Something went wrong. Try again later

cornbredx

This shows how much I use twitter. Always forget it.

7484 2699 70 86
Forum Posts Wiki Points Following Followers

The Top 10 Games I Played In 2016

Hey gang,

I want to start out this years list with an apology. I know last years list was nonsensical, and upon reflection (and reading it again after a year passed) I am upset I did that too. No one thumbed it up, really (except really nice people), and I get it. I get why you passed on it. It was an experimental idea I had that didn't really work. Even when I read it again after time passed I don't get why I did it either. I'm sorry.

I'd say this year, for games, was phenomenal. I played, and enjoyed, several games Giant Bomb didn't even really take a whole lot of notice of, and since I've been real busy I don't know facts, but I feel like the games I think are the best (from this year) aren't being talked about really which boggles my mind.

Anyway, as usual keep in mind that not all my games are from this year. Some are last year, some may be from 10 to 20 years ago. You never know what I played, and what was amazing to me.

Oh, and I'm sorry, but small self promotion if you want to follow me as a curator on steam I make silly comments about games I like here. It earns me nothing and only adds the, on occasion, comments I made about a gameto the middle of it's store page if you happen to be looking at one I "curated."

Honorable Mentions: I haven't finished Final Fantasy XV yet, but it's great so far and I'm excited to keep playing it. The Old Blood was a great follow up to that new Wolfenstein game (possibly even better than), Words for Evil is a great mix of word puzzle game and RPG, Sleeping Dogs, Crypt of The Necrodancer, Day of The Tentacle Remastered, Duke Nukem Forever (which I finally finished this year and yes I think that game is great but again 10 years too late), Deathspank, Killer is Dead (highly under rated, but I understand why some have a problem with it), Talos Principle (great puzzle game), Downwell, Book of Unwritten Tales 2 (I agree with Vinny), Kingpin Life of Crime, Return to Zork, Kirby's Epic Yarn, The Namco Museum (which was a release of Dig Dug, Pac Man, Ms Pac Man and Galaga on Steam this year), The Atari Vault (a release of 100 Atari games on Steam) and Beyond Two Souls. These games were great, I played them a ton, and I'm glad I got to play them this year.

List items

  • I wrote a review of it on Steam, but suffice to say I played the shit out of this game. The only thing I don't like about it is that when you replay it you don't feel any need to play it again. Although, with my backlog that isn't a bad thing.

    The feeling of movement in combat, killing demons, slicing up bad guys with a sword (of which they even have a ton of different swords), gun mods, character progression upgrades (which can be found as loot, in shops or gained), and world design was top notch for me. I know that they used a lot of procedurally generated stuff to make the maps change, but this didn't detract for me.

    I heard they made changes to the game, but this happened around the time I finished (it reset all my skills), and I never really saw a difference.

    The game was phenomenal, and next to Fallout 4 (which I may very well play on and on forever) it's one of the best loot shooters I have ever played. I highly recommend it, but be aware- it is a loot shooter so even though I think it's significantly better than any Borderlands games that comparison does get thrown around.

  • This game came out last year, and I am so pissed I didn't play it then. If I had, and I hadn't made a terrible list because of all the bad games I played last year, this would have been my #1 game I played last year.

    This game is phenomenal. While it's not "true" hacking, or even real coding, the command line "code" is so accurate it makes you feel like it's what you're supposed to type. There are tons of puzzles using the "dos-like" command line in order to hack into different servers and what not for various reasons.

    On top of that the story is really fun (it gets compared to a 90s hacker film, but I think it's better written than most of those), and goes to some really cool places.

    This game really brought me back to DOS 6.0 in the mid 90s, and telnetting into servers in the later 90s early 2000s. It was a ton of fun to play.

    This game is also highly recommended, but I probably should warn that if you are not familiar with command line interfaces it may seem trickier to play for you than it is for me. The tutorial section at the beginning does a good job at explaining things, though, so don't let that sway you too much. I just feel I grasped it really quick and the game was fairly simple the entire way through because I already understood most all of the concepts it uses.

    If you love that shit already, and you haven't played this game yet you are missing out. Get it right now.

  • Even if you don't know me, or of me, I think it's fairly well documented on this website (through my lists and comments history) that I love Dark Souls. I feel it is the greatest RPG made in a very long time, and it was the best game to come out in the last generation (despite any of it's flaws).

    Dark Souls III is not THAT good. It's still better than most, but it relies heavily on really wanting you to think the game is hard which I think (ever since Dark Souls II) really drags it down to 90% better than most games rather than the 100% of the original.

    It's still a fantastic game, with a lot of places you'll remember from past games only... slightly different. On top of that there are new places to explore, and all of the enemies are better designed than they were in Dark Souls II. I think what mostly drags it down, beyond wanting "hardcore" whiners to think it's hard, is that there have just been too many "souls" games over the last few years. There's been no breaks- no chance for them to think about the mechanics in order to evolve them at all or for us to take a breather. That's not entirely a bad thing, but this is their last chance. If they put out another "souls" game next year I'll have to pass. I need a year off from souls at this point, and I love "souls" games.

    This is still a great game, and possibly the culmination of everything they must have learned over the course of making 5 "souls" games over the last 6 or 7 years.

  • This game was pretty cool. I enjoyed the way the game tried to defy expectations at every turn, and the mechanics were solid and fun enough that it didn't really turn me off.

    I would say the worst thing about this game is the people who played it already that spoiled everything about it so the charm was lessened for me (for example I already knew the big secrets about this game such as how I think about combat). Those people are bad people, but at the same time you can't completely blame them. It's hard not to get excited about things being done in a refreshing way from top to bottom.

  • You probably noticed already DOOM is not at all my favorite game this year. In fact, as a Doom game, it's not even good. As a first person shooter, though, it is phenomenal.

    Look, I have made my thoughts on this game very clear (I reviewed it on steam), and somehow my thoughts on this game are controversial. The player character is too slow until you get the upgrade that makes you move at the correct speed, it feels like Unreal Tournament NOT DOOM, the self referential stuff isn't clever to me, I don't like the map design (but I admit the map design in comparison to the original is accurate), having to use that dumb ass quick kill thing- that I forget the name of now- slows down combat substantially until you get the rune to make it faster and even then it should just not exist... I have so many more problems with this game. I won't keep going through them.

    As a first person shooter this game is pretty good. After about 3 levels the game is actually a lot of fun, the music is fantastic all the way through, it becomes fun to jump around the maps killing demons mindlessly, and I enjoyed finding collectibles.

    I have considered playing this again on harder difficulty. It is fun to shoot stuff in this game. It's just not Doom. Not by any stretch of the imagination. I find it shocking that some think it is. Especially people who have played the original two Doom games within the last few years and still think this game is at all like a Doom game. It's just not.

    Sorry. I can't stop harping on this games flaws because there is so many. That's why this game is absolutely not the best game I played this year, but it's still top 5.

  • Before playing this I had only played Uncharted 2 which I had considered the best cinematic video game ever created. In a lot of ways it's actually what I would say is the modern Indiana Jones. This is why I think the idea of making this game into a movie is a complete step in the wrong direction because I think games like this one have progressed video games beyond what films are capable of ever being, but I digress.

    I played Uncharted 1, 2, 3, and 4 this year (due to the series being re-released on PS4 and amazon making these all so cheap that buying all four of them combined cost me no more than buying a $60 game). Playing all 4 of these is both an incredibly frustrating, and amazing experience at the same time. The games all look fantastic as they were released on PS4, but the game play within them varies from absolute trash (1 and 3) to fantastic (2 and 4). It's bizarre how it worked out, with the even games being so good, but the odd games being absolutely awful to play.

    Anyway, Uncharted 4. Why did they change the way Elaina looks? I always find it weird when video games do that- like I wouldn't notice. At least they weren't going for making her sexier, like Mass Effect did with that one girl I forget the name of (I'm terrible with names), but it was jarring at first.

    As a game it's definitely the best in the series, but also as a story you absolutely have to play all 4 of the games to fully get the story. I mean, sure you could play just this one and understand it, but I feel that would lessen the impact as this game is so much defined by what all three of the other games were and what Nathan went through up to this point.

    My biggest complaint is a story one. The way that Nathan's brother is written into this game is super clunky. He just never talked about him because... well it's a spoiler but he just didn't talk about him because he thought this one thing happened that didn't happen like he thought it did. Look, don't read further unless you want spoilers because I absolutely have to talk about this.

    I'll wait.

    You gone?

    Good.

    Look Nathan think's his Brother is dead because he saw him get shot. So, he decides to just never mention him again because of that? He wasn't like... having a beef with him at the time or anything. They were really tight, and then he thinks he dies so he just never talks about him.

    That seems like bullshit to me. I mean; I understand Nathan's character on a deep level. I don't trust or let people too close either, but my older Brother died this year. He was a piece of shit too. I'm not going to just pretend I didn't have a brother because he died. I have other reasons I did that for YEARS. It wasn't because he died.

    This is getting too heavy so I erased where this was about to go.

    My point is that that writing is total hamfist.

    Other than that, though, this game hits me incredibly hard. I'm getting older, I have an older brother that is very similar to Nathan's and similar experiences to that, and this game just touches on a lot of incredibly personal stuff that happens to be happening in my life right now.

    The shooting on a console still feels like trash to me even after all these years. I don't think I'll ever find it actually good. This one in particular added auto aim (which I turned off because I'm not a baby) which is telling.

    Despite how bad the shooting is, mechanically, I disagree with Jeff about the climbing aspects of this game. I felt like the climbing felt good in this one- better, more accurate, than the other Uncharted games- and the challenge was in finding the right hand holds or where to go. Whether this is good or bad could be subjective, but I was fine with it and I enjoyed that aspect of the game play.

    All in all this game is definitely worth playing, but especially if you've played the other Uncharted games. Do not skip this despite the hamfisted addition of Nathan's brother. It's still a good story despite that, and the performances are probably the best they've ever been in these games.

  • I'm not entirely sure how to count this, as this in itself is just a wrapper in which you buy other games technically to play inside it, but nonetheless I'll just tie the whole thing together as one.

    I love pinball. As a kid I have so many memories of playing pinball tables and the evolution of pinball is something I absolutely saw (I grew up in California and not only did I always see the newest tables as they came out in various places but I also was fortunate enough to know a few people who had old pinball tables). I knew all kinds of pinball tables when they were new and exciting.

    This game gives me wonderful feelings every single time I play it. Even though I think the direction pinball scoring went was terrible (there are late 90s early 2000s tables where getting 1 billion points is a meaningless score and I think that's absurd and makes scores meaningless) overall I can't help how much I love pinball. Even my father, who was not into video games at all, loved Pinball.

    I know what pinball "feels" like to play and it's kind of incredible how accurately it's represented in this game. The sound of the ball rolling down the slick board, and the feel of the ball bouncing on the slightest touch of a bumper- it all "feels" right in this game.

    I do have problems with this game. Sometimes the simulation goes crazy and the ball will behave unnatural to compensate (sometimes the ball flies into the nether outside the table for no reason, or it teleports centimeters in a different direction, etc.). I should explain, though, that unless you're paying attention when these do happen you may not really notice it (well you may now that I told you it happens), but it doesn't happen constantly, or enough for it to make it a bad game. It's a shame it happens at all, but it does occasionally.

    Even still I love this game. Playing pinball for 30 minutes to an hour before I go to work is something I very much enjoy. The biggest real down side is that they charge a significant amount for a pack of tables. If you want a pack it will usually cost $30. If you wait until it's on sale, though, they usually cut he price in half and honestly I recommend getting it during those times unless you only want a couple of tables. You can purchases tables singularly, but in the long run it's significantly more expensive (it's $5 per table if you buy them that way) so be warned of that and keep that in mind if you want more pinball than just a few tables.

    Me, I'm a pinball fiend, so I want all of the tables.

    Anyway, I got into this on Jeff's recommendation (the wrapper is free and comes with a free table- one of the best pinball tables ever made actually so it's a good demo in it's own right but on top of that you can play a demo of any table you want they just limit how long you can play the table).

    I think this game is very smartly designed and if you like pinball at all you would be remiss to not at least check out the free table to see if you would like it. It's a fantastic pinball simulation.

  • To say this game is disappointing is not entirely wrong. There is less to this game than there should be for a game that is somehow always online (it should absolutely not be an online only game), and there's nothing to do once you get to the end of the game for a game that sort of wants to be an online only game (did I mention it should absolutely not require an internet connection?).

    Despite it's flaws, though (of which, honestly, I can only name a few myself), I really enjoyed playing this game. The story is generic, but it's out of the way enough that it doesn't bother me.

    I just liked going places they sent me to kill stuff. I found that to be a ton of fun to do in this for some reason. This is a fantastic game for not paying attention to (so I can listen to podcasts).

    On top of that getting loot in this game felt like a fun thing to do. I liked the way shooting feels, I liked the cover system, I liked how "close enough" to accurate combat feels, and I like just running around this frozen wasteland of some part of New York (I forget where it was, Manhattan?). I just really liked playing this game.

    When it was over I was good with that. I was fine. I don't need terrible PVP from the dark zone to grind for gear I don't actually need for anything, I don't need to team up with 12 year olds to do instanced missions again, I don't need to play more of the same in this game. It's not an online only game, even if it pretends that it is, but as a game it was really fun to play and I actually recommend it if you want a loot shooter. It's a fantastic game for listening to podcasts while you play. That is absolutely not a bad thing- I wish more games understood that it is ok to be that kind of a game.

  • This is the MMO I got into this year. There was a lot of talk about it when it came out, and I wasn't sure if I actually wanted to play it. It seemed really broken, as well as incredibly obtuse.

    Well, I got bored as I usually do and I decided to check it out. At first I was really upset I did that because the game is daunting to start out. Nothing works like you are used to, and figuring it out requires some research because the tutorials in the game make very little sense in connecting what you actually need to do. Over a few days, and a lot of research to various websites, I started to figure the game out, and what you are supposed to do to actually play. After I did it started to actually feel an awful lot like what I liked about old MMOs. Like when you had to wait 10 minutes at the Starport in Star Wars Galaxies in order to take a shuttle to another planet, or had to travel several hours in Everquest to get where you were going. The game is an incredible time sink (so unfortunately I can't really play it anymore), but it feels so rewarding conceptually possibly because of this.

    I don't know if this game can be recommended- as I said it's really daunting to learn, and it has old MMO concepts that I just don't have the time to get into anymore- but if you want something new with a dash of old MMO design it's an option worth checking out. Just be warned that despite not being free to play there are pay to win things in their store which they very much make you aware of any time you log in.

  • I usually like difficult platformers as a novelty. I'll play them a little, get way too into getting the difficult collectibles, then get burned out on that so I move on with the game and stop playing around the time it just gets too hard on my hands. If it makes my hands hurt to play it I'm done. I absolutely hated Guacamelee because it was just physically painful to play.

    Ori and The Blind Forest gets really difficult, but I would argue this game felt more rewarding to play than any other difficult platformer I've played of this type for decades now (significantly more so even than Super MEat Boy which I did like a lot). The abilities felt good to learn, and putting them into practice was so hard sometimes, but so rewarding when I finally finished a puzzle I was stuck on for hours.

    The story is also very sweet, but I'm kind of a sucker for that in some ways (I played Kirby's Epic Yarn for the first time this year and loved that as well).

    This was the first difficult platformer I have completely finished in years and I'm glad I finished it. It was, all in all, a fantastic game.

  • I played a bunch of Fallout 4 again, and then I played the two map expansions- Nuka World and Far Harbor (which I'm still playing). I love them because they give me a reason to keep playing Fallout 4.

    HA! I probably have like 150 hours in this game. Jeez.
Load Comments