Let's vote on the Qt3 Forum's Game Of The Year for 2016!

Games
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What do we call this annual tradition? The Quarterlies? The Forum Choice awards? The Annual Official Unofficial Qt3 Game of the Year?

All of those! We do this yearly, and now that everyone’s had time to fill their holiday game sale loot stockings to overflowing, it’s time to vote.

Here’s how it works: you simply list your top 5 games of 2016. I’ll keep track of them on a shareable google spreadsheet. Put your picks in order, so that this is a weighted choice. Your first pick will get 5 points, your fifth pick will get one. That way I can aggregate popularity to come up with a final set of winners.

Feel free to provide commentary on your picks, too! Those are great to read, and can sometimes sway folks to seeing a game you love in a new light. This is also a thread where a lot of us find games we might have otherwise skipped to add to our backlogs thanks to said commentary. All I ask for clarity is that you do something to set the game name off for me. Bold it, for instance.

Also, give your list a little thought before you post it. Folks are going to want to revise their lists, and that’s part of this undertaking and no worries. As long as everyone’s not revising their lists on the fly three or four times, we’re fine; the fewer revisions, the easier it is for me to keep the gremlins away from the final tally. If you do change your list up, let me know because I keep the score as this thread goes, and I might not notice.

Finally…what games were released in 2016? Here’s a pretty comprehensive list.. Feel free to list any game–console, PC, mobile, etc. that you like. We’ve always discouraged listing Early Access games in this space in the past and I’ll reiterate that here…but if you gotta, you gotta, I suppose.

So make with the listing already! Let’s put a deadline on this of Tuesday night, January 10 at 11:59 pm PST. That should give everyone over a full week to make a list.

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  1. Batman: The Telltale Series
  2. Stardew Valley
  3. Rise of the Tomb Raider
  4. Total War: Warhammer
  5. Hearts of Iron IV
3
  1. The Witcher 3
  2. Forza Horizon 3
  3. Puzzle and Dragon
  4. Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes
  5. Links 2003
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This is hard for me because there are a lot of games I wished I had played more this year, and I didn’t, so I don’t know how good they are.

Anyway, here it goes:

  1. The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine
  2. Shadow Warrior 2
  3. Total War: Warhammer
  4. Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen
  5. Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE

Honorable mentions go to:

  1. God Eater: Resurrection / God Eater 2: Rage Burst
  2. Offworld Trading Company
  3. Grim Dawn
  4. Stardew Valley
  5. Dark Souls 3
  6. Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Ninja Storm 4
  7. Tyranny
  8. Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun
  9. Conception II: Children of the Seven Stars
  10. SteamWorld Heist HD
  11. Starbound
  12. Seraph
  13. Owlboy
  14. Ray Gigant
  15. No Man’s Sky
  16. Graviteam Tactics: Mius-Front
5

There are a lot of games I wish I had a chance to try, or many genres that I don’t play, but here is my list:

  1. Offworld Trading Company - I am not a big RTS fan and don’t like games that go too fast, but this game did so much just right and I never did ever tire of it. I would still be playing now if I didn’t get so distracted with other things, but I anticipate this being a title I keep installed on every machine I build going forward.

  2. Starbound - I can finally vote for this as it was finally released this year. This is more of a lifetime award for me as I put almost 200 hours into this going through all the content at least 3 times over the early access period. My wife and I had some truly memorable moments playing co-op in this, discovering things as we went along.

  3. Grim Dawn - It was great to see this game finally get released and have some success. While I never did finish it, I could appreciate a lot of what it did to further flesh out the action RPG scene.

  4. Stardew Valley - This is the only game I didn’t purchase or play, but I did read a lot of threads on it about the adventures of many people and did lean over to watch my wife play it for hours and hours. I am sure I will pick it up and enjoy it just as much as many others when I finally give it a shot.

  5. Civilization VI - It did enough new that it really captured me again. The new districts and research bonuses helped freshen up a lifetime loved series.

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1.Stardew Valley - even after years of asking for Harvest Moon and Rune Factory style games to go PC, an indie developer not only does it, but he does it better than most of the more recent iterations and snares several new fans in the process.

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This was a pretty weak year for me. (Of course, I didn’t play everything so it could just be me.) I hate picking an expansion pack as my favorite game of the year, but I don’t have much choice.

  1. The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine. They indirectly improved the combat by changing the encounters. They’re less frequent and more interesting: boss fights with story implications, and slicing through hordes of enemies at the forts. The story picks up late in the game for a masterful conclusion and a touching end to the series.

  2. Salt and Sanctuary. I can’t say this is an objectively good game that everyone should rush out to play. But I appreciated their take on a 2D Souls game. It felt fresh, which is important to me these days.

  3. Dark Souls 3. I’m very tired of the formula now. It was still a nice adventure the first time through, and I loved playing co-op in one of the invasion zones.

  4. Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen (PC). This one had a promising start. I love the idea of DMC-style combat in an RPG. It just became too shallow toward the end.

  5. Mushihimesama (PC). I wasn’t sure I liked this much at first until the audio-visual design started to grow on me. I also stopped trying to use an arcade stick to play shoot 'em ups. It’s so much easier to pick up a gamepad that’s always nearby. Then once I start playing, I’m hooked.

One beat 'em up short of a top 5 lockout over the last two years! TMNT failed me.

8

1 offworld trading company
2 dark souls 3
3 grim Dawn
4 twilight struggle

Nothing else from 2016 that I have played is worthy yet

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I will say this: between 2015 and 2016, it feels like we’ve hit a new golden age for gaming. Two really super strong years right in a row.

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Due to reasons, I didn’t spend anywhere near as much time as I should have with many new games this year. The only game I can put on my list in good conscience is:

1. Offworld Trading Company

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  1. Street Fighter 5
    While the game is super thin on content the fighting is probably the best I’ve seen. Enough so that I’m actually bothering to really learn SF.

  2. Overwatch
    Super well tuned and balanced fun. I like that they have managed to make support classes interesting.

  3. Battlefield 1
    Just a really solid shooter that is actually fun you play solo online.

  4. Division
    I’m a sucker for an action MMO and with Monster Hunter off on Nintendo somewhere and Destiny 2 a ways away Division occupied that slot. It’s a small genre, but I think Division did ok by it.

  5. Guilty Gear Revelator
    Because I your gonna beat someone up use anime to do it!

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Inside
Watch Dogs 2
Battlefield 1
Destiny: Rise of Iron

Inside is clearly the game that affected me most tho.

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Hey, one of my favorite threads each year! I started this list thinking I had things nailed down and then remembered a few games that made this a struggle. To triggercut’s point in the right year I could easily make any of my top 5 my GotY.

  1. Doom - Hard to believe how quickly opinions changed from the beta to release. I’m guilty of writing this game off based on the beta until opinions of the campaign came out that it didn’t suck. Turns out, they were right!

  2. Stardew Valley - For various reasons I was in the mood for a lot of laid back, “comfort food” gaming this year. Stardew fit the bill bringing a long console exclusive genre to the PC, and all from a one man team.

  3. Dragon Quest Builders - More comfort food, taking the core of Minecraft and wrapping it in the Dragon Quest universe. I completely bounced off Minecraft but giving purpose to the building (one NPC asks you to build an infirmary so they can tend to sick people) made things click.

  4. Ratchet & Clank - I touched on this in another thread, but this is the first game that I felt delivered on the “Pixar movie” level of graphics that has been talked about for a while. Past that, it was a great franchise reboot with all the crazy weapons expected in a R&C game.

  5. Tom Clancy’s The Division - An interesting spin on the ARPG genre – what if it took place in a modern setting (a beautifully realistic Manhattan) under the guise of a tactical cover shooter? I heard this game had a rough launch and early patches, but patch 1.5 and the season pass DLC (specifically Survival) have made it a great experience jumping in as a new player recently.

Honorable mentions go to (in no order) Tokyo Mirage Sessions, Overcooked, Forza Horizon 3, Offworld Trading Company, and Titanfall 2.

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  1. Civilization VI - Approaching 100 hours even though it was released at the start of my busy work season, despite a variety of oddities and poor AI, it still has me totally hooked. Love the new city building, something that, for a player like me, makes a world of difference.

  2. Pillars of Eternity: The White March (Part 2) - This release had me back playing a second round of PoE, finishing it up at 187 hours, my current Steam list’s second most played game after Civilization V.

  3. Grim Dawn - It may not have grabbed me quite as thoroughly as I thought it should have, but it sits at #6 on my list of Steam list for playtime hours, and it promises plenty more hack’n’slash enjoyment as it fills out.

Other games may have made the list if I had time to play/finish them. Not yet sure on The Witness, for instance, so leaving it off the list. Really, considering the games I’ve played, only Civ VI approaches GotY status but I figure that neither PoE nor Grim Dawn are going to get enough votes for mine to matter so consider them honourable mentions.

Problem with these lists, even though I like reading them, is that I usually don’t get to the games released in a given year until a year or two later. I dropped being an early adopter of games long ago.

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Cool. At first I thought there was no way I could make a list, but turns out I played more new games than I thought this year.

  1. Stardew Valley
  2. American Truck Simulator
  3. Offworld Trading Company
  4. Reigns
  5. The Division

Honorable mentions:
Shadow Warrior 2, Ratchet & Clank, Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture

Games that would probably be on the list, if I’d yet played them, but I haven’t.
Doom, The Hitman, Last Guardian, No Man’s Sky

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1. XCOM 2
2. Doom
3. Offworld Trading Company
4. Shadow Warrior 2
5. Sunless Sea: Zubmariner Expansion (if allowed)

Edited: 3:45 PM

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1 Firewatch : I hope this is the start of a new era of gaming, where games can be smart and funny and clever and sell huge amounts of copies and that at some point, more popular games are made that have nothing to do with killing something than popular games are made that are all about killing things

2 Banner Saga 2 : absolute banger. love all my characters, they are my Scandi buds <3

3 Dishonored 2 : ok so I only completed the first 3 missions and for first 1.5 I was like “uh, I am not sure I like this any more” which confused me as I loved the first Dishonored. Then it clicked. It’s fucking brilliant.

4 Oxenfree : see #1 - hot damn this was a great game with superb writing and although it didn’t have the emotional punch of the absolutely dynamite Life is Strange it did have some good “feels”

5 Virginia : see #1 - this is sort of a wild card pick as it’s not much of a game, you don’t have any real choices as such. But it’s the second best looking thing I played in 2016 (see #1), and I was consistently blown away by how the game told me so much about what was going on in each scene through expression and design. Nobody speaks. wtf! wonderful experience. Would quite happily spend most of my gaming in 3-5 hour meanders like this and #1

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You mean the expansion Zubmariner, right? The original game came out in 2015.

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Yeah, that’s right. Should I keep it there or change it? I edited the original post. If expansions don’t count I’ll switch it.

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1. XCOM 2
I liked the first reimagining, and the sequel plays up the strengths it had. It clearly embraces the shift towards digital boardgame, and it is better for it. I’ll eventually get around to another playthrough with the DLC.

2. Offworld Trading Company
To me it feels like a boardgame that simply can’t work as a boardgame. I am terrible at it because I just do not adapt and do what I must do to win, but rather build the engine I want. I need to play it more, as in really play it to win it.

3. Renowned Explorers: More to Explore
Not really a big expansion, but a chance to sneak in a vote for Renowed Explorers: International Society. I missed this game when it first released. It is not perfect, it gets a bit same-y or screw-y but it it is a diamond in the rough. I hope they make another expansion or a sequel that makes it a bit more involved. I really enjoyed the overland part… can’t someone make an exploration management game!?!

4. Civilization VI
It is not that bad. It builds on the many good parts of Civ V. But it needs some work. A lot of work, even. I did not dislike what I played, but it didn’t grab me. Looking forward to seeing how it is after the first real expansion.

5. Stellaris
Also not that bad. A bit lacking. But getting better. At its best it felt Star Control-y, but then the half-baked empire and fleet management set in. I need to revisit it.

Also worth mentioning:
Twilight Struggle – I’d put it on the list, but it feels wrong. It is game of the year 2005, not 2016.