Close to my own list, close to my heart and very close to my given name. Alex, I think your list is my second favorite from the staffers this year. Vinny put The Book of Unwritten Tales 2 on his though and... well, you know how it is. It's all politics.
Vinny, we may have been the only two GBers to put TheBUTT on our GOTY lists this year. I'm right there with you: that game's amazing. If you promise to play the rest of Technobabylon (if you haven't already), I'll try to fit in Cradle sometime this year.
Great list, Austin. I suspect moving forward that, like yours this year and last, everyone's GOTY lists will be half big names you'd expect and half little games that everyone forgot about or never knew existed in the first place, but meant a lot to the person highlighting them. I was sort of forced to stick mostly with the latter largely due to monetary reasons (I have none) but even so I squeezed out a list I was happy with not only because were they all great, but because they were all games that I felt like I was introducing or reintroducing to people and getting their name out there, albeit with a comparatively quieter voice. Hearing about those tiny personal games is what I'm loving most from your list and others.
And don't worry about the XenoVerse thing: I rolled up a cat mage in Skyrim called Wiz Khajiita. When doves cry, duder.
Man, I should do one of these. At least two thirds of the games I played this year came out in 2014 or earlier. But, eh, I sorta pack my regular GOTY Awards with enough yesteryear acknowledgements. No stealing themes from other bloggers this year, then. (2016, though...)
I'd go through some of these, but you know my feelings on mad stackz and I haven't played the rest besides God of War (of which you've already succinctly summarized anything of note) and FFXIII-2. I'd agree that FFXIII-2 is absolutely fine compared to FFXIII. I might like it more, even, in spite of being weirder and making very little sense from its core premise down to how convoluted the paradoxes make everything. Then again, I thought Lightning Returns was even better still and I recognize a losing fight when I see one.
I told Zoop that he should play XIII-2 before XIII for maximum confused agitation, but I suspect he won't humor me. Whatever, the mod team managed to buy him almost every single FF game on Steam this past week (including the soon-to-be-axed MMO FFXI) so he'll see it eventually.
Thanks for the shout-out. Super Mario 64 is definitely King of the "throw it all against the wall and see what sticks" game design camp, but it also says something that they were confident enough about their ideas to put Mario in the lead and make it the launch game for their new console. Then again, it was probably necessary to justify what was assuredly an expensive project to R&D.
I won't lie, I was this close to doing the same thing and focusing on all the older games I'd played this year when it came time to writing up GOTY stuff. It's fortunate that I was able to find some great last-minute 2015 Indie games earlier this month, thanks in part to the Steam sales. Still, I love that a few bloggers like yourself are focusing on more than just 2015 releases: it means I'm not constantly reading about how great The Witcher 3, MGSV and Bloodborne are when I'm sitting here being all too eager to play them myself.
Good stuff, you put a lot more work into your illustrations than I did :P
I'm going to give Tearaway: Unfolded a shot. If you're someone who recommends it and also acknowledges that the LittleBigPlanet games kinda play like garbage, that's some reassurance. It's dirt cheap too though, as you say, so it's no biggie if I decide I'm not that into it.
Have fun with Super Mario Maker. That game took over the last few months for me. Be sure to experience Jeff's downward spiral into malevolence in real-time by playing his courses in chronological order.
Just reminds me how far behind I am with Tales. Vesperia is still the newest one I've played. Along with Xenoblade Chronicles X, I'll have to add one of them to the shame pile for next year.
In other JRPG news I'm glad to hear that there's a new Ys to be released in Japan next Summer, though I think it might be too early for Falcom to talk about localizations yet. I hear Adol washes up on a mysterious island in this one!
I'm not sure if this is answering the question, but it wasn't until I played Doom on its second hardest mode that I was able to fully appreciate it.
The first incarnation of that game I'd played was the SNES version, and as well as being a blurry mess it didn't have a "save anywhere" feature or cheats to mitigate the challenge of the later areas and so I never played it above the initial two difficulty levels. I'd also skulk carefully around corners, trying to get the drop on enemies before they spotted me, because I really didn't want to die and get kicked back to the start with just a pistol.
After picking up the PC and XBLA versions some years later, I've determined that playing the game as a madman wildly running around with a shotgun and a hundred enemies on your tail is definitely the preferred way to play.
@spacetrucking: Yeah, Dan wanted DKC: Tropical Freeze in the running for best music, him being the only one who can stand Donkey Kong Country on the crew, and after making a spirited case they've been giving him shit for it ever since. It was all actually pretty amusing, but I'm sort of relieved there's no David Wise soundtracks Dan's going to try to bat for this year.
XCX's OST is pretty good so far, as an update on that to keep things on (sound)track. It's also four and a half hours long...
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