Ninth Coint & Plick: The ~60 best games of 2015 according to ILX

haha, i really want to say "pick it up again, it gets so much better!" but i'm duty-bound to note the diner sequence is followed by an even more terrible sequence where you search for bottles in a maze-like junkyard. BUT the last ~30 minutes of episode 2 is, like, the game moment i spent the most time thinking about/talking about all year, completely worth the clunky gameplay beforehand imo. and episodes 3 and 4 are really strong.

also i missed it the first time i scrolled through the thread, Fran Bow was on my ballot. it's a gory children's book come to life, Alice in Wonderland-esque, and just super weird and grotesque and interesting. it was created by a two-person team in sweden and i think it turned out really well considering their limited resources.

So Mad Max had a pretty middling (though still enjoyable enough) fighting system, it was awfully repetitive at times (scout a stronghold, take out perimeter defenses, punch punch punch) and the mini-boss battles were a joke (wait for attack, roll, punch).

But I had a stupid fun time driving around blowing up convoys and upgrading the car (even if it involved the tedium of collecting scrap). I put far more hours into it than it probably deserved, but I dig the world.

Geometry Wars 3 almost made my ballot, but didn't have the staying power the other games I voted for did.

Pluses: auto-aim really works great on a touchscreen, varying challenges keep things shaken up, fun things to unlock.

Minuses: I miss being bad at genuine dual stick and having to lock into a gridlike strafe pattern to keep my sanity. Auto-aim takes lots of the trickiness out of enemy management -- so instead of dodging to build up easily mowed-down enemy formations its just dodging and letting auto-aim pick 'em off. Set wavelike patterns also take some of the chaos/fun out of enemy management. Varying challenges take away from the core dynamic of these sorts of games, and make replaying failed levels repetitive. None of the unlocks really give all that much power.

The best version of GW I've played on mobile still.

Rayman adventures was my disappointment.

The first few rayman mobile games were so good, and rayman adventures went the mobile-micropayment route. Countdown timers limiting gameplay (tho not terribly obnoxiously so), a fixed relatively small set of levels, with randomized rewards, and semi-randomized level choice. So a few, like the "stealth" levels require replay because that's where the goodies are, but the same ones come up way too frequently, and all the levels where its about "figure the trick" get really boring to keep replaying. And there's not much reward for playing really well as opposed to "just ok enough." So it becomes tedious.

Arguably these are the same sorts of flaws that made angry birds 2 such a letdown -- randomized levels taking the fun out of just figuring out once a really tricky fixed level design with a lot of art to it, and also by that token, no sense of progress to new interesting levels -- just samey variations on a theme that can't be that carefully set up because they have to work with randomized combinations of birds.

So arguably 2015 was the year developers discovered how to make pervasive micropayments not really gamebreakingly obnoxious, but at the cost still of just having duller, less finely crafted games. The candy-crushification of good franchises. Lots of nitrome games had the same issue -- almost really great, but falling into an IAP-grindfest precisely when they could have put more work into opening up newer interesting dynamics. Its not that they're extracting money. Its that they've let the money-extraction mechanisms _take the place_ of where genuine gameplay should be.

Shit! Forgot to vote. Sigh

It's been years since I voted, but I always enjoy reading it.

I didn't vote either, as I'm years behind and will be until I die. I was going to prickishly ask for the system names to be actually in the entries - I'll be coming back to these in a few years when I EG buy a PS4 and being able to search by console would be very handy.

virtually everything that's listed for console, apart from nintendo games, is on PS4

http://i.imgur.com/licTBnk.png
#39 - Assassin's Creed Syndicate - Ubisoft Quebec
17 Points
2 Votes

As the owner of a PS3 and a Vita, I'm looking forward to voting in next year's C+P when my ballot will be nothing but a handful of pervy, barely-localized JRPGs.

('The slow death of the 7th generation of consoles' was my 2015 disappointment, btw.)

http://i.imgur.com/Ednsjb6.png
#39 - Dropsy - Tendershoot, A Jolly Corpse
17 Points
2 Votes

I think Dropsy narrowly missed my ballot. I appreciated its sad lonely weirdness a lot. Adventure games are kind of killing it for storytelling these days, even though I'm not a huge fan of the genre and never have been. (but I'm more comfortable cheating w/ gameFAQs than i ever was before, and better at not spoiling the next step than i used to be, so i can still enjoy the unfolding)

http://i.imgur.com/D4dIPA2.png
#37 - Helldivers - Arrowhead Game Studios
18 Points
2 Votes

http://i.imgur.com/yoRgGH3.png
#37 - Super Mega Baseball - Metalhead Software
18 Points
2 Votes

http://i.imgur.com/wJeQNHm.png
#36 - Ori and the Blind Forest - Moon Studios
19 Points
1 Vote
1 First-Place Vote

damn y'all, crickets

http://i.imgur.com/2VKLNj0.png
#35 - Yo-kai Watch - Level-5
20 Points
1 Vote

i haven't even heard of so many of these games!

I haven't played any of these games but they look really cool.

virtually everything that's listed for console, apart from nintendo games, is on PS4

Right, but if go CRTL-F 'console'...

i'm sure there will be some sort of summary spreadsheet at the end, it'll be alright

I'll post a recap at the end and include that line

(I am aware that I've moved on from 'prickish' to 'whining' - feel free to ignore me, and thanks for running the poll!)

http://i.imgur.com/89fDqoe.png
#34 - Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger And The Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist - Crows Crows Crows
20 Points
3 Votes

Wanted to play that purely based on its provenance but didn't get around to getting it. Any of the three voters want to rep for it? I note that although it got three votes none were very high, is that b/c it's short so not passion-worthy or b/c it's only ok?

http://i.imgur.com/JuTWbrT.png
#33 - Until Dawn - Supermassive Games
21 Points
1 Vote

So Yo-Kai Watch (for the 3DS, though it's labeled mobile) is basically the coziest virtual representation of an urban Japanese landscape I've ever played. Compared to the Pokemon games the overworld is just gorgeous, full of detail, life, character. That particular drowsy atmosphere of a neighbourhood on the outskirts of a a Japanese metropol.

The gameplay itself consists of relatively passive battles (best thing is it works quite differently from Pokemon), but the characters, the Yokai, are super cute and with their own off-kilter stories. General gist is the Yokai, unbeknownst to humans, affect their moods. To get some angry, stressed-out dude back on track you have to find and befriend the Yokai responsible.

The only reason not to buy this is that the sequel, which improves on everything, in particular making the overworld even bigger, more detailed and charming (you can ride trains!), is probably soon out in localized form.

http://i.imgur.com/wXIeRJO.png
#31 - Everybody's Gone to the Rapture - Andrew Crawshaw
21 Points
2 Votes

yeah sorry i realized i fucked that up (yo-kai as mobile) xp... there was bound ot be at least one given how bad my process is for maknig this images

http://i.imgur.com/S5h8rL7.png
#31 - Hotline Miami 2 - Jonatan Söderström, Dennis Wedin
21 Points
2 Votes

applause for the until dawn screenshot.
i am not sure if MGSV or Bloodbourne will win this.

or marvel puzzle quest. it's possible!

The name + screenshot of 'Everybody's Gone' definitely make me curious - what's it like?

"Walking Simulators": Puzzle/Exploration games

http://i.imgur.com/74YoimY.png
#30 - Broken Age - Double Fine Productions
23 Points
2 Votes

i love mpq but its continued existence on c+p makes me mad

"my favourite record of 2015 is kaleidoscope dream you have to let me vote for it again this year i keep lsitening to it"

http://i.imgur.com/GTmOjSI.png
#29 - Grow Home - Ubisoft Reflections
23 Points
3 Votes

http://i.imgur.com/FXHaNsU.png
#28 - Q.U.B.E.: Director's Cut - Toxic Games
24 Points
1 Vote

whoa. is that the sequel to Intelligence Qube?! that was one of the games on the PS1 demo disc that came with the system, and it was a lot of fun.

i don't think they're related, that was a japanese-made, sony-produced exclusive and this is an american indie steam game

http://i.imgur.com/8Rr6KlC.png
#27 - Agar.io - Matheus Valadares
27 Points
3 Votes

i voted for Agar.io

there's nothing like spending half an hour slowly building up your giant blob until you're a massive crawling force of destruction that other players seem to willingly sacrifice themselves to, only to be suddenly annihilated by a player called penisbutt as you rashly split your forces in an attempt to capture someone who looks vulnerable

Q.U.B.E. was my vote. Imagine the Portal games stripped down to mostly just the puzzle elements and the visual style of the sterile testing environments. If that sounds appealing, I highly recommend it.

i woulda voted for agario if i had remembered it. lost many hours there!

http://i.imgur.com/jnNUjkb.png
#26 - Trimps - GreenSatellite
28 Points
2 Votes

oh my god. i'm glad i never clicked on that link.

oo what is that?