I suppose it might be a bit late but I'll say it anyway, nice list!
I nearly forgot Dragonball Xenoverse came out in 2015 and it seems like a really fun game! I remember playing hours and hours of some of the PS2 Dragonball games and it seems like Xenoverse would bring back some good memories of those good old days.
It would have been nice to hear your opinions on some of your honorable mentions though. Especially Cibele! I'm very curios to see what other people thought about it!
@slag: You're welcome and thanks for the compliment! You come off as very experienced and knowledgeable which is definitely more than I can say about the way I write. But everyone is their own worst critic right?
I feel like the public opinion on the state of games coming out of 2014 was one of disappointment. That or ambivalence. I always think there's plenty of good games coming out at all times but it's just a matter of whether or not people are able to find them. You're definitely right when you say that 2015 had a deeper lineup of games and 2016 is looking to be pretty promising too.
There's only a couple of "big" games that I'm looking forward to (Street Fighter V and Dark Souls III) but my favorites usually end up being the smaller ones that sweep under the radar. I'm hoping I'll be able to find a few that pleasantly surprise me this year!
@slag:I played Evoland 2 directly after playing the first one and it is such an improvement on the concept. In Evoland the entire crux of the game felt so arbitrary. You'd got new mechanics and art styles because you found them in a chest and they were all very clearly a cheap imitation of some other well known franchise. The story was also very thin. That entire game felt very half-baked but I believe it began as a game jam game so I guess that's to be expected.
Evoland 2 weaves the changes into a story in a way that feels justified. The style of game changes because the characters situations or plan of action changes too. The art style changes to signify you're in a different time period and it drives home the point that even though you're still in the same place it's still different. As I mentioned, it's a gimmick. You could remove all those things from the game but it'd be a lot less interesting as a result. You'd be left with a competent-at-best action-adventure game, which is more that can be said about the first game.
The references I was talking about mostly refer to several instances of lazy writing and some nearly copyright infringing use of character designs. There's a group of girls you talk to as part of the story who look extremely similar to Sakura from Street Fighter, Annie from League of Legends and Paula from Earthbound. There's also a few super-specific references to certain games when the genres change but I'd rather not spoil them. I imagine it's something people will either love or hate.
Ah yeah Hylics! That game left such a positive impression on me that I still think about it from time to time. The visuals are a large part of it. Every time you die you're shown an image of the main character turning into a skeleton which I can only assume is a nod to Dragon's Lair. Every action you make in combat is accompanied by a pair of fairly well animated pixel art hands doing... something. I very clearly the first time I revived a party member and the hands started conjuring a rotating claymation hot dog. Because of course the revival items are hot dogs! They might've actually been microwaved burritos now that I think about it. That game's very strange and I like it a lot!
I was very self conscious about whether or not I'd written enough about these games to properly express how I felt about them. It's good to know that I managed get through to at least one person! 2015 was definitely a good year for games, I hope 2016 is just as exciting and interesting!
Oh and thanks for reading and responding! It means a lot to me!!
Great list Slag! I only played a couple of the games on your list but I really enjoyed reading what you wrote for every entry on your list. Your passion for games definitely comes across in your writing and it's super fun to read!
It's nice to see you had a better outlook on games this time around than you did in 2014. Here's to another (hopefully!) great year!
I also bought Type-0 in the recent Steam sale, I hope I come out of it with good things to say about it!
@remilia_seven_fangs: I noticed it on your list! I think I walked away from that game with a more positive opinion of it than I thought I would. Even though I feel some of the elements of that game are at odds with each other I still ended up liking it a bunch!
@l33t_haxor: No problem! I think I knew it was getting a spot on my GOTY list when I feverishly made a wiki page for it on the site. I did the same with Lisa last year and I also like that game a whole bunch!
Hey! Nice list! I can't say I played many of the games on your list but I found myself nodding in agreement to your statements on those that I did play. It was a nice read!
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