on this list if it hadn't been released five years after the original. It doesn't feel like this has advanced or changed enough to have been released more than a couple of years after Human Revolution. If it had tried to do something more interesting, or offered up a new array of powers, or... well, anything, really, it would have been magnificent. As it is, it's a lot of fun, but that feeling of "been there, done that" never quite goes away.

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  8. Tom Clancy's The Division

  At one point, I was seriously considering this for my GOTY. While the customization options in the game largely feel bland and samey, the backbone of The Division's third-person loot-and-shoot gameplay is absolutely right up my alley. While none of the powers are very interesting, being able to mix and match up so many different traits and skills is a great idea. And the gunplay feels pretty solid to boot.

  So what went wrong? A patch introduced in October or November "fixed" the game so that enemies match your level. In the early to mid-game, this is fine. But when you're fighting for your last few levels in the game, trying to scrape together slightly better armor and equipment, your survivability was already really low if you're playing solo, and reduced even further if you don't have a good team in multiplayer. Instead of being able to go back to previous areas and grind out a few levels to make things easier, now I'm stuck facing down shitty enemies that can three or four shot kill me when I have to sink dozens, if not hundreds or thousands, of bullets into them to kill them.

  Anyways, look - The Division has problems, but I'm hoping The Divison 2 winds up being a case like Watch Dogs, and they create a great sequel. Fingers crossed.

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  9. XCOM 2

  I'm a huge sucker for a well-made team-focused, turn-based tactical game, and Xcom 2 is definitely one of those. Unfortunately, much like Mankind Divided, there's too much of a pervasive sense that this should have been more ambitious, especially coming from Firaxis. The meta-game is still largely one-track-or-you-die, the "beat the game before the enemy builds a thing" timer is still present, and most of the new aliens are only slight modifications on old ones. Someone should have been allowed to play with the enemy creation ust a bit more.

  But most damning of all were the bugs I encountered on the console versions. By the end of the game, loading screens took several minutes, and any time a cinematic played after about the 2/3rds mark, it would play twice, with those same long-ass load times.

  It's baffling to me that this made it out the door to consoles in such a bad shape. Firaxis needs to aspire to more than "more of the same." They are a better developer than what 2016 showed of them.

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  10. Stardew Valley

  Number ten was the hardest spot to fill on this list. It came down to this, Ratchet and Clank, or Firewatch. Both of those other games are fine, but Stardew stands out as a remarkable achievement in indie gaming. Much like Banished a few years ago, this game was developed by one person and also happens to be remarkably fun to play.

  That said, it never quite does enough to sell itself as much better or different than the Rune Factory games. You grow crops, you fight monsters in a cave, you get married. That's about it. What's here is great, don't get me wrong, and I love seeing indie takes on a tried-and-true genre. But Stardew would have made it much higher on this list if it strived a touch more for its own identity.