Qt3 PRESENTS:Create your own year-end awards, 2015

2015 Catass Awards: Diablo 3, one of the best skinner boxes in the business. Runner up: Fallout 4. The buffet may not have the best stuff, but good lord is there a lot of it. Consolation prize: Elite: Dangerous. It takes about 130 hours to absolutely, positively realize that’s there nothing in this game but 1984 Elite and pretty graphics.

2015 Best Example of Devs actually improving things in a Sequel: Dying Light. Took everything that was broken in Dead Island and fixed it, then added an (almost) not annoying parkour system.

GOTY that I didn’t finish and don’t plan on finishing: The Witcher. I find some games just exhausting, for sundry reasons – it could be the combat system, a plodding story, or general orneriness. All of the * Souls games are in that category. The Witcher just wore out its welcome. It’s not you, darling, it’s me.

Best Board Game I’ll Probably Never Get The Right Mix of Board Game and Homeland Fans to Play: Homeland.

[B]The Wish I Could Zoom Out More Award: /B Witcher 3, Dragon Age 3. Let me take control of the camera you wankers! There is no excuse! None!

Game That Depressed Me For A Week And Yet I Will Play it Again Award: Life is Strange. Can I go back in time again to make things right?

Wargaming is Fun Again Award: Order of Battle: Pacific. Someone finally improved upon the Panzer General model. Shame that this game does not get more notice here.

Keep Downloading Steam Workshop Items and Never Play It Award: Cities: Skylines. Someday I WILL return.

[B]The Meh, Why Do I Feel Compelled To Keep Playing Award: /B Fallout 4, Wastelands 2 and Pillars of Eternity. I have no doubt I will play each of these again too.

The Fuck Me, I Am Playing This Again? Award: Europa Universalis IV. 500 hours and counting.

The Fuck Me, I Actually Spent Money On This Shit? Award: Worlds of Magic

The Fast Start, Faded Faster Award: (tie) Train Fever and Windward. Both are cool for about three hours before you realize that is all there is.

The Qt3 Circle Jerk Award: Massive Chalice. So incredibly overrated by those on this site.

Chicken Duck Woman Thing Waiting In the Bushes Award: Rebuild 3. It is the same thing over and over yet I keep playing it.

I wish more people did the Stupidest Fun award.

The BROLO SANTOSI Award for best exploding barrels in a year with a Just Cause sequel: BROFORCE.

The This Isn’t Even My Final Album Award: Crypt of the Necrodancer. The base soundtrack is already great and then they throw in more great variations on it just for fun.

The Accidental Hipster Award: Me. 2015 was an amazing year of gaming for me, even though I somehow haven’t gotten around to playing Witcher 3, Bloodborne or MGSV. Too many good games this year even without the big guns!

The classic game you keep checking coming soon for a remake for: Empire of the Fading Suns
The classic game you keep checking coming soon for a remake for (Runner up): Star Fleer Command 2
The classic game you keep checking coming soon for a remake for (Runner of runner up): Cyberstorn

The hey this is a cool genre award: Pillars of Eternity: How did I never play one of these party-based, infinity engine, D&D whatever games before? The game itself has its problems, but I found the mix of tactical and action RPG combat pretty compelling. I never finished either torchlight game, but I absolutely intend on getting through this one. And I’ve picked up Baldur’s Gate II from Steam this holiday sale. I hear it’s okay.

The I’ve finally tried single player this year after 100 hours of multiplayer award: Wargame Red Dragon: Turns out 1) I’m still atrociously bad at the multiplayer after this long, and 2) the single player campaigns that a lot of people seemed to like are actually pretty good.

The I’ll probably not play another one of these games award: Rebel Galaxy: I like it and I’m going to keep playing. The music is fantastic too, but space trucking and shooting is only fun for so long.

The game that made me start participating actively in QT3: BSG Honorable mention: Chaos Reborn : QT3 is a pretty great place, despite being filled with traitorous Cylons. (Also thanks to Craig and Knightsaber for putting BSG together and to Belouski for organizing the CR league)

All the truly Great Games Always Get a Backlash Award: Now goes to Massive Chalice as well I guess. I was avoiding Massive Chalice until now despite owning 2 copies, but now that I know there’s a backlash, maybe it’s one I shouldn’t avoid. All the truly great games always get people on both sides of the fence, right? Except maybe Star Control 2. Nah, someone out there’s gotta think Star Control 2 was overrated.

Using Star Control 2 as a comparison to Massive Chalice… man, that would get you set on fire inside of a bunch of tires in some countries.

Game That I Still Can’t Decide If It’s Actually a Game Or Not: Elite Dangerous: Horizons - Sometimes I log in, decide I don’t want to do anything, log off. It’s frustrating/awesome. I think.

Game That Will Win GOTY Everywhere That I Finally Bought and Installed But Haven’t Started Yet - The Witcher 3, of course. I sort of would rather play 2 first. And maybe 1.

Game That Is Not Great But I’ve Played Almost 20 Hours of Anyway - Car Mechanic Simulator 2015 - Laugh it up.

Game in a Continuing Series that I Haven’t Really Tried to Finish But Have Nearly Gotten Through the Next Game in the Series Twice - Assassin’s Creed: Unity…it’s been quite patched for a long time but it’s not clicking. CLICK WILL YA?

Episodic Game That I Think Is Ultra Amazing But Have Only Played One Episode of Even Though I Own the Whole Thing and Can’t Even Explain Why I Haven’t Continued Because I Have No Excuses - Life is Strange.

Almost as bad as playing VtM: Bloodlines with your mom in the room. Therese was a bit… suggestive.

Best game that kept me playing all year so I saved a ton of cash on other games since I picked them all up at the Black Friday sales: Destiny.

Most Ungrateful Character: Alyssa in Life is Strange. I saved her from getting splashed with mud, hit by a thrown roll of toilet paper, and getting hit in the head with a football. And yet one time, she gets knocked into a pool and I get blamed for not being there to save her.

Game that came out in 2015 that I didn’t enjoy that I played again in 2020 and was truly great in retrospect: Bloodborne

Game that got all the attention in 2015 that really stood the test of time: The Witcher 3