The Rest of the Best: 2016’s Most Notable Odds and Ends

One of the things I said in my original Top 5 post was that I wasn’t going to cover Blood and Wine since, as a downloadable expansion, it technically doesn’t count as a game that stands on its own, and more importantly, requires a game from 2015 to play.  However, it was also just as long as some of the games I put on that list, including Final Fantasy XV (which I have since beaten, and it remains where I put it) and would have been an excellent game on its own, I felt like it needed some sort of recognition, but I realized that it wasn’t the only game that sort of broke the rules that was really awesome, or did something really cool, or was a definitive version of a classic game that came out this past year.

As I originally said, this was a year of really good gaming, and it wasn’t just due to new games (of which there were several), but also one of revitalized franchises.  In my honorable mention category and my Final Fantasy XV entry, I mentioned that Doom, Watch_Dogs and Final Fantasy all managed to be brought to, or return to, form after years, or in the case of Doom, longer than my entire adult life.  Sure, we got a stinker that probably completely ruined a franchise in the new Mirror’s Edge, but for the most part, we saw a lot of developers knuckle down and attempt to really improve and fix what was broken, and that’s awesome too.

What I’m getting at, I guess, is that this was a good year, for video games, and a lot of the rules I use for my Top 5 list don’t really work for this year, so I’m going to break my rule and just say “hey, this thing did something pretty rad” so some awesome stuff that came out or happened this year can get some recognition.

Witcher III: Blood and Wine

Copyright CD Projeket Red

Witcher 3 was fucking awesome, as was Heart of Stone, but Blood and Wine might actually have been the best thing that came out for it, minus the fucking stupid final boss.  Blood and Wine was amazing.  Not only did it feel like a real goddamn expansion to a masterpiece of a game, it did so by expanding upon the core game and adding in new powers, new armor and new, sometimes actually challenging, enemies.  There were a few glitches here and there, and as I mentioned, that final boss was about the worst thing I’ve seen in all of Witcher III, although the DLC having a stupid boss seems to be a Witcher III tradition after the Toad Prince in Heart of Stone.

Toussaint is gorgeous.  It’s the best looking place in the game, maybe the best looking place in any open world RPG that has come out so far, and this is the game that gave us Skellige.  Hell, it’s so beautiful, the skybox is literally painted like a storybook.  The rolling hills stretching out forever is just one of the most wonderful things I’ve seen in a video game, to the point, that when I beat the game, I parked myself in my villa next to Triss and decided this would be the perfect place to stop playing.  I just wish they hadn’t based the economy on trying to gold sink dupers, because there is no way I could ever afford to upgrade that villa.

Pokemon Go

Copyright Nintendo and the Pokemon Company

I wasn’t actually the biggest fan of Pokemon Go, and I never actually downloaded it onto my phone, but the only reason was because my phone’s battery was actually in the process of dying when it came out, making it impossible to play.  Still, it managed to do something right when I was out, hunting for Pokemon with one of my best friends at three in the morning in the parking lot of my apartment complex.

It doesn’t feel like the perfect augmented reality Pokemon game, but I think it’s the closest we can get right now.  AR is still a nascent technology and needs a lot more time to develop, but this was definitely a step in the right direction.  Plus, it does feel cool to have a stable of the classic Pokemon.  As much as I am an anti-nostalgia advocate, it’s something that’s hard to argue against.

Kick Ass Indie Titles Rule Steam

Copyright Chucklefish Games

Let’s be honest and say that 90% of the indie titles that came out on Steam were hot garbage.  Probably more.  I would argue that it probably broke Sturgeon’s Law.  However, it’s also the year we got Inside and Stardew Valley, which were both amazing.  I went with Stardew Valley as a shout out to some friends who have completely fallen in love with it, so this is for you.

It wasn’t just those, however.  Like Hyperlight Drifter on my Honorable mentions, there were so many great indie titles of so many genres.  Firewatch, Darkest Dungeon (which, I know was in Early Release for a couple of years, but the official is out), another Binding of Issac and Starbound, there is probably an indie only Top 5 I could make that would actually rival the Top 5 I made, if only I had time to actually get through all of them.

I decided to mention this one, too, because of how much shit there has been on Steam.  One of the worst parts of the year was that a bunch of shit developers spewed their undigested discharge onto the platform now that it is completely without any safeguards.  It’s one thing, though, to flood the market with Unity Asset Flips and offensive bullshit, but when the developers can’t handle criticism and start suing game writers, then there’s a line that shouldn’t even exist that got crossed.  So, because of this shit, it’s important to remember that indie games are still great, and are still coming out, and are still renovating the genre in ways that not only did we not know could exist, but in ways game publishers tell us we don’t want anymore.

Even more than that, 2017 looks like it’s going to have even more great stuff with it.  Bloodstained, of course, is the one I’m most looking forward to, but if Koji Igarashi did anything, I’d be interested.  Even with the negatives, it looks like this is a frontier that interactive electronic media should continue to explore.

2016 Biggest Disappointment (In Gaming): Uncharted 4

Image copyright Sony and Naughty Dog

Uncharted 4 gets to be the biggest gaming disappointment, and disaster, of the year, because not only was it the worst game I played that came out this year, it also ruined one of my favorite game series from the last generation.  Not because it ended the series, or because it did anything particularly bad, but because it showed me that Naughty Dog just doesn’t care that much about making video games, and are more interested in making B-grade knock offs of B-movies.

I’m one of the six people in the world that didn’t really like the Last of Us that much.  Sure, Summer was a great start, and Winter would have made a nice second act, but the whole game felt like the team was more interested in making a movie, a movie that wasn’t particularly good, than making a functional game.  At the same time, the Last of Us at least had a game that was worth playing in there.  Sure, it was a pretty mid-tier stealth game with some half-assed survival mechanics bolted on, but that actually kind of made the game worth playing through and enjoyable to experience, even if I didn’t like it.  Uncharted 4 doesn’t even have that.  Everything that’s playable is just the same as it’s been since the second game.  No improvements, not alterations, no real push to the genre to bring it forward.

In my review, I mentioned it did manage to blend platforming in combat in a way that the series has tried, and failed, to do since the original, and it does do that.  It’s the one shining thing in the game, the perfect blend of the game’s cover based shooting and platforming, which would be great, if the game actually made a point of using it more than a handful of times.  Most combat is like it’s always been, with Nate outnumbered by way too many, and the best strategy is to hide behind cover, line up a head shot, and then move when they’re not shooting and trying to flank.  There are a few set pieces where the player can use the new improvements to combat, but it’s only a handful of them, giving a glimpse of what might have been if they had the time to actually make something out of the game.

See, one of Uncharted’s biggest failings is that it’s all about going from set piece to set piece, and honestly, set pieces are fine, as long as there is something to it.  Doom had a similar issue, but Doom also managed to kick ass and be a lot of fun, so it’s more of a minor issue than it is here.  When this game is on, it feels like it’s scripted, and then I die because I did something “off script.”  All of the big set pieces seem to only work when I follow the correct route and do things the right way.  It’s not that this is actually the case, the multi-tiered combat zones actually give the player a lot of freedom, but the game feel and enemy placement does a lot to punish the player for experimenting.  So while it does give a lot of chances for the player to stretch out their problem solving skills, it also packs in so many enemies and Nate still has the hit points of a wet piece of tissue paper, so it becomes in practice, an exercise in frustration.

Other than combat, though, everything is just a straight line.  All of the Uncharted games have been linear and have basically told the player where to go, but there is something particularly egregious about this entry, and it’s hard to pin down as to why.  Part of it, that I imagine, is because of the huge, sprawling landscapes that look like they’re open to the player, but are just background, or the obviously fake “open sections” where Nate and his worthless brother are parked and have to solve a puzzle.  There’s generally a pretty big place to wander around in, but mostly it’s to obfuscate the answer to the puzzle rather to actually allow the player to explore.

Finally, the story is probably the worst in the series.  The lack of magical elements, strangely, is one of the few saving graces, but the whole story is “Nate’s past comes back to haunt him,” which would be great if that wasn’t already the plot to 2, and second, if these characters, who are apparently so important to Nate, were ever mentioned before.  2 utilizes flashbacks, and the fact its the second in the series, thus still able to establish new stuff for the world and its characters, in order to make the past seem threatening.  Here, we have an established game world and suddenly we have Nate’s brother, never mentioned, and the psychopath who nearly got them killed, never mentioned, all coming back to complicate his life because he’s unhappy in retirement.  At least the ending manages to work out.  Sort of.

Maybe I’m the one person in the world who thinks this, but I hated Uncharted 4, nearly every bit of it.  At least it’s the end.  No reason to play the same game for the fifth (or sixth time, I never played the Vita game), after all.

Game of the Year: Dark Souls 3

Image copyright From Software and Namco Bandai

Like it was going to be anything else.  Sure, Ashes of Ariandel was kind of lame, but that doesn’t mean that Dark Souls 3 isn’t easily the best game of the year.  It’s the second time in as many years that I’ve had to revise my top 10 games of all time because of a brand new game.  Just as Metal Gear Solid 5 pushed forward military stealth games, Dark Souls 3 pushed forward action RPGs.

There’s very little to say here that I haven’t said already in my three Game Anatomy write ups without repeating myself, but the quality of this game cannot be overstated.  Dark Souls 3 is not only my favorite game of the year, it’s my favorite game in the series.  I’ve tried to get into every Souls game, all the way back to Demon’s Souls, and it’s always been a series I can understand and appreciate, but never liked.  I found them to be slow, sort of tedious, and something I desperately wanted to love and enjoy and couldn’t.  I got the furthest into Dark Souls, but then we got 3 and it gave it what I felt the series was missing.

It’s not just the extra speed, but that’s a big factor in why I enjoyed this game in the series more than the others.  What Dark Souls 3 does is that it perfects everything that the series does well at, and manages to make a lot of the more ambitious parts of the series that never quite worked out actually work out.  All in all, it’s the best version of Dark Souls, and that really is all that’s needed to make it Game of the Year.

Dark Souls is the essence of action RPGs.  It’s like Zelda, in a lot of ways, where it’s just one guy against the whole world, out to kill all sorts of giant bad guys, an army of the undead and make it through by the skin of your teeth.  There are a lot of games that do this, but Dark Souls makes it visceral.  Dark Souls is the game where it really does come down to a do or die battle.  Sure, after a couple of hours, the regular enemies are mostly fodder for experience points, but the bosses are some of the biggest and most brutal in the series.  It’s kind of like the old 16 bit games, where giant, screen filling bosses that challenge the player to push themselves past their own limits and become better is the selling point.

That, also, is one of the reasons why it’s the best game of the year.  One thing I do miss about games is when the developers would embrace that they were making a game, and that design and development was more important than story or cutscenes.  Don’t get me wrong, I love story, and I feel like games really need to improve there, but there is something pure about how games were made in the pre-seventh generation console era, and Dark Souls shows that the ideals of the seventh and eighth generation console games can be done with the design sensibilities from before that era, provided that the developers aren’t just failed movie directors who hate the medium they’re working on.  Dark Souls isn’t the only game to focus on design over making a shitty movie this year, in fact almost every game on the list this year focused on being good at everything, including design and working their story into the medium, it’s just that Dark Souls did it better than anything.

Also, nothing quite matches beating a guy called Aldrich, Devourer of the Gods on your first try, even if I really kind of credit my success to watching Arin Hanson fail over and over on him on Game Grumps.

Number 2: Dishonored 2

Copyright Arkane Software and Bethesda Softworks

I know I was hard on it on my review, but after a second playthrough, some very awesome upgrades and patches from Arkane, Dishonored 2 morphed from “great expansion pack sequel” to one of the best games I’ve ever played.  Even with my initial review, made from a pacifist Emily run, I loved every second of the game.  It was a smart, expanded sequel that knew what was good about the first game and knew where to build and where not to.  It wasn’t a huge leap forward like the first, but it did wind up making a better game.

Dishonored has been only my top 10 list of favorite games for years, so imagine my surprise when I found that Arkane managed to improve upon what was already so good.  They added nonlethal takedowns in combat, expanded the maps so the game was even less linear, with some levels almost feeling like completely open cities, and came up with new, cooler powers and even better gadgets and weapons.  It also fixed one of the major problems of the first game, that it had this deep, robust combat system, but it was only useful for the players who didn’t care about the morality system.  Here, we’ve got so many options, it doesn’t matter which route to take, each side has more depth than it did previously.

That doesn’t mean pacifists are just as deep as assassins, but it does mean that the game is no longer just a matter of blinking to the highest spot, blinking back down once a guy is isolated and choking him out.  Now, each room and guard placement allows for multiple ways around them, with tons of ways to solve each problem.  It’s the essence of gameplay in a lot of ways.  Dishonored has always thrown the toolbox at the player and let them go at it, but there are some nice new tools here that make the experience fresh, and definitely not a retread of the original, as my first playthrough led me to believe.

The difference between Emily and her father Corvo is one of the biggest reasons behind this.  Emily’s powers are definitely hers, unique and represent her in a way that seems to indicate what kind of character she is, as well as her regal standing.  It’s very cool, and does a good job of showing how and where the series can grow and evolve, and that’s awesome.

The map design also does a good job of making both Corvo and Emily feel like their different by making ways to ensure that each protagonist can use their powers.  While one playthrough may make it feel like a simple update, but playing as both characters, it shows the real depth in the game, and how each character has their own strengths and weaknesses.  Sure, the best option is to get as high as possible to bypass as many guards and obstacles as possible (although now, they do manage to post guards up on the roof now, which, kind of makes the bad guys in the first game seem kind of dumb), but when it comes down to brass tacks, and getting above everyone isn’t the best option, or even an option at all, using their different abilities means that the player can’t always approach every situation in the same way.

What’s even better is that Arkane has made a point of polishing the game after the release.  They’ve managed to fix most of the PC performance issues (although my 1070 still saw some dips to 54 frames per second), which does a lot to win my good graces.  Even more, they’ve added new game modes and special challenge modes, all for free.  New Game Plus even allows cross buying of powers, allowing Emily to Time Stop or Corvo to Domino, which only deepens the game further, even if it will make the already over powered assassins even more powerful, this is augmented by the fact that there are so many different approaches to how you can play the game by doing this, meaning that while the challenge against the AI may be gone, the new challenge of finding the coolest way to get past guards becomes even more challenging.

On the whole, the only real negative is that, like the first game, the story has a lot of potential, but the characters are flat and a lot of the ideas pan out.  Other than that, everything just sort of kicks ass.  It’s hard to say no to a game this awesome.

Number 3: Final Fantasy XV

Copyright Square Enix

The past decade hasn’t been easy for me, at least as far as being a Final Fantasy fan went.  Sure, XII came out, and it was my favorite in the series across all 20 years, but that was sort of the end of the line.  I didn’t think it could get much worse than X and all of the terrible sequels to VII, but then we got XIII and those games, XIV was so bad they had to rebuild it from the ground up to salvage it, so it was hard to look at XV with the legacy Square Enix had left behind for the past ten years and think that the ten years it took to make would result in a game that was coherent, let alone good.  Now, here we are, and I can’t stop playing this game.

Real talk, it’s not the best Final Fantasy, and it has a lot of the quirks of several of the other games in the series.  The characters are a little flat, the plot doesn’t always make sense and villains don’t get enough good screen time to be enough to flesh them out and all that terrible hair (Gladiolus has a mullet, people.  A mullet).  Plus the combat is a bit dodgy and the magic system is more of a good idea than a good execution, but, honestly from the word go, none of that mattered at all, because XV works.  How it works is best illustrated in the very first scene in the game, where the car is broken down on the side of the road, in the desert, because of course, and the prince and his buddies have to push the car to the gas station and all four of them start bickering and teasing each other while pushing it.  It’s just an instantly relateable scene that transports the player right there to the world, and everything just makes sense.

This is what makes it so good.  Final Fantasy, even back on the NES, had lush, gorgeous visuals that did a good job of making it feel like the player was right there in the action, only getting better over the past 29 years, but XV does it on a whole different scale.  Whether it’s driving on the highway with Noctis and company, looking out of the side of the road to see a meteor being held up by a titan just as part of the scenery, or riding on chocobo back in across the plains to fight some monsters, or walking into an enchanted forest to find a tomb of a lost king, all of completely seamless and without transitions, it made me feel like I was there, every second I’m playing the game.  When I was on the Veldt in Final Fantasy VI, it was just a map, with some forests added in for flavor, but here, I can drive out to the forests and go right in without anything ever changing.  It makes great work of the open world.

Combat is a lot of fun, too.  Sure, it doesn’t always work right, but it doesn’t matter.  The action combat system is the way Square wants to go, and I can’t blame them.  It’s not Dark Souls (and I’m glad it’s not), but the controls are good and the way engaging monsters happens, especially the huge, multi-target monstrosities the game will let a player tackle, works so well.  It feels exactly like how I imagined Final Fantasy combat “really” looked in my head when I played them as a teenager.  Maybe I didn’t expect throwing a greatsword at someone, then teleport slamming into their chest (which is SO satisfying, and I’m glad its a central part of combat), but everything else is exactly how I imagined it, right down to the characters making fun of each other and complimenting each other in the middle of a battle.  Even some of the chatter sounds word for word what I expected Cloud and Squall (or at least their buddies) would say after scoring a really nice critical.

At the end of the day, what really works about the game is that it’s about a bunch of buddies on a journey, and the journey manages to be compelling no matter what wrenches get thrown in.  Not everything here works, but it doesn’t matter, because when I get to camp, Prompto is going to have a bad selfie, a pick of Noctis’s ass while trying to get on a Chocobo, and a picture that made everything I did between save points look awesome as hell.  That, sometimes, is all that matters.

Number 4: Overwatch

Copyright Blizzard Entertainment

Overwatch blew me away, right off the bat.  From the moment I booted it up, purchasing it on a whim to play over the summer as my school year was winding down on the recommendation of some students, I was smitten, and it’s been a game that I can put down, walk away from and pick back up and feel like everything has been better.  Overwatch is just a fantastic multiplayer shooter, and this is from a man who doesn’t really like playing multiplayer shooters.

It may not be the best shooter, or have the best mechanics, nor is it the most innovative game in the genre, but it does what Blizzard always manages to do: make the best version of that genre available.  It’s hard to top what they do in general, but here, they’ve out done themselves and created something fantastic.  Instantly lovable and iconic characters, gorgeous visuals, easily some of the best in the world right now, tight controls and a game that is always improving.  Even in places where it’s weak, Jeff Kaplan and his team at Blizzard have been working tirelessly since May to make sure it’s the best it can be.  In a world where everything else Blizzard has done has had something that stunk to ruin it, Overwatch stands out, being that it’s always trying to improve.  It may not always work out, but they’re doing a lot more for their game than the World of Warcraft team is doing for theirs, that’s for damn sure.

Still, intercompany pissing aside, Overwatch is just a good game.  Sure, it’s a little light on game modes, and some of the maps and characters need some balancing work, but aside from a handful of outliers, most of the issues are small and can be overcome with some skill from the player.  The shooting is tight, each character feels distinctive and feels as if they fill their role effectively without being constrained by what they’re “supposed” to be doing.  Sure, Symmetra may not work, but every other character manages to feel like they do what they’re supposed to, and do it in a unique way, while still managing to limit the number of abilities each character has so there’s no ability bloat.  It’s  a trim, fast game that feels good to play and looks great, and it’s really hard to argue with that.

What really works though, is that it’s easy to put down and pick back up.  A lot of “endless” games, which Blizzard seems to specialize in, tend to have a problem with burnout, and that’s definitely something that can be an issue with Overwatch.  However, because of how accessible the game is, without sacrificing any depth, it’s easy to come back to the game whenever a player wants to, without it feeling like it’s a burden or it’s “necessary.”

The only thing that keeps this from getting higher up on the list, though, is that there are a lot of crappy microtransactions, and getting a hold of cosmetic items are a pain in the ass.  The loot boxes are boring RNG, and I almost never get anything other than sprays or duplicates (often duplicate sprays.  Ugh…), and it’s led me to dropping $20 during Halloween in order to get the Witch Mercy costume (which I got), but I still haven’t gotten Commando 76, or enough gold to buy it in the shop.

On the whole, though, it’s a great game and it gets points for always striving to be better, and having an honest development team that isn’t going to pull any bullshit when something goes wrong.  That wins a lot of points in my book.

Number 5: X-COM 2

Copyright Firaxis Games and 2K Games

I don’t like to put up games where I didn’t finish, but it’s hard to not put up a game I had to put down because it accidentally got my brother killed.  In the game, in real life my brother is fine, but it’s hard not to love a game where I had to put it down because some dude with a sword named after my brother got sacrificed for the mission.  Of all of the games I played this year, none of them were quite as moving or affecting as X-COM 2.

I didn’t really get into the first X-COM (of the new series, I’m too young to have been a big fan of the real original) for a lot of reasons.  It was a good tactical game, and did a good job of making it feel like there were consequences for mistakes, all that good stuff.  However, the tutorial was too long and had too many moving parts at once and it was just hard to get into.  Great game, just didn’t like it.

Fortunately, X-COM 2 manages to do a better job of easing the player into the game.  The tutorial is stronger and does a good job of introducing the player to the new things without just tossing multiple things at once at the player.  It doesn’t however, make the game any more gentle, making no bones about showing its lethal side, right at the beginning.  This is what makes the game work, it’s a brutal, challenging tactical game that demands a lot from the player, and continues to pus their tactical acumen to the edge, and beyond.

As a lover of tactical games, it’s hard not to love every heart pumping, stress inducing moment of X-COM 2.  It’s relentless, requires planning multiple moves ahead and doesn’t shy away from forcing the player to make difficult choices, which brought me back to the moment where I had to sacrifice my brother.  All of my characters are named after real life friends and family members, and my brother wound up running in and taking a bullet for the mission, getting in the way so they could succeed.  In an action game, it would have been a climactic moment.  In X-COM, it’s business as usual.

X-COM 2 expands on everything the original has.  First, classes have a lot more options.  Sure, it does kind of suck that when a unit promotes, the player doesn’t get to chose what they promote into, but when they do get into their unit classification, there’s more than one track to fill out, so when two great rookies promote into the same thing, picking different talents will allow them not only to compliment the fire team, but also each other as well, if they wind up fighting together.  Maps, too, are huge improvements over the previous game, which is saying something, because if there was one thing X-COM did great right out of the gate, it was map design.  2, however, adds so much more, but making routes and objectives so much more complex, right from the get go.  There is still a bit of enemies getting instant reinforcements, or aliens suddenly appearing on the map when they weren’t there before, which does work sometimes, but is often more a frustration than actually making a more tactically rich game.

The new stealth system (which may have been in one of the expansions, but I don’t know) is very nice, giving the player a slight edge they’ll need, since the player is almost always outmanned and outgunned right from the start, with reinforcements just making things worse.  The inability to return to stealth, even when no enemies are around is kind of dumb, as is the “aliens suddenly know where you’re at” aspect of it, but it does mean that setting up an ambush is more than just sitting on Overwatch and waiting for your sniper to blow grunts and serpents away.

X-COM was rewarding in a way that a lot of games have not been.  It’s brutal and viscous, and honestly, it’s actually kind of unfair, but that’s the point. It pushed me.  It made demands of my skills, and I made a point of reaching them.  Sure, the game cheats, but if it didn’t, it wouldn’t quite be the same.  It’s pretty awesome like that.

2016 Top 5: Honorable Mentions

I think we can all agree, no matter what you’re beliefs are, 2016 was a pretty shit tier year.  One thing that was great about it though, were the video games.  It’s hard not to look back on this past year and not remember some great games.  While it wasn’t a year of franchise makers and new IPs, unfortunately, it did see the rise of some new ideas, the revival of more than one long running series and several games that managed to break the Duke Nukem Forever curse.

What’s great is that nothing just showed up at the end of the year.  This was a year jammed wall to wall with great releases, from January to December, and it was actually legitimately difficult to narrow the number of games to 5 this year.  Hell, it was hard to narrow them down to a top 10 and still feel like I managed to get in a word about every game I loved this year, because there were a lot.

A few new rules this year.  As usual, I only choose games that I have played.  I try to put in games that I have completed, but there was no way I would be able to finish some games in the time span I’ve had them available to me.  Also, X-COM is really, really hard you guys, and I don’t want my friends to die.  So, there are two games on my top 5 that I didn’t fully complete, but I’ve gotten a pretty good handle on them.  Second, as much as I would love to put Blood and Wine on this list (minus stupid bullshit final boss), I’m putting my foot down and saying no DLC, no matter how good it may be.  Blood and Wine was hours long, well made, and deserves praise, which it will get in this series of features, but I can’t put it on the top 5, nor does it get to be an honorable mention.  Third and finally, I’m expanding the Honorable Mention this time.  There are a bunch of games I want to give a shout out to, but they just didn’t make the cut.  Everything that gets put on that list could have easily been on the top 5, some might actually be better games than my top 5 picks, so they deserve some recognition.

Before I begin, I want everyone to know, my top 5 picks are simply the games I liked the most.  Not that I thought were the best games (although that does apply to my Game of the Year), or the most innovative, or the games I played the most, because World of Warcraft: Legion is terrible and doesn’t deserve to be on this list, but it’s still not Most Disappointing.  They’re just the games I liked the most.  Also, this year, the list will be in the features themselves, so my Game of the Year will be revealed Friday.

Honorable Mentions

Copyright Id Software and Bethesda Softworks

Doom 2016 was amazing.  I was expecting a wet fart, especially after the bullshit surrounding the lack of pre-release reviews or anything, but what I got was one of the best shooters I’ve played in years.  It finally brought back the awesome run-n-gun style of the original games, plus the ability to melee kill demons to get health back, chainsaw for ammo and the absolute disregard for the asshole in charge the Doom Slayer has is fucking kick ass.  The only downside, I felt, was that there were too many “arena sections” in the game, and like Wolfenstein: the New Order, the higher difficulties were more about dealing with attrition than actual difficulty.  Still, I bought it at full price and loved every second of it.

Copyright Ubisoft

It shouldn’t have been good.  There’s no reason why Watch_Dogs 2 should have been as good as it was, but here we are.  Watch_Dogs was a game so bad, that when UPlay ate my save file midway through, I was happy because I didn’t have an excuse to keep playing.  Watch_Dogs 2, however, features a much more likable cast, a much cooler protagonist, better music, better controls, better use of hacking, much less focus on “vehicle stealth,” which all make for a much better game.  The story is sort of unclear, with jumps and cuts from clearly missing content, but over all, it’s a better game.  It does have a lot of the same problems every other Ubisoft Open World “stealth” game has, but it’s one of the better versions of that sort of thing.

Copyright Telltale Games and Warner Brothers

It’s hard to dislike a Batman adventure game made by Telltale.  As usual, they pack a lot of great stuff in here.  Unfortunately, my PS4 got stolen before I could finish the game, so I’m unsure how well the game works after part 3.  Still, the new mythos was fun to play around in and the story and voice acting was great.  I didn’t think Troy Baker could match Kevin Conroy, but here we are, in a world where I will say that.  It’s a little limited as far as interactivity goes, and some of the twists seem to be more for shock value than anything else, but still, it was a fun game, and well made.

Copyright Heart Machine

A game I only got a chance to play very little of, but I loved every second of it I played.  Honestly, it would have made my top 5, had I gotten a chance to play more of it.  It’s an excellent game, and I definitely should find the time to sit down and actually play through it.

Anywhere, there it is.  The number 5 game will be revealed tomorrow.