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Wagrid

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Top 10 Games 2016

I always like doing this; the ranking when it comes down to it is pretty arbitrary, but its a nice excuse to reflect and order my thoughts a little. There's probably some pre-amble I could write along the lines of '2016 bad, games good though', but I'd honestly rather just get on with it.

Before getting on with it, I'd like to give an honourable mention to 'Fruits of a Feather', a game not in the database that is absolutely wonderful. You play a bird, hunting for fruit and can find it on itch.io. Also an honourable mention to Hitman, which I did not play, but I adored watching so much I bought it, feeling like a terrible criminal for getting so much joy out of without paying for.

Anyway, with the enormous caveat that Life is Strange is GOTY every year, Max and Chloe forever, let's get on with the show.

List items

  • On paper, Overwatch is a collection of elements I shouldn't like at all. I don't like first person shooters. The odd shooter I do play I don't play on PC. Hero based games can fuck right off. And yet, it is indisputably my GOTY.

    I dropped 200 hours on Overwatch this year and I don't even feel close to done. This is the most I've gotten into a shooter since Halo: Reach. It's the first time ever where I've had a regular crew of people I play with (shout out to all the Giant Bomb users I've played with this year; this as GOTY is as much about you as the game itself). I adore Overwatch.

    Most of it is the characters! I can dress Pharah up as a Gundam! Mercy is the best. D.Va is the character I play when I decide 'fuck it, I want to win' - multiple games as her with 20+ elimination kill streaks and no deaths, not that I'm bragging. And McCree, my beautiful trash cowboy - I've gotten steadily worse with McCree since I stopped playing every night around August, but it will always be high noon in my heart.

    When Overwatch clicks it is pure joy. When Overwatch doesn't click it's because D.VA IS NOT A MAIN TANK YOU FUCKS JESUS. For real though, what a phenomenon this thing is, and I'm happily going to play it for years, until I get sick of JUSTICE RAINS FOR ABOVE, which, considering I have 24 hours of Pharah played, seems like it'll be never.

  • When I finished Hyper Light Drifter, I was so, so sure it would be my GOTY. This is probably my favourite 2D Zelda, yes, I have played A Link to the Past.

    This games whole aesthetic is just so phenomenally good. Looking through some screenshots just now really hammers home just how masterful it is. The style, the colour palette, the animation. All of it is just so perfectly done. The decaying science-fantasy aesthetic is my favourite - it's what kept me playing medicore-ass Destiny. In a good game, the desire to see more of its world was practically addictive.

    And it's just so much fun to play! It all feels so tight and satisfying. That final boss fight might be the best boss battle I played all year and a Dark Souls came out.

    It's minimalist storytelling also really did it for me. The pervasive sense of mystery and wonder, of trying to intuit the story of my surroundings whilst my surrounding were trying to kill me, was some of my favourite narrative all year. That moment where you find a half complete version of the Evangelions? Probably my moment of the year.

  • Well, specifically the Blood and Wine expansion. I miss proper expansion packs, I really do. Mask of the Betrayer, the first expansion for Neverwinter Nights 2 stands as one of my favourite games of all time.

    Anyway, Blood and Wine. What a wonderful end to this saga. Just note for note a perfect send off. It's fundamentally more of The Witcher 3, and I don't want to just rewrite my thoughts from last year - writing still good, combat still mediocre, basically.

    Blood and Wine is great, and easily has enough going on to stand on its own on a GOTY list. I don't subscribe to the idea that more content = better, and frankly I think the base game suffers from adhering to that philosophy (I would cut 90% of Skellige, tbh), but I was very happy to have more of the Witcher.

    So, err, when's the Ciri spin-off?

  • Last year I put Pillars of Eternity as co-GOTY alongside Life is Strange. This year Tyranny is in my number 4 slot. That is all I really have to say by way of comparison.

    Tyranny is a cool fucking game. The intro segment is genuinely brilliant and its approach to player choice is, as general rule, super well realised.

    It really benefits from a much more tighter focus on its main plot than Pillars - the main story is everything in Tyranny, whereas Pillars sprawled. There's so much to like on the writing side; Kyros, as a villain is wonderfully done - they are a creature of mystique and belief and manage to feel ever present without ever actually having any screen time. Like Darth Nihilus redux, in many ways.

    Belief, like in many of Obsidian and before it Black Isle's works is at the core of Tyranny. It can, after all, change the nature of a man. It can turn him into a god-emperor. And it can cast him down and raise up something better in his place.

    Tyranny can be many things, depending on how you play it. For me, it was the story of a plucky, doomed rebellion succeeding because they offered a belief far more compelling belief than fear of a far away overlord: Hope. That is a worthy story for the moment we find ourselves in.

  • DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM

    This was a big year for me and shooters. It was the year I got away from playing shooters on a gamepad, which is a pretty big shift for somebody who has always played console shooters. It was also, more seismically, the year the FPS brought itself back from the dead. Overwatch was half of that. DOOM was the other half.

    DOOM, right? Motherfuckin' DOOM. I have no nostalgia for 90s shooters, no nostalgia for Id Software, no nostalgia for the original games and I loved this. One of the best shooter campaigns of all time and frankly, the only reason I wrote 'one of' is because I DO have nostalgia for Halo.

    Everything about it just oozes excitement and fury and energy and wit and style. It is a masterpiece.

  • It's Journey, but under the sea! Reductive, but accurate. I loved it. Truly just adored it. I loved the story it told - I was more invested in the fate of Shark Friend than any other character this year. I loved the neo-Babylonian influence in its architecture, that clearly invoked the Ishtar Gate. And fuck, that soundtrack. Every year I'm screaming at the 'Best Soundtrack' deliberations as they snub Austin Wintory *again* in favour of 'Electronic Indie Game Soundtrack No. 19'.

    Abzu is a beautiful experience. I really can't think of any better word for it. Abzu is beautiful and I think, with all the conviction I can muster, that every human would benefit from experiencing this beauty.

  • Firewatch is the excellence of execution, with apologies to Bret Hart. Everything it goes for, it nails. The character arcs are so well done, and the story, as it has been put seemingly everywhere, is like a really compelling page turner. And, God, as a world to just exist in, to just drown in the ambience of, Firewatch might just be up there with Witcher 3 in the GOAT category - there is a reason I leaped at the chance to have my in-game photos developed, and a reason they are currently on my wall.

    I think the reason Firewatch isn't higher on my list is that I didn't connect with the characters emotionally so much, leaving me admiring the craft of the writing more than I was feeling it. This isn't a knock on Firewatch at all; if I was in a different place, I could easily see myself revisiting this game and forming that connection.

  • Dark Souls III was in the hella weird position of following up on a frankly pretty bad Dark Souls, but a truly great entry in the overall meta-series in Bloodborne. So it managed to be both a return to form and a disappointment. For all that, I ended up pretty fond of it?

    Visually, I've always like Dark Souls aesthetic, so a really nicely rendered version of it was actually hugely appealing. I also think it's probably the best playing of any of these games - the faster, more aggressive version of Dark Souls combat, without going the full Bloodborne, is so, so satisfying.

    And fuck, just some of the absolute best moments of the year. When I figured out how Ornstein's gear ended up in the Nameless King's boss arena was a personal favourite (spoilers: it is sad). Seeing Irithyll of the Boreal Valley for the first time, well, I got chills writing that out and a pang of deep sadness knowing I'll never see it the first time again. The Abyss Watchers. When 'Anor Londo' pops up on screen. When Soul of Cinder's music shifts and you realise 'oh fuck, Gwyn'.

    Dark Souls III is great; it's no Dark Souls I, thank the Sun it's no Dark Souls II. I'm happy with ending the series on this note.

  • I cannot believe Titanfall 2 is so low down on this list; what a year this has been. I'm not sure what to say about Titanfall 2, other than it is the most invested I've been in one of these (that is, a descendant of Call of Duty 4) ever. It's just great.

    I was one of the people deeply disappointed in the first Titanfall. It felt overall pretty anaemic, and frankly I thought the matchmaking was pretty dreadful. Titanfall 2 is everything that game should have been. Any other year and this would be my favourite shooter; sadly it came out in maybe the only year out of the last, oh five, maybe, with multiple good shooters. Still, Titanfall 2 is pretty great. Every part of it, just feels great. Every time I take on multiple titans solo and win I am prone to suggest that maybe, just maybe, Char Aznable doesn't have shit on me. That, I think, is worth its weight in Zaku.

  • This slot was Forza Horizon 3 until a minute ago when I suddenly said went 'oh fuck, Thumper' and promptly changed it. Thumper is an utterly perfect execution on what Thumper is trying to be. I'm not too keen on the boss fights, but Thumper is just an incredible thing. Every new stage of level 4 had me going 'oh fuck', 'holy shit' or some variation. I haven't finished it yet; I suspect if I had Thumper would be higher on this list.

    When I was younger, I'd describe a really good metal show as like 'being hit in the head with a brick'. I intended this as compliment. Thumper is like a really, really good metal show.
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