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Arcanum · 12-16-2015, 06:00 AM

I can never remember the games that came out from January to April/May when it gets to this year roundup time, so I looked at my steam product activation history and made this list. Then I realized how massive this list is (which isn't even the full list of what I played this year), so I'm going to keep it rather short for each title because holy shit do I get a lot of games.

Dying Light
This is actually a really solid zombie game. The melee combat feels pretty good, which is usually a hard thing for first-person melee systems to accomplish. And night time in the game is genuinely terrifying with the super zombies chasing after you. I only have two complaints about the game. While the parkour is fun it seems a bit more grounded in realism than other parkour systems in games. Specifically there is no horizontal wall run, which is disappointing since you have these esoteric weapons to kill zombies with, but you can't fiddle with gravity a bit to make wall runs possible. The other complaint is that mid/late game, when you have really powerful crafted weapons, night time is no longer scary because you can fight the super zombies. Then a little later you get the grappling hook, which trivializes the parkour system and the need to scout the best route on the fly, and allows you to avoid any punishment if you screw up a jump because you can just zip back up to where you were. This made late game extremely boring, and because of that I never actually finished the game.

Grey Goo
Pretty fun RTS. More macro focused than StarCraft 2, and I've seen it compared to the Supreme Commander (never played that game so I wouldn't know). The factions are neat and have somewhat unique mechanics, but the different units didn't really feel all that different resulting in pretty similar playstyles. The story mode was really fun and challenging, and the cinematics were gorgeous. Sadly the multiplayer community was practically non-existent from launch, so I had no incentive to keep playing the game.

Evolve
I played this game during its betas and absolutely loved it. I bought it despite the shitty DLC model, and had some fun for about a week or two. For those who don't know, the game is asymmetrical multiplayer where one person is a monster against 4 hunter players. The monster needs to flee the hunters and eat NPC creatures in order to evolve and become stronger so that it can start hunting the hunters. Sadly the game became stagnant thanks to the poor matchmaking. I would win 90% of my games as the monster because of how people failed to grasp the need for teamwork as the hunters, and my games as a hunter were awful because of the same reason. The few times there was teamwork with a good monster to fight, the game was fantastic. But nobody wanted to stick around to learn the game, coupled with the DLC disaster, and the active player count plummeted within weeks, making decent matches even less likely due to massive skill gaps.

Sunless Sea
Holy shit this game is good. Absolutely fantastic writing, amazing atmosphere, and just overall extremely enjoyable. The naval combat is a bit lackluster, but that's more of a side distraction than the main focus of the game, which is exploring the Sunless Sea and going on adventures on whatever islands you find, recruiting officers onto your ship, trading, going insane, managing resources, and cannibalism. Highly recommend this to anyone who doesn't hate reading.

Dragonball Xenoverse
Spectacle Dragonball Z fighting game. It's pretty flawed, but is still a really fun game if you're a fan of the series.

Ori and the Blind Forest
Absolutely beautiful game. It's a Metroid-light game that has a simple story, an adorable protagonist, and beautiful art. Not as much exploration as typical metroidvania games, hence the "-light," but still a very enjoyable experience.

GTA V
It's Grand Theft Auto. Not really much else to say. Really fun game, the story is solid with interesting characters. Multiplayer was neat for a bit, but it really shines if you're playing with friends and all of mine slowly stopped playing so I did as well.

Witcher 3
Holy shit this game is amazing. It deserves all the awards and praise that it has been getting. Morally grey quests with no morality system built in the game to let you know X choice gives Y karma. Your choices have consequences, that's all the feedback you get, and it is amazing. The writing is phenomenal, the game world is gorgeous, the combat is extremely satisfying. I could gush over this game for quite a long time. My only complaint is that once you get around level 20+ you can get some really powerful skill builds that trivialize a lot of the combat. I ended up purposefully gimping my build to keep it enjoyable. Other than that, this game is the best RPG I have played.

Freedom Planet
The best Sonic game since Sonic Adventure, and it's not even Sonic. This game was originally made as a Sonic fan game, but it grew into its own thing and I'm really glad it did. It is a fantastic 2D platformer, has a cliche but still interesting story (mostly due to the characters), and plenty of replayability thanks to multiple playable characters with unique play styles. If you liked the old Genesis Sonic games, then give this game a shot.

Duck Game
2D arena duck combat. Best played with friends. You can join random games online, but it's not nearly as fun as being able to laugh at the ridiculous moments that happen very frequently with 3 of your friends.

Ronin
Interesting 2D action game with some stealth elements. You move around the level in real time, but when you are spotted by an enemy time freezes and the game becomes turn-based with simultaneous turns. You can see where enemies will be shooting thanks to their laser sights, and the only way you can move around the world is by jumping. It essentially turns every combat encounter into a puzzle, and allows you to perform some crazy ninja maneuvers that would normally be extremely difficult if the combat was all real time. The game is pretty short, and there's not much incentive to replay it once you beat it, but it was an enjoyable experience while it lasted.

Rocket League
Best sports game of the year. It's soccer with rocket powered cars smashing into the ball instead of people kicking it. Plus they just added a hockey mode. Words can't even do justice to how amazing this game is. Hell even video doesn't do that good of a job. I know, I watched gameplay clips and didn't get why my friends were playing it. Then I tried a friend's copy through steam's family share and instantly bought own copy.

Titan Souls
Shadow of the Colossus meets 2D meets roguelikes. It's a neat game but I have one problem with the game which is that your respawn point is far enough from bosses to be extremely annoying. In a game where you die in one hit, you need to be able to restart the scenario almost instantaneously. Super Meat Boy does this, where death is easy to come by but restarting a level is instant and painless and feeds into the "one more try" mentality. In Titan Souls when you die you need to walk 5-8 seconds to get back to the boss arena. That doesn't seem like much, but when you are dying 10+ times against a boss it really adds up and is needlessly frustrating.

Warhammer Vermintide
Left4Dead but melee focused, and with classes. This is another game that does melee combat right. It's also the first game to shamelessly clone the Left4Dead format, and I'm okay with that. L4D is a fantastic game, and I'm surprised it wasn't successfully cloned sooner. The game also features a loot system to get you that dopamine fix and keep you playing. Also the devs are actively listening to their community, and plan on expanding the game with more classes and possibly more enemy types (currently you can only fight against Skaven, rat creatures).

Transformers Devastation
It's a character action game by Platinum and it plays like a character action game by Platinum and that is fantastic. Really fun game, multiple characters that are different enough to give you some variety, but similar enough to allow skill to carry over between them. Story is your typical sunday morning cartoon fare, and it is wonderfully fitting. Environments are a bit repetitive (for example you traverse the exact same city map in a lot of the chapters, just doing different objectives in it), but the core gameplay and boss fights are amazing. Highly recommend this if you're a fan of Platinum, G1 Transformers, or fast paced action games.

DmC Devil May Cry
Oh my god this game is terrible. Got it through a Humble Bundle and figured I would give it a chance despite hearing bad things about it. If you haven't played many character action games before then I'm sure you could enjoy this game. But anyone who is a fan of CAGs like anything by Platinum, or any of the previous DMC games, will most likely not enjoy this game. It's just not a DMC game.

Rebel Galaxy
You can't take the sky from me. Neat space combat/exploration/trading/questing game with an amazing soundtrack that constantly reminds me of Firefly. The game's combat pretty much takes Assassin's Creed Black Flag's naval combat and puts it into space, and it works really well. One thing to point out is the game is limited to a 2D plane, so there's no up/down navigation or exploring, but it doesn't limit it as much as you think. The game knows it's an arcadey space action game, and doesn't pretend to be anything else.

StarCraft 2: Legacy of the Void
The conclusion to the SC2 trilogy. I enjoyed my time with it. The story was decent, the missions were interesting, I finally got to play a campaign as my main race, and finally everything got wrapped up. Multiplayer also underwent a lot of changes, and I haven't had time to play enough to adjust to them. The games start really fast now thanks to an increased starting worker count, and matches get really hectic really fast.

Abyss Odyssey
This 2D brawler game has some really neat concepts like procedurally generated levels, some roguelike elements, and multiple characters with different playstyles, but all of it is held back by the sluggish combat. It's slow, it feels unresponsive, it wants you to combo enemies but it doesn't give you the tools to do so beyond a few hits. It just feels not good, and I couldn't keep playing the game because it bothered me so much.

Just Cause 3
Explosions! Guns! Jets! Explosions! Grappling hook! Wing Suit! Parachute! Explosions! Boats! Helicopters! Explosions! More explosions! This game gives you plenty of tools to have a fun time, and then leaves it up to you to have it. If you capture every settlement in the most efficient way you will probably get bored super faster, it's up to you to get creative and make it more entertaining. Likewise the story isn't anything to write home about, and is more of a way to gradually introduce more challenging enemies (like a tank that has an energy shield) and to occasionally have a cool set piece.

12-16-2015, 06:00 AM	#4
Arcanum Strike the Earth! Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Canada Posts: 3,185	I can never remember the games that came out from January to April/May when it gets to this year roundup time, so I looked at my steam product activation history and made this list. Then I realized how massive this list is (which isn't even the full list of what I played this year), so I'm going to keep it rather short for each title because holy shit do I get a lot of games. Dying Light This is actually a really solid zombie game. The melee combat feels pretty good, which is usually a hard thing for first-person melee systems to accomplish. And night time in the game is genuinely terrifying with the super zombies chasing after you. I only have two complaints about the game. While the parkour is fun it seems a bit more grounded in realism than other parkour systems in games. Specifically there is no horizontal wall run, which is disappointing since you have these esoteric weapons to kill zombies with, but you can't fiddle with gravity a bit to make wall runs possible. The other complaint is that mid/late game, when you have really powerful crafted weapons, night time is no longer scary because you can fight the super zombies. Then a little later you get the grappling hook, which trivializes the parkour system and the need to scout the best route on the fly, and allows you to avoid any punishment if you screw up a jump because you can just zip back up to where you were. This made late game extremely boring, and because of that I never actually finished the game. Grey Goo Pretty fun RTS. More macro focused than StarCraft 2, and I've seen it compared to the Supreme Commander (never played that game so I wouldn't know). The factions are neat and have somewhat unique mechanics, but the different units didn't really feel all that different resulting in pretty similar playstyles. The story mode was really fun and challenging, and the cinematics were gorgeous. Sadly the multiplayer community was practically non-existent from launch, so I had no incentive to keep playing the game. Evolve I played this game during its betas and absolutely loved it. I bought it despite the shitty DLC model, and had some fun for about a week or two. For those who don't know, the game is asymmetrical multiplayer where one person is a monster against 4 hunter players. The monster needs to flee the hunters and eat NPC creatures in order to evolve and become stronger so that it can start hunting the hunters. Sadly the game became stagnant thanks to the poor matchmaking. I would win 90% of my games as the monster because of how people failed to grasp the need for teamwork as the hunters, and my games as a hunter were awful because of the same reason. The few times there was teamwork with a good monster to fight, the game was fantastic. But nobody wanted to stick around to learn the game, coupled with the DLC disaster, and the active player count plummeted within weeks, making decent matches even less likely due to massive skill gaps. Sunless Sea Holy shit this game is good. Absolutely fantastic writing, amazing atmosphere, and just overall extremely enjoyable. The naval combat is a bit lackluster, but that's more of a side distraction than the main focus of the game, which is exploring the Sunless Sea and going on adventures on whatever islands you find, recruiting officers onto your ship, trading, going insane, managing resources, and cannibalism. Highly recommend this to anyone who doesn't hate reading. Dragonball Xenoverse Spectacle Dragonball Z fighting game. It's pretty flawed, but is still a really fun game if you're a fan of the series. Ori and the Blind Forest Absolutely beautiful game. It's a Metroid-light game that has a simple story, an adorable protagonist, and beautiful art. Not as much exploration as typical metroidvania games, hence the "-light," but still a very enjoyable experience. GTA V It's Grand Theft Auto. Not really much else to say. Really fun game, the story is solid with interesting characters. Multiplayer was neat for a bit, but it really shines if you're playing with friends and all of mine slowly stopped playing so I did as well. Witcher 3 Holy shit this game is amazing. It deserves all the awards and praise that it has been getting. Morally grey quests with no morality system built in the game to let you know X choice gives Y karma. Your choices have consequences, that's all the feedback you get, and it is amazing. The writing is phenomenal, the game world is gorgeous, the combat is extremely satisfying. I could gush over this game for quite a long time. My only complaint is that once you get around level 20+ you can get some really powerful skill builds that trivialize a lot of the combat. I ended up purposefully gimping my build to keep it enjoyable. Other than that, this game is the best RPG I have played. Freedom Planet The best Sonic game since Sonic Adventure, and it's not even Sonic. This game was originally made as a Sonic fan game, but it grew into its own thing and I'm really glad it did. It is a fantastic 2D platformer, has a cliche but still interesting story (mostly due to the characters), and plenty of replayability thanks to multiple playable characters with unique play styles. If you liked the old Genesis Sonic games, then give this game a shot. Duck Game 2D arena duck combat. Best played with friends. You can join random games online, but it's not nearly as fun as being able to laugh at the ridiculous moments that happen very frequently with 3 of your friends. Ronin Interesting 2D action game with some stealth elements. You move around the level in real time, but when you are spotted by an enemy time freezes and the game becomes turn-based with simultaneous turns. You can see where enemies will be shooting thanks to their laser sights, and the only way you can move around the world is by jumping. It essentially turns every combat encounter into a puzzle, and allows you to perform some crazy ninja maneuvers that would normally be extremely difficult if the combat was all real time. The game is pretty short, and there's not much incentive to replay it once you beat it, but it was an enjoyable experience while it lasted. Rocket League Best sports game of the year. It's soccer with rocket powered cars smashing into the ball instead of people kicking it. Plus they just added a hockey mode. Words can't even do justice to how amazing this game is. Hell even video doesn't do that good of a job. I know, I watched gameplay clips and didn't get why my friends were playing it. Then I tried a friend's copy through steam's family share and instantly bought own copy. Titan Souls Shadow of the Colossus meets 2D meets roguelikes. It's a neat game but I have one problem with the game which is that your respawn point is far enough from bosses to be extremely annoying. In a game where you die in one hit, you need to be able to restart the scenario almost instantaneously. Super Meat Boy does this, where death is easy to come by but restarting a level is instant and painless and feeds into the "one more try" mentality. In Titan Souls when you die you need to walk 5-8 seconds to get back to the boss arena. That doesn't seem like much, but when you are dying 10+ times against a boss it really adds up and is needlessly frustrating. Warhammer Vermintide Left4Dead but melee focused, and with classes. This is another game that does melee combat right. It's also the first game to shamelessly clone the Left4Dead format, and I'm okay with that. L4D is a fantastic game, and I'm surprised it wasn't successfully cloned sooner. The game also features a loot system to get you that dopamine fix and keep you playing. Also the devs are actively listening to their community, and plan on expanding the game with more classes and possibly more enemy types (currently you can only fight against Skaven, rat creatures). Transformers Devastation It's a character action game by Platinum and it plays like a character action game by Platinum and that is fantastic. Really fun game, multiple characters that are different enough to give you some variety, but similar enough to allow skill to carry over between them. Story is your typical sunday morning cartoon fare, and it is wonderfully fitting. Environments are a bit repetitive (for example you traverse the exact same city map in a lot of the chapters, just doing different objectives in it), but the core gameplay and boss fights are amazing. Highly recommend this if you're a fan of Platinum, G1 Transformers, or fast paced action games. DmC Devil May Cry Oh my god this game is terrible. Got it through a Humble Bundle and figured I would give it a chance despite hearing bad things about it. If you haven't played many character action games before then I'm sure you could enjoy this game. But anyone who is a fan of CAGs like anything by Platinum, or any of the previous DMC games, will most likely not enjoy this game. It's just not a DMC game. Rebel Galaxy You can't take the sky from me. Neat space combat/exploration/trading/questing game with an amazing soundtrack that constantly reminds me of Firefly. The game's combat pretty much takes Assassin's Creed Black Flag's naval combat and puts it into space, and it works really well. One thing to point out is the game is limited to a 2D plane, so there's no up/down navigation or exploring, but it doesn't limit it as much as you think. The game knows it's an arcadey space action game, and doesn't pretend to be anything else. StarCraft 2: Legacy of the Void The conclusion to the SC2 trilogy. I enjoyed my time with it. The story was decent, the missions were interesting, I finally got to play a campaign as my main race, and finally everything got wrapped up. Multiplayer also underwent a lot of changes, and I haven't had time to play enough to adjust to them. The games start really fast now thanks to an increased starting worker count, and matches get really hectic really fast. Abyss Odyssey This 2D brawler game has some really neat concepts like procedurally generated levels, some roguelike elements, and multiple characters with different playstyles, but all of it is held back by the sluggish combat. It's slow, it feels unresponsive, it wants you to combo enemies but it doesn't give you the tools to do so beyond a few hits. It just feels not good, and I couldn't keep playing the game because it bothered me so much. Just Cause 3 Explosions! Guns! Jets! Explosions! Grappling hook! Wing Suit! Parachute! Explosions! Boats! Helicopters! Explosions! More explosions! This game gives you plenty of tools to have a fun time, and then leaves it up to you to have it. If you capture every settlement in the most efficient way you will probably get bored super faster, it's up to you to get creative and make it more entertaining. Likewise the story isn't anything to write home about, and is more of a way to gradually introduce more challenging enemies (like a tank that has an energy shield) and to occasionally have a cool set piece. __________________ POS Almighty has spoken.