2016... 2016. Well...

2016, what can I say? It's certainly been a year! Thanks for quickening our slide into our dark dystopian future. Truly it feels we now live in the darkest of timelines. Maybe 2017 will prove that wrong? Things can always get worse!

Well, maybe not everything is scary, horrible, existential dread. As some might say, NOW is the best time to play video games. However to make sure lets look back to more holycon days, back to 2014!

2016's Best Game of 2014! - Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft.

The winner of my 2014 Game of the Year is still a winner in my book. With the addition of two great expansions and an adventure Hearthstone continues to keep it's hooks deep in me. The first expansion "Whispers of the Old Gods" themed around the eldritch horrors of Azeroth brought C'thun and his other tentacled friends to the inn. "One Night in Karazhan" adventure was a ton of goofy fun that brought some interesting cards to the game. Finally "Mean Streets of Gadgetzan" was recently released and really mixed things up with it's Tri-Cards representing the three warring crime families of Gadgetzan. Blizzard games really shine with polish and ooze with charm.

2016's Worst Trend in Gaming - No Man's Sky Backlash.

No Man's Sky is a complex situation. As a game it is flawed but not the disaster that people make it out to me. I actually had a pretty good time flying around and exploring planets and taking pictures of weird ass animals. It definitely didn't live up to the marketing promises and that is part of the problem. Sony noticed how the internet responded to that first trailer and hyped the hell out of the game. The internet then amplified this hype to levels that no game could ever hope to reach. Combine all this insane hype with a development studio that was naive and definitely over their heads and you have a PR disaster.

However all of that wasn't 2016's Worst Trend in Gaming. It was the backlash that came out of this. Calls for class action lawsuits and legal actions against the studio, dox'ing attempts and death threats against the developers, the list goes on. This caused the studio to basically go into lockdown mode out of fear leading to a lack of communication to the customer base which further aggravated things. The rotten cherry on this crap pile was how Sony washed their hands of the whole thing and laid the blame for the feet of Hello Games. Classy Sony! Nice third party support there. The mix of internet entitlement, corporate BS and poor communication by the studio exploded into a sickening and toxic backlash like we've never seen. If that's is a bad trend I don't know what is.

2016's Best Trend in Gaming - Virtual Reality.

The best trends are the ones that show you a bright feature. Virtual Reality I firmly believe is the future of gaming. It's certainly a nascent technology. Rough in a lot of ways but when it works, it works! I first bought an Oculus Rift and while impressive the lack of motion controllers was a real let down and I quickly cool a bit on VR. I tried the Vive and was fairly impressed but I couldn't bring myself to pay more money for VR. When the PS VR came out I decided what the hell and got one of those. I was pretty impressed with it. The addition of the move controllers reinforced my belief that motion controllers are required for the VR experience. Sony also did a good job getting a fairly decent launch line up for the platform. Finally Oculus Touch came out and wow... the hand tracking that the other two controllers lack adds so much to the experience. It's really something to have your hands in a virtual space be exactly where you think they are moving in the ways you are.. I wouldn't recommend to many people to run out and get one unless you have disposable income. VR is not cheap, but definitely find someone who does and try it out!

2016's Games I should have played but didn't.

There was only so much time this year to play games, and these are the ones I really wanted to play but never got around to. Maybe one will be 2017's best game of 2016?

Final Fantasy VX

Firewatch

Hyper Light Drifter

Superhot VR

Owlboy

Uncharted 4: A Thief's End

2016's Top Games of the Year:

10) World of Final Fantasy - Where did this game come from? I haven't even heard of it until the Quick Look and even then I mostly wrote it off. It wasn't until the Jefflr crew kept talking about it I decided to try it out. I figured this was going to be nothing more then Final Fantasy Pokemon and a bunch of bad nostalgia. However it's utterly charming and well written, with it's tongue firmly in it's cheek. It knows exactly what it is and leans into it and it is better off for it. Do yourself a favor and try it out, you may be surprised!

9) Street Fighter V - Street Fighter V, you should easily be my number 1 or 2 game. Sadly you are dragged down by a bad launch, bad single player modes, a joke of a tutorial mode, over priced DLC and the list goes on. To Capcom's credit they fixed a lot of the issues from launch on this game. Adding new Story mode which was "OK", weekly missions to earn Fight Money and getting the online store running. Even with these additions it still lacks somewhat.

However the core gameplay of SFV is so good it saves it for me. Impressive graphics and art, fantastic animations, a varied rosters with some interesting newcomers (Rashid the best of them) and decent online play still make it fun to play. The V system is really the highlight of the game. V Skills and V Triggers make every fighter feel different and fun. There is a lot here to love once you dig in. The shame of it of it all is what you need to dig through to get there.

8) Super Robot Wars OG: The Moon Dwellers - This installment features the "Original" characters from the other games making it a cross over of cross over games, it's weirdly meta. The games featured in this one didn't do much for me: Super Robot Wars Judgement, and Super Robot Wars GC, however Haken Browning from Super Robot Wars OG Saga: Endless Frontier showed up so that was great. Still it's a SRW game and I love them. Oh did I mention this one has an official English release?! Released for the Asian Market, you now can play a SRW totally in English! The translation is rough in points but it is more then serviceable. SRW V comes out in February and this is getting an English release too.

7) Let It Die - Well, this game really came out of no where. Announced at PSX in early December and released the following week this is a latecomer to my list. I really like this game. I might have put this higher on my list but I felt three weeks isn't enough to really chew on it. However, the game withing a game conceit, the general tongue in cheek nature of it (Have you seen the boss video intros!?), and just the whole aesthetic really does something for me. It's brutally hard and unforgiving but somehow you always feel like you are making progress. You will notice between the better equipment and your skills increases on floors you once struggled on you mow through them, then you get to a new floor and the game suddenly remind you of the harsh reality of the world. The free-to-play aspect of the game may turn some off, but once you wrap your head around what to spend premium currency on (Protip: storage and progress) it really isn't bad at all. Come say "Hi!" to Uncle Death, what you have to lose?

6) Hitman - "Come with me / And you'll be / In a world of pure assassination. / Take a look / And you'll see / Lots of dead bodies."

The clockwork world murder world of Hitman shouldn't have been such a great game. However the staggering amount of detail and fantastic characters and writing make it a joy. If Hitman was a serious and dark game it would have never worked however the game really knows what it is and doesn't take itself overly serious. Murdering Russian chess masters by rocketing them into space in an ejector seat, posing as a Fashion Icon and then using his phone to set an appointment with the target, killing your target with an exploding golf ball while he practices his swing in his seaside villa are just some of the ways you can fulfill your contracts.

It is also one of those games that is as fun to play as it is to watch someone play. Every time I watch someone play I go "HUH! Look at that", it's really mind boggling the amount of ways to off people in this game. Oh also the Elusive Targets are brilliant. Time limited single attempt contracts, they are super tense and require a mastery of the game.

5) Doom - Doom is amazing. A semi-reboot of the franchise it totally nails everything it needed. Fast, frantic and loud it is everything the original Doom was brought into the modern era and made better. The Glory Kill system is brilliant and strikes me as the complete opposite mechanic to the tried and true Cover Shooter System brought forward by games like Gears of War. I'm not 100% done with the campaign but I have loved everything I played so fair. I think if was I better at these kinds of games I would have this much higher on my list.

4) Thumper - It bills itself as a "Rhythm Violence" game in which you are a space beetle basically flying through hell to battle a future demon from while an Industrial Techno Nu Metal soundtrack attempts to melt your brain. How could you not love that!? It's oppressive and grinds at you, and leaves you feeling unsettled. Oh did I mention it's also a VR game, and that in VR all of that is cranked up to 11! It's super good, in fact it's one of the better music rhythm games ever made. It probably would have been way higher on my list too if not for...

3) Darkest Dungeon - "You remember our venerable house, opulent and imperial. It is a festering abomination! I beg you, return home, claim your birthright and deliver our family from the ravenous clutching shadows of the Darkest Dungeon."

There is so much I love about this game it's hard for me to unpack it all. Lets start with the presentation. I love the art style with it's hand drawn comic book Gothic styling, I love the narrator with his over wrought quips on your impeding doom, I love the soundtrack that sounds a mix of rock and funeral dirges. Next is the gameplay. This game is hard and unforgiving. Combat swings wildly, one second you are sure of your victory the next your party is near destroyed. Your heroes are go insane from the stresses of the horrors they see, lashing out at the party and themselves. No one comes back the same usually for the worse.

This is not a game about winning, it's about capitalizing on your small successes. It's a game about managing your losses to make the most progress. You band-aid what you can between forays into the dungeons. Two steps forward, one step back. Slowly you inch your way towards your goal, the end. However as the narrator says: "Remind yourself that overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer." Nothing is a victory here... in the Darkest Dungeon.

2) Overwatch - Leave it to Blizzard to basically smash a MOBA style hero game with Team Fortress 2 and make one of the best shooters on the markets. What really makes Overwatch stand out to me is it's never ending positivity. Lets take for example the characters. Like any good hero game, all the characters are unique and easily identifiable full of personality and charm. They are also diverse and inclusive at the same time, there is a little of anyone in any of those characters to relate to. One thing I would like to note here is the overall art style filled with bright colors and small details. Overwatch feels to me like it would easily be a spin-off of "The Incredibles".

Positivity also extends to how the game surfaces player stats, you don't get a scoreboard with K/Ds on it. You get medals for contribution to the team. You get those if you win or lose too. Players vote for who added to most to the game, from both teams. Finally you can play a support or healer role and feel like a team player.

Overwatch also make you feel like a competent badass pretty much all the time. You are pretty much just doing cool things constantly. Then they show you the "Play of the Game" which usually is the coolest thing that happened that game. The you get "Play of the Game" and you can't help but smile. That's what Overwatch does, it make you happy, it makes you smile and makes you feel good.

1) Stardew Valley - 2016 was a rough year in a lot of ways for a lot of people. Stardew Valley's promise to you is that it will take you away from all of that to a world where things are simpler. In fact, that is exactly how the game begins. You leave your life in your humdrum office job to take your Grandfather's farm over, with dreams of a new life and what a life it is.

It's a life where you are a farmer, a fisher, an adventurer and most of all a member of a community. There is a certain sense of purpose instilled in you when you arrive in Stardew Valley, you are the fresh blood here shaking things up in a place that seemed to have needed it. As you slowly build up the farm, you are also building up bonds with the town folks. Getting to know them better, doing small errands for them, and over all just making the world a better place. You become friends with these people, and you can if you wish even date and marry one of them.

I haven't quite "finished" Stardew Valley yet, if you can say there is an ending to it. I've been taking my time with it, heading off to the farm when I just needed to get away from it all. Letting the hours melt away as I planted strawberries, spelunked in the mines and fished for those legendary fishes. It's a world that gives back to you what you give it but never demands more. In a year that seemed to take from you and give back very little, Stardew Valley was exactly what I needed.

Honorable Mentions:

Titanfall 2 - The campaign is amazing, THAT level is one of the best moments I've played in games this year. However, I got bored with multiplayer pretty quickly. It's not really a fault of the game, I'm just not that much into shooters and when I want to play one, well... Overwatch.

Forza Horizons 3 - The game looks and plays fantastically, but quickly felt like more of the same.

Dragon Quest Builders - Charming and full of nostalgia, it's a really fun minecraft style game. Unfortunately the resets of knowledge between chapters drags it down a bit.

Enter the Gungeon - Plays great, I had a ton of fun with it. It years with lesser releases this would have easily made my top ten. It's getting some DLC early 2017, so I'll probably be going back in to see what's up.

Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 - A lot of smart additions make this a much better game then Xenoverse 1, however just home many times can I play through the DBZ story, I did it just a year ago!

Guilty Gear Xrd: Revelator - GG Xrd is one of the best anime fighters out there. The sequel to Sign adds a few new characters but doesn't do enough new things to make top ten. Story mode did answer a lot of questions however, it's worth it just for that.