2015 was a weird year for me when it came to video games. As much as I hated the culture surrounding video games in 2014 (which has only slightly improved this year) that year had a lot of really good games, and I had a lot of time to play them all, so narrowing down the list to just ten was pretty difficult. This past year, I had a lot less free time, and there were fewer games that interested me. It was such a struggle to come up with ten games I'd played this year that really grabbed me that I almost considered not doing a list at all, but the games that were good this year were so good that I decided to soldier through it for their sake. Plus, a top ten list where three or four of the games I'm neutral-to-disgusted about is kinda interesting. I guess. Maybe?
Caveats
Basically the same as last year: I have a finite amount of time! In fact, this past year, I probably had less free time than any other period in my life with which to play video games! So while every other outlet in the world gave Witcher 3 the coveted "clearly the best game in the world why haven't you played this yet" award, it won't be appearing anywhere on my list because it didn't look interesting enough for me to play it at all. Maybe I'll go back and play it later, but only huge dumb nerds do "Top 10 Games of 2015" lists in 2017. And I'm only a medium-large dumb nerd. So that's not happening. Remakes and re-releases are again disallowed, which doesn't really affect much of this list except that maybe Devil May Cry 4 would replace one of the things on here. Yep. Rules are fun to write about.
Honorable Mention: Destiny: The Taken King
I feel really gross right now. I don't feel as gross as finding out that other people are actually talking up a piece of DLC that does the absolute bare minimum of what last year's shooter-MMO hybrid should have done to warrant all of the hype and money being dumped into it, but I still feel pretty gross. Destiny: The Taken King is fun. I guess. The shooting and movement is amazing, but literally every other aspect of it is underwhelming, obviously crippled to give features to future content, or crippled for no discernible reason. It's an MMO that doesn't know how MMOs work and it's representative of the worst business practices in the video game industry. But I was bored and played it a bunch this year, so whatever. Yay.
10. Star Wars: Battlefront
In a lot of ways, there's even more to be mad about with Star Wars: Battlefront than there is with Destiny. Not only the game lack basic features and serve as yet another example of anti-consumer business practices, but Star Wars: Battlefront is also a sequel, and a sequel to an amazing series of games with loads of depth and flexibility. One could argue that Battlefront, which is inferior in every way to the past games in the series except for its amazing graphics and sound design, is a bigger insult than Destiny is. Unfortunately, I really am just that starved for a Star Wars game, especially after watching Episode VII. Battlefront might only be serviceable at best, but when it nails the Star Wars aesthetic as hard as it does, that's all I needed it to be. Plus, Fighter Squadron mode is actually genuinely fun. This, combined with the fact that I literally only played eleven or so games and really didn't want to put Destiny in my proper list, lets Star Wars squeak its way in. Yub yub!
9. Rocket League
I haven't played a lot of Rocket League. Barely any, in fact--maybe an hour, total. But I've played enough of it to know two things:
- Its premise--soccer, but with cars--has done what I once thought was impossible: get me to like a sports game
- The physics are so amazing and fun to play with that you have a good time even if you're not doing well
If I let it, I have the feeling that this game would suck up an embarrassingly large amount of my time. Speaking of...
8. Fallout 4
I didn't even get halfway through this game. I think. I didn't feel like I got super far, anyway. And yet, days of my life vanished. As notoriously terrible as their quality assurance department is, Bethesda is really, really good at building large, detailed, engaging game worlds, and their post-apocalyptic vision of Boston is no different. What really surprised me about this game was the general tone; both graphically and in terms of writing, this game is leagues more colorful (and, in my mind, more interesting) than Fallout 3. It might not be as insane and amazing as Fallout: New Vegas, but this game's still...the best-thesda.
Sorry.
7. Just Cause 3
Just Cause 3 understands what most sandbox games don't: much of the time, when people play a sandbox game, they aren't looking to exist as just another part of a massive game world. They want to travel through that world like a vengeful Mediterranean Spider-Man, leaving explosions and terrible puns in their wake. Just Cause 3 is another game I didn't get terribly far in, but I got far enough to tie helicopters to each other and blow them up with a rocket launcher that shoots eight homing missiles simultaneously. So my opinion of the game is pretty well-formed by now.
6. Yoshi's Wooly World
Pfft. A great Yoshi game? Duh. Yoshi is great. Of course Yoshi would have a great game.
Ha ha! Just kidding. Yoshi hasn't had a great Yoshi game for like twenty years! But Yoshi's Wooly World, with the absolute best visuals on the Wii U, breaks the streak, and breaks it gloriously. Running Yoshi through the adorable yarniverse (shut up) introduced in Kirby's Epic Yarn is a delight, and while it's a little repetitious and not particularly challenging, it makes up for that in sheer charm. Also, you can get a Yoshi that's patterned like a cow. Fuck yes.
5. Splatoon
I've posited before that we live in a bizarro, non-canon alternate universe to some other "main" universe, and the following sentence definitely gives more evidence to my theory. Nintendo made the best competitive shooter this year. Nintendo. A company that took multiple years to realize that maybe twelve-digit friend codes aren't the best way to get people to talk to each other online. For reals.
Ironically, Splatoon is great partially because of this cluelessness about modern trends--an online shooter without voice chat is actually far, far preferable to the alternative, thanks to the toxic depths video game communities can sink to--but mostly because Nintendo does something unthinkable to most other shooters: it innovates. It innovates visually, proving that having a bright, colorful, actually interesting game world is not mutually exclusive to good shooting gameplay. It innovates with what realistic physics should be used for by tying them into the game with inky, watery projectiles, rather than relegating them to window dressing. It innovates by changing the fundamental way that basic actions like moving and shooting affect the game by tying the two together. It makes you question whether you're a kid, or a squid. Want to find out which you are? Play Splatoon.
4. Super Mario Maker
I struggled four about .5 seconds with whether or not to include what is essentially a super beefed-up level editor on this list until I remembered that it has single-handedly allowed infinite new Super Mario World levels to exist. Then I played some Super Mario World levels.
3. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
This game is a tricky one to write about, because I have a lot to say but I still want to finish the series of Metal Gear posts I started to write, but stopped when this game came out. For now, I'll say that Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is easily the best unfinished game ever made. It's a tragic example of how important a good publisher is in the development of a game, and while not all of its faults can be traced back to Konami's mismanagement (Kojima is really, really weird about women), enough of them can be to convince me that this easily could have been one of the best games ever made if it had been given just a little bit more time and room to breathe. As it is, it's both the best stealth game and open-world game of this year, and in terms of gameplay, the best Metal Gear Solid game by a country mile. It's a shame that with just another year of polish, it could have been so much more.
2. Undertale
Last year, Bravely Default, a deconstruction of classic Final Fantasy-style JRPGs, took the top spot on my list of best games. Undertale, a deconstruction of Earthbound-style JRPGs, is just shy of the same honor, but not due to any fault of its own--as much as I love it, I love the next game on the list just a liiiittle bit more. Again, this is tricky for me to write, because not only am I still trying to process the game, but more than any other game on this list, this is one that you should go into as blind as possible. All that I'll say is that this game is one of the saddest, funniest, most well-written experiences in quite a long time, and that no amount of clumsiness in execution (which there is more of than people admit, but we'll get into that when I get my thoughts together more) can cancel out the tremendous amount of love and passion that clearly went into this game. Please buy it. It's only ten dollars. Don't be a bonehead!
Game of the Year: Bloodborne
Anyone that knows me will be utterly unsurprised by this choice, but I can't help it. I just can't. This isn't just my favorite game this year, it damn well might be my favorite game ever. I'll try to be brief, as Bloodborne is another game that players should approach with as little foreknowledge as possible, but in Bloodborne Miyazaki does for Gothic and Lovecraftian Horror what he did for western fantasy in Dark Souls. Like Undertale, Bloodborne oozes atmosphere, but unlike Undertale (and most games not by FromSoft, for that matter) Bloodborne conveys its narrative in subtler, less obvious ways that feel more tailored to video games. The gameplay is amazing, more comparable to something by Platinum than most other RPGs, and there's a weapon that's a hammer that explodes. As much as I decry the non-stop parade of sequels that most video game releases are, I'm pretty sad to hear that FromSoft seems uninterested in a sequel to Bloodborne. Oh well. As they say: the candle that burns twice as bright, is made of terrifying, damp wax pulled from the hoary withered eardrums of the cosmos, and induces madness when gazed upon.
That's enough of that. Video games? More like shitteo games. Next time: Top movies!
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