Ninth Coint & Plick: The ~60 best games of 2015 according to ILX

Thanks to everyone who voted. Here are the top 60-or-so games, as determined by ILX ballots, of 2015.

Generally, this year seemed to see increased buy-in on eighth generation consoles, as well as continued strength for the Steam platform. This appeared to come at the expense of the mobile platform, which had one of its weaker years in recent memory (that, or everyone was still only playing Marvel Puzzle Quest).

As always, the ballots were incredibly fractured, with each ballot having an average of 2.5 games that nobody else ranked... but that's the magic of Coint & Plick!

Assuming no delays...
Wed Feb 17: up to #41
Thu Feb 18: up to #21
Fri Feb 19: up to #01

Without further ado, let's roll this darn thing out.

http://i.imgur.com/xQNvKAh.png
#50 - Brain Guzzlers From Beyond! - Steph Cherrywell
10 Points
1 Vote

BTW: there are five little icons on each image that I got from some stupid video game based internet wingding font. They go: Mobile / Handheld / Console / Computer / Browser.

Yes, browser is a 3.5mm minijack. I couldn't find a good image in the entire thing that implied internet or whatever. OH WELL.

http://i.imgur.com/X2beeJR.png
#50 - Captain Toad Treasure Tracker - Nintendo EAD Tokyo
10 Points
1 Vote

Brain Guzzlers was one of those that made my extended ballot but had to cut to make space. Really wonderful, funny, well-written IF w/ some decent puzzles that weren't too hard. Also the IF Comp winner iirc so not too long (bc they all have to come in under 2 hours of gameplay). Def worth checking out, imo, even though I was unable to vote for it.

http://i.imgur.com/RejqwuY.png
#50 - Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes - Steel Crate Games
10 Points
1 Vote

Keep forgetting to play that! Maybe I should bite the bullet and print out the manual right now.

http://i.imgur.com/khOILCM.png
#50 - Lost Constellation - Finji
10 Points
1 Vote

http://i.imgur.com/wAkZy2E.png
#50 - Midnight. Swordfight. - Chandler Groover
10 Points
1 Vote

(gotta grab food, will keep updating after a short break)

Lost Constellation looks gorgeous! How is it?

Can't remember if I was the one voting for Captain Toad but it's a great example of how the Mario ludic universe can give birth to amazing, weird things that wouldn't be released if Mario wasn't attached in some form. This wouldn't have been a console retail game without that connection, and it's one of the sweetest low-key lighthearted games Nintendo has made in the past few years.

http://i.imgur.com/kUJjAN4.png
#50 - Minkomora - Kikopa Games
10 Points
1 Vote

Adam, "Lost Constellation" is brief and extremely simple in its mechanics (it's basically an adventure game without puzzles) but I found it funny and moving in a quiet, contemplative way. It can be downloaded for free here: https://finji.itch.io/lost-constellation

does minkomora have gameplay? i just wandered around a bunch but couldn't figure out how to actually do anything productive.

http://i.imgur.com/7o0GUnO.png
#50 - Renowned Explorers - Abbey Games
10 Points
1 Vote

one of my votes. really excellent game w/ deep/complex interlocking mechanics. i beat it w/ maybe 10 different teams before i got tired of it bc unfortunately there isn't a huge amount of variety in terms of places to go (you go to the same places over and over and eventually you know all the events + challenges you're going to see) but there is a lot of variety in how to build your team + maximize/exploit the various systems in play.

it's a very "gamey" game. really no storyline to speak of - no character development, etc. but very creative combat (you can resolve every combat w/ friendly, devious or aggressive maneuvers) which is nice since combat so often just means "aggressive." protip: anna is the most powerful leader in the game by far.

Wandering around is about the extent of the gameplay I could find in "Minkomora," but I found it compelling as an exploration game. On her website Soft Chambers, merritt kopas (who's now withdrawn from game design and criticism, apparently) described her intentions in this way: "soft chambers is bubbling excitedly about games which encourage us to set our own goals and terms of engagement rather than placing us into scenarios with clear conditions for success and failure, and hopes that such game experiences can begin to help us explore and unsettle our relationships to digital play."

i kept going back + forth over whether i preferred it to the curious expedition - but the latter, despite some troubling colonial/racist connotations, is really just so much more ambitious in really important ways. they're both roguelikes, and it makes sense to compare them to each other since thematically (tho not mechanically) they share so much in common. they both have between-stage areas where you can upgrade your team. the central structure in both is a series of different locations that you visit. they both involve collecting treasure, and they both involve scoring high enough points that you're the "greatest" adventurer. they're both roguelikes without saves (tho renowned has a lite non-achievement mode, don't remember if curious does as well). but other than that they are so totally different from one another in drastic + meaningful ways, mechanically, tonally, obv visually - that's what i like least about renowned. it looks like a cheap flash cartoon.

http://i.imgur.com/0U7fufZ.png
#50 - Saints Row: Gat Out Of Hell - Volition, High Voltage Software
10 Points
1 Vote

xxp i've become really judgy about non-gameplay games. i think there is a way to do player-driven goals (like cities: skylines) but you need interactive systems. ultimately this is what turned me off to Her as well (though that did some things very well). all you need is some level of challenging interaction: Brain Guzzlers like most IF does not have particularly complicated gameplay mechanics but it does have puzzles. i feel like games where you just wander around and the game serves the content to you without any work are not really games but maybe more like multimedia art installations? but at that pt you have to ask what you're gaining from placing it in the genre "games." like was Second Life a game really, or more like a virtual location where maybe games could occur within (but generally in my experience didn't).

Brain Guzzlers... really is a good little IF. Steph Cherrywell is great at characterisation and the games of hers I've played have all shared a fun youthful adventure vibe without being too childish. Midnight. Swordfight. on the other hand has a couple of o_O moments of very adult stuff, but its mechanics are brilliantly innovative and depending on your choices it can get extremely surreal.

Would very much like to play Keep Talking though I think I'm likely to be terrible at it.

Re: non-gameplay "games", I get what Mordy is saying but at the same time I don't think it hurts either the gaming community or the art games/walking simulators/whatever to call them games. The lack of clear ludic elements does mean they stand apart from puzzlers or shooters or [insert style of choice], but I feel like they're more in-between than simply an art installation or a non-game.

yes i feel more and more like what makes a game a game needs to be relaxed. if i get a game and just enjoy walking around, it is good enough for me, it serves its purpose. there is a tendency in modern games to make them goal-oriented and it's been disheartening to see people (not here but elsewhere) say that games are pointless unless there is something "real" to achieve for your efforts. ie. "is there any reason to keep playing this post-ending or is it pointless?" people are missing the entire purpose of PLAY. yeah games have these systems in place but i consider them just a rough guide. "here are some toys, do what you want with them".

I'm not really a genre stickler but I do think the term 'game' implies competitive/goal oriented elements in addition to free play ludic elements. It doesn't mean that games that don't involve competitive elements shouldn't be played, or voted for, etc just that there's an expectation I have when I sit down to play a game that lately has been thwarted/frustrated by games that don't have those elements.

*something something Wittgenstein mumble mumble*

i would like to like IF more than i do; there's something about updated choose your own adventure books where my attention wanders too fast.
i blame the internet

IF is a double whammy problem in the age of ADD internet use. Reading and puzzle solving. Both quiet, long processes.

Sorry all! Work :S I'm back

http://i.imgur.com/Mzmxmkh.png
#50 - Splatoon - Nintendo
10 Points
1 Vote

Splatoon looks fun but i will probably never get a chance to play it

http://i.imgur.com/khwJbpj.png
#50 - Talos Principle - Croteam
10 Points
1 Vote

I'm not big on competitive shooters in general but Splatoon was so cheerful and so damn fresh in style and execution I had to get into it. And the single player, while short, is a lot of fun and something I really hope they build on in future sequels. Like there were touches of Mario Galazy level ingenuity in platforming, boss fights etc - I think they could work with that foundation and end up with a masterful single playe rexperience.

Great looks
Great music
Great ink concept

http://i.imgur.com/5UdxC8f.png
#49 - Fran Bow - Killmonday Games
11 Points
1 Vote

http://i.imgur.com/r5R5j2m.png
#46 - Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions - Lucid Games
12 Points
1 Vote

Just started playing Geometry Wars 3 recently. Pretty badass and hard as hell. Like an ever-evolving Super Stardust.

They still make these huh

http://i.imgur.com/MDjJSbC.png
#46 - The Curious Expedition - Maschinen-Mensch
12 Points
1 Vote

http://i.imgur.com/iI1tGad.png
#46 - The Room 3 - Fireproof Games
12 Points
1 Vote

Don't know what curious expedition is

http://i.imgur.com/sHTZhn5.png
#45 - Pillars of Eternity - Obsidian Entertainment
12 Points
2 Votes

ah, my first vote. tbh i only played about 10 hours worth and then got distracted by life/another game and never came back. but i didn't play too many 2015 games, and i enjoyed my time with PoE, so i threw it on my ballot to pad it out a little. i imagine anyone with even a minor interest in games like Baldur's Gate would absolutely love it. for me, the idea of those kinds of old school western RPGs sounds better than the actual experience of playing them.

http://i.imgur.com/9rU8yqF.png
#44 - Invisible, Inc. - Klei Entertainment
13 Points
1 Vote

funny that my vote was the only one for Talos Principle, that's one i haven't played but enjoyed watching at a friend's place and really want to get to in 2016.

similar for Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, which i fully intend to ruin my relationship over, but so far i've only watched on Youtube.

Yeah I've watched quite a bit of Keep Talking.. on youtube. Not sure I'll play it but it's a great idea.

I sunk some time into Invisible Inc and enjoyed it quite a bit. I probably should have included it on my ballot. definitely worth the download, esp if the price has dropped since release.

http://i.imgur.com/hRMY5Zy.png
#42 - Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth - Nicalis, Inc., Edmund McMillen
14 Points
1 Vote

http://i.imgur.com/U48IkYI.png
#42 - Mad Max - Avalanche Studios
14 Points
1 Vote

^^^ the last game i ever did qa for (hopefully ever)

u guys are such weirdos how am i possibly the only votes for curious expedition, binding of isaac expansion, invisible inc and renowned explorers?!

http://i.imgur.com/b9T28vp.png
#41 - OlliOlli 2: Welcome to Olliwood - Roll7
14 Points
2 Votes

sell me on curious expedition and renowned explorers

That's it for today!

A fun bonus for today... some of you filled out your "disappointments of 2015" and here were the results:

Mentioned twice
Fallout 4
Star Wars Battlefront
Broken Age
Beginner's Guide
Not having time to play games/nobody playing games

Mentioned once
Tale of Tales quitting game design
Life is Strange Ep. 5
The slow death of the 7th generation of consoles
Telltale's Game of Thrones
Rayman Adventures
Her Story

u guys are such weirdos how am i possibly the only votes for curious expedition, binding of isaac expansion, invisible inc and renowned explorers?!

― Mordy, Wednesday, February 17, 2016 2:49 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Answer for me is that none of those are available for PS3 or Vita (aside from pre-expansion Binding Of Isaac). Plus that thing where I've still played very little that was released last year.

Broken Age
Beginner's Guide
Not having time to play games/nobody playing games
The slow death of the 7th generation of consoles
Telltale's Game of Thrones
Her Story

I've played more of Broken Age than I have of any other 2015 game that I didn't vote for. I'll keep on keepin' on but I'm not overly impressed thus far.

Wait, maybe I did vote for it. It wasn't very high on my ballot if I did.

lol @ three of my favourite games of last year being on the disappointments list.

em, will you rep for her story / beginners guide? or will anyone?
i found both to be clever, reasonably well executed failures.

i'm with you beginner's guide, emil.y (assuming that was one of your 3). i loved that game.

xpost we had a short discussion of beginner's guide here - The Stanley Parable - but i'm not sure it would change your mind

i liked her story! i found it fell squarely into the "nice surprise" department & not the "disappointment" one.

curious expedition is v evocative, w/ brutal mechanics (party wipes are super common), themes of colonization/exploitation (that are problematic in-as-far as they are a part of the game mechanics but never whitewashed - i'll talk more about these in a sec), weird supernatural elder gods type stuff, ok dice game combat mechanics. essentially each round you pick a place to go explore. you land your boat and there are various sites you need to find around the location. as you walk you lose sanity points. lose enough sanity points and terrible things start to happen to you including murder, cannibalism, theft, delusions, etc. you can regenerate your sanity by sleeping at various outdoor locations, or in a village. each location has villagers who represent the indigenous people. if they like you you can trade with them, rest at their village, recruit them (indigenous recruits generally will not move on w/ you since they want to stay home but you can convince them under some circumstances). you can also piss them off by killing local animals (who give trophies that can be traded for goods as well as meat that with a cook you can use to keep your sanity up), by stealing from their holy sites, raiding their crypts, etc. if you piss them off enough, they'll send out hunting parties to destroy you. yr party members can have various negative traits like racism, sexism, alcoholism, schizophrenia, kleptomania, pyromania that have various consequences. at the end of each location you pick a new perk, either donate your treasures and other finds for either cash (to buy supplies) or influence (the measure that ultimately determines if you win the game), and then recruit, get missions, etc, and repeat. each place gets increasingly more difficult. there's a lot of variety and all the places are procedurally generated. a v complex game w/ some problematic + provocative themes that acc to steam i've played 59 hours of this year [steam hours are always so embarrassing]

I will definitely rep for both Her Story and Beginner's Guide, but I might wait on a longer explanation of why until they place.

Actually I probably can't expand much more on Beginner's Guide than I did in the linked thread - my post was a bit waffly but basically got to the crux of the things I loved about it.

i voted her story as my disappointment both bc of the things we discussed above (that it's not really a game /in my eyes/) and bc while some of the story and performance was captivating at the time in hindsight i mostly remember brute force trying to find all the videos - and getting less and less back as i uncovered more and more. the big reveals came early on and then they were never seriously built upon (at least to my eyes). i think i wrote a longer thing about it that i included w my ballot.

i think something i really liked about Beginner's Guide was that it made me want to try to make my own game. like, coming away from it, i thought "hmmm, maybe i'll try to learn some really basic 3D modeling and make a weird game that takes place in one room or something." i can't think of many other games that prompt that same reaction.

i quit her story after an hour and i finished beginner's guide but i wish i hadn't.

i'll probably talk about it more when it places, but Life is Strange Ep. 5 was my big disappointment of the year. LiS was by far my favorite game this year, i ended up watching multiple Let's Plays of each chapter after playing it myself just to see how people reacted to certain painful choices. but after spending four episodes building up this elaborately detailed mystery, they ran out of money and put out a trite, truncated ending that has left me agitated ever since it ended. like, i refuse to accept that it's the real ending, and i'm convinced that someone over at DONTNOD has a bullet-point summary of how the plot with (vague spoilers) the Prestons and Pan Estates and the storm was REALLY was supposed to play out, and i won't be satisfied until i see it.

it sucks because i enjoyed episode 5 just fine, even the stuff they did on the cheap by reusing old assets ended up being really compelling. but there was so clearly supposed to be a different conclusion to the mysteries! it clouded all my enjoyment.

also i played Her Story in a group and i think it was the ideal way to experience it. we spent a lot of time theorizing and arguing over wtf was going on.

i played it in the dark on a laptop in 1-2 hour sessions at 2am and was pretty decently creeped out esp. by the flickering light behind the "monitor"

i was enjoying life is strange but stopped playing it after my punk bestie asked me to prove i could time-travel by predicting some mundane events of the next few seconds, and after successfully predicting a dropped glass, a speeding cop car, and some miscellaneous arrivals and departures, i misidentified an insect that was about to appear as a fly rather than a roach. "it's a sad day in alex-town," my friend said, and wouldn't believe i could time-travel. i thought "oh right, adventure games" and quit. i may still go back to it at some point; i probably would have already had everyone not been so down on the ending.

haha, i really want to say "pick it up again, it gets so much better!" but i'm duty-bound to note the diner sequence is followed by an even more terrible sequence where you search for bottles in a maze-like junkyard. BUT the last ~30 minutes of episode 2 is, like, the game moment i spent the most time thinking about/talking about all year, completely worth the clunky gameplay beforehand imo. and episodes 3 and 4 are really strong.

also i missed it the first time i scrolled through the thread, Fran Bow was on my ballot. it's a gory children's book come to life, Alice in Wonderland-esque, and just super weird and grotesque and interesting. it was created by a two-person team in sweden and i think it turned out really well considering their limited resources.

So Mad Max had a pretty middling (though still enjoyable enough) fighting system, it was awfully repetitive at times (scout a stronghold, take out perimeter defenses, punch punch punch) and the mini-boss battles were a joke (wait for attack, roll, punch).

But I had a stupid fun time driving around blowing up convoys and upgrading the car (even if it involved the tedium of collecting scrap). I put far more hours into it than it probably deserved, but I dig the world.

Geometry Wars 3 almost made my ballot, but didn't have the staying power the other games I voted for did.

Pluses: auto-aim really works great on a touchscreen, varying challenges keep things shaken up, fun things to unlock.

Minuses: I miss being bad at genuine dual stick and having to lock into a gridlike strafe pattern to keep my sanity. Auto-aim takes lots of the trickiness out of enemy management -- so instead of dodging to build up easily mowed-down enemy formations its just dodging and letting auto-aim pick 'em off. Set wavelike patterns also take some of the chaos/fun out of enemy management. Varying challenges take away from the core dynamic of these sorts of games, and make replaying failed levels repetitive. None of the unlocks really give all that much power.

The best version of GW I've played on mobile still.

Rayman adventures was my disappointment.

The first few rayman mobile games were so good, and rayman adventures went the mobile-micropayment route. Countdown timers limiting gameplay (tho not terribly obnoxiously so), a fixed relatively small set of levels, with randomized rewards, and semi-randomized level choice. So a few, like the "stealth" levels require replay because that's where the goodies are, but the same ones come up way too frequently, and all the levels where its about "figure the trick" get really boring to keep replaying. And there's not much reward for playing really well as opposed to "just ok enough." So it becomes tedious.

Arguably these are the same sorts of flaws that made angry birds 2 such a letdown -- randomized levels taking the fun out of just figuring out once a really tricky fixed level design with a lot of art to it, and also by that token, no sense of progress to new interesting levels -- just samey variations on a theme that can't be that carefully set up because they have to work with randomized combinations of birds.

So arguably 2015 was the year developers discovered how to make pervasive micropayments not really gamebreakingly obnoxious, but at the cost still of just having duller, less finely crafted games. The candy-crushification of good franchises. Lots of nitrome games had the same issue -- almost really great, but falling into an IAP-grindfest precisely when they could have put more work into opening up newer interesting dynamics. Its not that they're extracting money. Its that they've let the money-extraction mechanisms _take the place_ of where genuine gameplay should be.

Shit! Forgot to vote. Sigh

It's been years since I voted, but I always enjoy reading it.

I didn't vote either, as I'm years behind and will be until I die. I was going to prickishly ask for the system names to be actually in the entries - I'll be coming back to these in a few years when I EG buy a PS4 and being able to search by console would be very handy.

virtually everything that's listed for console, apart from nintendo games, is on PS4

http://i.imgur.com/licTBnk.png
#39 - Assassin's Creed Syndicate - Ubisoft Quebec
17 Points
2 Votes

As the owner of a PS3 and a Vita, I'm looking forward to voting in next year's C+P when my ballot will be nothing but a handful of pervy, barely-localized JRPGs.

('The slow death of the 7th generation of consoles' was my 2015 disappointment, btw.)

http://i.imgur.com/Ednsjb6.png
#39 - Dropsy - Tendershoot, A Jolly Corpse
17 Points
2 Votes

I think Dropsy narrowly missed my ballot. I appreciated its sad lonely weirdness a lot. Adventure games are kind of killing it for storytelling these days, even though I'm not a huge fan of the genre and never have been. (but I'm more comfortable cheating w/ gameFAQs than i ever was before, and better at not spoiling the next step than i used to be, so i can still enjoy the unfolding)

http://i.imgur.com/D4dIPA2.png
#37 - Helldivers - Arrowhead Game Studios
18 Points
2 Votes

http://i.imgur.com/yoRgGH3.png
#37 - Super Mega Baseball - Metalhead Software
18 Points
2 Votes

http://i.imgur.com/wJeQNHm.png
#36 - Ori and the Blind Forest - Moon Studios
19 Points
1 Vote
1 First-Place Vote

damn y'all, crickets

http://i.imgur.com/2VKLNj0.png
#35 - Yo-kai Watch - Level-5
20 Points
1 Vote

i haven't even heard of so many of these games!

I haven't played any of these games but they look really cool.

virtually everything that's listed for console, apart from nintendo games, is on PS4

Right, but if go CRTL-F 'console'...

i'm sure there will be some sort of summary spreadsheet at the end, it'll be alright

I'll post a recap at the end and include that line

(I am aware that I've moved on from 'prickish' to 'whining' - feel free to ignore me, and thanks for running the poll!)

http://i.imgur.com/89fDqoe.png
#34 - Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger And The Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist - Crows Crows Crows
20 Points
3 Votes

Wanted to play that purely based on its provenance but didn't get around to getting it. Any of the three voters want to rep for it? I note that although it got three votes none were very high, is that b/c it's short so not passion-worthy or b/c it's only ok?

http://i.imgur.com/JuTWbrT.png
#33 - Until Dawn - Supermassive Games
21 Points
1 Vote

So Yo-Kai Watch (for the 3DS, though it's labeled mobile) is basically the coziest virtual representation of an urban Japanese landscape I've ever played. Compared to the Pokemon games the overworld is just gorgeous, full of detail, life, character. That particular drowsy atmosphere of a neighbourhood on the outskirts of a a Japanese metropol.

The gameplay itself consists of relatively passive battles (best thing is it works quite differently from Pokemon), but the characters, the Yokai, are super cute and with their own off-kilter stories. General gist is the Yokai, unbeknownst to humans, affect their moods. To get some angry, stressed-out dude back on track you have to find and befriend the Yokai responsible.

The only reason not to buy this is that the sequel, which improves on everything, in particular making the overworld even bigger, more detailed and charming (you can ride trains!), is probably soon out in localized form.

http://i.imgur.com/wXIeRJO.png
#31 - Everybody's Gone to the Rapture - Andrew Crawshaw
21 Points
2 Votes

yeah sorry i realized i fucked that up (yo-kai as mobile) xp... there was bound ot be at least one given how bad my process is for maknig this images

http://i.imgur.com/S5h8rL7.png
#31 - Hotline Miami 2 - Jonatan Söderström, Dennis Wedin
21 Points
2 Votes

applause for the until dawn screenshot.
i am not sure if MGSV or Bloodbourne will win this.

or marvel puzzle quest. it's possible!

The name + screenshot of 'Everybody's Gone' definitely make me curious - what's it like?

"Walking Simulators": Puzzle/Exploration games

http://i.imgur.com/74YoimY.png
#30 - Broken Age - Double Fine Productions
23 Points
2 Votes

i love mpq but its continued existence on c+p makes me mad

"my favourite record of 2015 is kaleidoscope dream you have to let me vote for it again this year i keep lsitening to it"

http://i.imgur.com/GTmOjSI.png
#29 - Grow Home - Ubisoft Reflections
23 Points
3 Votes

http://i.imgur.com/FXHaNsU.png
#28 - Q.U.B.E.: Director's Cut - Toxic Games
24 Points
1 Vote

whoa. is that the sequel to Intelligence Qube?! that was one of the games on the PS1 demo disc that came with the system, and it was a lot of fun.

i don't think they're related, that was a japanese-made, sony-produced exclusive and this is an american indie steam game

http://i.imgur.com/8Rr6KlC.png
#27 - Agar.io - Matheus Valadares
27 Points
3 Votes

i voted for Agar.io

there's nothing like spending half an hour slowly building up your giant blob until you're a massive crawling force of destruction that other players seem to willingly sacrifice themselves to, only to be suddenly annihilated by a player called penisbutt as you rashly split your forces in an attempt to capture someone who looks vulnerable

Q.U.B.E. was my vote. Imagine the Portal games stripped down to mostly just the puzzle elements and the visual style of the sterile testing environments. If that sounds appealing, I highly recommend it.

i woulda voted for agario if i had remembered it. lost many hours there!

http://i.imgur.com/jnNUjkb.png
#26 - Trimps - GreenSatellite
28 Points
2 Votes

oh my god. i'm glad i never clicked on that link.

oo what is that?

another cow clicker

don't do it!

don't!!

we all know how this ends

http://i.imgur.com/l3doUih.png
#25 - Neko Atsume - Hit-Point
29 Points
4 Votes

oh ok i thought maybe it was a sim or something. i'm burnt out on the clickers.

Don't get this kind of thing at all (re: clicker)

i was a neko atsume vote. this might belong on the good writing about videogames thread, but: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/18/magazine/why-am-i-obsessed-with-a-cellphone-game-about-collecting-cats.html

I forgot to say upthread, thanx to reddening for sending some of the screenshots used in this thread!!! (i apparently used a different one for until dawn but there are one or two more coming up that reddening supplied so thx) :)

is neko atsume still japanese(?) language only? no translation?

it's translated now

http://i.imgur.com/PujdARN.png
#23 - Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate - Capcom
30 Points
1 Vote
0.5 First-Place Votes

i never played Hotline Miami 2 but i loved the first game. it had an amazing presentation and addicted gameplay.

i voted for "Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell" bc i really enjoyed SRIV, it was an open world GTA with way more freedom to it. the super-powers made the most boring part of those games (driving to/from missions) a complete thrill as you flying, leap over buildings, run up the side of skyscrapers, etc. essentially you are superman. GOOH is more of the same but with a nice hellscape version of the city to play in. i feel like hell as a setting is oddly unexplored in video games and GOOH did a great job with the fire and brimstones of the popular depiction. adding the angel wings for flight was a no-brainer, and makes the whole thing even cooler. lots of fun and the perfect alternative if you ever tire of GTA's seriousness.

http://i.imgur.com/Jg0ffgX.png
#23 - We Know the Devil - Aevee Bee
30 Points
1 Vote
0.5 First-Place Votes

I dig the Saints Row games despite their tenacious adherence to 6th gen aesthetics. Dumb and fun. I really need to screencap and share the hideous character I created for SR2 sometime.

ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh

http://i.imgur.com/JBHGzX6.png
#22 - Marvel Puzzle Quest (PORT) - D3
30 Points
1 Vote
1 First-Place Vote

I might have bought and played and voted for this if it had been released, more logically, on the Vita rather than the PS3.

vote for it at the end of 2016 when it inevitably is so we can have it on the ballot for 4 stupid years

Will do!

(I am truly sorry for the pain you continue to endure.)

this year i made an active decision to not include an image of match-3 gameplay you're welcome ilx

last one for today... the thrilling finale is tomorrow! 20-1. But for today: a game that actually came out in 2015 (prepare to see me grumble next year when y'all vote for it since it's getting a disc re-release apparently?)

http://i.imgur.com/C3tfPgw.png
#21 - Tales from the Borderlands - Telltale Games, Gearbox Software
30 Points
2 Votes

AND TODAY'S BONUS FEATURE: best non-2015 games of 2015

Mentioned on two ballots:
Marvel Puzzle Quest
Crusader Kings II

Mentioned on one ballot:
Crossy Road
Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin
Desert Golfing
Far Cry 4
Hearthstone
Hexcells Infinite
Red Dead Redemption
The Last of Us HD
the longest journey
The Swapper
Valdis Story
Vanquish

hey whose the other cool cat who voted for ck2

Vanquish was my non-2015 game. One of the most thrilling games I've ever played, like being dropped in the middle of a futuristic sci-fi action movie. I need to play more of it to figure out how it does what it does in a way that differentiates itself from other games of its ilk. I've played lots of good PS3 games that flew under the radar, but this one seems to be as low under the radar as it gets.

Boo at only me voting for Monster Hunter, but I guess.. I'm the only one voting for 3ds games in general? Mostly PC / mobile stuff here. Anyway MH4 lacks the unfairly hated underwater claustrophia of MH3, but adds so much content you could conceivably play it forever. With each entry they get a bit better at introducing new players to MH, pay a little more attention to the single player story, charming side characters, etc. The real genius of 4 is the new dynamic level design with lots of vertical, agile movement, amazing battlegrounds in the mountains, in the jungle, in caves.

vanquish finished 28th in the 2011 poll

Voted for Broken Age and Neko Atsume. Pretty sure I cut agar.io from my ballot, though had I more points I would have thrown it a few. I don't actually remember my final ballot mind you, so maybe I did.

Think I tried Trimps but didn't find it as interesting as other idle/clicker games. I played one called Realm Grinder quite a bit last year, didn't need another one.

well i just wasted an hour on trimps
never again

Boo at only me voting for Monster Hunter, but I guess..

i'm kinda curious about the Monster Hunter games, since they sometimes come up in articles about Dark Souls, but i don't think they've even been out on the platforms i've owned.

will m: did you get my ballot? if you did that means that at least one other person voted for all my top choices, which is rad.

actually you must have gotten my ballot b/c who else would have picked rayman adventures as a disappointment.

anyway, yeah tales from the borderlands was one of my picks. one of the only semi-big-ticket non-mobile games i played this year (i played a lot of borderlands 2 also, wrote about it on the thread).

i'm sure it only works if you're familiar with the whole borderlands deal, but its great episodic storytelling with maybe only minimal "game" elements -- there's _some_ interactivity to picking the choices, but none matters too much, and the gameplay bits themselves are pretty trivial. what makes it work is the writing, which matches or outpaces the best in BL2 -- great characters, goofy details, and lots of knowing fourth-wall nods that work particularly well given the weird combination of how immersive BL2 is while at the same time being so foreign and full of (forgive me) purely ludic elements. so the constant tease of actually _not_ getting awesome equipment and seeing awesome guns but _not_ getting to fire them, or the loot-obsession of otherwise actually-normal-seeming characters, their familiarity with brands of gun manufacturers and different characteristics, their geeking out over the same details a fan might, all this works particularly well.

And on top of this the satisfaction of a story that actually relates fully to the main franchise, and "moves canon".

at least one other person voted for all my top choices

no comment :P

Any of the three voters want to rep for it?

Yes me, wholeheartedly! I'll write up a few thoughts on it (esp wrt The Beginner's Guide, which was my disappointment of the year) when I'm not typing on a phone but you can play through the whole thing in 20 minutes at most, so you should just jump in anyway. It made me laugh more than anything else I played last year.

I was another one of the votes for Dr. Langeskov and will also rep for it. It's free, short, and pretty funny so there's really no reason not to give it a shot. I wound up playing through it 3 or 4 times to get all of the achievements, which I rarely do (and only took about an hour), and I can recommend searching out the bizarre director commentary tapes in particular.

Also, I was the other person who voted for Crusader Kings 2 as my non 2015 GOTY. I've been trying to get into these Paradox grand strategy games for a while to no avail, but CK2 finally clicked with me in a major way a few weeks ago after picking up a couple DLCs on sale and figuring out that I could just play it with a Visual Novel/Relationship Sim style bent as opposed to constantly micro-managing a dense web of sliders and brokering trade embargoes.

things of mine that placed today:

Dr. Langeskov etc. -- i'm the third voter, and i also highly recommend it! it's delightful. like you mentioned, emil.y, it didn't make the high end of my ballot because of its briefness, but i also had a feeling other people would vote for it and bump it onto the main countdown. it's a game that's really easy to blast through quickly, but you can also take a recalcitrant approach to the gameplay and get a lot more content that way.

Until Dawn -- i don't have a PS4 so i watched a friend play this, and even though it has a lot to be dubious about, it was a blast. dubious elements: occasional uncanny valley heebie jeebies (motion-capture Peter Stormare getting right up in your face was v. unsettling), SO MANY GODDAMN QTEs, and also the whole thing is reveling in teen horror movie tropes so the characterization is really broad. but the plot unfolds in a way that's more complicated than i thought it would be, and like i mentioned with Her Story, playing with a group made the clue-hunting and story-theorizing really fun. the graphics are gorgeous, and it's really gruesome and gory and fun once it gets going.

since it's a choice game it's got a decent amount of variable content (i ended up watching a lot of it on YouTube afterward). i think one of the big marketing points was that there's eight controllable characters and you can end the game with all of them alive, none of them alive, or some permutation in between. in my playthrough we only got two people killed.

it is time

http://i.imgur.com/C5BpS8J.png
#20 - Destiny: The Taken King - Bungie
32 Points
3 Votes
1 First-Place Vote

I'm a little surprised Destiny's so low - I got the impression the new version was a tour de force, bringing back people who'd played the original and found it a bit wanting.

Is it just "shooting games belong on PC"?

probably more "this isn't a brand new game" factored in i imagine

I don't know what that is? tbh I don't know what most of these games are. looks like I'll miss this current generation of consoles, or at least it'll be 5 years or so, so maybe the console games here will still fun in 5 years? Red Dead Redemption was my non 2015 vote & that's a console game, outstandingly fun, has a game that good come out on console recently?

so far my trimps and mpq votes have placed.

http://i.imgur.com/n6XdNYJ.png
#18 - The Executive - Riverman Media
35 Points
2 Votes
1 First-Place Vote

Destiny was fun, played a bit at a friends' house back when it came out, tried the new DLC recently and just got destroyed. with those FPS games you really need to keep your skills in check

http://i.imgur.com/4eW5UgL.png
#18 - The Jackbox Party Pack 2 - Jackbox Games
35 Points
2 Votes
1 First-Place Vote

^ Not a great screenshot but this is legit in the running for the best party game of ALL TIME and everyone should own it if they ever have >2 people to their house at the same time

jackbox offers an iphone controller download that works with consoles/pc/mac via bluetooth, right?

Mobile devices ARE the controllers for the Jackbox games, full stop. Very simple interface (go to their website, enter the code that pops up on the screen, you're good to go).

Jackbox was my number one. I think for the second year in a row. What Will said, basically. These games are a complete blast and hilarious, especially if you're playing with people capable of vulgarity and willing to utilize it. Quiplash is the new stand-alone that's worth a look, if you don't want the full set (which is valid, since, once again, two or three of the games are sort of duds). I believe that's the one where someone called the game stupid and got both a trophy and a seriously hilarious response.

these last 3 were all ones that missed my ballot but i wanted to give points to. jackbox is hilarious + good fun (and so many ppl can play at once!), executive was a iphone game (that ramps up significantly in difficulty as you move through it -- has anyone here actually finished it 100%?), and destiny was a ton of fun (loved the multiplayer maps)

the executive is great but once you max out the bonuses it becomes tedious, hard and not fun

(It may be outside the strict terms of the user agreement but I think if you streamed the Jackbox games on Twitch or somesuch, it would be technically possible for whoever's watching the stream to play.)

http://i.imgur.com/3jA4ikf.png
#17 - You Must Build A Boat - EightyEight Games LTD
35 Points
3 Votes

(It may be outside the strict terms of the user agreement but I think if you streamed the Jackbox games on Twitch or somesuch, it would be technically possible for whoever's watching the stream to play.)

Can't remember if i told this story before, but we had a big get together with some old friends and played this... one guy got sick and couldn't make it, so i opened my laptop, skyped him, and then set up twitch, and he watched us on the webcam on one of his PC screens, watched the twitch feed on his other screen, and played on his phone. you could very easily stream & play (altho there's a little lag, so don't wait until the last 5 seconds to answer the question)

the only complaint i have with that game is that there's no option to "cycle in" audience members (because people can play along and vote as the audience if you have more than 8 ppl)

hey y'all here comes the last tie of 2015 (and it's a three-way)

http://i.imgur.com/HHBI9ys.png
#14 - Batman: Arkham Knight - Rocksteady Studios
39 Points
3 Votes

http://i.imgur.com/ieOO2QY.png
#14 - Crank - Faedine
39 Points
3 Votes

*SIGH*

now crank is a game right and not just 3 ilxors hooked on methamphetemines believing that they're playing a game

who could say

i refuse to draw a conclusion until i am presented with the facts

ilx's 14th most favorite game of 2015: Crank.

it's the white iverson of games except we actually put it in our top 20

dammit, i forgot You Must Build a Boat! somehow i missed it when i scanned the nominations list, but it would have been a top 5 game for me, so in alternate reality it has 4 votes and around 45 points. it's the sequel to 10000000, and it manages to build upon everything that was great about that game. normally i shy away from the match 3 games, but i love the intensity of YMBAB! - when you're playing it, you're always "in the zone" because it forces you to do everything as quickly as possible. the achievements (forgot the technical name for them, but basically you need to complete them in order to advance) also have a good balance, and the harder ones never seem completely impossible. finally, i like the length of the game. it's long enough to feel like you got much more than your $2.99 worth, but it's short enough that you can be completely obsessed with it (in the bathroom) for a week of your life and then move on.

http://i.imgur.com/ybkhhTq.png
#14 - Goat Simulator (PORT) - Coffee Stain Studios
39 Points
3 Votes

ladies & gentlegoats, your 14th favourite games of 2015 are
- a skinner box
- your 2nd favourite game of 2014
- also, batman

http://i.imgur.com/wJPFrAE.png
#13 - Alto's Adventure - Snowman
40 Points
5 Votes

gorgeous game. the mechanics are not so dissimilar from tiny wings, but the music + the visuals are so good. the controls feel perfect. i 100%'d this one and i'll still go back and do a runthrough.

http://i.imgur.com/8IgigZ4.png
#12 - Sunless Sea - Failbetter Games
41 Points
3 Votes
1 First-Place Vote

Alto! I played that, made it to level 40 or so, pooped out, it got hard. but yeah it's beautiful and the controls are great.

I voted for Crank! didn't stick with it like trimps but I don't think it had a long end game

btw I saw that cookie clicker got updated! it even made French newspapers for some reason. looking forward to seeing it place here in 2016

i hate everything you represent

one of the year's best. takes place in the same canon as Fallen London. the writing is, as you'd expect, exquisite. the gameplay is so unusual - slow, meditative, strange. it's fun, but you definitely do have to get used to the pace. and i'm not sure i love the roguelike elements (it's brutal, easy to die in the beginning and some of the early game stuff can feel repetitive) but once you start to make progress there are so many cool niches and things to do. xxp

I am your enemy, Will M

alto's adventure is a fun little timewaster. as mordy mentioned, the controls are spot on and it just feels right.

Sunless Sea looks awesome, that's definitely going to be on my list

srsly tho if you haven't played sunless sea yet i cannot recommend it strongly enough. i placed it just below curious expedition, invisible inc, f4 and binding of isaac, but in some ways it's better than all of those in terms of effortlessly conjuring up a brand new setting, afaict a totally distinctive genre - it's really groundbreaking and hard to overstate it.

hey check this one out u guys

http://i.imgur.com/qMdJqyL.png
#11 - Fallout 4 - Bethesda Game Studios
47 Points
5 Votes
1 First-Place Vote

it's kinda like the ludic version of slow eating or whatever it's called, slow reading. it's slow gaming.

bullshit xp

how is f4 not goty? guys. how.

like i get that it's reiterative but... here's what i wrote about it in my ballot:

My top two votes are both reiterations of games I have given the #1 spot to in the past. It attests to the repetitive nature of video gaming in 2016 but also to how successful these games originally were. Fallout 4 is gorgeous. The violent urban environments are immersive in a way that I’ve never before experienced in video games. Much of the game can turn into a drag (building settlements, trying to figure out why a woman in post-apocalyptic Boston has an Irish accent) but in terms of marrying the aesthetics of Fallout 4’s bright post-apoc counterfactual history to the geography of Boston the game is a gorgeous tour de force. The shooting isn’t too bad either.

there are 10 reasons F4 is not GOTY (xp)

also it gave me terrible motion sickness but even that did not stop me from pouring tens of hours into it

I bought fallout 3 a few years ago, I'm hoping to play it in 2016, then maybe I'll play new vegas, then maybe fallout 4 in 2020 or so.

wow, i feel bad that i didn't put F4 higher on my list. tbh it was kind of a strategic thing because i assumed it would be an easy top 3, but i do think there were a few better games in 2015.

the shooting is the only thing that salvages F4 imo, that game is such a fucking slog.

per my twitter feed a few months ago:

- I haven't liked a Bethesda fallout game ever because I thought these games had nothing to say. But after killing my 436th opponent I realize

- Maybe these games are a statement on the meaninglessness of literally everything ever

- Because Goddamn I play a bunch of video games & none of them make me more acutely aware of how much time I am wasting g doing virtual chores

- Funny picture I wish existed: normal-sized person lying on shaq's bed

8 of my 11 votes have already placed and i'm not certain the other 3 will as well - i've never felt so outside the ilg hivemind!

and then my friend replied with this

imagine a world of infinite possibility... Now imagine you have like 3 interesting verbs and constantly need desk fans

xp it's jsut because you didn't pour 30 points into anything, only 20 ballots y'all know how it is

TOP TEN TIME

http://i.imgur.com/W6TST2i.png
#10 - Beginner's Guide - Everything Unlimited Ltd
48 Points
3 Votes
0.5 First-Place Votes

(i'm gonna start letting these breathe a lil bit more)

haven't played this yet but i loved his first one so i guess i probably should

oh look trash collector simulator jk Fallout 4 was ok but i have never been taken in by the Fallout series.

imagine a world of infinite possibility... Now imagine you have like 3 interesting verbs and constantly need desk fans

3 interesting verbs is otm, and it's one of the main things that makes Witcher 3 a better game (i know they're very different games with different goals, but tbh i only have time for one incredibly massive open world action RPG a year, so i lump them together). it's nearly impossible to have an interesting conversation in Fallout 4, because you have to play as the most boring, emotionally stunted person in the entire world

can we talk about the irish accent thing tho. like wtf. how could it be.

my wife's theory was that she was just cosplaying being irish

theory: anyone that has posted on this thread is capable of writing better conversations in Fallout 4 than what they came up with, and is probably also capable of hiring an amateur voice actor through Craigslist that would have done a better job

feel like the junk collecting mechanic was both the best thing and the worst thing. first time i trashed that opening neighborhood felt amazing and i ran around picking up every single thing i could. that was fun for a few hours.

*entire world explodes in background*
your fallout 4 character walks up to a military officer supervising dozens of people scrambling toward the vault: "Hi, how's it going? Hey there. Hi. Hi, how's it going? Hi. Hey there."

i can see what Fallout is doing but it seems like it requires some effort on the player to complete the immersion and ignore the bugs/jank, and the world/setting is not appealing to me enough to make me want to do that.

the irish accent somehow bothers me less than the one doctor having a... chinese? accent? iirc?

http://i.imgur.com/5WaXhqv.png
#9 - Downwell - Moppin
50 Points
3 Votes
0.5 First-Place Votes

i'm just done with games where conversation is an important game mechanic. it's always...bad. or if it's good, it's usually the primary mechanic, which is not particularly interesting to me.

Oh, cool, I didn't know they made a Baby Jessica game.

what's the best dialogue game ever? galatea maybe?

^ feels like a worthy ILG thread

Yeah, I really don't care about dialogue or story in most games (at least where they aren't central elements, like in the Telltale games). Probably because those elements often suck. That might be why I find myself drawn to games where the characters are ridiculously ott parodies or complete cyphers.

I love the story/"dialogue" in the Portal games.

monkey island 2 comes to mind immediately but that might be nostalgia
witcher 3 is better than most but still regularly garbage

marvel puzzle quest, of course

sure but that doesn't give you (the illusion of) choices. same with the Souls games.

i remember KOTOR being a pretty good talky game, but i never got very far (it was actually too overwhelming with all the people you could talk to and possible paths).

(was talking about Portal)

best dialog game imo The Secret of Monkey Island. insult sword fighting is still maybe the best use of dialog as game mechanic.

fyi, it is a graphic adventure and one of your quests is to fight The Sword Master. while training you learn that the real key to swordfighting is having a clever quip ready at all times. so you must travel around the island bumping into random pirates and learning new insults and their appropriate comebacks. the brilliant thing is once you get to The Sword Master, all of her dialog is different from what you have learned, so you are re-contextualizing the comebacks, often to hilarious and unforeseen results.

i think we all know secret of monkey island :p

I loved Downwell, and that was with the difficult iPhone 4S controls. I'd love to give it another shot with a gamepad and see how much farther I could go

http://i.imgur.com/vbhhyv4.png
#8 - Super Mario Maker - Nintendo
68 Points
4 Votes
0.5 First-Place Votes

I've never played a Fallout game but always wanted to, though mainly because I know there are nuclear-war themed radio stations. I'm kind of alright with grind/collecting/chores type gameplay but the hate is making me think maybe I should just stick with my own nuclear song playlist.

<3 insult sword fighting. Have used "how appropriate, you fight like a cow" many many times irl.

loooved watching Super Mario Maker videos this year. it's the first thing to make me want a Wii (U or whatever).

Kind of tempted to c&p my post on Beginner's Guide but Karl linked it upthread, it's not hard to find.

"I hope now you've learned to stop picking your nose."

I deeply love Skyrim despite not being overly-enamored of the whole sword & sorcery thing. Fallout 3 should've been a lock for me since it's the same company doing a similar type of game in a setting that interests me much more but it's been such a slog for me to get into it. I don't know why, exactly. I can do inventory management and smithing and enchanting and shit in Skyrim all the livelong day so it isn't about the tedium.

Super Mario Maker is amazing and insane. i like it how it is so much more than simply making Mario levels, that they threw in all the weird characters and easter eggs and bizarre musical cues. as usual production quality is top-notch and gameplay is fun and perfected. i still wish every game was published by Nintendo.

http://i.imgur.com/mn9ZCMq.png
#7 - Life is Strange - Dontnod Entertainment
68 Points
4 Votes
1 First-Place Vote

not that i am actively encouraging it or anything but it is interesting that nobody is making predictions

Frog Fractions for #1!

i think i had an epic whine last year about predicting the top 5. or maybe it was on a music poll. or both. it's something that i whine about

I kinda assumed Life Is Strange would be top five, although much of the praise I've heard has been tempered.

What, Witcher at number one? I really have no idea. I haven't even heard of 4/5 of the games that have placed thus far.

pretty sure my #1 will be #1

(Frog Fractions should be honorary #1 every year though)

thread: what is your stance on fake top 3s before the real top 3s

asking for a friend

If only I'd remembered to vote MPQ it could've made it into the Top 10! Regrets.
And The Executive would've placed higher too.

love fakeouts

Life is Strange wasn't available for mac, iirc, so even though I think I would love it, I can't play it.

I also love fakeouts.

re: life is strange... one of my favourite things is non-american representations of american coming-of-age stories... granted I am only halfway thru, i kinda lost some steam afte the xmas break, gotta go back and finish it!

Bloodbourne / Witcher 3 / MGS V / Rocket League should be top four but I don't know in what order

Her Story hasn't placed yet, right? But I imagine it'll probably be up next.

If only I'd remembered to vote MPQ it could've made it into the Top 10! Regrets.

nhex is my secondary nemesis

http://i.imgur.com/ZDz9YXH.png
#6 - Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain - Kojima Productions
83 Points
5 Votes
2.33 First-Place Votes

too

fucking

low

Oh hai is it too late to update my ballot, just remembered that Duke Nukem 3-D was released for consoles in 2015, thx

i keep thinking i should play this but i haven't played a MGS game since the NES. does that matter?

surely undertale is still to come, yeah?

many xps, re: MGSV, no spoilers

this was my #1 FYI. it's unbelievable that it even exists really. the MGS series might be the best game series of all time and it's unbelievable that a team that pretty much defined a style of game that is now virtually outdated (high prod value narrative-driven linear AAA) managed to turn around and not only create an incredible open world experience, but do it without sacrificing ANY of the idiosyncrasies that made the original series so essential. i DID NOT EXPECT mgs5 to have a "psycho mantis reads your memory card" or "use a turbo controller and die" moment. I didn't think there was a way? but they did. the moment where you are madly completing missions trying to solve (INSERT MYSTERY HERE) and once you come to a solution you have to use the game's menu system in such an exhausting, labour-intensive way was fucking brilliant. annoying. but brilliant.

and mission 43 (if you've played the game, look it up, you'll know what i mean) was SO FUCKING INTENSE that i once cried DESCRIBING IT.

i keep thinking i should play this but i haven't played a MGS game since the NES. does that matter?

as you may have surmised from my above paragraph: you should play every one of these games and then also read every article leigh alexander has ever written about them

in the year 2027 when we finally get around to polling the best game of the 8th generation of consoles i will be on ILX screaming about the brilliance of MGSV

i will probably be screaming it into a virtual reality headset which will transcribe my madness to 3D letters which i will grab with my hands and put in a box on ILX which will look exactly the same

xpost Mordy, no it will probably be for the best, since you won't be used to sitting through hours of cutscenes.

this was my #1. gameplay wise it is easily the best controlling 3rd person game outside of a Mario. storywise it is incredibly underrated and ahead of its time. i really like how Kojima took this "ultimate perfect soldier" and made this game about playing as a disabled vet with PTSD.

it has been funny and slightly unnerving to see gamers rationalize all of the horrible things the lead character does in this game. i think Kojima knew this, and had long ago reconciled gamer bloodlust vs. his own anti-war anti-nuke messages that seem lost on that audience. hence why language is such a big theme in the game. this is a Japanese man making a game about US military dominance, about the roles of private forces in conflict zones, about Afghanistan -- a place we are stilled mired in. yet you didn't read anything analyzing this or wondering what this game says about our modern wars, it was all TMZ-style Konami vs. Kojima hype/hate. this dumb industry.

I just scanned through the rollout and... I basically gave up on games last year, apparently.

The only thing on the list that I played was Fallout IV, and I only played about an hour of it.

someday i will get around to playing MGSV, a friend lent it to me. maybe in 2019 when i get tired of playing Dark Souls 3.

The Final Word on ‘The Phantom Pain,’ a Video Game About Video Games <-- the only article worth reading that talks about the Koj vs Konami stuff. Posits that the game is a message in a bottle about that very conflict. Fuck I love this game

this really makes me wanna play MGSV now, will have to pick this up. should i play ground zeroes first? should i catch up on the ones i missed too (3 and 4)?

i'd like to play the older MSG's, Will, but most of them have not been released on the ps4 platform yet and i can't emulate like the ps, ps2 + ps3 games (which i take it are when the series actually took off)

i burnt out on MGS and transferred to witcher 3; think i'm ready to switch up again now

but mgsv is fucking awesome and loads of fun and kind of astonishing based on the 30 or so hours i dumped into it

I own all of the MGS games aside from the newest. I'm currently alternating between the first and VR Missions. I have not played any of the rest but am looking forward to working my way there.

(This is just my "thing" atm, as I am also playing FF 1 and just finished the first Persona. I like the idea of slowly working my way through the history of a game series I haven't previously experienced. Even if it winds up taking me 25 years to do.)

MGS1, 2, 3 and Peace Walker can all be played on the PS3 and PS Vita (MGS1 can also be played on the PSP). I'm sure they'll eventually find a way to get them on the PS4.

but mgsv is fucking awesome and loads of fun and kind of astonishing based on the 30 or so hours i dumped into it

omg how far are you

u are in for at least one (1) traet

but more like 10 traets

that game is a traet

imagine i just held the entire C+P rollout hostage forever talking about MGSv instead of posting the rest of the results

so i've talked a bit about Life is Strange already, but something i haven't mentioned is how great it is to see a game with a strong focus on female friendships/relationships: not only chloe and max, but max and kate, chloe and rachel amber, chloe and her mom, etc. even victoria, the main female antagonist, can be interacted with in a thoughtful way, although since it's a choice game you can also take it full-tilt into bitchiness if you want. i also really appreciate that DONTNOD didn't reject the idea that chloe/max could turn romantic (and that even from the start, you could direct max to be like "uhhhhhhhhhhhh no" to warren).

http://i.imgur.com/jQcM0TF.png
#5 - Undertale - Toby Fox
83 Points
6 Votes
1.5 First-Place Votes

Didn't get a chance to play Undertale before voting, but got it as a gift from an ilxor recently (thanking you!) and am really liking it so far.

i'm close to finishing the True Pacifist route and i'm scared to start the Genocide route, on the one hand i want to see the content but on the other hand we're all such good friends :(

really really want to play Undertale, i'm just not in the habit of sitting in front of my desktop PC and playing games. need to get around to it somehow.

^ this

If I haven't liked any MGS games up until now is there any reason to play MGSV? It's not a radical change or anything, right?

also re: undertale, color me impressed that you can call characters on your cell from, like, 3/4ths of all the rooms in the game, and you almost always get unique dialogue. it's the kind of thing they didn't have to include but it makes the experience that much richer.

Dowd: it depends on what you didn't like about them

http://i.imgur.com/FAnMQaj.png
#4 - Her Story - Sam Barlow
88 Points
7 Votes

If I haven't liked any MGS games up until now is there any reason to play MGSV? It's not a radical change or anything, right?

yeah MGSV is radically different from previous games. controls like a dream, no more gameplay-interrupting codec calls, no more overly long cutscenes, mission structure pretty much just play whatever you want to, level design is open world so you can just ditch what you are doing and play around. what Symphony of the Night did for Castlevania, MGSV does for Metal Gear.

i bought Undertale but still haven't played it yet. i have heard good things. how is the music?

Undertale and Her Story are cool. pumped that they both placed top 5.

I talked abt Her Story upthread a little bit. But man. Playing this game I became distracted and kind of obsessed on a meta level. Who am I? Why does this computer have all of these files? Why do I want to sort through them? What room am I in, which flickering lights, a touchy CRT monitor, an outdated OS, etc.? What are the stakes for me? Is this a "cold case"?

I never "100%ed" this game so I can't say for sure if they ever answer these questions but from what I understand they never do. I'm very glad that they don't. It makes the entire thing feel... idk, unnerving. Like, the entire plot-out-of-sequence thing feels unnerving. And the plot itself. So fucked. It's such a cool and fresh way to experience a story.

I don't get the complaints about it. "I knew what happened and I was only 30% in." Great! Then quit playing or explore more. "I had to brute force..." no, you didn't because you don't NEED TO GET 100%. It's not necessary! The joy is in dancing around these interviews, hearing tiny clips... some of which are useful, some funny, some useless, some creepy as fuck (there's one where she puts her head on the table and just starts tapping her fingers in a weird way, it gave me the willies like nothing else).

idk guys what do you think should i post the top 3 now

Yes they do answer those questions! I never forgot that it was fiction or that she's an actor so I never really felt super immersed.

"I knew what happened and I was only 30% in."
Part of the fun is locating the achievement cards and trying to uncover all the videos, filling in the database with all the unwatched videos. It's a new type of puzzle in that sense.

http://i.imgur.com/hGlVhOe.png
#3 - Rock Band 4 - Harmonix
151 Points
4 Votes
6.66 First-Place Votes
http://i.imgur.com/hAe9zUh.png
#2 - Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 - Treyarch
151 Points
5 Votes
6.66 First-Place Votes
http://i.imgur.com/avzHr9k.png
#1 - Fallout Shelter - Bethesda Game Studios
151 Points
6 Votes
6.66 First-Place Votes

oh lol the one game I played this year that's on the list was #1

i really pooched it... i wanted to get 3 screenshots of in-app purchases for those 3 games, but since i couldn't find one for rock band i just used a funny photo, but as a trio my fake top 3 actually kinda loses its... point? and now it just looks dumb.

thread: what is your stance on fake top 3s before the real top 3s

asking for a friend

― Worth Taking from Little Kid (Will M.), Friday, February 19, 2016 1:48 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

xpost

are these jokes?

it wouldn't be an ILX top game rollout if i didn't drop a fakeout

lol

correction: an ILX top (ANYTHING) rollout

i lol'ed

http://i.imgur.com/aPRjKTG.png
#3 - Rocket League - Psyonix
91 Points
6 Votes
2 First-Place Votes

http://i.imgur.com/yySbvmO.png
#2 - Bloodborne - FromSoftware
96 Points
5 Votes
1.33 First-Place Votes

http://i.imgur.com/a44ClUG.png
#1 - Witcher 3 - CD Projekt RED
101 Points
6 Votes
2.33 First-Place Votes

I prefer the fake top 3

Rocket League is one of the most instantly addictive games i have ever played

oh WAIT I have played Rocket League! that game is fun

played all of them and they were all great!

oh shiiit I dunno Rocket League. Ima try it out.

i need to give Witcher 3 another try. i couldn't get over the control/general feel of the game at first. may need to sink some hours in to get used to it.

Bloodborne is amazing. love love love the art design. it's a game i would have made if you gave me millions of dollars.

i apparently used 6 full days of my life to play Bloodborne. i regret this generally but not specifically. it actually became more enjoyable the more i played (the DLC coming out helped a lot too). it was also the first From game that clicked with me in terms of pvp, which makes me even more excited about DS3 coming out.

hopefully this doesn't destroy any browsing experiences

Rnk| Pts |Vts| #1s  | Game Title                           | Platform
 1 | 101 | 6 | 2.33 | Witcher 3                            | CONS / COMP
 2 |  96 | 5 | 1.33 | Bloodborne                           | CONS
 3 |  91 | 6 | 2.00 | Rocket League                        | CONS / COMP
 4 |  88 | 7 |      | Her Story                            | COMP
 5 |  83 | 6 | 1.50 | Undertale                            | COMP
 6 |  83 | 5 | 2.33 | Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain | CONS / COMP
 7 |  68 | 4 | 1.00 | Life is Strange                      | CONS / COMP
 8 |  68 | 4 | 0.50 | Super Mario Maker                    | CONS
 9 |  50 | 3 | 0.50 | Downwell                             | CONS / MOBI / COMP
10 |  48 | 3 | 0.50 | Beginners Guide                      | COMP
11 |  47 | 5 | 1.00 | Fallout 4                            | CONS / COMP
12 |  41 | 3 | 1.00 | Sunless Sea                          | COMP
13 |  40 | 5 |      | Alto's Adventure                     | MOBI
14 |  39 | 3 |      | Crank                                | BWSR
14 |  39 | 3 |      | Goat Simulator (PORT)                | CONS
14 |  39 | 3 |      | Batman: Arkham Knight                | CONS / COMP
17 |  35 | 3 |      | You Must Build A Boat                | MOBI
18 |  35 | 2 | 1.00 | The Executive                        | MOBI
18 |  35 | 2 | 1.00 | The Jackbox Party Pack 2             | CONS / COMP
20 |  32 | 3 | 1.00 | Destiny: The Taken King              | CONS
21 |  30 | 2 |      | Tales from the Borderlands           | CONS / COMP
22 |  30 | 1 | 1.00 | Marvel Puzzle Quest (PORT)           | CONS
23 |  30 | 1 | 0.50 | Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate            | HAND
23 |  30 | 1 | 0.50 | We Know the Devil                    | BWSR
25 |  29 | 4 |      | Neko Atsume                          | MOBI
26 |  28 | 2 |      | Trimps                               | BWSR
27 |  27 | 3 |      | Agar.io                              | BWSR
28 |  24 | 1 |      | Q.U.B.E.: Directors Cut              | CONS / COMP
29 |  23 | 3 |      | Grow Home                            | CONS / COMP
30 |  23 | 2 |      | Broken Age                           | CONS / HAND / MOBI / COMP
31 |  21 | 2 |      | Hotline Miami 2                      | CONS / HAND / COMP
31 |  21 | 2 |      | Everybodys Gone to the Rapture       | CONS
33 |  21 | 1 |      | Until Dawn                           | CONS
34 |  20 | 3 |      | Dr. Langeskov (...)                  | COMP
35 |  20 | 1 |      | Yo|kai Watch                         | HAND
36 |  19 | 1 | 1.00 | Ori and the Blind Forest             | CONS / COMP
37 |  18 | 2 |      | Helldivers                           | CONS / COMP
37 |  18 | 2 |      | Super Mega Baseball                  | CONS / COMP
39 |  17 | 2 |      | Assassins Creed Syndicate            | CONS / COMP
39 |  17 | 2 |      | Dropsy                               | HAND
41 |  14 | 2 |      | OlliOlli 2: Welcome to Olliwood      | CONS / HAND / COMP
42 |  14 | 1 |      | Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth         | CONS / HAND / MOBI / COMP
42 |  14 | 1 |      | Mad Max                              | CONS / COMP
44 |  13 | 1 |      | Invisible, Inc.                      | COMP
45 |  12 | 2 |      | pillars of eternity                  | COMP
46 |  12 | 1 |      | Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions          | HAND / MOBI
46 |  12 | 1 |      | The Curious Expedition               | MOBI
46 |  12 | 1 |      | The Room 3                           | MOBI
49 |  11 | 1 |      | Fran Bow                             | MOBI / COMP
50 |  10 | 1 |      | Brain Guzzlers From Beyond!          | BWSR
50 |  10 | 1 |      | Captain Toad Treasure Tracker        | CONS
50 |  10 | 1 |      | Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes     | COMP
50 |  10 | 1 |      | Lost Constellation                   | COMP
50 |  10 | 1 |      | Midnight. Swordfight.                | BWSR
50 |  10 | 1 |      | Minkomora                            | BWSR
50 |  10 | 1 |      | Renowned Explorers                   | COMP
50 |  10 | 1 |      | Saints Row: Gat Out Of Hell          | CONS / COMP
50 |  10 | 1 |      | Splatoon                             | CONS
50 |  10 | 1 |      | Talos Principle                      | COMP
60 |   7 | 1 |      | Guitar Hero Live                     | CONS / MOBI
60 |   7 | 1 |      | Leons Cool Game                      | COMP
60 |   7 | 1 |      | Super Blackout                       | HAND / MOBI
63 |   6 | 1 |      | Cities: Skylines                     | COMP
63 |   6 | 1 |      | darkest dungeon                      | COMP
63 |   6 | 1 |      | I Am Bread                           | CONS / MOBI / COMP
63 |   6 | 1 |      | Hook                                 | MOBI / COMP
63 |   6 | 1 |      | Heroes of Loot                       | HAND / MOBI
63 |   6 | 1 |      | Kings Quest Ch.1: Knight to Remember | CONS / COMP
69 |   5 | 1 |      | Apotheon                             | CONS / COMP
69 |   5 | 1 |      | Blades of Brim                       | MOBI
69 |   5 | 1 |      | Cibele                               | COMP
69 |   5 | 1 |      | Hand of Fate                         | CONS / COMP
69 |   5 | 1 |      | Landsliders                          | MOBI
69 |   5 | 1 |      | Massive Chalice                      | COMP
69 |   5 | 1 |      | Pocket Mine 2                        | MOBI
69 |   5 | 1 |      | Star Wars Battlefront                | CONS / COMP
69 |   5 | 1 |      | Steven Universe: Attack the Light!   | MOBI
69 |   5 | 1 |      | Tobys Nose                           | BWSR
69 |   5 | 1 |      | Wasteland 2: Directors Cut           | COMP
69 |   5 | 1 |      | htoL#NiQ: The Firefly Diary          | HAND
69 |   5 | 1 |      | Sunset                               | COMP
82 |   4 | 1 |      | Crimsonland                          | HAND / COMP
83 |   3 | 1 |      | Back To Bed                          | MOBI / COMP
83 |   3 | 1 |      | Nihilumbra                           | HAND

PREDICTIONS ITT (italic: incorrect; bold: correct)

i am not sure if MGSV or Bloodbourne will win this. ― ulysses, Feb 18, 2016 12:53 PM
What, Witcher at number one? I really have no idea. ― Old Lunch, Feb 19, 1:47 PM
Bloodbourne / Witcher 3 / MGS V / Rocket League should be top four ― ulysses, Feb 19, 1:53 PM
Her Story hasn't placed yet, right? But I imagine it'll probably be up next (in 6th place) ― emil.y, Feb 19 1:54 PM
surely undertale is still to come, yeah (top 5)? ― reddening, Feb 19, 2:01 PM

Wait, I thought 5 points was the minimum you could give?

my ballot

15: Fallout 4
14: Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth
13: Invisible, Inc.
12: The Curious Expedition
11: Sunless Sea
10: Renowned Explorers
5: Hand of Fate
5: Destiny: The Taken King
5: Alto’s Adventure
5: Wasteland 2: Director’s Cut
5: Steven Universe: Attack the Light!

Did not make it but I wish I could’ve voted for:

Brain Guzzlers From Beyond!
Cities: Skylines
Darkest Dungeon
Fallout Shelter
Heroes of the Storm
NEO Scavenger
Prison Architect
The Executive
The Jackbox Party Pack 2
Wasteland 2: Director’s Cut

5 pts was the minimum, but i received a couple of ballots late that didn't adhere to that policy so i just included them.

will probably get rid of the 5 min rule next year tbh.

The loneliest voters in 2015, based on number of points given to games nobody else voted for:
abcfsk - 70
Mordy - 64
Old Lunch - 52
one way street - 50

Least lonely is a 3-way tie between forks, orifex and methanietanner (0 "lonely" points)

i wish i could do all that "closest neighbour" stuff but it seems monumentally complicated rn

Lol, 5 point minimum is probably correct because those are all my games at the bottom. Sorry if that was the case and I am a failure with instructions. Clearly, I had a great deal of conviction in several of my picks (although they're all decent if ultimately inconsequential).

Probably not much interest in relatively casual Vita games here anyway, though, if I had to guess.

lol even with the explicit warning that there would be a fakeout i had a moment of "oh FFS really?"

thanks so much for running this, Will!

yes, thanks Will!

Read that as "ruining this", lol.

Re: Her Story - I never forgot that it was fiction or that she's an actor so I never really felt super immersed.

Do you mean her acting wasn't convincing to you (in which case fair enough, I thought her acting was very very good but different things appeal to different people) or do you mean that ~the very fact of it not being a true story~ ruined the immersion for you? Because someone else said something similar about Beginner's Guide and now I'm just afdslhflakshflihfas have you guys never heard of fiction before?

I guess I'll do some light stumping for htoL#NiQ, which is basically a Japanese Limbo without that game's aesthetic (which I gather is most of the appeal of Limbo) and in which the Vita's back touchscreen plays a more instrumental role than 'a place to rest your fingers'.

Thank you for your hard work, Will!

i couldn't have ruined this without all of you <3

sorry I didn't vote after making you put Marvel Puzzle Quest on the ballot

Someone should run a 'Best year in which to play Marvel Puzzle Quest' poll.

I am actually doing a closest neighbnours thing now though lol

basically it checks everyone else's ballots against yours, and sums all of the points you gave the game based on whether or not they're on the other person's ballot (their number of points doesn't matter, but there are several ties so i am figuring out how to break those ties now)

^ may not be a good system now that i am looking at it

thanks Will M. for all the hard work!

Re: Her Story - I never forgot that it was fiction or that she's an actor so I never really felt super immersed.

Do you mean her acting wasn't convincing to you (in which case fair enough, I thought her acting was very very good but different things appeal to different people) or do you mean that ~the very fact of it not being a true story~ ruined the immersion for you? Because someone else said something similar about Beginner's Guide and now I'm just afdslhflakshflihfas have you guys never heard of fiction before?

― emil.y, Friday, February 19, 2016 3:39 PM (47 minutes ago) Bookmark

I didn't mean it as a negative. Her performance rules, but I was responding to the plot being described as "fucked." And yeah it is, but I never forgot that it was fiction or a game.

Ah, okay, I think I was interpolating some stuff into your statement, then.

I did it like this:
1. Compared the ballots; anything where there was a similar game, I added both scores (so if you gave a game 30 and I gave it 5, total 35, for every game we share)
2. Found the best match for each ballot (in the event of a tie, I looked to see which person gave a higher score to your number one)
3. Put them in an order that I'm too tired to explain but you'll understand in a second maybe idk

111 - Karl Malone - orifex
111 - orifex - Karl Malone
70 - JimD - orifex
60 - s.clover - orifex
50 - Mordy - JimD

100 - Adam Bruneau - polyphonic
100 - polyphonic - Adam Bruneau
50 - abcfsk - Adam Bruneau

99 - Forks - gukbe
99 - gukbe - Forks
50 - Jordan - Forks

85 - Will M. - reddening
85 - reddening - Will M.
79 - billstevejim - Will M.
73 - methanietanner - reddening
35 - Old Lunch - Will M.
64 - emil.y - methanietanner
47 - one way street - emil.y

73 - Euler - abanana
73 - abanana - Euler

name of left is you. name on right is your closest neighbour. number is combined mutual scores on ballots

Order seems straightforward enough - strongest matches first, grouped into people who matched w/ each other, right?

yeah basically i took all of the mutual ones, made them "parents" of each chunk and put all of the one-way neighbours underneath and ordered it by strength of closeness

100% mutual ballots would give a total of 200 points, which means orifex and karl malone are like over 50% the same person, you guys should hang out

Anyway who cares. Here's my ballot (this may be the first C+P I've ever given a game 30 points!):

30 - Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
20 - Life is Strange
10 - The Jackbox Party Pack 2
10 - Her Story
5 - Rocket League
5 - Undertale
5 - OlliOlli 2: Welcome to Olliwood
5 - Cibele
5 - Massive Chalice
5 - Super Mega Baseball

as much fun as it is running this i kinda miss the not-knowing, you know? i'm currently reading C+P 2014 and 2013 to get my surprise fix, haha

KM + ME = <3. Phantom Pain didn't make my list because I just started playing it, but it's crazy good so far (surely the most mind-blowing *tutorial* of any game?) Witcher was my goty by a fair margin. Loved playing an actual character with an actual personality (albeit pretty one-note), loved how almost every quest had at least some little quirk or twist or shady character to keep it interesting, loved getting hammered and dressing up as a pretty lady and drunk-dialing some sorceresses through a magic portal, didn't love the mullets, didn't love that I got the worst possible ending but I cried about that over on the Witcher thread.

Also I played the Dr. Lang game last night because of this thread and it was great, thank you internet.

thanks for doing this! i'll try to post comments on some of my other top picks later -- looks like i was with the hivemind in the mobile space, basically.

Thanks Will! This was great. Wasted a lot of time this past month trying to catch up.

Yes, thanks, Will! I was not super active in this thread, but I appreciate the work you put into it and the poll, which should be a great resource if I ever find the means to play more of these games.

(My ballot, incidentally, was:

30 /// undertale
30 /// we know the devil
10 /// sunless sea
10 /// minkomora
10 /// neko atsume
10 /// lost constellation

Non-2015 GOTY: the longest journey
Disappointment: tale of tales having to quit game design (http://tale-of-tales.com/2015/))

111 - Karl Malone - orifex
111 - orifex - Karl Malone

high five!

20 Rocket League
15 Witcher 3
11 Agar.io
10 Beginner's Guide
10 Fallout 4
6 Cities: Skylines
6 Alto's Adventure
6 darkest dungeon
6 Neko Atsume
5 Star Wars Battlefront
5 pillars of eternity

i fully expect that if i would have played MGS5 it would be near the top, but i just haven't had a chance to try it yet (i just bought my PS4 in November or so)

Battlefront deserved to make the top 60, at least. yes, nearly all the modes are boring and the combat is thin and the controls aren't the best. but Walker Assault mode is an absolute gem - it's some of the very most fun you can have in the metaverse. i don't know if renting games is still a thing, but if so, i highly recommend renting Battlefront and binging on Walker Assault for a week to the point of nearly losing your job. at that point you'll finally be sick of the game and there'll be just enough time to calm your boss down

also my Darkest Dungeon vote is for the early release version of the game on steam. i haven't played the finished game that just came out.

also did any of you try Cities: Skylines? i mean this was basically the SimCity a lot of people have been waiting for since SimCity2000. it wasn't perfect but it moved the goalposts enough (god what a terrible phrase, sorry) that you can imagine another team perfecting it soon.

touchdown

yes - it just missed my ballot. i liked it a lot, though the game itself is pretty shallow and i exhausted most of the stuff to do in ~5 hours. the modding community is supposedly v good + add a bunch of replayability but i haven't explored it. one thing it was missing for me was a longer arc of unlocking things / accomplishing achievements / etc. very early on you pretty much unlock everything you need and then every few population markers you unlock a new iconic building or whatever to place. or at least that was my experience. like u said i think it's a great foundation. have u tried the dlc that just came out? the snow one?

see, i think the lack of a conventional sense of progression was part of why i liked it. all the important bits are unlocked early on, and once it becomes clear that the goal won't be to reach population X by time Z, it frees you up to just focus on the city itself, like the reward is in the fun of pretending to be really into city planning for an afternoon, just testing out different ways to connect districts and constructing ridiculous overpass systems. it's kind of a throwback to the basic sense of curiosity you'd get playing simcity in the windows 3.1 days. the old simcity had goals and progression and scenarios and all that, but i think the reason it became a megahit was because it let you briefly have sense of being a fake city planner, like it let you bring spreadsheets and charts and graphs and models to life for a little bit, and it did it such an intuitive way that it seemed like an obvious subject for a game, but i don't really think it was. anyway it's hard to explain for some reason, but cities: skylines kind of brings me back to that old SimCity feeling, only with all the modern conveniences and visual updates that come from the 20-ish years of gamemaking in the interim.

i only played like 3 eligible games (tho this morning gf and i finally played keep talking and nobody explodes -- rly fun and sui generis but wears off quickly i think, probably renewable through introducing people to it) but this thread made me wish i'd voted anyway; sorry will! and gr8 job.

so i've talked a bit about Life is Strange already, but something i haven't mentioned is how great it is to see a game with a strong focus on female friendships/relationships: not only chloe and max, but max and kate, chloe and rachel amber, chloe and her mom, etc. even victoria, the main female antagonist, can be interacted with in a thoughtful way, although since it's a choice game you can also take it full-tilt into bitchiness if you want. i also really appreciate that DONTNOD didn't reject the idea that chloe/max could turn romantic (and that even from the start, you could direct max to be like "uhhhhhhhhhhhh no" to warren).

― the jackal-snouted problem man (reddening), Friday, February 19, 2016 11:21 AM (12 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol in e1 i was as vengeful as possible to victoria, "hold that pose!" was sweeeeeeet. lil butterfly's like this will have consequences! i'm like shut up mom. anyway otm.

i'd almost bought sunless sea a while back but there are so many permadeath semiroguelikes these days i got choice paralysis and didn't (tho i have played the orig binding of isaac) -- mordy itt has made it my takeaway from this, gonna get it soon.

my steam hours hit three digits for fallout 4 :/ but i don't think i came close to the end of the main quest. i kind of squeezed the map dry tho, otherwise. at the time it seemed obviously better than f3 but rly i'd have to replay it; both games are kind of curiously ephemeral. for me really enjoying f4 required disobeying it more often than not, but people have said that about bethesda games forever.

will play witcher 3 someday but uh i just got witcher 1 working w the steam controller (surprisingly fluid) and i have witcher 2 unplayed in my library from like five years ago.

i liked pillars of eternity enough to buy a season pass, which fallout 4 never chiseled out of me. just installed white march 2 the other day. of course i never played white march 1 and soon it'll be awkward to go back to the game as i've already forgotten most of the nine million words i've put in so far.

for ppl curious about cities skylines it is free this weekend on steam. it's kinda a perfect game for only one weekend of play so i highly recommend checking it out. and if you're ready to mod it look for all the soviet era architecture (esp the tenements).

my ballot

25 /// The Executive
20 /// Downwell
20 /// Tales From The Borderlands
20 /// You Must Build A Boat
5 /// Landsliders
5 /// Pocket Mine 2
5 /// Blades of Brim

i couldn't vote for it in good conscience but i played a lot of pocket mine 2 last year

I honestly don't remember my ballot as I used the online form. I gave the most points to Jackbox Party Pack 2, Goat Simulator, and Q.U.B.E., and all of the ones with < 5 points are mine. Also htoL#NiQ and Heroes of Loot.

s.clover, a werewolf high-five to you for voting The Executive, that was definitely in my top 3 for the year

The Executive: a good game made great thanks to off-kilter artwork and story, and a difficulty curve that's just right for a long time until the upgrades peak out and you have to just have much better reflexes than I happen to.

Downwell: One of the nice things about mobile is the opportunity to revisit old genres and see what would happen if you mixed their sensibility with certain more modern notions of gameplay. Downwell is effectively a game that its shocking was never invented for the C64, but, which if it had been, would have been one of the great games of all time. Twitchy, with lots of subtle interaction complexities built on a fairly minimal set of objects and enemies, and an actual sense of progression and a go, albeit one that seems daunting to actually reach. And for all the tightened gameplay, an upgrade progression that only works per game and still makes sense.

YMBAB: Almost all other combat match-3 is effectively strategic, or at least provides lengthy move-counters. Here, every second lost matters as the screen ticks forward, whether you swipe or not. So gameplay moves from being primarily about the "best" thing than about doing something, anything, as quickly as possible, and occasionally looking for the match you actually need. There are a few other great mechanics here as well (but they're also effectively held-over from the prior game) -- in particular, picking the number of quests and tying them to variables in the difficulty level means that you get more interesting shake-ups in gameplay (with the modifiers _really_ changing the careful balance of the game) and also the ability to dial back "just a bit" when things seem impossible, to unlock one or two more upgrades, and then make a run at them again.

Landsliders: I voted crossy road as the 2014 game because it took me a year to realize just how influential its "actually free to play but pay to spin for characters" model would be, and landsliders, by a studio founded by people who had first been at crossy road's, is the best of this sort in this year. Novel gameplay interaction, huge variety in levels and potential challenges, the openness to play in a variety of styles, either racing to the top or trying for every last collectible, or just trying to unlock one or another particular cache for the hell of it.

Pocket Mine 2: A lottery ticket in a box with monetization on top. I probably played this more than anything else in the first chunk of the year, before I ran out of most of the not-impossibly-grindy-to-unlock content. The big thing you unlock as you go along is the ability to get longer games with more blocks destroyed before your pick breaks, feeding the "next time i can do a bit better" sensation. Eventually this backfires and games just feel they go on too long, and that's the end of that.

Blades of Brim: Another mobile grinder, this one probably played more than anything else in the second chunk of the year. By the Subway Surfers developers (SS by the way still being one of the games I see most played by other people on my daily commute) it takes 3d-lane-change-endless-runners about as far forward as i've seen -- from 3 lanes to a fairly arbitrary number, from a few levels (SS was one of the first to really open up the vertical space) to again lots and lots. And the combat mechanic -- not too challenging, but enough to transform swipe reflexes. You can't approach enemies directly without rolling, or but you can approach from the side. And then when you get a chain of flying ones and end up hopping between them slashing as you go! I think the devs are as confused as to why it didn't catch on as the next SS as I am, so they've rebalanced and changed core gameplay a number of times now. Hearts used to regenerate -- now they stay gone. Used to have three simultaneous quests -- now just one. I don't know if this is really that much better than other endless games. I know I get less bored of it, and that I bothered to get my skills up to a level where occasionally I pull off something just feels really fluid and nice, and technically well-executed, and where I had to think at least a few moves ahead to get there, and that that freedom compares positively to something like temple run where its much more "read the terrain, do the one possible correct thing." But I don't know if that's what too many other people want from and endless runner.

to the detriment of my mental health i'll probably give all those a try at some point

19 /// Ori and the Blind Forest
My computer exploded around 3/4ths into this but it was still amazing. This was a year where everyone made a Metroidvania, and this was by far the best.

13 /// Undertale
Possibly overrated at this point, but I still got a lot of enjoyment from it.

12 /// The Room 3
Great puzzles. Shame about the attempt at a story.

11 /// Grow Home
Great idea let down a bit by some fiddly controls.

10 /// Crank
An entertaining and short idler.

9 /// Dropsy
I need to finish this. First two hours were great.

8 /// Agar.io
Simplest waste of time of the year. Downside: memes, trolling encouraged.

7 /// Broken Age
Also my disappointment of the year. An acceptable adventure that seems stuck in the past.

6 /// Her Story
Hypertext fiction lives on, I guess? Probably the best of this limited type of storytelling.

5 /// Trimps
Avoid this game. But I got suckered into it, so it gets the minimum points.

Had a blast playing some Rocket League last night. There is a new free mode called Rocket Lab out now (which replaced the hockey-like Snow Day) and it is a couple of Tron-inspired tracks that are a whole ton of fun! One of them is designed like a horseshoe, with the whole field looping in on itself, so you can fly through your goal and end up coming out through the other side's. Total game-changer.

whoa, that's awesome! i didn't like Snow Day at all, but that sounds much more fun.

after playing exclusively 3v3 since i got it, i recently switched over to 2v2 and it's like a brand new game.

yeah Snow Day was a kind of a pain to get used to. this has the same physics but a totally new playing field.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3LS-8925xs

!! those maps look awesome

'that map' i mean, lol

PSN sale this week has Life is Strange complete for $10, will probably grab it.

oh hey that's a good price.

Super Mega Baseball and Towerfall are both listed as Free now. Not even discounted to free. Not sure if they implemented some sort of freemium model or not but those games are both so good.

they're not, it just shows up that way on the store when you already own a game on your account

oh. shouldn't it say Purchased?

they need to fix that, v confusing

yeah, it's ballsed

Their whole online presence is a disaster on a number of levels.

the psn store is so weird. some days it seems integrated into the ps4 os, and then other days it seems like it's like html or something

For instance, here's a helpful hint: game sales sometimes last longer than a week but they often disappear from the sale page after the first week. Why? Anybody's guess. You just have to trawl through all of their game listings to see hidden stuff that's discounted.

Sunless Sea part of a Humble Bundle at the moment: https://www.humblebundle.com/humble-indie-bundle-16

sold.

CPX - TENTH ANNUAL COINT & PLICK 2016 nomination thread