Welcome to the first part of my Game of the Year Awards. This will be split into 2 parts. The first one will be covering a number of categories, some inspired by the Giant Bomb staff's Game of the Year Awards, and some of my own. These include Old Game of the Year, Best Surprise, Best Art Style, Best Graphical Quality, Best Atmosphere, Best Story, Best Music, Most Disappointing, Best Short-Time Game, Best Early Access, Best DLC/Expansion, and Best Moment. The second part will just be my top 10 games of the year, going more in depth about why I liked each of those. Some categories will need a bit of clarification which I'll provide when I get to them, but as a general rule I am counting games where the final version was released this year for things such as Early Access titles and games that released on the platform I first played them on this year. Without further ado, here are the awards.

Old Game of the Year

This category is simply for games that came out in previous years which I did not get around to playing/finishing until 2015. Not much else to say about it. The runners up include Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, SteamWorld Dig, and TrackMania². Tropical Freeze is a game that I played a bit of in 2014 but never got very far in. I went back to it this year and ended up liking it a lot more than when I originally played it. It has great level design, fantastic music and visuals, and is overall just a really fun platformer. It doesn't quite live up to Donkey Kong Country 1 or 2 in my eyes, but it is still a great game in its own right. I initially passed over SteamWorld Dig due to thinking it would be too simplistic, but that is certainly not the case after playing it. I picked it up from a Humble Bundle this year and was pleasantly surprised by its world building, story, and depth of mechanics later in the game. It's a great little game that only takes a few hours to play through, and I'd highly recommend it. TrackMania² (I'm counting the three variants as a single game here) is a game I wasn't really aware of before this year, but it ended up being something I really enjoyed. I'm a big fan of short, precision-based time trial games, and TrackMania is exactly that.

Winner: Dustforce

Dustforce is not only my favorite old game this year, but one of my favorite games ever. I can't believe I missed this when it originally released, but I'm glad I finally played it. The gameplay, art style, animations, soundtrack, and just everything about the game really are fantastic. The gameplay is very simple at first and easy to get into, but has an insanely high skill ceiling which makes it incredibly satisfying to master. Each of the game's four characters control slightly differently, providing different options to suit your personal style of play, while also having levels aimed at each character to promote learning each of them to some extent. All of the levels are expertly designed, not only for more casual players but also providing alternative routes which let you complete the level faster while also making it more difficult. The game's leaderboards are one of its strongest points, tracking the best times in two different categories for each level (including user made ones). These are surprisingly kept free of hacked times, and also allow you to view a replay of any time submitted to them, which is great for learning new strategies or just seeing how to beat a level. As I already briefly mentioned the game has a level editor which is very competent, and while I haven't personally used it too much some great levels have come out of it. I could go on about this game a lot longer, but I'll just say it is a masterpiece, and is my favorite Old Game of the Year.

Best Surprise

This category is for the games that surpassed my expectations the most. Whether I had low expectations for them, or simply none at all going into the game. The runners up for this category are Environmental Station Alpha, Rocket League, and Cities: Skylines. Environmental Station Alpha is a metroidvania game that surprisingly few people seem to have played this year. I've heard many times that it was a great game for metroidvanias, one of my favorite genres, citing Ori and the Blind Forest and Axiom Verge as examples, but Environmental Station Alpha never gets mentioned, and it definitely should. This won't be the last time it's mentioned in my awards, but I can already tell you if you like metroidvanias it is a must-play. I heard some positive things about Rocket League before playing it, but I'm really not a fan of soccer, and with that in mind I wasn't too sure I'd like it when I first played it. I was completely wrong. Rocket League is a tremendous amount of fun, even more so with friends, and is one of the best games I played this year. Cities: Skylines is a game that I think surprised most people. City builders were pretty much a dead genre after the disaster that was Sim City 2013. Cities: Skylines captures what made the earlier Sim City titles great and expands on that, making easily the best city builder of all time. I didn't end up playing too much of it, as I'm pretty terrible at that type of game, but I certainly appreciate how good the game is and spent quite a lot of time watching others play it.

Winner: Undertale

Going into Undertale I wasn't sure quite what to expect. I never played Earthbound, the game I had heard it most often compared to, and I'm not at all a fan of JRPGs. I decided to give it a shot though, and it turned out to be an amazing game. I'm sure everyone reading this has already heard about how great this game is, and for a lot of people it has probably become one of those annoying games people won't stop telling you to play (the fans of the game really are awful sometimes), but that is all for a very good reason. Undertale is an amazing and very unique game that I think everyone should play. I won't talk too much about it here becuase, spoilers: it's in my top 10 games of the year. It is definitely the best surprise of the year for me.

Best Art Style

I think this category is fairly self-explanatory, so I won't bother detailing my requirements for it. The runners up for Best Art Style are Grow Home, Kalimba, Environmental Station Alpha, and Hotline Miami 2. Grow Home has a pretty simplistic art style consisting of flat textures and low-poly models. A whole lot of games that do this end up looking terrible, but Grow Home certainly doesn't. Everything in the game looks bright and colorful, and entices you to explore every bit of the world. Kalimba is a very interesting-looking game. The art style is flat and colorful, which both fits with the totems you play as, and the sometimes quite fast gameplay. I think Kalimba is a great example of a game where most developers would have used a retro 8 or 16-bit aesthetic but instead uses a unique art style and modern visual effects to really stand out. A lot of games should take notes from how Kalimba handles its art style. Environmental Station Alpha is the opposite of Kalimba in some ways. It uses a retro, low-res style that very easily could have blended in with the myriad of other games that attempt to capture that. However, that is certainly not the case. Environmental Station Alpha contains a good variety of nice-looking environments that all manage to still fit together and have a distinct visual style even at such a low resolution. For a game set on a space station, it sure has a lot of visual variety, and it all looks great. Hotline Miami 2 looks great, but so did its predecessor. If it were a standalone game, it might win this category, but it doesn't do anything particularly new with the art style. That said, it still is a really great art style and that hasn't changed since the original Hotline Miami.

Winner: Ori and the Blind Forest

Ori and the Blind Forest is a beautiful game. Its aesthetic is striking from the moment you begin the game, and it never lets up. The whole game looks like a moving painting, and it is fantastic. Each time you enter a new area, it somehow manages to look even better than the previous one. Ori is just a really beautiful game, I can't say that enough. The art style is very unique, fits the game well, and is consistent throughout its different environments. There's really not a whole lot to say about it other than you should see it for yourself.

Best Graphical Quality

This category is for games that look great on a technical level, but don't quite fit into the Best Art Style category. Art Style certainly still plays a role in this, but it is more focused on technical prowess. The runners up for this category are Cities: Skylines and Grand Theft Auto V. Since this is the first time I've mentioned Grand Theft Auto V, I played it for the first time when it released on PC this year, so that is the version I'll be considering for these awards. I'm aware most people played it 2 years ago, but I didn't. I'm glad I waited, because the PC version is definitely the definitive version of that game. It just looks great. Cities: Skylines looks really good, and it looks really good with scale, which is impressive. If there were an award for best use of tilt shift in a game, Cities: Skylines would be the clear winner.

Winner: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

The Witcher 3 is such a clear winner for this category. The game simply looks fantastic, and does so in a massive open world. Some people have complained about the graphical downgrade since early pre-release footage, but I really don't think that matters as this is still one of the best looking games out there, if not the best. It also runs surprisingly well, and still looks great across its range of graphical options. Pictures of this game don't really do it justice, as some of the best parts of it you have to just see for yourself. A particularly good example is the weather effects, this game has the best rain I've ever seen in a game. It just blew me away the first time I saw it. The Witcher 3 has by far the Best Graphical Quality of 2015.

Best Atmosphere

Why this category is here, and what this category even is, is kind of hard to describe. This isn't the art style, music, sound effects, voice acting, or animations of a game, but rather how well all of those things come together, how immersive the game feels, and just how atmospheric the world is. I hope that makes sense. Anyways, the runners up for this category are Axiom Verge, The Witcher 3, and the Ori and the Blind Forest. Axiom Verge's blend of retro-styled pixel art and modern visual effects, along with its formidable-sounding music make its world one I would be remiss to not include here. The Witcher 3 builds a large, impressive fantasy world, but I think possibly its most impressive aspect is its characters. The variety in NPCs is great, with good quality voice acting and writing for all of them, with even characters only involved in minor side quests being compelling. These characters really make the world of The Witcher 3 come alive. Ori and the Blind Forest expertly mixes its amazing art style with its gameplay, music, sound effects, voice acting, and animation to create a world that really feels consistent and immersive. Everything in Ori just fits together in a way that more games should try to accomplish.

Winner: Hand of Fate

Even with some fantastic examples of this category as runners up, Hand of Fate is an easy winner to pick here. The Dealer is one of the best characters in gaming this year, really bringing the world alive with his excellent voice acting and the way he adds small details to many of the cards. His cluttered table feels very personal, and makes a great setting for a game where you're mostly just sitting at a table playing cards. The world of Hand of Fate is a really compelling one, and it's one of those rare games where I actually enjoy reading every bit of lore I can find. Even the minor characters you encounter are interesting and fit well into this amazing world. I could go on about this, but you should really just play it for yourself, because Hand of Fate's atmosphere really makes the game worth playing.

Best Story

This is another category that is pretty self-explanatory, so I'll just get right into it. The runners up for Best Story are Grand Theft Auto V, Hotline Miami 2, and Ori and the Blind Forest. Grand Theft Auto V has a surprisingly good story that I ended up thoroughly enjoying. The cast of characters is really great, and the variety in missions throughout the game made it really fun to play. Hotline Miami 2's story is one of the game's best aspects. While I ended up being rather disappointed in the game, I really enjoyed my first playthrough trying to piece together the wildly out of order story. It took what people enjoyed about the first game's story and did it on a much larger scale, tying together storylines of multiple playable characters while going back and forth through time in a way that few games could accomplish. Ori and the Blind Forest definitely deserves a spot here. One of the first things you'll hear from anyone who has played it is how good the prologue for the game is, but I don't know that I can say that's even the high point of the game's story, as it consistently has great moments throughout the game, making you feel attached to characters who don't even speak. It definitely deserves to be on this list, and it might have won had the winner of this category not came out this year.

Winner: Undertale

Undertale's story is one I don't think I'll ever forget. It's the only game I can think of that truly acknowledges the player and their actions as a part of the game's world. The story goes beyond the great cast of humorous characters you'll encounter throughout your playthrough, which are already great enough to be on this list, and really does some things that I haven't seen games attempt before. It gets even better with consecutive playthroughs, adding a lot more to the game than most games would for a New Game+ mode. I think locking off so much of the game's content from your first playthrough, and just hoping that players will feel invested enough to play the game multiple times is a risky move, but one that really pays off for Undertale. I don't want to go into too much detail because I really can't without spoiling things, and if you haven't played Undertale yet you should experience it for yourself.

Best Music

The only bit of explanation I feel the need to add to this category is that I prioritize original soundtracks over licensed music. How well the music fits the game, and how good the music is on its own are the most important factors, but keep in mind that original music being a bonus explains some omissions from this category. The runners up for Best Music are Ori and the Blind Forest, Environmental Station Alpha, Axiom Verge, Hotline Miami 2, and Crypt of the Necrodancer. It really shows how good of a year for music in games it has been that I can't cut this list down any further than this. All of these games have great music and none of them would feel out of place winning this category. Ori and the Blind Forest has an amazing soundtrack that goes along well with the rest of the game, and really enhances the game's key story moments. It makes exploring the game's world enjoyable and exciting, and really adds a lot to the game. Environmental Station Alpha's soundtrack is the perfect soundtrack for "you are alone on a space station," which is exactly what the setting for that game is. It has quite a few memorable tracks, and I've really enjoyed listening to it on its own even after playing the game. Axiom Verge's soundtrack is great, and it really fits the mood of the game well. I don't have a whole lot to say about it other than it's just a really solid, good soundtrack. Hotline Miami 2's soundtrack takes everything that was great about the first game's and does it better. It's hard to believe that it's even licensed music because of how well it fits together and how well the game uses it. Each piece fits the pace and feeling of the level it's used for in a way that few games can accomplish. In another year it may have won this category, but as I said before it was a really great year for music in games. It's hard to talk about Crypt of the Necrodancer's music separate from the game itself. The two are so intertwined and both are really great. The game being based around moving to the beat of the music makes it really important for the game's success that it have great music, and it certainly does. Necrodancer actually has 3 versions of its soundtrack included in the game, with electronic and metal cover versions of the original soundtrack also being quite excellent.

Winner: Undertale

Yet another category I can't help but give to Undertale, because it really deserves it. Undertale has different variations of many of its songs that often change throughout a battle, and some songs that are only able to be heard during one type of playthrough or another. All of the tracks are just fantastic, and it is made all the more impressive by the fact that the sole developer of the game also composed the entire soundtrack. Every bit of Undertale's soundtrack is just great, and I think it really is the best this year.

Most Disappointing

These are the games that most disappointed me this year in some way or another. At the same time none of these should be winners, and they also should all win this category. The runners up are Hotline Miami 2, Yoshi's Woolly World, and Star Wars: Battlefront. Hotline Miami 2 should be a really great game, and it does have some good aspects as shown by it being mentioned in other categories here. It falls incredibly short in some aspects though, in ways that it really shouldn't. Many of the levels are just too big for the game's top down perspective, causing you to die off screen an unreasonable amount of times. The first game handled this well, why is it so hard to do it well again? Just stick with confined areas and it would all be okay. The game is also incredibly glitchy for how many delays in development it had. With how long it took to come out, and how similar it is to the first game you would really think these problems would be solved. What were the devs doing that whole time? Yoshi's Woolly World could have been a really good game. Yoshi's Island was a really good game. Why, Nintendo, do you not get that? There have been so many awful Yoshi games over the years, and all they need to do is do what they did for Yoshi's Island. Woolly World had a good aesthetic and music going for it, but the gameplay falls incredibly short. It's far too easy and simple, and the only even slight amount of difficulty comes from the largely meaningless collectibles which makes the game very repetitive. I was really excited when a new Battlefront game was finally announced, but that excitement was diminished greatly over time. Battlefront should not be named Battlefront, because it is nothing like the first 2 games in the series. All the depth was thrown away in exchange for shallow gameplay, and such a limited amount of content that charging $60 for this game feels criminal. The game sounds and looks great, but I guess that's where all the development time went because it certainly wasn't spent on gameplay. This is made even worse by outrageously expensive $50 season pass. The game is incredibly lacking in content, it should have shipped with far more maps, weapons, and characters, and they're charging the most I've ever seen for a season pass. On top of that the gameplay just has some huge problems, like heroes and vehicles being randomly awarded as powerups rather than placed on the map or as rewards for doing well. I could go on for a while about all the problems with Star Wars: Battlefront, but it isn't the winner here.

Winner: Dirty Bomb

When I started playing Dirty Bomb it was a really good game. Class-based shooters is a genre that aside from Team Fortress 2 is very lacking. I was pretty excited when I found out about Dirty Bomb, and put a lot of hours into it pretty quickly despite a few problems with its free-to-play business model. That business model ended up being what ruined the game for me, with the release of a character called Phantom. I don't think I've ever seen something so unbalanced in a game before, or something that was so obviously a cash-grab. Phantom released in a ridiculously overpowered state, and in reaction to community outcry the developers gave a bullshit response that people simply hadn't had enough time playing him yet. No, we could already tell he was broken. Despite the eventual nerf, that incident made me lose trust in the developers' ability to balance the game, and as a competitive focused game that ruined it for me. Speaking of the developers, Dirty Bomb was made by Splash Damage. Splash Damage previously developed Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, which is often praised as one of the best multiplayer shooters ever made. They also developed Brink, which wasn't as well received, but many people hoped that Dirty Bomb would be a return to form for them. I am very sad that it is not. This is one of my favorite genres, and it really could use more good games (that also aren't free-to-play please), and seeing another one ruined definitely makes it the most disappointing game this year for me. At least there's Overwatch to look forward to in 2016, hopefully that doesn't go as wrong as Dirty Bomb did.

Best Short-Time Game

This category is for games that I enjoyed which are suited to shorter play sessions. Some of these are just more casual games, and some are games where it's just easy to get a quick round or two in while I'm waiting on something. The runners up for Best Short-Time Game are Agario, Duck Game, Rocket League, Downwell, and Nuclear Throne. Agario was a really fun little web game I played for a few weeks. While it didn't keep my attention for too long, the game was creative and fun, and there was something special about the interactions you would have with people when the only way to communicate was your name or through your actions. Alliances and rivalries form quickly, sometimes by accident, and that makes Agario a really interesting game to me. Duck Game is really great. It has a dedicated quack button. How can you not like a game with a dedicated quack button? Rocket League is a game that I felt I should mention here, although it doesn't win this category simply because I can't ever manage to play just one game of it. The rounds are short, and theoretically you could have short play sessions of this game, but it's very easy for one game to turn into two and so on. Downwell is a surprisingly fun and difficult game for how simple it is. Jumping and shooting your way downwards is fun and makes for good quick play sessions because of how often I die. Nuclear Throne may seem like an odd choice for this list, and I'm sure for players who are better at the game it really isn't a short-time game, but for me the 5-10 minute runs of this roguelike are great for shorter play sessions and keep me coming back to it time and time again.

Winner: Lara Croft Go

I really didn't expect that I'd like a mobile game from Square Enix this much. I never played Hitman Go despite hearing that it was good, and I'm not a big fan of Tomb Raider, but Lara Croft Go is a really enjoyable game. Its short puzzles are great for quick sessions, and the well-hidden collectibles add replay value to the game. The visuals are simple but really look great for a mobile game, and the simple style suits the game well, allowing you to focus more on the puzzles. It's a simple game, and there's not a whole lot to say about it, but I really liked Lara Croft Go.

Best Early Access

This award is for games that I think are both good games and games I think the developers of are handling Early Access well. The only games eligible for this are games that entered into Early Access this year and have not released yet. The runners up for this category are Darkest Dungeon and Killing Floor 2. Darkest Dungeon is a really unique game due to its stress system, where the mental health of the characters in your party is a very important factor. Each character reacts differently to different situations, and each one has a different way of relieving stress back in town after your adventures. Adding this on to a system where you lose your characters permanently when they die makes the game quite tense for the player as well. While I've held off on playing too much of this before release, it is already in a great state and the regular updates from the devs make it look like a promising game for early 2016. Killing Floor 2 is everything a sequel to Killing Floor should be. It released in Early Access this year in an already great state, if a bit lacking on content. Tripwire's abilities really show in how polished this game is for an Early Access title. The updates are a bit slow, but they're still steadily bringing in new content and Killing Floor 2 is shaping up to be a really great game.

Winner: Rivals of Aether

Rivals of Aether goes beyond just being a "Smash Bros. Clone" and really stands out as its own game while taking some of the better mechanics from the aforementioned series. The original cast of characters each stand out with a unique playstyle and they are all very fun. The stages look and play great, offering a simple version of each for competitive play. The online multiplayer is one of the best I've seen in fighting games, working surprisingly well even at its Early Access launch. If you didn't know what content the game was missing, Rivals of Aether would already feel like a complete game. It's a great example of a good Early Access game, already offering a good value and promising even more later down the line.

Best DLC/Expansion

This award is for the game with the best single piece of DLC or expansion. If I were talking about DLC as a whole for games I might include some more games in this category, but I don't think the winner would change either way. The runners up for Best DLC/Expansion are Plague of Shadows for Shovel Knight and Afterbirth for The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth. Shovel Knight was my favorite game of 2014 and Plague of Shadows is an excellent reason to revisit it. Plague of Shadows lets you play through the entire game as Plague Knight, with remixed rooms and enemies more suited to Plague Knight's style. While it is still the same base levels, Plague Knight's gameplay has much more depth than Shovel Knight's, and the upgrades you unlock for him allow you to do a lot of interesting things. The fact that this DLC was completely free makes it even better. Afterbirth is more of The Binding of Isaac, which as far as I'm concerned is definitely not a bad thing. While I'm one of the more casual players of the game and haven't yet experienced all Afterbirth has to offer, the new items, bosses, and particularly the new game mode are all great additions.

Winner: The Awakening for Path of Exile

Path of Exile already offered a huge amount of content for free, and The Awakening increases that even further adding a fourth act to the game (which turned out to be my favorite act), a new jewel system which makes the game's skill tree even more complex, and most importantly a fix for the game's awful desync issues. Desync was my biggest problem with Path of Exile and fixing that alone would have made this expansion great, but it does a whole lot more than that and does it very well. Grinding Gear Games' (one of my favorite names for a developer) free-to-play model is absurdly player-friendly, and is one of the few that doesn't make me despise the game being free-to-play. This continues with The Awakening being a completely free expansion that I think is the best of the year.

Best Moment

This category is for my favorite moments in games this year. There really are no rules for this. The runners up are the Prologue from Ori and the Blind Forest and Finding a Good Level in Super Mario Maker. Ori and the Blind Forest's prologue is fantastic. It manages to get the player emotionally invested in the story and characters in only a few minutes, which is something that not only games but also other forms of entertainment struggle to do. Ori does this really well, and I think adding just the little bit of player control to it adds a lot to that part of the game. Cutscenes in Ori blend in perfectly with the gameplay, and there's more than one "Oh, I can actually move around" moments in the prologue alone. Finding a good level in Mario Maker is a much more abstract moment, but one that happened to me quite a few times this year and I thoroughly enjoyed every one. Mario Maker is a great game, but one of its few flaws is its lackluster search tools. It can be quite difficult to find good quality levels, especially in the 100 Mario Challenge, but when you come across one that you can instantly feel had a lot of time and thought put into it that is a really cool experience that shows just how good Mario Maker can be.

Winner: Asgore's House in Undertale

Warning: Undertale spoilers ahead. This is the last category, so if you haven't played Undertale yet stop reading now.

That out of the way, finding Asgore's house is by far my favorite moment in a game this year. The immediate realization of Asgore's connection to Toriel, and the ways in which his house mirrors hers but is also different is a really cool moment. The music greatly enhances this, being a slightly different version of the music from Toriel's house earlier in the game. Seeing Asgore's house is a very interesting reveal but is also very sad at the same time, and this continues with the battle against Asgore, where he is an obviously skilled warrior but is so reluctant to fight you. Asgore is a really compelling character, and seeing his house for the first time and everything that comes along with that is my favorite moment from Undertale, and my favorite moment of the year.

That concludes the first part of my Game of the Year Awards. I hope you enjoyed reading it, and I hope if you haven't played some of these games that you'll give them a try (excluding the ones from the Most Disappointing category). Part 2 should be up later today with my top 10 games of 2015.