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Shadrin

Waiting for Stellaris to release :)

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My top 10 favourite games of 2016

This year has been great. There have been so many great games that I´ve had trouble keeping up with them. Even though I´m pretty selective in what I want to play, I ran out of time near the end of the year. There were so many great games I wanted to play, but couldn´t possibly find the time for. Especially near the end of the year the release schedule was just too packed and I had to make some tough choices.

I really need a slow period for new releases for the first 6 months of 2017 to come anywhere near to catching up. But I guess that's a good problem to have.

Anyway without further ado here are my top games of 2016:

List items

  • A few years ago I thought grand strategy games were a bit too complicated to be fun for me. I enjoyed strategy games like Civ, Galciv and most RTS games like C&C and Star Craft. But the Paradox games seemed to have a steeper learning curve than I was willing to scale. I had at some point received a free copy of Europa Universalis III for being signed up to the Paradox forums. I think I originally signed up because of Swords of the Stars 2 which they published. When they gave out EU III codes to forum members, I downloaded the game, got through the tutorial and tried playing the game. I had no idea what I was supposed to do and closed the game some 30 minutes later and uninstalled it.

    A long while later a youtuber I followed, Quill18, started playing UE4 and specifically a playthrough as the Netherlands (my home country). This got me interested again and watching him play the game made it look a lot easier than trying to figure out how the game worked myself.

    So I resolved to try grand strategy again myself. In the next steam sale I bought Hearts of Iron III. World War II has always been my favourite historical subject. It was pretty much the only time period I paid any attention to during history classes in school.

    Hearts of Iron 3 was already an older game when I bought it, the tutorial was really unhelpful and I once again found myself in a position where I had no idea what the fuck I was supposed to do. Once again I turned to Youtube. This time I found a tutorial series by Alexlifeson1985. I watched a few hours of his tutorials to get the basics and watched a few of his let's plays to get a feel for the game. All in all I watched a dozen hours or so of youtube content before starting to play the game myself.

    My first playthrough as the United Kingdom went horrendous. I failed to control the seas around the British Isles with destroyer fleets and naval bombers so the German subs destroyed all my convoys and I couldn't get the raw materials I needed to produce weapons or get lend lease from the US. The next game I started I had learned from my mistakes and I eventually managed to last until the end of the war and defeat Germany, although the Soviets did most of the heavy lifting and ended up with a lot of territory they did no get historically.

    I did continue playing however and gradually got better at the game. So when I heard about HOI IV I started to follow development, I read every development diary and watched every developer stream. Once the game released on the anniversary of D-day I started playing as soon as it was available. Compared to HOI III it's a lot easier to play and the tutorial is somewhat useful this time. I have played more than 200 hours of the game, and I'm still interested in playing more. I have played games with all the mayor nations that participated in the war and a few of the minor ones too.

    HOI IV allows you to play any nation that existed during WWII, yes ANY nation. No matter how small it's playable. Of course Luxembourg will generally have a smaller impact on the war than Germany does. But the game is more of a sandbox than HOI III was. It's easier to go ahistorical and, for instance, turn the US into a fascist state and get allied with Germany to conquer the world.

    This has been the game I returned to when I didn't know what else to play. There is still lot's of stuff to do in the game that I want to try out. And the DLC Together for Victory that just came out fleshed out the British Commonwealth countries to a point where they've become much more interesting to play. I think the 200+ hours I've played so far are just the beginning for me in this game. This is my most played game and favourite game of the year and you should play it if you have any interest in strategy games in general and WWII strategy in particular.

  • Doom should not have been good. By all rights a game that has been in development as long as this, and has been scrapped completely along the way, should come out terrible. The multiplayer beta did not do anything for me either so I expected I would not like this game. Once reports started to come out that the game was actually good (no thanks to the lack of review copies, seriously stop that shit Bethesda), and captured the spirit of the first two Doom games I became interested.

    Doom was one of the reasons I really wanted a PC to play games on when I was 12 years old. I'm from a working class family and my parents didn't have enough money to buy a PC that could run the game when it came out.

    I didn't get to play it until two years later when I had finally earned enough money from a paper round to buy a PC that was on discount at a retail chain. It had a 15 inch SVGA monitor and OEM videocard, A cyrix 586 100 mhz processor, 8 megs of RAM and a soundblaster compliant, but not original, soundcard. It wasn't a very good PC and I probably would have been better off to continue saving and buy an actual pentium machine, but it would run Doom (and C&C and later Duke Nukem 3D). Of course I didn't have any money left to actually buy Doom so I played the shareware episode over and over again until I finally found a cheap version of Doom on 6 floppy disks.

    I was terrible at the game and had to play it on the easiest difficulty to make any progress and I got lost in pretty much every level, but I loved it.

    Fast forward to my college years when Doom 3 came out. I was really excited for it and bought it on release. I had a machine that could run it pretty decently with an AMD Athlon 3200+ A Geforce 6800gt and a whole GB of RAM. It looked amazing but when I got over the wonder of shiny new graphics I didn't really like the game. The monster closet approach and the forced choice between a flashlight or a weapon didn't sit well with me. I also felt that I was fighting small amounts of enemies and not mowing down rooms full of demons like I had been in Doom 1 and 2. In the end I never even finished the game.

    Needless to say I did not expect anything from Doom until I played it. The first level immediately got me hooked. The speed of the game and the amount of enemies on screen and the constant need to keep moving to avoid getting shot felt great. I ended up finishing the game in two sittings and immediately starting another game on a higher difficulty, which is something I very rarely do with shooters. I'm currently on a third playthrough on Nightmare difficulty, which is a bit above my skill level, but I'm enjoying it a lot.

  • Yes I know, The Witcher 3 launched last year. The title should read The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine. But for some reason these lists don't let us select expansion packs. Now usually I would agree that an expansion is not a new game. But this one takes place in an entirely new area, has a self contained story that rivals the quality of the main game and it has about 30 hours of content. Which is more than a lot of full priced games have nowadays.

    Last year I spent 120 hours playing all of TW3 and trying to finish all it had to offer. I eventually gave up on some of the ?'s on the Skellige Isles because the travel by boat was a bit laborious. But I really enjoyed my time with the game. So much that I really wanted to replay it, something I rarely do with games these days because I just don't have the time.

    So I started a new game+ playthrough earlier in the year during a lull in the releases. This meant I kept all my equipment and didn't have to craft all the potions and elixirs etc. all over again. I could just enjoy the story. It was also the perfect game when I needed something easier to play when I was frustrated with Dark Souls 3 ;)

    I ended up finishing the main game and Heart of Stone DLC right before the expansion launched and went right into it. The new area is stunning to look at. Where the main game takes place in war torn and somewhat dreary looking environments the new area Toussaint is colourful and vibrant. The main story in the expansion starts out with a rather simple sounbding contract to kill a monster that has been killing off nobles and leaving their corpses in ways that resemble their sins against the chivalric virtues. This seems to have taken some inspiration from Se7en, but it's well executed en in the end things are not as straight forward as they appear.

    All in all this expansion is a must play for every one that liked the Witcher. Mechanically it's more of the same, but the story is absolutely worth it.

  • I'm a late convert to the souls games. I never owned an Xbox 360 or PS3 so I never played the first game. I did try it once it was finally ported to PC, but I bounced off it because of the 30 fps cap (yes I'm one of those people) and other technical issues. I tried again when DS2 launched but I did not really get into it. Part of that was the slow deliberate pace of the combat and the fact that monsters eventually stopped spawning when you had died enough times. This made me feel like I was just grinding away and trowing corpses at the problem until the game threw me a bone.

    This changed last December when the Old Hunter edition of Bloodborne went on sale. I had been looking for a game to justify my purchase of a PS4 at launch. Between The Last of Us remastered and Destiny it had mostly gathered a lot of dust. I also enjoyed watching the Breaking Brad episodes where he went for the platinum trophy and I generally liked the theme of the game (I'm a sucker for lovecraftian horror).

    The faster pace of Bloodborne also clicked with me a lot more. I got a bit overwhelmed on the exploration side of the game so to stop me from wondering where the fuck I was supposed to go I used a minimal progression guide that made sure I went through the game in the recommended order and found all the bosses. Other than that I used no help. I figured out all the bosses on my own and defeated them without the help of summoned players or NPC's. This led to me trowing a controller around the room once or twice, but the accomplishment of finally defeating a tough boss did stick with me.

    So when I heard DS3 would come out and it would apparently have a little faster combat compared to the earlier games. I went in completely blind and I took care to take my time exploring every area as best I could. This would on occasion lead me to area's I wasn't ready for. But I had learned to recognise that and search for another path. I ended up finishing the game on my own, finding all the bosses

    and defeating all but one (The Nameless King, which I eventually skipped after dying to him for 3-4 hours) without summoning any help.

    I'm not sure if I have a second playthrough in me, but I'm glad I finished the game without outside help.

  • 4X space games traditionally have some problems in the early game. The eXploration part of the game is rarely very interesting and the fun mostly starts once you get to eXploiting, eXpanding and finally eXterminating.

    Stellaris spices up the early game with exploration events that detail the history of your, randomly generated, universe. You don't just discover planets to colonise but you find information about precursor races, space organisms to research and eventually other races.

    Once most of the inhabitable planets are taken disputes over territory inevitably lead to war among the different races.

    These races are all randomly generated by the game. The player get's to customise it's own races appearance, which is purely cosmetic, preferred planet type, and ethics. These ethics consist of multiple opposing ideological leanings like collectivist vs individualist and militarist vs pacifist. Based on the chosen ethics players can choose from a few government types ranging from direct democracies to military dictatorships.

    Other than the regular races there are the fallen empires, remnants of old empires from a bygone age. They have massively powerful ships but have lost interest in expanding, most of them just want to be left alone, but something might trigger them into action. And when the come for you you're in some real trouble, unless you have some really late game tech at your disposal.

    I found the game very entertaining. For me it serves as the happy medium between something more simple like Endless Space and the complexity (and mind boggling UI) of something like Distant Worlds.

    Like most Paradox games it does need some expansion though. Once you've gotten to the end game a few times, the end game crises that trigger once the average tech level reaches a certain point, become a bit samey. After that there's little else to do than take over the rest of the galaxy. Which leads me to another downside. There's not much to do if you want to play a peaceful race. The game pretty much is all about war. And while you can wage wars to liberate occupied territory it ultimately isn't very interesting to play a pacifist race. There are no peace victory conditions like a tech victory or a builders victory.

    I'm sure Paradox will flesh out the game with regular DLC's like they do for all their games. And despite this I still played well over 150 hours of this game and the only reasons that wasn't way more are some of the games higher on this list.

  • After the last formula 1 race of the season I wanted some more racing action. I don't really enjoy racing games because I'm just terrible at them. I do however like management games and this one is a pretty good one.

    I installed it right after the race finished and started playing. I only stopped because I started to get hungry after about 6 hours of gaming.

    This game has you take over the general manager position of a racing team in one of three open wheel racing leagues.

    There you make decisions on hiring personnel and drivers, design of new parts and at the start of a season a whole new car. When funds allow it you get to build new buildings like test track, a weather station and various R&D departments to improve you car, the skills of your drivers and the quality of the parts you can design.

    During races you decide on pit stop strategy and tell your drivers to either push harder or conserve fuel/tyres. To do this effectively you have to keep an eye on changing weather conditions and fuel levels and tyre wear.

    The races themselves are fairly compelling to watch even though the presentation is quite simple. I found myself watching the races on the default speed despite the option to speed them up considerably.

    All in all this was just the game I needed to satisfy my need to watch race cars until the next season of formula 1.

  • I was planning to put this game off until January. Because it released one day before Dishonoured 2 and I couldn't see myself having the time to play them both. But then Bethesda decided to deny review copies to the press and on top of that the PC version had some horrible performance issues.

    And so I got to play Tyranny, which I really like. I never really got into the old infinity engine games. Mostly because I was more of an action gamer back when they were popular. The closest I got to playing an RPG in the 90's was Diablo. I eventually got into RPG's via Bioware's KotoR and Dragon Age: Origins.

    When Pillars of Eternity launched last year I picked that up and I really liked that game. Tyranny is a different take on the same formula. It's a bit smaller, both in world size and even the party size is smaller (4 characters in stead of 6). The battle systems are mostly unchanged, but it's now possible to craft your own spells from some basic elements.

    The biggest draw for this game is the story. It's set in a world where the evil empire has won. The last bit of free land is conquered during the intro to the game. The fun thing is that you have influence over how this conquest takes place. You make choices regarding which of the two armies sent on this conquest has the most influence over the outcome. This has real influence on the later game. Some NPC's will or won't show up based on the choices you made.

    As the player you're an agent of "justice" for the evil overlord. You're supposed to enforce the laws of the empire and deal with an uprising of the locals and the bickering between the two leaders of the armies sent to conquer the territory. There are multiple factions with which you can align yourself and you can choose in which way you uphold the law. Along the way you'll be presented with opportunities to adjudicate issues brought before you by NPC's. Through conversation, and sometimes investigation, you'll have to make a decision that always has some, if sometimes minor, consequences.

    I don't think I'll ever have the time I need for the multiple playthroughs this game deserves, but I love it anyway.

  • I bought this game on early access as soon as it was available. Watching Brad play in on a UPF immediately got me interested. I stopped playing after about 25 hours so I wouldn't burn out on the game before it was fully launched.

    Darkest Dungeon highlights the sanity effect of dungeon delving like no other game has before. In most games heroes are these infallible brave characters that aren't bothered with the things they see while they slay the horrific monsters in the deepest dungeons.

    The game plays like a tactics RPG where you select four characters of various classes to go on a dungeon run. All of them have various abilities that work based on their position in the party and the position of the enemy monsters.

    Characters in Darkest Dungeon become stressed and develop quirks while they're on an adventure. When they get back to town they have to relax by going out to drink, gamble or fuck in the tavern. Or by going to meditate, pray or flagellate in the abbey. Character getting too stressed during a mission can lead to them mentally breaking and becoming a detriment to the party. If stress keeps building after that they may even die from a heart attack.

    The quirks can be positive, like a bigger chance to scout ahead in certain dungeons. But also negative, like being scared of certain monsters which leads to increased stress.

    This can even lead to characters that can not relax in town anymore because they have a quirk which causes them to only want to go to the brothel (Love interest) and the quirk that bans them from entering the brothel (Deviant tastes). Luckily its possible to remove quirks in the asylum.

    All the systems are quite simple when regarded on their own, but the way they play on each other makes for a very deep game. I really like how it's sometimes impossible to get a perfect team together an you'll have to make due with the characters that are available.

    If there is one downside to the game it is that it can become a bit grindy, especially during late game. I haven't finished the game yet but I keep coming back to it periodically. I'm really looking forward to the announced DLC that's supposed to release early next year.

  • I really loved XCOM Enemy unknown. Not because of nostalgia as I never played the original games, because I didn't have the patience for them when they came out. I really liked the tension in the game and the bond I fostered with the soldiers under my command.

    XCOM 2 was basically more of the same. The mission structure was changed a bit to introduce a little more urgency. This lead to more risk taking which pushed me harder to get to the goal which in turn increased the tension. The strategy layer where you're tasked with contacting resistance groups and adding them to your organisation is a bit more interesting and more flexible than the launching of satellites was in the first game.

    All in all this is more XCOM, but better and it could have ended up higher on this list if it wasn't for two major detractors.

    First of all the performance issues. When the game launched it would hitch during missions for no visible reason. This eventually got patched but it was a major issue for me during the first few weeks.

    The worst part was the final boss fight. It wasn't a unique alien but instead it consisted of three of the same alien creatures that you have defeated before. Their gimmick was that the'd teleport to a random location after getting hit. On top of that the'd spawn groups of three increasingly tough aliens every turn. This just wasn't very fun for me and even though I played two full ironman campaigns to get to the end I never actually finished the game because I got frustrated with that final fight.

  • Civilization 5 was disappointing out of the gate. The 1 unit per tile change, the lack of religion and the ridiculously exploitable city states put it so far behind Civ IV that I just went back to that game after two campaigns. Civ VI does a lot better in that regard. It has kept the best parts of previous games, mainly trade routes and religion and adds some new mechanics.

    The terrain now matters more with regards to city placement. Districts require some forethought so it´s no longer a case of just building everything in every city and getting the most out of them leads to some interesting decisions. Building wonders on the map, with some restrictions on their placement, is also a nice touch.

    Firaxis has also tried to give the leaders some personality and give them their own objectives based on their personality. Pedro II of Brasil will dislike you if you have more great persons than he has. Frederick Barbarossa will tell you to stop befriending city states because he has a bonus to conquering them. And Philip II of Spain will only like you if you follow the one true fate (meaning the one he founded). And while this does add some flavour it get's a bit annoying once they start denouncing you every 5 turns or so with the same flavour text over and over again.

    All in all this is a competent game and I like it, but it didn't have the impact on me Alpha Centauri or Civ 4 did. But I doubt any new Civ game ever will.
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