This list does not include any completed DLC or episodic content, with the exception of the Higurashi and Umineko titles. Whilst these are episodic, they are very lengthy titles (10-15 hours per episode) and no full season purchase option is available. As such they will be entered per purchase.
Game #1: Witcher 2 - A definite improvement (to me) over the first entry. A very solid fantasy RPG, but one that I admit, like the first, didn't grab me as expected given the hype.
Game #2: Cibelle - I just did not get this. The gameplay is extremely tedious, and is clearly just filler. As for the plot, I don't want to sound crass cos I know it was based on a true story, but it felt so obvious that the bf character was bad news from the off, I felt like shouting at the screen to the main character to get rid of him.
Game #3: Witcher 3 - Now this, I can understand all the hype for! I'm one of those in the camp against the combat, but the world building, characters, and writing is just exceptional, combined with an open world that for once in a long time really gave off a sense of actual place. Wonderful.
Game #4: Pony Island - A sort of subversive meta-game. Not so strong on gameplay but a very engaging short ride that keeps you guessing and wondering what it's going to do next.
Game #5: Hitman GO - A very solid puzzle title, and that it's a mobile title is pleasantly surprising!
Game #6: Lara Croft GO - similar to Hitman GO, but with levels that have a greater size to them, and more of a sense of adventure to it, which is fitting.
Game #7: Battlefield: Hardline - Ok, colour me shocked, but I quite enjoyed this campaign! Nothing exceptional to make it stand out, but the fact it's not utter dog shit like every other BF campaign ever made, is noteworthy in of itself!
Game #8: Westport Independent - A Papers Please-esque title that got a bit of an unfair kicking imo. It's definitely scaled down from PP in scope and it's certainly too expensive for how short it is, but if you can get it on sale, it's certainly worth a go.
Game #9: Resident Evil 0 HD - One of the worst of the "classic" resi titles. I'll never understand the choice to get rid of the item boxes. Still, I'd rather take this than most modern Resi titles...
Game #10: Resident Evil 5 Speaking of! It's just such a bland, boilerplate action shooter. It's just dull, but at least it has more reminiscence to Resi than 6 does, which I'll get on to...
Game #11: Rise of the Tomb Raider - I regret this one. I really did not like TR2013, it felt like the most uninspired "design by committee" game I've played in years, but I gave this one a shot after word of improvements, plus the more positive reception and GOTY awards. It's still the same shit. Except semi open world now. Cos we really needed more of that.
Game #12: XCOM 2 - A very worthy sequel to XCOM EU, more of the same, but not a bad thing, and with just a few little tweaks to keep it fresh.
Game #13: Firewatch - Count me in the disappointed camp for this one. Namely due to the bait and switch (imo) unsatisfying plot
Game #14: Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc - The first in what ended up being a surprising trend for me this year, visual novels. I loved this game! It's dark in a cartoony comical way, mysterious, full of impossible daft twists reminiscent of many Japanese anime tropes, charming characters, and quite funny. And Monokuma is just so interesting to watch!
Game #15: Superhot - The most innovative shooter I've played in years...
Game #16: Invisible Inc. - Stealth Roguelike XCOM. Nuff said really.
Game #17: Hand of Fate - Roguelike Dungeon Crawler, represented through a board game played with cards. It's a novel and engaging concept, and the dealer character is a charismatic presence. Only knock for me is that the last chapter gets stupid hard, the spike in difficulty is reminiscent of the end of Psychonauts. I had to drop to Easy and it still took me ages.
Game #18: The Division - Initially engaging, and certainly scratched that cover based military shooter itch for me, but it got old fast. Really fast. Each borough plays out
exactly the same way. I trudged to the end of the campaign and never looked back.
Game #19: Republique - A massive disappointment. I won't get into it here, as I actually made a full thread on it here:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1199750
Game #20: Day of the Tentacle - A neat little funny adventure game. But I admit I do find old school PnC games very difficult to play.
Game #21: Maniac Mansion - A bonus from the above title. It's older than me and it shows. How anyone is supposed to beat this without a walkthrough I have no idea.
Game #22: Valkyria Chronicles - Really liked this! First I've played a S-RPG I believe actually! Quite tough in places (strategy is not my forte) but very enjoyable.
Game #23: Dark Souls III - Simply more Souls but I can't complain too loudly about that. Whilst I really liked this a lot, and will surely be in my top 5 for the year, I do think the series needs a break now.
Game #24: The Walking Dead: Michonne - Let's just say this is in keeping with most of Telltale's recent output quality wise... Dull.
Game #25: Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair - Much of the same as the first, not as well done as some of the minigames are just an irritance frankly, but still very good.
Game #26: Uncharted 4: - I'm going to get lynched for this. I liked it. I didn't think it was anything astounding though. Uncharted as a series, to me, is now suffering the same problem Gears of War had a few years ago. Innovative and pushed the genre forward, but has been aped so much since that the original series is struggling to stand out now.
A fitting conclusion for the series, and a title that is very well written, but the gameplay is simply nothing new or exciting anymore.
Game #27: The Banner Saga 2 - An unfortunate step down from the first title. It plays just as well as its predecessor, but the story feels like pure setup for another game still to come.
Game #28: DOOM - Oh man, I love this game!
I don't think there is much I can say that hasn't already been said, but it's just such a smart "dumb" shooter, and one that is so gratifying
Game #29: Mirror's Edge Catalyst - I wasn't the greatest fan of the first, but I was curious enough from it to check this one out. Even most fans seem to see this as a disappointment. It has no real character or identity to it unlike the first game, and the open world feels so much like EA trend chasing.
Game #30: Dreamfall Chapters - Oh man, this one hurts
I loved The Longest Journey, and also very much enjoyed Dreamfall. But I just feel like something went wrong in the development of this, pretty much nothing happens in this for the first 3 episodes, before moving into a rather confusing tangent for the remainder and unsatisfactorily tying everything up at the end. It felt like they were setting up another title given how slowly everything was being paced out, before just rushing head on to a conclusion.
Game #31: Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter - Very much like the previous in the series, Crimes and Punishment, and not a bad thing. There are no other games I can think of that deliver a puzzle mystery in the way this series does.
Game #32: Higurashi Chapter 3: Tatarigoroshi - Probably my least favourite chapter so far, with the 2nd being my favourite so far. This series main problem for me though, is that the writing has an awful lot of padding. But the devs fixed this for it's other title Umineko.
Game #33: That Dragon, Cancer - Such a genuinely sad tale
Game #34: Oxenfree - I felt like I was missing something here =/
Seems there is a lot of praise for this one of late, and while I liked it, I didn't think it was anything noteworthy.
Game #35: Everybody's Gone to the Rapture - I'm definitely missing something here against the reviewers that liked this. Zzzz.... Chinese Room has my respect for giving birth to a new genre, but they're not very good at making them.
Game #36: The Magic Circle - A very curious little title. Imagine Toy Story but for a game that wasn't ever finished.
Game #37: Umineko: Chapters 1-4 - Oh man, this is great! The writing is such a step up from Higurashi, and personally speaking I'm finding the central mystery more engaging and also more difficult to get my head around. Plus the music is genuinely amazing!
Game #38: Abzu - It's really pretty. I don't mean that as a slight against it. There's not much here but it's a good relaxing way to kill 90 minutes.
Game #39: Unravel - Cutesy, but you've played this kind of puzzle platformer a million times by now.
Game #40: Grow Up - To me this was a big step up (no pun intended) from the previous title, largely in thanks to the greater expanded roster of movement capabilities the main character now has, and it's really quite awesome to yourself fly across the planet and see it all beneath you.
Game #41: Deus Ex GO - Much like the other GO titles, but still a very good puzzle game for on the move.
Game #42: Reigns - A resource management game meets Tinder, it's a great concept, and it's neat trying to see which combination of choices lead to new and weird scenarios. One big criticism I have for it though, if you want to actually beat it, you only have a limited amount of time to make the correct choices necessary and even then you're at the mercy of RNG. I was very near to having a full playthrough ruined because a certain area I needed to visit didn't appear for literally hundreds of turns. I only beat the game with about 4 turns left.
Game #43: Replica - Another curious little experiment, where you are imprisoned by an authoritarian government (I like to think it's post Brexit UK personally) and forced to crack a suspected terrorist's phone by going through his emails, texts, social media etc.
And of course with any authoritarian government story the lines get blurred whether they are acting in the best way or if you genuinely believe this person who this phone belongs to is really a terrorist or not.
Game #44: Deus Ex: Mankind Divided - Probably my GOTY so far. More HR but with a more explorable and versatile hub to explore. I feel this will be looked back on in time as being too unfairly criticised by reviewers frankly.
Game #45: Minecraft: Story Mode - Oh god, this is awful. I don't know what I expected, I don't even play Minecraft but I was willing to take a chance as I liked Tales of the Borderlands when I don't like Borderlands. Just don't.
Game #46: Resident Evil 6 - It's like if RE5 went full Michael Bay. No semblance of horror, it's just another cover action shooter, and a really boring one at that. You mostly walk from area to area to be confronted with more enemies, it is relentless in the amount of encounters you face, and over it's long play time, is just suffocating.
Game #47: Virginia - Murder mystery with no dialogue, inspired by David Lynch and X Files. Really enjoyed this, and it's engaging to try and keep up with it, trying to discern and interpret what is happening in the moment. Also a great soundtrack.
Game #48: Steins Gate - Probably my favourite visual novel I've played this year. Just a great story. It's like a Japanese version of Weird Science but with the kids making a time machine made out of a microwave instead. Conspiracy, waifus and some genuinely heart redning moments then ensue.
Game #49: Clustertruck - Oh my god, this is so much fun!!! It's like "the floor is lava" but across a fleet of moving trucks. Nothing else needs said.
Game #50: Aragami - A solid but a little but janky stealth title. It would be much better without it's boss fights though, much like Deus Ex HR, the boss fights stand out as something really terrible.
Game #51: The Silver Case - Disappointment of the year. It's an incomprehensible mess, I'd struggle to tell you what this game was even about, honestly.
Game #52: Thumper - I admit I suck at this game, and it gets really hard, really quick. My hands felt numb by the end of some boss levels.
But it's something with a terrific style, and is a real rush to play.
Game #53: Higurashi Chapter 4: Himatsubushi - Shortest chapter so far, not a particularly interesting one though unfortunately, I'd struggle to tell you what happened in it now tbh. Think this is my least favourite chapter now
Game #54: Shadow Warrior 2 - It's a mechanically strong FPS but damn, I wish they didn't go down the Borderlands route >_<
Game #55: D - A really strange, odd title. Heck, it's almost like something that would come out now as an experimental indie game actually. It's a neat experiment and only lasts like an hour or so plus it's really cheap, worth a look, but mind the bad controls.
Game #56: Owlboy - Worth development time it took? No. Damn good platformer adventure regardless? Yes.
Gorgeous artstyle, boisterous soundtrack, and an empathetic cast.
Game #57: Dishonored 2 - Too similar to the first for my tastes to be perfectly frank.
Game #58: Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare - Hasn't been a good CoD campaign since Blops 2, and this at least stands among some of the better ones. I'm impressed with the choices they make in the story particularly towards the end in fact, most sobering a CoD game has been in a long time.
Game #59: The Bunker - Another neat little experiment. FMV title about a quite literal manchild who is locked in a bunker away from a nuclear holocaust. Very short but worth a look.
Game #60: VA-11 HALL-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action - A big favourite of mine this year. Love the aesthetic and the premise, plus the characters are easily likable, as well as presenting a very grounded "normal" look at a cyberpunk dystopia.
Game #61: Titanfall 2 - Only played the campaign, but it's indeed a good one. Best campaign this year bar DOOM. Don't quite think I'd go as far as others though calling it "best Valve game we never got" =/
Game #62: Batman: The Telltale Series - Best TT series for me since TWAU, and one that puts some very surprising and interesting spins on the Batman mythos that will leave you guessing even if you're a series veteran.
Game #63: Super Mario Run - It's decent enough for a mobile runner. Not really got the depth I'm looking for in the campaign but I do understand the limitations a touch screen affords. It is a commendable effort though.
Game #64: Divinity: Original Sin - Not really my kind of RPG tbh. Wasn't story heavy enough, and was more combat heavy, and I don't like playing these games for their combat.
Game #65: King's Quest - A very mixed and erratic response to every episode was seemingly felt by players. You can tell that the devs were under some strain finishing this as the quality per episode is simply all over the place. I did enjoy it, and it certainly was charming and rather funny in places, but it enver reaches the high of the first episode again.
Game #66: Inside - As someone who didn't particularly enjoy Limbo, this was a big step up for me. I found the haunting atmosphere much more affecting, and the puzzles were less laborious, and was overall paced better. At the same time however, I still don't feel there is enough to this game, that it leaves me rather baffled to see it be awarded with much GOTY acclaim.