Hell of a list @majormitch!

I don't know either if 2015 belongs in the discussion with 1991/1998 etc what have you either, but I do think it's safe to say it is the best year of Generation 8 yet by far. Maybe it doesn't have many All Time Greats this year that changed the way games are played for forever types, but it's a year packed with All Stars. I feel like there 20-30 games this year that are legitimately great and I suspect there's a handful more hidden on the Vita that few will see.

One of the signs that this is a great year to em though, is I can look at your list, see an ordering and a makeup largely different from mine and still think that's a really great list!

Gotta to ask you about Metal Gear. Did you play it? That's the one big name I do't see on your list. I know it's divisive, so I'm curious what your take on it is.

I'm super jealous you got to play Rise of the Tomb Raider. I can tell it would easily make my list as well, but alas I've never been an XboX person and thus have to wait till 2016.

man N++, that's one I didn't see coming. That's cool you put it on your list, I met the developers of the original N once and they seemed like incredibly super people.

Oddly enough I've met the Axiom Verge guy before too, very soft spoken fellow but seemed very nice. He easily had the homeliest no frills booth at PAX East this past year. Just two monitors, 2 PS4s, a folding chair for himself and a Card table. Glad to see his game get some love, if there is any great aspect to this era of gaming, it's that independent creators like him can seemingly prosper alongside the Publicly Traded Wall Street Behemoths.

I really should play that especially if you think so highly of it. I remember thinking as I played the demo, why has no one ever thought to merge Contra Shooting action with a Metroidvania exploration before? But It came out on Ps4 first and by the time it came out on PC, I was engrossed in other games.

Nice list, a good slice of the year there. I feel like most of my games came from the latter part of 2015. Also I wish I could play Tomb Raider but I gotta wait till January or something for that PC release.

I'm with Slag on this - it's neat to see a list with bunches of games I wouldn't have picked. Speaks a lot about the overall quality of 2015's games. Great stuff.

Thanks @slag! I totally agree it’s been the best year for the new consoles thus far; not that it has the strongest competition there! My only reservation about 2015’s status among the greats is that, for me personally, it is missing a landmark, all-time great as you mention. 2015 is definitely a very strong year with tons of awesome games, but when we’re talking about the very best of the best, everything comes under even more scrutiny. Anyway, that’s a big old tangent for another time; what matters for now is that 2015 was a great year for games!

I think one of the biggest signs of this year’s quality, as both you and @sparky_buzzsaw mention, is that there was such a large variety of good games that we can all have very different, but equally strong lists. There’s enough high quality games to pick from to satisfy all tastes, and I really like seeing the spectrum of cool games that appeal differently to different people! It feels like video games are reaching a point where they have enough diversity, and we don’t all pick the same “best” games every year, which is awesome.

For me, I would guess Pillars of Eternity, Axiom Verge, and N++ are the main ones that won’t appear on many other lists- that’s really cool you got to meet the devs of the latter two! Those are all fantastic, and highly recommended if you can find the time. And I wouldn’t fret too much about having to wait for Tomb Raider; the PC version isn’t too far off, and it will probably look even better than the Xbox version! I was pretty happy to finally get some use out of my Xbox One though...

Finally, regarding Metal Gear Solid V, I’m the rare person who has never liked MGS, and did not play MGSV. I’ve actually never finished a MGS game; the control and general feel of the games have always felt poor to me, and the overwrought exposition always seemed like a bunch of nonsense. (Though perhaps that’s the charm!) It seems like MGSV fixes at least the control part, but given my lack of positive history with the franchise, and how many other time-consuming games I played this year (I was still knee-deep in both The Witcher 3 and Mario Maker around the time MGSV came out), MGSV was an easy time-sink for me to cut. I actually did a pretty good job of playing a lot of the noteworthy games from this year (especially considering the first four months were knocked out by school), but MGSV didn’t make it. Maybe someday!

Thanks @humanity! As I mentioned to @slag above, I wouldn’t worry much about waiting for Tomb Raider. Something tells me you may end up playing the better version on PC :) Now that I look back and tally up my list, at least half of them (or more, depending on where you place Life is Strange) came out in the first half of the year. I remember thinking around April that this year was off to an amazing start, then the summer was dry, and some fall games got delayed (XCOM 2, Uncharted 4, etc.). But some strong surprises landed in the fall for me that really rounded out the year nicely.

Thanks @sparky_buzzsaw! I agree, the quantity, quality, and variety of this year’s games has been wonderful! It’s made seeing everyone’s different lists really cool :)

@majormitch: sure thing man!

I suspect until we see the next big hardware innovation (likeliest contender being something VR/AR related or whatever the Nintendo NX does), we may just see All Star games instead of Hall of Fame games so to speak as mechanical Risk Aversion reigns supreme among the AAA publicly traded types. A new normal so to speak. If the quantity of product stays this diverse, I'm ok with that.

yeah man, I'm with you. The variety imo is what makes this year so good and that's what I'll remember most about this year. So many genres and publishers feel vibrant and that's a fantastic feeling. I just hope they all are profitable, That's the possible downside to something like this I suppose. Too many games chasing too few dollars. I would have liked to have a good chunk of these games to play in 13 &14 instead of trying to drink from the Fire Hose of awesomeness 15 that has provided. :) There's a quite a lot of games I didn't get to in time for my list.

Pillars and Axiom I've already seen on quite a few lists, but yours is the first place I've seen N++ and I think one of the very few to have Legacy of the Void on it. I got a good buddy who swears by LotV being the real deal in campaign mode as Blizzard's best ever, so it's cool to hear you think very highly of it as well.

I think what's most striking about yours to me is the placing. There are definitely some popular names this year, but the ordering this year is wildly divergent from user to user. There is no super obviousTop 3 this year for the community as their usually is (My money is still on the Safe bet of MGS V, Witcher 3 and Mario Maker being the community's top 3 once everything shakes out).

re: MGSV- Remember your rationale about Shadow of Mordor from last year? I feel much the same way about MGS V this year, in that mechanically it's so enthralling it outweighs the other nebulous bits.

fwiw I found the old Metal Gear Solid games to be mechanically frustrating as well (3 especially) and the story stuff was just really overexplained and overwrought to death. I didn't mind the zaniness, it was getting to the good stuff that was always the problem. MGS just had a nasty habit laying it on way too thick with the exposition as you said, lots of Japanese games of the Ps2 era seemed to. Xenosaga was another criminal offender. Besides the NES games, the original MGS was probably the only one I truly liked. But man this one handles like a dream. I think Kojima went too far the other way on the exposition with this one (odd to want more story from a Metal Gear game), but it still beats the never ending droning from MGS2.

Great List and Happy Holidays Majormitch!

@slag: Everything I keep hearing about MGSV is that it plays much better than the previous games, which has me curious to check it out when I carve out the time. At the very least I will try Ground Zeries (courtesy of PS+) to get a feel for it. If it plays as well as everyone says, I could see myself getting into it!

LotV's launch got completely overshadowed by Fallout 4 and Rise of the Tomb Raider, all of which released on the day day. But LotV has top notch mission design, and it's campaign is very much worth a play for people still into that style of RTS (even if the story was "meh"). What really grabbed me about LotV though, even more than the campaign, are the multiplayer changes. I got hooked back in WoL, but HotS didn't add quite enough to keep up the pace, and I fell off it for a few years. LotV really improves and irons out a lot in the multiplayer; it surprised me, as someone who played hundreds of hours during WoL, just how much more solid it feels. A friend and I have had tons of fun diving back in.

Thanks again, and Happy Holidays to you too!

Cool list, always nice to see lists with games the majority don't always go for. I've been on the fence on Life is Strange (and kind of still am), but I'll eventually give that a shot one of these days. I also can't wait to actually play Rise of the Tomb Raider when it's done being a timed exclusive. -_-

If only the WiiU wasn't so damn expensive, I wouldn't be missing out on Mario Maker and a couple games on the platform. ;__;

@dietmango: Thanks! A friend and I were just talking about how Nintendo hasn't been very aggressive with their console pricing, given how few games are on it. The Smash Bros + Splatoon bundle is the best I've seen, and if those 2 games are of interest, getting that bundle + Mario Maker isn't the worst deal... but I agree in general that that system continues to be a tough sell :-/

If you like story-based/adventure games (especially the choice driven ones like the Telltale stuff), then Life is Strange comes with the heartiest recommendation. Well, so long as you can handle awkward "teenspeak" :)

Sorry I'm so late getting to this Mitch. It's been a weird couple of weeks both in work and in my personal life, and all of my spare time has gone into putting together my own awards and list. It's only now that things have started to wind down and normality has resumed that I've found the time to check out other people's lists.

I've chosen Axiom Verge as the first video game I'll be playing this year. I've got no previous experience with the 2D 'Metroidvania' genre, but having spent so much time with systems-heavy games in late 2015 (MGSV, Fallout 4, and I guess even Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire to an extent), it's refreshing to go into a game where I don't have to worry about much beyond clearing one screen and moving on to the next. I've only put an hour in so far, but I'm really excited to see where the game goes from here. I love the dirty 8-bit aesthetic, too.

Bloodborne, The Witcher 3, Life is Strange and Rise of the Tomb Raider are all on my to-do list for 2016. I already own the second and third and they're both really high priorities for this year. Bloodborne is in my Amazon Wishlist and I'll probably jump on it once it hits a £15-20 price point, whereas Rise of the Tomb Raider I'll have to wait for the PS4 release later this year. Damn, so many great games and nowhere near enough time, and that's not even counting what's due out in 2016! Great list Mitch, and a very Happy New Year to you and yours.

@dankempster: Thanks Dan! Hope you enjoy Axiom Verge- I obviously liked it a lot :) I'll be extra curious about that as you continue, given you mention you don't have much experience with such games.

It was definitely a strong year with tons of solid games. I thought I did a pretty good job keeping up this year, and I still have a lot of stuff to get to yet! I hope you enjoy some of those other big ones as you get to them... I think you have some good gaming ahead of you :)