10. Cities: Skylines

I am a Licensed Professional Engineer (P.E.) in Civil Engineering and my main profession is roadway design. The last thing I thought I wanted was to come home and play a city builder that trivializes my very difficult job. Yet, I dumped around 50 hours in this game. For a design engineer like myself, it became a power fantasy because I could design infrastructure without having to follow EPA regulations, right of way restrictions, developers, municipal politicians, State design standards, or pretty much anything that prevents me from getting my job being done faster.

9. Xenoblade Chronicles X

I was impressed with how the numerous systems in this game came together into a cohesive game. The combat, mapping, harvesting, crafting, and soicial mechanics in this game are dense and they wall work together well. That is an extreme accomplishment. Xenoblade Chronicles X gave me a great feeling of trying to build up my settlement and rise up in the rank while going out fighting huge monsters in dope mechs. I wasn't fond of the story, in fact, I skipped nearly all the dialogue, but I'm pretty sure everyone is xenophobic.

8. Bloodborne

The lack of a shield in this game didn't bother me. I never used a shield in any of the Souls games so the combat in Bloodborne was perfect for my tastes. This game probably gave me the best frustration vs accomplishment ratio out of any game this year.

7. Fallout 4

I should be honest and mention I only started having fun with this game when I gave myself like a million caps, 99 fusion cores, and took away encumbrance. I got way into the settlement building. The feeling of turning the tables on Super Mutants and Raiders by invading their bases, bringing back their loot, and outfitting my settlers. It was a great sci fi fantasy feeling for me. I tried to branch out in this Fallout but I just reverted back to my path of running around with fists and bloody mess like Riki-Oh, but these days its One Punch Man, I guess.

6. Freshman Year

This is a difficult game to talk about. Freshmen Year is an incredibly personal story told very well through the form of a video game. The message doesn't come across as well in any other medium, because you realize as the player that no matter what choices you make horrible things will happen and there's nothing you could have done. The only safe choice is to stay inside forever, which is a depressing decision as well. I was hesitant at first to put Freshmen Year on my list because I didn't want to intentionally make the statement that video games that feature female protagonists are only worth talking about unless she goes through a traumatic event. But I do think that this is an important game and one worth highlighting for the year of 2015.

5. Her Story

l didn't quite understand why people found this game interesting. I unlocked all the video clips in a couple of hours and thought it was pretty clear what happened. But after spending another 4 hours browsing teh Internet and reading everyone's interpretation of what happened was fascinating.

4. Cibele

Another Nina Freeman game making on my list. I could relate to this story because I used to be like Ichi. When I was much younger and dumping large amounts of time into WoW (World of Warcraft), I spent a lot of time with other girls in game. This is where I mostly picked up women, Tinder and Ok Cupid didn't exist, by acting like such a wounded child and have them shower with me attention. This tactic almost always worked and eventually did lead to multiple cross country relationships and breaking many hearts. I was an enormous asshole. So by the end of Cibele, I was screaming at my screen, "NO, HE'S PLAYING YOU!, OMG! ALL GUYS SAY THIS! I SAID THIS!, HES NO GOOD!"

3. Massive Chalice

Turn based strategy games are probably my favorite gaming genre and at least one always makes my personal top ten list. Massive Chalice does a really good job making the stakes of each battle high. Personality traits keep your troops from being too over powered and losing too many soldiers can set your game back to a point where it is very difficult to come back. The main reason why this game rated so high with me is that I always lock in House Davis and keep that house going through the generations.

2. Metal Gear Solid 5

This was the only game this year that made me abuse my level of power at my work. I would hand off work to my interns and coops so I could go home early and play Metal Gear Solid V. This game has an incredible amount of elegance with balancing all the systems together. So much interaction with enemy behavior and tools ready to exploit the world. I really loved the elegance in its game design.

1. Life is Strange

For me, nothing else came close to Life is Strange. It's a flawed, beautiful, awkward game that touches subjects video games tend to avoid. Life is Strange deals with dark subject matter in ways most games try to be dark. Usually when a video game attempts mature subject matter, it's often the worst or most violent case scenario that could be brought about. Life is Strange has more nuance in the way it approaches its characters and their situation. When it came time to make the final decision, I got up, ran a 5k, made dinner, then once I had collected my thoughts I finally made my decision. I loved everything about it.

The setting is very close to me because I graduated from a rich white private high school where there were only 200 people in the whole school. The way Life is Strange depicts private school is remarkably similar to what I experienced in my high school. Rich parents who owned whole buildings of the school, rich kids getting away with all kinds of trouble, teachers sleeping with the students, this all happened at my school and its all on display in Life is Strange.

Life is Strange displays strong voice acting towards the end of the series. Standout voice actors that first come to my mind are Laura Bailey, Jennifer Hale, Troy Baker, I think Ashly Burch's Chloe Price puts her up with these voice actors. I think she is a great Cassie Cage (MKX) and Sasha Braus (Attack on Titan), but I think Chloe Price puts her on voice actors I look out for.