I did a longer post with more detailed thoughts here. The only post-Christmas change: I’ve switched out Xenoblade in the #5 spot with Golf Story. I’m up over a hundred hours on Xenoblade and at something around ten in Golf Story, and I think I’ve had more fun playing the latter, never mind fun relative to time or anything else. I had no idea I needed a GolfRPG, but it really hit the spot.
Mass Effect: Andromeda
No I’m not joking.
Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock
As Brian Rubin-san says, it’s a frakkin’ good time.
The Golf Club 2
PC golf and I don’t 100% suck at it.
What Remains of Edith Finch
It was weird but I like it.
Cold Waters
Mass Effect: Andromeda
Because despite what anybody say and technical issues aside it was EXACTLY what I wanted from the Mass Effect series after ME1 and never got before. Such a shame that it was so harshly treated and we won’t see more of it. I loved my time in that new universe, discovering the planets and exploring ancient ruins. I liked the squadmates even. Yea, there is no Garrus and Liara sadly. But the inter-party banter is so great, the ship feels so alive when you can hear the people discussing stuff from their point of view. Just get Peebee and Drack in the same group and have a hearty laugh while driving around the vast planets.And Liam and Jaal get a bonus price for greatest and weirdest Bromance in video games. Looking back I had my greatest experience this year with this game by a long shot.
Elex
Because PB returns to form with a janky and clunky game that still manages to draw me in and makes me explore a world I can find believable. The factions are different enough to experience several times, even though the story is a bit weak. The world is the star in my opinion.
Prey
Because SS2 was so long ago and it is amazing that Arkane continues to try to be the new Looking Glass. The station is a delight to traverse and explore, the game is creepy and challenging in parts.
Xcom2: War of the Chosen
Because other developers would sell this as a sequel. Makes a great game even better. There just so much added, if I had not played vanilla first it would be overwhelming. And all the changes seem to be for the better too!
Wolfenstein II
Because it is great when a developer goes full tilt on a games premise and does not slow down. The first one was great but 2 is even more zany and over the top. Bonus points for being able to play it almost as a sneaker for vast swathes of the game. Before everything goes to hell and its Guns a Blazing of course. Plus, there is even a good story and characters I care about hidden within.
I’ve updated my post with some examples and how to. For your post specifically it looks like you need to add the periods (or parentheses) after the numbers and the rest will work out fine.
Golf Story was close behind Cuphead. Loved the concept though it lasted maybe one course too long for its own good.
The “let me love you” runners up:
Wolfenstein 2 - does not get along with my PC
Nier: Automata - I need to push through the beginning from what everyone is saying, but with so many other good games to play that’s a hard ask
Super Mario Odyssey - nothing technically wrong with it, and it was fine as a game. The design choice to jam pack every level with upwards of a hundred moons fell flat. I didn’t feel a sense of accomplishment and got at most an “oh, that’s neat” when I figured out how to grab one.
Zelda: Breath of the Wild - low durability destructable weapons combined with a small inventory? When did Zelda become yet another early access open world survival game?
Ooooh. Picking five is harder than I thought. But here it goes (and I picked only games I have played a lot of this year - there are tons of other games that I haven’t really played and would probably have made the list if I had, and I’ll list them below):
NieR: Automata. I never thought a game would manage to cover existentialism, transhumanism, and other philosophical boundaries in such a thoughtful, insightful, and enjoyable manner. I don’t remember a game that fused graphics, music, writing and gameplay in such a manner as to elevate every single part of it, a game that was, like this one, so very much more than the sum of its parts. I know no other game that can be classified as a true work of art like this one. It’s my Game of the Year, of the Decade, maybe of the Century. We’ll see.
Nioh. I love Dark Souls. But I wanted that series to be 1. more beginner friendly, and 2. with good, meaningful random loot and crafting. Nioh is almost everything I wanted Dark Souls to be. Bonus points for being the only game I know with combat that implements proper kamae in a deeply satisfying manner.
Persona 5. My first Persona, and a really interesting take on Jungian psychology and Japanese culture and mysticism. Interesting (if a bit too on-the-nose at times) story, cool characters, fantastic UI, and an amazing soundtrack.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel. Of course, this game came out a long time ago in the consoles, but I was glad to see it finding its way to the PC this year. The Legend of Heroes series is fantastic, with many lovable characters, and its world-building is second to none. Trails of Cold Steel streamlined the “quartz” system and added some nice tweaks to the combat system, but left the heart of the series unchanged. A very enjoyable game, but be aware that there’s a lot of reading to do.
Tales of Berseria. The best Tales of game I’ve played. Granted, I only played Berseria, Zestiria and a bit of Symphonia, so there might be better ones. But the way the characters are portrayed and developed in this game is fantastic. The combat system is really fun too (most of the time), and much improved over Zestiria. It’s fun to play and explore, but the real treat is in the relationships between the characters, particularly the main character of Velvet Crowe; she’s not just a pretty face with a somewhat questionable wardrobe, but a fantastically complex and well written character. I really enjoyed my time with this game, and I’m so sad to see it forgotten in nearly every end-of-year list around that I had to make sure it figured in my own end of year list.
Honorable mentions:
There are lots of great games I’ve bought but didn’t play nearly enough to tell how good they are. A short(ish) list with no comments:
Nordic Weasel Wargames rule sets.
With multiple wargames rules releases this year, each one blending meaningful decision making and high chaos, this one man operation dominated my wargames play this year. Like One Hour Wargames before him Ivan seems intent on getting a careers worth of game design done within a few short years. He shows no signs of slowing down. If I had to pick one of his excellent designs he released this year as my number 1 I would plump for his latest Squad Hammer, simple, flexible and demands the players change the rules on the fly to suit their needs. Superb.
https://www.wargamevault.com/browse/pub/5701/Nordic-Weasel-Games
Ghost Recon Wildlands PC game
The definitive comfort open world shooter. Easy to get in and out, easy gunplay, fun stealth a beautiful world with no gates and a simple to skip storyline. Wonderful.
Field of Glory 2 PC game
When a true master game designer has a release it demands attention and Richard Bodley Scott is the wise old craftsman marking each cut in contrast to the spirited youthful exuberan tfireball of Nordic Weasel. A well crafted superbly balanced game that rewards play after play.
Mongoose Traveller 2nd edition Pen & Paper RPG
Simply the best edition of Traveller since New Era. Got me back into RPG’s. Apparently The Great Rift just released is also fantastic. We shall see.
Sniper Elite 4/ Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 PC games
I tried to split them but couldn’t Both flawed but highly enjoyable sniper games. What one does well the other does poorly and visa versa. Play both and stealth snipe to your hearts content.
Golf Story Switch
Not just the best Golf RPG released in a decade but the best console game I have played this year. Fun gameplay a genuinely funny storyline and very content rich. You can tell the developers really had fun making this game. It shows.
@Rod_Humble I don’t think that formatting works. You need to use either “1)” or “1.”, not combine them to"1.)" :)
Fair enough :) Fixed.
Total War: Warhammer 2 - It’s a retread, but doing a fantastic game even better is fine in my book. Some nice QoL features, an improved campaign, and the addition of Mortal Empires as by far the largest TW campaign to date push this one to the top.
XCOM 2: War of The Chosen - I hate putting two games that are essentially large expansions at the top of this list, but this expansion hugely improved XCOM2 from a good game to a great one. I really can’t praise it enough. The only reason it isn’t #1 is that I don’t know if my heart can handle another Ironman run, so I only played it through the once. But what great fun.
RimWorld - The first Dwarf fortress style game to not bounce off of me, had quite a bit of fun with this one, and imagine I will get more out of it in the future if I ever start exploring some of the mods.
Divinity: Original Sin 2 - A fantastic combat system and fun RPG. Sure, the story wasn’t the greatest, and the last act was definitely lower quality than the first, but I still deeply enjoyed my time with this game.
Monster Slayers - Just as a wild card pick. For a game I had zero expectations for, I had a remarkable amount of fun with this.
Honorable Mentions - The open world games: Breath of the Wild, Horizon Zero Dawn, Assassin’s Creed: Origins, Mass Effect Andromeda. All perfectly nice games with beautiful visuals and nice gameplay. But at the end of the day I won’t be replaying them, and I’d only give them a recommendation to people that enjoy the genre. The Witcher 3 had a better story, a more artfully constructed universe, and was simply a better RPG and Skyrim was a better “explore a fantastic world” sandbox.
Indeed. Fixed.
Edit: Added #4.
Wut aboot Bomber Crew?
Whoa. Wut?
Well crap, I wanted to be the first one to claim Mass Effect Andromeda as my game of the year, now I just look like a ‘me too!’ But still -
Mass Effect Andromeda - my Xbox tells me this was my most played game last year and I believe it, it took me over for probably a solid month when it was released. Andromeda gave me wonderful shooting mechanics, beautiful worlds to explore, interesting characters to meet and an overarching sense of exploration that taps right into what I love about spacefaring games. It also gave me an unfinished plot, a bunch of samey FedEx quests, and apparently a single model of Asari reused for each character. In the balance, I had a blast. It’s my flawed gem and I burn with resentment that it may be the last time I get to spend exploring that world. I will not go gently into that good night.
SOMA - released in 2016 for most platforms, but in December 2017 for Xbox One. I had watched a Let’s Play when it was getting buzz and I really liked what I saw. Finally getting the chance to play for myself I got to immerse myself in its dead world, working to preserve the memory of humanity from a catastrophic event. It’s not so much a fun experience as an enveloping, engaging one. I recommend it highly.
Life is Strange: Before the Storm - I continue to work my way through the growing subgenre of stressed-out Pacific Northwest teen girls (next up: What Remains of Edith Finch!), and really loved spending more time in the town of Arcadia. It was great spending more time with Chloe and getting to know Rachel in this more low-key prequel, with only the barest hints of the supernatural backing things up. In this game, it was the details where they set their hooks - the little game of D&D you could join in the first episode, the ad-libbed flirtation during a presentation of The Tempest, letting you fix up and kit out a beat up old pick up truck. So much in the little things, you almost forgot you were watching two girls with a preordained doom. I was sorry to see it end.
Thimbleweed Park - a wonderful throwback to point’n’click adventures that I continue to carry a torch for. They still make them of course, but not like this - not with tricky puzzles that require attention paid to all the details. Detractors mock the cat mustache puzzle, and they’re right to do so, but to paint an entire genre with a single illogical task is a mistake. This one is like settling down with an Agatha Christie novel, or a Sean Connery Bond movie. It’s timeless.
Destiny 2 - I called this a disappointment in another thread and I stand by that, but I can’t deny that it keeps me in its orbit. I still think Bungie has the mechanics of the run and gun shooter down cold, better than just about anyone else, and flying around the solar system shooting weird robots and aliens in the head so they disappear in a puff of purple smoke, well that just tickles the old reptile brain. It’s really more Destiny 1.5, but I knew it was a snake when I picked it up. It’s a heck of a time killer.
So, that works out to three indie, two AAA games, which sounds about right for my year. There’s a bunch I didn’t get to yet, but plan to in the coming year, stuff like Prey and Wolfenstein 2 and Dishonored 2 and who knows what else. Still, I enjoyed what I did make time for and had a pretty good year gaming-wise. Here’s hoping that trend continues.
Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus: The crazy story is what puts this at the top for me. It through in so many unexpected moments that were sometimes shocking, funny, and / or emotional. The action was good, but not ground breaking. Thanks for not throwing in those boss battles from the first game.
Through the Ages: I don’t play this as much as I would if it were on PC, but it is such a cool remix of a Civ-type game. The random cards make it do the game doesn’t play out the same every time.
XCOM 2: War of the Chosen: All the new stuff just makes XCOM 2 a more well-rounded game. The Chosen were a bit too gimmicky and could be a little annoying, but the basic formula is a good one and got better with the expansion.
Horizon Zero Dawn: I’m only about 8-10 hours into the game, but enough to have a feel for it. This does a lot of things well, but the writing isn’t The Witcher 3 level good. I like Aloy alot - her dialog, the way her lines are delivered by the voice actor, her attitude. I feel similar about Rost. I can’t say the side quest NPCs have held up nearly as well. I’m enjoying the overall story, even when something predictable happens. The combat is good, the world is beautiful. I’m not sure yet if there is a reason to just explore as I haven’t stumbled upon much. I try to use the compass as little as I can and use the map to get my bearings while heading to a quest location.
The Golf Club 2: It’s been so long since I’ve played PC golf and it was good to get back. It can take some work to figure out how to hold the controller to usually get a straight shot. Most of the courses are user made, so quality can vary. Some users get too aggressive with their green layout and that can make for some frustrating play, but the game itself is a lot of fun.
Honorable Mentions
Cuphead : Excellent on every front - gameplay, graphics, sound. It is more difficult than I’d like as I’m making very slow progress on island 2, but I haven’t broken down and done the easy versions of the levels. Sticking with normal so far.
Opus Magnum
Very clever game. I didn’t realize how many ways a problem could be solved until I saw other players’ solutions. It hasn’t been difficult to get a solution, but I’ve banged my head against the wall for hours trying to optimize a solution.
Monster Slayers
It can be a little grindy, but this is a great deck-based dungeon crawler. Combat is resolved by playing cards. A lot of different classes to choose from that make the game feel different. I can’t believe I put over 100 hours into this game.
Prey
This teetered on being an excellent game for me, but there are three things that held it back. I didn’t enjoy the backtracking I had to do, I hated when I had to go out into space, and the enemy design just didn’t do it for me. I enjoyed the story and initial exploration of areas. It felt like a real place. The action was good.
Pinball FX 3
I simply have fun chasing high scores in this game. I have trouble knowing what I need to do in what order on many tables, but it doesn’t stop me from having fun trying to hit the flashing things and keep the ball from draining.
Antihero: I definitely don’t like it as much as lordkosc, but I don’t think most people like their family members as much as he likes Antihero.
OOTP Baseball 18: Every once in a while I enjoy reliving the Ron Guidry of 1978 and progressing into the Don Mattingly era.
It takes this from the “I aint been shot mum” style rules in the modern era but it has a far older lineage.
For each situation it gives you certain guidelines and suggestions but insists at the end you and your fellow player “call it” yourselves.
So for example I might decide my hover tanks are +1 to hit during my turn because they moved over a swamp and are higher. Next turn however if they didnt move I may say they have landed and thus are in cover at -2 to hit. This kind of judgement based approach removes dozens of rules in a stroke. It allows you to craft very complex situational rules on the spot.
It gets back to the homebrew ethos of the 70’s & 80’s in mini’s wargames and harkens back to the earlier refereed Kriegspiel approach. Essentially it says that the more formal rules you have the less interesting and more rigid the game will be.
So the game designers job becomes to give a flexible framework & tools for the players to ad lib and invent. The examples are there to help that thinking rather than looking things up.
I find it a welcome return of an old and classic design method and perhaps far more interestingly it leans into an aspect of wargames that computers are inferior at. “Just in time” judgement systems in AI is an emerging field and one I am very interested in.
8-15 hours really is the sweet spot for that game. If I had stopped there it would have placed much higher on my list. Unfortunately the story and pacing really drag in the mid game and late game is a mess of unskippable sections where you’re not fighting cool robots while you listen to a middling YA sci-fi plot that the developers are convinced is the most important story ever told.
Sure.