2015 in Review

Games I played this year but didn't finish, in alphabetical order:

The Banner Saga - In this game, you lead a band of vikings or something and do missions for people. I was attracted by its art style and being a strategy RPG, but I found the mechanics in the game off-putting. While it is unique, the concept of gaining extra turns for units by sacrificing turns with other units made this really awkward for me to play. I wasn't grabbed by the story either. Worth a look if you're really into these kinds of games.

Castlevania - In this game, you are a paranormal hunter trying to kill Dracula I guess. After getting into Souls, I decided to revisit this series and see if I was just not mentally prepared for it back in the day, as there is a lot of crossover between the two fanbases. While I enjoyed playing the game for a while, it suffers a lot from the arcade influence of the time. I quit at the Frankenstein's monster and Igor battle; after probably about twenty attempts I was making no progress. I may give Symphony of the Night a shot soon. The soundtrack is great; I'll give it that.

Child of Light - In this game, you play as a little girl who gets trapped in some story book world and searches for a way home. I wanted to like this game, but it just feels so glossy and contrived. Maybe if I were younger and hadn't played so many similar games I could get into it. Delivering all dialogue in verse is interesting, but I wasn't especially invested in the story.

Crisis Core: Final Fantasy 7 - In this game, we witness the backstory of Zack from Final Fantasy VII. I am told the ending is great but never got there. At first, I was impressed this game had the production
quality it has. However, like most games that are organized in 'missions' the structure started weighing on me. I was not enjoying the battle system, though it wasn't bad by any means. I am probably not a big enough fan of FF7 to really care about what's going on in the story.

Fire Emblem: Shin Monshou no Nazo Hikari to Kage no Eiyuu - In this game, you play a Fire Emblem game. FE12 is good, I guess. It turns out I can only take so much Fire Emblem in a year, and after Shadow Dragon, I didn't feel like slogging through this one.

Fragile Dreams - In this game, you are a boy who has been living in a tower Rapunzel-style and leaves to discover the world is a post-apocalyptic wasteland. I probably played this about 60% of the way through. It's got an interesting premise and some things that almost always work in adventure games. The flashlight being a big part of the game was great. However, for some bizarre reason the developers decided to add combat to this game, and saying the combat is clunky would be an understatement. This applies to any event in the game that required precision as well. I gave up during a game of tag in which I could not get my character to interact with the NPC for the life of me.

Guacamelee - In this game, you play as a man who gains the power of some magical Luchador masks on La Dia De Los Muertes (I think I spelled that right...) and goes on a quest to save his girlfriend. The visual style and Mexican setting was a breath of fresh air. Unfortunately, that didn't do enough to distract me from how familiar the gameplay mechanics are and how dumb the constant inclusion of memes and references is. I mean, the game blatantly has a Chozo statue give you new powers. I'm not sure why the developers didn't have enough faith in their own concept to let its stand on its own. It certainly doesn't seem like a bad game, but I was in the middle of grad school when I tried playing it and the cheapness of the references weighed on me. Some day I may return.

Kid Icarus Uprising - In this game, you play as Pit the angel and do some missions for Palutena. I giggled a few times playing this, but found the controls really awful and frustrating and never got far. I have never been a fan of space shooters and the like, so honestly this just isn't a game for me. I got it for free in the final Club Nintendo event. RIP Club Nintendo.

The Last of Us - In this game, you play as a guy trying to make the best of things in a post-zombie apocalypse world. If you have seen literally any zombie-related fiction in the past forty years, you won't find much new in the sections I played. I got this game for free with my PS4; I had no interest in it beforehand, but gave it a few hours. It continues to amaze me that people can still enjoy cover shooters, though I guess I can't talk as a fan of jRPGs. I found it particularly hilarious that the game was going to such great lengths to make a realistic-feeling world, then as soon as a shoot-out scene started it turned in to an arcadey sequence with perfectly placed boards to hide behind.

LISA - In this game, you play as a guy protecting (I guess) the seemingly only living female in a post-apocalyptic world (is this the fifth of these so far?). I didn't get far enough to see any twists. I found the humor and darkness of this game off-putting, but it's probably amusing to some people. The battle system seemed a little strange, but I admittedly didn't see enough of the game to pass any judgment.

Mark of the Ninja - In this game, you play as a ninja and try to be stealthy. After playing the Thief series, I find it very difficult to play other stealth games. I'm sure this game is probably fine if 2D stealth is exciting to you. It wasn't to me.

Valkyria Chronicles - In this game, you play as a writer or something who gets caught up in a military operation in his hometown and (I assume) becomes a leader or hero in the war. The story was engaging at the start. The battle system is fairly unrealistic, and reminded me of playing wargames. I am fully aware I did not give this game a fair shot, but again, grad school, and maybe I have just played way too many strategy games. They always feel tedious to me these days.

Wayward Souls - In this game, you explore a tower with a class you choose at the start of the game in a typical roguelike fashion. It's a nice time waster, but nothing too exciting. I'd recommend it if you're looking for a decent mobile game. Pretty tough, fair warning.

And here are the (few) games I did complete this year, ranked by how much I like them or they impacted me. I should preface that I thought this was a great year for games based on what I played, and my top 3 all come highly recommended.

11. Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon - In this game, you play Fire Emblem. It's the worst of the Fire Emblem games I have completed, but still fine if you like those. The game felt like it overstayed its welcome some, and I very much disliked how emptily everyone was characterized. At least that's better than the alternative of having too much (bad) dialogue. Nonetheless, the story wasn't great and this didn't have much to offer over Blazing Sword, Radiant Dawn, Awakening, etc. Still worth playing for FE fans.

10. Drakengard 3 - In this game, you play as Zero, a girl who has her soul bonded with a dragon. She's on a quest to kill all of her sisters, and you'll learn why over the course of the game. Drakengard 3 is the latest game written by Yoko Taro, who blessed us with Nier. I found this game a lot worse than Nier, but not entirely without appeal. Zero is foul-mouthed, promiscuous, and intentionally over the top, and if I'm being honest her characterization felt silly. On the flip side, I loved her Dragon sidekick; he is cute and charming, but also has a nice character arc. Like other Taro games, once things get weird they start getting interesting, but the gameplay really drags things down. All you do is mash buttons, farm upgrade materials, and wait on load times pretty much. It gets especially frustrating in the late game. I didn't get the best ending and didn't care to, but watched the rest of the story on Youtube. If you're into these offbeat, hate the player type games, you might check Drakengard 3 out, but if you're expecting something as good as Nier you'll probably be disappointed.

9. Mario Kart 8 - This is a Mario Kart game. It's fun to play with friends, but not particularly deep or original. I had fun with it, but I suck at it, so the wife and I lost interest after finishing all the 100cc tracks. To the game's credit, I enjoyed this more than every Mario Kart game since Super Mario Kart. (which still has a weird quality to it that makes me enjoy it more than other racing games) That is likely a function of actually having someone to play the game with this time around.

8. Shovel Knight - In this game, you play as Shovel Knight, who uses his shovel to fight bad guys and save his girlfriend. I was never a huge Megaman fan, but I liked the first couple of games enough, and SK seemed to have some nice twists on the Megaman-style platformer so I checked it out. Shovel Knight offers a pretty fresh re-imagining of several NES platformer concepts, and is well worth the low price of the game. The soundtrack is the best part, but the game also has a good difficulty curve and witty enough dialogue that it doesn't get boring. I particularly liked that levels have multiple approaches to traversal as you get better at the game, which is always a satisfying thing. I have not played the Plague Knight DLC, but that's a thing too. This game's very good.

7. Kirby's Return to Dreamland - In this game, Kirby, Meta Knight, Dedede, and Waddle Dee help a totally innocent magician rebuild his ship and it all goes well. This is certainly my favorite Kirby game since Super Star. It was a blast of nostalgia and just plain fun, though I did like Kirby's speed more in the earlier game. I played through this game with my wife, who really loved playing as Meta Knight. It's nice that the Kirby developers have started looking to Super Star for inspiration--the complex movesets for each power were part of what made that game great, and I always felt they were sorely missing from Kirby games since. A fun game to play with friends, and probably fun solo as well.

6. Life is Strange (2015) - In this game, you play as a high school student (have high schools become
colleges since I was in high school? This felt way more like a college to me and was kind of a bone of
contention to me since it makes the setting very unrealistic Edit: my friend pointed out that some private high schools are like this, but I still think this game would have been better off with a college setting) who discovers she can turn back time and shenanigans occur. At first, I was not enjoying the game all that much because it is written like a hipster indie film but with high school cliques (ugh) and has a nauseating soundtrack to match, but I muscled through and found it got a lot more exciting once school days were less of a factor in the story. Life is Strange is ultimately an interesting take on the concepts laid down in "A Sound of Thunder" and other similar time travel stories, but it takes a while to get to the truly interesting bits. One complaint I have about the time travel aspect is that it's awfully arbitrary sometimes--you can't take back actions if the plot doesn't want you to, which makes little sense in-universe and makes the game feel less exciting than it could have been. Nonetheless, the time travel made for interesting puzzles and story beats. I didn't like the majority of the cast in the game either (even by the end I actively disliked almost everyone in the story) but the yarn the writers spun is a worthy one, and I would recommend this game to those of you who enjoy modern adventure games and visual novels.
[20:01] <@jsh357> yes
[20:01] <@jsh357> everything but the characters is done so well
[20:01] <@jsh357> it's remarkable frankly
[20:01] <@jsh357> in fact
[20:01] <Sawks> still guess I'll give it a chance since I'm a whore for time travel
[20:01] <@jsh357> i actually liked the interactions between the characters
[20:01] <@jsh357> and not the characters themselves
[20:01] <Sawks> that's incredible

5. Yoshi's Woolly World (2015) - In this game, you play the only worthy follow-up to Yoshi's Island so far. Man, if you love Yoshi's Island, play this game. Maybe it leans a bit too much on the original for level ideas, but I'm not going to complain because it does so much right. The bosses are kind of boring, but otherwise I had a blast relaxing and playing this. It's also a great game to play with a friend/spouse, though you'll be accidentally eating one another a lot.

4. Dragon's Dogma - In this game, you explore a vast world in search of a dragon who has been ravaging the land and try to bring him to justice. There are a lot of open world action RPGs out there, and most don't interest me too much, but this one captured my heart somehow. Part of it is the "slightly incomplete" charm of the game. This has negative (but funny) effects: there are entire sections that seem rushed and interactions you can force that break what the developers expected. For instance, if you play as a female character, the game still seems to think you are male at times. The pawns also repeat incidental dialogue a lot, but somehow the delivery makes this funny instead of annoying. Dragon's Dogma is messy, but charming in this way; even though it has problems, they did not detract from my enjoyment.

I also like how your character customization options affect movement and statistics instead of being purely cosmetic--it adds some realism to the world and gives the game something most games don't try out of fear of offending people I guess. It is also cool how random enemies can wander in to mini-boss battles and interfere. The game also gives you a lot of freedom of customization, but it's so simple that you can just make some choices and roll with it instead of spending hours looking over spreadsheets and wikis. Maybe my favorite aspect of the game is the Pawn system. You can hire ghosts of other players and form parties of them (You need to do this unless you are hardcore too), and these pawns are even tied in to the overall plot. It was nice to see that union of gameplay and worldbuilding, as these things are often taken for granted in games.

Other things are hit and miss, like how enemies are at static levels around the world and you can get wiped out for exploring; this creates some tense moments and encourages tactics on the one hand, but it's also frustrating when playing the game blind. Dragon's Dogma is a highly imperfect game, but I had a blast exploring its huge map and making discoveries. The game also has a nice sense of humor, not taking itself as seriously as most medieval games. It's coming to PC soon, so I hope a lot of people find the diamonds in the rough that I did.

3. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (2015) - In this game, BOSS. GET DOWN. THE ENEMY SNIPER. The top 3 here are all super close. You can interchange them if you like; I don't mind. MGSV is a great addition to the Metal Gear franchise, filled with the usual japes and attitude Kojima brings to his work. I am the type of Metal Gear fan who favors the MGS2 Naked Raiden section to the brooding patriotism talk in MGS3, so it was great for me playing a Metal Gear game that kept a sense of humor while moving the story along. For the most part, I think the story was well-handled, even though some plot lines seemed to be dropped that shouldn't have been; I don't want to spoil any important details, but the themes of language and information control were fascinating to me, and the game managed to tell the story in far fewer elaborate cutscenes than previous Metal Gear games, which is a plus in my book. Quiet and Code Talker ended up being interesting characters, though I wished they had gotten more screen time; other members of the supporting cast were also good.

However, the real star of MGSV is the gameplay. This is the first Metal Gear title that felt like a legitimate espionage game to me. In most of the games, the stealth sections are either impractically slow or meaningless in the context of the plot since Snake gets discovered right away in cutscenes, but here I felt like sneaking around was rewarded and I had plenty of tools to do it with. The same can't be said for nonlethal weapon options, but I suppose part of the challenge is finding ways to win without killing, so it's not too huge of a deal. MGSV successfully makes stealth feel tense and exciting, so bravo to Kojima Productions there. The new additions to the system like Buddies and calling in help are also interesting twists to the formula. I could have played this game for probably 100 more hours than I did, but I knew I had to finish with it some time. Probably my favorite overall Metal Gear game.

2. Bloodborne (2015) - In this game, you are a person who has been injected with strange blood for an unknown reason and is now trapped in a place called the Hunter's Dream, forced to fight beasts and find answers. Bloodborne is the latest Souls game, and like the previous non-DS2 games, I loved it. It has awesome enemy designs, really cool weapons, exciting combat, and the sense of risk and reward that drives the series. The game also has tightly designed maps that work well with its fantastic artistic direction and create a compelling world. The only major issues I have with the game (farming supplies takes way too long and build options are more limited than in previous entries) feel minor considering how much I have loved playing Bloodborne this year. The DLC, The Old Hunters, adds some worthy new content as well. All that said, I feel like the Souls series is running its course and it's a good thing Miyazaki plans to end things after the next one. Too much of a good thing can be a negative if the quality doesn't stay up. I find myself with little else to say--I just don't have much to harp on with this one. I was sure it was going to be my game of the year back when I first played it. You might say I was DETERMINED. But then...

1. Undertale (2015) - In this game, seriously just play it because man, I don't want to spoil anything about it and it's just one of those games where explaining why it's good would ruin the reason it is. At first, I thought I was going to say this was good, but not great at the end of the year. Reflection, replays, and watching others play have done wonders for ensuring its position here. Undertale is one of the most intelligently crafted games I have ever played. The amount of thought and detail that went in to the experience is not possible to understand in full without spending extra time on the game, but it truly blew my mind and sucked me in to this world. Undertale also has a remarkable soundtrack, easily my favorite since Nier. More game composers need to use leitmotif--it fits the medium of games so well, but tends to get passed up in recent games.

While bullet hell is not a genre of games I generally enjoy, I thought Undertale did a great job combining it with traditional RPG mechanics, and the conversation system (I assume inspired by Shin Megami Tensei) adds an extra layer that succeeds in making the monsters you face seem like things that actually exist beyond the battle screen, whereas in SMT the conversations seem randomly generated at times. There is a lot I can say about Undertale, but the true secret of its success is in characterization. I have not been this deeply attached to a video game's cast... ever? Chrono Trigger may come the closest, but even then I would have to give Undertale the nod. I actually cared about every major character in this game by the end, even the one I initially hated, and it's no easy feat for a writer to achieve this with a snarky jerk like me. If you have been put off this game by its fanbase and the internet hate machine, I urge you to try and put biases aside (maybe in a year or two) and at least try the demo, though I can understand if it isn't for everyone. This game ended up being one of the most profound works I experienced all year and I haven't felt the same about games ever since. In my book, that easily makes it game of the year.