2015 had some ok games I guess
So normally I do this list in January. I pull up my 5 favorite indies/smaller releases for the year and talk about why they’re so great. You may have noticed that it’s March.
I had to wait a while to do a top 5 for 2015 for two reasons. 1) I felt 2015 was an underwhelming year for video games on the whole and 2) I played a ton of board games as a result. I could do a top 5 for them more easily than video, but I’m known to talk about video games a lot so heeeeere we go. GALAK-Z: The Dimensional
I didn’t like Skulls of the Shogun, which was a shame because I love grid-based tactics games. When I heard that 17 Bit’s second game was going to be a completely different beast I was skeptical that they could pull it off. My skepticism increased when they said it was going to have roguelike elements. I was wrong and I couldn’t be happier. Galak-Z is a great game, even if it doesn’t really succeed at its homages to old anime as much as you’d hope. The gameplay is tight, satisfying, and unforgiving when it needs to be. It scales well throughout and provides solid challenge and interesting levels despite being randomly generated.Â
The most important takeaway from this game is that it doesn’t rely on manufactured badass moments like most triple-A games do. Every time I took the ship that I customized - MY ship - and juked over a sword-swinging mech to shoot it in the back, I felt like a fucking god. When you die in Galak-Z it’s harsh but fair. When you win? It’s amazing. Invisible, Inc.
Remember when I said I love tactics games? I meant that. I went into Invisible Inc. expecting a solid stealth game. Klei delivered in a lot of ways I expected, and a few I definitely didn’t. First, negatives. Some characters just kind of suck. Sometimes the levels you get just don’t have enough items/the right items in them. Sometimes you get roguelike’d because every goddamn game has to be a roguelite these days. These are all legitimate issues and you’d be right to be annoyed by them. But they won’t matter when you’re actually playing. Klei managed to nail stealth just as well as they did in Mark of the Ninja, but in a completely different way. Where Mark of the Ninja did an amazing job of making you feel like the biggest badass on earth when you managed to make a plan work, Invisible, Inc. nailed a totally different tone- it’s tense. Incredibly tense. The inability to permanently incapacitate enemies without severe repercussions is huge. Every single step you take is time that guard has to wake up, and leaving one of your crew behind to keep a knee on his throat means everyone else will be down a set of hands when shit really hits the fan. Every decision ratchets up the tension higher and higher, to the point that completing a level is more of a relief than an accomplishment. It’s great. NOT A HERO
Bunnylord is a fucking monster. Everyone he employs is just as awful. And you’re going to get him elected mayor through serial murder. The action in Not a Hero is so incredibly tight that there’s not a whole lot to talk about. Shoot. Jump. Run. Dash from cover to cover. What matters is that it does it absolutely perfectly and embraces the inherent violence of the genre with bloodstained arms wide open. Enemies try to reason with you and it never, ever works. Bunnylord’s dialog is a madlib of compliments and death threats (seriously, his dialog is partially randomly generated and it works better than it should). Your missions tend to have morally positive results, but you approach them in the absolute worst ways possible and for entirely selfish reasons. Bunnylord doesn’t give a shit if crime is rampant in London, but the voters do, and that’s enough. The character variety and blistering pace of Not a Hero makes it an easy game to recommend. I can’t wait to see more speedruns for it, even if every single one of them is going to play no one but Mike. I refuse to explain any of that. Look it up. Apotheon
Apotheon is a goddamn mess. Play as not-Kratos in a game where you murder your way through Mount Olympus. Also physics are broken. And the writing is bizarre. And the combat (while so very gratifying) is inconstant and wonky. I’m not going to say this thing is great, but it is memorable and so very, very fun. I can’t even justify putting it on this list but I enjoyed it SO MUCH that it’s here anyway. Sometimes sheer fun is enough, even if every other part of the game is at least partially broken. Also games in Q1 always get forgotten and that’s just not fair. Helldivers
Coop is hard to do. Most games just shoehorn it in. Some do it slightly better but include screw-your-teammate mechanics just for shits and giggles. You would think it would be even more of an issue when every single bullet can kill your friends, but somehow it comes back around to reasonable. Helldivers has a learning curve, and by curve I mean brick wall covered in barbed wire and flames, but it’s absolutely worth scaling. Few coops are this rewarding. I talk a lot about games that generate a genuine feeling of accomplishment. Achievement has been cheapened a lot in the last few generations by more and more games attempting to create artificial milestones. Helldivers just kicks you around until you start kicking it right back. I appreciate that. It’s important that we don’t lose sight of what makes games special. Talking about awesome moments shared with friends days, weeks, months, even years later? That matters. Interaction is important and games can facilitate that if you let them. Helldivers does this better than any other game of last year, and that’s important. WHERE’S UNDERTALE? It’s not on the list because it’s not worth putting on the list. Credit where credit is due, the character dialog is great and the soundtrack is phenomenal. The problem I have with Undertale, besides forcing you through multiple playthroughs to get the endings you actually care about, is that it assumes the player is a complete idiot.
I know murder is bad. Better games have explained this with better narratives. LISA is the gold standard for an RPG touching on moral choices, and Undertale comes nowhere close. It’s cute and funny and a lot easier to swallow than the story LISA tells, because unless you’re a complete psychopath things get tied up and end happy.
Sometimes bad things happen and that’s it. Coating everything with sugar doesn’t make it better, it makes it saccharine and fake. Undertale assumes that its audience couldn’t handle harshness, and considering the reception I’d say it’s right. That disappointed me. Also if you’re going to have a character as perfect as Mettaton it’s a crime not not focus on him more.
