Edited to add a game I completely forgot despite loving.

If you want to avoid self-indulgent self-reflections, skip down to the list.

Despite a global pandemic and it's ramifications on 2020, it was a crazy year for me that had very little to do with a pandemic. In fact, my life hardly changed at all. I work with production at a poultry plant, there's no working from home for me. In fact, being in the food industry I was apparently seen as essential worker. As someone not having kids, that meant very little to me as that information was more about the city offering more services for those that can't stay home with their kids. For me it just meant, things went on as usual. I don't have an overly social spare time either so for some of the pandemic (and especially since here in Sweden, government took a different approach for a lot of it) it all felt like I was living in some weird bizarro universe. Everyone (even here) was talking about how unprecedented it all was, how this 'new normal' was hard to adjust to. What new normal? I got out of bed, went to work, got home and did my shit. Nothing changed at all. And the longer it lasted, the more out of place I felt.

But life had other plans for me. Around the start of the summer by a combination of personal finances, poor life organization and mounting responsibilities in various areas of life I had a stress induced panic attack at work. It felt like the world was vibrating, I couldn't breathe properly, my hands were shaking and I felt trapped. As though in a cage that is slightly too small. I never saw myself as an easily stressed individual, in fact most people would probably say I seem pretty relaxed and easy going. I left work in the middle of the day and drove out by myself to a lake. It was quiet, sunny with a nice breeze. Birds were taking turns having a bath. One in particular was especially thougrough. But my leg wouldn't stop bouncing.

It took me a week to calm down and I realized I was on the verge of burning out. I had to make changes. I will however be eternally greatful to my fiancée for taking care of me and the house that week. She has her own struggles to deal with but despite that handled it all like a pro. Through work I got in touch with a coach that really asked me some hard hitting questions and poked a lot of holes in my own inner narrative. One of the best things she told me was; "You say you can't fool yourself into doing the boring constructive things, but you're fooling yourself into doing the frivolous and potentially destructive. Either you can fool yourself or you can't. You obviously can. This isn't about your ability to fool yourself. It's about your self-image. I think you're self-harming. You're not physically harming yourself, but you're not doing what's good for you. Why is that? Would you avoid doing what's good for those close to you? Of course not. But you act like you don't deserve to be handled with respect. You don't respect yourself enough to do the things that are good for you. So in a way, by not doing something good for you, you're harming yourself a little bit at a time. And all those bad choices eventually catch up to you. And here we are." -- I was stunned. Never thought about it that way, but it was so entirely spot on.

So I started to make a monthly budget (we live on my pay check, so it's not rich living), I started planning my weeks (including days for hobbies specifically). And I started bit by bit find my rythm again. Life has not changed much, but I have found new energy again when life isn't a disorganized mess that I keep putting off. When it's all said and done, 2020 will go down as the year that while everyone was dealing with an external threat I was dealing with an internal. It's still much left to do, but I'm at a better place now.

Myself and my struggles aside; I truly hope you and yours are all safe and that you have been spared the worst of the pandemic. I hope 2021 will be a year in which we'll continue to strive for social equality for marginalized groups and better representation in our entertainment. And lastly, while it doesn't directly affect me much I was very happy to see the results of the presidental election in the US. But even more than that, I was happy to see how many people got out there and voted. Let's hope we're all turning this ship around for a better tomorrow, I feel like large parts of the west (including Sweden) have now for a few years been far too close to sniffing the authoritharian right wing glue. There are better solutions to the world's problems than fascism.

GAMES TIME!

Now that we have the heavy handed navel gazing and big picture stuff out of the way, let's get to talking about some frivolous games. Because let's face it, this is why you're here. To read what I thought about some games. Apologized for having forced that novel at the top down your throat to get here.

Honorable Mentions, Brought To You By PSnow (mostly)

Red Dead Redemption 2

This was the year I finally finished it. Well, the Arhtur Morgan story anyway. Not since the Assassin's Creed franchise has it taken me this long between starting a game and finally finishing it with a big window in the middle when I didn't play it at all. It was satisfying though to finally put this game behind me, it had a lot of highs but at the same time it was long and took it's time with evertything. I didn't finish everything, and despite playing a couple of hours of the epilogue I doubt I'll ever finish that.

Jedi: Fallen Order

I played most of it at the tail end of last year but found myself getting back into it a bit during this year. Still not finished because the game just felt increasingly less interesting as I progressed. I had some fun times with it this year though and parts of that game looks and sounds fantastic. But it's also a strong reminder that I was never that big on Star Wars.

Prey

I didn't think this game was for me, I tried the demo a long time ago and got some real Bioshock vibes and my history with Bioshock isn't the best. But having it on PSnow I figured it was worth to just give it a try. Found the world and the game surprisingly engaging. It didn't carry me through the entire game though and other games took it's time away. Still glad I gave it a fair shake.

Greedfall

A gam on PSnow you say? Spyder's games all have the same feel to them. They seem made by people who thought Ultima 4 was the pinnacle and no need to progress anything. The game is basically what if monsters and colonializm had a baby. The game was up to a point pretty fun despite that, but I can only be in a game that feels stuck in the 90s for so long.

Days Gone

Another game I have been wanting to try without having to buy unless very cheap. Found it's way to PSnow so that was my chance. As a "let's play Darryl"-simulator the game had some fun moments. Being surprised by a walking horde as I was driving around aimlessly at night was very exciting. But the open world being overall pretty dull and the story not really pulling me along made it so I eventually put it down. Also, being stranded without gas wasn't ideal either.

The Raven

A point and click adventure game found on PSnow filled with moments of "what the hell am I supposed to do now?!". It had a cozy feel to it though and I enjoyed my time with it even if I never did finish it.

THE GAMES OF 2020

(That may or may not have been released in 2020, and I give no guarantee that I finished anything on this list)

Monopoly Plus

It's just Monopoly. But it was one of the few games me and my fiancée played together this year. Playing Monopoly on two people is weird, especially when it comes to auctions, but it was fun times anyway. That being said, I'm also extremely convinced the game's internal RNG is rigged. Because the games always had the same flow. I would get a little bit ahead, it would seem like I had this in the bag and suddenly my rolls kept fucking me over and my fiancées rolls were magically just avoiding my streets and giving her benefits. Suddenly I was taking out loans on my streets (or selling them to my fiancée) to pay my debts until I eventually got bankrupt. What do you got against me, Monopoly?

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire

I loved the first Pillars of Eternity, it's one of my highlights of my time living alone before I met my fiancée. I would spend hours soaking in that game. So I was very excited to see POEII released on the PS4. For a lot of the time in the game I was having a similar feeling, but not to the same extent. I found myself not really at ease with the structure and flow of the story and I was at times feeing like I was going about the game very aimlessly. I had some very good times with the game, but it may just be one of those games I'll come back to later when it fits in better. It feels like I am being negative, but I think I was just not in the right head space for a game like this at the time and it's on this list because the moments of spark I experienced with it is enough to make me feel confident I'll be enjoying it a lot at a later date.

Mafia III: Definitive Edition

I did finish Mafia III when it came out, but during my search for things to play during the vacuum left at the start of the year by the lack of a Cyberpunk release, I got back into it. I had not played the DLCs for it so I figured I could give those a twirl. The upside for me was more Mafia III. I loved the way this game plays, from driving to shooting it's all very rewarding. Even though I know a lot of you will probably disagree, especially on the driving. The stories of the DLC were pretty good and it was almost like comfort food getting into this game again. My only gripe was that certain aspects of the DLC took more time to develop (such as the weed farm) that I found myself with little to do except drive around and wait or some internal timer and even at that point I had no use for money that the weed farm generated because there was nothing to spend it on in the world. That place would have been good at the start of the game if anything.

Redecor

I didn't know I loved interior decoration. Redecor is a free to play iOS game in which you are tasked with picking everything from materials and fabrics to posters and wall paper in a given room. Once you're done, other people will rate you versus other players and within a group of 10 you're then ranked accordingly. It was very relaxing, but I also found myself getting very invested in getting those first place spots. Because first place was not only glory to my divine sense of taste, but it unlocked new items and gave you more currency to unlock whatever you felt you needed. I eventually did drop some money into the game, but at that point it wasn't to get myself ahead as much as just tipping the developers after hours of good time with the game.

Pokémon Shield

Would you believe me if I said this was the first Pokémon game I ever played despite playing (with some exceptions) Nintendo games since the NES? Because that's the very case. To be perfectly honest, Pokémon has always eluded me in it's appeal. I am not sure if even as a kid in the 90s I still looked at Pokémon as a 'kids game' and that's what made me avoid it or if I was just lacking the means or interest to seek out RPGs in general until much later that did it. Despite all that, the only reason I ended up actually giving this a go was because of Jan on the site talking about and showing it off and something about it just caught my eye. And you know what, I dig Pokémon. There's something addictive in a positive way trying to catch and build a good team and practice having a fluid team based on opponents weakness and strengths. I got through most of the trainers before the game fell by the wayside of other games, but it was a great time while it lasted and I would give it some extra credit to actually get me in the door in the first place.

11-11 Memories Retold

Maybe it's because of history class in school or maybe it's because of fiction in general, but I have always had some kind of nostalgia for time and places I was never a part of. World War I&II central Europe being two of them. The game have you follow two people from opposite sides of the war, a german father searching for his son and a british war photographer. The game has a water color like aesthetic that initially felt very blurry mostly but as time went on I found it fitting, as paintings sometimes feel like like a mirror to the past. The story was very engaging and touching and I found myself getting very immersed in the world it presented.

Ghost of Tsushima

People were not lying when they called this an old school Assassin's Creed type game. But that is really to the game's benefit. There's something very refreshing about an open world game that doesn't have a map that look like someone asked Jackson Pollock to throw icons all over. It gives you a chance to focus on the story rather than a billion side activities. Sure, the game has some collectibles and stat boost stuff but they are short and the game even gives you the option to have it guide you to them directly. The combat when it flows is super satisfying, making you feel like a demon posessed samurai/ninja. Story has some real high points but at times also feels like an excuse just to fuck some folks up. Also, I didn't mention the game's visuals are just beautiful to look at and play around with in photo mode. But at the end of the day the game just feels like a real palette cleanser to a the general trend of open world map vomit and for that I'm very greatful.

Observation

Few games in recent memory has made me completely question the intentions of my own character. This game in particular plays around with expectations of genre and perspective a handful of times to the point where I sometimes feard for the other character's due to my actions while at some other point fear for my own character due to other characters. It plays around with who might be the antagonist if any. The game has such a dense atmosphere (and that's not a space joke) that I found myself completely sucked into the mystery of it's story. While it goes some crazy places, it plays around with a type of narrative I'm very much into, ideas of time and space and a narrator's reliability and the reliability of your own perspective. I don't know why I completely spaced on adding this game when I posted, but it's here now, thank the stars.

Stranded Deep

I have historically had a hard time with survival games, because what I want to get out of them vs the reality of them doesn't always square up. To put it in other terms, what I want is to be a survival architecht and explorer but what I don't want is actually having to deal with the maintenance of survival and scarcity of resources. But the visual appeal of stranded tropical islands just felt like something I had to explore. It's ironic in a way that during my week of stress relief from almst burning out, I started a survival game. But through some happy accient, the game became a vacation from stress despite being a survival game. The setting itself was relaxing, but more than that, the survival mechanics gave me a sense of control and structure. I drew a physical map of the locations of islands and their resources. I planned trips to and from islands by storage room to make sure I could bring tools, tool repair resources, food but enough storage to be able to bring resources back to my main island. I was living my best Cast Away fantasy and it was like lotion for the soul.

Assassin's Creed: Valhalla

My history with Assassin's Creed is like a rocky relationship that still has some promise. At the beginning things was all bliss and I couldn't keep my eyes off of them. But as time went on, things became routine. At one point they were finding themselves and I felt like we were growing apart and I didn't really recognize them anymore. We got seperate apartments, but stayed in touch in the hopes that maybe it's temporary. We both had some soul searching to do. We had a brief spark with Origins, but the novelty wore off and we took a break over Odyssey. And this year they came back, all dolled up in Norse history and mythology and I could barely contain my excitement. It's a piece of history near and dear to my heritage and interests. I was weary though, this could backfire just as well as it could strike gold. Engaging with the game though it soon became clear to me that I had to give the game some slack in historical accuracy and soak in the parts that meant something to me. But oh do I soak. It's living my own norse fantasy in so many ways. It may not do everything perfect and it may at it's core just be a reskinned Assassin's Creed. But it explores things so close to home for me that there's no other feeling than true love for it. I'm about 50 hours into it and possibly less than half way through and I forsee this to be the first Assassin's Creed I'll finish since Unity.

Cyberpunk 2077

This year I was convinced the universe did its best to make sure I would never get to play this game. From delay after delay to an eventual pull from PSN. The conversation around the game made it seem like it had been a wait in vain. But I was curious, I needed to know. So, I bought a physical PS4 copy. Having read and seen that the Pro version was 'fine' I felt at least confident I would survive playing it from a performance level. But the universe wasn't quite ready to stop messing with me. After installing the game from disc and downloaded and installed the 1.05 patch (I thought), I tried to boot it up. But, to my surprise they had just released Hotfix patch 1.06 and by some weird universal fuckery the game refuses to boot if it's downloading a patch. Most games will ask if you want to boot the game anyway. Looking at the patch size though and reading up on 1.06 I was downloading the big version. Meaning, the system treated this like the most updated day 1 patch. And lo and behold, my game install said 1.0. Which got me thinking, if I was playing offline and installed from disc, would I even be able to launch it seeing as the game seems to refuse to launch before the patch was downloaded.

Anyway, eventually I did get into the game. And people were right, the game is buggy, performance is acceptable but not great. But technical aspects aside, I was blown away. The look and feel of the world, the combat, even the driving was all appealing to me. And I realize I might be the only one liking the driving because it has a real Mafia III feel. I was instantly invested in V and their story. It feels like an open world Deus Ex in the whole "let's find the path suited for your playstyle". My Nomad Netrunner feels exactly like I had envisioned them. There's choice but there's also a sense of wonder about what you could do that you're not doing. At one point I considered if I could shoot someone in a conversation that was dead weight to the character I was on a mission to save. And I could! With conversation to support it after it was done. Nowhere was I given a promt to, I just gave it a try. Which leads me to wonder if I could kill important characters as well given they have similar profiles to other people that isn't just civilians. But in general, while it may all be a lot of smoke and mirrors as far as choice go, I feel like the game balances it very well as I find myself considering my options on how to approach things and often times find that the way I had planned it is accounted for and very satisfying. I still have a long way to go with this game and I'm just savoring it and taking my time. Because while it may never live up to my head cannon of what Cyberpunk 2077 would become, taken for what it is it's still a game I am having a fantastic time with despite bugs and crashes.

Special Thanks

Lastly I would like to shout out the band Slaughter to Prevail and their song Demolisher as one of the reasons I stayed sane this year. Which was evident when my Spotify end of year results were in and it basically told me no one else listened as much to that song as I did.

And thank you if you read this whole thing and didn't set your computer on fire, it's very appreciated.

This blog is going to be all sorts of a mess, because I have two very similar yet differen ideas about what the hell it is I am about to blog about. I'll start where the idea came to me, as these blogs that I write once every other year seems to. Recently got back into PS Now and saw that they had added, among other things, Greedfall. A game I was curious about but not really willing to buy at full price because I have learned the hard way that I rarely, if ever, finish Spiders's games. I do think they are pretty damn fun for a few hours though, because something about the way they feel reminds me of playing old Ultima games on my PC as an early teenager. They are also ambitious to the point of failure, which is some kind of admirable.

But I digress. Something caught my eye while playing this game, because this game does it so bluntly that I couldn't ignore it. But it's by no means limited to this game or Spiders's games specifically. The first thing that caught my eye was the sense that your main character seems really naive. I'll try to be vauge as to not spoil anything but it's a tiny mission in the first hour so it's not a huge plot point. Basically, you are tasked to look up someone that is selling a product that is fake. Upon meeting them and figuring out that it's very much the case you confront the persn. They in turn give an explanation that is meant to put them in a better light. Despite all evidence showing that this person engages in acts of complete dishonesty your main character's reaction is basically to accept them at their word. You can decide to still turn them in, but the overall vibe of the conversation is pointing you toward turning him in being the 'renegade' option and letting him go is the 'paragon' option. But I was just sitting there wondering why my character would be so quick to take him at his word, he had no evidence nor did my character ask for it.

Once back to the mission giver I lied about him getting away. And that's when it dawed on me. Why am I the only one lying? Or are the other ones lying or believe they are not lying and my character is just gullible?

I found myself pondering if I have ever played a game that dealt in deception of the player by a character you are built to trust. Sure, there have been left turns in some games but most of the time it feels as though those moments are in some way telegraphed ahead of time. And more often than not, in those games I still have no agency over calling them on their bullshit before that time comes because the narrative is on rails. When it comes to games like Greedfall I do have agency, but the writing makes it so obvious what they want you to do depending on what type of character you play. And even when they do give you broader options, I still feel guided to feel some kind of way if I stray too far off their hero's journey.

My gripe I suppose is that I rarely feel decieved by someone because the ones I am supposed to dislike are so often clearly defined as antagonists. But that is the nature of games overall, well defined honest goals. Which leaves me as the only person truly engaging in deception. Lying to achieve my goals when I am trying to stay true to my morals whithout burning every bridge that has a clearly defined point of view but who is also useful.

This is why it was so fascinating to go from Greedfall to Observation. That narrative is a stright line for the most part, but up until the end it kept me on my toes about who or what to trust. At a certain point in that game, I didn't even trust myself by way of who I was playing. It's perhaps a bad example because it's not a game about dialogue options at all. But the point remains the same and the did give me the option to not trust someone based on my own hunches (even though that game also telegraphs a bunch of stuff, so the impact is a bit soft).

So what's my point here, my TLDR summary, well I think my general curiosity is why games seem so hard coded against deceiving you, why our heroes are so fast to believe the words of someone without so much as a hint of actual evidence. In fact, our heroes do a lot of quests based on nothing but someone asking them to without much justification. And why are we seemingly tasked with being the inventors of lies in a lot of games with dialogue options when seemingly no one else lies since they can all be taken at their word?

Thank you for reading this rambling mess, I hope my thoughts are at least somewhat coherent. If not, ask away and I'll clarify.

Ps. If you have played a game that fits the concepts of deception of the player, feel free to suggest I give it a shot.

Before I begin writing about the game I figured I would give some personal back story as to why the game had such a profound impact on me at a very specific time in my life. Most of us have probably have a piece of media touch us in some way at a time in our lives. A sort of moment in time when things just align in a way that almost makes it seem like you're living your very own version of The Truman Show.

Two years ago come February I decided my marriage was over, the spark wasn't there and had not been for a long time. It had taken me some time to realize I was living with someone who had become more of a roommate than a wife to me. It wasn't anyone's fault (at least not in any direct way), our relationship had just for some reason reached its expiration date and I couldn't spend another day living a charade. I mustered up the courage for the talk and I let it all out. When you hear about relationships and marriages ending you often hear the side of the person receiving the bad news, the shock and sadness of a heart breaking. And I had been on both sides before and it's always a hard time for both parties involved for a number of reasons. But ending a marriage and a relationship that was ten years long was a different kind of hard. The lives are much more intertwined, the logistics of a shared life and knowing someone you consider at the very least a dear friend will have their world shattered in a fraction of a second from your words.

There's a sense of freedom that comes when that initial bump is over, being that true to yourself. But there's also a tremendous amount of guilt. The following months after our talk I was losing weight by the day due to sleep issues, anxiety and a general lack of self-care. Once the split was official and the logistics of the separation was done things settled and I was slowing finding my balance again. During this time I was finding myself, realizing things I had put on hold that I had wanted to do for a long time. I bought a guitar that I was (and still am) slowly teaching myself to play, bought new clothes and started realizing who was on a deeper level and what I wanted out of life.

By the end of the year I was living a really nice life again, happier than I had been in years. If I was someone that believed in concepts such as energies attracting, I would say it was meant to be because I was ready now. During the new year's weekend a year ago I decided to take a weekend away in a different city just by myself. Celebrating New Year's Eve in a fancy hotel room with a bottle of my favorite whisky and a sky filled with fireworks outside my window. It felt like a fitting end to a year spent on my own. Little did I know life had other plans. Prior to arriving in the city I had briefly talked to a woman on a dating app. When she asked what I was doing on New Year's Eve, I told her I would actually be in her city over the weekend and told her about my plans for a solo New Year's Eve. But seeing as I was in town we took the opportunity to meet up the day before New Year's Eve.

My solo weekend ended up not being particularly lonely as we spent most of it together. This woman was in so few words; fantastic. She was genuinely hilarously funny, intelligent and beautiful. It had been a long time since I could recall being so drawn to someone, it was intoxicating and intimidating all the same time. We spent every possible weekend together after that. We decided we were official after a while and not long after that we made plans to have her move in with me and the logistics of that.

It was at this moment in time that I started playing Florence. That game begins when Florence is living a mundane, routine life. Something I had been feeling for a while prior to my divorce. She meets someone new and life begins anew. As I was in the middle of the adventure that is a new and exciting relationship I was seeing so much of Florence early stages with her new found love extremely relatable. Everything was fun, even grocery shopping, and conversations were flowing like the well of topics had no end. Life seemed to get a bigger spectrum of colors and I sincerely told my girlfriend that I didn't think a love like that which I feel for her was ever going to enter my life, and I still feel profoundly lucky to have met her. When Florence and her partner moves in together it really hit me, the compromises of a shared life. What stuff should be up for display, what furniture are you going to use? I spent a lot of time in this part of the game for some reason. I wanted Florence to be represented, but her partner needed space too. So what do you sacrifice to let someone else feel at home?

I had forgotten what that part was like but elegantly Florence reminded me of it. It's exciting to turn one home into a place for two, yet it's also very complicated. Tastes differ and things that hold value on some level may also look more like a relic from your relationship history to the other person. I was reminded that cohabitation is a real life puzzle that has no right solution, just many different solutions that may or may not please two people equally all the time. But you compromise, because the person you love is more important than an object that has been sitting on a shelf for a long time.

Florence life with her partner takes a turn eventually and starts falling apart. The dialogue puzzles are a mess, moves fast and communication breaks down. What was once a happy place turns into a broken vase that has been fixed with glue too many times. Eventually there's no turning back, the vase is beyond repair. We thus arrive at the same puzzle as before when Florence and her partner moves in together, but this time we pack things up. I was reminded of the anxiety of splitting up a home, do I get to keep the things I value or will the other person claim them for themselves? This time though most solutions are always bad for someone, and you're less likely to want to compromise because there isn't that love there to urge you into those for the well being of the other. You want to protect yourself and they want to protect themselves. What was once a home is now a cold calculated business transaction of things.

Eventually the dust settles and you begin your journey again. Florence finds herself in her paintings, realizing who she is on her own. And I found myself realizing my life at that point was an achronogical mirror to Florence. I had been through all of the stages in recent memory but out of order. My life had all the elements of her story in a jumbled version. In some way it made me appreciate the ups and downs of life and the puzzles it comes with. How it changes but change isn't necessarily bad, it may very well be the best thing that could happen to you, even if at some moment it seems to be the hardest thing you have to do.

Here I am now, living with the most amazing individual I have had the pleasure of falling in love with along with her two cats whom I now am a sort of adoptive father to. I feel like a better version of myself, the best version of myself in years. Even though I have written all of this and concluded that change isn't always bad, I still naturally wish and hope not specifically secretly that this time, this person, is the one with which there will not be a need to glue pieces of a vase back together. Because it will not break. I will at the very least to my very best to make sure of that.

Thank you for reading!

Some thoughts on my year, completely optional!

TLDR, Tell me about the games!

10. Mass Effect: Andromeda / Persona 5

I have a hard time picking either of these for the last spot. I absolutely love the world of Mass Effect and Andromeda was a real eye poke of a bad surprise. But even so, there were glimmers of hope in there. I had my moments of fun with the game. But I just couldn't bring myself to finish it. Likewise, I have a hard time getting through the Persona games. I love them for several hours but after a while it feels like a chore to keep playing, mostly due to the battles. It's no secret I have no love for the way JRPGs function these days, if there was a way to play the game entirely without battles (save for maybe boss battles) I would love to continue just experiencing the story.

9. Yakuza 0

I have always found the Yakuza franchise fascinating. As I heard someone once say, they feel like better takes on a Shenmue-esque game design philosophy. But they are also more over the top, yet fittingly cinematic crime stories that is so unapolagetically steeped in Japanese culture that I can't help but admire it. The fighting is always a joy, the story is fun to go along with. And those mini-games, all those mini-games.

8. Observer

I am not entirely sure this is a good game, but I couldn't help enjoy it even so. It ran like shit at times, it crashed several more and once in a blue moon do you get a voice actor that isn't bad. Actually, it felt like most voice actors were doing voices for different games. It's a really stylish game that manages to truly set a mood and somwhere I just found myself really clicking with it enough to keep it this far up the list.

7. Cuphead

The game I wanted to play since it was first revealed in that now famous Xbox indie reel. The music, animation, attention to detail are all fantastic. The game is hard but rewarding to play. It is strange to feel like I have so little to say but every time I play it I get mostly overwhelemd with admiration for it's artistic intent and execution.

6. Call of Duty: World War II

When it comes to distractions, few things work as well as CoD multiplayer. It's fast paced, fast rounds and you end up zoning out and just relying in instincts. A year when I needed a break from thinking, this game truly delivered. And that isn't a veiled stab at Call of Duty, mind you. I always liked the Call of Duty of old that were set during WW2. While the modern games had their evolution and interesting additions, I fell off after Advanced Warfare. Things had turned too crazy visually and movement wise, it just wasn't fun anymore. Going back to basics, in a sense, were a nice compromise for me. Things are still faster in some aspects compared to the old games, but the weapons and settings just feel a little more fun to play around with. I haven't been this good at Call of Duty in years. I have only briefly touched the single player and what I have seen seems pretty by the numbers. But those, while sometimes fun, are not why I buy Call of Duty.

5. Pillars of Eternity: Complete Edition

Technically the game isn't a 2017 release as a title, but it is a 2017 release as a PS4 game. I bought the game on a whim one night when I wanted to play something new. This game had gotten good reviews on PC but looking at images and video didn't quite convince me. But, beggers can't be choosers, I took a leap of faith and ignored that. Luckily for me, it was a fantastic game. I vanished into the game and the world and hours passed by as I explored the world and it's story. It was all like reading a nice book, by a fireplace while drinking hot chocolate-levels of good times.

4. Assassin's Creed: Origins

Not going to deny I am a bit of an Assassin's Creed apologist, I never grew tired of the franchise and contrary to most I like my AC games full of themselves and plenty of conspiracy. I also prefer the entries with cities rather than open spaces, which is why I enjoyed Unity more than both III and Black Flag. Ironically, open spaces are plentiful in Origins but the way there are implemented here feels a lot less grating than they did in either of the other two. When I first started playing and getting into the game, I picked up on the very obvious Witcher 3 inflences. But I think it was for the benefit of the game. I was further surprised and delighted that they had revamped the climbing to include basically every type of surface, not just limited to buildings. The story has been interesting, the world is fascinating and beautiful and the combat is actually quite fun. It is without a doubt my favorite AC title since the days of Ezio.

3. What Remains of Edith Finch

For a while, I was pretty set on this game being my actual GOTY, I was in love with the story of the game and the fates of all the people in the Finch family. Every room was interesting to explore and the characters whom you get to meet through the memories were diverse and enjoyable. But one room really set the bar for me and it was interesting to see that it did it for other people as well though perhaps for different reasons. The fish canning factory sequence in this game may have been interesting to people, but for me it hit almost too close to home. A few years ago at the job I have now, I was working a station not disimillar to the one depicted in the game (though a poultry rather than fish). When you know a boring job well enough to do it on auto pilot, that's when you need to keep the time running. Music and podcasts were a thing, but day dreaming your time away was equally effective. But working in such a place is also very mentally draining due to it's monotonous repetition. I saw a friend turn into a depressed alcoholic (luckily, he's better now and got a job he enjoys elsewhere) and another coworker commited suicide (not only due to the job, but it was in the mix). I was on the verge of quitting by the time I was offered a different, better, position. When that segment ended I was in tears, partially because it was a well crafted piece, but because I saw someone illustrate a small piece of my life with such pinpoint accuracy that I had to put the controller down for a while.

2. Wolfenstein: The New Colossus

This game is crazy. It is dark and grim but hopefull and empowering. It defies expectations and surprise you at every corner. It was even better than Pillars of Eternity in making me completely forget about the real world and just be somewhere else. Whenever I stopped playing it felt I had to reemerge into the real world. Sort of like when a movie you're really invested in ends and you are thrown back out into reality. I was at first sceptical of the talk of this game and it's moments, I find people tend to often be hyperbolic. And while some scenes were not to the degree I had heard, there were so many nuances to the characters and the story that when certain things happened I couldn't help but admire the game's ability to almost treat it's cast of characters the way certain tv-shows do. They love them, but they will sacrifice them for impact when needed.

1. Hellblade

"Have you ever died before? It’s a serious question. When an illusion of self is shattered, you simply cease to be. Though it may not seem that way to others. You know when it is true. You can feel it. A stranger in your own body. An imposter. And nothing is the same ever again."

Unlike most people, I didn't have much issue with the combat or the puzzles. I enjoyed them enough, they weren't either too hard or too easy. Probably because I was so enamored with the world of Hellblade, what might otherwise have been an issue I dealt with. I sat and translated the runes on the first stone you see when you reach the shore and get control of Senua, already there the game shined with it's attention to detail and even reveals an aspect of the story. Honestly, I think I mostly bought the game because of it's use of norse mythology. But playing it I was surprised. Pleasantly surprised by the game's visual style, the audio design, the fantastic music and it's world. Though the thing that surprised me the most was through dealing with Senua's struggles, the game spoke to me in related terms. The quote above hit me the way the cannery scene in Edith Finch did, it felt like the game spoke directly to me. And the deeper into the game I got, the more I felt for Senua and her struggle. For her sake but also for mine. It is a hard thing when your biggest enemy is yourself, how do to beat them? I can't praise this game enough.

A few days ago, the year that killed David Bowie ended. It was a real rollercoaster of a year with a lot of things going downhill. Ironically, games were pretty good. And I went back to school to try and make myself hirable as something other than a punching bag, and to my surprise I am doing pretty damn well in school. So here's to hoping that keeps up as we start down on the highway 2017 and whatever this year brings us. So without further ado, here's some games I liked and can say things about in a somewhat coherent manner.

Games that made an impact, but didn't make the list.

• The Witness - Best designed world this year.
• Virginia - Best use of Twin Peaks. Interesting evolution on Thirty Flights of Loving game concept.
• Dishonored 2 - Best use of sneaking, though it feels like a weaker experience than the first.
• Watch Dogs 2 - Best improvement over a predecessor. Wrench is my bro.
• Deus Ex: Mankind Divided - Best use of cybernetic implants. Though I didn't ask for this game to be this small in scope.
• Unravel - Best use of yarn. Also, most Swedish game of 2016.
• Asemblance - Best use of looping memories. Screw you, I am going to stare into the wall until I see the truth.

Runner-Ups of the year, these ones almost made the list.

• PinOut - Best mobile game 2016. It's endless pinball in a TRON-esque environment.
• Final Fantasy XV - I haven't enjoyed a Final Fantasy this much since FFVII. Best looking food since Sunny's eggs in MGS 4.
• Thumper - It's so good I wish I had bought it sooner.

The actual top 10ish list that this whole thing is about.

10. Overcooked / Tricky Towers

If there was a combination of just fun couch games this year it would have to be these two. For a rare moment in time I brought my PS4 over to my mom's place for an evening hanging out with my brother and her. I had these two games on the console but I figured they would be fun for a little while until we moved on to something else. Lo and behold my surprise when they take over more or less our entire evening. Even my mom got in and played several rounds of Tricky Towers, which was super fun to watch considering she doesn't play games at all (outside of trying to play Suikoden once in 1997). And going through most of Overcooked with my brother was a frustrating treat, didn't know we could shout that much at each other in a joyous manner.

9. Batman: The Telltale Series

As a big fan of Batman and Telltale's games, there's a lot of things going for this game. Naturally it could all fall apart, but luckily it didn't. In fact, it was quite a fresh take on Batman that managed to seemingly take inspirations from all sorts of Batman sources. I found it really interesting to tackle the issues as either Batman or Bruce Wayne and the core concept of who Batman or Bruce Wayne actually is.

8. Adr1ft / Firewatch

Maybe it's 2016, maybe it's the responsibilites of life in general. But this year I found myself really drawn into games and stories about isolation and alienation. Firewatch is a gorgeous game with a really charming story about finding yourself. The interesting part was that I realized something about myself playing that game when I noticed how I was contemplating how Henry should respond to Delilah's inquiries. I enjoyed how the game manifests through its story man's ability to see ghosts where there are none.

Adr1ft on the other hand ended up being more of a puzzle game than I had anticipated and I often found myself lost in the similar looking hallways. But there was something relaxing about the experience, as if I was drifting far above my responsibilites on earth and how small they seemed up there.

7. Overwatch

There's something special about Overwatch's ability to both give you the thrilling sensation of a really good multiplayer FPS while also incorporating the flow and sense of breaking waves as in MOBAs. I also quite appreciated a multiplayer game that wasn't trying to be edgy, super fast or overly complex. Overwatch is a fun game with complexities, naturally, but it manages to straddle the line and never go into the deep end. Every character feels viable and even though I found my niche, I was never uncomfortable playing something else if needed be.

6. Stories: The Path of Destinies

Here's a game I took a chance on one evening when I was bored and was hooked on for a long time. The core of the game is finding your way to the true ending and you do that by playing it through to an ending and realizing things along the way. You start over and you make different choices and so on and so forth. It may sound repetitive, but I actually found it really interesting to play through a narrative where I slowly but surely saw every character and choice in the game with different eyes with the varying bits of information I had acquired along previous runs. The combat is fast and fluid, even though its pretty simple and the game has some really good use of narration.

5. Battlefield 1

If I had to define myself within the franchise it would be as a Battlefield 2 kind of guy. I missed the whole Bad Company part and Battlefield 3-4 and Hardline just didn't quite scratch the Battlefield itch I had. But Battlefield 1 is something special. In some aspects it feels like a palette switch from Battlefront but with added complexity, because the game is missing something from Battlefield 4. Not in any negative sense, but it feels like a lighter, more streamlined Battlefield. But I haven't had this much fun getting headshots on dudes from too far away since Battlefield 2. And when you get those 'Battlefield Moments', it's a real treat.

4. Hitman

An episodic Hitman game sounded like a really weird idea. How much fun could there be on one mission alone? To my surprise, a ton of fun. Even in Colorado, my least favorite mission, I was still having fun finding my own way of tackling the mission. While I didn't end up finishing every mission a ton of times, I have seen enough by completing them to know that there's plenty more for me to do if I ever wish to. Good on you, 47. Looking forward to your next season.

3. Uncharted 4: A Thief's End

I have a weird love/hate relationship with Uncharted. I have always disliked the combat, loved the story and environments and rolled my eyes at the end game of the ones that I got that far in. So imagine my surprise when Uncharted 4 is an improvement on all my negatives without sacrificing my positives. This is by a long shot the best Uncharted, I even enjoyed engaging with the combat. It was also one of the games with in-game camera that I had a ton of fun stopping whatever it was I was doing to do photography. If this ends up truly being the end of the franchise, it's a hell of a good way to end on.

2. EA UFC 2

If there was one game this year I spent more time with against my brother it would hands down be this game. We're both into MMA and UFC specifically. But EA UFC transcends that by also being a really fun pick up and play fighting game. The career mode is serviceable, creating a fighter could still be a little more nuanced, but the in-ring action is fun as hell. They streamlined the ground game from the last one, making it a little more manageable. When it comes to the stand-up side of things, they added a weird amount of physics to everything and extra animation to the point that the game got even more jank than the previous entry. I suppose I should give the game a negative for that, but the amount of time me and my brother has been sitting at 4am laughing till tears together is worth more than a technically "perfect" game.

1. Mafia III

All things considered, I probably couldn't have asked for a better Mafia sequel than what Mafia III turned out to be. I'm an unflinching apologist for Mafia II and its open world design. And while Mafia III builds on that and makes it a little more active on the map at all times, I still found the world of Mafia III to be just as enjoyable as Mafia II. Add to that an engaging story with varied cast of characters, fun and weighty combat and cars that handle great enough to make your action film sequenced driving look easy. There was no other game I had as much fun with this year as I did Mafia III, by the end of the game I was engaging with the systems for no reason and I was finding my way through the city without even looking at the road signs. Those light effects though, what was that all about?

If you for a moment consider these questions; what makes a good open world map? Does the game have to justify the map in some way? If yes, does the game have to offer up incentives or can the exploration come organically?

I ask those questions because having finished Mafia III and pondered how I tend to fall on the odd side of the discussion on the Mafia franchise. A lot of people argued that Mafia's maps are pointless because there's no reason to explore them. Maybe that's the case, maybe not. But it made me think about a long standing idea I've had regarding open world games and their maps. Namely the negative spaces. Those places you rarely ever go to because you either have no mission there or optional incentive to explore the area. I am sure you can think about any open world game you have played and nod because you remember that one alley, park, field or factory that became window dressing more than a place you actually visited.

When we discuss open world games and their maps it's often with the distinct agreement that there need to be things to do in order for you to explore the map, otherwise what is the point? In your every day life, do you explore every area around the place you live for no reason? Of course not, that would probably not yield all that much of interest to you with possible exceptions. But we expect games to be crammed with those things to motivate us to explore, even though a lot of those games are designed to mimic real life to a certain degree. They are exaggerated, of course, but still aim to be a simulated city in a bottle.

I would argue that the motivation to explore an open world map beyond what the developers ask you to explore needs to come from the map itself. I rarely enjoy side activities in these games, because they're often pretty pointless. Collectibles are usually too many for my taste and often more feels like a map clearing checklist than a form of exploration. Consider the Elder Scrolls series and how exploring the map often reveals interesting places, stories and quests. Sure, compared to Mafia, there isn't anything like that to find in Mafia but I'll get to that later. The Elder Scrolls franchise wants you to explore its map, because it's packed with things to find. But that may also be one of the notable exceptions. I would argue Witcher 3 does a good job of this also, but that game also reveals a lot of it's points of interest on the map which makes the act of exploration less organic because you're drawn to markers on the map. Even so there are plenty of things to find.

But if we focus on the open world crime genre that often takes place in cities and the surrounding areas the reasons to explore those maps become smaller much faster because there's very little to actually discover. So the game needs to show you the map because it can't rely on your sense of curiosity. And here's the point where I think Mafia shines and a lot of other open world games don't and I'll explain with an anecdote from my time with Mafia III.

I was tasked with bringing in a shipment of electronics from out in the Bayou. I'm not going to lie, being far up in the map and being tasked to drive down to the Bayou can feel like a hassle. But I got to driving, did some fancy drifting around corners and eventually came to a fork in the road and I looked at the sign that pointed me in the right direction and I stopped the car. I stopped the car not because I missed the turn but because when I saw the sign I realized I had driven all the way there without looking at the signs. Having looked at the map where to go my internal sense of place within the game's map had already drawn a route to drive. And so I started thinking about why that was and I came to the conclusion as I played the game that they make sure you see that map by design.

Missions begin and end in such a way that you have to drive back to your points of progression using different roads. When I finished that game, I had probably driven on most if not all the streets of that map. What I came to realize is that the map had very few negative spaces (but it does have some) and I began to feel at home in most areas and how they were interconnected with each other. I didn't need a reason to explore the map, the game was built in such a way that I would be doing that organically through playing the game beat by beat.

This may all sound like a defensive speech in favor of Mafia, I realize, but I found it an interesting jumping off point (and I am sure plenty of you will disagree with my experience and that's totally cool). That being said, I am interested in your thoughts regarding the subject matter and if you have ever thought on the concept of negative spaces in open world games or what motives you to explore open world maps in general.

Once in a blue moon I decide to pick up some older games that I haven't gotten around to trying out yet for various reasons. Either I didn't quite find them appealing at the time of release or I was curious but didn't want to spend too much money on them. Whatever the reasons are, I have a tendency to sooner or later give them a shot just to either see if I was right or wrong with my assumptions. This practice may sound crazy, but it has given me a pretty decent track record of knowing what games will actually appeal to me.

So for this round of games I just got around to playing we have the futuristic world of Killzone: Shadow Fall, the gritty world of Shadow of Mordor and the pretty lycan hunter The Order 1886. Read on for my hot takes on these games my expectations may or may not prove me right. Some spoilers perhaps, also I haven't actually finished any of these yet.

Killzone: Shadow Fall

Imagine if someone killed your father in cold blood, how would you react? Sad or angry? Maybe act crazy and scream and shout? Well, in Killzone kids apparently don't give a shit. They respond with some overly self reflective question of their future. It was as though your dad couldn't be less important to you other than as a source of food and housing. The game doesn't start off particularly well, in fact I audibly laughed at this specific scene. I didn't expect the story in the game to blow me away, but it was as if they weren't even trying with this one. I mean, even the justification for the entire plot is ridiculous. You wipe out your enemy's home planet and decide to invite them to stay on yours. Did I mention you let them bring weapons? And forcefully seize neighborhoods? And suddenly you play cold war as though it's a futuristic Berlin. Who thought this was all a good idea? Didn't anyone in the writing room go "hey, you know, this makes absolutely no sense at all from any perspective".

Playing Killzone has always been hit or miss. There's something to the gun play in these games that never quite sit well with me. It feels like they're trying to be Call of Duty fast but at the same time have some weight to it making everything feel slightly like playing COD when you have had a few beers and aiming just isn't where it should be anymore. I did however quite enjoy the drone that can help you out in some sticky situations with the tools available, it became sort of a flying set of magic skills.

I suppose in the end I bought the game mostly because I am a sucker for pretty futuristic cities in entertainment. And for a few brief moments I did enjoy some nice skylines and architecture in general. But when push came to shove I decided to end my stay in the world early as it wasn't the shooter I wanted to play, the story was garbage and looking at nice digital houses only get you so far.

Verdict: Didn't need to buy it. Should have trusted instinct.

Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor

Winner of Giant Bomb's own Game of the Year 2014 and on many lists that year. Introduced the much lauded nemesis system and apparently played like gold. My initial reaction back then was that it looked like a bland Lord of the Rings version of Assassin's Creed. While what I read of the nemesis system piqued my curiosity, it never persuaded me to give the game a chance.

First time playing the game I was surprised to find that the graphical style of the human characters felt a lot more cartoony than videos made them out to be, visually speaking. I know cartoony gives a really weird image in ones mind but look at it like this; take a game that aspires to look real and take a few steps towards World of Warcraft. Ironically, I never felt like the enemy seemed to be. In some way I kind of feel like they put more effort into making detailed looking orcs than they did their human characters who feels a lot more generic in contrast. Even the main character feel like he's some random dude in Middle-Earth cosplaying Aragorn.

The world itself still looks really weirdly bland from my inital impression. It feels like you're just running in circles in mud. And I feel like I have read you get to a different area at some point that isn't as muddy and dull looking but I am not entirely sure I want to do this thing I'm doing for that long. The story isn't particularly interesting, the world is a real drag for most of the time to look at and everything feels really constructed and intentional as opposed to feeling like landmass that should be this way.

I will admit though that the combat is really satisfying and fluid. Strike, parry and executions can all lead to some really spectacular moments and I actually appreciate that the enemy doesn't care that you're doing some weird mind-meld with an enemy and actually hits you out of it if you're not paying attention.

But for as fun as the combat is, I actually haven't really seen the fruits of the nemesis system. In fact I would say I don't quite get it outside of the fact that if I die to a captain he can level up and rank up. How that benefits me is completely beyond me. Also, when you kill off a ton of the captains it feels like the entire system breaks down. Also, captains are linked to certain war-chiefs at times but I have no clue why. Maybe I have missed something, but at the same time the game tried to introduce me to "new" features at some point when I had already done that for at least an hour. So I am not so sure the game explains itself all that well.

Verdict: More fun playing than expected. Most of the things I didn't like before playing still holds true though. Nemesis system is a mystery to me. Could have lived without it, but having some fun with it.

The Order 1886

This was one of those games that seemed like a good time to me but it wasn't received all that highly and was said to be pretty short. That being the case I never quite felt like paying full price for it. So I waited for a sale. The game feels like a basic cover based shooter with some quick time events thrown in. Playing it is generally just straight forward with not much in the vein of challenge, except a few places where it feels like the game is setting out to give you a bad time and your AI buddy doesn't help at all. General gun play feels solid though and some of the weaponry is quite fun to wield.

In some way the game feels like it is pulling in two different directions. One is more visual and cinematic and the other leans heavy on classic cover based action. And it seems like the two don't quite want to be there with the other, making it a little bit of a struggle. But it never really turned somewhere I wasn't comfortable with.

But man is the game pretty. I had some moments of looking at buildings where I was actually in some level of awe. The game having a pretty robust photo mode is quite welcomed. Contrary to a lot of other photo modes though, this gives you a free camera that isn't joined at the hip of your character, something that always bugs me in most other games with photo modes.

I realize talking about photo mode seems like an odd thing to focus on, but it was something that I actually had fun with as I find the whole idea of in game photography interesting after seeing some people focus a lot on that. On some level it's a fancier way of saying you took a screen shot, but there's some artistic value there to be sure. But I digress.

Story wise the game isn't quite firing on all cylinders, but nothing is really ruining my experience and I am curious to see where it ends. The world they built is interesting on its own, even if the characters you are spending your time with feels a bit like archetypes than fully fleshed out characters, however fancy their facial hairs might be.

Verdict: Glad I bought it. But I can certainly see the criticisms the game has gotten.

Closing thoughts

When it comes down to it, I am still actually really surprised Shadow of Mordor got as high praise as it did. For as competent as the game is at certain things, the overall package is opposite the concept of "greater than the sum of its parts". Mordor sort of becomes less than the sum of itself. In some ways though, the art style of that game and its world probably rubs me the wrong way more than it does other people. I'll give it a few more story missions and see if anything picks up on the story end, otherwise it will probably have to move aside once Mafia III comes around.

It's a little bit ironic, also, that I spend time talking about photo mode in games and I don't take the time to fix a set of screenshots by myself instead of searching the site for ones to use. I even took the time to set up a way to get them out of there not to long ago either. Ah well, next time!

I know this is a week or two off most lists but I've had a ton of stuff to do and some games I've wanted to finish off before settling on the list kept it back. But enough excuses, here are some games that made me want to put a number on and write something about them in an orderly fashion.

1. The Witcher 3

As I arrived in Skellige the skies were dark and rain was pouring down. Thunder and lighting danced over the seas as I traveled across the islands on Roach. A gentle song emerges, a song of love between someone stuck at shore and someone out at sea ("The Fields of Ard Skellig"). My eyes were tearing up, not because I speak Scots Gaelic but because up to this point The Witcher 3 had been an amazing RPG in a lot of ways. But it was on the islands of Skellige where my heart found a home in the world of the Witcher. Geralt was so happy he celebrated the whole thing by doing a big dive from the Kaer Trolde bridge.

There are so many things in the game I want other games to look at and learn from. Such as well thought out side quests with stories worth your time. Building a world that feels lived in and filled with culture and history. What really impressed me was how deeply rooted everyone's perspective on their world seemed. Even the most random NPC (well, to be fair, within reason) you talked to seem to have their own perspective and values. But the underlying thing that I found fascinating was that the game didn't really point fingers and moralize at it's own world. It just offered up the events as it was and you decide how to tackle them and their morallly ambigious nature. In a lot of games there are moral choices that are both bad (because "gritty realism") and others that are two opposites. I found a lot of the moral questions in this game to feel a lot less about specifics and more about general ideas of perspective. As I said earlier, it never feels like the game is moralizing, so you never really feel penalized for your choices in any practical sense.

That's all not even mentioning the combat which I actually had a ton of fun with, to the point of giving myself excuses just to engage with it. But all the moral dilemmas, interesting stories and fun combat aside though, what really and truly places this on the first place is just the simple fact that The Witcher 3 did what no other RPG of the last 19 years have done; kept me enthralled with it from beginning to end without a moment of downtime. I found myself looking for excuses to play more. Not even Skyrim had me this excited to play more. The last time I played an RPG I was this in love with, was Suikoden back in 1997.

2. Her Story

When I first heard about the game I was quite intrigued by the whole concept. And even before it came out I had this urge to play the game while taking hand written notes (something I started a thread about), it just felt fitting somehow. It wasn't just fitting though, it was very practical. Because the game itself give you so few tools to keep track of what connections you make yourself and how it relates to what videos you've found other than you giving videos their own user tags.

But that loop of searching a word you heard in an answer and explore the videos you found from that was incredibly rewarding in and of itself as I was writing down new information and drawing new conclusions. But the number one aspect of this game is when you find that one search that reveals something bigger. That key that open the door to a more complex idea. Just fantastic experience all around.

3. Bloodborne

I'll confess something; I don't necessarily like challenge. In fact, some would argue I tend to shy away from things I do when things get hard instead of getting better and working through it. And I might even say they have a point. It's probably a mix of being slightly impatient (I guess I'm an instant gratification kind of person at times) and not liking the feeling of being bad at something (because when you're impatient about yourself, you also know you don't have the patience to wait for yourself to get better).

Something about Bloodborne kept me at it though for reasons I can't quite explain. I almost smashed my controller dying several times in a row at the hands of Father Gascoigne. I was so furious. But I kept banging my head at the game and finally it clicked. I don't want to say I was Neo seeing the code in the Matrix, but it was a revelation of sorts. Suddenly it was fun and dying was part of it. But the more I accepted dying being a part of it, the less I found myself dying. Probably because I stopped doing dumb things in a hurry.

The game also has a really cool atmosphere and visual style that kept me wondering what kind of weird monstrosity would be around the corner. A corner I probably now turned around on some aspects of letting my games actually give me the challenge I so often avoid.

4. Until Dawn

There are two sides to Until Dawn that really appeled to me. It's a David Cage-esque interactive movie type of game done almost better than David Cage's own creations (especially a coherent script). But it's also a faithful video game version of cheesy horror film. Yet I can't fault anyone who would take the game at face value because it's so faithful to it's inspirations that you'll be excused in thinking it's not done with that in mind. Or, maybe I should say I hope it's done with that in mind. Because the cast of characters are such perfect examples of horror tropes.

The characters are funny in their own right, the game can get extremely violent (as it should, all things considered), and the game was just down right fun to play. I never made a concious deicision to keep peple alive, but I found myself doing what I expect people to do most of the time (and not what they would do in the movies) and had decent success. Also, I'm a real sucker for any kind of personality tests and what they may or may not say about me.

5. Jotun

Something else me and my long beard is a big sucker for is Norse mythology. Jotun's premise is simple; you are playing Thora, a viking warrior that dies an inglorious death and must prove herself to the gods by defeating elemental giants (Jotuns) to enter Valhalla. I was sceptical at first (because I tend to think people handle Norse mythology pretty stereotypical and poorly) but with the Icelandic VO, the hand drawn art style and a gameplay style that works under the less is more mentality made the game a real treat to play. Sure, it takes some horned helmet liberties but I found enough respect for it's source to ignore that part, because the game is just that fun.

The bulk of the gameplay is some light puzzles, combat against some enemies of your size or thereabouts and big boss fights that are all unique and require their own strategy. The only thing you have to assist yourself beside your axe (that has a fast and a hard swing) are gift from the gods that are limited in use. These things are all useful but you need to think about how, when and why to use them. Otherwise you'll be at the mercy of the boss eventually. Like Bloodborne mentioned earlier, beating a boss and being that one step closer to your goal is just so satisfying. And I cant stress enough how awesome this game looks and sounds.

6. Fallout 4

I didn't think I wanted more fallout. I was wrong. I wanted more fallout. Currenly the dude I am about to meet for a quest is fighting Brotherhood of Steel knights while their ship is hovering above. Guess I'll come back later when he's not busy. I need to remodel part of my settlement anyway.

7. Assassin's Creed: Syndicate

While I am not done with the game, there are enough improvements over Unity to say I'm quite pleased with the game in general anyway. Jacob and Evie are both fun characters in their own right. Jacob feels like a blend between early Altair and Edward Kenway. Impatient, eager and jovial. While Evie on the other hand feels more like the actual assassin of the two, in the vein of Ezio, who try and focus and be a little more serious about matters.

I find them both to offer an excuse to play the game in two distict ways. Either I use Jacob as a blund instrument or I use Evie as an deadly shadow. It makes the gameplay feel less repetitious and missions a lot more varied. Which in some way is already true since the missions in this game feels a lot more inventive than they have felt recently. Even if some of them are remincient of those classical missions, there's enough unique gameplay scenarios here to keep me quite entertained.

8. The Beginner's Guide

As a creative person and a consumer of creative works there are some things in this game that just resonated with me on a deep level. The game explores a lot of concepts all ranging from what of ourselves we put in our works but also what people read into those works. But the game also brilliantly explores the concept of player agency and how that in turn can be related to you as the player.

There's a specific scene in the game that made me question why I even play games at all. I am not saying the creators intended that or anything else I took from the game. But that's also why I find the game to be so fascinating. It's the first time in a while where I feel like what I get from the game is as valid as what the game is doing on it's own.

9. Metal Gear Solid V [REDACTED]

9. Cibele feat. Emily is Away

I know it's unfair to place two games on one spot. And both deserve their own spot, I admit. However they both fit into the same headspace for me since they both share a DNA of personal experiences of my own. I played MMOs as an activity with my long distance girlfriend at the time. I had folders with website ideas, photos, poems and drawings. I lived a large portion of my life online. One part of that life was through instant messengers such as AIM, ICQ and MSN. While being Swedish and most Swedish teens at the time favored ICQ or MSN, I had a lot of US friends through message boards that had me using AIM for the most part. In some way, both of these games represent a nostalgic and sometimes tragic look back at my own love life through other people. But also the good times, old friends and the joy of hearing someone come online and the heartbreak of saying good bye to someone you love at an airport and hearing the sound of someone logging out of your life.

10. Star Wars: Battlefront

I've never been a big Star Wars guy. Writing that I wonder how many other people have written something to that effect when talking about Battlefront. But Star Wars is something that have always been relevant in popular culture in some way so even if you're not, you've probably absorbed a lot of it through osmosis. Battlefront came with some expectations from me as a guy that does love Battlefield and have faith in DICE as a developer. And initially I wasn't wrong.

The game plays great, looks great and (obviously) sound great. It's a feel good experience all around. When people talked about it being shallow I said they were crazy. Because the game was just that much fun. I found the card system for loadouts to be pretty neat, the kill streak esque pick-ups were a welcomed change to how most games do them. All in all I was having a ton of fun. However, something about the game just doesn't keep you there. So I bought Battlefield 4 with Premium on a PSN sale thing and didn't look back. It's not necessarily a knock at the game though because I do think it's a very fun game, it just wasn't that pick up and play multiplayer shooter I craved.

The Case Against Metal Gear Solid V

One notable game isn't on this list and I figured it was worth discussing why I didn't put it on the list despite all its qualities. Few games in recent memory have been so divisive in my own mind that I've had to sit and discuss it with myself. Let us start by talking about the positive aspects of the game. It's a stealth action sandbox game that has some really interesting mechanics. Some are obvious and some I found through reading the forums and listening to podcasts. I was always fascinated by these new solutions and how flexible the game was to your play style. And the game did play great, even if Snake is still a bit stiff as always. But what the game lacked in fluid motion, it made up for in sheer depth of mechanics. But let us be fair here, MGS has never been about fancy gameplay animations and what is in the game is the best the franchise has been.

So for the first handfull of missions (including a bunch of side ops) the gameplay loop felt fresh. Scenarios felt like they needed a different approach to some degree. Though as the game progressed I found myself getting stuck in a singular mindset, play style and loadout. Because at some point you start to find your own groove and what solution nets you the best end result. Two specific things happaned that simultanously had me in awe and ruined everything. I acquired the ability to custimize guns and I met Quiet. This resulted in what can only be described as my own play style's singularity. Most missions became a routine so similar to the previous mission that the game slowly turned into a grind with no carrot. As the impact of the mechanics started to wear thin, the narrative felt equally bare bones. The drop that made the goblet tip over though was the forced FOB tutorial. I was trying so hard to just get through the game's main story when that came up and it just killed every motivation I had finishing the game.

Somewhere in MGSV is a terrific game, unfortunately for me I took a turn with the game somwhere and realized that I wished the core gameplay mechanics was in a better game overall. And while I could have rewarded the game with a spot for it's gameplay alone, I was so furiously frustrated when I stopped playing the game that I managed to resent the game enough to simply not want to reward it. I suppose this long explenation in some way is me recognizing the game for it's good part and coming to terms with how we both just grew apart. It's not you, Snake, it's me.

Honorable Mentions

• Elite: Dangerous - Space have never felt this big and fun to explore. Driving your own cargo ship between stations might not have been the most story heavy, but the visual design of your ships interior, sense of scale and the sound design makes it a treat to just be in the game.
• Mortal Kombat X - Most fun I've had with a fighting game in a long time.
• Kerbal Space Program - I don't know what I'm doing.
• WWE 2K16 - I'm sorry. I had fun with Wrestling this year.
• Downwell - One of the best playing iOS games I've played in a while. Loved those different color options.
• Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger, and The Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist - One of the funniest little games this year.

Ever sit and think about what you did 18 years ago? No? Maybe it's an age thing as I am closing in on my 32:nd birthday, but I have. Especially in light of games these days often incorporating player choice and consequence, but also mature themes and ideas.

Around 18 years ago I was 14 years old sitting in my friend's room in front of his old Mac seeing a type of game unfold that I had never seen before. On a superficial level it was an adventure game with static hand crafted backgrounds and the characters were filmed animated puppets, as opposed to digital models. Everything had a bleak eerie look to it. It was cartoonish expressionistic but sedate enough to let you accept the world as it was. Of all the games I've played over the years, the images of this game are still as clear as though I saw them yesterday. It was one of those perfect marriages of right thing at the right time for my impressionable mind.

In Blackout you start the game by waking up in a bloody bed next to a headless corpse, things start getting really surreal until you faint and wake up again to a clean room without no real understanding of how or why things are happening. So you venture out into the city to try and figure out who you are. From here, the game pretty much give you free reign over figuring things out on your own. You can explore the various parts of the city, talk to people and hopefully find out what's going on.

So what is going on? Well, spoilers for an 18 year old game; at one point you meet a woman in a car. The vibe she gives off is that of some sort of mobster boss. An underground queen, if you will. She explains to you calmly that they are in the business of making movies. The type of movies in which the heroine doesn't survive. In other words, they make snuff films. Remember that headless corpse at the start? You are part of that.

But that's not all. During your stay in the city you can talk to your therapist, visit a brothel (to talk or have sex, up to you), eat food at a Chinese restaurant (and play different tunes on it's jukebox) while the waiter explains the meaning of the dish, discuss big boxing icons with a bartender, listen to an argument between a tattooist and a priest that ends with the tattooist indirectly threatening to burn down the church. And much more.

This city is bleak and filled with aspects of the worst of humanity, but in a really human way. And your trek through it is uniquely your own because the game will end in describing who you end up being by the results of your actions. I recall on my first playthrough ending up as a demon of sorts. These endings, whichever you might get, was a side of your character because your character suffered from multiple personalities and the ending highlights your dominate characteristic.

To be honest though, I don't know how well this game has aged since I haven't played it for a long time. But it's one of those games that even back in 1997 didn't treat adult themes in a game as having the biggest selection of cuss words or gore. It was adult not only due to some of it's story content but the level at which it took itself and it's characters seriously. I felt like the game respected the time I spent in ways even game's these days don't. At least, that's what my brain is telling me happened 18 years ago.

From what I understand, the game isn't only a cult hit in my circle of friends, but was actually at the time one of the games that heavily influenced getting the Danish game's industry up and running. And to my utter surprise and delight, according to Nordic Game Bits, the game is undergoing a remaster treatment (which currently is in it's infancy) and will be released for tablet in the future. If this ends up being the case for real, I'll be beyond excited.

Ever since the start of the franchise, I've had a real unwavering love for Assassin's Creed. Even when the games took a turn for the less interesting I still enjoyed my time. Listening to people talk about the franchise has always been interesting to me because there always seem to be two distinct camps; people that think the franchise is walking in circles and people that want to see the franchise find it's end point. I suppose I land somewhere in between. Because on one hand I think the potential story (or my "head canon") from the start could have a potential really interesting end point. But on the other hand, I don't necessarily believe it needs to be concluded to work as an ongoing framework.

There have been moments with these games where I've had the same fascination with the unknown as people had dissecting Lost episodes. Which is often why I refer to the potential of Assassin's Creed. Because the potential meta-narrative of these games and the potential historical events are broad enough to keep it going for quite a while.

But when Unity came out and people were disappointed and critical of both it's narrative content and at it's mechanical (and technical) issues, I feared the worst and I put the idea of buying the game aside for other games instead. But as I worked myself through my PS4 collection and started looking for something else to play, Unity was back on the table. And to my surprise, I didn't hate it.

Going from Black Flag into Unity there are noticeable changes to the core gameplay. There are obvious ones from a thematic and settings point of view (such as lack of boats), but there are a ton of other changes that add and subtract certain elements from the franchise. When it comes to the story beats, the game feels a lot more laid back and at worse somewhat thin. I could see where some would find it boring, but I somehow find it relaxing. I'll elaborate a bit more on these things later. First I would like to talk about language.

Language is a part of human interaction. It is what communicates ideas between people and it's part of a cultural identity. When I started playing Unity I found it surprisingly off putting that everyone was speaking English. Much like when I was playing previous titles starring Altaïr or Ezio. While in those games they explain that away in the fiction, I've always wished they could have figured out a way to add a more customizable way to handle languages. For example, playing Ezio, I wished he would have been speaking Italian but that anything outside of the Animus would have been in English. But if you make it so Ezio speak Italian, everyone speaks Italian, even Desmond. And that just didn't feel right either. And since the voice actor for English Ezio was actually pretty decent, it didn't hurt to have it be set to English.

Playing Unity though, aside from the early introduction and some brief messages (so far, I am not done with the game), there haven't been that much meta-stuff in the game. As such, since most of my time is spent with Arno and on the streets of Paris, I have the game set to French and it adds so much to the overall tone of the game. And I'll admit, I don't speak French so I don't necessarily reap the full benefits of it other than as cultural window dressing, but I appreciate it nonetheless. Games don't need to adopt the Hollywood "let's use English and pretend they speak a different language" mentality, we have the technology to allow for more options.

I have always admired Ubisoft for their city building craft, both technically and artistically. Paris is a wonderful place to roam around. Different parts of the city come with distinct feelings of differing status and wealth. Making the boiling nature of the social structure at the time of the game even more emphasized. But beyond just the nature of the place, there's a sense of scale and detail to the architecture that is beyond what's been done previously. Naturally with more architecture of the new consoles there's bound to be more stuff, but what I found the most intriguing was the detail work on statues, columns and other details on bigger landmark buildings. All of those things together has made some of the bigger synch point buildings in this game feel bigger than a lot of the older game's just by the nature of the added fidelity and scale.

As Arno was sitting at the top of Notre Dame it dawned on me why Assassin's Creed III and Black Flag didn't do it for me the way the previous games had; I love exploring well crafted takes on big historically important cities with impressive architecture. Because as much as I loved listening to my shipmates sing as we went full speed into Davy Jones locker cannons blazing or come flying down from a tree with my tomahawk ready to taste templar blood, those places weren't as interesting long-term however much I appreciated the love taken to craft those places.

One thing I've really enjoyed with the later AC titles is the level of customization you get for your character. It's been limited to a special outfit or a couple of them. In Unity though, they went all out and not only added different parts that you can mix and match to your heart's content, but added stats for your specific play style if you want. I found this super welcomed (as a bit of a customization enthusiast, whatever that means), even if I wish they would be a bit more liberal in how to unlock them.

Another part that changed is the combat and weapons department. No longer do you run around with a big arsenal of weapons hanging on every free area of your belt. At first this bugged me since I wish you could mix and match at least two weapon types. But what I realized was I didn't actually miss it, and since switching weapons in the menu is so quick and can be done pretty much anywhere anytime, it probably lessened that urge to carry everything I might need all the time. And when it comes to engaging in the combat, it was a bit of a roller coaster turn. At first it felt clunky and unresponsive. But after a couple of hours I realized it hadn't actually changed that much, other than in tempo and weight.

There's certainly some issues in the combat though. At times it seems as though the game isn't fast enough for it's own combat. But the bigger issue I take with the combat is the camera angle and the new notification of incoming attackers as it leads to moments when you're unable to tell someone is attacking until it's too late. Also, it seems as though they completely removed the ability to dodge gunshots by grabbing an enemy. But even with those issues, when the combat flows and you're being careful not to just push buttons whenever, it still feels great and I find myself engaging in more combat than necessary just for fun. Which is a great thing for me since around every corner there's a chance some civilians need the assistance of the prowler of Paris; Arno.

So about that story and Arno. The overall meta conceit of the game feels, for now, to be pretty forgettable. It doesn't have the sense of mystery as the previous games or the crazy rabbit hole that was Black Flag's first person sequences. But it's not in my way or overtly distracting either. Arno's story though I do find a little bit interesting, if only because it's continuing on from Black Flag's introduction of slightly blurring the lines between Templars and Assassins and showing cracks in both of their organizations.

As a main character I find Arno very functional as he reminds me a lot of how Altaïr was positioned in the original Assassin's Creed. It's a character that doesn't stand out as much in their own personality other than their own convictions. It's a lot easier to project yourself onto Arno or Altaïr than Ezio, Connor and Kenway. The latter felt like they had established personalities (though Ezio had the benefit of 3 games of growth) that had nothing to do with you. But while Arno has his aspirations and his own demeanor, he has enough spaces for you as a player to fill those in with your own ideas. Though those spaces are also probably why a lot of people dislike Arno, as he's not a character that's entirely entertaining on his own.

In a way I find Unity to be a trimmed down Assassin's Creed. And in other ways the game feels as bloated as ever with collectibles, chests, side missions and random street events. But I can't get over the fact that I just unapologetically really like the game despite it's shortcomings and I really hope the franchise continues to be a bright spot on my radar for some time to come.