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

actually you must have gotten my ballot b/c who else would have picked rayman adventures as a disappointment.

anyway, yeah tales from the borderlands was one of my picks. one of the only semi-big-ticket non-mobile games i played this year (i played a lot of borderlands 2 also, wrote about it on the thread).

i'm sure it only works if you're familiar with the whole borderlands deal, but its great episodic storytelling with maybe only minimal "game" elements -- there's _some_ interactivity to picking the choices, but none matters too much, and the gameplay bits themselves are pretty trivial. what makes it work is the writing, which matches or outpaces the best in BL2 -- great characters, goofy details, and lots of knowing fourth-wall nods that work particularly well given the weird combination of how immersive BL2 is while at the same time being so foreign and full of (forgive me) purely ludic elements. so the constant tease of actually _not_ getting awesome equipment and seeing awesome guns but _not_ getting to fire them, or the loot-obsession of otherwise actually-normal-seeming characters, their familiarity with brands of gun manufacturers and different characteristics, their geeking out over the same details a fan might, all this works particularly well.

And on top of this the satisfaction of a story that actually relates fully to the main franchise, and "moves canon".

at least one other person voted for all my top choices

no comment :P

Any of the three voters want to rep for it?

Yes me, wholeheartedly! I'll write up a few thoughts on it (esp wrt The Beginner's Guide, which was my disappointment of the year) when I'm not typing on a phone but you can play through the whole thing in 20 minutes at most, so you should just jump in anyway. It made me laugh more than anything else I played last year.

I was another one of the votes for Dr. Langeskov and will also rep for it. It's free, short, and pretty funny so there's really no reason not to give it a shot. I wound up playing through it 3 or 4 times to get all of the achievements, which I rarely do (and only took about an hour), and I can recommend searching out the bizarre director commentary tapes in particular.

Also, I was the other person who voted for Crusader Kings 2 as my non 2015 GOTY. I've been trying to get into these Paradox grand strategy games for a while to no avail, but CK2 finally clicked with me in a major way a few weeks ago after picking up a couple DLCs on sale and figuring out that I could just play it with a Visual Novel/Relationship Sim style bent as opposed to constantly micro-managing a dense web of sliders and brokering trade embargoes.

things of mine that placed today:

Dr. Langeskov etc. -- i'm the third voter, and i also highly recommend it! it's delightful. like you mentioned, emil.y, it didn't make the high end of my ballot because of its briefness, but i also had a feeling other people would vote for it and bump it onto the main countdown. it's a game that's really easy to blast through quickly, but you can also take a recalcitrant approach to the gameplay and get a lot more content that way.

Until Dawn -- i don't have a PS4 so i watched a friend play this, and even though it has a lot to be dubious about, it was a blast. dubious elements: occasional uncanny valley heebie jeebies (motion-capture Peter Stormare getting right up in your face was v. unsettling), SO MANY GODDAMN QTEs, and also the whole thing is reveling in teen horror movie tropes so the characterization is really broad. but the plot unfolds in a way that's more complicated than i thought it would be, and like i mentioned with Her Story, playing with a group made the clue-hunting and story-theorizing really fun. the graphics are gorgeous, and it's really gruesome and gory and fun once it gets going.

since it's a choice game it's got a decent amount of variable content (i ended up watching a lot of it on YouTube afterward). i think one of the big marketing points was that there's eight controllable characters and you can end the game with all of them alive, none of them alive, or some permutation in between. in my playthrough we only got two people killed.

it is time

http://i.imgur.com/C5BpS8J.png
#20 - Destiny: The Taken King - Bungie
32 Points
3 Votes
1 First-Place Vote

I'm a little surprised Destiny's so low - I got the impression the new version was a tour de force, bringing back people who'd played the original and found it a bit wanting.

Is it just "shooting games belong on PC"?

probably more "this isn't a brand new game" factored in i imagine

I don't know what that is? tbh I don't know what most of these games are. looks like I'll miss this current generation of consoles, or at least it'll be 5 years or so, so maybe the console games here will still fun in 5 years? Red Dead Redemption was my non 2015 vote & that's a console game, outstandingly fun, has a game that good come out on console recently?

so far my trimps and mpq votes have placed.

http://i.imgur.com/n6XdNYJ.png
#18 - The Executive - Riverman Media
35 Points
2 Votes
1 First-Place Vote

Destiny was fun, played a bit at a friends' house back when it came out, tried the new DLC recently and just got destroyed. with those FPS games you really need to keep your skills in check

http://i.imgur.com/4eW5UgL.png
#18 - The Jackbox Party Pack 2 - Jackbox Games
35 Points
2 Votes
1 First-Place Vote

^ Not a great screenshot but this is legit in the running for the best party game of ALL TIME and everyone should own it if they ever have >2 people to their house at the same time

jackbox offers an iphone controller download that works with consoles/pc/mac via bluetooth, right?

Mobile devices ARE the controllers for the Jackbox games, full stop. Very simple interface (go to their website, enter the code that pops up on the screen, you're good to go).

Jackbox was my number one. I think for the second year in a row. What Will said, basically. These games are a complete blast and hilarious, especially if you're playing with people capable of vulgarity and willing to utilize it. Quiplash is the new stand-alone that's worth a look, if you don't want the full set (which is valid, since, once again, two or three of the games are sort of duds). I believe that's the one where someone called the game stupid and got both a trophy and a seriously hilarious response.

these last 3 were all ones that missed my ballot but i wanted to give points to. jackbox is hilarious + good fun (and so many ppl can play at once!), executive was a iphone game (that ramps up significantly in difficulty as you move through it -- has anyone here actually finished it 100%?), and destiny was a ton of fun (loved the multiplayer maps)

the executive is great but once you max out the bonuses it becomes tedious, hard and not fun

(It may be outside the strict terms of the user agreement but I think if you streamed the Jackbox games on Twitch or somesuch, it would be technically possible for whoever's watching the stream to play.)

http://i.imgur.com/3jA4ikf.png
#17 - You Must Build A Boat - EightyEight Games LTD
35 Points
3 Votes

(It may be outside the strict terms of the user agreement but I think if you streamed the Jackbox games on Twitch or somesuch, it would be technically possible for whoever's watching the stream to play.)

Can't remember if i told this story before, but we had a big get together with some old friends and played this... one guy got sick and couldn't make it, so i opened my laptop, skyped him, and then set up twitch, and he watched us on the webcam on one of his PC screens, watched the twitch feed on his other screen, and played on his phone. you could very easily stream & play (altho there's a little lag, so don't wait until the last 5 seconds to answer the question)

the only complaint i have with that game is that there's no option to "cycle in" audience members (because people can play along and vote as the audience if you have more than 8 ppl)

hey y'all here comes the last tie of 2015 (and it's a three-way)

http://i.imgur.com/HHBI9ys.png
#14 - Batman: Arkham Knight - Rocksteady Studios
39 Points
3 Votes

http://i.imgur.com/ieOO2QY.png
#14 - Crank - Faedine
39 Points
3 Votes

*SIGH*

now crank is a game right and not just 3 ilxors hooked on methamphetemines believing that they're playing a game

who could say

i refuse to draw a conclusion until i am presented with the facts

ilx's 14th most favorite game of 2015: Crank.

it's the white iverson of games except we actually put it in our top 20

dammit, i forgot You Must Build a Boat! somehow i missed it when i scanned the nominations list, but it would have been a top 5 game for me, so in alternate reality it has 4 votes and around 45 points. it's the sequel to 10000000, and it manages to build upon everything that was great about that game. normally i shy away from the match 3 games, but i love the intensity of YMBAB! - when you're playing it, you're always "in the zone" because it forces you to do everything as quickly as possible. the achievements (forgot the technical name for them, but basically you need to complete them in order to advance) also have a good balance, and the harder ones never seem completely impossible. finally, i like the length of the game. it's long enough to feel like you got much more than your $2.99 worth, but it's short enough that you can be completely obsessed with it (in the bathroom) for a week of your life and then move on.

http://i.imgur.com/ybkhhTq.png
#14 - Goat Simulator (PORT) - Coffee Stain Studios
39 Points
3 Votes

ladies & gentlegoats, your 14th favourite games of 2015 are
- a skinner box
- your 2nd favourite game of 2014
- also, batman

http://i.imgur.com/wJPFrAE.png
#13 - Alto's Adventure - Snowman
40 Points
5 Votes

gorgeous game. the mechanics are not so dissimilar from tiny wings, but the music + the visuals are so good. the controls feel perfect. i 100%'d this one and i'll still go back and do a runthrough.

http://i.imgur.com/8IgigZ4.png
#12 - Sunless Sea - Failbetter Games
41 Points
3 Votes
1 First-Place Vote

Alto! I played that, made it to level 40 or so, pooped out, it got hard. but yeah it's beautiful and the controls are great.

I voted for Crank! didn't stick with it like trimps but I don't think it had a long end game

btw I saw that cookie clicker got updated! it even made French newspapers for some reason. looking forward to seeing it place here in 2016

i hate everything you represent

one of the year's best. takes place in the same canon as Fallen London. the writing is, as you'd expect, exquisite. the gameplay is so unusual - slow, meditative, strange. it's fun, but you definitely do have to get used to the pace. and i'm not sure i love the roguelike elements (it's brutal, easy to die in the beginning and some of the early game stuff can feel repetitive) but once you start to make progress there are so many cool niches and things to do. xxp

I am your enemy, Will M

alto's adventure is a fun little timewaster. as mordy mentioned, the controls are spot on and it just feels right.

Sunless Sea looks awesome, that's definitely going to be on my list

srsly tho if you haven't played sunless sea yet i cannot recommend it strongly enough. i placed it just below curious expedition, invisible inc, f4 and binding of isaac, but in some ways it's better than all of those in terms of effortlessly conjuring up a brand new setting, afaict a totally distinctive genre - it's really groundbreaking and hard to overstate it.

hey check this one out u guys

http://i.imgur.com/qMdJqyL.png
#11 - Fallout 4 - Bethesda Game Studios
47 Points
5 Votes
1 First-Place Vote

it's kinda like the ludic version of slow eating or whatever it's called, slow reading. it's slow gaming.

bullshit xp

how is f4 not goty? guys. how.

like i get that it's reiterative but... here's what i wrote about it in my ballot:

My top two votes are both reiterations of games I have given the #1 spot to in the past. It attests to the repetitive nature of video gaming in 2016 but also to how successful these games originally were. Fallout 4 is gorgeous. The violent urban environments are immersive in a way that I’ve never before experienced in video games. Much of the game can turn into a drag (building settlements, trying to figure out why a woman in post-apocalyptic Boston has an Irish accent) but in terms of marrying the aesthetics of Fallout 4’s bright post-apoc counterfactual history to the geography of Boston the game is a gorgeous tour de force. The shooting isn’t too bad either.