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2015's Games of the Year?

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Basing things purely on stuff I played in 2015 (even if it came out earlier), I think I'd have to give the crown, if awarding it right this instant, to 80 Days. But that's probably biased by it being the last really impressive thing I played in 2015, both in terms of writing and general production values.

 

Runners up would have to be Invisible, Inc, which is similarly both a really well designed game, and also a well produced one, and Her Story, which is getting the position just for being a good FMV game released in 2015, with a new mechanic.

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Evoland II

Bought on a whim, and it's a whim I would advise everyone to sport. Well, everyone who shares a console past, owned a NES and/or SuperNES and especially favors Zelda and Chrono Trigger. If you poured those two games in a mixer and added a heap of spices from all over video game history, you'd have Evoland II. It's incredibly varied and insists on challenging you: Sometimes you get the impression that you are supposed to be a master at two dozen historic video games just to play this game (blood and sweat during the Street Fighter sequence, I tell you). I finished rather satisfied, but with a mere 92% of secrets found and mini-game challenges completed. Time well spent.

 

so I guess they learned a lot of Evoland 1, as that was quite bad.

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I think the game I've played the most of last year was Heroes of the Storm. I'm not sure I'm confident enough to call it my game of the year, but one of them. It is is a fine distillation of wizard-em-ups into their purest form (Making decisions and doing things), with all the other stuff like farming and last-hitting cut out. Plus I can ride around on a tiny goat, and Dota lacks this vital feature.

 

I got some games in the sale which I already think very highly of. Necrodancer might be my best game of 2015 (Although playing it gives me some serious cramp). And I'm only a few hours into Cities Skylines but I'd say it's one of my favourites of 2015 and easily the best city management game I've played. I have a folder full of screenshots of wonderful cities, made by my friend who is better than me.

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Here's how I voted in Polygon's GOTY proceedings :)

 

1. Dropsy

2. SOMA

3. Witcher 3

4. Life is Strange

5. Rise of the Tomb Raider

6. Super Mario Maker

7. Read Only Memories

8. Undertale

9. Her Story

10. Bloodborne

 

Jennegatron nailed it re: Dropsy's excellence. No one else at my outlet voted for it (though, I think we had a damned fine list overall), but it was the most special experience I had in a game all year. The entire top five was very, very close for me.

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so I guess they learned a lot of Evoland 1, as that was quite bad.

 

Bad enough, from what I've heard, that I won't touch it.

 

I guess had I ever played the first game, I wouldn't have given the second a chance. And a lot of reviewers who played the first instalment say exactly this. Evoland I bullshit, Evoland II solid gold. Despite coming up with a halfway coherent time travel story, the game is still a parody and maybe rip off of other games, but the sheer number of games emulated/parodied and the nostalgia thunderstorms are well worth the purchase. The first part, I guess, was a lackluster Zelda clone. The second incorporates not only 4 time zones (with a GameBoy aestetic for the most distant past and NES (past) SNES (present) and a modern console 3D look (future)), but dozens of game mechanics – with Final Fantasy/Zelda/Secret of Mana at its core, the game also features sequences with the game mechanics of e.g. Pong, Snake, Space Invaders, Mega Man, Bomberman, Mario, Chrono Trigger, Bahamut Lagoon, Street Fighter, Double Dragon, Raiden, Guitar Hero or Hearthstone.

 

I started my second run through the game yesterday. :)

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I quite liked Evoland 1. But I don't remember anything about it now. I guess I'll pick up 2 too.

 

Yakuza 5 is so far my GOTY, even though it's only been out a month now. It's honestly the most enjoyable game I've played this year. Nothing can beat the melodrama, or the deluge of side stories and distractions that you can do. I punched a bear guys. 2 bears, to be exact. Also a 3 year wait can get the hype going, even if it feels like it is only me who's excited for it. lol.

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So many good games this year!

 

In no particular order, my favourites this year are:

 

The Witcher 3 Love it for all the reasons people already stated in this thread many times. I put over a hundred hours into it and I was still sad that it ended.

SOMA This is secretely a great adventure game with some horror elements!

Ori and the Blind Forest Goooorgeous! Unexpectedly difficult platformer that controls great. Really satisfying game.

The Book of Unwritten Tales 2 Best point and click adventure game in YEEEEAAAAAAARS. Great characters and utterly charming. It can be a little reference heavy, but overal just a wonderful game. Highly recommend it.  Lots of added value if you play the first game first, though that's admittedly a lot rougher of a game than the 2nd one. Still good and well worth playing, has a lot of charm too, just not as great as the 2nd one. Just a heads up that both of these are 20+ hour games. Really anyone with a love for point n click games should play this though!  :buyme:

 

Game that was great fun to play but overall I'm just not sure about: Metal Gear Solid V Yea. I dunno. Great in some ways, incredibly disappointing in other ways.

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I'm really annoyed with myself that I spoiled Soma and Cradle listening to the GB podcasts. No one to blame except myself, but I don't know if either will really be worth playing now.

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I'm usually pretty terrible at picking GOTYs simply because I'm so far behind the curve.  The list of major titles that I didn't play in 2015 is massive, and I have quite a few smaller titles waiting in my Steam inventory, like Life is Strange, Her Story, King's Quest, Cibele, and The Beginner's Guide.  I actually only played like 4 games released in 2015, so they're both my best and worst games of the year.

 

4. Star Wars: Battlefront, for about 90 minutes

3. Helldivers

2. Axiom Verge

1. Yoshi's Woolly World

 

Axiom Verge and YWW are set apart from the other two.  I really enjoyed them, being a massive fan of both Super Metroid and Yoshi's Island.  Both have their flaws and both struggle against the best games of earlier years, but I still enjoy them a lot.  YWW is adorable on every level and never fails to make me grin.  It's also hard as balls to find all of the hidden powerups.  But LIKE HELL I'M NOT RESCUING EVERY YOSHI.

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I'm really annoyed with myself that I spoiled Soma and Cradle listening to the GB podcasts. No one to blame except myself, but I don't know if either will really be worth playing now.

 

Oh gosh, their descriptions actually fostered my interest in games I would never even think about playing otherwise. I may not play them, but I might seek out Let's Plays.

 

My Most Disappointing might be Axiom Verge. I tried to play it again over the weekend and just bounced. I should LOVE that game. I should love it more than Ori.

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I didn't have much in the way of spare funds for most of the year so I haven't played a lot of what I wanted to but I'll likely get around to them in 2016.

 

1. Metal Gear V

2. Infinifactory

3. Tales From The Borderlands

4. Helldivers

5. Grow Home

6. Massive Chalice

7. Beginners Guide

8. Everybody's Gone To The Rapture

9. Star Wars: Battlefront

10. Cities: Skylines

 

Stuff I haven't got around to (but may have been on the list if I had):

Bloodbourne

Witcher 3

Life Is Strange

Fallout 4

 

The award for 'Most conflicted game' goes to Destiny + Taken King etc, I don't think I've ever thought a game was so good and so bad at the same time before.

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I'm really annoyed with myself that I spoiled Soma and Cradle listening to the GB podcasts. No one to blame except myself, but I don't know if either will really be worth playing now.

 

I argued pretty hard around here for people to play Soma, but it kind of ended up being the old "You just have to take it on good faith, because you don't want this shit spoiled" thing that nobody listens to.

 

Even if you have had the story spoiled, i think the game is well worth playing, there are some seriously clever scenarios in that game and it is thick with atmosphere. (Also, perhaps more importantly, the GB guys didn't even talk about some of the biggest moments in the game, to my surprise. They also had a long argument about how the monsters are non-responsive to thrown objects, which i'm 95% sure they're wrong about, because i used thrown objects in a lot of the encounters to distract enemies and it sure seemed to work. The monsters all have different rules to suss out though, and that can be hard to do when you're in a panic.)

 

Still, going into that game relatively blind, really only knowing about the marketing materials that had been put out in advance of it, i had multiple "I need to stand up and walk away from my computer for a few minutes" moments with the game. It's really something that shouldn't be spoiled, if at all possible.

 

Cradle is really terrific too, perhaps one of my favorite pieces of sci-fi world building ever, it's full of fascinating ideas, but the GB guys are completely right about it not sticking that landing. The actual puzzle progression is sort of blah and it lands at a pretty aggravating conclusion.

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Soma made enough game of the year lists that i think I'll probably pick it up. Sounds like I'll drop Cradle from my wish list for now.

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A recommendation from you sir is one that I will definitely check out, seeing as we seem to have incredibly similar tastes (I still haven't played Armored Core V yet, and I feel guilty)

I argued pretty hard around here for people to play Soma, but it kind of ended up being the old "You just have to take it on good faith, because you don't want this shit spoiled" thing that nobody listens to.

 

Even if you have had the story spoiled, i think the game is well worth playing, there are some seriously clever scenarios in that game and it is thick with atmosphere. (Also, perhaps more importantly, the GB guys didn't even talk about some of the biggest moments in the game, to my surprise. They also had a long argument about how the monsters are non-responsive to thrown objects, which i'm 95% sure they're wrong about, because i used thrown objects in a lot of the encounters to distract enemies and it sure seemed to work. The monsters all have different rules to suss out though, and that can be hard to do when you're in a panic.)

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Hearing everyone complain about the monsters in Soma makes me actively want to avoid it. I have a very low tolerance for bullshit and I know if I got frustrated even once I'd dump it. I'm glad people actually brought up its weaknesses in any GOTY discussion, otherwise I'd have bought a game I'd probably hate.

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Hearing everyone complain about the monsters in Soma makes me actively want to avoid it. I have a very low tolerance for bullshit and I know if I got frustrated even once I'd dump it. I'm glad people actually brought up its weaknesses in any GOTY discussion, otherwise I'd have bought a game I'd probably hate.

 

Well, for one thing, in playing Soma across two playthroughs, i died exactly once, so i wouldn't say it's frustrating in that sense.

And putting aside scenarios where it's either a scripted chase or trying its hardest to convince you you're in danger when you're not, the real actual monster encounters make up a surprisingly small portion of the game. (With only two or three of those sequences additionally having you juggle multiple objectives on top of simply trying to survive. Trying to listen to an audio log while a monster is roaming around is admittedly crazy tense, and not in a way that will entertain everybody.)

I also find the whole hide n` survive genre kind of stressful, the first Amnesia destroyed me in a way no other horror game i've played did, but i did not have that experience with Soma. I think it's much more in line with the experience of playing a really spooky adventure game.

 

The one thing that might complicate Soma in a very real sense is discerning the rules each monster operates under, because they're all quite distinct in how they perceive and react to the player. (Which is one of the things i think is really cool about the game, but i've seen it spawn a lot of accusations about the game being broken in one way or another.)

 

Failing all of that, people still seem to think the game is worth playing if you cripple the AI with mods.

 

 

A recommendation from you sir is one that I will definitely check out, seeing as we seem to have incredibly similar tastes (I still haven't played Armored Core V yet, and I feel guilty)

 

AC5/ACVD are almost certainly a lost cause this far out from release. I held on for as long as i could and bailed only when the absence of developer support kind of fed into the player base sort of self-destructing. I still wonder what made Dark Souls really take off in the west when Armored Core just seems perpetually doomed abroad, because the two franchises actually have a lot of very similar sensibilities.

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