It’s almost halfway through 2017! I’m bad at making videos in a timely manner! Let’s convert my video script for my Top 10 Games I Played In 2016 list into a blog post so I can launch this site and make myself feel better!!!
Following with the trend of recent years, 2016 was pretty great as far as games go. I have this theory that as the political climate becomes more and more fucked, the collective soul of the video game medium is harvesting the negative energy being expelled into the atmosphere and using it to become stronger.
Or good video games are just more enjoyable as more and more dumb things happen. That’s a possibility too.
Below is a list of my top 10 favorite games I played in 2016. If this is your first Rasen Bran GIPTY (Games I Played This Year™) list, just keep in mind that this is a comprehensive, personalized list that includes older games that I happened to have first played this year, not just games released in 2016. Let’s get rollin’.
#10 – DARK SOULS III
Given my well-established love of the Souls series, Dark Souls 3 coming in at number 10 might be a bit of a surprise. While I enjoyed my time with this game, I did find it a little disappointing. Though the gameplay is arguably more polished and improved compared to its predecessors, I felt that Dark Souls 3 lacked an identity of its own. The game seems content in riding on the back of the first game’s legacy and in my opinion played it a little too safe. Despite the greater amount of variety in customization options I found that the game was almost refined and balanced to a fault – I never really felt like my choices made when making different character builds had any true consequences because of how similarly they all ended up performing. Overall, the game just felt like it lacked in creativity and was too afraid to have any character of its own.
That being said, Dark Souls is still Dark Souls, and even if I was disappointed in some ways the game delivered in so many others. The bosses here are some of the best in the series. Despite my criticisms of the game’s rigid faithfulness to prior entries, I can’t deny how excited I was when I saw that one of the early bosses (Abyss Watchers) was a combination of my favorite boss from Dark Souls and my favorite from Bloodborne. Beyond that, I had a lot of fun with Pontiff Sulivahn and I think the brother princes fight is one of my favorite moments in the entire series. While I found the actual ending fairly underwhelming, the final boss fight was a beautiful send-off for the series.
Dark Souls 3 is a great game, I just wish that it stood out on its own a little more. Every time it finds the courage to move out of the shadow of the first game it provides a lot of memorable and beautiful moments. Despite that, I couldn’t help but leave Dark Souls 3 finding myself wanting more, and for that reason alone I can’t justify this game going higher on this list than number 10.
#9 – Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Human Revolution is one of my favorite games ever. I was a bit skeptical about Mankind Divided when it was first announced, as the former Deus Ex games were all set decades apart from one another and this one is a much more direct sequel. To be honest, I felt that Human Revolution did a good enough job as a prequel to the original. I didn’t think we needed any more setup nor did I think Jensen was compelling enough as a protagonist to revisit a second time.
Now that I’ve played through it, I can say that the game… almost proved me wrong. Almost. The gameplay takes everything great from Human Revolution and improves upon it in various ways. Jensen controls a lot smoother, quest and level layouts feel more carefully crafted, and character customization and progression feels much tighter and mechanically sound.
There’s a fun, new experimental augmentation subsystem that allows you to sacrifice some of your other skills to unlock abilities that are more powerful than normal. While it isn’t perfect, I think this mechanic was integrated in a mostly seamless manner and the new abilities never felt like they overshadowed the ones from the previous game, which I greatly appreciated.
However, the game did fall short in some significant areas. I think at this point everyone reading has at least heard of the whole “Augment Your Preorder” controversy. Even disregarding all the preorder silliness, I felt at launch that the game’s handling of DLC and microtransactions was pretty shitty.
The actual writing of the game itself wasn’t as good as previous entries. I thought Human Revolution did a pretty good (though I’ll admit it wasn’t perfect) job of fleshing out its world. It took a fairly broad, societal approach in discussing artificial human enhancement, drawing some minor parallels to contemporary issues along the way. Mankind Divided, however, focuses on the specific issue of discrimination and the result was awful. It feels like the writers just wanted to cash in on Black Lives Matter and related cultural events. The pro-aug vs anti-aug metaphor for real life racism/classism never works and ends up feeling insensitive, half-assed, and exploitive. The general conspiracy-thriller plot and many side quests are written well, for what its worth, but never become compelling enough to overshadow the lazy handling of the game’s primary themes.
What bothered me most of all, and what bumped it down a lot lower on this list than I had initially anticipated, was the handling of the game’s development. Let me start by providing some context.
Square Enix has pushed for more of their games to follow an episodic release format, and I can’t really blame them. Modern AAA game development is more expensive and time-consuming than it ever has been, and if games need to be split up into more manageable segments for the end result to be high quality… I really don’t mind. I’d rather buy something that has been finished, polished, and properly tested when possible. I wouldn’t be surprised if more and more companies start to adopt this process. If anything, hopefully it cuts down on the amount of incomplete games releasing in crappy states.
So yeah, episodic releases? That’s all fine and great. But it would be nice to know that prior to buying the game. If you’re not already aware, various journalists have reported that Mankind Divided was once a much larger game, with the later plot points of the intended story being split off to make a third game starring Jensen. If you’ve played the game it’s easy to see – the ending cuts the plot off rather abruptly and the game only features one primary hub area in contrast to the previous entries’ multiple hubs from around the globe. To be fair, the team did a great job of expanding the city of Prague into a pseudo-open world with a lot of fun secrets to find and side quests to complete.
That said, the game underperformed by Square Enix’s standards and the series is on hiatus for now, meaning this is a story not getting proper closure anytime soon. It’s an unfortunate stain on an otherwise loveable experience, but I won’t deny that it really soured my opinion of the game knowing I’m not getting closure anytime soon, if ever.
#8 – Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE
Tokyo Mirage Sessions is a game that managed to make a lot of insecure young men mad for no real justifiable reason. On one hand, there was a wave of hardcore Megami Tensei and Fire Emblem “fans” who refused to let go of the idea that this game wasn’t worth playing because it was weeb garbage despite already loving series that are, well, weeb garbage. Then there was an outpouring of creepy people who got really upset that Nintendo didn’t let them see sexualized underage girls in the localized version.
Not a lot of fuss got made about other things which are actual localization problems though, like how somewhat-plot-important battle dialogue wasn’t given subtitles. It’s almost like the people who constantly bitch about localization quality only seem to care when people take away their creepy fap material, or something!
Well it sucks for those people, because Tokyo Mirage Sessions is really fucking good. This is a direct continuation of PS2-era MegaTen and it served as a perfect bridge between the older console games and Persona 5. Gameplay-wise, it borrows a fair bit from Fire Emblem, mainline SMT, and Persona. To my surprise, there was quite a bit of Digital Devil Saga mixed in there as well. Hell, it’s probably the closest thing we’ll get to a Digital Devil Saga 3.
The story and characters don’t get explored quite as much as in other MegaTen games, but I found myself not really minding, because they served the overall themes of the game well. This is a story about the entertainment industry and the characters struggling to balance their creative passions with their personal problems, which ended up resonating with me a lot more than I thought it would. The only major complaint I have with the story is how cookie-cutter and boring the protagonist is. They really should have just cut him out completely and made Tsubasa the main character instead.
I really hope this game gets ported to Switch. It’s a damn shame that it got stuck on the Wii U. If you skipped out on TMS because you’re still mad about it being something fun, light-hearted, and upbeat instead of the shitty grimdark SMT x FE fanfiction you imagined it would be, you’re missing out.
#7 – DOOM
Doom was a pleasant surprise. Between a lackluster E3 trailer and Bethesda withholding review copies, I honestly expected the game to be a cheap attempt at cashing in on the original’s name recognition.
I have never been happier to be wrong. This is one of the most groundbreaking first-person shooters released in years. The game’s fast-paced combat not only captures the spirit of the original games, it manages to provide the type of innovation and evolution we deserve but rarely get from franchise reboots.
While I’m one of the few people who actually enjoys Doom 3 and think people are a bit too harsh on it, I can’t deny that Doom 2016 was the best possible direction for the series to go down. The game revels in its dumb 90’s high school heavy metal outcast aesthetic and all its glory. They even manage to throw a cute nod toward the original game’s absurd number of rereleases – It turns the Doomguy into a satanic force of nature, destined to reincarnate again and again to wage a never-ending, cyclical battle with the forces of hell. They even call him the Doomslayer! It’s so fucking dumb, I love it!
Of course, Doom’s story isn’t the star of the show. What really makes this game noteworthy is its complete rejection of modern FPS conventions in favor of a more chaotic and brutal game flow. In many ways, it’s both a return to form and a major step forward for the genre. We’re back to no longer having regenerating health and being able to carry more than two weapons at a time, but we’re now looking for opportunities to jump in and get melee kills. Melee executions cause dying enemies to drop more resources than they normally would have if shot, turning them into disgusting little vending machines that you can’t help but want to disembowel.
Other than that, the game has an impressive level editor feature that I think is often overshadowed by the fantastic campaign. I actually spent more time in this mode than I did playing the singleplayer and there’s a lot of breathtaking stuff being made by the community. If you ever pick up this game I highly suggest looking into it. You won’t be disappointed.
Something that I was a bit let down by was the length of the campaign. I personally feel that it’s a few hours too long. There were a few levels where I felt like I just wanted the game to get on with it despite the moment-to-moment battles being so fun. There’s a slight bit of backtracking through previous areas that felt a little unneeded as well, thought it wasn’t a major problem.
Minor letdowns aside, I honestly believe Doom is one of the most important games released in 2016, and I can see it having a lasting influence in the FPS genre. There’s a level of game design mastery here that very few games can hold a candle to.
#6 – Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse
I really, really, really liked Shin Megami Tensei IV. Apocalypse takes steps both forwards and backwards, and while I don’t think I like it as much as the original it’s still one of the best handheld RPGs I’ve played in a good while. Atlus responded to criticism of SMT IV and this time around gave us more difficulty options, rebalanced the skill and smirk systems, and gave us a map that isn’t complete shit.
Unfortunately, they also seemed to listen to the people who didn’t like IV’s amazing story and settled on telling a more traditional narrative this time around. While it’s not bad by any means, I have to admit it’s a little disappointing seeing some of SMT’s individuality stripped away in favor of another plot centered around overdone shonen anime themes and a cast made up of tired archetypes instead of deeply damaged people driven by extremism. I can’t help but feel this was a direct response to people’s complaints about Walter and Jonathan being underdeveloped, which is a shame. A lot of the A+ storytelling in SMT IV was done with subtext, which is all but gone in favor of long tirades about godslaying, the nature of humanity, and the importance of friendship. Don’t even get me started on how much potential was wasted with the Divine Powers – an interesting new faction immediately undermined by being introduced as a purely antagonistic force.
Regardless of flaws, the game is still pretty fun in my opinion and Atlus has proven once again that nobody can come close to delivering the same flavor of intense turn-based combat that they bring to the JRPG table. Apocalypse did a lot of nice rebalancing of the gameplay systems introduced in SMT IV and I hope to see many of these gameplay systems around in some form or another in future entries.
#5 – Overwatch
Continuing the trend of FPS games I didn’t expect to enjoy at all we have Overwatch coming in at number 6. I was originally part of the crowd laughing at the game when it was first revealed, both for its painfully generic title and its close initial appearance to Team Fortress 2. To be honest, I’ve never really cared much for Blizzard’s game lineup aside from a brief stint with Diablo 2 when I was probably far too young to really appreciate it. So when the open beta for Overwatch launched, I wasn’t exactly expecting to fall in love but… here we are now.
Overwatch masterfully combined competitive multiplayer first-person shooters and MOBAs in a way I didn’t really think possible before playing it firsthand, and both communities ate it up. Naturally, a bunch of diehard Blizzard fans also hopped in on the bandwagon because if any company in the games industry has a fanbase that would follow them to the depths of hell it’s probably them. I also saw a lot of fighting game players hop on the Overwatch train because of the strong focus on character-based gameplay and excellent cast design. But possibly most important of all, I saw people who would never even think about playing a competitive multiplayer game jump in on day 1 and feel right at home.
I think there’s a lot that contributed to Overwatch becoming the phenomenon that it is now. The entertaining and diverse cast of characters, the wide range of casual and competitive gameplay modes, and a good selection of playable characters that don’t focus on direct combat but instead rely on good movement, equipment placement, and ability usage all probably helped.
Overwatch has been consistently updated and is a game I expect to play on and off for many years to come. Also the memes are great.
#4 – Demon’s Souls
Remember how I said Dark Souls 3 lacked creativity? Demon’s Souls is a game with the opposite problem. There’s way too much going on in Demon’s Souls. It’s too creative, and a lot of its ideas were terrible, but goddamn I love it.
I have a great appreciation for this game for how experimental and courageous of an endeavor it was for the time it came out. You can feel From Software throwing things at the wall to see what would stick and what didn’t. For each idea that didn’t quite work, two others did. The Souls seed is being planted here, and it’s fun to see how From Software laid a foundation for its future games.
Demon’s Souls has a more traditional world-and-level-based structure than the other Souls games, but what it lacks in 3D open world shortcut fun it makes up for in player freedom. After the first level, you can warp to any of the other areas in the game and make progress through them in any order you want. This also means you have easier access to a wider variety of equipment and skills earlier on in this game than you do the others.
Unfortunately, the open-ended nature of Demon’s Souls did result in the game not always being able to keep up with the player, and it’s quite easy to become unintentionally overpowered. While I might miss it, I think the decision to restrict the player a little more in Dark Souls-onward was a good idea and allowed for the tighter, more refined gameplay design that lead to the series becoming a mainstream hit.
Some poorly-thought-out gameplay systems aside, (looking at you, world tendency) Demon’s Souls was a great first attempt at Souls-style game design. It’s easily one of the most unique games I’ve ever played, and I don’t know if we’ll ever see anything quite like it ever again.
#3 – Super Mario 3D World
I don’t know what else to say about this one other than Super Mario 3D World is everything fun about video games bundled up in a little ball of pure joy and constant excitement. Super Mario 64 is the first game I ever played and I’ve loved it to death since I was a child. I spent countless summer nights blasting through Super Mario Bros 3 with my family. Super Mario Galaxy completely changed my perception of how 3D space can be handled in video games.
But fuck all those game, throw them in the trash. Super Mario 3D World is the new god amongst platformers. I’m not kidding, I think this is easily the best Mario game I’ve played in my entire life.
I can’t recall a single moment of frustration or boredom as I went through this game. It borrows so many different elements from Mario’s long history but still somehow manages to take them, blend them together, and feel completely original, exciting, and fresh. I’ve never seen a game manage to so successfully feel like a best-of collection and a new step forward at the same time. It’s wonderful.
Every level is superb and each one feels like the culmination of Nintendo’s greatest strengths as game designers. I think the only thing I can really criticize the game for is its heavy reusage of bosses, but even then it didn’t really bother me all that much. And trust me, the final boss is some Gurren Lagann-esque awesome shit. If you have a Wii U, you owe it to yourself to pick up Super Mario 3D World.
#2 – Titanfall 2
I think we’ve established by now that 2016 was a good year for shooters, but in my heart one game reigns above all else. Doom and Overwatch were a blast, and I think they’re going to have a noticeable impact on how shooters are made going forward, but Titanfall 2 feels like the pinnacle of the modern era of shooters.
For years now FPSs have been focusing more and more on expanded mobility options and raising the skill barrier to create more frantic and adrenaline-fueled gunfights. You could say the original Titanfall was one of the major causes for this trend, and Titanfall 2 is its apex. I have never played another game that feels this much fun just to move your character in. From wallrunning, to sliding, to speed boosts, to grappling hooks, you live and die in Titanfall 2 by how proficiently you make your way around the map.
But that’s only half the fun. Once you actually get your Titan the game changes completely. As a huge mecha fan, I love how empowering it is to finally jump inside your Titan and reign death upon the people below. Titan-on-Titan fighting is just as heavy and intense as you’d want it to be. They absolutely nailed it.
The singleplayer campaign is pretty short but sweet. It does a great job of introducing you both to your standard pilot abilities and the possible titan loadouts you can use in the multiplayer. It also has one of the best levels of any game I’ve ever played. Without spoiling what exactly happens, I think “Effect and Cause” should go down as one of the greatest FPS campaign missions of all time.
Anyways, Titanfall 2 has easily become one of my favorite multiplayer shooters ever, which is impressive in a year with Overwatch and Modern Warfare Remastered vying for my attention as well. This is the last game on this list that was released in 2016, so I guess that makes Titanfall 2 my 2016 Game of the Year.
#1 – Transistor
Transistor is one of the most beautiful games I’ve ever played. That goes beyond its stunning visuals – it’s the music, the gameplay, the voice performances, everything that makes up this experience was crafted with so much detail, love, and care that I still partially refuse to believe the game exists and I didn’t just hallucinate my multiple playthroughs.
It’s quite short for an RPG, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. The story is paced perfectly and I never once felt like the gameplay was being padded out with unnecessary filler moments. Transistor is all about skill customization and it encourages you to play around and discover different playstyles, all of which have their own merits and are equally fun to use.
I don’t want to say much about the story. Its brief yet powerful look into a utopia on the edge of destruction and a couple caught in the middle is something you absolutely need to witness. You really owe it to yourself to experience this story. Few game endings have made me cry like this one did.
My love of Transistor is so powerful it made me finally made me break my rule of not buying dumb nerd merchandise for things I don’t need. Now I have a dumb overpriced Transistor USB and a figure of the main character lying around. I also have the entire soundtrack on my phone and I’ve listened to some of it almost daily since I’ve beaten it.
Transistor is a masterpiece. It’s managed to sneak its way into my top 10 favorite games of all time list. It’s a true work of art, and a reminder of why I love games.
Well, that ends that. Thanks a bunch for reading my first blog post. Converting this from a video script to an actual written list was… an interesting process. We’re halfway through 2017 now and I’m already struggling with deciding how the hell I’m going to make my Top 10 Games I Played list for this year. With so many awesome games that have already come out, it’s for sure going to be a rough one.
