Game of the Year 2016
This year was incredible for games, here is my top 10.
List items
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Admittedly I got to Overwatch a bit late, between buying my home and other aspects of life, I passed on it initially. Then Blizzard had a free weekend sometime in the fall, and I immediately understood what everyone was gushing about. After a couple rounds it was clear that I needed more than a weekend with this title.
The main draw for me is of course how well the game plays. It borrows ideas and concepts from other games and then perfects and combines them into an insanely enjoyable experience. I find it incredible how well they have promoted teamwork through the mechanics of the game. Support characters are fun to play for a change, it awards team play after matches and the in game communications (I say Hi before each match) are a nice touch for team building. I also love how well thought out all the heroes are, from their personalities, to how they play, is just meticulously crafted. Every character plays different and has unique abilities, they are gorgeous looking, and have tons of personality and a surprising amount of lore if you’re willing to dig a bit. Blizzard has made a hell of thing, it is my most played game of the year and I can see this trailing well into 2017 given the support (holiday events, new maps/heroes) the game has been given.
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I first came across Stardew Valley when I was browsing Steam Green Light looking for interesting projects to pay attention to back in 2012. As soon as I read the description and got a look at some of the art work it was clear this was a love letter to Harvest Moon, a game I have very fond memories of. I acknowledged that it was a game I wanted to see on Steam, put it in my watch list, downloaded a background for my laptop and went on my way. I would check in time to time to see how it was progressing over the years and it seemed to be making headway but eventually I just lost track of it.
When it was finally released in 2016 it caught me by surprise, I hadn’t heard much about it for a while and for the most part I had forgotten about its existence. It seemed to be getting solid critical praise and Dan Ryckert personally could not stop gushing about it so it finally ended up back on my radar.
Once I got my hands on it I could tell immediately what all the praise was about. Stardew Valley took the Harvest Moon format and expanded and refined it into a truly magical experience. All of the elements that made the Harvest Moon titles so addicting to me where there with even more to do and interact with. I love the routine of a day in that world, wake up, take care of chores around the farm and then decide how you want to spend the afternoon. Should you focus on building relationships to find that special someone, or should you delve deep into the mine in search of artifacts and resources to improve your wealth and homestead, the choice Is yours. Ultimately, I think that is what I love about games like this and even more so Stardew Valley with how effective it pulls this off. For me this game is not about seeing the ending credits or achieving a high score but just enjoyment of being in another world, leading another life, it’s just peaceful fun.
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Limbo is one of my favorite puzzle-platformers, its combination of aesthetic and puzzle solving created an immersive world that I really found fascinating. Playdead was able to craft a unique and ambiguous world that I was just intrigued in and just wanted to learn more about. I was eager to see what they were going to make next and wondered if it would persist in the same dreadfully weird universe that Limbo took place in. Now I’m not quite sure if both Inside and Limbo exist in the same universe but I can certainly say that Playdead nailed down a similarly unique and horrific world.
Inside is absolutely gorgeous in a very dreary and stark way, the environments and set pieces express a lot about the state of the world. This world they have given life to is truly disturbing, it’s unclear exactly what is going on but it does give you the feeling of dread quite often. The puzzles are fun and even failing can be interesting, these instances are represented with some gruesome deaths but I found enjoyment in seeing these sequences as most are very different from one another. The story, while left mostly up to the player’s interpretations is thought provoking and I personally love games that allow you to ponder about what actually happened and is even compounded by some of the secrets found in the game. Inside was really creepy, dark and twisted but that is what I found so striking about it, it was able to make me dread heading into the water but also compelled me to do so.
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Futuristic technology and weapons have always fascinated me, I suppose it is why I have gravitated to Science Fiction so much over the years. I remember coming across a copy of MechWarrior 2 at the store when I was around 10 and being enamored by walking tanks, they looked so interesting and powerful, I just really wanted to pilot them. Over the years there have been plenty of mech titles that I’ve tried, MechWarrior, MechAssault, Chrome Hounds, and Hawken to name a few, and they were all pretty good but nothing remarkable.
Enter Titanfall, the first iteration was great, a fast-paced first-person shooter with tight controls and a great look. It was truly what I wanted out of a Mech combat game, you felt powerful and mobile, pilots and fodder enemies running around really dug into that feeling of operating a dominating war machine. However, something was missing, it was fantastic gameplay but I was looking for more. I longed for an explanation of the world and the technology being used and why it was being used, it was absent. With Titanfall 2 they remedied everything that I found lacking about the first, which mostly centered around a missing single player campaign and a general lack of universe building. Respawn not only included a story this time around but it was one of the better stories of the year in my opinion. I felt a real connection to BT by the end of the game and I can only hope they continue the tale going forward. Titanfall 2 is a more well-rounded experience than its predecessor, it offers a great multiplayer option and an outstanding single player campaign, I cant wait to see where Respawn goes next with the series.
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Battlefield has been a staple in my gaming diet for quite sometime now. It has always been my preferred online shooter even though many of my friends never got into until recently. At first, I was a bit skeptical if a FPS based on World War 1 would be enjoyable, as a man who likes the history of warfare I found it hard to believe it would be as most of WW1 was fought from trenches and was a particularly ugly war. In spite of these clear hurdles the developer made a fun experience, though I would say they took some liberties to make this game stand up to other modern shooters.
The campaign is broken into vignettes that follow different soldiers from different countries and tell a short story about the sacrifices and valor of these men and women. Each one of these stories seems to focus on a different mechanic of the game, one will have you flying planes and another driving in tanks. It would seem to me that the campaign is a bit of a tutorial for the main draw of Battlefield which is the online multiplayer. And while the campaign is far from bad it really is not why I come to the game.
The multiplayer in Battlefield 1 is incredibly fun, they give you a variety of semi-period specific weaponry and gadgetry to use. Like I mentioned before the developers took some liberties so there is an abundance of automatic weapons I doubt would have been prominent on the WW1 battlefields. However, I think that’s a positive for the game as its more what players have become accustomed to. The guns handle very well, I personally enjoy the medic class as I like using rifles and you can get a lot of points by healing and reviving teammates. I’m also quite fond of the limpet charges of the support class too, demoing buildings with people in them is quite satisfying. Finally, the addition of horses as a vehicle was a great idea but mostly because its comical killing people by using your saber or just running them over. When its all said and done it’s a great Battlefield game, its not doing too many new things but it’s a solid campaign and an outstanding multiplayer experience.
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I’ve always been a fan of Tom Clancy games, I was intrigued with the realism they attempted in their earlier games though I often didn’t enjoy the implementation. I remember trying my best to like Rainbow Six for the Dreamcast but there attempts at realism usually made gameplay a chore and a clunky one at that. It would seem those days are in the past and what we have now is games that exist very much on the fringe of realism, story and gameplay wise, and I think this is for the best given the results are far better games to play in my opinion.
The Division takes place in a believable New York city that has been hit with a virus that was spread via bank notes during Black Friday, which sounds plausible though a bit out there. Similar to the story the gameplay stands on the edge of realism barley sticking its toes in the water. The weapons are based on real world firearms and some of the gadgetry seems to be based on things that exist or are in some R&D lab but that’s sort of where that ends. Players and enemies take enough rounds to kill an army and most of the gadgets work on cool downs rather then inventory, not sure where my character was hiding all those remote turrets and I probably don’t want to know. With all that being said I think its for the better and makes for a much better gameplay experience for the player.
I thought the story was a great romp through the streets of New York and they sprinkled just enough flavor on top to make the world intriguing to be in. I enjoy loot shooters in general so re-running missions for better equipment didn’t get boring for me but I think that is also an endorsement of the gun play and other mechanics. However, were this game really took off for me was in the Dark Zone, the area designated for PvP. It created an experience that I’m not sure I have ever had in games, moving through the DZ was tense and chaotic. Every engagement could be your last resulting in your loot being dropped for the masses to scoop up and exfiltrate with. Every human player you cross could be a friend to help with fire fights or a snake waiting for the right opportunity to shoot you in the back and take what’s yours. This created a constant tension and if you happened upon a nice piece of loot it made getting that loot out of the DZ an immediate priority. This area is where this game felt unique and worthwhile and is ultimately why it was in my top ten games of 2016.
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Darkest Dungeon is a game I will probably never finish, and frankly I’m fine with that and it may even be one of the more endearing qualities of the game, it doesn’t pull punches. I would love to see all it has to offer but to me this game is about its unrelenting punishment to the characters and thus the player, so I’m fine with it being something I might never finish. The world the game depicts is a brutal and twisted alternate universe of earth where eldritch horrors and unthinkable monstrosities await around every corner. The art and sound design perfectly compliment the aesthetics they were looking for and fit the general tone and brutality the game piles on the player.
Darkest Dungeon is an outstanding turn-based strategy game with tons of depth and tough decisions to make. In order to succeed you need to understand a wide variety of the games mechanics and execute them properly also having a bit of luck doesn’t hurt. The game has a ton of skills and class types making options for finding success quite varied and rewarding once you find combinations of classes that work with your play style. At times it can feel a bit unfair when you miss an attack and it ends up resulting in a cascade of afflictions for your party but like I mentioned before, I believe it’s the tone they were looking for. I can see myself diving back into Darkest Dungeon for years to come, it’s a very unique take on the turn-based strategy genre and has a lot of style to back it up.
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Some of my fondest college memories involve Gears of War, I was a Junior in college when the first game came out and it all but consumed me. I would spend most nights staying up far to late playing multiplayer with some buddy’s I had met online. This series also helped bring my future brother-in-law and me closer together, so it has some significance to my relationship with him as well. And subsequently me and Brian have played through every campaign some even on the hardest difficulty. We were a bit soured on the series after Judgement though we did enjoy the game the format change wasn’t a positive change to us.
Gears of War 4 came out and it seemed like they got back on track with what we loved from the series. Gears 4 introduces a new cast of characters to play as but also gives you some throwbacks to old favorites, personally I was always a big Augustus Cole fan so I loved seeing him show up. Additionally, you fight some new enemies and for the most part I enjoyed engaging with them, I wasn’t the biggest fan of the snatchers however. They also added some new weapons that broadened out the arsenal, and the addition of the fabricator made for some cool base defense missions. Combat remand ultimately unchanged but you certainly wont he me complaining as I am a big fan of cover shooters, mostly due to this series. I thought the story was ok, it was of course a bit sad like most Gears games have been and in typical fashion ended on a huge cliff hanger. I can’t wait to see where they take the story next.
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I really didn’t get to play as much of Hitman during the year as I would have liked, I only got around half way through the campaign before 2017 happened. However, I did play through enough of the game to know that it is an incredibly well-crafted murder sandbox. The scenarios it sets up and the approaches you can take to those assassinations are immense and varied, allowing for some unusual and sometimes hilarious scenarios to take place. You can actually see the mechanics at play too, which in my eyes is half the fun. It allows you to experiment with the systems and really craft the experience to how you play. Even more so Hitman presents you with challenges within each scenario that make you want to replay them and try different ways of executing your goal, and even gives you a nice bread crumb trail in order to fulfill those different requirements all feeding into a system that rewards your experimentation.
Outside of actually playing the game I got a lot of mileage just from watching others play Hitman. The Giantbomb staff created some of my favorite content from the year around Hitman, I think this really added to my general admiration of the game. What IO Interactive was able to accomplish is quite profound, they were able to stabilize and create immense good will on a franchise that was in a serious rut. I can now say I am eagerly awaiting what will come next in the Hitman series.
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I was a little young for the original Doom and my family didn’t own a PC until much later on so I don’t have much affinity for the series outside of knowing it was an important game for the medium. When Doom (2017) came out I dismissed it in spite of how well they handled Wolfenstein back in 2014 due to how terrible Duke Nukem was back in 2011, I simply couldn’t believe they could revitalize two first-person shooters that seemed very much a product of their time. It wasn’t until I received a free game rental coupon from Red Box that I decided to give it a shot, no harm if I didn’t enjoy it. It was about 5 minutes into the game when I realized they might have knocked this one out of the park.
Doom controls so well, it’s one of the most fluid combat systems I have felt in a console shooter to date. There just aren’t enough FPS’s these days that relay on the player to keep moving rather than hunker down whenever they find themselves in trouble, it’s quite refreshing to see a game go back to their roots and succeed. They also did a great job of making the player interact with its many mechanics in order to properly keep the player supplied with ammo and health. Additionally, the weapons are just fun to use and have meaningful upgrades, I am a big fan of shotguns that feel powerful and Doom has a fantastic one. I didn’t get very far into the campaign by the time the end of the year came around and thus it only came in 10 on my list, but I’m pretty confident if I had more time with this title it certainly would have made it a bit higher in my list.
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