Chew’s Top 10 games of 2015
10. Nuclear Throne
(PS4/PC)
Finally, Nuclear Throne can get the full props it deserves. Not since Spelunky has their been such a compulsive play. NT is violently simple, balancing the action perfectly with a punshing difficulty that can end you if you don’t respect the game. Vlaembeer’s knack for punchy, abbrassive action games is perfected here. The kill-everything gameloop is in a league of it’s own among Nuclear Throne’s contemporaries, and has been for a while, but now it’s complete.
9. Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture
(PS4)
Rapture made me long for a place I had never been. The little vignettes around Yaughton made it feel like a real place. The intentional obfuscation of figures and shapes of people actually has the same effect of novels and allows you to graft your immigration onto a place that already has form, making it the best of both worlds. Rapture is one of the most humanizing games I have played this year and the attention to detail in the environments is simply amazing.
8.Darkest Dungeon
(PC)
Even in it’s early access state, I dumped well over 30 hours into the game. Darkest Dungeon is such a brilliant fusion of so many modern game elements, bending them into a remarkable fresh RPG. There’s XCOM flavored turned-based combat and permadeath for playable units to which you can name and become emotionally attached. That strand is weaved into a dungeon-crawling roguelike structure and it’s all bound by the battle fatigue system. The more you fight, the closer people get to long-lingering status elements that change the personality of your units and the way the game plays. Having a mage get hit with masochism means they’re a liability in battle, they’ll willing aggro more damage from all sides and override your control at times. The entire package scrathes so many sorely missing itches for me in 2015, turned-based RPGs and XCOM. It is a shining example of early access done right.
7. Undertale
(PC)
Undertale’s true power lies in the cast of characters. While the game does makes some clever subversions of JRPG/RPG conventions, the cast of characters across the board are unironically great and memorable. Truly, Undertale’s cast of characters has to be the most memorable ensemble of this entire decade. Not since Persona 4 have I been so invested and enamored with a collection of characters, even when the game was dragging its heals in sections. The writing is so strong across the board, even if some jokes reach a little too far, they’re is so much genuine heart to the characters that a part of me feels sad leaving them in a manner that recalls Toy Story.
The boss battles are incredibly inventive spectacles that must be seen to be believed. Boss battles are dying before our eyes, but Undertale takes the convention and fundamentally redesigns what classic boss battles could mean, specifically RPG battles. With the game’s focus on pacifism and empathy, the narrative and mechanical tenants of the boss battles in this game change what makes a truly good boss battle. All of this, and Undertale has the best OST of 2015 by a daunting margin. It’s pleasing and anthemic enough to listen to out of the game, but it’s function as a world-building device is exceptional as it lends life and scale to the entire game already working through subsistence. Undertale best exemplifies the philosophy of working within limitations and boosting creative thinking and design out of necessity to exponential effect. .
6. Grim Fandango Remastered
(PS4)
A game that appears as a fascinating relic in terms of puzzle design, but remains absolutely timeless in story design. Manny’s quest from beginning to end is filled with an overwhelming charm and style that eclipses many if not all other adventure games following in its wake. By making key upgrades like alternatives to tank controls and cleaning up the visuals, One of the true classics of that genre holds up to this very day.
5. Splatoon
(Wii u)
Nintendo’s greatest strength is the ability to defy convention. Even when Nintendo takes familiar franchises, their ability to constantly reinvent is near matchless. Splatoon is completely new however. It’s rare that we get a brand new Nintendo franchise, but Splatoon seems to signal the change over of the old guard hopefully ushering a new wave of creators. The vitality of Splatoon flows as hard and heavy as the paint splattering every surface in the game. In some ways, it feels like an entirely fresh fusion of Jet Set Radio, Super Mario Sunshine and Rachet and Clank, but even boiling it down to those influences is a disservice. Splatoon takes the shooter and twists of all its modern conventions. The style and unhinged fusion of Japanese youth culture into Splatoon’s aesthetic is impossibly and joyously weird. When Nintendo get’s weird, the world is better for it, and Splatoon’s aesthetic direction is the proof. Splatoon is also a multiplayer-centric game that gives new importance to objective design in shooters. It’s fundamentally a conquest/capture conquer based game but the whole map is a capture point, and while the paint serves as the capture but it also serves as ammo and traversal options. In making the objective purpose of Splatoon to simply cause grafitti anarchy, the dynamics and the depth that slowly rises reveals a surprisingly deep game with a high skill ceiling. Splatoon’s is Nintendo’s latest incarnation of their ability to make believers out of pessimists, and better yet they did it without Mario and made the best shooter in years.
4. Rocket League
(PS4)
A game that almost entirely justified PS plus in one swoop. Rocket League is easily one of the best multiplayer games this generation because it nails a few specific things. It’s incredibly intuitive to understand conceptually, the potential for dramatically, wild anecdotes are possible at any time and the game is easy to learn but rewarding to master. Rocket League is one of the feel good releases of the year because it perfectly realized what it was and trusted fans of the game to spread gospel while respecting their time. There’s nearly no downside to this game, it’s fundamentally a powerful synergy of timing, placement and execution.
3. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
(PS4)
The last third of The Phantom Pain is a bit of a tragic mess. It has some cool ideas and an interesting ending, but they’re scattered among a storm of incomplete, dysfunctional mission progression that tarnishes one of the best action games ever made. Even with the rest of the story clearing taking a back seat to the gameplay, Metal Gear Solid V is an incredible gameplay sandbox that is so far ahead of all it’s contemporaries that it makes it bittersweet to know the franchises’ best days are gone. The amount of improvisation, considered tactical planing and creative plotting facilitated by the game’s brilliantly understated (but decisive) mission design, allows for the most open-ended and rewarding stealth game play I have yet witnessed. The following is an excerpt of a mission I carried out in the game that embodies why Metal Gear Solid V is a flawed masterpieces:
During one of the main ops (main missions), the magnanimous Big Boss swings open the helicopter door while “The Final Countdown” plays over the chopper’s loudspeakers. The opening credits roll on, guest stars in the form of mecha appear along side the level designers and the mastermind director, Hideo Kojima. I get on the ever loyal D-Horse (Diamond Horse) and run into battle. I don’t get to close because I know this outpost’s day shift patterns. Having stalked this fort in the day and night, I know where certain enemies are stationed in this particular garrison depending on the time of day, the early shift guardian solider at the door now has a gas mask (can’t smoke him out to cut vision anymore, the game has actually adapted). My intel team, after being provided with more capable soldiers from the battlefield now gives me more weather information, it’s going to be cloudy momentarily so I crawl out into the sunlight to charge my solar powered stun arm. The tanks I have to destroy are now on the move, and once again my intel team informs me of their various distances. Snake inches forward each run through of the mission, I want the angles of KojiPro’s ever shifting layout this time around. I purposefully gather all the information I need to make a plan. Planning is the integral core to MGS V’s open level design. There are so many variables to account for planning and execution are paramount. About an hour with this level, and now I’m ready for the full run, hit up Snake’s walkman and play “Kids in America”, let’s go.
I move deliberately and tranqualize that guardian solider to cut enemy eyes to the road where the truck is waiting for me. Always moving with pace and awareness, I drive the truck a little to the side of this forked road where Tank #1 is coming through in about 567 m, that way the tank won’t come to a stop, it’ll roll through and get the biggest bite of the explosion I’m preparing. Four packs of C4 and a time limit running, I need to make the best of my stock. 345 m away, I’ve set my first charge on the ground just close enough to the truck. The second charge is set on the grill of the truck to take out the would-be incapacitate tank after the immobilizing effect of the first explosion. Tank #2 will come out of the garrison after everyone realizes the explosion. By 200 or so meters, I have set mines at the massive gate where Tank #2 will roll out of in a frenzy of confusion and meet its demise.
Step one of the plan goes off perfectly. The C4 on the road immobilizes the tank, and the second charge destroys it. Tank #2 comes out and meets its demise, right on schedule. Meanwhile, Tank #3 and #4 are on their way in the distance. The plan is going so well it’s actually wracking my nerves in the process. After multiple runs of this mission I have been able to gauge the speed of the last tank and the current deployment time of my air support to the second. The precision is paramount, flubbing a couple of meters results in the tank 1200 m away just barely escaping the air strike. Tank #3 will soon be coming over the bridge where I placed my last charge. The marker for the airstrike disappears, I can’t see the tank but I’m hoping for the best. Ocelot confirms the hit and I’m sighing in relief, but only to get a second to refocus the final flourish. I turn my attention to tank #3 just in time to catch it over the bridge and destroy it.
But the enemy still doesn’t have solid eyes on me.
Two anti-air vehicles are coming my way and I’m realizing I didn’t think this far ahead, fuck. As luck would have it (not really, it’s actually an effect of good game design) a truck carrying a prototype anti-vehicle missile would come to my attention by way of intel radio. I catch D-horse while I’m sprinting and head for the truck with the goods. Take out twopotentially good soldiers, but I can’t stop because the pressure is really on. Take the truck and the missile far enough to roll out and catch D-horse. On horseback in motion I get a lock on both AA tanks and take them out. That’s the mission wrapped up, I call my support chopper to pick me up and take me back to base, but as more sadistic luck would have it, there’s a soviet gunship closing on me. I can’t destroy it. I can only hide and wait for support to come. The chopper comes and I sprint for it, just narrowly avoid a run-in with the soviet gunship on ground or in the sky.
It’s not without it’s flaws, but where it counts The Phantom Pain comes up absolutely huge in the gameplay department with enough overwhelming depth and idiosyncrasies to experiment indefinitely.
2. Fallout 4
(PS4)
Fallout 4 might be Bethesda’s most iterative work, but for the usual bag of flaws, it still scratches an itch like no other. 2015 is a golden age for open world games, but the sense of exploration, discovery and world building of Fallout 4 are still in a league of their own. The investment and connection to the Commonwealth is stronger than Skyrim’s playspace because the density and connective tissue between various things in Fallout 4 are intensified by comparison to other Bethesda games. From the decisions you make in allegiances and world-changing choices to the pieces of junk you pick up, Fallout 4’s systems seem to interlock with a vice grip that makes turning the game off a truly difficult task because the Commonwealth feels like home. Truly, checking in with your companions, upgrading your settlements, lugging resources back and forth, or just working on a power suit with some Nat King Cole cranked, I felt a genuine melancholia when I wasn’t rummaging through the scrappy world of Fallout 4. It has to be said that atmosphere is a potent asset when weaponized correctly. Fallout 4′s amazing atmosphere is a balance of unscripted humor, blood-splattered nuclear sunshine aesthetics made fluorescent and engrossing environmental storytelling. Even with the big miss of the dialogue revamp and the hit and miss nature of the new perk system, the significantly improved gunplay, great companions and the general cohesion of the Fallout 4’s various systems still make it a recommendation without question.
1. Bloodborne
(PS4)
Bloodborne is the greatest horror action game I have ever played. It is one of the most decisively brilliant offsprings of Resident Evil 4 (and obviously Dark/Demon’s Souls) to date. Bloodborne is the most completely realized game of 2015. In a year where 19th century Britain was all the rage, Bloodborne’s visual design is uncompromisingly menacing, twisted and beautiful. Although working with a dark colour palette consisting largely of deep, deep blues, the majestic nature of its visual identity is among the strongest on the PS4. Bloodborne is not a game designed with excess in mind though, so even the colour palette’s intentional limitations give way to intuitive visual centering. Playing through environments where deep reds splatter about murky cobblestones bounded by tarnished gold gates creates a strongly precise image that still deals in the grandiose.
Even with its incredible aesthetics, Bloodborne’s true accomplishment is its fierce loyalty toward the precision of it’s gameplay design. Like the Souls games, Bloodborne is not afraid to destroy its players. Bloodborne rewards those who are willing to die, persevere and learn in the purest form among all of big-box gaming. It takes Dark Souls gameplay and creates something learner and meaner. Bloodborne takes the meticulous, ponderous style of Dark Souls and flips into something more pro-active. Bloodborne isn’t just about reading enemies patterns, it’s about body control in an aggressive top gear way. Taking risks, calculating the worth of a strike and capitalizing on your positioning is all turned to an aggressive tempo that requires skill, and you better bring it or you’ll get dusted. Once you enter Bloodborne’s force, you’ll be able to move and fight with a sense of control that remains exciting because you could lose it at anytime. You could lose your composure by getting overzealous with your confidence by making a bad strike. You could get overzealous and underestimate an opponent. It’s this second layer of fear under the horrific veneer, that creates a brilliant new breed of interactive fear. There simply is no other greater dopamine rush of 2015 greater than defeating a boss in Bloodborne for the first time. You know you’ve gotten there through hard work, through making the right calls, through managing your play against the fear of losing it all.
The culmination of Bloodborne’s gameplay design as it pulls you in makes a every battle an engrossing narrative unto itself. All this and it’s all presented with a grotesque decadence and a truly invigorating art direction that ensures the player will be transported almost instantly. For my two cents, Bloodborne is simply the greatest game of this generation.
