Moving this around as the year goes on.
This list is only for games both released and played by me in the year 2015
Games I wanted to play from this year that I didn't get around to: Fallout 4, Just Cause 3, Tembo the Badass Elephant, Disgaea 5, Yakuza 5
It's motherlovin' Taiko on the motherlovin' Vita!! When you fight enormous demons by bashing drums while blaring rock jpop plays you'll know what I'm talking about! It has the Evangelion OP, the Attack On Titan OP, BABYMETAL, Maximum the Hormone, Wiley Stage 1 from Mega Man 2, the boss theme from Ys Chronicles and some of those Namco originals made up just for Taiko are bliss. Now I know Vita's Dpad, face buttons and triggers aren't as suitable for rhythm games as the PSP was but it looks sharp, has better load times and other little features added the PSP ones didn't have.
I was waiting for a Bemani game to play on Vita but since that has a 0.01% chance of happening now... Taiko is my second choice!!
Having played Demon's in 2013 I've now played one of these games each year since 2012 and the 'Soul Fatigue' is definitely starting to set in. The good here is the new setting and combat changes, but the lack of loot and build variety, and the reduced multiplayer components limit the replayability the others had. First playthrough was still incredibly fun.
Obviously Undertale wins game story of the year. Tons of great characters, humour, and touching moments, complimented by a great soundtrack. I've heard people call it a "meme game" but I only very rarely felt like it was trying too hard to be weird or funny. The only problem is that, being story-based, it very much doesn't want you to get stuck on something too difficult, so I feel the gameplay is a little lacking in order to get everyone through it. The 'genocide' route provides some challenge but I finished it wishing for more.
Seeing a small indie game like this manage to make such a big impact fills me with..... DETERMINATION.
This game is so frustrating because it was extremely close to being the first Final Fantasy game I've enjoyed every part of. The combat seems great at first until you find out it depends way too much on level. A certain boss battle around 1/3 of the way through the game was amazing but nothing comes close after that. A certain cutscene at the end was so touching that it just makes it disappointing how few character development scenes we get from the main party throughout the rest of the game. The good parts of this game are fantastic, it just doesn't end up coming together as a whole.
I am absolutely not a Metal Gear or stealth fan but this game managed to suck me in thanks to the controls and the Pokemon.
[VAGUE PLOT CONCEPT SPOILERS!]
Life Is Strange is the typical time travel story we've seen many times already. There were a lot of complaints after episode 5 was released about how predictable the ending was and how little the player choices mattered. Personally I think this story was told well enough that those points don't matter all that much. The writing and voice acting are great, as was the pacing and build-up of the plot. It's very melodramatic and teenage-focused but it does have great, relatable characters, meaning that hunting those feels is something you actually want to do.
Who'd have thought a developer in 2015 could make decent 3rd person hand-to-hand combat that isn't Capcom or ex-Capcom? Unfortunately, the combat is about the only thing really good about this game, and the rest was clearly done on a tight budget. Oh and also the costume customisation in this (that's also used in Senran Kagura) really should be used in more games, if only for the hilarious things you can make.
I love rhythm games. I kinda like roguelikes. This greatly simplifies both and combines them into an action game that works out a lot better than one might initially expect. It requires consistent quick decisions but since there are never as many choices as in a full roguelike it never becomes overwhelming and instead is really fun.
Danganronpa 1 and 2 were great, but this one doesn't have a number attached to it, and it shows. Very much a side story, it doesn't deliver on what I wanted it to. It's hard to say what exactly without spoiling Danganronpa 2 but the fact is that it only drops tiny hints at what it could have been.
Then there's the matter of the shooting gameplay which is clearly not great. It's good that they realise that though, and it tended to be more puzzle-based than pure action the whole time.
Finally, this game is very glitchy and with no sign of a patch in development it knocks some more points of its score.
So what is good about this game? Subverting your initial opinions on characters, character development, the way it shows its morales without hitting you over the head with it, the graphics (particularly the different styles of fmv at work) and it is very funny in a few select places.
Great dialogue and okay combat. Will I finish it before the end of the year? Not likely...
So, this game, I never bought or played. As someone who is very much not a slasher horror fan I probably wouldn't have liked it at all if I'd played it myself. But I did watch a let's play of it, and it deserves to be on this list by its story and dialogue. It's often hard to tell what decision affects what, which is far better than the Telltale way of doing story pathways.
This game got completely slammed by critic reviews, and not necessarily without reason. There is little variety in the gameplay, way too much grinding, and it has awful multiplayer. Still, I personally think this game could have been much better with only a few scripting/number changes. It was obviously not made on a huge budget so they went for a very arcade like game. But they don't go far enough in that direction. Later on in the game you start to get levels where you have to fight off multiple enemies while still managing to keep your combo up and destroying the generators under a strict time limit. These levels are GREAT so why not put time limits on all the levels?
It's best to think of this game not so much as a game but as a condiment to the movie series. If enjoyed in short bursts it delivers on the destruction and monster vs monster action you expect from the films.
It seems in the times I've stopped playing PC management sims they've become more about customisation and less about actual management. I think this game gets a lot of numbers stuff wrong, but as someone who's last city builder was Sim City 2000 this was really easy to get into and is decent as a game to put in a window while I watch internet videos.
(maybe don't count this as 2015?)
(Since I wouldn't think of buying a GTA game on a console anymore this should count as 2015 but also maybe not...)
