Tatty's 2016 Game Of The Year Awards, 2016. LIVE! Of Duty! Pokemon!

#7 - Darkest Dungeon



Developer: Red Hook Studios

Genre: RPG (with the dreaded Roguelike elements)

January 19 2016

PC, PS4, PS Vita

Darkest Dungeon was one of the Steam Early Access success stories, finally getting a 1.0 version this year followed by a lucrative (hopefully) Sony console release.

I know some people who don't dig it but, frankly, those people are WEAK. They become attached to their party of adventurers, thrust into the titular dungeon, and become sad when one of them dies. And die they will, since Darkest Dungeon's random number generator style of gameplay means that a big, ugly Cthulhu style brute will bump you on the head rather hard and rather often.



There is a learning curve, and the trick to it is to treat your adventurers like cattle. Herd them into the dungeon's abattoir and don't be surprised when the abattoir do what it do - You've got plenty of willing ... erm ... cows left over.

You'll soon find ways round most of the enemy types. They'll still kill you, just not as regularly and not as cheaply.

Darkest Dungeon's got style. Beautifully drawn characters, appropriately OTT doomy music and a narrator who must curse himself every day that Hammer Horror is no longer a thing.

The final dungeon - the darkest one, natch - is tough, so tough that I've not cracked it yet in nearly 40 hours. Other games have caught my eye but I keep getting pulled back every so often when I think of a new combination of adventurers for a party.

It's not a game for everyone, and if I don't see another Roguelike for as long as I live I'll be content, but there's enough polished fun to be had for Darkest Dungeon to easily make my top games of the year.

Death is not the end, if you own the dungeon. Those contractors you hired to clear it out?

Yeah, it's probably the end for them.

FLAPPY BIRD!

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"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan

2016 has been a pretty good year for games imo. Probably better than last year and maybe 2014.

I've only played Doom so far that's on your list; not too much of a Dark Souls fan and the only indie games I've played recently are Firewatch and Outlast.

Have you played Final Fantasy 15? I'm pretty addicted to that one right now, and still need to get Dead Rising 4 to close out the year.

Ive played the crap out of Street Fighter IV Ultra, really surprised and disappointed they dropped the ball so heavily with this one. Maybe in another year itll finally be what it should have been. Maybe?

I'm torn. The massive, weird patch they've announced which will flesh out character development and rebalance content is enough for me to pause the game until it's out. I'm enjoying it up to a point, and much more than I thought I would, but the time spent versus satisfaction gained ration isn't near where it should be.

And yet, even though my time has decreased markedly these past few days, I still play it.

@Tongo: It's probably a great game right now - it certainly is according to diehard fighting game fans - but I guess I'm past caring.

#6 - Civilization VI



Developer: Firaxis

Genre: 4X Strategy

October 21 2016

PC

Sid Meier (I can never spell that guy's name correctly) is one of the few, possibly the only game developer who deserves his name on the box, independent of the development team. Sorry, American McGee.

Even though he's more of a company figurehead (think: talented George Lucas) these days rather than a hands-on coder, having Sid Meier associated with a game means something.

For the company it probably means a zillion more sales, for the consumer it denotes quality. I frequently wonder why I don't enjoy non-Civ strategy games with any regularity and I think it's because for me, the pan-genre gamer, they denote games that are not only highly polished but also have enough familiarity and approachability to be fully inclusive to the more casual audience.



They're not mind-numbingly impenetrable, in other words.

Civilization V was a great game, and with all the expansions running, became a classic of the genre which can be spoken of in the same breath as the venerated Civ IV. I was wary of the new game initially - Civ V was so feature complete by the end, surely they'd have left some major mechanics out in order to justify the inevitable DLC?

Nope, everything that Civ V had (including trading and religion) is in Civ VI from the get-go. It makes me wonder what on earth they've got planned for the expansions?

The basic gameplay loop is an iteration on mechanics that are a quarter of a century old, of course, but things have been expanded on (even over V) to such an extent that they feel fresh. I think the artwork, which has come in for criticism from many quarters, is flat-out gorgeous - Certainly more in the vein of the exaggerated style of the (massively underrated) console title, Civilization Revolution, than past games but all the better for it.

Civilization VI, then. Outside the top five for no other reason than I enjoyed four games slightly more.

FARMVILLE!

Well, that was the easy part.

I'm agonising over the order of the top five a lot more than I should be, but I think I'm happy with it.

#5 - Firewatch



Developer: Campo Santo

Genre: Narrative Adventure

PC, PS4, XONE

February 9 2016

What is Firewatch?

That question got asked a lot during 2014 and 2015. Turns out that Firewatch was another "one of those", a narrative focused adventure game. A walking simulator.

It also turns out that Firewatch is the best "one of those" I've ever played.



Games like this stand and fall on how they engage the player and Firewatch does this in a number of ways - A killer script, fine performances from the actors and an inviting, beautiful world. It's linear, these games have to be if they've got a story to tell, but a recent patch has added an open world mode so you can wander to your heart's content.

Firewatch affected me emotionally in a way that media of any kind seldom does. It's a story of loss, guilt, love and acceptance wrapped up in the plot of a thriller Alan J Pakula would have been proud of.

I'm not going to say too much more, because the story in this game is the main draw and it doesn't deserve to be spoilered. You'll play through it in 4 or 5 hours, so it won't be a major time sink.

Just buy it. A million people already have, and I find that heartening.

Everyone should have "one of those" in their library...

Awesome list so far. I think I can guess a couple of the choices left, but I'm very interested to hear the order and reasoning and all that, too.

I did like Firewatch, it looked great and the voice acting was good. I was actually really let down by the ending though.

I still need to fire up Firewatch.

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You ever try Europa Universalis IV Tacitus? I used to play Civ games and Total War then I graduated to the much more in depth EU4.

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I have it, and have sunk 20-odd hours into the game but I've never been able to get into the EU series.

Crusader Kings 2, on the other hand, is one of my favourite games of the past decade.

Worst Game of 2016 - Trials of the Blood Dragon



Developer: Redlynx and (tellingly) Ubisoft Kiev

Genre: Self-satisfied kitsch puzzle platformer

13 June 2016

PC, PS4, XONE

How the **** do you mess up a Trials game?

Previously, every Trials game released has been a minor classic. They're pitch perfect 'just one more go' physics and momentum based puzzle games, basically.

The new Trials is a sequel to another Ubisoft property, Far Cry: Blood Dragon.

Whereas the original Blood Dragon took a cheesy 80s action movie take on what made Far Cry 3 popular - shooty stuff, base capturing - Trials of the Blood Dragon tries to be clever. We get the signature impossible looking motorbike jumping which is at the franchise's core, true enough, but they had to add something to it, didn't they? They just couldn't help themselves.

What the developers added were sections of some of the worse platforming I've ever seen in a video game.

It's now pretty obvious that the Trials engine does one thing very well - 2-wheeled action. Getting off the bike and running around? Not so much.

A good Trials game:



A woeful Trials game:



I bought the game as soon as it was announced at E3, which was a very bad move.

It is rancid.

I kind of, sort of feel the same. I don't think the ending is bad, it fits the tone of the overall story and it did go for the more unpredictable, which I commend them for. I was disappointed when I first played the game, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized it had to be that ending to emphasize what they wanted to achieve with the story. However, after reading the several different ending ideas from other players, I can't help thinking what could've been. Some of those ideas were pretty great, but no doubt would've made for an entirely different game.

Expected Pokemon, didn't get it.

#stopclickbait

I have played Pokemon Go.

Didn't think much of it, to be honest. I have enough strange little people coming to sit in my living room as it is, I don't need virtual ones.

Yeah I didn't think it was a horrible ending, when I said disappointed I wasn't trying to say the ending flat out sucked, "underwhelming" I guess is the more appropriate term. I understood that they were going for something a bit different, but it really could have been so much more.

Firewatch is a game that demands clarity on the distinction between a good ending and an ending that makes you feel good.

Taccy, your woeful Trials video clip doesn't seem to be available anymore. Sadness... because I was really hoping for a good chuckle when comparing the two videos.

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I see your point here, but that ending made me feel ... well, nothing, really. Just a lot of, "Well...??"

A lot of "Meh," and I otherwise loved the game. I tried overthinking it in order to squeeze more out of it, but it didn't happen. Perhaps because I had just recently played Oxenfree, whose ending also gave me a sort of bleh feeling. Can't have too many games with mediocre endings in a row or one becomes highly vexed.