Hey folks, Dan Kempster here, presenting the final batch of individual acknowledgements from My End of 2015 Awards. This one's taken slightly longer to put together than the first three parts (which you can find here, here and here, if you missed them), mainly because I've been at work all day and haven't had as much writing time as I've had the past few days. Worry not though, because I've still got a healthy helping of honours to hand out to eight more games before we're done. I'll begin with...

'Mr Freedom' Award for Best Open-World Gameplay

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

There's precious little I can say about Metal Gear Solid V that hasn't already been said better elsewhere. Everyone and their mother has poured glowing praise upon Kojima's latest (and final) Metal Gear game for its pioneering emergent stealth gameplay. For me personally, MGSV's greatest success lies in how it both encourages and rewards experimentation. Past games in the series have juxtaposed extensive inventories and toolkits with small, enclosed environments and unforgiving fail-states, an incongruous pairing where fear of the latter often discouraged experimenting with the former. Contrary to this, MGSV's open design means the player can approach any given task from multiple angles and with any number of potential strategies. Not only that, but the game almost never equates discovery with failure, providing multiple opportunities to complete mission objectives even after the alarm has sounded. This adds up to a game where experimenting with different loadouts and strategies is not only encouraged, but rewarded time and again. With its reactive enemy AI and the sheer wealth of options available, an infiltration that goes awry can produce moments of brilliance that feel just as rewarding as a successful 'perfect stealth' run. The Phantom Pain has changed the way I look at open-world action games forever, and whatever comes next has a lot to live up to.

'Jump' Award for Best 2D Platformer

'Splosion Man

'Splosion Man felt like the anti-And Yet It Moves for me this year. I went into it fully prepared for another gimmicky 2D indie platformer I wouldn't enjoy, and came away from it feeling terrible for even having the nerve to think like that. While And Yet It Moves came across as a one-trick pony for relying too heavily on its world rotation mechanic, 'Splosion Man instead feels pure in its simplicity. Its physics model is floaty yet precise, making the simple act of playing feel satisfying and rewarding in a way that AYIM never did. Its level design is fantastic too, mixing up straight platforming levels with puzzle-solving, reflex-based challenges, timed sequences and even combat in the form of boss encounters. It's difficult, sometimes punishingly so, but never in a way that feels unfair, reminding me of my time with Super Meat Boy some five years ago. 'Splosion Man turned out to be a real sleeper hit for me this year, and one of the best 2D platformers I've played in recent times.

'Strange Town' Award for Weirdest Game-World

Zeno Clash

I love weird video games. Weirdness is a by-product of imagination and creativity, a leap out of reality and into something strange and unrecognisable. The world of Zenozoik, setting for first-person brawler Zeno Clash, has weirdness in spades. It's the first time since my lengthy excursion to Morrowind five years ago that a game-world has captivated me with its completely alien design. That design works because its environments and characters feel cohesive and consistent with each other. The outlandish creatures that Ghat and Deadra meet along the way feel like they belong in the arid deserts and swampy marshes they call home, just as the crooked architecture of Halstedom feels like an appropriate base for Father-Mother and its many deformed children. It's this cohesion of design that makes Zenozoik feel like a believable place, and that believability is what drew me into the experience of playing Zeno Clash. I'm really keen to visit ACE Team's unique pseudo-neolithic world again, most likely in Zeno Clash 2, one day in the future.

'Now the Action Is on Fire!' Award for Most Impressive Set-Pieces

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

Uncharted 2 was never going to have to do much more than its predecessor to impress me. Uncharted: Drake's Fortune was essentially an interactive Indiana Jones movie, and Among Thieves doing more of the same was absolutely fine by me. But instead of resting on their laurels, Uncharted 2 feels like Naughty Dog took Drake's Fortune and turned every single dial up to eleven. It looks better, it sounds better, it plays better, and the action sequences are several times bigger and exponentially better-scripted. What makes these set-pieces so memorable is the surprising amount of agency they typically feature, putting the player in the thick of the action while giving them the best possible view of it all. Of all the game's many cinematic set-pieces, my favourite is without a doubt the extended battle with the tank through a Tibetan mountain village, a sequence so perfectly paced and expertly directed that I'm confident I'll hold it in my personal pantheon of the greatest moments in video games for a long time to come. Here's hoping Uncharted 3 can continue following the same trend. Do they even make dials that go to twelve?

'More of That Jazz' Award for Best Additional Content

BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea

I loved BioShock Infinite unreservedly. Its incredible characters, mind-bending story and innovative shooter gameplay were all enough to earn it a well-deserved space on my (heavily truncated) Top Ten Games of 2013 list, as well as entry into my list of favourite FPS games ever. I've been meaning to play the Burial at Sea downloadable content for the game ever since it was announced, but I didn't actually get around to it until late this year. The two-part expansion, set primarily in Rapture just before the underwater city's imminent collapse, was a welcome opportunity to get reacquainted with Booker DeWitt and Elizabeth Comstock in a very different setting. Its story, easily its strongest suit, brings the whole series full-circle in a wonderfully comprehensive fashion that left me itching to boot up the original BioShock as soon as the credits stopped rolling. The gameplay of Infinite is largely intact too, although the restrictive environs of Rapture aren't as conducive to Skyhook combat as the open skies of Columbia. There's always a man, there's always a city, there's always a lighthouse, and there will always be my undying love for this game, in all its forms, in every dimension of the multiverse.

'Buying New Soul' Award for Revitalisation of a Stalled Franchise

Assassin's Creed Syndicate

After a lacklustre experience with Revelations last year, I was just about ready to give up on Assassin's Creed. I've heard so many conflicting things about ACIII that even though I'd bought copies of every game in the series up to Unity, I was thinking about cutting my losses and accepting that the franchise just wasn't ever going to revisit the fleeting brilliance of ACII. I never intended to buy AC Syndicate, but ended up choosing it as the best value option of several potential pack-ins with my new PlayStation 4 when I bought it last month. Victorian London turned out to be too much of a draw to ignore, and I jumped into the game with flagrant disregard for the franchise's chronology. Turns out that was probably the best thing I could have done. AC Syndicate avoids the diminishing returns of Brotherhood and Revelations with tight (if a little systemic) gameplay set in a beautiful rendition of London circa 1868, driven by at least one fantastic protagonist in Evie Frye, and showcased with some of the best mission design I've witnessed in the series. I'm still not sure if I'll be going back to the interim Assassin's Creed titles to fill out my experience with the franchise, but it's comforting to know that this year's instalment is one of the good ones.

'With A Little Help From My Friends' Award for Best Co-Operative Experience in a Single-Player Game

Pokémon Alpha Sapphire

Astute readers may have noticed that this award is the inverse of the award handed to Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light yesterday. That's because, while Guardian of Light was a co-operative game I played through solo, Pokémon Alpha Sapphire was a single-player game that I played with the involvement and support of some truly great friends. Having struggled to get over the 'hump' of playing Pokémon Omega Ruby ever since its release in November last year, I instead turned my attention to the Alpha Sapphire version and constructed a scheme to see me through the third-generation remakes in the form of an Egglocke challenge. Some of my best friends donated eggs to the cause, and from the start of August right through until last week, I journeyed through the Hoenn region using Pokémon that those friends had bestowed upon me. It was a long adventure, filled with peril and more than a few untimely deaths, but the entire thing was a blast. I recorded every important moment, every hatched egg and every tough battle, and shared them with my friends, turning the whole Egglocke into a crazy social event. I'm insanely grateful to Duncan, Jon, Tom, Matt, Dean and Jack for helping me to overcome my “gamer's block” with Pokémon ORAS, and I can't wait to continue the social experience when we revive our competitive Pokémon league in 2016.

'21 Guns' Award for Best Weapons Arsenal

Ratchet & Clank: Locked & Loaded

Alright, so technically I haven't finished Ratchet & Clank 2 yet at the time of writing this, but I'm so close I can practically smell the Protopet... or maybe that's just the Plumber... Anyway, the point is, I should have this HD remaster of the Lombax and robot duo's second outing wrapped up before the clock strikes midnight tomorrow. It's been a really fun journey through what I've long considered to be my favourite of the PS2-era Ratchet & Clank games, and a big part of that is down to its awesome arsenal of completely bonkers weaponry. From the conventional (the rifle-like Lancer and shotgun-esque Blitz Gun) to the more surreal (Sheepinator, anyone?), Locked & Loaded's weapons roster is full of memorable guns and helpful support gadgets, all of which feel great to use. It's also the first Ratchet & Clank game to feature a proper weapon upgrade system, featuring 'levelled-up' versions of every gun that unlock through persistent use and additional gun mods that can be bought with rare Platinum Bolts, which in turn provides a great incentive to experiment with every weapon. That's why I love the weapons in this game so much, and why I feel obliged to acknowledge them in these awards.

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Here ends the individual awards portion of My End of 2015 Awards. From these thirty-two titles, I'm now tasked with the difficult responsibility of whittling the whole list down to the ten experiences that best define my year from a game-playing standpoint. These Top Ten Games of 2015 will be decorated even further in the fifth and final part of these awards, due for release tomorrow. Looks like I've got some thinking to do. Until then, thanks very much for reading guys. Take care, and I'll see you around.

Dan

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Currently playing – Pokémon Omega Ruby (3DS)