Best of 2016
A long strange year but one with a lot of really great games. Fall was very busy for me so there is a bunch of stuff I didn't manage to get to but here we go.
List items
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One of the most polished games ever made. A tight smart experience with lots of wow moments. As a developer, I'm stunned what they achieved with the Unity engine, from perfect AA to the jaw-dropping mix of code and animation on display in the last act.
Inside is one of those games that makes me want to be a better game developer.
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I may have played too much Legion this year. There is probably a lot of other games I should have put time into but Blizzard really hit a home run with this expansion.
Just overflowing with content and new features. Good reasons to try every class and tons to do if you just stick with one character. I've played it every day for the last couple months and think that trend will probably continue deep into 2017.
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After the departure of Amy Henning it was hard to think what Uncharted 4 was going to be. I mean Uncharted 3 could have been much tighter but I wasn't entirely sure what I wanted from a franchise finale.
Uncharted 4 is Naughty Dog at their peak of understanding of how to make an action adventure game and how to tell a story. The game smartly borrows some of the steath mechanics from The Last of Us while integrating mechanics like the rope to make the gameplay feel very dynamic. The game also plays with much larger environments in some sections that allow new approaches to the tried and true cover and climbing gameplay.
Naughty Dog also draws on their bleeding edge character-driven story techniques to tell the deepest Unchartered story they've ever done while also making sure that it tonaly still fits with the rest of the franchise.
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Making a sequel to a series that defined a genre 22 years ago is no easy feat, especially after the last entry in the series was heavily criticised for its direction and even that came out 12 years ago.
But the new DOOM nails it. It still feels like the first couple games in the franchise but adds just enough modern shooter mechanics to not feel like a throwback. Opening a portal in DOOM and fighting off waves of enemies is a bit overwhelming and stressful but its balanced so well that it feel extremely rewarding. Constantly needing to make high-speed decisions like should I glory kill an enemy to get health, use my chainsaw fuel to get ammo, fire off a BFG shot to give myself some room.
Playing on the higher difficulties it sometimes feels like it is going to be nearly impossible to make it through a particular scenario but then I'll get that run where everything clicks into place, I'm not wasting ammo, I'm picking up the powerups at the right time, I know which big enemy to get rid of with the chainsaw. Combined with the pumping soundtrack it just feels great.
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Blizzard has a knack for examining genres with half-baked ideas and figuring out how to polish them into something accessible but with lots of depth. In the case of Overwatch, however, the most notable game in the Team-based Shooter genre, Team Fortress 2, had already solved a lot of those gameplay problems.
What Overwatch brings is increased the diversity of its cast, both in the gender/race/sexuality of the characters and the mechanics those characters employ. Every character is fun to play and there is definitely a character for you regardless of how much multiplayer shooter experience you have.
The game is also hyper aware of how it displays success and failure to the player. Always attempting to err on the side of positive reinforcement. From Play of the Game to the player upvoting that happens at the end, to the type of statistics the game shows, you're unlikely to leave a night of Overwatch feeling like you completely blew it.
I do wish the game had some more metagame progression and dare I wish for some story-driven gameplay content. Thankfully the fantastic short films and comics Blizzard has been building outside the game fill in that narrative gap quite a bit.
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Johnathan Blow manages to combine gameplay and presentation into one cohesive whole where every corner of the island feels integral. While I do wish this game stole the screenshot annotation feature from Myst 4 (please god somebody needs to start stealing that feature) I enjoyed building a detailed physical notebook of solutions and ideas.
The non-linear solving of the island is really neat and the way the game teaches new mechanics without any kind of heavy-handed tutorials is really brilliant. The way each new mechanic changed your view on the island even more so.
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The original public demo was one of those slap myself in the head "Why didn't I think of that." situations. The way that the SUPERHOT team managed to take that concept and flesh it out into a full-length experience is brilliant.
The way enemies shatter always looks great. The way guns eject from fallen enemies towards you is fantastic. The way time lurches forward when you take a shot almost makes the action feel turn-based at times. The between-levels computer terminal stuff can also be quite clever.
Also quick shout out to Superhot VR. I haven't finished it because I only have an Oculus Touch at work but it is its own amazing standalone experience that really makes you feel like a badass.
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Episodic games have long been the domain of narrative-driven adventures but could a game where the narrative doesn't really matter actually work? Turn out yes it very much can as far as Hitman is concerned. By releasing a level a month the game was easy to return to throughout the year for me since the commitment time was usually only a couple hours. While I usually only had time to play a level once, there was lots to do if you had more time.
I did manage to attempt quite a few Elusive Targets which were a real thrill when you managed to pull one of those off. Really looking forward to the second season.
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We are still in the early days of Virtual Reality but Fantastic Contraption feels fully formed in its current iteration. It is a game about giving the player some simple but flexible tools and an open-ended objective to encourage creativity.
Smart and playful reinvention of UI concepts, such as placing a helmet on your head to enter a menu. The team is also constantly pushing to make the experience better for the community with mixed reality steaming support, in-game Twitch chat, Kaiju-scale, spectator cameras.
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The way Darkest Dungeon makes you feel like you are constantly screwing up could have been the nail in the proverbial coffin for the game but its is the fact that they drip feed you with just enough hope that pulls me through.
Getting critical damage at just the right time or a critical heal or seeing a character's stress meter max out only for them to roll a heroic bonus and be your linchpin for Victory against a boss. Darkest Dungeon is always intimidating but strikes a careful balance to keep me feeling like I should continue to journey onward into the darkness.
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