Your personal best and worst games of 2015

[MetalSoup]

What were the best games you played this year? What surprised you the most? What disappointed you the most?

Doesn't matter if the games were released this year, just that they were memorable gaming experiences that stood out for you personally in 2015. Feel free to add more categories to your own lists, if you like.


I'll start with mine:


Game of the year:

I tried really hard to pick one, but there were 3 games that really stood out to me this year that I just had hours of fun with, and I can't pick one over the other.

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Grand Theft Auto V


Biggest surprise:

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.

I've never played a MGS game before, so I bought the Ground Zeroes demo and thought it was okay but didn't really get all that into it. After watching some trailers for TPP, I got more and more intrigued by it, and decided to take a chance and get it. Trying to figure out the stories from the previous games looked like something even dedicated fans struggle with, however once I started this game, I decided to just take the story for what it is, and I just simply couldn't stop playing the game, it was just so much fun.

Honorable mention: The Wolf Among Us


Biggest Disappointments:

Mad Max

It's not a bad game by any means, but after playing TPP, the gameplay just seemed extremely dull and repetitive, I was hoping for much more from the creators of one my favourite games, Just Cause 2.

Mortal Kombat X

Also not a bad game at all, and I actually quite enjoyed the silly story, but its launch issues and performance problems on PC started my hatred for all things WB, and it pretty much just went downhill from there.

Armikrog

Just no.





Side note: please try to avoid just making lists, try to go a little bit into your choices, and feel free discuss other people's choices, whether you agree or disagree with them.

[Wlad]

Game of the year:

Bloodborne
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

I really can't choose between these 2 games. I love them equally for different reasons. Bloodborne for the combat system, atmosphere, setting and awesome weapons and Witcher 3 for the amazing story, the massive open world to explore at my leisure, Gwent,Trolls, Ciri, Yen and Triss.

The Witcher 3 was everything I wanted from the final game and the ending (the one I got at least) was absolutely perfect as an end to Geralt's adventures. I spent 120 hours on my first playthrough and I'm just waiting to get a new GPU so I can finally play it properly on PC using my imported save games from the first 2 games.

Bloodborne is like a gift that keeps on giving; or never ending punishment depending on your perspective. I have played this game pretty much non-stop since it released early this year. The longest I have gone without playing it since release is about 2 weeks and I am still playing it and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

Biggest surprise:

Mad Max

I honestly didn't expect much from this game since licensed games suck real bad 9 times out of 10, but Mad Max was a really pleasant surprise. I couldn't really be bothered that the narrative was so thin since the game was just so much pure fun to play. Yes, the side-missions can get repetitive, but when something is this much fun I don't care how many times I have to do it. I loved the game so much that I bought it on PC as well in addition to the steel case PS4 version I bought at launch and have since finished it on both platforms.

Honorable mention: Wasteland 2


Biggest Disappointments:

Metal Gear Solid V

The most overhyped game released this year IMO. I didn't finish it (or get very far), but I played enough of it to know it's not for me. Something about the game just feels "artificial" or "fake" to me. I don't really know how to explain it, it kind of feels like an arcade game, if that makes any sense.

[The_Imp_ZA]

We all know what I'm going to talk about.

Game of the Year:

Eh? I don't think I really have one. I didn't finish that many games this year, I didn't play any between June and October. I'll give it to Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition (again). It's fun, what more do I need to say.

Other:

Enslaved: Odyssey of Monkey's Western Bollocks had some gorgeous art, but lacklustre combat. Andy Serkis is brilliant as Monkey. I don't remember the name of the female character, but she was good too. The speeder thing you got to fly around on was great, and I would have loved more of that. The Pigsy DLC is also good. PC port is quite rubbish though.

Grow Home: I shot my star seed all over the planet. Fantastic way to relax, or so I hear. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Type Rider: I learnt about fonts. I learnt a lot about fonts. I also learnt too much about comic sans.

The Witcher 1, 2 and KOTOR II: Do I have to say anything? Go play them, again, for the 5th time. Do it, do it now!

Biggest Surprise:

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Well, CD Projekt finally made a game that didn't almost bankrupt their entire studio, so that's a positive. My cynicism aside, they managed to make a world that is ridiculous in size, and the pure graphical fidelity on display is incredible. Attention to detail in the character models and facial animation is fantastic, allowing for a remarkable amount of nuance. I don't think I've ever seen a videogame character cry as convincingly as Ciri does. The first expansion, Hearts of Stone is also better than anything we got in the main game. It's a disappointment that the rest of the game couldn't be of a similar standard.

Also Gwent. I usually dislike TCGs, but I love Gwent. Seriously, I can't believe they haven't released a standalone Gwent game on mobile.

On to ... the biggest disappointment:

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

It wasn't what I had expected coming off of replaying The Witcher 1 and 2 for the umpteenth time. The game suffered heavily from using an Open World design that copied the Ubisoft style of filling the map with useless content. For a game that promised innovation, it lacked it in spades. Their original vision of the combat system would have set TW3 apart from other games, but it proved too difficult to implement in their time frame. Basically, imagine a mix of VATS and Metal Gear Rising's Blade Mode. You would have felt like a Witcher at all times, with the game being more dependent on skill and precision than an arbitrary level system. The leveling in the final game just doesn't make sense. When I'm a level 1 Witcher, drowner's wreck my shit, but when I'm a level 15 Witcher, I eat Griffin' roast for breakfast. On the hardest difficulty, the game is still too easy. TW3 didn't need to be an open world game, there's not a single quest that necessitates it. A tighter, hub styled "linear" layout would have suited the game better, used less development resources and allowed for more experimentation in the gameplay.

The main plot was disjointed and the third act was rushed out the door. CDPR themselves have even admitted this. The amount of cut content is insane, and that's only what we know about from the leaked docs and a small amount of content that was left in the files. The save import is laughable (BioWare got destroyed for doing this in ME3 but for some reason CDPR got away with it), there's only one character that it effects. They cut the entire Scoia'tael plotline (along with a lot of other content) around May 2014, so why they bothered keeping the save import is unknown to me. There were also major development issues that resulted in most of the team crunching for more than a year to put together some kind of overall narrative, and what we got in the end simply isn't that good if you know the lore or have read the books. I put it in both categories because The Witcher 3 isn't an objectively bad game. It's not broken or super buggy, the gameplay is competent and it might even be a decent conclusion to the book series, but it is a horrible sequel to the previous games, which was precisely the thing I was hoping it wouldn't be.

Also the sex/nudity (sue me, I'm going to talk about this). The Witcher 1 was completely juvenile in this regard, those sex cards were just sad. The Witcher 2 moved the medium forward by presenting the Elven Baths scene in Flotsam, which was both cute, corny and almost realistic. A step forward, one that could be easily avoided if the player chose so. It wasn't forced, or a reward for saying the right things or doing someone a favour. Then we go and take a major step back in TW3, where the majority of the scenes are treated as quest rewards. I didn't like it, most of them felt kind of creepy, and those alternate costumes they added as the free DLC were overly sexualised and pandering to a small section of the fanbase. As I've always said, don't put sex scenes or romance options in your game if you aren't, can't or won't handle it properly. It's difficult and requires nuance. Bioware is the worst offender, but I thought that CDPR had nailed this. That was a poor choice of words.

[Blazzok]

Game of the year:

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Ori and the Blind Forest

My games of the year and I just can't choose between the two. The Witcher is fantastic, I played basically nothing of the first 2 games so I can't compare elements of 3 to them. The game is beautiful and the environment is filled with things to do. The characters are engaging and ofcourse Gwent is a fantastic mini game. I have yet to finish the game though, I am about 50 hours in, however I doubt the ending of the game will change my view on the game.

Ori is brilliant. The music is outstanding and I have listened to the OST several times after finishing the game, the visuals are also great and the story was really emotional for me. Everyone should play it.

Biggest surprise:

Broforce

It is such a fun game. I have been playing it since early beta, but only played the final release a few months ago. The mindless fun and destruction is fantastic, the sound is good and the enemies are so damn funny with their quirks. Playing with a friend (or friends) makes it even more ridiculous and fun. They also expanded the game a lot going from beta to final. For a few minutes (or hours) of mindless fun this is hard to beat.
Get Expendabros for free if you're unsure if you'll like Broforce, it is basically the Broforce demo.

Honorable Mentions: Grim Dawn, Hero Siege

Grim Dawn is still in early access but it is already a lot of fun. I'm anxiously awaiting the final release so I can play the full game.
Hero Siege is Diablo in pixel art form. It is great with single player and even more fun with multiplayer.


Biggest Disappointments:

Planetary Annihilation

I played it when it was still in Beta and then it was kind of boring, however I put it on the back burner and waited for final release. I finally got around to playing the final release early this year and it was better, but still crap. I was hoping to get a Total Annihilation feel from the game but it didn't happen. The multiple planet idea is nice but in practice it doesn't work well, and neither does fighting on a sphere map. There is no single player and the multiplayer aspect bored me so damn quickly.
I'd rather just play TA again.

[DieGrootHammer]

Game Of The Year

Star Wars Battlefront

Yes, the game I loved the most this year is Star Wars Battlefront. I've never played a game where I felt like I'm part of the movie franchise like Battlefront. The graphics, the sound, the gameplay, it all ties together so well to create a truly amazing Star Wars experience. Yes, there isn't as much content as other shooters perhaps, and yes, it's not complicated and rather casual, but that's exactly what I want from a shooter. Not every online shooter has to be the next CoD or hardcore online competition platform. It's not the target market for Star Wars at all. It's a game that can be played by anyone no matter what your skill level or experience with online shooters. To me, that's prefect! That's exactly the experience I wanted.

Honorable mentions:
Kerbal Space Program, Fallout 4, Forza Motorsport 6

Biggest Surprise

Cities: Skyline

I love management style games, and was terribly disappointed with SimShitty pretty much destroying the franchise. Enter Cities: Skyline. If you haven't played this game yet, please do! It's absolutely absorbing and incredibly polished and detailed. I was really surprised about how much I liked and played this game. It's not taxing on your machine which is great because I have to play it on my laptop. The modding scene of the game is also thriving and adds so much more content to the game to make it as close as possible to the perfect city builder. If you liked SimCity of old and need a fix for some city building, get City: Skyline now!!!

Biggest Disappointment

Rory McIlroy PGA Tour

I was really looking forward to this game. I love sport games and I specifically adore golf games. I've been craving a proper golf game in a while and which I could get The Golf Club working on my laptop. So the latest PGA Tour game was my only hope, and it sucked! It had pretty graphics and decent gameplay, but so little amount of courses, no player management like before and lost a whole host of other features that has became a staple of the franchise.

[DarthMol]

Game of the Year:
I've got two, vastly different games that were my gaming highlights this year:

The Wolf Among Us was my favourite, immersive single-player experience of the year. I was hooked on the story, attached to the characters and each time I finished an episode I couldn't wait to play the next and advance the story. Although the narrative is fairly linear and it's not so much a game as a digital choose your own adventure - I really valued the fact that you get to decide what kind of person Bigby is and develops into by choosing his responses and approaches to events in the game.

The Jackbox Party Pack is an amazing party game. The fact that you can invite some friends over and they can use their smartphones as controllers is genius. Fibbage is by far the best of the pack and provides just the right amount of hilarity and competitiveness that keeps you wanting to play. Drawful can also provide some entertainingly bad drawings of outrageous concepts. One of my best purchases this year.

Biggest Surprise:

Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood really surprised me with great characters and voice acting, a decent western adventure story, fun gameplay and good looking visuals. Also the game concluded with a really satisfying ending. To be honest, this should also be listed as one of my games of the year.

Biggest Disappointment:

Receiver disappointed me, not because I expected it to be super-amazing, but it did have a fair amount of positive reviews, I just found it clunky and not really fun at all. I may try it again and see if it clicks but "meh" for now.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed Ultimate Sith Edition
I had heard it was bad, but that the story was actually quite decent. I felt like being a Jedi... And to be honest, the story does seem quite decent but the gameplay... the controls... the boss fights... unbearable. I hoped it would get better as I got further in or became accustomed to the control scheme but nope. So disappointing because if they had got the gameplay right it could've been a great Star Wars game. I should've known that "Sith" in the subtitle is actually an anagram for it's true description.

[Solitude]

I played about 50 games this year which for me is quite an achievement. I've got them all rated here: Solitude Games.
In the beginning of the year I told myself that I would make time for my hobby this year and tried to play an hour a day. Sometimes I didn't and sometimes, like on Saturdays I played much more than that. Games wise I had a great year.

Game Of The Year

Outlast: Whistleblower
As in Outlast with the added DLC. It was an incredibly difficult decision since I played some great games this year. Outlast was one of the best horror games I've played in years though. It had me on the edge of my seat and it had me hooked throughout the whole game. The DLC completes it and I wouldn't recommend playing the game without Whistleblower. Due to the tension that the game creates I won't play it again but wow I can't wait for the sequel. A sequel which will support the Oculus Rift! Oh man, it's a pre-order for me.

Honourable Mentions
The Wolf Among Us, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Game of Thrones

Biggest Surprise

Forza Motorsport 5
Not in my wildest dreams did I think I would enjoy a racing game but since it came with the console I thought I'd try it out. And so I sat and raced for hours on end, getting better and better and just having a lot of fun. So much so that I bought Forza 6 later in the year and paid the most I have ever paid for a game by a long shot. Who knew? I'm not even a person who likes cars. Forza is something special.

The Cat Lady
The screenshots look terrible and when you first start up the game it looks and feels horrible. And yet, my wife and I loved it so that I actually went and thanked the developer. This game understands depression. It understands suicide. It's a game that has a special place in my heart and I would recommend it to anyone who struggles or struggled with depression. It's a game that's so completely different from other games and I wish I could play more like it.

Biggest Disappointment

Final Fantasy XIII
I played some bad games this year and Final Fantasy XIII wasn't the worst but it's definitely the biggest disappointment. I honestly can't see how people like the Final Fantasy games. It has the worst cast ever. I didn't like a single character in the game. And I like most fictional characters! A ridiculously boring story and some of the most repetitive gameplay I've ever experienced. In the future I'm staying away from all Final Fantasy games.

[Dohc-WP]

GOTY:

Witcher III, even with the graphics downgrade the game is still amazing to play, im still faffing around in the beginner stages of the game, its just vast.


Biggest surprise:

Life is strange, im not into those type of games but it is super enjoyable, it has nice graphics, relateable characters, great pacing.

Shadow Complex Remastered: Always wanted to get the game on the 360 and then suddenly a remastered pc version was announced and released for free and its every bit as amazing as the reviewers made it out to be. the old school side scrolling gameplay is top notch reminds me of the old shooters you had on the megadrive.

Honorable mention:
Forza Horizon 2 presents F&F , why cant turn 10 implement nitrous as an upgrade in all their new titles, and driving the vehicles from the F&F movies is epic.

Resident Evil Revelations 2, Simply because the revelations titles seems to capture the true spirit of RE games more than the core titles in my opinion


Biggest Disappointments:

Batman Arkham Knight, why couldnt they have just delayed the title like ubisoft or Ea normally do with their pc releases and optimize the damn thing properly


other than that i actually havent gamed much this year

[BeoTeK]

Taken me a while to think of this. It's been a good year for gaming.


Game of The Year
I think I would definately have to go with The Witcher 3 here. From an immersion perspective, this game just sucked me in with it's characters and world. A truly unique environment and atmosphere, I was really engrossed by it. Though I never actually finished it, I have never spent so much time in a single game in such a short space of time as I have with The Witcher.



Biggest Surprise(s)
This would have to go to Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. As never playing a MGS game before and knowing nothing about it, I was pleasantly surprised and enjoyed the crap out of it while I played it. That whole emergent game thing and the way the world reacts to your actions, the cause and effect was amazing.



Biggest Disappointment(s)
The Order 1886 - Beautiful graphics aren't enough to sell a game.
Fallout 4 - It will always be a big seller and I've spent a lot of time, and will spend more. I guess I was just expecting more or too much.
Batman Arkham Knight - Although I was gifted the game I was still marred by the technical problems it had on PC, in the end I think I missed enjoying this game due to this fact.



Honorable Mention(s)
Bloodborne - This was a tough one for GoTY. As a 'Souls fan I love the game, mechanics, world etc. It just got too dark for me from a setting/aesthetic point of view. Very morbid and depressing.
Forza 6 - I am a Forza fan, bought an Xbone just for it. Case and point. It does what Forza does and better. Best of the series.
Need for Speed - This is actually the best NFS title I've played since Most Wanted. Actually a lot of fun for an arcade racer.
Mad Max - I'm a sucker for the post apocalyptic world and this one is imagined beautifully.
Just Cause 3 - 'splosions and physics!

[PythonFSi]

Game of the year:
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

Being a huge MGS fan, the choice of GoTY is pretty obvious. Everything about this game, graphics, game-play, story and plot is just amazing. Kojima didn't dissapoint.


Biggest surprise:
The Witcher 3

NOT being an RPG fan at all but curious as to why all the hype surrounding the game I took the plunge and bought The Witcher 3. I played for an hour or two and decided I made a huge mistake. What a crap game! Fortunately I took advice from some die-hard RPG fans and really got stuck into it. Still playing and enjoying The Witcher today

Honorable mention:

Theres a few I'd like to mention:
Dying Light
The Order: 1886


Biggest Disappointments:
Battlefield: Hardline