GOTY 2015
right now this is just a useful tool to help build my 2015 goty list
List items
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I'm so glad I went back to finish this game. When I first stopped about 3 hours in I walked away thinking it was a super neat, charming little game somebody put together. Then I went back to finish the last hour or so and realized, "oh...oh this is something special."
It is the most unique game I played this year and was so well written and it plays around with you in such cool ways. It has some many different ways to make you smile from either humor, touching relationships, the music or just neat surprises and gameplay.
Saying Undertale is a simple throwback to RPGs of the past is doing this game such a disservice. Though that did allow me to go in to this game not expecting any of the crazy stuff that makes this game great.
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MGSV is an incredibly fun game and the perfect MGS take on an open world game. It feel like the natural progression of open levels and endless ways to overcome a challenge that Kojima was always going for. So many neat tools to play with. So many really cool interaction the open world sets up and accounts for. This game is just pure fun. Though the level escorting the children was near a personal breaking point. Woof, everything about that broken level was anger inducing.
Rest assured, Kojima continues to be complete hack of a writer and all the characters kind of suck whenever they aren't talking about burgers, but Kojima's specific vision of crazy gameplay and weirdness is still great. I'm glad to see MGS go out on the highest note of the series, even after loving all the previous mainline MGS games.
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Super Mario Bros. was the first game I ever played so this game was easily going to hook me. I spent so much time as a kid thinking about Mario's gameplay and levels and being able to easily play with well known Mario elements and combine them in new and fantastic ways is a dream come true.
The game isn't perfect. They're missing some classic Mario level elements and it suffers from the normal Nintendo issues of not trusting their users and just really missing on the online experience with the awful sorting. Neither of those issues are enough of a problem to keep me from enjoying this game.
But goodness, every time I do a 100 Mario challenge I'm left wondering what the heck most of the people creating those levels were thinking. Have they played a Mario game before? Why did they upload this half completed test level? What do they find interesting about this simple, one track autoplay level? The magic of this game is certainly not found there.
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It was easy to go into this game expecting it to be real rough. It went through development hell but somehow came out the other side as a fantastic success. The way the story lines and characters can flow and move and part and change and come back together is so seamless and well done. It really makes me want to see how many different ways this story can go down. And it absolutely nails the script, characters and feel of the style of horror movie it is going for. Having control of the characters, navigating them through all the perils trying to keep them alive (or not if that's you're style) really help you connect and feel for these dumb, sexed up teens.
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Yeah, it isn't really all that different from 3 or New Vegas. Yeah, that Bethesda jank hasn't gotten any better but sure has gotten much more difficult to put up with or defend. But, man, Fallout is still such a neat universe with such a unique feel and style. Like the last 2 entries into the series I may not finish this game, and it may be because it game breaks in such a way were it, again, won't let me finish it. But I'm still going to get everything I need from spending hours upon hours exploring the wasteland and unearthing all the crazy, cool and weird little stories that Fallout is much beloved for.
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The more you play this game and the better you get at it, the more you realize how well designed this game is. It throws you in without any explanations, but the initial look of the game is so simplistic that you quickly start feeling your way around and figuring it out. The game doesn't tell you anything though obvious text prompts or any upfront tutorial, instead it teaches you through the game design. The way certain enemies look and act teaches you how to deal with them. The UI starts to hint that there is a combo system and the better you get the more important you realize that system is. Did you know there is a wall jump mechanic? There is! I learned that by accidentally doing it and then spending some time experimenting with it to figure out how it works and the best uses for it.
This all works because of the quick respawn arcade style Downwell is designed around. You may die quickly but you also learn quickly and are able immediately to apply that knowledge and see the positive feedback of feeling you are getting better at the game.
This is easily the best arcade style game I played this year.
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I'm so happy that Codemasters went back to the style of their past Dirt games. Dirt 2 and 3 were very fun racing games but they had gone pretty far into the X-Games culture, leaving traditional fans of the rally discipline searching for something else to fulfill our needs.
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