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fram

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My Top 10 Games Of 2016

This year has been super busy with life things! I still managed to play a bunch of great games, so here's my list with a couple of honorable mentions up front:

Titanfall 2 - The only reason this isn't on my list is because I've only played the first two campaign missions and about an hour of multiplayer to date. I already know I'm going to love this game, but I won't get a chance to play it much more before the year is out :(

Gears of War 4 - I thought the campaign was great and have only just begun to scratch the surface of Horde. I'm happy Gears is back, and am keen to see where it goes from here.

List items

  • DOOM 2016 is the greatest FPS campaign I can remember. One of the best soundtracks of the year drives the brutally intense battles - a cacophony of gunfire, explosions, and glory kills. The moment Doomguy took that elevator ride to Mars and cocked his shotgun in time with the music, I knew that everything would be ok. More than ok, turns out. Fucking AWESOME.

  • One of these days I'm going to replay Firewatch and see it as the all-time classic I know it to be. Thing is, on my first playthrough I wanted the paranoid thriller angle to pay off so bad that I couldn't ignore the tinge of disappointment I felt when the credits rolled. Like Henry, I went into this looking for an escape from reality, but Delilah laid it all out at the end and turned a mirror on me. Acknowledgement, frailty, responsibility - Firewatch is about all these things, I just wasn't ready to hear that.

  • This game, this goddamned game. It made a little nest for itself inside my head and refused to leave until I earned that damn platinum trophy. The days I spent throwing myself against the final puzzles and the optional sequence under the mountain were frustrating and exhilarating and I loved every second of them. This bastard of a game.

  • I've not been more disquieted and horrified by anything else this year. The oppressive, atonal soundscape and beautifully bleak visual presentation kept me entranced throughout my single-sitting playthrough, and the ending left me shook.

  • I can't tell you why I played so many hours of this utterly perplexing mix of horse racing and solitaire, nor why I still get the itch to play it. Like right now. WHY IS THIS SO GOOD?

  • Thumper is where I go when I want to feel small and insignificant, to get pummeled against the sides of organic nightmare tunnels by a relentless percussive march. Each successive level breaks me, then slowly builds me back up over the course of several agonising minutes of breakneck rhythm violence. By the end I'm a mass of frayed nerves and shaking hands, and I want more.

  • This was THE online multiplayer game of the year for me and my group of friends. The setting was a calculated departure from the current grip of sci-fi military shooters, and it paid off big time. Multiplayer is endless fun, and as good as recent Battlefield has ever been, while the campaign handles its WW1 vignettes with surprising care and clarity.

  • I felt a lot of things during Virginia's two short hours. Don't let the simple inputs fool you - this thing GOES PLACES. I'm not sure I was ready for just how far things would go by the end, but the well-drawn characters and assured style pulled me through.

  • Maybe you haven't played the best mobile game released this year. That would be a shame. This is pinball, but it ain't your Gerstmann's pinball. What if at the top of your pinball table, another pinball table started? Then another? And another! And it all looked and sounded like Tron!!! Wait, maybe this is EXACTLY your Gerstmann's pinball...

  • I love Remedy. I love that they care about their worlds and settings and narratives, that they make their shooty bang bang gameplay feel different from the other shooty bang bang games. I love that they license great songs and hire good actors and try to smash a live-action TV series into a third-person shooter. I love their ambition and their unique voice. After Max Payne and Alan Wake (my personal favourite) it's clear that they're working to a template of sorts, but it's a template nobody else is using and I love it.
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