It’s been a terrific year for video games. The current-gen consoles finally have enough of an install base to warrant dedicated AAA game development, so we’re starting to see some really impressive-looking titles like The Witcher 3, Star Wars Battlefront, and Bloodborne. Meanwhile, despite all the nay-saying that occurred about the PC’s coming obsolescence in the early-2010s, the PC has proven to be the most enduring gaming platform of all, still capable of pumping out visuals that even the new consoles can’t handle.
Aside from visual improvements, 2015 continues the trend of huge, 40-hour plus titles. Playing everything worthwhile is hardly an option anymore, as enormous games like The Witcher 3 and Fallout 4 are practically the norm now. Even annual games like Assassin’s Creed are completely packed with things to do, and games centered around multiplayer like Call of Duty are expected to be loaded with separate features and modes to justify their $60 price tags. The linear, 8-hour games that were all the rage 5 years ago are becoming more difficult to justify, and when games lack the content players hoped to get out of them (like, say, Star Wars: Battlefront), word is getting out and sales are being affected.
It’s a world that can be overwhelming, but is growing and changing more frequently than any other medium. WIthout further ado, here are my personal picks for the best games of the year.
Best Action/Adventure Game – Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
The Phantom Pain has a number of problems, the worst of which being that it is unfinished. The story stops rather than ends, and the behind-the-scenes turmoil obviously had an impact on the title. So it’s a testament to the strength of this title that it still stands tall above nearly anything else released this year. For the first time in franchise history, Metal Gear Solid V makes you FEEL like a war hero, jumping, diving, rolling, sneaking, and shooting with perfect precision. This game plays like a dream, and the wealth of options when upgrading your base, researching equipment, or simply choosing what (and who) to deploy with means that its gameplay never ceases to surprise you. Hideo Kojima will never make another Metal Gear title, but his final title in the series is a flawed masterpiece that players owe it to themselves to try.
Best RPG – The Witcher 3
Let’s just forget The Witcher 3’s incredible visuals and CD Projekt Red’s gamer-friendly business tactics for a second. As a game, The Witcher 3 completely upends what we believed to be possible in an RPG. As western RPGs became the norm, and their storytelling was sacrificed on the alter of “more content,” it seemed impossible that a game could be as huge and open as the Elder Scrolls and Fallout series AND be full of side missions that were actually compelling. Yet The Witcher 3 pulls this off, with terrific writing and side quests, many of which lead to fully-independent new plot threads, that always feel substantial and worth your time. The game is also built completely around the character of Geralt, meaning that character interactions and game mechanics feel specific and unique. Given the generic treatment by most RPG NPCs (meant to fit with whatever avatar you create), this too feels revolutionary. The tone, writing, world-design, and yes, graphics, are so incredible in The Witcher 3 that going back to Fallout 4 felt like a chore.
Best Shooter – Call of Duty: Black Ops 3
I’m as surprised as you are that Black Ops 3 is getting my recommendation for Best Shooter of 2015. I strongly disliked this game when I first started playing. The multiplayer component removed a lot of the mobility I liked in last year’s Advanced Warfare, and the campaign started out incredibly flat and uninteresting. But as I played on, both modes won me over: the campaign does some very interesting things in its back half, and once multiplayer gets its hooks in you, it’s hard to get away. Even the zombie mode, which I’ve admittedly barely touched, has a really unique aesthetic this year and a great cast. There’s not one particular area where Black Ops 3 excels beyond its competition, but as a package, it’s very tough to beat.
Best MOBA – Heroes of the Storm
Let me just say up front that I am NOT a big MOBA player. I find the games too difficult to pick up, and their communities too toxic to enjoy their steep learning curves. But Heroes of the Storm feels more inviting than the others. The gameplay components aren’t quite as complicated, I can contribute to my team by doing mini-quests, and Blizzard actually makes an effort to give you extra tutorials if you need them. Heroes of the Storm still isn’t something I play on a regular basis, but at least it doesn’t scare me away like its competition.
Best Simulation – Batman: Arkham Knight
I’m cheating just a little bit here. Obviously Arkham Knight doesn’t deserve to be in the same categories as, say, Sim City and Forza Motorsport. But damn it, Warner Bros. advertised Arkham Knight as a Batman simulator, and that game made me feel like The God-Damn Batman. And really, if you’re going to simulate something, why do it for anything OTHER THAN Batman? This game covered all of the bases where the character is concerned (stealth, fear, combat, gliding, and batmobile), and was a lot of fun overall, so it’s getting my recommendation here.
Best Puzzle Game – Portal Stories: Mel
Portal Stories: Mel isn’t a Valve project, nor is it the work of a third-party studio hired to work on the franchise. It’s a fan-project, completed independently and released for free as a Portal mod, and it is fantastic. Aside from a much higher difficulty level, it’s nearly impossible to tell Mel apart from the “official” Portal series. The art, level design, puzzles, voice acting, and music are all terrific. I wouldn’t be surprised if this team got hired up by a big publisher to do more work in the near-future, but in the meantime, make sure to give this free gem a chance.
Best Platformer – Super Mario Maker
Super Mario Maker isn’t the first mainstream platformer to emphasize creating and sharing levels with others; that would be Little Big Planet. But whereas Little Big Planet’s mechanics and physics were somewhat awkward, everybody already knows how a Mario game should play, making this title far more accessible. The same can be said for the level creation tools; gone are the triggers and d-pad based menu interactions of LBP, replaced by a simple and intuitive touchpad interface. This game is a love-letter to game design and a blast to play, regardless of whether you’re a creator or a player.
Best Free-To-Play – Hearthstone
On the one-hand, it’s essentially impossible to be seriously competitive in Hearthstone without spending absurd amounts of money. Accumulating the amount of gold necessary to purchase booster packs and new content is just not conducive to that kind of play. However, unlike other free-to-plays, in which this would be a game-breaker, Hearthstone’s ranking system makes sure that even if you’re not buying up all of the game’s best cards, you’re still competing with players who are roughly the same level as you. It’s also worth noting that Hearthstone is simply a great game, borrowing heavily from Magic the Gathering while removing a lot of the more complex and tedious rules that makes that series difficult to penetrate. It takes the old “seconds to learn, a lifetime to master” to heart, making the base rules simple while allowing for lots of strategy and deck-building synergy. Little else in the free to play market even comes close.
Best “Narrative Choice” Game – Tales from the Borderlands
If you had asked me which Telltale series to be more excited for, Game of Thrones or Tales from the Borderlands, I would have eagerly said Game of Thrones. The world of Borderlands is fun, but not particularly deep, and its feints toward serious drama never land very hard. So color me surprised that Tales from the Borderlands is not only a terrific series, full of great plot-twists and likable characters, but also the best thing Telltale has done since the first season of their Walking Dead series. This year had a number of strong choice-based narrative titles (shout-out to Life is Strange), but Tales from the Borderlands emerges as my clear favorite.
Best Multiplayer Game – Halo 5
Halo 5 is far from a perfect game. The campaign is incredibly weak, and it introduces micro-transactions that are at best unnecessary, and at worst manipulative and predatory. But as a multiplayer title, few can compete with Halo 5. By splitting its content between “Warzone” mode and “Arena” mode, players get the best of both worlds: a “modern” multiplayer experience with perks/rewards/loadouts, and a more “classic” experience in which all players are on equal ground and ranking determines match-ups. The “Arena” mode, my personal preference, contains several of its own game types and playlists, and 343 Industries is continually updating the title with new maps and modes. After the disastrous Master Chief Collection, 343 had a lot of work to do to prove their aptitude with the franchise. With Halo 5, they’ve managed to do just that…at least when it comes to shooting strangers in the face over the internet.
Best Indie Game – Her Story
While independent games have soared on Steam in the last few years, they’ve often fallen into similar patterns and visual styles. There are countless retro action games and platformers, meant to evoke an 8 or 16 bit aesthetic, and all sorts of rogue-likes and survival games. Such an environment makes Her Story feel all-the-more fresh, with its purely narrative focus and lack of traditional, old-school game mechanics. It’s proof that developers don’t need huge teams and dump-trucks of money to create something unique.
Best Story – The Witcher 3
Perhaps it would be more fair to title this “Best Stories.” While The Witcher 3’s central narrative is good, it’s probably not my favorite of the year (that would be Tales from the Borderlands). But given the wealth of great writing included in the side quests, including material that often surpasses the quality of the main quest, it feels like a shoe in. The first DLC, Hearts of Stone, deserves its own special recognition as well. This content involves its own, completely self-contained story that is, in my opinion, stronger than anything in the vanilla title. That you can get all 10-20 hours of it for only $10 (or $25 in the “Season Pass” package) is just icing on the cake.
Best Graphics – The Witcher 3
Even with the much-ballyhooed “graphical downgrade” that The Witcher 3 underwent between its first public footage and its ultimate release, the title, running on a high-end PC, is still the most gorgeous game of the year. From the incredibly detailed faces to the realistic clothing to the way sunlight shines through the trees, an incredible amount of work went into this game. Coupled with gorgeous world design, in which no place was created without a history or a reason to exist, The Witcher 3 is hands-down the prettiest game of 2015.
Most Improved Game – Destiny: The Taken King
It’s amazing how much the little details can mean in a game. The Taken King is still a grind-a-thon, forcing players to replay levels and raids ad infinitum to get better gear and raise their light level. But tweaks were made to Destiny to make it far more enjoyable this year. For one, the game’s tone is a lot more lighthearted, with characters like Nathan Fillion’s Cayde 6 clashing with the gloom-and-doom of other Year 1 characters. It also sets out to reward you and make you feel special, kicking things off with a victory tour through the tower, giving you presents along the way for your work in Year 1. The quest format, too, makes sure that you almost always have some sort of goal (aside from grinding daily/weekly events) to keep up your sense of progress. But smallest and more importantly of all, Destiny tweaked the light system to be an average score of all your weapon/armor values. This means that, instead of leveling up once in a blue moon after incredible amounts of grinding, your level is increasing almost every time you pick up a new piece of equipment that is better than your old one. The impact from leveling is less significant than before, but it’s also more frequent, making Destiny rewarding in almost every play session.
Most Disappointing Game – Star Wars Battlefront
How did this one go wrong? The game looks and sounds incredible, and absolutely captures the feel of the original trilogy of Star Wars films. But somehow, whether it was in an effort to reach a casual audience or some other miscalculation on EA’s part, Battlefront just isn’t very fun. The on-foot gameplay lacks depth, the vehicle controls are abysmal, and the whole game is lacking in content. The option to buy a $50 “Season Pass” which doubles the size of the game, stinks of opportunism, as well. Hopefully EA realizes their mistake and will release a far more substantial sequel in time for Episode VIII.
Most Unique Game – Her Story
Her Story is unlike any other game out there. There are no real play mechanics, just an old computer interface and a database of pre-recorded live-action footage to dig through. There’s no direction, no mandatory order in which to discover the story, just a search engine and the ability to “tag” videos with keywords. It’s incredibly brave and experimental, and works far better than it has any right to. The game only costs $5.99 on Steam ($3.59 on the current sale), so give this curiosity a chance.
Best Xbox One Exclusive – Halo 5
While Rise of the Tomb Raider was a solid entry in the series, it failed to do much that its predecessor didn’t already achieve. So my pick for Best Xbox One exclusive falls to its other high-profile release, Halo 5. I’ve already mentioned that Halo 5’s campaign disappointed, but the multiplayer, coupled with the continued developer support and free content releases, is strong enough to make it the stand-out exclusive for the Xbox One.
Best PS4 Exclusive – Until Dawn
Nobody really expected much from Until Dawn. Beginning life as a Playstation Move title, the title was in rough shape every time it was shown to critics or journalists, and even months ahead of release, signs did not look good. Even Sony, the game’s publisher, barely promoted the title, showing a serious lack of faith. But regardless of what Sony thought about one of their only exclusive titles this year, Until Dawn was a great time. There was a real feeling of consequence to the game, imbuing each decision and quicktime event with a sense of dread. Repeat playthroughs ruin some of the game’s illusions, but it still stands high as the best reason to own a Playstation 4 this year.
Best Wii U Exclusive – Splatoon
Splatoon feels weird the first time you try it. Combining right-stick lateral camera controls with a motion-aiming mechanic, there’s a bit of a learning curve. But it’s amazing how natural this mechanic, along with all of Splatoon’s other unique design choices, feels after about an hour of play. This is a seriously innovative title, combining shooter mechanics with a territorial mobility system that has never really been done before. It’s a shame that many will write off Splatoon as a kiddie shooter without trying it. It’s one of the best multiplayer titles released this year, and my personal favorite on the Wii U’s 2015 slate.
Best PC Exclusive – Her Story
While PC-exclusive AAA titles are essentially non-existent these days, PC is still home to a vast number of indie titles. No matter how easy Sony tries to make indie development for its platform, PC is always going to be the easiest way to get your game created and out into the marketplace. Of all the PC indie titles I played this year, Her Story is probably the most interesting, and the least viable on any other platform. It’s proof that the game industry is still expanding and experimenting, even when mainstream titles are congealing into a handful of marketable genres.
Gaming Platform of the Year – PC
Despite all of the hype and commotion around the PS4 and Xbox One, the fact is that even at this early stage in their life-cycle, they pale in comparison to a moderately-priced gaming PC. While they’ve got affordability in their favor, the consoles have also failed to release nearly as many compelling exclusives as they have in the past. Given how many titles came to PC this year, and how much better most of them performed, the PC is far and away my pick for “Platform of the Year.” Sure, you’ll get a botched port from time to time (*cough* Arkham Knight *cough*), but if that’s the price to pay for the biggest library of games and the best performance and visuals, it’s a sacrifice worth making.
Developer of the Year – CD Projekt Red
Not only did CD Projekt Red make one of the largest, most impressive games of all time this year, but they did it with a team that was only a fraction of the size of their competitors, and they kept the consumer in mind the whole time. Outside of the game’s actual development, CD Projekt Red really pushed for DRM-free game ownership through GOG, created loads of free DLC to be released over the weeks following the game’s release, and created incredible new expansion content that actually warranted its price point. Even if The Witcher 3 isn’t your cup of tea, you have to hand it to CD Projekt Red. They proved that unfinished games, microtransactions, and loads of junky DLC don’t have to be the norm. There is a better way.
Game of the Year – The Witcher 3
What can I say that I haven’t said already? The Witcher 3 is phenomenal. It’s enormous, gorgeous, beautifully written, funny, and unpredictable. The team behind it is relatively small, yet, outpaced every other developer this year in both quantity of content in-game and the quality of each piece of content. They gave early-adopters weeks of free DLC, released one of the greatest expansion packs I’ve ever played for only $10, and have at least 20 hours of new content coming next year. The Witcher 3 does things that publishers have been telling us are impossible in modern game design for years. I look forward to those same publishers playing catch-up.
Game of the Year Runner-Up – Metal Gear Solid V
Make no mistake about it: Metal Gear Solid V is a deeply flawed, even incomplete game. When put side-to-side with something as polished and whole as The Witcher 3, I cannot in good faith give my Game of the Year recommendation to MGSV. But no game I played this year pushed sandbox gaming further than Kojima’s final Metal Gear Solid title, and few played so damn perfectly. It’s a testament to The Phantom Pain’s terrific, varied gameplay that even the highly-repetitive Side Missions never entirely collapse into tedium. I’ve done just about everything there is to do in this game, yet I still feel like I could come back anytime and enjoy it all over again.