So I live on the East Coast now.

Maybe it's the darker nights, maybe it's the separation from friends and family, probably mostly it's just the getting older, but no year has been filled with more existential dread than 2015. On the bright side, every anxiety-filled minute spent unable to sleep is another good minute for playing video games because my kids are in bed and I don't want to be left alone with my thoughts.

The releases of several high quality, time-crushing games hitting triple-digit hour marks this year, alongside a bevy of smaller narrative experiences from developers of all shapes and sizes, went a long way to keeping me sane. Of course, given how many of these games had such a strong thematic focus on mortality, the nature of consciousness, and often near extinction-level events, maybe they didn't really help my psyche all that much? Eh, better not to think about it.

Because while every year is a good year to be not dead, 2015 was a particularly fantastic year for being not dead and a player of video games. Allow me to cling to the illusion of cosmic relevance by telling you about some of the games that made an impact on me this year.

2015's Old Game of the Year

AKA "What are you thinking, releasing your game in December?".

The Talos Principle

A lot of people were talking about this game at the end of last year. Ok, maybe it was just Chris Remo on Idle Thumbs. But between having too many games to play and having already spent too much money on having too many games to play, I just had to let this one fall by the wayside.

Which worked out for the best, as it turns out. I ended up circling back around to Talos Principle when the release of the "Road to Gehenna" expansion reminded me A) that this game existed and B) that I really wanted to play this game. 3D puzzle games with an omnipotent voice that becomes gradually more sinister in nature are right in my wheelhouse, and I couldn't help but feel myself identifying strongly with the "salvaging the final vestiges of humanity" themes present throughout the core game.

Then I got to Road to Gehenna and hoo boy, what a fucking fantastic intersection between the nature of personhood and AI and the nascent formation of BBS communities. Not to knock the actual gameplay, but at a certain point I was looking up walkthroughs for any puzzles I felt even slightly stymied by simply so I could hurry along to the next terminal and advance the plot because it was sooo good.

It's not a universal recommendation, some of those later puzzles get really gnarly and unlike Portal where there's lots of forward momentum every time you figure out the next step, in Talos Principle there's a lot of staying still or even backtracking which can make significant progress feel like no progress. But if you grew up on the internet in the late 80s and early 90s and enjoy stories about AI that can make you question your sense of self, you should definitely check it out.

Runners-up: Assassin's Creed: Unity, This War of Mine

Best Surprise

SteamWorld Heist

I actually didn't know about this game until last Friday night when I decided to watch the GB quicklook for it. The guys who made that kinda generic-but-solid digging game followed it up with a 2D, turn-based tactical RPG? What? And it's really good!?

Since I had just wrapped up Picross e5 and Pokémon Picross is apparently a microtransaction nightmare, I needed something I could distract my brain with while waiting for exhaustion to take over and put me to sleep at night, and SteamWorld Heist sounded like it would fit the bill. To my pleasant surprise, I discovered a game that hits almost all the bulletpoints that make up a strong TRPG:

• Varied characters/classes that promote unique styles of play
• Special abilities that encourage use and can generate explosive turns when used in conjunction
• Equipment system that can't be simply min/maxed and isn't cumbersome for players constantly swapping characters
• Quick and easy save scumming

I'm having one of the most satisfying experiences in years with one of my favorite genres, so much so that even though I wanted it to be my "before bed" game it's turned into my "any time I have a free minute like when I'm using the restroom or at a red light" game and I'm pretty sure I'm going to run out of game soon and then what will I play in bed?

Pokémon Picross sounds real rough.

Runners-up: Her Story, Until Dawn

Best Intensely Personal Narrative Experience

Cibele

Let me tell you a story.

So before I had a real girlfriend, I had a series of internet "girlfriends". This is at a time when, for most people, the most efficient way to show someone across the country a picture of yourself was to develop a photograph, stuff it into an envelope, and mail it to them. At one point I actually somehow talked my parents into buying me a plane ticket to fly from LA to... Chicago? to stay with a girl's family for like a weekend.

What the fuck mom & dad? What the fuck girl's mom and dad? In retrospect it was one of the craziest things that was only made slightly less crazy by the fact that I was a big enough shithead to chicken out at the last minute which was a whole other ordeal. (To be clear, the girl was totally not a creepy 40-year-old murder guy and we actually became friends later on and even hung out face-to-face once, but now that I have kids of my own I can't imagine myself ever feeling ok with doing something like that when they turn... I dunno I think I was 15? 16 at the time? without the additional layer of peace-of-mind that stuff like webcams and cell phones provides us with today.) Nina Freeman is a good few years younger than me, but swap VoIP conversations with AOL RP chatrooms and this game is me during my first two years of high school.

Which is why Cibele hit me so so so hard because every stupid line Ichi said trying to be a cool flirty guy was something I typed into an IM at some point. Every time Nina struggled to juggle various conversations about who was or wasn't doing what with who among a group of people who had never even seen each other before was a struggle I had experienced. And watching Ichi and Nina finally get together and do body stuff then immediately have a falling out was like a weird look into an alternate universe where I actually went through with it and took that flight (although I'm pretty sure no weird body stuff would have happened since I was going to be staying at her house with her parents and also we were 15).

I am Ichi. I am Nina.

Runner-Up: Emily is Away

Biggest Disappointment

Undertale

Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait. Wait. Wait.

Undertale is not a bad game. No one who likes, loves, bleeds for Undertale is wrong for having that opinion. I feel like I'm a hair's breadth from being right there with you.

On paper, Undertale should be everything I want in an indie RPG. It's heavily inspired by Earthbound, my 9th favorite game of all time, has an intensely wry sense of humor, encourages non-standard styles of play, and takes full advantage of the unique features of the medium to create a narrative that subverts your expectations via the game's mechanics.

But man is it super duper not fun to play. Full disclosure: I got to the Undine fight, died a couple times, got crazy tilted (I was also on a losing streak in the SFV beta at the time which didn't help my mood), and proceeded to delete the game in the ultimate ragequit. Then I reinstalled it a few months later, banged my head against the fight a few more times, and haven't been back since. And in all that time, not once did I actually enjoy the act of playing the game. I'm not a hater of bullet hell mechanics in general, I love me some Ikaruga, but for whatever reason its implementation in Undertale never went beyond fluctuating between being boring, tedious, and frustrating for me.

I really really really wanted to like this game. So many people whose opinions I place a lot of stock in absolutely adore this game. The spoilers described in the GB GotY podcasts sound like amazing things to experience, but I'll never get there unless they add a mode that mitigates the bullet hell stuff entirely.

Runners-up: Code Name: S.T.E.A.M., Everybody's Gone to the Rapture

Best Game to Pay Full-Price for but Not Play

AKA "What are you thinking, releasing your game in December (part deux)?"

Xenoblade Chronicles X

Look Xenoblade Chronicles. You're real cool. Your UI is a beautiful cluttered mess. Waiting 30 hours to introduce a major game mechanic that recontextualizes the entire experience is one of the greatest things. But Fallout 4 came out first and I have a lot of settlements I have to maintain. All these microscopes aren't going to collect themselves. I've gotta help my doctor robot girlfriend download her consciousness into a synthetic human body and raise a militia to stop all the anarchy. Oh also my son is missing so I should probably try to find him at some point.

Life with kids means I'm usually on the bottom of the totem pole when it comes to getting TV time, not only because everyone else gets priority but also because if my kids aren't watching TV then I'm probably chasing them around and too busy to play. And it's just so much easier and less obtrusive once everyone is asleep to boot something up on PC. I'll definitely be giving this game a lot of my time in 2016 (early Old Game contender?) but I knew there was no way I'd be able to invest a satisfactory amount of time in it for GotY considerations so it didn't make the cut.

Soma thanks you.

Runners-up: Invisible, Inc., Rebel Galaxy

Best Moment

Life Is Strange - Chloe's Request (Episode 4)

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

To catch you up, Max goes back in time to the day Chloe's dad dies and saves his life, drastically altering the present, leaving Chloe paralyzed from the neck down, strapped to machines, and confined to a wheelchair. After a day talking about Chloe's life, future, and the strain her injury has placed on her parents, both emotionally and financially, the two friends fall asleep while watching Blade Runner together.

At it's core, Life Is Strange is about two things: unforeseen consequences and Max struggling to keep Chloe alive. Both of these ideas converge the next morning when Chloe asks Max to help her commit suicide by administering an overdose of morphine.

If you've been paying careful attention, Max's next move is telegraphed from a mile away. She's going to go back back-in-time to undo saving Chloe's dad's life, but before she does she has to make a choice. And even though you know there's no real consequence, even though she knows there's no real consequence, Max is going to have to live with the knowledge of her decision for the rest of her life.

In the end, my Max couldn't do it, and even if it was for just a moment in a reality that wasn't going to exist any more, Chloe's attitude of bitter resentment was crushing.

Runners-up: Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain - Mission 43 (the bottom floor), The Beginner's Guide - Stop adding lampposts

StarvingGamer's Top 10 Games of 2015

10. Until Dawn

As much as I hate horror anything, I absolutely adore this game. Yeah it scared the shit out of me even though I only played it during daylight hours with the blinds wide open, but the way it handled the Quantic Dream formula and perfectly twisted it to fit the genre was incredibly impressive. In 20 years when they make a TV show about the 2010s and a character says "get monked!" we'll know. We'll know.

9. Tales from the Borderlands

Man did I think this sounded dumb and unnecessary when they first announced it. Man was I super-duper wrong. Rhys and Fiona are excellent protagonists with personalities that allow them to shift between a wide variety of emotional responses without feeling out character, and they are supported by a strong cast with their own unique wrinkles that make them both likable and unlikable in all the right ways. Also Rhys crying on Sasha is one of the cutest, sweetest moments I've seen in a video game ever.

8. Her Story

Yeah, the actual plot is kinda dumb/far fetched, but this game does two amazing things. It fully leverages the UI design to give you a powerfully immersive sense of place, and it builds the narrative in a wholly unique manner only possible in a video game. I am extremely satisfied.

7. Fallout 4

Settlements! They're so janky and busted but I can't stop building settlements! I'm not even good at it! Also I love having a real excuse to loot literally everything. I think I have close to 300k caps now and I don't even know what I could ever spend it on. Curie is great. Piper is great. They are my waifus.

(GB image compression is a bummer, source file here)

6. Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate

If I had more time to play this game it would probably be higher on the list, but that doesn't doesn't diminish the fact that it was an incredible evolution of the MH formula that managed to bring many new players to a franchise that I love dearly. Also I feel completely justified buying two different giant strap-on devices for my 3DS to get the interface as close to the "claw" grip as possible.

5. Starcraft II: Legacy of the Void

What a perfectly fitting end for the trilogy. Blizzard takes their galactic soap opera and cranks the melodrama to 11 and it is glorious. Kerrigan literally turns into Phoenix and Raynor maybe commits suicide (I mean obviously not it's Blizz but what if!?!?)? John de Lancie chews the scenery with his reverse-echo voice like nobody's business and you get AoE Voidrays. Also from what I hear it is a much better eSport than HotS was although I haven't had a chance to check out the new season of GSL yet.

4. Soma

I literally beat the game this morning. Did I mention I hate horror games? Circling back to the existential dread for a bit, Soma hits on all of the issues I've had with digital transference of consciousness in sci-fi narratives and actually makes me feel a bit more grimy about Talos Principle and Fallout 4 (and Naruto. Naruto is really fucked up if you think about it. Kage Bunshin no Jutsu is a mass murder every time). Even if all the parts with monsters were majorly anti-fun, they were never punishing enough to deter me from pushing on to the next narrative bit where things became even more gross and twisted and I got to fumble my way around some other future technology thing.

3. Life Is Strange

I just have one question: To all the people out there complaining about the dialogue in Life Is Strange, how many of you have spent enough time around teens from the Pacific Northwest to authoritatively know how they talk nowadays? Also what is your home address and the police are on their way.

2. The Beginner's Guide

Remember how I praised Her Story for delivering its narrative in a uniquely video gamey way? The Beginner's Guide is that x100. By incorporating himself into the experience, Davey Wreden strings us along by building expectations and subsequently subverting them in the most devious ways as he pulls us through the twists and turns of his darkening monologue.

1. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

This game is weird.

How do you take a traditionally 6-10 hour game narrative and stretch it across 80+ hours of gameplay? I guess in the case of MGSV, you don't, and there's definitely a thinness to the story that makes it feel like something was lost from what most people think of as a "good" Metal Gear.

But none of that really matters when the game is so unbelievably fun to play. MGSV does 3D stealth in a way that, most importantly, is far more fair than previous games in the genre, and as a result the game is much more enjoyable. The shooting is solid enough to keep the action manageable when things get dicey, but there are so many ways to approach each mission and so many tools at your disposal that you are completely empowered to turn every location into a ghost town by strapping balloons to the backs of all your enemies. And gun emplacements. And tanks. And bears?

Which isn't to say that the narrative is bad, just a bit sparse and maybe trading in some of the gleeful insanity of the older games in order to maintain its dire tone. But stun-knife D-Dog is amazing. Also Quiet is amazing (although it felt a bit weird the way she kept shoving her ass in front of the camera whenever my family was around). And that ending. Oh man, between that and the incredible strength of the gameplay, I am super duper duper bummed out about what seems to be the future (or lack thereof) of the franchise.

If I don't get a game from V's perspective during the events of MG1 & 2, Konami will feel ashamed of their words & deeds.

So bummed!

GotY!