Hey duders!

This year was filled with a smothering of games of all shapes and sizes, from epic-scale RPGs, to indie gems, to experimental games that defy genre convention, which meant that people could have wildly different experiences with a variety of games. These lists are hard for me, as I usually have one single game that I will just splurge all over, and then kind of dabble with other stuff during the year. Not the case here, as I had no trouble rounding up 10 games that spent at least 10 hours apiece with, and I didn't even touch Fallout 4!

I also enjoyed anime, One Punch Man and Death Parade were awesome and Ikuhara-san (of Utena fame) made a new series with lesbians and bears, and it's called Yuri Kuma Arashi! The first season of Jessica Jones was cool and the new Star Wars did not disappoint.

But this list is about games and before my list, my honorable mentions include: Lara Croft GO, Shooty Skies (I really enjoyed this, no joke), Her Story, The Beginner's Guide, Downwell, and 80 Days.

And stuff that I didn’t get to: Boxboy, Galak-Z, Rebel Galaxy, Ori and the Blind Forest, Hacknet, Tales from the Borderlands, Grow Home, Just Cause 3, The Room Three, Assassin's Creed Syndicate

So let’s get started!

10. Invisible Inc.

After listening to the GiantBomb GOTY deliberations, this game stuck out on my mind as something that was out of my comfort zone, but it could appeal to me if I let it grab me. Ten hours later, I’m infiltrating giant mega corps, hacking drones to kill guards and I’m on the edge of my seat trying to find the way out of many tight situations. It’s a game of tension, with room for both player creativity and emergent solutions, all within the confines of a turn-based roguelike. It's got the style of a Saturday morning cartoon by way of old spy thrillers, it's cyberpunk, it supports a variety of playstyles, and Tom Chick thinks it should be taught in game design school.

9. Dying Light

I originally brushed off this game as being a generic open world game, with a narrative to justify its existence and nothing more. Turns out, it’s got parkour mechanics that work great with the large scale of its map that rivals Mirror’s Edge, great co-op integration and great “game-feel”. Running across rooftops to avoid zombies is kinaesthetically pleasing and intuitive, hitting zombies with melee weapons is great, and there’s a crafting system where you use quest rewards to maximize your weapon damage. Guns are there too as a last resort, just don’t rely on them since they attract more zombies. And don’t stay around at night-time, visibility is reduced and other players can spawn in as special enemy zombies to tear shit up. It’s great all around and it looks incredible on a nice PC.

8. Super Mario Maker

I’ve been enjoying everything going around Mario Maker, the GiantBomb videos, Patrick’s Twitch stream, and even though I got the game around Christmas, I've had enough fun discovering levels and making them to put them on here. The thing about Mario Maker is that good Mario levels can finally come out of people that aren’t working at Nintendo or making ROMhacks. This has allowed Mario levels that Nintendo would never dare to make: puzzle levels, crouch jump levels, hitting item blocks to set off chain reactions and so on. They have also updated their creation tools with checkpoints, a red clown car that shoots fireballs (shmup levels!) and fixed bugs. This is the type of game only to come out of Nintendo and yet does un-Nintendo things, letting you put goofy-SFX in your levels, introduces a creepy reskin of Mario. The WiiU only ever needed one game, and this is it.

7. Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number

Hotline Miami 2 is the Pulp Fiction of video games. It’s told out of order, it’s hyper violent, and it’s a trip. It starts off at the first game’s level of difficulty and gets even harder, the game forces you to rethink your way of playing Hotline Miami by stretching out the level design and making more open spaces. Player improvisation and tactical thinking are key, as is trial and error. Following the story requires careful attention, although if you’re dumb like me, the wiki is a good solution. It’s great fun, but it’s not for everyone, and sometimes that’s okay. Oh and the soundtrack gets you fucking pumped.

6. Undertale

Undertale comes from a guy who has made Earthbound ROMhacks, great music and knocked it out of the park with his first game. Tobyfox does much more than crib from Earthbound though, he wrote great characters (Napstablook, Papyrus, , actual comedic dialogue and situations, subverts old school RPG tropes as well as he can and while the game’s self-awareness of the player’s actions in the world do little more than poke fun at the player, or discourage them from doing certain… things, the ending(s)’ stick the landing. Undertale’s medley of turn-based RPGs, shmups and rhythm games is truly unique, and deserves attention.

5. Life is Strange

If you try to dissect Life is Strange, the pieces of it kind of fall apart. It’s kind of cheesy, there are really embarrassing lines, the puzzles can be obtuse in a point and click adventure kind of way, and some characters aren’t very well defined. But Max’s journey through her week at Blackwell is heroic, and I’m glad I experienced it. It’s a coming of age story about a girl who tries to reconnect with a childhood friend in a town going through many crises. It’s also very modern, with themes that hit hard for me, and really tense moments. I loved it for its many characters, its trippy finale, and beautiful scenes.

4. Xenoblade Chronicles X

I got super hyped for this game just on its premise: open-world-mech-RPG. It’s a huge world with lots and lots of hostile and non-hostile enemies and lots of collectibles, but it fails to deliver on an overarching plot. It makes up for that with really cool sidequests and its Xenoblade-branded Affinity chart where every NPC has at least one relationship with another NPC. The systems in this game are very much interconnected, the combat system requires you to “synergize” your party: Elma staggers the enemy by attacking from the side so Lin can topple it and then everybody activates overdrive for maximum damage. And then there are Skells, which require you to get through half of the story missions, get a chain of sidequests to obtain a licence to pilot one, and then get one and realize it’s really shitty, and get to level 30 to buy a good one. It’s this year’s game of delayed gratification, the more I spent time with it, the more I realized how big all of its systems were. The more I explored the world, the more I experienced the incredible environment design and breath-taking vistas. Tetsuya Takahashi and his team at Monolith crafted this experience on a console with limited horsepower and a budget for a JRPG and they delivered on their fantasy: the open-world-mech-RPG.

3. Rocket League

Playing Rocket League is the only way to understand how well it works, the cars have an arcadey feel, and you can jump, boost, flip your car in the air and hit other cars. The beauty and simplicity of its design is how well it imitates football (soccer) in a videogame-ass videogame. The player, has to learn positioning, hitting the ball where they want, manage their boost meter and work with their team to score goals, which is a lot more work than it sounds. I have cheered with my sisters and friends when we scored goals, yelled at them for missing shots or letting shots through, it is exhilarating! Rocket League is a huge surprise and I’m going to keep playing it for a while.

2. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

While I am caught up with the story of the Metal Gear Saga, this is the only MGS game I have beaten in the series. I watched ChipCheezum’s Let’s Plays of the series which I recommend, he goes through the game, muting commentary for cutscenes and showing every collectible, and is very good at the Metal Gear Games.

As Xenoblade X provides a web of JRPG systems to navigate through, Metal Gear Solid V, provides a web of third-person action stealth games with base building, worker placement and weapon upgrade progression systems working in the background. The day/night cycle influences visibility on the field, multiple optional objectives add replayability to the campaign missions, and they absolutely nailed character movement. Guards can patrol, investigate suspicious activity or not: if a guard spots the player while moving around in a cardboard box and the player has a Russian soldier sticker on, the guard, depending on his recon skills will either assume that it’s a fellow soldier or see through the player’s ruse. You can hide in a toilet and play a recording of a man’s painful bowel movement, so guards will move away, you can attach a balloon to a tank, you can throw smoke grenades in your jeep and drive through a camp so enemies will ignore you, and it’s beautiful.

It’s a shame the story delivery was weak, as it would have elevated this game’s status as one of the Greatest Games of All Time.

1. The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt

I don’t like fantasy stories, WRPGs made by people other than Bioware, but the Witcher 3 made me question my tastes. It’s a shame the GiantBomb crew didn’t like as much as I did, because this game sells the fantasy of Witcher simulator 2015 pretty hard.

One of the first sidequests is off the beaten path, an old lady calls out to you and asks you to break in to some stranger’s house and retrieve her frying pan. Another quest asks you to put on a play to draw the attention of a doppelganger so that he can play a part in your plan to rescue Dandelion, one of Geralt’s friends. It has great writing, great stories and a fantastic main story involving Ciri, whose relationship with Geralt is one of the most interesting to watch in any medium, rivalling Nier’s father-daughter dynamic. It has things to say about alcoholism, losing loved ones and family, living in a war torn country, parenting… It even plays on tropes in European folklore and fairy tales.

The player is expected to wade through lies, red herrings, characters aren’t always what they seem (good or evil). They are also expected to learn a combat system that forces you to roleplay Geralt and his monster slaying abilities. And for people who like optional card games, Gwent was made for them.

It is a game so vast, so dense with content and yet it manages to keep a level of quality and panache most of the 100+ hours through. It’s my favourite game of 2015.