The
Impact Factor’s 2015 Game of the Year Awards!
Article,
Part 1 of 2
2015 has been an absolutely phenomenal year for games. We’ve had stellar
AAA games years in the making, surprise indies that wowed, and small artistic
experiences that brought something new to the world of gaming. It’s also
probably my busiest year ever as a gamer. I jumped between my computer, phone,
Vita, 3DS, PS3 and PS4. I played nearly 60 games total. Starting The Impact
Factor back in January was a huge inspiration to sit down to play anything and
everything that not only caught my eye, but the critical eyes of others too.
2015 is the year current
generation consoles became a must buy. Welcome to The Impact Factor’s game of the year awards for 2015!
Strap in.
It’s a real treat to once again list my favorite, and the best, games of
the year. After all, making a game of the year (GOTY) list was how I
started The Impact Factor. What was five last year is twelve this year. I’m sorry. I just can’t narrow it down to the
standard list of ten. Believe me, I tried. The games in the #12 and #11 slots
are just too good to not be represented here today.
As a scientist first and games writer/podcaster/streamer second, I’m all
about full disclosure to my audience. To address the first and most pressing
question: no, I was not able to play literally every single game that came out
in 2015. You may notice some big exclusions, or games that made it onto many
other GOTY lists. By virtue of me
actually trying to complete my Ph.D. in a non-Rip Van Winkle-esque timeline, I
just can’t get around to playing all the games I want to. My list, like all
lists really, are a collection of the games I thought were the best this year.
My favorites. All GOTY lists are subjective and given how many exceptional
games came out this year, it should come as no surprise that lists this year
were so varied. So I suppose I should include an asterisk in this article’s
title that reads: *based on an incomplete sampling. You can see all games that
I ‘sampled’ below.
This year was the first I could share my GOTY list in more than written
form! The Impact Factor podcast just recorded its GOTY talk, in which I go into
more detail about my top five favorites of the year. You can find the episode below.
But without further ado, let’s get into The Impact Factor’s top 12 games
of 2015! 12-7 are today, honorable mention and 6-1 tomorrow!
12. Grow
Home
3D platformers are few and far between nowadays, but Grow Home gets it so right. The game is
charming, whimsical, atmospheric, and fun. I finished Grow Home over the course of one night & the following morning
because I couldn’t stop playing. Grow
Home nails floaty physics, contrasting the powerful pull of growing large
vines with the lightness and clumsiness of your lovable little robot. 2015 is
the first year I can quote myself about just how much I enjoyed some of the
games on this list, so I’ll let my review’s summary do the rest of the work
here: “Grow Home is an unmissable experience in gaming. My time
with the game was awe-inspiring and meditative. A beautiful world complements
your simple objective—to fill a planet with life. Climbing your way through a
growing world creates a tremendous sense of player impact. Unusual physics and
controls set the foundation for creating a compelling bond between the player
and the game’s robot avatar, B.U.D., the more you play. Grow Home is
a game that understands what it wants to be and shows players total
respect. Grow Home is a perfect, compact experience deserving
of your time.” You can read my full
review of Grow Home for more
about what makes the game so great.
11. Life
is Strange
Life is
Strange does a remarkable, and almost unprecedented, job of making the ordinary
extraordinary. You live the life of a teenage girl discovering who matters most
in her life, who she is, and who she wants to be. With a bit of supernatural
elements added into the mix to amp up the drama. To summarize it briefly: you
play as Max, a senior at a high school for the arts, who discovers she can
manipulate time. She uses her newly found powers to reinforce, or erode, her
social bonds. More importantly, though, it’s about rebuilding her time worn
friendship to her childhood bestie, Chloe. What’s most impressive and engaging
about Life is Strange is its
depiction of normal life. The coming of age in during a trying time and about
the complicated nature of making meaningful connections. Life is Strange runs the gamut of big dramatic moments, like drug abuse
and suicide, but it’s groundedness (and humanness) make its dramatic flairs
feel earned. Over the course of the five episodes I grew so attached to Max and
Chloe. I did everything in my power to keep the two happy and healthy, because
they deserved it. A few instances of clunky dialogue aside, Life is Strange excels in every way. I
loved seeing another studio, DotNod, take a shot at a genre that Telltale had
seemingly monopolized. And do it so incredibly skillfully. Life is Strange was another of 2015’s big surprises.
10.
Persona 4: Dancing All Night
The surprises keep rolling with Persona
4: Dancing All Night (P4D). At
the start of 2015 I would have scoffed at the idea that I’d care about a rhythm
slash visual novel hybrid game based off a JRPG franchise I’d never played
before. Let alone that it makes my top ten of the year. But here we are, and P4D is my number ten favorite game of
2015. I was blown
away by Persona 4 Golden earlier this year, and it created
an insatiable hunger for more. P4D
sated that hunger, surprisingly, and stood out as it’s own fantastic game. P4D does everything well. The visual
novel elements are well-written, funny, and feature great animated character
models (a big deal for a visual novel game). The rhythm elements are even
better. Motion-captured dancers move through interesting backgrounds, songs are
instantly catchy and infinitely repeatable, and the inputs are simple yet mask a
complexity that appears at higher difficulty levels. The Persona team does not
make bad spin-offs. Perhaps most powerfully, P4D is a game that my fiancée played while I watched. Playing
through P4D with her is one of my
favorite gaming memories from 2015, easily cementing the game’s placement in my
top ten list. I’ll let my own words wrap this up, “ P4D exudes
design confidence, showing that Atlas not only knows its world, but knows how
to perfectly expand upon it. I expected P4D but to be fun, but not
great. Turns out it’s exceptional.”
9. Until
Dawn
Until
Dawn is the best realization of a long-promised notion in games: that your
choice matters and affects the outcome of the story. What an exceptional
surprise and a devilishly fun game. Until
Dawn had everything going against it: a troubled development (it started as
a PS3 Move game over five years ago), a formulaic plot (teen slasher /
supernatural horror set in a cabin in the woods), and released with almost no
fanfare. As a big fan of both horror and adventure games, I had to see what Until Dawn had to offer. I was blown
away. Until Dawn is so freaking fun.
The characters are shallow and tropey, but knowingly so. Voice acting is
exceptional. The story takes twists and turns that easily carry you through the
10 hour experience. You’re in a constant state of fear, not only because of the
monsters lurking in the shadows, but knowing that every choice you make could result
in the permanent death of one of the game’s protagonists. You can beat Until Dawn with everyone alive, no one alive, or anywhere in between. Until Dawn does new and interesting
things with adventure game control schemes too, namely the ‘don’t move’ prompt
that requires you to keep your controller perfectly still during some of the
game’s most tense moments. Until Dawn
is a great solo experience, was a great co-op story experience for my fiancée
and I, and would also be an exceptional party game. Until Dawn is the game form of yelling at the screen during a
B-horror movie: do you run or try to hide from the masked intruder? And so on. Until Dawn was another of 2015’s great
surprises and easily one of the best games this year.
8. Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate
Well, here it is. The game I promised to review since March. The game I
never got around to reviewing. So this will have to suffice. Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate (MH4U) is exceptional. MH4U was my first foray into the long
running Monster Hunter franchise. A
franchise that, while limited to a small (but passionate) following in the
west, is routinely one of the biggest games in Japan. The game boils down to a
couple disparate parts. You travel out into a multi-zoned map to track, find,
and kill gigantic monsters to
complete quests. Killing said monsters awards you with monster parts, which can
be used to craft new armor and weapons. There’s a loose story, but MH4U is all about killing big things
with big swords (or axes, in my case). MH4U
is impressively complex and almost unfathomably content dense. Killing your
targets is never a button mash fest—it’s the exact opposite. Killing these
giant monsters requires problem solving, pattern recognition, and quick
reflexes. Your attacks are slow, monsters do a ton of damage, and they have a large
health pool. Each new fight is a puzzle, one in which your life is on the line.
Combat is therefore deliberate and tense. Enemy design is great, too. MH4U is an RPG fanatic’s dream, with a
wealth of systems to master, each with immense complexity. The game is also
like 8+ games in one, as each weapon type makes monster encounters feel totally different. Fighting with a
sword and shield is nothing like fighting with a switch axe, a bow gun, or a
hammer. They each require their own skill set and approach. I played MH4U for 80+ hours and I got maybe
halfway through the content. That’s if I’m being generous. MH4U took me completely by surprise. And as I’ve read online, as
the most accessible Monster Hunter
yet it’s a perfect place for newcomers like me to jump on board. Just writing
this makes me want to pick it up again. Dangit.
7. Tales
from the Borderlands
Tales
from the Borderlands is the little game that could. It had a lot to
prove from the outset: how could Telltale make a game set in the Borderlands universe? It also had some
pretty lofty expectations to overcome. As a big fan of both Telltale and the Borderlands IP, this unusual pairing was
very much a peanut butter in my chocolate kind of scenario. But I was
skeptical. Tales from the Borderlands
delighted in proving me wrong. The game is one of the year’s best (duh), one of
the year’s funniest, and Telltale’s second best game ever (just behind The Walking Dead S1). If I were to make
a list of my favorite new characters from 2015, Tales from the Borderlands would easily secure upwards of four to
five slots on a top ten. Letting me speak for myself here, “Tales from the
Borderlands is fresh and exciting. Telltale flourishes in their return
to comedic storytelling. Original characters feel at home in the Borderlands universe
and are some of the best Telltale has ever done. The writing is sharp, witty,
and often laugh-out-loud funny. Decisions made in Tales from the
Borderlands feel meaningful, both within the game’s self-contained
plot and in the Borderlands universe at large. Tales
from the Borderlands is a wild ride and a raucously good time.” Telltale
also plays with their own game conventions in Tales from the Borderlands, freshening up the play experience for
the first time since The Walking Dead.
Fan of Borderlands or not, Tales from the Borderlands is a must
play. You can check out my full thoughts on the game in my
review.
Check back here tomorrow for a couple honorable mentions and #6-1!
Check back here tomorrow for a couple honorable mentions and #6-1!
