Sean Mesler’s Top Ten Games of 2015

2015 turned out to be one hell of a year for gaming. No matter what you’re interested in, this year had it in spades. It’s also the most surprising year for me, personally, because games I expected to love I didn’t (one I even hated), while others I expected to hate I fell madly in love with. It’s also a year that really drove home how much more important gameplay is to me over story. I love a good story, but without good or compelling gameplay, I am left wanting; whereas, games with so-so or less overt stories but amazing gameplay come out ahead of the pack. That’s not to say one is always going to win over the other, but it bears stating.

With that out of the way, here is my personal list for the ten best games I played this year. And yes, I played The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. For about 60 hours. Remember where I mentioned a game I expected to love wound up being one I hated? This is the one I hated. It’s not on the list, so if you’re looking for validation for that game, you’re going to be disappointed. If you’re interested in seeing a different opinion than possibly your own though, I’m glad you’re here!

Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to play every game long enough to form an opinion I feel comfortable with. As such, I do have some honorable mentions. These are games I truly enjoyed and will be completing once I have more free time: Dying Light, Evolve, Mad Max, Freedom Wars, and Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate.

10. Call of Duty: Black Ops III

Don’t be surprised that Call of Duty: Black Ops III made my list. Be surprised at how low it is. As an unabashed Call of Duty fan, year in and year out I pick it up and enjoy the hell out of it. I’m a campaign-first kind of guy and have always enjoyed the dumb action-movie spectacle of the series. Until this year. While it was fun to play, Black Ops III’s campaign is easily the worst of the entire series. Nonsensical and flat out stupid, with some of the worst voice acting in video games I have heard in probably a decade, I honestly can’t believe Treyarch took three years for this and saw fit to release it.

However, it’s a testament to just how good the multiplayer is that it made my list. Bringing back some of my favorite things about the multiplayer–smaller maps with choke points and clear delineations of control, shooting that is satisfying and doesn’t take two bullets to kills someone, mobility, interesting score streaks, and just an overall sense of fun that I feel has been missing from the last couple of Call of Duty games–Black Ops III gets more right than it does wrong.

9. Stealth Inc. 2: A Game of Clones

Stealth Inc 2: A Game of Clones is the sequel to one of my favorite games of 2013 and takes everything I loved about it: mind-bending puzzles, a beautiful art style, and a dark sense of humor, and expands upon it. Adding in gadgets, actual cloning, as well as puzzles to the overall map, and a bit more narrative makes it a superior sequel to an already stellar game.

8. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

If you would have told me that the long-awaited follow up to my favorite game of 2008 would have been disappointing, I wouldn’t have believed you. But alas, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain did disappoint me. It’s still a really good game that manages to squeeze out a lot of fun from what amounts to be pretty repetitive gameplay, but by trading in set pieces for a more “open world” approach, we missed out on some variety in terms of “moments.” At least Kojima does give the player a large breadth of ways to approach each new area. For example, in an early mission against a sniper, I could have just played it as a battle of snipers, waiting for my moment to strike. Instead, I opted for dropping supply drops on my enemy’s head until they were down.

Want to shoot your bionic arm and guide it into enemy’s faces? You can do that also. And nothing is more satisfying that calling in a sandstorm and using your Fulton balloons to lift a whole tank into the air. Unfortunately, I did miss the variety, and the normally charming histrionics of the Metal Gear Solid stories just got on my nerves. Still, again, a really good game.

7. Disney Infinity 3.0

Maybe it’s the high from seeing The Force Awakens three times in a week, but I bought Disney Infinity 3.0 on a whim and I’m glad I did. As my first “Toys to Life” game, I found myself surprisingly engaged with it. Charming in its artstyle, fun but not overly complex in its gameplay, the playsets offer a good amount of fun for the price. Using and leveling up each character will offer a ton of replay value for the future. Unfortunately, it’s also ignited an addiction to buying figures.

6. Until Dawn

As a lifelong fan of horror, I have long been wanting a horror game that gets the tone and vibe of 80’s slasher films down. Enter Supermassive’s Until Dawn. While most people were surprised by how good the game is, I can safely say that I wasn’t in the slightest. By taking the branching adventure gameplay of David Cage’s games, adding and playing up to horror tropes with a really neat narrative twist, Until Dawn is a no-brainer that’s a blast to play and experience. It’s not a spoiler to say any character can die and your story will continue without them. In my first playthrough, all but one of the characters survived the night, and I had a lot of fun going back and making sure none of them did. I’m really looking forward to what Supermassive does next with the genre or IP.

5. Batman: Arkham Knight

I absolutely fell in love with Batman: Arkham Asylum, but Arkham City left me cold. It was just too big of a game that I felt lacked focus and as I neared the end, I rushed through it just so I could see the ending. With that in mind, I wasn’t overly excited for Arkham Knight, and maybe it was those lowered expectations, but I wound up really, really enjoying it. Much more focused than Arkham City in design and story and with a ton of gameplay variety, Arkham Knight is nearly flawless in its package. And for the record, I never, not once had an issue with the Tank combat/missions. I did, however, have a problem with the driving during the Riddler’s challenges that required use of the Batmobile. That and the annoying amount of Riddler trophies keep Batman: Arkham Knight from being higher on my list.

4. Fallout 4

As the release of Fallout 4 neared, I found myself less and less excited for it. Not because I’m not a fan of Fallout or Bethesda, but because I had become burned out on open-world games. I played so many this year and so few felt worth my time; the thought of exploring yet another vast world with minimal direction and my OCD for going to every possible place on the map really gave me pause. But I decided to give it a go anyway, and I will say, Fallout 4 is the best open-world game in years. Is it a flawless game? An emphatic “No!” But, it is the most immersive one I’ve played in a long time. Constantly surprising me, it hooked me after about the 7^th or so hour/level, and it’s been pretty much all I have wanted to play since. It does suffer from it not bringing all that much new to the table and being extremely familiar, but I’m okay with that because it reminded me of what I love about Bethesda’s open-world games. In fact, I am dying to get back to it as I write this.

3. Rise of the Tomb Raider

In all honesty, there was no other game in 2015 that I was more excited for than Rise of the Tomb Raider. The sequel to my favorite game of 2013 is everything I wanted it to be and more. It’s tighter, more focused, gorgeous, and a ton of fun to play. So why isn’t it higher on my list? Mostly because I feel like the game just took everything I loved about the last game and made it better without adding much new to the package and ultimately felt like a very refined half step forward rather than a leap forward that really elevated it to another level. It’s a minor complaint for a stellar game, but it was enough to land it at number three on my list and not higher.

2. Ori and the Blind Forest

What an incredible game. Gorgeous, moving, exciting, vexing in its challenge, Ori and the Blind Forest is the very best game of its style that I have played in decades. It’s so smartly designed, so excellently paced, so expertly crafted that for a long time I thought it might be my favorite game of the year. The only thing that keeps it from being at the top were some odd decisions made by the team, like locking players out of returning to the game after it has been completed to grab things they might have (and most likely will) missed on their initial run-through. For a game that has gated access behind powerups, it seems like a poor choice to make players go through the entire thing again. Again, a minor complaint, but one that nagged at me enough to not put it in the top spot.

1. Bloodborne

No game this year (or in recent) has affected me with its pure execution of gameplay, atmosphere, character, enemy, and world design more than Bloodborne. And the best part is that I fully expected to hate, and I mean HATE this game. Prior to Bloodborne, I hadn’t played any of From Software’s Souls games based purely on my ignorance due to all of the hearsay and descriptions by the developer’s vocal legion of fans. Nothing about what I was hearing regarding their difficulty, obtuse mechanics, and story made me want to play them. And had it not come out when it did, in late April, with virtually nothing else new to play, I would have skipped it altogether.

This would have been a huge mistake on my part.

From its complete commitment to its theme, and aesthetic, oozing in gothic horror, to its impeccable and massive world design, to its rich sound design, this game’s presentation is as close to perfect as I have experienced in my 35 plus years of gaming. But, what Bloodborne really did was make me into a better gamer. Not kidding. It made me faster, smarter, and rediscover things about myself that I had lost years ago. It made me truly appreciate challenge and the feeling of overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds that is so purely satisfying and gratifying, which is why I loved video games my whole life. Eschewing an overt narrative, treating me like an intelligent human being capable of learning without flashing tutorials on the screen, Bloodborne is without a doubt the most rewarding gaming experiences I have ever had. I will say it again: There is no other game I have played this year that is so pure as a video game. Yes, it has very obvious “gamey” systems like enemy placement and AI patterns, but it’s so punishing of mistakes and hubris that every time I died, and it was a LOT, that it felt like my fault. I should have known better.

Bloodborne has an addictive risk/reward cycle that once it gets its hooks in you, it doesn’t let go. Do I go and cash in my Bloodechoes and level up, purchase supplies, gear etc., or do I push forward to get more? I can’t tell you how many times I did the latter and wound up stumbling into an inescapable boss fight. Like Thunderdome, two enter, one leaves. And more often than not, I was the victor on my first attempt. That’s not to say that more than a few bosses didn’t have my number and whooped my ass proper several times though. With 19 bosses in all, including optional bosses, the game kept rewarding me for months. Add in the recently released, equally brilliant, and doubly punishing DLC, The Old Hunters, Bloodborne slashed, dodged, injected its way to the top of my list, not only for the year, but of my all-time list.

Yes, I will say it; Bloodborne is the best game I have ever played. Good luck to all games in the future. You have quite the bar to get over.