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!

Intelligent Design: Persona 4 and Capitalizing on Familiarity

Article

Abstract: My time spent playing Persona 4 built a multifaceted familiarity that fuels my passion for more. Too often in gaming, sequels and spin-offs of beloved franchises are created for one sole purpose: to gouge the pockets of devoted fans. Atlas’s work in expanding Persona 4’s game universe, however, is quite the opposite. Persona 4 Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth, Persona 4 Arena and Persona 4 Dancing All Night all pay homage to the beloved Persona 4 while being great games in their own right. Atlas’s approach to capitalizing on familiarity should serve as the model for the industry.

I miss hanging out with my friends in Inaba. This summer I spent a year making friends, solving crimes, and accepting my true self in a small town in the Japanese countryside. I still remember the jokes I shared with the goofy Yosuke, the heart to hearts with Yukiko, and my budding romance with the pop star turned high school student Rise. With one game, one playthrough, I became a lifelong fan of Persona 4.

Persona 4 Golden on the Playstation Vita was some of the best 80 hours I’ve spent gaming this year. If you haven’t already, you can check out my review in which the praise is heaped on pretty heavy. I was a little skeptical coming into the experience. It had been a long time since I played a more traditional JRPG, tropes and turn-based combat and all. But Persona 4 converted me fast. The experience is rich, engaging, and distinct. There was just so much the game did right: writing, character development, aesthetics, social simulation, early to learn but difficult to master combat, dungeon crawling, and plenty more. In the months since playing it, one aspect has stuck with me the longest. What Persona 4 did so well that it left a profound impact on how I think about games. And that’s how it builds familiarity.

No you're incredible, Persona 4 Golden.

Everything about Persona 4’s design works to build your connection with the world. Persona 4 Golden is one of the few games in which the long time it take to complete is thoughtfully incorporated into your experience. Many JRPGs are long because, well, JRPGs are expected to be long. There’s grinding and sidequests and meandering around the world map. The stories are long and build upon themselves, but often involve a series of twists and turns to keep the heroes moving from one location to the next. Persona 4’s length is laid out from the very beginning—you’ll be spending a year in Inaba. As you work your way through the game day by day its world becomes more clearly in focus. You become immersed. The game feels long because a year is a long time. You change and learn and grow a lot over the course of 365 days. Persona 4 smartly uses this length to draw you in and keep you there.

Never before has time to completion so thoroughly enhanced my experience
 with a game.

The familiarity that Persona 4 creates as a result of its length is multifaceted. As you might expect, you develop a strong familiarity with the game’s systems. Building S-Links, fusing personas, pulling off all-out attacks. You also gain a deep understanding of your surrounding world & geography. By the end of the game I could navigate the streets of Inaba and the winding hallways of Yasogami High with my eyes closed. The familiarity extends to your party, your core group of friends within the game. As I wrote in my review, the closeness I felt with the game’s characters transcended what I usually experience with fictional characters. Kanji and Naoto and Teddy and Chie now feel like old friends. The dozens of hours I spent playing Persona 4 Golden also led to a deep closeness with the smaller aspects of the game. The voices the sounds the music. It ranges from main theme songs all the way down to the tiny bleeps and bloops of in-game menus. Persona 4 has worked its way into my consciousness in a way that I never expected, and in a way that fueled my desire for more.

We sure had some good times, old friends.

I’m certainly not alone in wanting as much Persona 4 as possible. Ever since it’s original 2008 release on the PlayStation 2, the game has had a vocal legion of fans craving more of Yu Narukami and his Inaba crew. Atlas, the development studio, was well aware of this demand. The fans asked and Atlas delivered. Persona 4 has had three spin-off games: Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth, Persona 4 Arena and Persona 4 Dancing All Night. It’s easy to be skeptical of these derivative titles: so often you come across cheap ‘cash ins’ in the video game industry. I’m sure you can all think of examples where an IP has been used to justify a downright awful game. Like, say, any non-Naughty Dog Crash Bandicoot or essentially any Sonic the Hedgehog game after the initial two or three on the Sega Genesis. The Persona 4 spin-off games, however, are fantastic. Atlas knew they could capitalize on this familiarity. They avoided releasing fan-exploitative cash grab titles by not violating one principal rule: don’t release a bad game. The spin-offs pay great homage to the source material while still being great standalone games. Let me briefly go through how Atlas accomplished this feat, and why they should serve as inspiration for any company hoping to use an IP in new ways.

Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth (PQ) is something I’ll touch on only briefly, as I have the least experience with it. PQ is the ultimate wish fulfillment game. It combines the beloved world and characters from Persona 4 with the ultra-fan-favorite characters from Persona 3. It builds a massive new story for the player to explore. Atlas knows what they do well: make JRPGs. And that’s what they’ve done here. Except in PQ it’s not just more of the same. An RPG spin-off that utilized the exact gameplay mechanics from its inspiration could feel like a cheap cash grab. ‘Hey look, it’s Persona 4 again but now with more characters!’ This kind of exact copying leads to series/IP fatigue (see Assassin’s Creed). But that’s not the case here. PQ ditches the 3^rd person exploration for old-school first-person dungeon crawling like we had in early western RPGs like Ultima Underworld or Might & Magic. It’s a mechanic that plummeted out of popularity, maintained in the fringes of modern gaming with titles like Etrian Odyssey and Legend of Grimrock. PQ is a meaty, substantive and unique experience for Persona 4 fans and one where the efforts of the developer show clearly in the final product. Atlas cares not just about making a new Persona 4 game, but make a great new game that is connected to Persona 4. The distinction is important.

Persona Q brings something new to the Persona RPG table.
It's not just about reliving your time with Persona 4.

Persona 4 Arena and its sequel, Persona 4 Arena Ultimax (P4AU), even more clearly show Atlas’s devotion to making Persona 4 spin-offs great. P4AU is a 2D fighting game featuring characters from both Persona 4 and 3. Atlas, and the Persona team, get pretty distant from their RPG roots with this one. Designing fighting game systems is almost certainly nothing like designing social simulation and turn-based RPG combat. It’s clear that Atlas had a vision for the game, however, and wanted to make the best possible experience. To accomplish this, Atlas pulled in probably the best 2D fighting game developers to make P4AU: Arc System Works. Arc System Works is responsible for some of the most important 2D ‘anime’ fighters of the past two decades: Blazblue, Guilty Gear, & Under Night In-Birth. Their finesse at creating deep fighting systems, fluid attacks and flashy combos serve as the foundation for the excellent P4AU. One of hallmarks of a well-designed fighting game is to build an avid community: a community that is there to learn the intricacies of the characters, from frame data to mix-ups to bread and butter combos. P4AU still has that, so much so that it was featured on stream this year at the biggest fighting game tournament in the world. P4AU is a balanced, thoughtful fighter and an excellent Persona 4 game. Atlas went beyond the call of duty to provide a lengthy and engaging story mode for the game that builds upon Persona 4’s overarching narrative and sheds new light on its protagonists. There were so many corners Atlas could have cut with P4AU, but what they delivered excelled on all levels. If you want to make a fighting game based on your IP, P4AU is the way to do it.

Persona 4 Arena was the best reviewed fighting game of 2012. Its
community is still thriving in 2015. That's impressive.

Finally the latest Persona 4 spin-off, Persona 4 Dancing All Night (P4D). The last, and perhaps my favorite of the bunch, P4D is a visual novel slash PSOne-esq rhythm game hybrid that’s exceedingly fun and brilliantly designed. Atlas tackles the challenge of a new central gameplay mechanic, and once again succeeds by drawing inspiration from the past and combining it with engaging RPG-mechanics. In many ways, P4D is the spin-off that’s most successful at capitalizing on the familiarity built by Persona 4. Everything about your time with the game is brought back in fun ways. The music, which was supplementary to your time with Persona 4, now serves as the basis for how you interact with P4D. You know the songs, but now you can fully engage with them. Playing P4D is like playing Persona 4 all over again, but in a smaller (and new) package. It’s a phenomenal feeling that I’ve never really had before, neither with direct sequels nor spin-offs. P4D, on top of being an excellent Persona 4 game, is also an excellent rhythm game. It takes cues from best in the genre, like DDR and Bust a Groove, with great press-and-hold notes, double notes, alternate button record scratches and a powered-up fever mode. Instead of boring, static or abstract backgrounds, Atlas put the effort into motion capture to animate realistic and character-specific dances that happen while you’re playing a song. P4D also works to be a perfect experience for all levels of skill: bringing in RPG-like systems of item collection that allow you to perfectly titrate your difficulty level (you can make notes slower or faster, preserve your life meter longer, extend combos easier, or make all notes invisible). Atlas also expands upon the idea of what a rhythm game can be by creating a fully fleshed out visual novel story mode that uses the dancing as both narrative and gameplay. And, I should mention, Atlas didn’t skimp on the visual novel aspect either. Character models are animated, every single line of the game is voice acted, and the story pays great homage to the Persona 4 characters I care about so deeply. 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.

My fiancée and I still cannot get enough of Persona 4 Dancing All Night.
It just does everything so well. And it's super fun.

If every studio put the care into building upon an IP like Atlas and the Persona team have done with Persona 4, we’d live in a much richer game space. Atlas deserves commendation for its commitment to honoring fans and creating great games that exist for reasons other than gouging cash from its committed audience. The finesse with which Persona 4’s universe was expanded gives me all the more confidence in the team to create an awesome Persona 5. I can’t wait.

The Impact Factor Ep. 26: Shameless Pug

Podcast

Welcome to the 26th episode of The Impact Factor! The Impact Factor is what happens when two scientists, and two best friends, get together to talk about video games. Hosts Alex Samocha [biomedical scientist] and Charles Fliss [social scientist] sit down every week to discuss the week in gaming! Listen in for the news, views, and games that made the biggest impact!

Please send your suggestions and feedback to: impactfactorpodcast@gmail.com

In this episode Alex and Fliss talk about Paris Games Week, No Man’s Sky, PS VR, Detroit: Become Human, SFV, SXSW, Persona 4 Dancing All Night, Until Dawn, Halloween & more!

The video game guide to sex--reader feature:metro.co.uk/2015/10/24/the-vide…rs-feature-5459168/

Subscribe to us on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-impact-factor/id993404882?mt=2

For articles and reviews from Alex, check out: www.theimpactfactor.blogspot.com
For a blog about Japan, pop culture & more from Fliss, check out:

www.flissofthenorthstar.blogspot.com

YouTube page:www.youtube.com/channel/UC_zpRq6h1O7d2MlMYWhNNjw 

Follow Alex @alexsamocha on Twitter. 

twitch.tv/megalodonphd
Follow Fliss @thecfliss on Twitter.

twitch.tv/flissofthenorthstar

Intro song:

You Kill My Brother by Go! Go! Go! Micro Invasion, East Jakarta Chiptunes Compilations. Freemusic Archive. (Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike License)
freemusicarchive.org/music/Indonesi…s_Compilation/
Transitions:
News & Views and Perspectives transitions from victorcenusa, Freesound.org (Creative Commons 0 License)
freesound.org/people/victorcenusa/sounds/148785/
freesound.org/people/victorcenusa/sounds/148784/
Experimental Methods transition from Sentuniman, Freesound.org (Attribution Noncommercial License)
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