The top 20 Games I played this year

Here are the top 20 games of the year and some thoughts on each one.

If you’d like to see a comprehensive list of all of the games that I played this year, refer to this spreadsheet

1) X-Com 2

War Never Changes

by Firaxis Games
Total Time Played: 2718 minutes

I don’t think people give the narrative backbone of this game enough credit. A really good metagame requires a framing mechanism, and the tale of a ragged resistance that’s barely scraping by is the perfect inversion of the X-Com from the first game. The story creates new plot mechanisms in unique environments with interesting juxtapositions and forces the player to keep moving and make tough choices with real consequences. By flipping the narrative the world becomes fresh and exciting with real stakes, and allows the developers to focus on refining and iterating on the core systems.

I’ve heard this game described as “X-Com 1, but everything is better”, which is true. But in a game like this people don’t pay attention to the story, even though they actually do — and it’s a gripping and emotional story of humanity at it’s best, in the face of seemingly insurmountable adversity.

PS: I savescum, don’t @ me

2) Inside

in pursuit of perfection

by Playdead
Total Time Played: 268 minutes

I‘ve worked on something like 15 games through a 15 year career — sports games, shooter games, a Superman game, some more shooter games, and they all have one thing in common — I was never satisfied with what I shipped. In many cases I haven’t played the games I've worked on after they shipped - so glaring are the errors, the missed opportunities, the room for improvement. I have never and will never ship a perfect game because it isn’t possible.

Inside is perfect. They polished it for 2.5 years (most games get about 3–6 months for polish if they’re lucky) and it shows. Everything is perfect. It’s the perfect length to create the perfect ambiance. The puzzles are instantly intuitive in such a way that make you feel brilliant and insightful. The animation work is masterful. There’s only one way to play it and everyone has the same experience and that’s one of perfection. Seems the only way to have a perfect game is for someone else to do it for you.

3) Hitman (2016)

Like an onion, and at the center is death.

by IO Interactive
Total Time Played: 3238 minutes

I feel like it’s high time that we had an awards ceremony specifically for Level Design. This was the year of Level Design. Later games in this list, Dishonored 2 and Titanfall 2 chief among them are particularly noteworthy because of their level design, but Hitman brings it to another plane. The massive open environments make full use of the space with incredible opportunities for discovery and creativity. The state machines of the NPCs interact with each other and the environment in perfectly thought out ways that respond to the player’s choices even though they don’t realize it. Each episode is so expansive it could be a game.

The assassination objectives and targets are between slightly and extremely weird, and the means to achieve them vary between standard and totally insane. The characters (minor and major) and locations (macro and micro) are colorful, richly detailed and usually odd and surprising. It all adds up for a Level that you’re not only willing to, but crave spending time in just so you can understand how it all works.

4) The Witness

Pure Edifice

by Thekla
Total Time Played: 1338 minutes

I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said — “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

5) Stardew Valley

Nice Guys Finish First

by Concerned Ape
Total Time Played: 3954 minutes

I lost my job at Visceral this year under circumstances that were less than ideal and made question my character to the core. It was a workplace I thought I loved, making games that I thought were worth it for a company that I believed appreciated me.

In the two months that I spent searching for a job I played Stardew Valley. It was made by a lone individual who made the game that he wanted to play because no one else was making it. He worked on it publicly and didn’t release it until it was done. He’s like the nicest dude and became a millionaire the day after he released it. His fans adore him because he cares about them, and it comes through in his work and work ethic, which is so sweet and innocent and giving. He deserved everything he achieved.

For me, Stardew Valley was a pleasant escape, a lovely pre-occupation in a time of tumult and stress as I interviewed at a variety of game companies and questioned my self worth. Ironically the game is about someone who leaves the drudgery of a cube-farm corporation (that destroys everything it touches) for a simpler life on his grandfather’s farm. I only stopped playing because I got a job at Bethesda Game Studios. In the end, I got fired from a shitty job as a cog at a massive company that didn’t appreciate me and ended up working at a small studio that treats you with respect and dignity and makes things you can be proud of.

6) Oxenfree

Teenage Daydream

by Night School
Total Time Played: 258 minutes

I have no interest in the minor dramas of middle class teenagers. As a reclusive, curmudgeonly old man it’s the worst kind of character set with the worst, most banal tropes that I can think of. Their motivations are meaningless to me and their conflicts totally avoidable and have no stakes. The first fifteen minutes of Oxenfree were so arduous I almost quit. Then it got weird.

The two dimensional needs, insecurities and awkwardness of the teenagers were forced into three dimensions and shattered violently into character traits through masterful writing, plotting, voice acting and an innovating free flowing conversation system. The ambiance of Edward's Island created an environment that I could see being terrifying if you were stuck there, inexperienced and insecure already. But the best part about it was at the end, these callow, self involved teenagers transitioned into adulthood, and I was there for it.

7) Dark Souls 3

The Dark Souls of This List

by From Software
Total Time Played: 907 minutes

Dark Souls is a game about patience, observation, dedication, spiritual calm, and learning to pay attention to what really matters. Your sword doesn’t matter, the metagame doesn’t matter, the enemies don’t matter, the only thing that matters is if you can see the game for what it really is. It’s somewhere between a diorama and Megaman 3 slowed down to 10%.

I played the game for more than 9 hours and didn’t even beat the giant tree boss, because I was paying attention to the wrong things. This person can beat the game in 36 minutes:

This is a subversive game that has the trappings of an action RPG just to fuck with you because it knows you’re a human, and it knows how helpless you are to ignore extrinsic motivations. I don’t think it’s cynical, or mocking the player. I just think it doesn’t care.

8) Dishonored 2

(Verbs + Worlds +Characters) x (Attention to Detail^Hard Work) = Genius

by Arkane Lyon
Total Time Played: 576 minutes

This is fucking CRAFT. Awe-inspiring, monumental craft. Somebody made this. Somebody sat down and pitched the idea for the Clockwork Mansion and then a bunch of Somebodies MADE IT. Like, this is the kind of shit, where you hear about a blind Japanese craftsman who spent his entire life alone in a bamboo forest making flutes by hand and they’re the best flutes in the world, but he won’t sell them to just anyone; you have PROVE that you’re worthy of buying one by playing a song that no one has ever heard but everyone recognizes - that’s these somebodies. In a forest surrounded by the zen-like clattering of bamboo plants and the burning desire for perfection. You have to prove to this game that you’re worth it’s time.

9) Superhot

Every Bullet Has a Story

by SUPERHOT Team
Total Time Played: 648 minutes

I wrote a great deal about this game:

SUPERHOT

10) Thumper

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a cockroach that grew up in a TRON arcade cabinet and went to an EDM concert on MDMA?

by Drool
Total Time Played: 168 minutes

I pledged to the Amplitude Kickstarter, because I wanted to play Amplitude again. I loved Frequency and Amplitude back in the old days, and I wanted that classic, simple rhythm game to get me into the zone. But it was missing the eccentric track list that made it so lovable, and the mechanics felt tired and worn after a decade of playing plastic instruments as colored notes slowly cascaded towards you at boring work parties.

A lot of people gave Stardew Valley shit for being a retread of classic games, but I saw it as a love letter to a subgenre that Ape knew no one was doing the way it needed to be done. Thumper is the way it needed to be done. It took the things that we loved about the work that Harmonix did and remixed it, bringing us back while looking forward.

11) Please Don’t Touch Anything (VR Edition)

One room, many ways to die

by Bulkypix

Total Time Played: 196 minutes

The first and most obvious thing to make with VR are shooters. We’ve all made them anyways and there’s a million of them you can just straight adapt, and the controllers look like guns as usual, so it’s natural that this would be the first instinct — in fact, while the DK2 was the top tier VR headset and content was even lighter than it is now, Half Life 2 was probably the best experience I’d had.

It would be sad to me if the first 5 years of VR are dominated by shooters, but based on the early work that i’m seeing I don’t think that that’s going to be the case. The Golden Age of Indies is smashing directly into the VC/Facebook money-rich, content-hungry world of VR development. Best case scenario, a lot of clever people spend the next five years trying out wild new shit with plenty of room to fail hard, and VR is defined by what makes it special and not an alternate display technology for AAA mainstays.

Please Don’t Touch Anything is a logical combination of two pre-existing things — the iPhone version of the same game and the real world “Escape the Room” concept. It’s perfectly suited to pre-touch VR, sitting in a single chair and having the room react to you and reveal it’s secrets and influence your perception as you pull back layers of mystery.

Games are a trojan horse for VR. Within a few years they’re going to be used for therapy, education, architecture and landscape design, and a host of other things we can’t even guess at yet. But as we take these first tentative steps into a new paradigm of games it’s great to see something so witty and surprising leading the charge.

12) Virginia

Rules were meant to be broken

by Variable State
Total Time Played: 96 minutes

When I was working on Homefront, we brought in John Milius (filmmaker of Conan the Barbarian fame) and we showed him our single player prototype, a standard walk-and-talk through a post-apocalyptic community. It was meant to show what the player’s experience might be and that we could handle cinematic storytelling seamlessly intermingled with gameplay. He kept suggesting that we cut between moments — that we shouldn’t be spending time walking down stairs where nothing happens, that it had to be way trimmed down; but we insisted that he didn’t understand. “That’s not how games work, especially First Person Games — they’re contiguous experiences. This is what players expect, and it’ll break the immersion if you do it any other way. I mean maybe in film, but..”

Turns out we were wrong.

13) The Division

Welcome to the Grind

by Ubisoft/Massive
Total Time Played: 4110 minutes

Every so often I get Shooter Ennui — I play a lot of shooters because it’s part of my job and i’m good at them and I do like them but some months I just can’t take it. My brain craves something new, or something old and comforting. Just not more of the same goddamned mechanical retreads. When The Division finally came out (and not those hilariously awful, clunkily scripted “stage demos” that Ubi persists in showing at tradeshows, no one talks like that), I took one look at the gameplay. The same gun has different damage values depending on its level or rarity? Numbers fly off of guys when you shoot them? Co-op raids with strangers? HARD PASS.

Then my friend Ian started playing about it and raving about it, and he’s a guy with taste but still, fuck no. I was not getting sucked into the grind. Then I bought a new video card and it came with a free copy of the game and I was like FINE I’LL PLAY IT BUT I’M NOT GOING TO LIKE IT.

65 hours later Shooter Ennui returned.

14) Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

I actually did ask for this, and i’m perfectly content with what I got.

by Eidos Montreal
Total Time Played: 782 minutes

The aesthetic of this game is phenomenal. Like, I would love to see the Art Director’s pinterest board. The people that built this game seem to adore aggressive architecture. Weird confrontational non-objective sculptures, imposing buildings with reckless disregard for materials science, and faceted structures that alienate the inhabitant and intentionally waste space — all combine to make you want to defeat that space by understanding it.

Cyberpunk is this weird, winding river of worlds that never were, a subgenre of science fiction that rolled around in dystopian prognostication, cosplay fetishism, futurist observations, satire, and design criticism. Its a reflection of our reality; grossly distorted through a funhouse mirror, exaggerating certain aspects and downplaying others, intended to warn us that the objects that we fetishize and lust after, that help us, that watch us, that entertain us, may end up being our undoing if we’re not alert. Deus Ex is a window into a subtopic of this subgenre, raising interesting questions about the intersection of humanity and machines, all in the trappings of a power fantasy.

15) Firewatch

The Forest Beckons

by Campo Santo
Total Time Played: 228 minutes

I remember reading a lot of hot takes around the time of The Last of Us about the “daddification” of games, a word so stupid it physically pains me to write it. The real problem is that there are too many people talking about games and not enough people making games.

“Daddification” is easy shorthand for idiots that don’t understand that games can be about something beyond their mechanics, because they are art and some people still haven’t come to terms with that fact. Firewatch is a game about struggles like hiding your depression from yourself through isolation, and the anxiety and paranoia that same isolation creates. It’s about dealing with grown up problems that everyone over the age of 12 has to deal with.

Firewatch is also about a small group of people that used to talk about video games, and then went and made a game that was theirs that expressed their point of view about what games are. I mean, they weren’t total noobs when it came to game development, but they put their money where their mouths were and I respect that.

16) Steven’s Sausage Roll

Surely this is impossible

by Increpere
Total Time Played: 240 minutes

I started playing this game at the end of this year, and i’m not done with it by a long shot. I only got 4 or so hours in and solved a dozen or so puzzles. It takes roughly 30–40 hours to get through, but you can’t just play it all the way through. You have to try the puzzles and fail, and let it marinate in your brain, and go away and come back and then you get it. There’s no time limit, no explicit reward system honed through a finely tuned feedback loop — only personal achievement. The only enemy are your own mental blocks and the only victory is a nicely cooked sausage.

This game lacks the gravitas and polish and extraordinary beauty of The Witness, but has the same approach to solving the puzzles. Figure it out for yourself or fuck off. The description on the Steam Store for this game is “A Simple 3D Puzzle Game” and that exactly what it is. They just fail to mention that it’s unbelievably challenging.

17) Hue

One color at a time.

by Fiddlesticks
Total Time Played: 186 minutes

18) The Elder Scrolls: Legends

Learning can be Fun

by Dire Wolf
Total Time Played: 3263 minutes

Being a game designer means you’re always in someone’s classroom. There’s always someone better than you at anything that fits into the broadly encompassing role, so that means that there’s always something more to learn. Legends is pure mechanics, polished and balanced until they shine. It’s Rock-Paper-Scissors-Gun-Shield-Missile (Missile beats Rock. EVERY TIME). But this careful crafting of a CCG using a variety of mechanics is something i’m barely beginning to understand. Slowly taking Legends apart and seeing the mechanics laid bare has been interesting and a unique opportunity for growth.

*I missed the whole Heathstone thing. I don’t know why; this is my first CCG since Magic 1st edition.

19) Pony Island

A game that’s not about ponies, or islands but is actually a meditation on the relationship between the creator of an interactive artwork and it’s players and the medium itself — but it does have ponies and islands in it.

by Daniel Mullins
Total Time Played: 156 minutes

“The finest trick of the devil is to persuade you that he does not exist.”

• CHARLES BAUDELAIRE, “Le Joueur généreux,” Le Spleen de Paris

20) Really Bad Chess

But “Bad” in the Micheal Jackson sense of the word

by Zach Gage
Total Time Played: 323 minutes

I stand in awe of the thinking behind the concept- that the pieces on a chessboard and their associated rules represent more than the rigid 1400 year old Game of Games. Maybe it’s because the movement rules of the pieces are so distinct and meaningful that it’s possible for this game to work. It certainly isn’t possible without assistance from a computer to balance the ranking system, which gives the game it’s constant push and pull as you move up and down the rank ladder. I’m going to be thinking about this game a lot, mostly cause it let me checkmate a king using only 3 pawns. I think this game is really important.

HONORABLE MENTIONS FOR BEING WEIRD AND DIFFERENT AND SURPRISING:

1. Beglitched
2. Shower With Your Dad Simulator 2016: Do You Still Shower With Your Dad?
3. Californium

ANTI-GAME AWARD FOR LIKE, I GET THE POINT BUT I DIDN’T LIKE PLAYING IT, IT WAS EASIER TO WATCH THE ERRANT SIGNAL VIDEO ON IT THAN PLAY IT:

1. Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor

SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT IN EXPLAINING THE TENSION BETWEEN THE INTENTION OF THE DESIGNER AND THE DESIRE OF THE PLAYER TO EXPRESS THEMSELVES, AND WHY YOU SHOULD JUST LET THINGS BE WHAT THEY WILL BE:

1. This pair of scenes from the Pilot of Westworld:

THE “SORRY FORREST” AWARD FOR A REALLY GREAT GAME THAT I DIDN’T PLAY BECAUSE I PLAYED IT IN PRE-ALPHA AND ALPHA AND BETA BUT IT’S REALLY GOOD AND I’M A TERRIBLE FRIEND:

1. The Flame in the Flood

GAMES I DIDN’T PLAY BECAUSE OF EMOTIONAL SCARS FROM WORKING IN GAME DEVELOPMENT:

1. Battlefield 1
2. Homefront: The Revolution

GAME I DIDN’T PLAY BUT IS ACTUALLY LOADED ON MY XBOX AND READY TO GO BUT I GOT DISTRACTED WITH PLANET COASTER AND OWLBOY:

1. Final Fantasy 15

GAME I PLAYED THIS YEAR THAT WON’T BE OUT TIL NEXT YEAR AND I THINK EVERYONE WILL BE TALKING ABOUT:

1. She Remembered Caterpillars

I SHOULD HAVE LOVED THIS GAME BUT IT DIDN’T HIT ME AND FEELS UNFINISHED AND I KNOW I'M GOING TO PLAY A LOT MORE AFTER THE FIRST EXPANSION AND A FEW BALANCING PASSES:

1. Civilization 6

MOST ANTICIPATED GAME OF 2017:

1. Shadowhand