2016 has been a year for big games for me. Like, literally games i can spend a long time with. It's been a great year for strategy games, and an okay year for shooters. Mainly Doom. With the introduction out of the way, I proudly present...
McNum's Game of the Year 2016 list!
1. Fire Emblem Fates ; That is a LOT of Fire Emblem. Between the three campaigns, Birthright, Conquest, and Revelation, there's easily enough game to hit a three digit amount of hours played without repeating a story chapter. (Side chapters are shared.) Add to that a refined version of the gameplay Awakening introduced, with making the pair up system weaker but more versatile, as well as reducing the ability to cheese you character strengths, and you have what is quite possibly the most mechanically solid Fire Emblem game release, at least internationally. So there's a lot of it and it's all solid gameplay. But even though it's my game of the year, I do feel the need to mention the story. It's... passable at best, annoying most of the time, and awful at worst. The split into three campaigns from a single prologue hurts the storytelling. The idea of choosing side is interesting, though slightly undermined by Revelation's "No, I choose my own side! YOU can join ME!" option. Not much of a dilemma when there's a third better option.
Overall, though, I cannot have any other game as number one here. There's too much Fire Emblem goodness, no matter if you want the Awakening styled Birthright, the classic styled Conquest, or the mixed style of Revelation. Personally, I think I prefer Birthright, but Conquest has the better characters.
2. Doom ; Rip and tear! Doom is a shining example of how to do a revival of an old-school FPS based on movement and momentum right. It has a lot of the trappings of modern shooters, but it kept the speed based combat of the original Doom, as well as exploring for secrets. Each enemy is also still easy to identify, has optimal tactics to counter, and with the glory kill mechanic, you're encouraged to go up close and personal to rip and tear heath pickups out of your foes. Or cuts them in half with a chainsaw to make them explode into ammunition. Does that even make sense? Hell no, but it works perfectly as a game mechanic. Overall it just feels like Doom. It does help that despite only being a pair of arms, and sometimes a torso, the Doom Marine is a surprisingly effective silent protagonist. This game gets more out of a scripted camera pan and a shotgun pump than many games do in a long cutscene. But he is a simple guy. There are demons. He hates demons with a fiery passion. Everything else stems from there, especially the glory kills.
As an aside, thank you Doom for having a colorblind mode, especially having three different colorblind modes. That's much appreciated and pretty unexpected. I mean... it's Doom. It didn't need one. But it is a main reason Doom sits in the high end of this list.
3. XCOM 2 ; You lost. Now what are you going to do about that? The aliens have taken over the world and are close to finishing their sinister plot against humanity, and only a rag-tag bunch of soldiers in their flying headquarters can stand against them. They are XCOM and thank heavens you're here to lead them again, Commander. XCOM 2 is... well it's more XCOM. The interplay of the strategic and tactical layers is still there, and both have seen some changes since Enemy Unknown. Being the aggressor, you start many missions in concealment and can make big aggressive moves with vastly reduced risk which you'll need to since many mission have harsh turn limits. Same with the strategic layer, there's a big red bar ticking down to your doom, and you can only delay it, not stop it. That's a theme of the game, timers, and turn limits to force your hand. And that is a matter of taste. I don't mind as much, but others do.
4. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Spirit of Justice ; Or more accurately, Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney - Spirit of Justice. Because this is Apollo's game, and thank Capcom for that. It's the sequel to Dual Destinies and that's pretty much exactly what you should expect. The gameplay is the familiar old Ace Attorney, with a new minigame added in the Seance sequences where you see the last moments of a victim's life and get into an argument about what that actually means. It has a fantastic cast of characters, as usual, a pretty amazing soundtrack, and has perfected the dramatic reveals to an artform. Especially in the fifth episode. If there's one thing Ace Attorney games know how to do, it's the final episodes and Spirit of Justice does not disappoint.
5. Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 ; Self insert Dragon Ball fanfiction, the sequel! The Time Patrol is hiring! Create your new character (and import your original Xenoverse one for story reasons) and play through a story mode where a genric doomsday villain is threatening time itself, with movie villains this time! Face off against Lord Slug, Turles, Cooler, Janemba, and everyone's favorite rageaholic, Broly as they intrude on the Dragon Ball history in the worst possible times. The game is a fairly improved sequel overall, the fighting system has been streamlined, and the AI has stopped cheating, it just fights really well instead. Good luck with Story Mode Cooler. You will need it. The multiplayer side has added more co-op missions and raids, as well as a sprawling hub world that you can fly around in... when you get your flying license after beating Cooler.
6. Stellaris ; Paradox style grand strategy in space! On the surface this seems like a somewhat basic space 4X game, but thanks to its Grand Strategy influences it allows for much more in the ways of diplomacy and is tilted less towards all out galactic warfare, and more towards roleplaying your empire. It IS possible to win the game, but it's not really about that. Try something out, see if it works, then go do it all over again. While I just got started on it, I can already tell this game is going to be a time robber. It also has a fairly impressive update schedule, the game as it now is different than at launch and will probably be different in six months.
7. Day of the Tentacle: Remastered Edition ; A classic now in HD with redrawn art, remastered sound and a commentary track. It's a very competent remaster and it is still very much the Day of the Tentacle that baffled us all back then. It has some ridiculous leaps of logic, all in the name of comedy. Like when you see a black cat and carry around some white paint, but need a skunk, you had better be up on your old cartoon knowledge. Also a shout out to the achievements in this one, some of those are for the most obscure things, with excellent comedic timing. Like pointing out just how many items you've technically stolen, or point out that it's only alligators, not hamsters you can flush down the toilet. Hamsters go in the microwave. In short, this is an adventure game classic that everyone should try.
8. No Man's Sky ; You could write a lot about No Man's Sky. Unfulfilled promises, a small team taking on a project too big for them, generic rage and accusations... And a lot HAS been written. But I'm writing something else, I had fun with it. Sure it's a bit barebones and a lot of the criticisms are true... but I liked the gameplay loop of going to new planets and mining stuff to go to other new planets. If you like a lot of exploration in games, No Man's Sky still delivers on that. But probably only that, though the base building and freighters upgrade was pretty neat.
9. Gal*Gun: Double Peace ; This year's "Game that had no right to be anywhere near a GOTY list" winner is Gal*Gun: Double Peace. It's stupid, it's lewd, and it's self-admittedly a creepazoid game, but... It is also a surprisingly mechanically solid rail-shooter. You have skill shots, challenging enemy patterns, and sub-objectives for each level. It does fall apart a bit with a mouse, but Inti Creates put way, way more effort into this game than it deserved. And that's kind of cute, in a way. The €80 DLC that gives you X-ray vision is a little suspect, though.
10. Street Fighter V ; Street Fighter V is the most self-contradictory game of 2016. It launched with what is likely one of the most wellmade and balanced iterations of the Street Fighter style of fighting game system, polished to a most excellent shine... and then everything else was awful. Inconsistent netcode, no real content other than online VS mode, no tutorial other than the extreme basics, and a lot of promising that the game will be better, honest! It did get a decent enough story mode, but it's still missing several basic features, like Arcade Mode. To be frank, the only reason this game is here is because the fighting engine is just THAT good, despite everything else being... not. An extra special mention to Capcom for the PC Rootkit they installed in September. Bad form, Capcom.
And the honorable mentions go to...
x. Super Mario Run ; Credit where it's due. This is a proper Super Mario platformer where you only have one input. It works pretty well, but didn't catch my interest enough to upgrade to the full version. Neat in concept, though.
x. Picross Touch ; It's a basic picross game on Steam. But I liked it enough to give it an honorable mention. A decent example of doing one thing well and nothing else.
x. Star Fox Zero ; A lot of the game has that "It's Star Fox, but..." feel to it. Like it's really close to what you'd want... but not, in large part thanks to the controls. when they work it's great... but when not it's awful. At least the anime short launch trailer was pretty good.
And that's my list! I wonder if anyone else has their Fail of the Year vote on their Game of the Year list, too? Street Fighter V, how I love and hate you at the same time. So good, so awful.
Updated to add Day of the Tentacle at the cost of Star Fox Zero.
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