Games of the Year: 2016
here are my games of the year!
List items
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Hell yes. DOOM is an incredible revival of 90s FPS AND an innovative step for the genre, and it has a damn good sountrack too. An outstanding game start to finish.
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The nail-biting tactical strategy series takes a dystopian turn - your failed attempts in XCOM 1 are canon, and the aliens have taken over. Now it's time to show those screeching ADVENT bastards what's what and take Earth back, with new gear from swords to drones ready to help out.
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What seemed at first like Blizzard going for the Team Fortress demo turned into a more original MOBA-like FPS with a bevy of interesting, unique and personable heroes to choose from, and a genuinely fun, team-based style of play that's a whole bundle of joy with some good friends even if it's more of a casual experience than the hardcore, realistic, twitch gameplay of its contemporaries.
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Hardcore, realistic twitch gameplay, meanwhile, took a trip a century back to the Great War in easily the best Battlefield game since 3. Well-balanced bolt-action rifles share the battlefield with SMGs, machine guns, early tanks and aeroplanes in a visually compelling and dynamic experience. EA wisely ditches BF3 and 4's close-quarters maps and their lame attempt to ape CoD for large maps with varying terrain and game modes like Frontlines, which has players playing a brutal tug-of-war for an ever-shifting front line.
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A good return to form for Hitman after the missteps of Absolution, HITMAN revels in Blood Money's blood-soaked costume parties and lets you wreak a seven-foot tall, bald albino path of unique destruction over a number of well-designed, expansive locations.
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Another solid entry in the prestigious turn-based grand strategy series, CIV 6 has a pleasantly surprising amount of content right out of the gate, and features a number of cool improvements on Civ 5’s gameplay. Basically, it does everything CIV 5 did well (including in expansions) and builds on it, while unfortunately still making combat be kind of lame as it has been for a while in CIV. Dope soundtrack, too, and the starting civs are pretty decent.
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XCOM meets Lovecraft in a grim, dark, grimdark tactical RPG/dungeon crawler that gives you no shortage of sanity-fraying enemies in your path but also no shortage of noble heroes, classes, and items to throw into Cthulhu's meat grinder.
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SUPER HOT. A fantastic shooter where time moves only as you do, featuring minimialistic graphics, men made of ruby who want you dead, and tons of great action-movie inspired gameplay straight off the film negatives of The Matrix and John Wick.
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PDS’ other game release, a sequel to their hardcore WWII grand strat that attempts to make the unique and complex gameplay systems – even compared to their other games – less opaque, and mostly succeeds without sacrificing too much of the intricacy and difficulty of HoI 3. It could do with slightly more complex diplomacy and politics, lacks a real intelligence component, and a more detailed world map, however. The AI is not always perfect, but has the decency of giving you a good fight/helping you win the good fight before you vanquish it/give it nothing in the ensuing peace treaty. Try the alt-history Kaiserreich mod for even more fun!
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Paradox's space GSG debuted this year to a mixed response - it offers fantastic exploration and a highly customizable galaxy to settle your colonies and fight your wars in, but has a disappointing lack of diplomatic options or mid-game content, as well as lacking some other space GSG staples like superweapons, massive ships, culture and piracy. Basically, it should have been Sins of A Solar Empire 2 but instead falls behind Sins 1 in some areas while exceeding in others.
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