I refuse to do a 'Top 10' or 'Bottom 10' list. In what messed up world does something as objective and complex as art somehow get reduced down into a numerical value? And then other people compare their numbers on their lists like they're trading Pokemon cards. This is also why I don't give a rating at the end of my reviews. It's just trivialising the whole thing.
So instead I'm giving random awards out to either games, companies, or events that deserve to be recognised and remembered when historians look through data-archives to find out what 2015 was like. But, to save them time: Hi guys! 2015 was a horrible year, and I hope 3015 works/worked out better for you.
The 'Biggest Dissapointment' Award
I was spoilt for choice in this category. 'Dissapointment' really sums up 2015. I was disappointed with the UK Election results. I'm disappointed that Northern Ireland has gone thorough a total political reform yet same-sex marriage is still being blocked. I'm disappointed that the world appears to be far more racist than I thought. I'm disappointed Donald Trump actually has a shot at being President, but most of all I'm disappointed that climate change is still getting worse.
In gaming, I'm disappointed that the Triple A market has already, a mere two and-a-bit years into a new console generation, stopped trying and now churns out sequel after sequel with no sign of innovation. This is something that the previous generation took about four years to achieve.
I could name almost any Triple A game from this year as the most disappointing game, but disappointment is a personal thing. You have to sink emotion into something only to have said thing betray you in order to be disappointed. I knew that Five Night's At Freddy's 4 would probably suck, and I didn't have any expectations for Westerado. So I'm giving this award to Kholat.
In hindsight, the game's very good at the whole navigation mechanic. You have a compass and a map. You have to use your bearing to find out where you are and where you need to go next. There's absolutely zero handholding, which adds to the crushing feeling of being lost. The graphics and sound design are also top-notch. This game could've been excellent.
But it just had to go down the whole Slender route. Your objective is to collect pages whilst avoiding a teleporting monster. Occasionally Sean Bean will, in a very bored voice, say some vague nonsense - and there might be a psuedo-cutscene showing a fleeing figure. There's nothing strong enough to keep your interest, which is why everyone's already forgotten about this game. Whilst I liked the navigation, it might've been better making this a more linear experience.
The story is also completely ruined the instant you start the game: Satan killed them. There's no ambiguity or a reason to bother tracking down the documents and audio logs to piece the puzzle together. The Devil murdered them. It's like starting a muder-mystery novel with Chapter 1 being called: 'The Butler Did It.'
Oh, and you can't jump despite the fact that the whole game revolves around climbing mountains. I was excited about this game because I thought it was going to play with how this is based off-of real life events. There are so few games that try this docu-drama approach. This could've been great, but, as it turns out, you have no reason whatsoever to play this game. And that just breaks my heart.
The "I Don't Get It" Award
Initially I was going to give this to Undertale, because the internet has exploded over this 'it-looks-like-it-was-made-in-RPG-maker' game. Whilst I didn't experience the euphoria everyone else appears to have, I can safely say that I 'get' the game. It has a lot of great storytelling chops going for it, and the juxtaposition between adorable and really creepy is what makes the game stand out. I just found the turn-based combat and the number of random encounters wearing, which is why I never completed the game. Maybe if the developers patch it I'll give the game another shot and see if I too can fall in love with it.
I also hear Volume's been patched too, which is why it's not going to appear anywhere here in either a positive or negative light. Again, I may re-visit it to see if I can make it past the first hour with some actual idea of what's going on. Though, if the game turns out to still be surprisingly bad then I may retroactively give it the "Most Disappointing" award.
No, I'm giving this award to Kung Fury: Street Rage.
For some reason, this is one of my most read reviews. I'd like to think this is just because everyone loves me, but more likely it's because I'm the only online reviewer who's ever given this game a negative review. Although, no-ones posted any hate-mail, troll comments, or in fact any comment at all. Can someone please give me a clue here?
I know it's only £1 on Steam...but even then it's not worth it. The game doesn't have enough content to be considered good, bad, dissapointing, surprising - it's just nothing. I only played it for about an hour because I was reviewing it. If I wasn't reviewing it then I probably wouldn't have lasted ten mins. It's so lacking in content that it doesn't even justify the £1...but everyone seems to love this. Why? I've played countless free online flash games that have far more content than this. This isn't even enough to be a mobile game. Why do you people like this game so much?
The "Token" Award
The last three years has seen the battle for digital equality. Despite statistics and my own personal experience proving otherwise, game companies continue to assume that only straight, cisgender men play video games. This obviously annoys the other 40% or so of the population who aren't straight cisgender men (including me) and would appreciate it if we didn't have to seek our entertainment in an enviroment that's pretty hostile towards us.
So the Triple A industry has tackled this problem the same way they tackle every problem: with stone-faced blandness. Rather than create more female protagonists, or eradicate tired tropes - they just try to make the ratio 1:1. Both Assassins Creed: Syndicate and Call Of Duty: Black Ops 3 have you killing both male and female assailants. Congratulations! You've solved institutionalised sexism!
It seems everyone is dealing with gender imbalance in the worst way possible. Women still aren't receiving any more attention in terms of writing and marketing - they've just been increased in quantity. This is bizarre considering that out of the all the times I've pondered the placement and characterisation of females in video games, the one thing that's never crossed my mind is: "You know, this game would be SO much better if I was beating the crap out of women as well as men."
Both the Triple A industry and the vast majority of everyone online has interpreted the digital gender equality movement as exclusively "we need more women." Whilst this need does play into the movement, I've always seen it as more "we need women to be given the same amount of attention, care, and respect as men." Men are consistently made the focus of the writing, with the story giving male characters various flaws, hopes, strengths, quirks, and humanity - in addition to actually wearing practical clothing. There are many examples of females in gaming, but there are very few who actually stand as their own characters rather than fall into tired, regressive tropes. It breaks my heart to admit it, but even Alyx from Half Life 2 falls into the "you're in love with her because we say you are" void that absorbs so many well-written female characters.
And when females are actually given attention, they're short-haired characters who show absolutely no emotion other than contempt for anything feminine, they're getting the ever loving crap beaten out of them, or they're 'ironically' wearing mini-skirts/fetish gear because feminism. It's odd that games like Metroid Prime, No-One Lives Forever, Portal, and Beyond Good and Evil work so well because they're like: "Yes, you're playing as a woman. And?" Meanwhile, developers have tried that with gay characters and it just feels so awkward. Mortal Kombat X did the whole "this-character-is-gay-oooh-look-how-little-of-a-fuss-we're-making-about-it" thing and it doesn't work.
But the gaming world lives and learns. Maybe making us able to kill both men and women is the first tiny step towards digital equality. Perhaps game developers can actually understand this 'woman' thing, and in turn audiences can actually see women as women. And maybe I can start an air-traffic control system for flying pigs.
The "Biggest Disaster" Award
You probably already know what this is, so let's just get it out of the way. It's Batman: Arkham Knight.
So after about half a year back on the old drawing board, it's back...and it's still broken. The game is only supported by Windows 8 - which is laughable since Windows 8 was so bad that Microsoft gave all its users Windows 10 for free. The game is incompatible with almost any graphics driver except an old NVIDIA one. It demands outdated software, yet also ridiculously powerful hardware - and even if you're mad enough to posess this then the game still doesn't work properly.
Warner Brothers remains unsympathetic. Their official advice is merely "turn it off and on again." There is nary a graphics card driver suggestion, or a list of known hardware incompatible with the game. Fans have had to go through all this themselves, doing a billion dollar corporations work for them. And all this effort has just proven to all the fans that this PC game is screwed beyond belief. In a year that bought us such excellently optimised ports as Mad Max and Metal Gear Solid V, this is a disgrace.
All I can conclude with is: Thank Christ for Steam refunds...
The "Asshole Corporation" Award
Again, I was spoilt for choice here. It's tempting to call out Warner Bros - who are to 2015 what Ubisoft was to 2014 - for refusing to even consider looking around for the distribution right to No One Lives Forever, but they will happily sue anyone who tries to claim the rights for themselves. There's Nintendo for stealing a cut of any profits YouTubers make off-of Nintendo-related videos, which has only resulted in YouTubers boycotting Nintendo and resulting in an already faltering company losing even more money. And of course there is EA for being EA, but I'll get to that later.
Instead, I'm giving this award to the coalition of Rockstar and Take-Two Interactive in the wake of the Grand Theft Auto V fiasco.
Grand Theft Auto V is by itself a technically impressive, beautifully realised mess. All Grand Theft Auto games are complete messes. The veichles always feel off. The running around and shooting feels off. The writing is off. The AI is off. The HUD is off. 'Off' is a perfect word to describe the entire GTA franchise.
What Rockstar does best is giving you an unchanging, expansive, detailed, consequence-free world to wreck havoc on (though, the Just Cause series has kinda overtaken GTA in this regard). This means that the whole experience is improved tenfold by mods. Already there are hundreds of really fun mods that open the game up to be an infinite anarchic playground. You want god-mode? There's a mod. You want the Just Cause Hookshot? There's a mod. You want the gravity gun from Half-Life 2? There's a mod. You want to turn the whole thing into EuroTruck Simulator? There's a mod. You want a gun that shoots cars? There's a mod. You want to breathe fire? There's a mod. Zombies? There's about twenty mods. GTA V has a mod for everything and anything. The PC version isn't even a year old, and already it has better mod support than Skyrim.
This is impressive considering that Rockstar doesn't want you to use mods.
With GTA V comes Grand Theft Auto Online; which kind of sucks. Take any one of your favourite games and imagine there's a handful of the worst humans in the world running around trashing everything in sight. Unless you can get some friends together, then GTA Online is a deeply annoying and unnecessary experience. But since it comes free with GTA V then I can't really complain about it, since it's just an extra bundled at no additional cost. Except, because of GTA Online, you can't use mods unless you want your Rockstar account nuked.
Even a simple script alteration to fix the horrid FOV will result in your account being banned. Fixes that don't alter the gameplay in any way and are just aesthetic changes to the graphics or (horrid) HUD will count as cheating. So if you want to jump online then you'll need to uninstall everything. You so much as look at a system file funny then kiss your account goodbye.
But Take-Two went one step further. One fan begun working on his own GTA Online server that would allow players to use their mods. This would solve the problem of players getting banned for either accidentally leaving a mod on, or using mods that don't change the gameplay. It would also mean that the people who do feel the need to use mods can do so in a consequence-free enviroment that won't annoy other players.
Take-Two decided to repay the guy with a visit by private investigators.
Yes, a game company has private investigators. A game company has private investigators.
Rockstar has done an EA. By holding the game away at a distance, demanding consumers pay for it yet denying them the full content, GTA Online will probably only last a few years before it's gone forever. And now Take-Two actively have Thought-Police who will come to your house if you dare tinker with a game you legally bought so you can have fun with other legal purchasers.
Why not do what Team Fortress 2 does? Have official company-run servers, fan-servers with an anti-cheat system enabled, and fan-servers with no strings attached. I'd argue that TF2 wouldn't still be around today if it wasn't for Valve essentially handing the game to us on a plate - rather than charging us to stand there looking at it.
God, what assholes...
The 'Never Forget' Award
All the way back in April, Valve tried to introduce paid mods. I wrote an article explaining exactly why this move was a complete disaster, but there was no need since shortly afterwards Valve stopped. I'd like to think this was because they realised they might've won the 'asshole corporation' award - but actually it's because Valve lost millions in sales that week as gamers protested.
So paid mods won't be a thing....but still! We shouldn't forget that both Valve and Bethesda tried to implement this. They actually attempted to make us pay for mods, and they outright lied in saying that this was to reward the modders.
No! No it wasn't! Valve and Bethesda both swiped so much of all profits made that by the end of it the modder would recieve nothing. In fact, under this system, the modder would've had to wait until the mod had recieved a certain number of downloads before recieving the money - meaning that Valve and Besthesda would be taking 100% of all profits.
I hate to use the word literally, but this is literally Valve and Bethesda earning money off-of other peoples work. You thought that Nintendo stealing profits from YouTubers was an asshole move? It still is, but at least Ninendo only took a cut. No-one should forget that paid mods almost happened, and this should remain a dark stain on Valve's failing reputation.
The "Worst Game of 2015" Award
Every singe day, games are being released. There must be thousands of games out there made this year alone. Some of them are good. A lot of them are probably bad.
Because Valve completely messed up both Steam Greenlight and Steam Early-Access, we've seen entire waves of unfinished and unplayable games. Any of these could be called the worst game of the year. It's fine for people to experiment with games and learn - but these games shouldn't be sold for actual real-world money. They shouldn't even be posted for free online.
Yet my 'Worst of 2015' choice is a Triple A blockbuster title based off-of one of the highest grossing movie franchises of all time. It's Star Wars: Battlefront.
This isn't the worst game of the year because it's a bad game. As I said in my review, Battlefront is actually quite fun. The problem is that EA took a classic game series, stripped it of content, then asked that we pay an additional £40 on top of the £40 the game already costs. And if you're playing the PS4 version then you can't actually play the game unless you pay for a Playstation Plus subscription. You can just play the PC version, but there's no mod support and you have to use Origin - which is frankly a piece of shit. It's not quite as bad as Uplay, but it's up there in terms of ruining your PC Gaming experience by adding layers of obtrusive bullcrap.
But there's no point in even paying for DLC and subscriptions because EA have already announced they're planning a sequel, and EA is infamous for closing down their online-only games after just a few years. You're being made to pay around £100 for a game that will be dead by 2019. Why aren't you in prison for extortion and fraud, EA?
So I place this game here, not because it's bad, but because it represents everything wrong with the gaming industry. Charging full price yet still demanding more whilst giving less. Holding the game away from you despite having paid for it. Forcing you to play online. Trying to start a franchise before the first game's even out. Sacrificing content and freedom. Watering down a product to appeal to the largest market possible. When you step back to look at the larger picture: this game is repulsive.
I think the fact that Battlefront is actually kinda fun just makes it worse, because it means EA has ruined a decent product. In a few short years time EA will pull the plug on the severs and this game will be dead. Can you imagine if a book publisher released a novel, waited for about three years, then pulped all existing copies? Or if someone walked into your house and stole one of your DVDs forever? Or if The National Portrait Gallery chose a painting at random and burned it? In no other medium does art get treated this way. We've long established that games are art - so why aren't they preserved as such?
This is abhorrent. EA are abhorrent. I don't think they deserve to be repeatedly labelled as 'the worst company in the world,' but out of sheer protest I hope they continue to anually recieve this award.
The 'I May Have Been A Bit Too Harsh' Award
Buddhists believe that when you die, you review your entire life's events all over again so you may experience the ultimate and final reflection. Whilst science has yet to prove this right, I believe that the end of a year is a less spiritual yet far more painful version of this.
And, of course, I always like to look at what a scumbag I've been each year so I can feel even more miserable. During this reflection, I decided to re-install a game I suddenly became interested in once again despite giving it a quite scathing review. Whilst playing the game, I still raged and moaned at it, yet emerged from the other side a new person. I was re-incarnated by a simple revelation:
No, I do not hate Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number.
When I set out to play the game, I was expecting it to take the razor-sharp focus and make it the entire focus. The plot of Hotline Miami isn't great, but the way it was told got me. The way it toyed with perception and used ultra-violence to paint a futile yet LSD-fulled trip.
At no point did the developers promise any of this. In fact, looking back, the marketing is very honest: it's just more Hotline Miami. It's more fat, less meat and at no point was I promised anything else. I have only myself to blame for being dissapointed, since I'd let my imagination run away with itself whilst ignoring the marketing. Can I hate 'The Mona Lisa' because it doesn't have any pirates on it? No, because that's not what Da Vinci set out to make. Similarly, I can't hate the new Star Wars movie for being nothing more than fanservice because it never promised to be anything otherwise.
Still; there's no way I can call this an enjoyable experience. I stand by my review all the same. The levels are too open, they're filled with too many enemies, they force you to use a particular play style, the plot is bloated, and the game just keeps going on and on and on whilst never finding any sort of focus. Plus the ending sucks. It's not a good game, and there is no way I can reccomend it.
But Hotline Miami 2 certainly isn't a disappointment. Well; it is, but it's not. It's dissapointing in the sense that it's not very good. Yet it's not a personal betrayl like Kholat was. The game delivers what it promises, but doesn't deliver what I hoped it to be. When writing my review, I was bitter and extremely fustrated. Now that I've had the time to calm down and re-evaluate, I realise that Hotline Miami 2 is still kind of bad, but really - what did I expect? Aside from a good game...
The 'Close But No Cigar' Award
I always believe that any game with any kind of merit deserves a place in gaming history. This is why I discuss Floor 13. and this is also why I despise the recent Assassin's Creed games for wallowing in blandness. A game that attempts to either do something unique, or do something that's already been done but has never been done this good deserves to be played at least for an hour.
Which is why I give this 'honorable mention' award to not one, but two games released this year that re-invented old, dated methods of interaction to work with a fresh, innovative story to create two unique games.
The first game is Her Story.
I'm just young enough to remember Full Motion Video (FMV) games. For the most part, they were all terrible. Who needs to actually create gameplay when you can just have D-List actors performing in front of greenscreen effects worse than a 2007 YouTube channel. Then you compress the video so you can barely see what's going on anyway - which is actually a blessing.
But Her Story works because you must use the video to work out the mystery. It's not just a movie pretending to be a game *COUGH*The Last of Us*COUGH* nor is it trying to make up for it's lacking gameplay by filling it with cutscenes *COUGH*every FMV game ever made*COUGH*. It's 'computer within a computer' interface manages to perfectly compliment all the elements as it's fused into one smooth interface. No matter which order you reveal the story, it will always surprise and interest. It's the sort of mystery game that makes you whip out a pen and paper, but it's not the sort that cannot be completed without a strategy guide.
The second game is Emily is Away.
I can't believe that a free Steam game made it here. Steam used to be the pinnacle of PC gaming. It used to be a land where only the best of the best could be found. You made it onto Steam then your game was cemented in gaming history...or you were a very rich company. Either way. good or bad, Steam used to be populated with actual 'games.' Yes, there were bad games, but some of the stuff in my Steam queue cannot even be called games.
Yet out of this slosh came a short yet damn sweet game. It doesn't even have video. It's nothing but words, yet the choice you have within those words, and what those words represent beyond simple rhetoric really shows what makes text-based games so great. Behind these two souls having a conversation, so much can be left to interpretation. I hope more games like this get made. This combined with Depression Quest should start a genre.
Ultimately though, I can't call either of these favorites because they have little to no replay value. Both games revolve around unlocking a mystery via an intentionally dated interface. This is all great stuff, but it means that as an unfortunate side-effect the mystery is soon ruined. Once I'd completed each game up to 100% then I turned them off knowing that I'll never need to play them ever again; because I've got everything I came for. But at least I was satisfied.
The 'Favorite Game of 2015' Award
It's The Beginner's Guide.
Here we have a game that's not only about other games, but about the personality behind it. You just never see this. Hardly anyone discusses the auteur when it comes to gaming, and it's one of the reasons why people argue that gaming isn't actually an art - because there's apparently no artistic vision. This is of course bullshit considering how making a film requires more than one person. Yes, Stanley Kubrick was an influential director - but working alongside him, he had producers, cinematographers, art directors, sound producers, writers, actors, the list goes on. And people call The Cohen Brothers auteurs despite the fact they're two people. It's entirely plausible to argue that a group of people all striving towards the same artistic purpose are creating art.
But even if we do have games purportedly made by one person (real or not) then they remain art. They're a single vision striving to convey an idea. And these ideas hugely effected me on an emotional level. I maintain my view that The Beginner's Guide probably won't have the same impact on you as it had on me. This is why this is 'favorite' games rather than 'best.'
I'm still replaying it. Like The Stanley Parable and Portal, it's short length actually works to it's advantage as you can spend a Friday evening or Sunday afternoon blasting through it and getting that same fulfillment you got the first time playing through it. It only lasts about an hour but it's stayed in my mind all year, and for that it deserves credit. I never thought a barely interactive game would or could ever become a classic, yet here we are.
The 'Actual Favorite Game of 2015' Award
OK. There's a difference between games I love and games I think deserve a place in history as a milestone to be discussed whenever the whole 'art' debate is bought up. I absolutely love Papers Please as an artistic statement, but you can hardly call it a 'fun' game. It's not something you're going to sink all your free time into because the gameplay is simultaneously overwhelmingly intense and soul-crushingly grim.
Meanwhile, whilst I can praise Team Fortress 2's completely mad sense of humor and diverse gameplay - I can't artistically justify sinking 600 hours into it. That's not love; that's obsession, and no real critical discourse can come from it. Sometimes love of the enjoyment and love of the art overlaps, but in this case it doesn't. So my actual favorite game has to go to Just Cause 3.
Yes, games don't have to be fun. Spec Ops: The Line, System Shock 2, and Silent Hill 2 aren't 'fun' games. But ultimately, why do we play games? Why do we slump in front of the television/computer after a long day? To have fun.
Just Cause 3 has fun built into it's very code. Just Cause 2 was already one of the most anarchic, satisfying games ever made - and now Just Cause 3 is here. It's the same game only even more fun. The map is bigger than GTA V, you can hookshot, hijack, fly, and blow up within this massive, fully realised world. Did Just Cause 2 need a sequel? No! Could all the stuff from Just Cause 3 be modded into Just Cause 2? Yes. But this isn't art we're dealing with. This is fun! It's not a novel - it's a playground. And playgrounds should be as large as possible whilst crammed with things to play with.
In fact, everyone seems to have forgotten GTA V because this does exactly the same thing only better. And whilst Square Enix kinda messed up the PC port (though, it's already been patched and it still wasn't as bad as Fallout 4's port) this game has full mod support. Plus Square Enix hasn't sent private investigators round peoples houses seriously what the hell Take-Two!
2015 was an awful year. But at least it ended with Just Cause 3 to cheer us all up/make me not want to kill myself. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to further de-stabilise a war-torn country. It's OK! It's not real...
