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

i lol'ed

http://i.imgur.com/aPRjKTG.png
#3 - Rocket League - Psyonix
91 Points
6 Votes
2 First-Place Votes

http://i.imgur.com/yySbvmO.png
#2 - Bloodborne - FromSoftware
96 Points
5 Votes
1.33 First-Place Votes

http://i.imgur.com/a44ClUG.png
#1 - Witcher 3 - CD Projekt RED
101 Points
6 Votes
2.33 First-Place Votes

I prefer the fake top 3

Rocket League is one of the most instantly addictive games i have ever played

oh WAIT I have played Rocket League! that game is fun

played all of them and they were all great!

oh shiiit I dunno Rocket League. Ima try it out.

i need to give Witcher 3 another try. i couldn't get over the control/general feel of the game at first. may need to sink some hours in to get used to it.

Bloodborne is amazing. love love love the art design. it's a game i would have made if you gave me millions of dollars.

i apparently used 6 full days of my life to play Bloodborne. i regret this generally but not specifically. it actually became more enjoyable the more i played (the DLC coming out helped a lot too). it was also the first From game that clicked with me in terms of pvp, which makes me even more excited about DS3 coming out.

hopefully this doesn't destroy any browsing experiences

Rnk| Pts |Vts| #1s  | Game Title                           | Platform
 1 | 101 | 6 | 2.33 | Witcher 3                            | CONS / COMP
 2 |  96 | 5 | 1.33 | Bloodborne                           | CONS
 3 |  91 | 6 | 2.00 | Rocket League                        | CONS / COMP
 4 |  88 | 7 |      | Her Story                            | COMP
 5 |  83 | 6 | 1.50 | Undertale                            | COMP
 6 |  83 | 5 | 2.33 | Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain | CONS / COMP
 7 |  68 | 4 | 1.00 | Life is Strange                      | CONS / COMP
 8 |  68 | 4 | 0.50 | Super Mario Maker                    | CONS
 9 |  50 | 3 | 0.50 | Downwell                             | CONS / MOBI / COMP
10 |  48 | 3 | 0.50 | Beginners Guide                      | COMP
11 |  47 | 5 | 1.00 | Fallout 4                            | CONS / COMP
12 |  41 | 3 | 1.00 | Sunless Sea                          | COMP
13 |  40 | 5 |      | Alto's Adventure                     | MOBI
14 |  39 | 3 |      | Crank                                | BWSR
14 |  39 | 3 |      | Goat Simulator (PORT)                | CONS
14 |  39 | 3 |      | Batman: Arkham Knight                | CONS / COMP
17 |  35 | 3 |      | You Must Build A Boat                | MOBI
18 |  35 | 2 | 1.00 | The Executive                        | MOBI
18 |  35 | 2 | 1.00 | The Jackbox Party Pack 2             | CONS / COMP
20 |  32 | 3 | 1.00 | Destiny: The Taken King              | CONS
21 |  30 | 2 |      | Tales from the Borderlands           | CONS / COMP
22 |  30 | 1 | 1.00 | Marvel Puzzle Quest (PORT)           | CONS
23 |  30 | 1 | 0.50 | Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate            | HAND
23 |  30 | 1 | 0.50 | We Know the Devil                    | BWSR
25 |  29 | 4 |      | Neko Atsume                          | MOBI
26 |  28 | 2 |      | Trimps                               | BWSR
27 |  27 | 3 |      | Agar.io                              | BWSR
28 |  24 | 1 |      | Q.U.B.E.: Directors Cut              | CONS / COMP
29 |  23 | 3 |      | Grow Home                            | CONS / COMP
30 |  23 | 2 |      | Broken Age                           | CONS / HAND / MOBI / COMP
31 |  21 | 2 |      | Hotline Miami 2                      | CONS / HAND / COMP
31 |  21 | 2 |      | Everybodys Gone to the Rapture       | CONS
33 |  21 | 1 |      | Until Dawn                           | CONS
34 |  20 | 3 |      | Dr. Langeskov (...)                  | COMP
35 |  20 | 1 |      | Yo|kai Watch                         | HAND
36 |  19 | 1 | 1.00 | Ori and the Blind Forest             | CONS / COMP
37 |  18 | 2 |      | Helldivers                           | CONS / COMP
37 |  18 | 2 |      | Super Mega Baseball                  | CONS / COMP
39 |  17 | 2 |      | Assassins Creed Syndicate            | CONS / COMP
39 |  17 | 2 |      | Dropsy                               | HAND
41 |  14 | 2 |      | OlliOlli 2: Welcome to Olliwood      | CONS / HAND / COMP
42 |  14 | 1 |      | Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth         | CONS / HAND / MOBI / COMP
42 |  14 | 1 |      | Mad Max                              | CONS / COMP
44 |  13 | 1 |      | Invisible, Inc.                      | COMP
45 |  12 | 2 |      | pillars of eternity                  | COMP
46 |  12 | 1 |      | Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions          | HAND / MOBI
46 |  12 | 1 |      | The Curious Expedition               | MOBI
46 |  12 | 1 |      | The Room 3                           | MOBI
49 |  11 | 1 |      | Fran Bow                             | MOBI / COMP
50 |  10 | 1 |      | Brain Guzzlers From Beyond!          | BWSR
50 |  10 | 1 |      | Captain Toad Treasure Tracker        | CONS
50 |  10 | 1 |      | Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes     | COMP
50 |  10 | 1 |      | Lost Constellation                   | COMP
50 |  10 | 1 |      | Midnight. Swordfight.                | BWSR
50 |  10 | 1 |      | Minkomora                            | BWSR
50 |  10 | 1 |      | Renowned Explorers                   | COMP
50 |  10 | 1 |      | Saints Row: Gat Out Of Hell          | CONS / COMP
50 |  10 | 1 |      | Splatoon                             | CONS
50 |  10 | 1 |      | Talos Principle                      | COMP
60 |   7 | 1 |      | Guitar Hero Live                     | CONS / MOBI
60 |   7 | 1 |      | Leons Cool Game                      | COMP
60 |   7 | 1 |      | Super Blackout                       | HAND / MOBI
63 |   6 | 1 |      | Cities: Skylines                     | COMP
63 |   6 | 1 |      | darkest dungeon                      | COMP
63 |   6 | 1 |      | I Am Bread                           | CONS / MOBI / COMP
63 |   6 | 1 |      | Hook                                 | MOBI / COMP
63 |   6 | 1 |      | Heroes of Loot                       | HAND / MOBI
63 |   6 | 1 |      | Kings Quest Ch.1: Knight to Remember | CONS / COMP
69 |   5 | 1 |      | Apotheon                             | CONS / COMP
69 |   5 | 1 |      | Blades of Brim                       | MOBI
69 |   5 | 1 |      | Cibele                               | COMP
69 |   5 | 1 |      | Hand of Fate                         | CONS / COMP
69 |   5 | 1 |      | Landsliders                          | MOBI
69 |   5 | 1 |      | Massive Chalice                      | COMP
69 |   5 | 1 |      | Pocket Mine 2                        | MOBI
69 |   5 | 1 |      | Star Wars Battlefront                | CONS / COMP
69 |   5 | 1 |      | Steven Universe: Attack the Light!   | MOBI
69 |   5 | 1 |      | Tobys Nose                           | BWSR
69 |   5 | 1 |      | Wasteland 2: Directors Cut           | COMP
69 |   5 | 1 |      | htoL#NiQ: The Firefly Diary          | HAND
69 |   5 | 1 |      | Sunset                               | COMP
82 |   4 | 1 |      | Crimsonland                          | HAND / COMP
83 |   3 | 1 |      | Back To Bed                          | MOBI / COMP
83 |   3 | 1 |      | Nihilumbra                           | HAND

PREDICTIONS ITT (italic: incorrect; bold: correct)

i am not sure if MGSV or Bloodbourne will win this. ― ulysses, Feb 18, 2016 12:53 PM
What, Witcher at number one? I really have no idea. ― Old Lunch, Feb 19, 1:47 PM
Bloodbourne / Witcher 3 / MGS V / Rocket League should be top four ― ulysses, Feb 19, 1:53 PM
Her Story hasn't placed yet, right? But I imagine it'll probably be up next (in 6th place) ― emil.y, Feb 19 1:54 PM
surely undertale is still to come, yeah (top 5)? ― reddening, Feb 19, 2:01 PM

Wait, I thought 5 points was the minimum you could give?

my ballot

15: Fallout 4
14: Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth
13: Invisible, Inc.
12: The Curious Expedition
11: Sunless Sea
10: Renowned Explorers
5: Hand of Fate
5: Destiny: The Taken King
5: Alto’s Adventure
5: Wasteland 2: Director’s Cut
5: Steven Universe: Attack the Light!

Did not make it but I wish I could’ve voted for:

Brain Guzzlers From Beyond!
Cities: Skylines
Darkest Dungeon
Fallout Shelter
Heroes of the Storm
NEO Scavenger
Prison Architect
The Executive
The Jackbox Party Pack 2
Wasteland 2: Director’s Cut

5 pts was the minimum, but i received a couple of ballots late that didn't adhere to that policy so i just included them.

will probably get rid of the 5 min rule next year tbh.

The loneliest voters in 2015, based on number of points given to games nobody else voted for:
abcfsk - 70
Mordy - 64
Old Lunch - 52
one way street - 50

Least lonely is a 3-way tie between forks, orifex and methanietanner (0 "lonely" points)

i wish i could do all that "closest neighbour" stuff but it seems monumentally complicated rn

Lol, 5 point minimum is probably correct because those are all my games at the bottom. Sorry if that was the case and I am a failure with instructions. Clearly, I had a great deal of conviction in several of my picks (although they're all decent if ultimately inconsequential).

Probably not much interest in relatively casual Vita games here anyway, though, if I had to guess.

lol even with the explicit warning that there would be a fakeout i had a moment of "oh FFS really?"

thanks so much for running this, Will!

yes, thanks Will!

Read that as "ruining this", lol.

Re: Her Story - I never forgot that it was fiction or that she's an actor so I never really felt super immersed.

Do you mean her acting wasn't convincing to you (in which case fair enough, I thought her acting was very very good but different things appeal to different people) or do you mean that ~the very fact of it not being a true story~ ruined the immersion for you? Because someone else said something similar about Beginner's Guide and now I'm just afdslhflakshflihfas have you guys never heard of fiction before?

I guess I'll do some light stumping for htoL#NiQ, which is basically a Japanese Limbo without that game's aesthetic (which I gather is most of the appeal of Limbo) and in which the Vita's back touchscreen plays a more instrumental role than 'a place to rest your fingers'.

Thank you for your hard work, Will!

i couldn't have ruined this without all of you <3

sorry I didn't vote after making you put Marvel Puzzle Quest on the ballot

Someone should run a 'Best year in which to play Marvel Puzzle Quest' poll.

I am actually doing a closest neighbnours thing now though lol

basically it checks everyone else's ballots against yours, and sums all of the points you gave the game based on whether or not they're on the other person's ballot (their number of points doesn't matter, but there are several ties so i am figuring out how to break those ties now)

^ may not be a good system now that i am looking at it

thanks Will M. for all the hard work!

Re: Her Story - I never forgot that it was fiction or that she's an actor so I never really felt super immersed.

Do you mean her acting wasn't convincing to you (in which case fair enough, I thought her acting was very very good but different things appeal to different people) or do you mean that ~the very fact of it not being a true story~ ruined the immersion for you? Because someone else said something similar about Beginner's Guide and now I'm just afdslhflakshflihfas have you guys never heard of fiction before?

― emil.y, Friday, February 19, 2016 3:39 PM (47 minutes ago) Bookmark

I didn't mean it as a negative. Her performance rules, but I was responding to the plot being described as "fucked." And yeah it is, but I never forgot that it was fiction or a game.

Ah, okay, I think I was interpolating some stuff into your statement, then.

I did it like this:
1. Compared the ballots; anything where there was a similar game, I added both scores (so if you gave a game 30 and I gave it 5, total 35, for every game we share)
2. Found the best match for each ballot (in the event of a tie, I looked to see which person gave a higher score to your number one)
3. Put them in an order that I'm too tired to explain but you'll understand in a second maybe idk

111 - Karl Malone - orifex
111 - orifex - Karl Malone
70 - JimD - orifex
60 - s.clover - orifex
50 - Mordy - JimD

100 - Adam Bruneau - polyphonic
100 - polyphonic - Adam Bruneau
50 - abcfsk - Adam Bruneau

99 - Forks - gukbe
99 - gukbe - Forks
50 - Jordan - Forks

85 - Will M. - reddening
85 - reddening - Will M.
79 - billstevejim - Will M.
73 - methanietanner - reddening
35 - Old Lunch - Will M.
64 - emil.y - methanietanner
47 - one way street - emil.y

73 - Euler - abanana
73 - abanana - Euler

name of left is you. name on right is your closest neighbour. number is combined mutual scores on ballots

Order seems straightforward enough - strongest matches first, grouped into people who matched w/ each other, right?

yeah basically i took all of the mutual ones, made them "parents" of each chunk and put all of the one-way neighbours underneath and ordered it by strength of closeness

100% mutual ballots would give a total of 200 points, which means orifex and karl malone are like over 50% the same person, you guys should hang out

Anyway who cares. Here's my ballot (this may be the first C+P I've ever given a game 30 points!):

30 - Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
20 - Life is Strange
10 - The Jackbox Party Pack 2
10 - Her Story
5 - Rocket League
5 - Undertale
5 - OlliOlli 2: Welcome to Olliwood
5 - Cibele
5 - Massive Chalice
5 - Super Mega Baseball

as much fun as it is running this i kinda miss the not-knowing, you know? i'm currently reading C+P 2014 and 2013 to get my surprise fix, haha

KM + ME = <3. Phantom Pain didn't make my list because I just started playing it, but it's crazy good so far (surely the most mind-blowing *tutorial* of any game?) Witcher was my goty by a fair margin. Loved playing an actual character with an actual personality (albeit pretty one-note), loved how almost every quest had at least some little quirk or twist or shady character to keep it interesting, loved getting hammered and dressing up as a pretty lady and drunk-dialing some sorceresses through a magic portal, didn't love the mullets, didn't love that I got the worst possible ending but I cried about that over on the Witcher thread.

Also I played the Dr. Lang game last night because of this thread and it was great, thank you internet.

thanks for doing this! i'll try to post comments on some of my other top picks later -- looks like i was with the hivemind in the mobile space, basically.

Thanks Will! This was great. Wasted a lot of time this past month trying to catch up.

Yes, thanks, Will! I was not super active in this thread, but I appreciate the work you put into it and the poll, which should be a great resource if I ever find the means to play more of these games.

(My ballot, incidentally, was:

30 /// undertale
30 /// we know the devil
10 /// sunless sea
10 /// minkomora
10 /// neko atsume
10 /// lost constellation

Non-2015 GOTY: the longest journey
Disappointment: tale of tales having to quit game design (http://tale-of-tales.com/2015/))

111 - Karl Malone - orifex
111 - orifex - Karl Malone

high five!

20 Rocket League
15 Witcher 3
11 Agar.io
10 Beginner's Guide
10 Fallout 4
6 Cities: Skylines
6 Alto's Adventure
6 darkest dungeon
6 Neko Atsume
5 Star Wars Battlefront
5 pillars of eternity

i fully expect that if i would have played MGS5 it would be near the top, but i just haven't had a chance to try it yet (i just bought my PS4 in November or so)

Battlefront deserved to make the top 60, at least. yes, nearly all the modes are boring and the combat is thin and the controls aren't the best. but Walker Assault mode is an absolute gem - it's some of the very most fun you can have in the metaverse. i don't know if renting games is still a thing, but if so, i highly recommend renting Battlefront and binging on Walker Assault for a week to the point of nearly losing your job. at that point you'll finally be sick of the game and there'll be just enough time to calm your boss down

also my Darkest Dungeon vote is for the early release version of the game on steam. i haven't played the finished game that just came out.

also did any of you try Cities: Skylines? i mean this was basically the SimCity a lot of people have been waiting for since SimCity2000. it wasn't perfect but it moved the goalposts enough (god what a terrible phrase, sorry) that you can imagine another team perfecting it soon.

touchdown

yes - it just missed my ballot. i liked it a lot, though the game itself is pretty shallow and i exhausted most of the stuff to do in ~5 hours. the modding community is supposedly v good + add a bunch of replayability but i haven't explored it. one thing it was missing for me was a longer arc of unlocking things / accomplishing achievements / etc. very early on you pretty much unlock everything you need and then every few population markers you unlock a new iconic building or whatever to place. or at least that was my experience. like u said i think it's a great foundation. have u tried the dlc that just came out? the snow one?

see, i think the lack of a conventional sense of progression was part of why i liked it. all the important bits are unlocked early on, and once it becomes clear that the goal won't be to reach population X by time Z, it frees you up to just focus on the city itself, like the reward is in the fun of pretending to be really into city planning for an afternoon, just testing out different ways to connect districts and constructing ridiculous overpass systems. it's kind of a throwback to the basic sense of curiosity you'd get playing simcity in the windows 3.1 days. the old simcity had goals and progression and scenarios and all that, but i think the reason it became a megahit was because it let you briefly have sense of being a fake city planner, like it let you bring spreadsheets and charts and graphs and models to life for a little bit, and it did it such an intuitive way that it seemed like an obvious subject for a game, but i don't really think it was. anyway it's hard to explain for some reason, but cities: skylines kind of brings me back to that old SimCity feeling, only with all the modern conveniences and visual updates that come from the 20-ish years of gamemaking in the interim.

i only played like 3 eligible games (tho this morning gf and i finally played keep talking and nobody explodes -- rly fun and sui generis but wears off quickly i think, probably renewable through introducing people to it) but this thread made me wish i'd voted anyway; sorry will! and gr8 job.

so i've talked a bit about Life is Strange already, but something i haven't mentioned is how great it is to see a game with a strong focus on female friendships/relationships: not only chloe and max, but max and kate, chloe and rachel amber, chloe and her mom, etc. even victoria, the main female antagonist, can be interacted with in a thoughtful way, although since it's a choice game you can also take it full-tilt into bitchiness if you want. i also really appreciate that DONTNOD didn't reject the idea that chloe/max could turn romantic (and that even from the start, you could direct max to be like "uhhhhhhhhhhhh no" to warren).

― the jackal-snouted problem man (reddening), Friday, February 19, 2016 11:21 AM (12 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol in e1 i was as vengeful as possible to victoria, "hold that pose!" was sweeeeeeet. lil butterfly's like this will have consequences! i'm like shut up mom. anyway otm.

i'd almost bought sunless sea a while back but there are so many permadeath semiroguelikes these days i got choice paralysis and didn't (tho i have played the orig binding of isaac) -- mordy itt has made it my takeaway from this, gonna get it soon.

my steam hours hit three digits for fallout 4 :/ but i don't think i came close to the end of the main quest. i kind of squeezed the map dry tho, otherwise. at the time it seemed obviously better than f3 but rly i'd have to replay it; both games are kind of curiously ephemeral. for me really enjoying f4 required disobeying it more often than not, but people have said that about bethesda games forever.

will play witcher 3 someday but uh i just got witcher 1 working w the steam controller (surprisingly fluid) and i have witcher 2 unplayed in my library from like five years ago.