2016 was an intimidating year. The historical iceberg of the Trump election, the surging social and political power of the American right, plus little meaningful movement on climate change from any of the major powers. Parallel to these shitty developments, we saw America support a proxy war on Syria that has devastated the country. While games may have had a great year, humanity certainly did not. I'm starting off with this because it's New Years today, and I'm seeing a lot of people talk about wanting to forget 2016 on social media, but for me it's important to remember what happened. And I would hate myself from the future if I didn't mention anything at all, even if this is just a simple top ten list...
In any regards,
2016 in gaming. It was indeed an incredible year, for me an "evolution" year more than anything. I feel like we saw a growth in story-telling around some of the best games (Persona 5, The Last Guardian, Inside [although I haven't played it yet]) towards maturity and literacy, and smart progressions in game mechanics as well. Titles like Titanfall 2 proved how adding verticality to the tired FPS formula can reinvigorate it. Likewise with Doom, where id's addition of an aggressive attack-to-survive game balance seems to have really captured people (another one I haven't played yet though...) We're finally seeing the potential of this generation come to bear, and parallel to that, a welcome return of Japanese devs to the fore after a slow start.
The PS4 had a landmark year and for me evolved into what the XboxOne was aiming for: an all-in-one "lifestyle box", with a smooth non-intrusive UI, quick boot-up and entertainment features like Youtube, Netflix and Twitch etc. that kept me engaged. I use my PS4 now probably more than I used my Xbox360 in its heyday; it's got everything I need.
I should note by the way that every year when this voting comes around, I am typically the only person who votes for an arcade game, and as a result the sole reason that Cheesemeister has to make arcade game category. Not this year though... The arcade release slate was very slight, with perhaps Kancore being the biggest game to go into operation, and nothing updated or newly released was anywhere near as compelling as what we saw on consoles this year. The absence of a Street Fighter V arcade port this year was also more or less a turning point, itself a (likely very reasonable business) decision by Capcom which pointed to the poor profitability of even fighting games in the arcades nowadays, not a good portent by any means for those of us who still care about this format.
Despite the rather grim arcade situation, I did actually spent a lot of time in them this year, playing my own favorite fighting game (UNI) with friends and randos. These were actually some of the best gaming experiences of the year for me, even if it wasn't something "new" per se.
Enough of the pre-roll, time to remember the best of a great year...
1. Titanfall 2 (Respawn, PS4)
Play Time: Clear, 30 hours, Platinumed
Superplay reference videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPns9Efq3wI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5vl5UUPtqU
Since the announcement for PS4, I was interested in Titanfall 2, but the release apocalypse at the end of the year took it off my radar. Too broke, too little time. That was until EA started their PSN Store sale on the game dropped it to 40 bucks. Alright, I'm in. And it didn't take long until I was hooked. My first time with the grapple class went smoother than I expected, I was in the air and blasting in no time. I quickly transitioned to the high ground battle: using the R201 from rooftops on the map to mow down slow-moving opponents. I stuck to the standard Angel City map and learned how to move.
Multiplayer is why Titanfall 2 is at the top of my list. One of the advantages of the download version is that I can just boot this baby whenever I want to, and given how easy Respawn has made it to jump into a match, I'm literally playing in less than 2 minutes after booting my PS4. Given how addictive and incredibly well-balanced the game is, the lure of jumping in any time I'm near my PS4 is an ever-present temptation.
Back in-game, my strategic evolution continued. After seeing how effective cloaked players could be in Amped Hardpoint, I made the transition to Cloak and adapted my strategy accordingly. I could turn invisible and backstab unwitting opponents, pop a few runners and then accumulate enough energy to drop into Cloak yet again. The virtuous cycle of aiming to almost always be invisible was addicting. I also shifted Titans. From Ion, the standard big-gun/big-defense default titan to Northstar, the lanky sniper who could pick off Titans from far off on the map. Recently I've moved onto Ronin, the close-quarters sword-wielding Titan who teleports in and frenzies for aggressive kills in close combat.
For Multiplayer, Cloak/Ronin is where I've settled, with some ventures into Phase Shift (which allows you to pop in and out of the game field to escape certain death situations).
A lot of people have been praising the single player for this game, and that's fair it's an excellent campaign with some incredibly theatrical moments. But personally I found the story to be uninteresting and cheesy; it was the game balance and wow factor set pieces that got me engaged and kept me on the edge of my seat until the end. Really though, multiplayer is what sells the game and will definitely keep me playing deep into 2017.
TLDR: Multiplayer is ridic, I will stab you while invisible.
2. Assault Android Cactus (Witch Beam, PS4)
Play Time: Clear, trophies 40%
Superplay reference videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gh_gQcXPy98
I was hyped for this game since it was announced; a top-down twin-stick shooter with bullet hell patterns and manic action set in a cartoony universe, from a dev team I hadn't heard of. That much I could get from the trailer. I picked it up on release but had it sitting in my unplayed folder for months due to prioritizing other games. I figured it would be some fun, quick gameplay, possibly a little throw-away given that there were a fair share of games this year that looked good but didn't really deliver when you got to the meat of the game.
I was dead wrong. The game is by all means straightforward: hold R2 to shoot, hit L2 for your secondary weapon, move and shoot with LS and RS respectively. Beyond that though is the complexity of the stages, and the unexpectedly exquisite difficulty tuning. The game starts off easy enough, and maintains a steady curve up to about the 3/4 mark, making it very approachable even for people who don't play a lot of shooters. In the last set of stages though, things get crazy. Some might call it a difficulty spike, but for me this was when the game really took off. What were previously quite simply navigated and mowed down enemy waves come even faster and more fervent.
You're shooting, dodging and missiling anything that comes on-screen amid huge waves of enemies, and the action gets absolutely white-knuckle in 60 FPS.
What is evident over this slow difficulty curve is the wisdom with which Witch Beam built their game; their battle system is the centerpiece around which they set enemy placements, attack patterns and boss phases. Because the core gameplay is so tight, and Witch Beam was wise enough not add any unnecessary crap on top of it, the rest of the game is evidently the fruit of polishing what was already there. The last two stages of the game are brilliantly designed, and take you to the edge of your seat in neck-and-neck danmaku combat. In fact, the last stage is so challenging that I figured most players would give up here, but the PS4 trophies show 20% of people clearing it, so I guess not...
Incidentally, you can see me take it on here:
https://t.co/x8FTuXOPei
(By the way, I love the tribute to Ibara in the boss' fourth form!)
Beyond the game balance, I really liked the characters in Assault Android Cactus. They don't talk much, and there isn't much of a story to speak of, but when they do, the writing/VO is great and the character models are really expressive.
If there's one thing I didn't like about this release, it's that the devs were maybe a bit overconfident in their game balance, and dropped in a trophy for getting S+ rankings on all stages. This is more or less possible up until the aforementioned last two stages, at which point it becomes 2nd loop of Dodonpachi Daioujou territory. A bit of a shame that such refined balance doesn't go the whole 9 yards with a platinum trophy accessible to players of intermediate skill, and this is the only blemish on an otherwise amazing inaugural release.
Cheers to Witch Beam for their great work. I am psyched as hell to see what they do next.
3. Gunvolt 2 (Inticreates, 3DS)
Play Time: True Ending Clear, 60 hours, all S ranks, 5 Quests Left Uncleared
Superplay reference videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gROZNRf0gMM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fETB7U3xPRM
I downloaded Gunvolt 1 on a whim before a long plane trip last year, and played it until probably about two stages before the last boss. People have mentioned the difficulty spike towards the end of the original game, and that was exactly what caused me to put it down. Not only were the bosses suddenly confusingly hard, the "kudos" system, which lets you build up multipliers by chaining enemies, had very strict rules to it: die once and your counter/multiplier got reset = not much fun scoring. So the fun factor was basically lost on me because by the time I started to "get" the outlines of the score system, the game had climbed in difficulty so much that I didn't notice how cool it was.
Gunvolt 2 changed basically everything that was bad about the first one. First, the kudos system now allows you to get hit three times before your combo cuts out, which means that it's much easier to chain enemies, in turn making the scoring all of a sudden incredibly engaging. Lock two enemies with your shot then electrocute them with your electric field for a "double". Hit three for a ”triple". Kill bosses with skills and earn big point bonuses. Then gamble with your life by avoiding the mid-way save points to keep your multiplier climbing.
The risk-reward is much more apparent, much more addicting.
The new character, Copen, is the other major highlight in this game. Whereas Gunvolt functions at screen length by sniping enemies and then electrocuting them with a lock-on, Copen is the opposite.
His combat and scoring are all based on hovering in mid-air, zooming in with a body blow and "tagging" enemies, then destroying them via lock-on. As a result, his attack patterns transform the gameplay into something that is once aggressive but also graceful and acrobatic. You zoom through the level, jumping from enemy to enemy, slowly building up bigger point bonuses, all the while trying to avoid touching the ground to keep your combo going. Copen to me is probably the best addition to the "Megaman" lineage since Zero. His precision-based flying mechanic is incredibly satisfying once you figure out what you're doing.
Gunvolt 2 gets my number 3 thanks to the overall improvements it makes to the formula of the first one (most importantly scoring), and also the thrilling addition of new character Copen. Beyond these two major points, the difficulty is incredibly well-balanced. Challenging, and sometimes a little frustrating, but ultimately something you want to keep drilling at until you've done every challenge the game presents you with.
4. Alienation (Housemarque, PS4)
Play Time: Clear, 10 hours
Superplay reference videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uz0CskJ2cY
Who would have thought that twin-stick shooters would wind up having a banner year in 2016? But here we are, right? Much like Assault Android Cactus, Alienation finds you mowing down waves of enemies using a variety of weapons in local and online co-op, or in solo play. Also much like AAC, and to no fault of these games only my own hectic schedule, I bought and forgot about this release, right up until years' end when I binge-played it for a single day.
The greatest thing about this game, like many of my other picks this year, is its pick-up and play aspect. Minimal loading, quick response, you're into an online co-op room in minutes basically. And once you are, there's some thrilling blasting to be had. The core game has 20 stages, with different Worlds beyond that which basically up the difficulty and give you more experience/rarer loot drops the further you can get. As a result, the first loop of the game, while a fine challenge, is really only the gateway until the rest of the game.
It's basically a twin-stick shooter MMO, something you never asked for but now obviously needed to exist.
Overall it's the endless replayability and drop-in/drop-out co-op experience of Alienation that puts it high on my GOTY list this year. Occasionally the balance can be a little frustrating, especially when you warp into a game too high above your current level, but that is mostly to be expected given the long level progression curve. You also keep XP and loot for any matches you join even if you wind up losing, which softens the blow when you can't cut it. The result is a consistent motivation to play, and a brilliant update to the formula that Smash TV once laid claim too. I will add that the game's trophies are pretty easily unlockable, so it seems to be a fun coast to the platinum. Always a plus in a year full of tough games!
5. Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA Future Tone (SEGA AM2, PS4)
Play Time: Clear, 20 hours, Trophies 100%, around 100 songs cleared on Hard
Superplay reference videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73lJRo9SDPc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZBouq24qfE
I was a big fan of the arcade version of this game, and would almost always drop a 100 yen in whenever I was in my local game center. I knew that whenever the PS4 version dropped, it was going to be epic and I was not disappointed. 220 songs, beautiful graphics re-built in AM2's rendering engine, full customization: hair, accessories, costumes (modules) etc. Above all though, the clincher is the perfect artisan-level polished game balanced that existed in the arcade version brought over as-is to the PS4 version, with target charts only slightly altered to adapt to the DualShock, that make this pretty easily one of the best music games of all time. On top of that you have snappy, no-load menus that get you in and out seconds after booting up, making it a perfect "go-to" game that you can access anytime when you're between projects.
Given the volume of tracks and stuffs to unlock, the quality of the music and graphics, plus AM2's precision game balance, this game really would have been my GOTY except for one problem: the DualShock 4. The DS4 unfortunately has a very stiff D-pad, which often fails me during long target chains, leading me to losing combos on some of the faster songs in Future Tone. I am hoping that at some point there will be an incredible music game controller released for the PS4, or maybe something specifically for this game. When that happens, Future Tone will most likely very quickly be acknowledged as one of the best music games of all time, and a high point that other games will have to somehow measure up to. Until we've got easy access to that controller however, it's just a hair short of greatness in my opinion.
6. Persona 5 (ATLUS P Studio, PS4)
Play Time: Not cleared, 65 hours
I don't want to say much on this one because a lot of folks are going to be waiting for the localization. I will just say that up until this game, I was no fan of the Persona series, due largely to straightforwardly disliking Persona 3, after which I resolved that I didn't need to bother with this corner of the JRPG universe. Persona 5 changed that. The richness of the characters, the cut-scenes, the brilliantly-crafted story, the social experience of the big city, and the sheer amount of stuff you can do in Tokyo all make it a thorough and enthralling journey: an early classic in the PS4's library.
I had to bookmark this one about 65 hours in, just because I had other games to play and I still had quite a bit to go in the main story. That said, they just put out some Christmas costume DLC, so that will probably be enough to revisit Ann-sama at some point and eventually clear it.
7. 7th Dragon III (SEGA, 3DS)
Play Time: 45 hours, Full Clear, Last DLC Not Cleared
Reference video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WagCQR2J7y0
Much like Gunvolt, 7th Dragon III was definitely one of my surprises this year. I had no idea I'd be spending tens of hours on my 3DS, let alone with a JRPG (!), but I picked it up after seeing how much people liked it in the OT, and the game really started to pull me in with a smartly balanced battle system and well-structured campaign. From a technical standpoint, 7th Dragon III is no marvel. Simple models, simple cut-scenes, simple stages. Hell, the dragon enemies that appear on maps are probably 12-polygon purple shapes. It is a 3DS JRPG through and through. And yeah, outside of the lesbian dating features, the story didn't do too much for me either ::cough::.
This game's exquisite flavor only starts to make itself apparent when you, ahem, start chewing. I.e. it's only when you sit down and start toying around with the different characters and classes you can recruit that you start to understand the game's honed balance. Every dungeon is a solid challenge, and some will really make you go back to the drawing board to formulate new combinations of characters/classes for taking out certain types of enemies. You can by all means level up and get yourself ahead of the curve, but that advantage doesn't last very long. Boss battles tend to be genuine challenges, and you have to bring to bear all of the little tricks you've picked up along the way in normal encounters to overcome them.
A jazzy electro soundtrack by Yuzo Koshiro is the cherry that tops 7th Dragon III off, making all the dungeon exploration and dragon hunting that more pleasureful. Strategic combat, waifu dating and dungeon diving, all set to a post-Detroit electronic soundtrack made 7th Dragon III one of 2016's hidden gems for me.
still it was a fun romp, but it didn't keep me from Overwatch.
