My top 10 games of 2015
1) The Witcher 3
Yes. Last year, Dragon Age: Inquisition came out. A year later, The Witcher 3 really showed Bioware how it should have been done. The Witcher games have always flirted with greatness but never quite reached it. The Witcher 3, though, was stunning. The mechanics, design and story were all first rate. It’s my new favourite game of all time.
2) Evolve
There’s a bit of a quality gap between the games I put in first and second place.
Scratch that. There’s a massive quality gap. There was nothing else released in 2015 that came close to rivalling The Witcher 3 in terms of mechanics and story. If I was being honest I’d leave the second and third space on the list blank and restart the list at point 4.
Evolve, then. It’s a good game. It’s fresh, it’s interesting. It lacked game modes but had atmosphere dripping from the wazoo. People hated it because there was loads of cosmetic DLC available on launch. Of all the reasons to dislike a game, I think this is one of the stupidest. Evolve provided hours of entertainment for me and I’m really looking forward to the sequel.
3) Dying Light
I hate zombies. They’re one of my least favourite antagonists because there’s nothing new that can be done with them. Dying Light, though, proved that a purely iterative game can still be really fun. It boasts strong melee fights and an excellent parkour system.
4) The Beginner’s Guide
The first of the great narrative games. The Beginner’s Guide isn’t anywhere near as good as The Stanley Parable was but it still tugs on the player’s heart strings and has a lot of really interesting things to say about creativity.
5) Warhammer: The End Times – Vermintide
Vermintide probably would have placed higher if it had been just a little bit more substantial. It has wonderful design, atmosphere and a solid melee system. It only has 13 maps, though, and given they take between 5 and 15 minutes each to get through, that’s really not very much. Especially as only about half of the maps are actually any good. I’ve lost count how many times I’ve played that bloody Horn of Magnus level.
6) Rocket League
Rocket League is pure, disposable fun. It takes a little while to be properly proficient at it but once you are, it’s an absolute blast. I’m not hugely convinced about its longevity as it has even less variety on display than Vermintide but there you go.
7) Life Is Strange
Life Is Strange is maddening. About two thirds of the game is stunning both in terms of narrative and character. It even has the gall to back this up with fun puzzle elements. It could have been one of the best games this year… were it not for the episodic format.
The episodic format (or, more specifically, the decision to end every episode with a cliff hanger ending) forces the game to make some seriously stupid narrative contrivances. One particularly shocking revelation at the end of one episode was immediately reversed at the start of the next with no lasting consequences.
Still, though, the game pushed through the worst of the cliff hangers and the final episode was pretty good.
Life Is Strange out Telltale’d Telltale because, whilst the decisions you make don’t really impact the game, because the game is primarily focussed with character rather than story, the decisions still feel like they matter, even if they don’t when considered in terms of the narrative.
8) The Magic Circle
The Magic Circle is such a silly, meta game. I love it. It’s quick and disposable. It doesn’t have the lasting impact of Life Is Strange or The Beginner’s Guide but said what it had to say. It’s unique in its subject matter (a game about development hell? Yes please) and its mechanics (exploration/puzzle solving/vampirism/level design). It didn’t rock my world like some of the games on this list but that doesn’t stop it from being entertaining and thought provoking.
9) Tales From The Borderlands
The story and characters of Tales From The Borderlands are great. There are couple of dodgy narrative choices but they don’t ruin the overall experience. It’s by far the funniest game on this list and has a lot of fun with the Borderlands universe. The only reason it’s so low down on this list is: The gameplay actively detracts from the experience. Its standard Telltale slow walking, threadbare puzzles and quicktime events. Life Is Strange really showed how narrative Telltale-style games should be done and Tales From The Borderlands suffered by comparison. Still fun though.
10) Carmageddon: Reincarnation
Carmageddon: Reincarnation is fun and silly. It’s also only on this list because I haven’t bought Her Story or Undertale yet. Enjoy being on my top 10 because of a technicality, Carmageddon!
Games that disappointed in 2015
I played two games this year that really disappointed me. Here’s why:
Games of Thrones
Tales From The Borderlands showed how Telltale’s model of adventure game can survive when the focus is on character and humour. Game Of Thrones showed that Telltale’s model completely falls apart when the focus is on player choice and narrative... when the narrative is tedious and the player choices make no impact.
Here was my experience with Game Of Thrones:
I’d make a choice as a player, the game would then spend ages yelling at me for making the wrong choice. So I’d make different choices and change my strategy. Those choices were wrong as well. I started not responding to obviously rhetorical questions during character exchanges because I was fed up with the characters yelling at me. The characters then yelled at me for not interrupting them.
I know some people say that Game Of Thrones (the TV show) works because it’s grim but that’s not actually true. It works because it’s a grim world spattered with humour, fun moments and tense but enjoyable battles. Game of Thrones (the Telletale game) had no humour or levity. It had no way to get through it without feeling like you were playing the worst possible version of the story… because every version was the worst possible version.
On top of this, it also has the same terrible gameplay of Tales From The Borderlands.
Game of Thrones is a poster child for gaming missed opportunities.
Fallout 4
I didn’t really get on with Fallout 3 or New Vegas because I didn’t like the gameplay. The shooting was unresponsive and lacked punch. It also had a host of weird gameplay contrivances that took me out of the experience. Why does hitting someone with a baseball bat do more damage than shooting them with a pistol?
Anyway, I was hoping Fallout 4 would fix these issues.
It didn’t.
The gunplay in Fallout 4 was as unimpressive as the gunplay in Fallout 3, but with the added unfortunateness of combat being focussed on way more than in Fallout 3.
I also realised that one of the only things I really loved doing in Skyrim was exploring the wonderfully designed landscape. Those mountains! Those snowy plains! Those elegantly designed towns!
Fallout 4 is many things but it’s not a beautiful world to explore… and that meant (along with the unimpressive combat) it had nothing for me.
Broken Age: Part 2
So yeah, it turns out that Tim Schafer really doesn’t know how to run a project. Broken Age: Part 2 was a mess. It revisited the same locations from part 1 (none of which really deserved to have more time spent in them) and made a series of contrived plot leaps.
It was a mess, and a completely avoidable mess at that. Broken Age was late, way over budget and failed to be the old school point and click adventure its Kickstarter campaign promised. A lovely visual style and great voice acting is no good if the content is terrible.
For me, the most telling thing about Broken Age is this: In the Fig crowdfunding video for Psychonauts 2, Tim Schafer stands in front of banners for Double Fine’s previous games. There’s a Stacking poster, a Brutal Legend poster, a Costume Quest poster and a Massive Chalice poster. No Broken Age, Tim? No Spacebase DF-9? You know? The other game that got crowd funded and was then abandoned after it became clear you didn’t have the organisation or budget to complete properly?
People haven’t learned, though. At the time of writing, the crowd funding campaign for Psychonauts 2 is 87% complete with 20 days left on the clock. It’s going to get funded no matter what I say. I hope Psychonauts 2 isn’t the monumental disaster Broken Age was… but I suspect it will be.