Old Game Of The Year - 2016 Edition

2016?! Bah, that's yesterday's news. Let's talk about some Old Games!

What do you consider your "Old Game of the Year" for 2016? What's that one game you revisited a lot throughout 2016? Any noteworthy 2015 catch up games? Any other old games you never played before that you finally decided to try out?

As for me:

1. Persona 4: Not so much from playing this game--Ok, actually, I did play some Persona 4: Golden this year--but this is mainly with me watching the Persona 4 Endurance Run and all of the stuff that followed it.
2. Diablo III: Reaper of Souls: I always enjoyed Diablo III and played Reaper of Souls around when it came out. But 2016 was the first Season I participated in, and I took a new character up to around Torment Level VIII. Whether I was grinding for gear and experience solo or with one of my friends over Skype, 2016 was the best time I ever had with Diablo III.
3. CastleVania: Symphony of the Night: I always wanted to play through this game, but I never did. Seeing the VinnyVania of this game was a real treat. Watching Vinny play through Symphony of the Night makes me understand why this game is such a classic.

Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth.

Every. Single. Day.

I picked up Nuclear Throne in a Humble Bundle and few months back and have somewhere between 20 and 30 hours in it now. It's become my go-to quick session game and occasional one-more-run-for-hours game.

Bloodborne - first time with it. About 30 hours of Fallout 4 as well before I got sidetracked

CS:GO. Still the game that dominates my video game life.

Went through all the Souls games and Bloodborne. None of them would have been my game of the year on the year of their release, but Demon's, Dark Souls 1, and Bloodborne are up there. I also enjoyed Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin, but not sure where I'd fit that in. Dark Souls 3 plays fine, but I'm not that into it.

Mad Max. I picked it up for $10 during the Xbox sale and have had fun just clearing out everything on the map. Pretty much spend a couple hours a day while on work conference calls playing this game trying to just get 100% completion.

hmm...I only got to play 4 games from this year so 90% of my time was spent playing older games.

Finally experienced Silent Hill 2 and that definitely stood out. Witcher 2 was very good tho felt like 2/3 of a game. Played a ton of great games actually.

The biggest surprise was Lightning Returns. That thing was very addictive and got its hooks into me real good. The writing was soooo bad but man, fun ass game.

I finally played Dying Light earlier this year. That game is pretty good.

The Witcher 3 because of the expansion.

Yakuza 5. It came out in December 2015, and I didn't have time to finish it until this year.

I played through Dark Souls and Persona 4 for the first time ever this year and they are both among the best games I've ever played. If I had to pick one of the two though Dark Souls is the easy choice and it now sits comfortably among my top 5 games of all time.

This year, I played through Mass Effect 3 for the first time. I wouldn't call it a great experience, it's horribly uneven. But while I was frustrated often, at the end I was happy to finish the story with all of the characters from Mass Effect 1 and 2.

I honestly didn't play a ton of old stuff this year, but I did play The Witcher 3, and I think that game deserves most of the praise it received. I'm not sure if I'll do an "old game of the year" list like I've done before, but if I did that thing would be on top, easily.

Oh, I also played Kingdom Hearts for the first time this year. That game... sure is kind of amazing in how dumb and earnest it is.

Rainbow Six Siege became a true contender in 2016.

Edit: I guess that falls more in the 2016's 2015 GOTY category.

Been poking at the Witcher 3 again. Having beat it once already I don't have the urgency to find out what happened Ciri so now I feel more free to explore more of the side content. It is glorious and really fun. Also having fun playing through it using different skills and signs. Updates to the UI are great.

Finally got around to beating Pillars of Eternity. Gorgeous game although it has things that bother me. Still really glad that I finally got around to beating it finally after stalling out twice before.

Got around to Bloodborne after finally getting a PS4. Great game, probably my least favorite 'Souls' but still loved it.

I went back to a few things this year. Finally got around to The Evil Within, which ended up being a lot better than I expected, especially the DLC chapters. Also played The Talos Principle, which was fucking incredible for many different reasons. Austin was pretty correct about Invisible Inc being awesome, although I still need to put more time into it. The list of great stuff I went back to goes on and on: Trails in the Sky, Valkyria Chronicles, Parasite Eve II, Jet Set Radio, Rez, and more.

However, the big thing I did this year was finish out the Final Fantasy games I'd never completed: I-VII and X-2. This has been a bit of a vision quest for me for a few years now, something I started but couldn't finish in 2014. It's great knowing that I've completed every mainline FF game--including X and XIII spinoffs and both MMOs--and I really enjoyed experiencing FFI, FFVI, and X-2 for the first time. That series gets a lot of shit, but it has some truly memorable classics and still remains interesting even now, something few games series can manage.

The true winner would probably be FF12 though. I went and got a version of the Japan-only International Zodiac Job System version and played through that and was blown away by how much better it was than (the already great) FF12 original. It remains my favorite game in the series and I had to delete it from my hard drive to keep myself from playing more of it. A truly great game that is more than deserving of my old game of the year award for 2016 (and probably 2017, since the new HD version comes out then!).

2016 has been a good year for games, but nothing I've played so far this year has wowed me like Life Is Strange and SOMA from last year. A game from 2012 has been the exception: Virtue's Last Reward. I will be playing Zero Time Dilemma before 2016 is over, but I had to play through VLR earlier this year in preparation. VLR was bananas. 999 was amazing, but it did little to prepare me for the ludicrous nature of VLR. Not only did it top 999's mind-blowing moment, VLR topped its own twists and turns left and right until a finale that just left me in laughs and amazement at the sheer imagination on display.

Gears of War: Judgement. We beat it in one sitting with 4 players in my living room over LAN. And it was some of the most fun I've ever had with a Gears game.

Oh, and I did the second Muramasa: Rebirth DLC and it was great!

Fallout 4 because of the Far Harbor DLC.

I spent a lot of time Counter-Strike GO this year too.

I think I'm going to write a blog about this soon, but the entire "Trails" series. Mainly The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky and The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky SC.

Path of Exile continues to be an amazing game with free major content updates every year. Really cool to see a small passion project do so well.

Played Axiom Verge this year for the first time. A great game that could've ended high up my 2015 list.

The Witcher 3. I finally got around to playing it and Hearts of Stone early in the year, and I played Blood and Wine as soon as it came out. All told I played like 200 hours of that game this year and it's at least a top 20 game all time for me, maybe top 10.

Burnout Paradise came out on Xbox One BC last week and I, uh, already got all of the billboards, barriers and super jumps again. So probably that.

I finally got around to The Witcher. Terribly dated, clunky gameplay and some completely busted scripting (chapter 3 is a train wreck that took me over half of my 54 hours of playtime to get through) weren't enough to stop me from plodding through it over the course of three months. I also read all of the books beforehand. It certainly made the game more enjoyable. I've got 2 and 3 lined up to go soon, but I'll probably take a break from the Witcher universe and play something else first. I'm thinking Hyper Light Drifter or The Witness.

Ahh yeah, I also spent a significant chunk of time on Rogue Legacy. What a great little game.

Steins Gate. It will just be my game of the year because unless you're a review site I don't see why you should only list games released this year.

Killer Instinct 3 or Bloodborne for me. I revisit the former far more often than the latter but Bloodborne was an amazing trip. Got the Platinum, too!

I'd like to give a shout-out to Saints Row IV. A bunch of Volition devs spent some of their own time to add mod support to the Steam version of the game, and when that got added they spent time over Thanksgiving weekend to fix a bunch of bugs that popped up because of it. I know it's not everyone's cup of tea, but I still love playing SRIV and I'm excited to see how the mod community handles it.

I also went back and played Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning for some reason. Every now and then I'd get a weird urge to play it, even though I know I'd sold my copy off long ago. Going back to it now, I can see why it still sticks with me, but also why I got rid of it. It fulfills a craving for a certain type of game for me, I guess. There's some interesting bits and pieces, but it's major problem is that there's TOO MUCH going on and none of it really stands out. I have been enjoying it for what it is, though. Just not sure why exactly.

I might write more about it if I do my GOTY list (or at least it's sequel), but I also finished Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel this year and found it to be a good time overall. If you enjoy JRPGs with a hint of strategy, a healthy dose of world building, and a pinch of Persona, it might be worth checking out. I think I clocked in around 80-90 hours on that thing, and don't really regret any of it.

Tough to say, there were some good games last year, but I stopped playing all of them by Feb 2016, because this a was big year for games too. I played more CoD Advanced warfare which was a 2014 game really. So, CoD:AW is my pick in that I played it until March - when The Division arrived.

I'm still thinking about why shouldn't it be able to win GOTY? It's probably my favorite thing I played this year.

Thanks to the thanksgiving day steam sale, Wolfenstein: The New Order is my 2014 2016 GOTY and Wolfenstein: The Old Blood is my 2015 2016 GOTY.

Life is Strange was REALLY good.

If we're only talking old games that were re-released this year, I'd say the Battlezone '98 Redux and Duke Nukem 3D 20th Anniversary re-releases were alright.

The older games I've played the most this year were Civilization 5 and Section 8: Prejudice, despite the latter's multiplayer servers having been shut down long ago.

Leaning towards Battlezone '98 either way, since that was a solid re-release, whereas Duke Nukem 3D had a good new episode, but the actual packaging wasn't great, the port is suffering from a bunch of issues not even the previous kinda poor Megaton edition had.

For me it has to be a tossup between Rise of the Tomb Raider and Forza Horizon. Both are fantastic games that I wish I got to play earlier.

Mario Galaxy. Turns out that game is as good as everyone says it is.

And if MMOs count, I'll throw Final Fantasy XIV in there. I've played just about almost every MMO released pre-2014 and I never really stuck with any of them for that long. Maybe a month or two, but then I'd get bored and move onto something else. I log onto XIV almost everyday and I'm still not bored.

@artisanbreads: I'm so hoping Vinny brings Blood and Wine up for the top ten list.

• Mortal Kombat XL
• Elite Dangerous
• Diablo 3 RoS
• Darksiders (Warmastered edition came out this year, but whatever).
• The Witcher 3

For me Heroes of the Storm. I dunno what they'd pick, most of the ongoing series this year were from recent games. I guess Symphony of the Night? Or hey, maybe a Mario Party!

Invisible Inc.: Console Edition. I was already interested in playing this game but also skeptical about Austin Walker's love of it in the discussions last year. Having played it this year I feel he was completely justified in pushing hard to get that game on the list because holy crap did this become one of my favorite video games ever. I've been on a real Rogue-lite kick this year and this is probably the best game of that type that I've ever played.

Rebel Galaxy. Another console edition of a game from last year. I was pretty ambivalent about all the hype around No Man's Sky simply because I played Rebel Galaxy and realized what I really wanted was some space-ass space. Not the most inspired of campaigns but I had a great deal of fun just traipsing around space, hauling space goods, and blowing up space ships.

The Witcher III. Beat Heart of Stone this year and am in the middle of playing Blood and Wine. I continue to love this game for what it's doing with story and narrative even if some of the actual game mechanics are still kind of questionable.

Tales from the Borderlands. This might just be my favorite of the modern Telltale adventure games. Easily the funniest one of these kinds of games of the past few years. For as much as I love the Borderlands games they felt like they were not capitalizing on the great sense of styyyyyle of this universe, which I think Tales from the Borderlands does with gusto.

I might say Nuclear Throne but that game was in an incomplete state for most of this calendar year.

After today's Playstation keynote: Windjammers.

For a game I didn't actually like all that much, I sure did play the shit out of Fallout 4 this year. Ugh.

My pick is definitely Bloodborne. I just picked up The Old Hunters for $7.00 on a PSN Flash Sale, so my time is not over with this game.

Virtue's Last Reward is one of my favorite games, largely because of how bananas it is. If you are able to, I would definitely play through Zero Time Dilemma. It is very similar to VLR with how you piece together the story. ZTD is in some ways more and less crazy than VLR. Less so in the sense that once you know what is possible in those games; normal weirdness isn't that shocking. But, boy howdy, when that game gets nuts, it gets fucking NUTS!! I absolutely love those games. (Never actually finished 999. I've only played the iPad version for a little bit, but got sidetracked early on)

2016 was weird for me. As a dude who's spent his fair amount of time playing MMO's, this year was pretty heavy for MMO's. FFXI, FFXIV, and EVE Online were all games I've spent the most of my gaming time on. 2 of those games are over a decade old and even FFXIV is starting to look a bit dated. :)

F.E.A.R. I play it at least once a year bought it when it first came out and this year I played it in VR awesome experience.

Mine would be Tron 2.0 because it holds up pretty well considering it's over 10 years old. Also, if you don't count the re-master: Bioshock. Come to think of it, both of those are pretty similar.

Me and my wife like to play a mission or two of EDF every once in awhile. We are excited that they are making a new one!

Witcher 3, though the content is big/fresh enough that I'm comfortable just giving it plain old GoTY.

Warframe, I spent 100+ hours in it this year great game and an example of a great free to play game.