Best Games I Played in 2015

Another year gone by, another "best of" list for all the games I played. Again, this is a list of best games I played in 2015, so not necessarily every game on this list was released this year as I tend to go back and play a lot of older stuff. This is a list of games I played for the very first time during the year of 2015, regardless of when the game actually released. It seemed like this year especially I played a lot of really excellent games, so it might seem like I'm overlooking certain games on this "best of" list but it's only because I played so many high quality games this year. Like before, here's a list of the award categories and what criteria I use to classify them:

Best Soundtrack - Awarded for games whose soundtrack not only stands on its own, but compliments its game to help create style and atmosphere.

Best Art Style - Awarded to games that have a striking and memorable visual presentation

Best Narrative - Awarded for games that excel in storytelling, have a gripping plot, raise important questions or otherwise can challenge the player to think

Best Mechanic Design - Awarded for best implementation of innovative, thoughtful or original game systems

Best Game You Probably Haven't Played - Awarded for excellent games that I think flew under the radar

Game of the Year - Awarded to my overall favorite games I played this year.

The games eligible for these awards are:

Theatrythym Final Fantasy: Curtain Call (2014)
Shatter (2009)
Super Mario 3D World (2013)
Enemy Mind (2014)
The Jackbox Party Pack (2014)
The Talos Principle (2014)
Pokemon Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire (2014)
Rayman Legends (2013)
Ori and the Blind Forest (2015)
Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze (2014)
DOTA 2 (2013)
Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number (2015)
Mario Kart 8 (2014)
Dark Souls (2011)
Her Story (2015)
Lethal League (2014)
Dear Esther (2012)
80 Days (2014)
Contadiction - Spot the Liar! (2015)
Five Nights at Freddie's (2014)
The Beginner's Guide (2015)
Undertale (2015)
Super Mario Maker (2015)
Battleblock Theater (2013)
Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime (2015)

So let's get to it

Best Soundtrack Runner Up: Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze / Retro Studios (Nintendo) & Monster Games - 2014

David Wise is the man. Finally back to work on the franchise that he's most well known for, Wise totally hit it out of the park with this soundtrack. The remixes of the old SNES DKC tracks are amazing, but there's also a lot of excellent original tracks as well. My favorites are Windmill Hills, Deep Keep, Fruity Factory, Current Capers, Irate Eight Chase and Twilight Terror

Best Soundtrack: Shatter / Sidhe Interactive - 2009

So I'd have to say this game would be pretty forgettable for me if it weren't for the soundtrack. "Module" did an absolutely stellar job with this soundtrack, and listening to it totally makes the game worthwhile for me. Highlights are Amethyst Caverns, Freon World, Granular Extractor, Krypton Garden and Kinetic Harvest. If you dig electronic music, you should totally give this a listen

Best Art Style Runner Up: Dear Esther / The Chinese Room - 2012

The audiovisual presentation is really good here and I think is also a key to why this game works. Hearing the ambient wind blow and rustle through the high fidelity tall grass really enabled my immersion in this game and let my mind start to wonder about about the story and fill in the blanks as I explored the beautiful environments. This is not a game for everyone, but I don't think it's even a question that this is a very pretty looking game 

Best Art Style: Ori and the Blind Forest / Moon Studios - 2015

Holy moly this is such a visually striking game. It's a 2D sidescrolling metroidvania, but the visuals don't look anything like what you'd expect from a game fitting that description. All of the NPCs, friendly and enemy alike have such expressive animations that give them so much character. The backgrounds, which appear to be static at first glance will sway in the ripples of energy sent off by Ori when he gets a powerup. Even the way the water flows and ripples is just really visually pleasing. Ori is one of the prettiest 2D games I've ever played

Best Narrative Runner Up: Her Story / Sam Barlow - 2015

This game was super captivating. I loved feeling like an actual police detective piecing together the details of the crime in order to compile a complete story in my head. It was really rewarding when you had a hunch about where the story was going, putting in some search terms and ending up being correct. There's probably a few holes you can poke in the story, but the fact that it was so captivating and interactive earns it a spot on this list

Best Narrative: Undertale / Toby Fox - 2015

Undertale is the highest caliber of video game storytelling. I loved the story, I loved the characters and there's many secrets and easter eggs in Undertale to discover if you really want to take a deep dive into its universe like I did. I've played through this game twice now and without spoiling too much about this game, I probably won't play through it again because I don't want to ruin my memory of the last playthough. This game is really humorous and endearing. This is a must play if you like good storytelling in video games.

Best Mechanic Design Runner Up: Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime - 2015

This is one of the freshest new implementations of cooperative gameplay I've seen in a while. In Lovers, both players are required to man various stations on a spaceship to navigate and shoot through several randomly generated levels. This game requires a high level of cooperation and verbal communication with your partner to effectively operate the spaceship. I loved the design here. Really neat idea that results in one of the best couch co-op games I've played in recent memory

Best Mechanic Design: Dark Souls - 2011

There are so many smart design decisions in Dark Souls; some great original new ideas and some are simply good old ideas re-purposed in a modern game. There's the meticulous interconnected level design of a metroidvania game, there's a complex spreadsheet of statistics from any good RPG and then there's the excellent enemy design from any good action game which forces you to pay attention to the enemy's movements and patterns to properly counter them. Dark Soul's original game mechanics are great ideas as well, such as the soul retrieval system which allows you to keep lost experience points at death as long as you can make it back to where you died without being killed again. The online message system was a welcome feature as well in a game as difficult and obscure as Dark Souls. This is an extremely well designed game, and while it's not for everyone, Dark Souls is extremely rewarding for those players that invest the time into discovering its mechanics

Best Game You Probably Haven't Played Runner Up: The Talos Principle - 2014

The Talos Principle is a great 3D puzzle game with a compelling mystery presented in its story. If you like puzzle games, you may want to give this a look if you haven't already. I haven't played a 3D puzzle game this solid since Portal. And The Talos Principle's Story is a neat original idea that is pulled off really well and meshes with the game's mechanics.

Best Game You Probably Haven't Played: Undertale - 2015

I'm aware of the relative popularity of this game and that more and more people are hearing about this and trying it out, but I'm going to include it under "Best Game You Probably Haven't Played" just in case you happen to be one of the folks who still haven't played this. Undertale is an an amalgam of a Japanese styled RPG and a bullet hell game. It's not a systematically deep RPG, but the story, soundtrack, characters and writing are all top notch. What Undertale excels at is subverting your expectations. There are a lot of build ups with a seemingly obvious direction, only to be flipped on their head at the last second, often to comedic affect. This is also a game with a particular sense of humor which meshed well with my own and made me laugh out loud several times. If you don't share creator Toby Fox's humor, some of the jokes may not land but this game is still worth a playthrough for its excellent original ideas and fantastic world building and storytelling

Game of the Year Runner Up: The Talos Principle - 2014

See: Best Game You Probably Haven't Played Runner Up

Game of the Year: Undertale - 2015

See: Best Game You Probably Haven't Played

So there you have it. What, don't like that the Best Games you probably haven't played are also my games of the year? Undertale and The Talos Principal are the best games I played this year and I also think not enough people played them. Also Undertale was obviously a pretty big hit with me. I would have also given it a spot under "Best Soundtracks" were it not for DKC Tropical Freeze and Shatter. All in all 2015 has been a pretty solid year for video games and I hope 2016 has as good of an offering