Best of 2016

Well folks, 2016 has come and gone. It wasn't quite as good a year for gaming as last year was, but it was definitely better than 2014. In 2016, we have seen quite a few sequels as well as quite a few brand new indie projects. We have seen heartfelt games dealing with the loss of a child and we have seen moronically brutal games dealing with killing as many demons as possible. It has been a year of unparalleled variety and numerous surprises both positive and negative. As usual a few new categories have been added this year, but I have also taken a few categories out. For instance, there is no longer a best enemy or best quest category because there weren't enough games this year that could supplement these entries (for example, not many games this year had actual quest systems, so I would have to take that category pretty liberally in order to make it work). Likewise, as with any year, I didn't get to play everything that came out. For instance, if a game came out this year and focused on multiplayer, I didn't play it. So if you're as sick of seeing Overwatch win Game of the Year as I am, you're in luck. Some other notable titles I didn't play include: Battleborn, Titanfall 2, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, Battlefield 1, Watch Dogs 2, any of the Telltale games other than Walking Dead, anything Nintendo put out other than Pokemon, anything VR-related, any XONE exclusives, etc. The point is that if you don't see a review for it up on this site, I didn't play it. I reviewed everything I played this year, so you will have a reference for any decisions I make on these lists. A few more notes before I begin. This year is different in that I played a game that can't really be scored: That Dragon, Cancer. Because I can't bring myself to put a number on it and don't think that I can judge its place on these lists honestly, it is not eligible for GOTY this year, and it will only get spots on these lists if it has truly earned them. Also, last year's lists were riddled with instances of "I can't go too much into detail without spoiling." Rather than avoid talking about spoiler content at every turn, I will be letting you know if there are spoilers for a particular game in the little blurb at the start of each list in the event that spoiler content will be discussed. The reason for this is something that notable critic Totalbiscuit says around this time of year: An award means absolutely nothing if the reason for a recipient's victory isn't explained. Last year there were too many instances in which I decided to just say "take my word for it," and as a result, the lists suffered. So, there are one or two things that I definitely will not talk about, but otherwise I will be sure to put a warning every time so that you can avoid spoilers if you so desire. Well, dear readers, the time has come. Let us begin with the technical awards.

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The Technical Awards

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Best Realistic Graphics:
Throughout the years, the "best graphics" category has been shared between games that have good realistic graphics, interesting art styles, and games that simply perform better. Well, this year I have decided to split that award into three: one for each of these types of games. This first list celebrates the games that valued realism in their graphics this year.



#5): Mafia III

If this award were strictly for character models and dialogue animation, Mafia III would win the top spot in this award with no competition. There simply has never been more detail put into character faces and talking animations. The rest of the world, while not quite as lovingly rendered, still looks fantastic. The reason Mafia III isn't further up this list is because there are a few effects that actually don't look very good at all and skyboxes tend to be a little corny.



#4): Far Cry: Primal

Far Cry: Primal is a little bit of a step in a different direction for Ubisoft, as there could be no radio towers anywhere. Rather, Ubisoft was tasked with building a prehistoric world complete with vegetation, wildlife every two steps, and a night sky devoid of any human light. The world of Oros feels truly prehistoric because of the love that Ubisoft put into their artistic development. Fire flickers convincingly in the night, casting shadows against rocks. Vegetation moves convincingly as wildlife scampers through it. Animals move like one might expect these prehistoric species to move, and likewise, human character models move like people might have moved at the time; without a sense of propriety, where every step is taken with purpose. That might have sounded like a load of crap, but that was the impression I got while playing Far Cry: Primal.



#3): Dishonored 2

It may seem odd to see Dishonored 2 on this particular list. After all, this franchise is known for having a unique art style. Were we talking about the original, it would be on the next list. However, despite having a unique art style, Dishonored 2 actually emulates reality in a unique way. The reason that Dishonored 2 makes it this far up the list is the lighting. The lighting in this game gives the world a surprising degree of perceived depth. I could talk about it all day, but in the end, you'll have to play it to see what I mean.



#2): Doom

Doom's spot on this list is similar to Dishonored 2's in that it's mostly dependent on the lighting and depth perception. Doom's graphics have one purpose: create a sense of foreboding. If Doom had rendered creepy environments it would have been more than sufficient. However, Doom went the extra mile and created graphics that are simultaneously creepy and beautiful to look at. Beyond the environmental graphics, smaller scale graphics are also well-done. Enemies light up when they are shot at close range, fire moves with the wind, gun textures and animations give the weapons a sense of power, etc. Were it not for this next game, Doom was have the best realistic graphics of this year.



Realistic Graphics of the Year: Uncharted 4: A Thief's End

Uncharted 4 wins this category for a number of reasons. It had the best character models and animations, the best water effects, the best lighting, the most detailed graphical tidbits (i.e. Nathan Drake's shirt only being wet up to where he was submerged in water), and the best explosion effects. Naughty Dog has always made an effort to create stellar graphics, and if they can't do stellar they do detailed. In the case of Uncharted 4, however, they went with both. If you ever stop to take a look at your surroundings, you will notice that great love has gone into creating the lavish environments. Uncharted 4: A Thief's End wins the award for Best Realistic Graphics of the Year for all of these reasons.



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Best Artistic Graphics:
Artistic graphics are a difficult thing to judge. After all, the most unique art styles are not always the most visually appealing, and the most visually appealing sometimes sacrifice individuality. To fill up this list I decided to take an average of these aspects and choose the games with an artistic style both visually appealing and unique. These were the five games that best represented this ideal.



#5): Hyper Light Drifter

The reason that Hyper Light Drifter gets this spot is simple: because its artistic graphics were pretty to look at and they stood out from other games with similar art styles. The 2D bullet hell style is not a new concept, but Hyper Light Drifter sports much clearer visuals than your average game of this style.



#4): Islands: Non-Places

Islands: Non-Places wins this particular spot because it focuses on one thing that not many games take into account: color. It has been a long time since I've seen a game utilize color in such an interesting way. Every "scene" in Islands has a particular color palette, and the developer draws the player's attention to certain items by having them set as a color that belongs in the palette but stands out. The items being rendered are fairly simple, but the developer creates a tangible atmosphere and unique art style using only color.



#3): Abzu

While Abzu itself was not an incredible game, its art style is the kind of thing we've come to expect from the folks behind Journey. It isn't as pretty as Journey, but there is no denying the fact that the undersea environments are rendered in an artistic way that is beautiful in an almost alien way. It takes place in the ocean and has Earth-based ocean life in it, but the art really emphasizes the otherworldly nature of its setting.



#2): Firewatch

Set in Yellowstone National Park, Firewatch could have looked any number of ways. A realistic art style would have been the easiest way to go. There aren't any real character models to render, so it could conceivably have been done. However, Campo Santo studios decided to go in a different direction. They instead elected to use a truly unique style that emphasized the beauty of nature. Sunsets sweep over the mountaintops like water, foliage appears overly lush without looking fake, dirt looks downright comfortable, yellowing grass ripples with the wind like a wave. Everything about Firewatch's art style conveys extravagant beauty. It could have easily been the winner of the top spot in this category, but there was one game that actually did the opposite of what Firewatch did.



Artistic Graphics of the Year: Inside

Whereas Firewatch conveys beauty in its art style, Inside conveys bleakness and depression. There are lush areas in Inside, but they are rendered in shadow. The bleakness and terror of the game seems almost solid as blankets of fog as dense as milk peek through trees and singular lights cause shadows on the edges of room where unethical science is performed. The environments of Inside are oftentimes expansive, and yet they seem to still convey a sense of claustrophobia



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Most Well Performing:
If you ever take a look at some of the terrible games on steam, you will realize that good graphics are not that difficult to create nowadays. An amateur game developer can use the Cry Engine or the Unreal Engine and make a game that looks on par with AAA products. However, one thing you will also notice is that these amateur games run terribly. In the end, graphics matter, but they are nothing without stable performance. This award celebrates the games that ran at smooth framerates, avoided texture pop-ins, and avoided other technical glitches better than any other games this year.



#5): Final Fantasy XV

It's rare for a game to have no texture pop-in whatsoever. There are few games I can think of that have all texture rendered at a decent draw distance at all times. Final Fantasy XV is one such game. Though it would be preferable if it ran at 60 fps, it runs nonstop at a decent 30. Granted, there are times when so much focus is put into rendering the surrounding correctly that the game will forget to load enemies as you approach, but few games are perfect in the technical department.



#4): Hyper Light Drifter

In Hyper Light Drifter, you die a lot. It is therefore a great thing that there is practically no loading time in-between death and re-spawning. Beyond the load times, the game also runs at a consistent framerate throughout, even when there are many enemies on the screen and all of them are attacking. That is an important accomplishment for any game that is even remotely bullet hell-inspired.



#3): Doom

Given the amount of chaos that takes place in Doom, it's a miracle that the framerate stays at a smooth 60 fps at all times. There will sometimes be as many as thirty enemies in the fray, each of which moving at different speeds and attacking at different times. Despite all of that, Doom performs stably through it all. The only reason it isn't further up the list is because it does take quite a lot of time to load after each death and there is some degree of texture pop-in upon loading sometimes.



#2): Islands: Non-Places

Okay, so Islands: Non-Places isn't exactly the most demanding technical game ever made. It is less than an hour long and features minimal user interaction, after all. However, given how beautiful and intricate the graphics and animations are, it would still take a decent amount of effort to keep the framerate as high and consistent as it is.



Most Stable Performance of the Year: Inside

Inside is completely seamless from beginning to end, meaning there are no loading times save for when starting a new game. Once the game starts, you'll get from start to finish (all the while changing environments) without having to wait for any length of time save for 2-3 seconds of black after death. Most games these days, even smaller indie ones, can't go five minutes without having to load something, much less two hours. I think that indie games and AAA games alike can learn something from Inside's stellar loading. When I say "loading," I don't just mean content in general. I mean textures, sound effects, everything. There is never a texture missing or out of place. Character models are always where they are meant to be. No matter how much you try and test the limits, the proper sound effects always load. All of these things would have been enough to secure Inside a place on this list if not this very spot. However, Inside runs at a smooth 60 fps (and if it isn't 60, then it really feels like it) the entire time. One can argue that, since there isn't that much chaos on the screen at any given point in Inside, the stable framerate isn't that surprising. I disagree. If you look at any Telltale games title, you'll notice constant dips in the framerate, but no such dips in Inside. Inside is not only the best performing game of this year, it is one of the best performing games since the old days. Truly, no game in recent memory has been more deserving of this spot.



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Best Sound Design:
This award is one of the brand new categories I concocted this year. Typically it isn't something that one considers when one is playing a game, but in this year of stealth games, it started catching my attention. There is no single model for how to do sound design well in a game. For example, in an fps, a developer should typically try to make guns sound metallic and meaty when they fire and there should be audible feedback from whatever the bullet hits. In stealth games, on the other hand, good sound design entails giving the player the ability to pinpoint enemy locations from the sounds of their footsteps. This category also deals with how well the soundtrack is utilized. It may end up that in a year or two this award gets split up, but for now, these were the five games that boasted the best sound design in 2016.



#5): Final Fantasy XV

This one might raise a few eyebrows. After all, there are portions near the end of the game where voice acting is overpowered by music, and there are also several points throughout the game where characters will talk over each other. Final Fantasy XV makes this list because of how it handles sound transitions. Simply put, it transitions between tracks and alters existing tracks more smoothly than any game in recent memory. For example, take a look at any outpost in the game. Once you arrive, the music flawlessly changes from whatever it was to a country-style piece with harmonica, organ, bass, and guitar. If you enter the restaurant that comes with the outpost, the second you enter the building, the harmonica is dropped, the guitar and bass become quieter, and the organ becomes more prominent. It doesn't matter at what point in the track you are when you enter, the change is instantaneous. That is quite a feat.



#4): Far Cry: Primal

As I mentioned in an earlier list, with Far Cry: Primal, Ubisoft had one job: immerse the player in a prehistoric world. If you put on a pair of headphones while playing this game, you will see what I mean. When you are at Takkar's home base, the sounds of distant drums ring out, making the village seem more alive. As the Wenja population grows, the drum sounds become more prominent. It is a tiny detail that makes all the difference. When not at camp, the sounds of insects and distant creatures are constant. Unlike some open world games, however, the sounds of creatures are entirely diegetic. For those that didn't take a film course in college, this means that the sound comes from something on the screen or at least is made to seem like this is the case. Music is typically not diegetic, as it is just played in the background and doesn't come out of anything in the game/film world. However, if a song is coming from a radio and it gets louder and softer as you change your distance to it, this sound is diegetic. The point is that many open world games just play animal sounds in the background like they would music, and it in no way means that there is actually an animal around. In Far Cry: Primal, however, anytime you hear a growl, it is coming from something nearby. This is where headphones come in handy, as you can perfectly pinpoint where an animal is just by listening to its cry. Far Cry: Primal gets this spot on the list because of how well its sound design allows you to interface with its world.



#3): The Guest

The Guest gets this spot on the list for pretty much the same reason as Far Cry: Primal: it uses diegetic sound to better immerse its players in the game world. Now, the game world of The Guest is significantly smaller than that of Far Cry: Primal, but the reason that it is further up the list is because it handles sound layering just a little bit better. There is a point in The Guest where you have the option to play a record at will. The song plays on a loop until you turn it off, and it's undoubtedly diegetic and the volume lowers the further away you get from the record player. When the record isn't playing, there is an atmospheric piece that plays to fill the silence. However, this piece doesn't entirely go away when the record starts. Rather, the piece becomes incredibly quiet and grows in volume the further away from the record player you are. Likewise, the song from the record player never really disappears until you turn it off. When you are right by the record player, you can very faintly hear the sound of the atmosphere piece underneath it. When you are as far away from the record player as you can be, you can still hear very faint singing. The atmosphere piece and the song are perfectly layered and balanced to match your distance to the song's source, and I know that that must have taken quite a bit of work, so it deserves recognition.



#2): Islands: Non-Places

Islands: Non-Places is an odd choice for this list in that nearly all of its sound is non-diagetic. Almost every bit of its sound is played in the background, and yet, you wouldn't get that impression just listening to it. The example that I like to use to describe this is a level in which you are in something like a hotel lobby or an upscale coffee shop with chairs and desks in a circle around a set of tropical trees. In the background you can hear the sounds of plates being put on tables, people chattering, faint typing, all the sounds you might expect to hear in such a place. Nowhere on screen does anything of the sort take place, but as you listen the sound itself sets up the scene in such a way that you can almost visualize the people going about their lives inside this coffee shop. It's the kind of thing that is difficult to describe, so I would recommend that you play Islands: Non-Places for yourself, but if you do I would recommend that you keep an ear out for its excellent sound design.



Sound Design of the Year: Inside

Whereas other games on this list have earned their spot through the ways that they handle large quantities of sound, Inside breaks the mold in that it actually uses sound sparingly. For a lot of the time, the only sound you can hear is the sound of the boy's footsteps against whatever surface he is walking on. Whenever extra sounds are added in, it's always in the interest of better immersing the player in the atmosphere. A prime example of this is a moment towards the beginning of the game in which the boy passes by a van in the middle of the woods. A man with a flashlight and a gun appears from the darkness and suddenly there is a droning sound and the little boy's breath noticeably picks up. At this point, the sound of footsteps slightly lowers despite the fact that the boy is running faster. It is a brilliant design choice that brings more focus to the boy's terror in the moment than to the ever-present sound of footsteps. Another example would have to be the segment involving the girl in the water (not to be confused with the M. Night Shyamalan film with a similar name). In this segment, there is a little girl in the water who is trying to drown the boy, and the puzzles involve getting through the water without her catching up. As the girl approaches, there is a particular sound that I can't quite describe. The best I can do to describe it is to say that it's the kind of sound you would definitely be able to hear underwater, so maybe that's the point. Either way, this sound grows increasingly louder as the girl quickly catches up, but the second you exit the water it stops. There is no hang time on that sound at all. This sound is flawlessly engineered to crescendo and stop at certain points, and that is worthy of praise. I realize that the examples I'm laying out seem pretty standard, but the fact of the matter is that we can sit here and discuss good sound design until we're blue in the face, but at the end of the day sound design is an art that needs to be experienced to be understood. So, if you haven't already played through Inside, I would recommend doing so with the best pair of headphones you own. If you don't have any, borrow some from a friend or family member, because the sound design in Inside is a force to be reckoned with.



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Best Soundtrack:
This award probably sounds pretty self-explanatory, but there is more to a good soundtrack than just sounding good. A good soundtrack must also fit its content. In other words, A Knight's Tale would not even remotely make this list if it were a game. Likewise, Morrowind's soundtrack was fantastic, but 99% of the game was just walking around and talking to people, so it needed more atmospheric scene-setting music and less epic sweeps. These five games had the best sounding and best fitting soundtracks of this year.



#5): Hyper Light Drifter (Disasterpeace)

Disasterpeace's soundtrack for Hyper Light Drifter is without a doubt the most unique entry on this particular list. It is also the most atmospheric entry. The reverb-laced techno vibe of Disasterpeace's work fits perfectly with the borderline 80's aesthetic of Hyper Light Drifter. What is truly impressive about this soundtrack is that it never loses sight of its identity, and yet it still covers a wide variety of moods. There are epic sweeps, tender pieces meant to accompany overlooks, and quiet atmospheric pieces, but all of these are consistently wrapped in the style that Disasterpeace chose for this game.



#4): Valley (Aakaash Rao)

In a year where Austin Wintory fell down on the job, Aakaash Rao was right there to pick up the slack with his soundtrack for Valley. As I listened, Rao's desire to emulate the Wintory style was clear, but through the strategic use of exotic instrumentation, Rao made the sweeping Wintory style his own. It's clear to me that this was not a phoned-in gig, as it really seems like Rao was briefed on every situation that was going to take place in Valley and composed a different piece for each one. Rao's compositions are part of what gives Valley its unique identity.



#3): Final Fantasy XV (Yoko Shimomura)

One problem that I typically have with JRPGs is their constant need to blend things that break tonal consistency. There will be a serious plot with human characters and then all of a sudden a talking human-sized weasel will show up. People will be fighting with swords and axes but also be driving cars. The same can be said of their soundtracks. It's typically an uncomfortable blend of angsty rock beats and directionless chamber music. One can argue that Yoko Shimomura's compositions for Final Fantasy XV fit this description, but I would argue that it is an example of the standard JRPG-style soundtrack done right. There are moments when Shimomura invokes a nearly Baroque sound to draw attention to the opulence of a location or a harmonica and organ to convey a more down-to-earth feeling in outposts on the road. Then, when the inevitable rock-chamber tracks come into play, the two parts feel as if they're working together as opposed to just existing in the same sphere. One example is a track that uses a heavy metal drum beat and rock guitar, but these are used merely as a backbone. The set the rhythm and determine which beats are emphasized, while the choral unit plays off of the emphasized beats as if the two sides of the track are conversing. Maybe that sound corny, but I couldn't help but notice.



#2): Doom (Mick Gordon)

I'll be the first to admit that Doom's soundtrack is this high up the list because it's a genre that I personally love. I don't believe I've ever heard any of Mick Gordon's work, but regardless of what he did in the past, his work on the music of Doom shows that he's a better metal musician that most metal musicians these days. On one level, the pieces are just good metal pieces. They're handled exactly the way metal should be handled: the listener can practically hear the fury packed into each note. The drums sound like their drummer is putting dents in them. The double-bass pedal on the drum set practically mimics the gunfire in the game because of how much of a barrage it is. The guitar is crunchy and tuned to a low key. The bass makes the tracks boom while still sounding like the strings are about to snap. Fire up a track from the Doom soundtrack, and if you're a metalhead like me, you won't be able to resist banging your head and air guitaring along with it. Simply a fantastic metal album even when divorced from the game itself. However, the music also fits the content, so not only does it sound good, but it's also functional. Many tracks are specific to certain levels. Tracks like "BFG Division" - used in a level that takes place mostly in science labs - set an eerie atmosphere with a metal guitar somehow, whereas tracks like "rip and tear" - used in a level taking place in the very heart of hell - bring all the spitting anger they possibly can to convey the feeling that you're truly in the most evil location in the universe. I would have loved to give Doom the top spot on this list as it certainly would have earned it, but there was one soundtrack this year that did a better job of everything overall.



Soundtrack of the Year: Dark Souls III (Yuka Kitamura)

Firstly, I have no clue if this picture is actually of Yuka Shimomura. There is very little information about this person, but this seemed like the most accurate photo. The music of the Souls series has had its ups and downs. In Dark Souls, the music was an atmospheric masterpiece that brought in incredible dissonance mixed with complex and beautiful orchestration to convey a sense of both beauty and fear, and it all culminated in a veritable whisper of a piece to signify journey's end. In Dark Souls II the music was ok. In Bloodborne, certain tracks stood out and helped convey the Lovecraftian horror vibe that From Software was going for, but the rest just went for straight horror dissonance, and it didn't always work. Despite the fact that the soundtrack for Dark Souls was the best in terms of its functionality, I must say that the soundtrack to Dark Souls III is my favorite. True, it can be argued that it's a little bit more mainstream with its non-dissonant choral pieces, but the game seemed to take place in a world just beginning to shatter, so less dissonance was called for. Lothric seemed to be a holy kingdom to me, and if not that, then at the very least a kingdom with a great deal of devotion to...the gods? I'm not entirely sure, but there are like a billion cathedrals in this game, so it has to signify something. Either way, the soundtrack mirrors the world's focus on the divine. Church bells add an ominous undertone to certain pieces, and the choir actually sings what sounds like words this time around instead of just "aah"-ing and grunting the notes. Likewise, great care was put into making certain pieces match either the lore or the general feeling of their respective situations. For example, the track for the boss fight with the Dancer of the Boreal Valley sounds akin to something you might hear coming out of a music box; something icy and high-pitched and slow but with choice dissonance thrown in to make the elegance unsettling. Another example would be the track for the fight with the Undead Legion. The entire piece sounds desperate, but in a depressed way. The track itself utilizes a male and female vocalist singing no words but nonetheless sounding as if they're pleading with the player. Just the kind of thing one might expect to hear as the go up against an immortal legion on the verge of being swallowed up by the abyss. Whatever way you slice it, however you interpret the intricacies of Dark Souls III's soundtrack (if you do so at all), Dark Souls III had the best soundtrack of any game this year. Yuka Kitamura should be immensely proud of the love that she put into her work.



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Best Soundtrack Piece:
Now, unlike the previous category, this one is exactly what it sounds like. These five soundtrack pieces are the best sounding pieces from this year, and this category may very well be the most subjective category in Right Trigger history. The little writeups after each of the items will also be the shortest in this entire deal because there is such a huge degree of pure musical opinion involved.

[Spoilers for That Dragon Cancer]



#5): Room Lights (The Guest)

I'm not sure if this song existed before The Guest, or if the developers wrote it, or if the developers hired somebody to write it. Either way, "Room Lights" is not only a great song, but also a perfect song for the atmosphere in The Guest.



#4): End Credits (That Dragon, Cancer)

Skip to around 17:19 to hear the piece. Though an incredibly simple piano piece that never really goes anywhere, The end credits piece from That Dragon, Cancer did what it needed to do. After Joel's death, after the immense discomfort that the player has experienced, the game shows us Joel eating pancakes with a dog in heaven and the camera pans up to a violin swell. Then the piano starts and it's as if all the tension is finally released.



#3): Invidia (Final Fantasy XV)

This was the piece that I mentioned back in the "Best Soundtrack" category. This piece is used a number of times, mostly when fighting against human bosses.



#2): Lothric, Younger Prince (Dark Souls III)

This particular point in the game was meant to be one of the more intense sequences, so it should come as no surprise that so much work went into making this piece sound a certain way.



Soundtrack Piece of the Year: Rip and Tear (Doom)

And here we see proof of the purely subjective nature of this list. Simply put, "rip and tear" is absolutely brutal, and as a metalhead I loved it to death.



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Best Level Design:
Much like sound design, there is no one single model for how to do level design well. It all depends on the game. For example, imagine a turn-based rpg like Fire Emblem, where the only movement you have is taken in turns and distance is limited each turn. In such a game, it would be poor level design indeed for the battle maps to be gigantic sprawling areas. Rather, in such a game, concision is key. Such a game would have fantastic level design if levels were tightly knit and littered with bits of cover or powerups that the player would have to think strategically to make use of. The thing to keep in mind is this: does the way that levels are designed allow the player to make the most use out of the gameplay style? For these five games, the answer to this hypothetical question is "yes."



#5): Valley

If you wanted to boil Valley down to an overly simple description, a fair one to give it would be: a toy box. Valley's gameplay is based off of several functions that are a part of an in-game technology, and one of the reasons that it succeeds is because of how well suited its levels are to experimentation with these functions. Everywhere you go there are metal panels, grappling points, etc, that allow you to constantly make use of every toy you find in the box. In the description of this category I mentioned that the important thing about level design was the way that it allows players to utilize its gameplay style, and Valley embodies this principle.



#4): Uncharted 4: A Thief's End

While it's certainly true that Uncharted 4 suffers from the standard third-person shooter problem of "oooh boy, there are chest high walls. I wonder if there's going to be a fight?" the existing battle areas are almost always built so that the player can be flexible in their play style. Uncharted 4's level design allows players to move freely across the field at all times, which is useful both in stealth and in open combat. In addition, some levels allow the player to make use of the terrain to whatever end they're trying to reach. There is a particular level that is made up of giant spiraling rock formations above a gigantic chasm. If you choose to be stealthy in this level, you can kill enemies and leave no bodies, but the tradeoff is that as you move further in there are far more opportunities for enemies to see you. If you choose to go in guns blazing, you have plenty of cover, but so does the enemy, and moving in to attack may leave you exposed from every side. The name of the game in Uncharted 4's level design is adaptability.



#3): Dark Souls III

This is the one entry that isn't on here because of how its design affects gameplay. Rather, Dark Souls III's level design makes this list because of its sheer intricacy. Dark Souls has always been a provider of intricately interwoven environments. Even Dark Souls II with its sometimes cliche'd environments built its levels with a sense of intricacy in mind. While obviously not as intricate as the original, a great deal of Dark Souls III is interwoven in ways that make sense and make the locations feel deep and well-traveled.



#2): Dishonored 2

Though it isn't the top spot, Dishonored 2 was the reason I came up with this category this year. There are few genres in which good level design is more important than in stealth games. Whereas an action game can still end up being fun in the event of bad level design, the quality of stealth gameplay is tied directly into level design. The original Dishonored was somewhat lacking in this regard, and path choices always felt scripted as a result. Arkane Studios must have realized this and decided to focus on that for the sequel. If this is true, then it paid off, because Dishonored 2 has some of the best level design of this year. There is an incredible sense of verticality to the levels in this game, and in every instance this verticality feels organic. In the original, the extent of the verticality was typically a random pipe jutting out from a wall where it didn't really make sense. In Dishonored 2, however, Most buildings have multiple floors, and NPCs are constantly occupying these floors, so the sense of verticality seems to have a worldbuilding purpose. While it's true that this added sense of verticality drastically takes away from the already meager difficulty in Dishonored 2, I can't deny just how well suited its level design is to its gameplay.



Level Design of the Year: Doom

In many shooters it's pretty clear where fights are going to take place. Any time you enter a large room with chest-high walls it becomes clear that you're going to be attacked. In Doom, however, this isn't the case. Giant arena, hallway, cramped ventilation area, anywhere is a possible place for a brawl. The gameplay in Doom is better suited for the larger arenas, but every area (no matter how small) allows the player to experiment. Much like in Uncharted 4, Doom's level design encourages adaptability. I've heard it said that every battle area in Doom is like a playground, and I would have to agree with that. Every battlefield has different levels of verticality and different levels of cover availability. This means that no two battles are exactly alike. In every battle the player needs to take note of their surroundings and alter their movement patterns accordingly. There is no single style in Doom's level design, and that is perfect for a fast-paced shooter like this one.



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Best Atmosphere:
When you think about it, atmosphere is the sum of many parts, all of which are technical. It depends on lighting, sound,  and field of view as well as good general technical performance. Think back to Amnesia: The Dark Descent. It created an oppressive atmosphere that made players dread to take another step even without having a threat present for about half the game. This was due to a number of technical accomplishments that the developers achieved. This award, needless to say, celebrates the games that best immerse players in their worlds through technical aspects.



#5): Dishonored 2

With an art style as unique as Dishonored 2's, it's a wonder that I was able to be immersed in the world. However, its excellent level design gave the entire game a more three-dimensional feel to it, and its masterful use of contrast between lighting and shadow did wonders for its atmosphere. Even in levels that took place in broad daylight, Dishonored 2 handled atmosphere admirably.



#4): Doom

Doom is, of course, very gory. It's easy to overdo things like that, and many developers do, in fact, overdo it. However, Bethesda and ID Software understood that creating a foreboding atmosphere requires that thought be put into placement and level of gore. There will be piles of flesh in corners just barely out of the way of the player, and this plants a little seed of discomfort that is expanded upon by Doom's expert lighting. Locations other than hell are always dark, but not so dark as to warrant a flashlight. The lighting creates a sense of isolation while still leaving players with the ability to see the destruction and mutilation that the demons have brought to the Mars base.



#3): The Guest

My one complaint about the atmosphere in The Guest is that its lighting is too dark. Even with the brightness turned up it's impossible to see some things in the game. However, other than that small complaint, The Guest is truly impressive as an atmospheric piece. Despite being an intricate puzzle game in the same vein as The Room (not to be confused with the Tommy Wiseau film by the same name), I felt a distinct sense of discomfort the entire time I was playing. It felt like I was seconds away from suddenly playing a horror game. So many aspects of The Guest work together to make this happen. For instance, everything in the game is rendered in an ultra-realistic way reminiscent of Gone Home. This by itself isn't unsettling, but much like in Gone Home, it's the way that the lighting interacts with this art style that makes it feel this way. Truth be told, before I started writing the writeup for this exact entry I hadn't made the connection between Gone Home and The Guest, but now that I've made that connection, it is really the perfect way to describe The Guest's atmosphere. Think of it as Gone Home but considerably darker.



#2): Islands: Non-Places

Islands: Non-Places has very little at work, so it was important that every aspect of it perform at its best. It would have been enough for it to do just that, but all of the pieces work together to form a surrealistic atmosphere the likes of which I've never quite seen before. Firstly, there's the art style. Every scene has a particular color palette, and everything in this scene adheres to that color palette. This ensures that each scenes gives off a certain feeling and nothing present distracts from it. Then there is the phenomenal sound design, which works as a backdrop to the color palette. An example that comes to mind is a scene in which a car drives up to a streetlamp, and as the scene goes on the parking lot becomes a series of apartments. In this scene the color palette adheres to dark navy blues and muted yellows to convey a day's end aesthetic. The sounds of this scene are things like footsteps going up stairs, a muffled tv, and the sounds of lights clicking off. Just hearing about it probably doesn't make it sound all that impressive, but the way that sound and color interact in this game is something to behold. Like I said, there is very little at work inside of Islands: Non-Places, but what little there is works together to set up not just one, but ten different atmospheres (each distinct in its overall feeling).



Atmosphere of the Year: Inside

Inside is a game that revels in its atmosphere. From beginning to end there is no reprieve from the oppressive dystopian atmosphere, and we can thank Inside's lighting, sound design, art style, soundtrack, and sense of contrast for this. It isn't the case with every game, but in Inside, the lighting and art style go hand in hand. I mentioned in an earlier category that fog hangs through the trees of the early forest sections like a blanket, and this is a direct result of both the way that the forest is rendered and the lighting in which it's rendered. Nearly everything is handled this way, with both the lighting and the art style crafting a baseline oppressive atmosphere, but what makes Inside truly stand out from a visual perspective is its sense of contrast. The standard color palette for Inside is basically white, gray, and some black. However, you may notice that the boy is wearing a red shirt. It's an interesting artistic choice to be sure, but it serves a purpose. Throughout the game, you might notice many instances of tiny little separations from the visual formula. For example, towards the beginning, a truck pulls away from the camera. This truck has red taillights. Likewise, in a segment before the boy reaches the city, there is a faintly yellow sky in the background. Then, in the submarine sequence, the submarine lights up a muted red as it charges up. Let me explain what I'm getting at here: If all of these contrasts were taken out, the atmosphere would certainly be dark, but it wouldn't have the same gripping level of discomfort. The boy wears red because it subconsciously gives the player a different kind of feeling. Were the entire game rendered in the exact same color palette from start to finish, there would be no frame of reference for the player. We would spend the entire time looking at the same three colors and we might end up getting used to it. However, when there are constantly little bits of visual dissonance thrown in, the rest of the visuals constantly look darker and more foreboding than something. I don't know if I actually got my point across with that bit, but another way to look at it is this: think about the little red blinkers at the top of radio towers that are there to keep planes from accidentally hitting them in the night. The night sky behind that blinker is always dark, but if you focus, it seems darker when there is suddenly a little spot of red in the center. I mentioned the soundtrack and sound design contributing to this atmosphere, but the way that they do so doesn't require much explanation. Inside is a prime example of how to use lighting and color in tandem to create a consistent feeling of discomfort. It is perhaps the most deserving winner of this category in Right Trigger history.



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The Character Awards

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Best Character Development:
Even in games like Bioshock: Infinite, where characters are more or less terribly written, there can sometimes be Booker DeWitts. Characters such as that often stand out and get put on the next few lists. However, this year I wanted to take a step back and recognize the five games that had stellar character development more or less across the board, as that is quite an achievement and it isn't one that I have touched on in the past.

[Spoilers for Orwell]



#5): Uncharted 4: A Thief's End

Yeah, Nathan Drake is a little bit of a stereotypical action hero, but Uncharted 4 took steps that the franchise has never taken before to give some more depth to its characters. In this installment we see Nathan Drake not just as a quipping moron but as something of an addict. We see him as a man seemingly afraid of settling down despite his efforts. This kind of treatment is given to just about every character in Uncharted 4.



#4): Oxenfree

Though Oxenfree does get lazy with characters like Ren and Nona, with other characters it went all out. It would have been so easy for Clarissa, the mean character, to just be that single trait. It would have been so easy for Jonas to just be the apathetic stepbrother. It would have been so easy for Alex to just be a female protagonist in a game. However, the team behind Oxenfree put in the work to make these typically easy characters something more.



#3): Firewatch

The only reason that Firewatch isn't further up this list is because it only really had to develop two characters. Both Henry and Delilah are flawlessly developed characters, but like I said, they were all the developers had to create. Regardless, through dialog alone we're able to establish the kind of woman Delilah is. We hear her talk about the son of one of the former Yellowstone workers and through hints in the dialogue it's implied that Delilah, while not one to settle down, is perhaps disappointed that she didn't get to have kids herself. Likewise, with Henry we hear tiny cues in his lines that would help us to understand how he feels about his wife's mental illness even if we hadn't already known about it.



#2): Mafia III

If as much effort had gone into the gameplay and mission design of Mafia III as into the character development, it would easily be a Game of the Year contender. Lincoln Clay, despite being perhaps a stale protagonist, is a complete hypocrite. Sal Marcano, the head of the mob, amasses all of his wealth as a chance to get out of crime and help his family lead a normal life. Father James faces internal conflict as he compromises Christ's teachings in order to help a man he watched grow up. Mafia III could have been as bog standard a mob story as they come, but it takes so many of the archetypes and turns them on their heads that it's difficult not to be impressed.



Character Development of the Year: Orwell

The characters in Orwell have a level of detail that I've never seen before. Because you essentially spy on everything they do, you get to see them in every one of their circles: their emails, their phone calls, their chats, their social media personas, the ways they're perceived by others, everything. In my review of Orwell, I mentioned that it truly felt like I was spying on real people, and I stand by that statement. So much detail is used to establish these characters that I can't help but feel that they must be based on living people. Let me give you an example: The character of Harrison O'Donnel is perhaps the Enjolras of the cast, a vehemently anti-government character who does most of the planning and work for the supposed terrorist group, "Thought." With every breath he takes he wishes for the destruction of the state. However, after further digging, it's revealed that he writes an opinion column for the Nation's #1 propaganda newspaper, and every article he writes for it supports the various bills that the Nation plans to put out. That much is made a major plot point, but there are other aspects that the plot doesn't draw attention to, such as the fact that he owns a joint health insurance account and, as can be inferred through a single picture on his phone, has a terminally ill mother. Here we see a man compromising every principle he has in order to help his mother. Like I said, the plot doesn't draw attention to it, but the trail is there for the player to follow if they so choose. This level of detail is afforded to every single character in the game.



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Best Voice Actress:
Normally I have a single category for performances, but there were so many fantastic performances this year that I had to split this category into two. So, this first performance award exists to celebrate the women who lent their voices to characters this year.

[Slight spoilers for Uncharted 4]



#5): Melissa Hutchison as Clementine (The Walking Dead: A New Frontier)

As usual, Melissa Hutchison gets a spot for her role as Clementine. Hutchison is an actress that has had more opportunity to be her character than most other actresses. She has played Clementine at all stages of this character's life: as a child, as a preteen, and now as a teenager. Hutchison has always astounded me with her ability to play the same character at different levels of maturity. Though we haven't yet seen her reach the emotional heights that she performed in past seasons, her performance in the first two episodes is good enough to land her on this list.



#4): Erin Yvette as Alex (Oxenfree)

Yvette's performance as Alex in Oxenfree is defined by its layers. At first glance, Alex is your standard blue-haired teenager with an identity more or less defined by what the internet says is "in," and Yvette's performance seems to cater to that kind of character. However, as the story progresses we see more of Alex's insecurities and past tragedies and we suddenly realize the nuance that has been sitting in the back of the voice acting. Unlike the other actresses on this list, Erin Yvette's performance is one that is so nuanced that is needs to be heard in order for you to understand what I'm getting at, but make no mistake, this is but more proof of Yvette's talent as a voice actress.



#3): Eden Riegel as Iris (Final Fantasy XV)

Even if you watch the film and anime series that precedes Final Fantasy XV, first impressions of Iris in the game are...shall we say, less than stellar? The first we hear from her is a phone call straight to Noctis, and there is an unmistakeable air of "I'm deeply in love with the protagonist and that is my only character trait" to her. With that, it's easy to write Iris off as your average anime unrequited love interest. Though the dialogue does give her a bit more character as the story progresses, what makes Iris end up standing out as a character is Eden Riegel's acting. Her voice is suited to the stereotype, but she ends up adding so much personality despite having a script that doesn't leave much room for development. That is truly the sign of a great actress: making the most of what you're given and crafting a believable and likable character with your acting alone. Eden Riegel could easily have won this category, but there were two other actresses who brought even stronger performances to the table.



#2): Cissy Jones as Delilah (Firewatch)

There's a reason that I felt like I knew Delilah despite only hearing her on the opposite side of a radio. That reason is Cissy Jones's remarkable performance. Delilah is a woman in her 40's who has spent most of her life working in Yellowstone and the outdoors in general, and her dedication to her work has cost her at times. In an earlier category I mentioned that I got a sense that Delilah, though she doesn't regret doing what she loves, regrets not being able to have children. I may also have mentioned that this is purely an inference and is not mentioned in the dialogue. However, Jones adds these little tonal nuances to certain lines that imply further backstory than we get in the script. It's one thing to work with a subpar script and make something good out of it as Eden Riegel did, but it's another thing entirely to work with an excellent script and make something even better.



Voice Actress of the Year: Emily Rose as Elena Fisher (Uncharted 4: A Thief's End)

In all my years of gaming, there has never been an actress who has brought as much personality to her character as Emily Rose does in her role as Elena Fisher. This has always been the case, but Rose brings an even greater A game in Uncharted 4 than she has in previous installments. I've heard Elena referred to as a "high school crush," and even in this slightly darker installment I can see the comparison. There is a particular point early on in the game in which we get a look at what life in the Drake household is like. After a brief argument, Elena excuses herself to go and do the dishes, but Nathan stops her and says that he should do it. This continues for a bit and then Nathan offers to "play her" for it. He then bets that he can beat her high score on her "tv game thing" (Crash Bandicoot), and if he does, then she can do the dishes because he will have earned the night off. There is then an exchange to this effect:
Elena: You're gonna beat my high score on my 'tv game thing'?
Nathan: Yep
Elena: You don't even know what its called!
These lines themselves probably don't seem like much, but Emily Rose imbues them with such charm, such personality, such amusement at her husband's antics that it makes the entire moment memorable. But Rose's performance quality doesn't end with the positive moments in the story. There is also a moment about halfway through the game where Nathan is caught in a lie and Elena shows up at his location to call him on it. In this sequence she delivers her lines with such a perfect combination of heartbreak, anger, and confusion that I was legitimately breathing through my teeth the whole time and wincing because of how much trouble I could sense that Nathan was in. Emily Rose is one of my favorite voice actresses, and her performance as Elena Fisher in Uncharted 4: A Thief's End further reinforces this.



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Best Voice Actor:
Much like the previous category celebrated the women who played characters in video games this year, this category aims to celebrate the men who did the same. I feel like that was pretty self-explanatory, but I didn't want to just have one line of explanation for this category. This was a great year for actresses, but while there were still quality performances, it wasn't a great year for male actors. So, without further ado, let us see which five voice actors were the cream of the crop in 2016.



#5): Gavin Hammon as Jonas (Oxenfree)

If you were to just listen to Gavin Hammon's performance as Jonas in Oxenfree without knowing anything about him, you could be forgiven for thinking that he was just an ok actor. After all, Jonas doesn't require a great deal of skill to play. However, when you stop and think about the fact that Mr. Hammon was Kenny in Telltale's The Walking Dead, it becomes all the more clear just how talented he is. The fact that he plays a teenager thrown into an awkward situation as well as he plays a Floridan family man with a killer mustache shows that he really has chops.



#4): Jeff Schine as Javier (The Walking Dead: A New Frontier)

As of yet, we have only experienced two episodes of Jeff Schine's performance as Javier. However, in these two episodes, Schine has tackled every situation Javier has been put into with grace. He does a better job as Javier than Dave Fennoy did as Lee (as much as it pains me to say it), and I am looking forward to hearing more from this actor.



#3): Chase Austin as Young Sam Drake (Uncharted 4: A Thief's End)

Perhaps you've never heard of Chase Austin, and if true, that would be understandable. He is fairly young, after all, and this small role would appear to be one of his larger roles. However, I can say with certainty that Mr. Austin is going places. Troy Baker, one of my absolute favorites, played Sam Drake for the rest of the game, and yet Chase Austin's performance was superior. Not only is Mr. Austin's performance believable as a younger version of a Troy Baker character, but it is also believable on its own. I don't know what Chase Austin's next projects are, but he is a voice actor to keep an eye on in the future.



#2): Gordon Greene as Father James (Mafia III)

Father James is a character that you know has a long and troubled past just by listening to him. Every word he speaks seems to come from a place of hope ravaged on all sides by sadness. The developers of Mafia III could easily have just hired some Joe Blow off the street to play a standard preacher character, but instead they hired Gordon Greene. Now, I've never seen or listened to anything else that Greene has done, so I don't know what his performances typically entail. So, as a first time Greene experiencer, I can say with certainty that he is talented. He speaks with a weariness that truly fits the character. He delivers lines about truly believing that Lincoln Clay is a good boy, and Greene's performance shows the little sliver of doubt that Father James has. Even though Mafia III isn't an incredible game, it's worth playing to experience Gordon Greene's performance as Father James.



Voice Actor of the Year: Nolan North as Remy Duvall (Mafia III) and Nathan Drake (Uncharted 4: A Thief's End)

Let me be honest: even though Troy Baker is my favorite voice actor, Nolan North is the best one. I can't count the number of times that I've finished a game and looked up who played whom and found that Nolan North had, unbeknownst to me, played a certain character. He is just that versatile. I, of course, know him best as Nathan Drake in the Uncharted series, but this year he had another role that cemented his place as the winner of this category. I was playing Mafia III, and I got through the point in the game where Lincoln infiltrates a KKK meeting being led by a local radio personality, Remy Duvall. What puts North's performance ahead of all the others is the way he performs his controversial content. The majority of North's dialogue is a speech littered with racism. What makes his performance so fascinating is the conviction with which he spurts the racism. As he delivers his lines you can practically hear him spitting into his microphone from how angry he is about racial integration. Countless people have played racists before, but they almost always think that saying the lines is enough to convince people that they are racist. That isn't true. While its certainly true that people from my generation will buy that Columbia (from Bioshock: Infinite) is racist because there are cardboard cutouts of stereotypes, that isn't how to handle the content compellingly. The way to truly convince people that something or someone in your game is racist is to have your actors deliver lines declaring African Americans "bug-eyed big-lipped savages" with so much hatred that they stumble on some of the words. That is what Nolan North does, and it is what makes him the winner in this category.



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Lamest Character:
Character development, much like writing, is an art that is lost on most developers. Every year there are a host of quipping morons who try to be Nathan Drake but fail and female characters whose first line is "I can handle myself." I seem to be bringing Bioshock: Infinite up quite a bit this year, but it once again is relevant. Most of the plot revolved around Elizabeth, but Elizabeth was a terrible character, and as a result the plot was completely lost. It might have had a half-decent story even with all the pandering multiverse nonsense had Elizabeth not been a lame character. Kingdoms of Amalur is another good example. Its story was unique and actually quite good, but every character was a mess, so it all just came off as corny. The point is that lame characters can bring otherwise decent stories down. These five characters were the lamest of this year.



#5): Gabe (The Walking Dead: A New Frontier)

Gabe is better developed than any other character on this list, which is what puts him at the very bottom. He is, however, insufferable to listen to. He's definitely a different type of character than Telltale has given us before in that he's a sullen teenager, but that doesn't mean he's a good character. He's basically just on this list because I don't like him, but that's exactly what this list is for.



#4): Ren (Oxenfree)

Ok, so Ren reminds me of certain people I went to college with and that alone would earn him a spot on this list, but there's more to it than that. In a game in which such care was given to make stereotypical characters more three-dimensional, it's all the more disappointing that Ren was lame. In a game that took a stereotypical mean girl and gave her plenty of development, it was disappointing that the developers couldn't do the same with a stereotypical stoner. There was so much room for development that Night School Studios didn't make use of, and as a result, Ren's lack of development really shows.



#3): Cassandra (Mafia III)

Given how many incredibly strong, well-developed people of color there are in Mafia III, it was such a shame that the single woman of color was neither of these things. The leader of the Haitian mob, Cassandra was shaping up to be a powerful player after pretending to be a victim to escape execution by Lincoln Clay. However, as soon as she was recruited into Clay's mob, all potential was thrown out the window. Rather than a force to be reckoned with, Cassandra just became a decoration with an attitude. Thankfully, Cassandra is the only female character on this list this year, but it's still a shame that a developer that otherwise did such a good job with character development couldn't get this character right.



#2): Rotomdex (Pokemon Sun/Moon)

To be fair, Rotomdex only exists to help small children make progress in the game, but I still had to listen to it ramble on and make not funny jokes, so it makes this list. Rotomdex is a pokedex that has a Pokemon called Rotom living in it. As the game progresses, Rotomdex gives you your objectives and comments on story events. It is always guaranteed to break whatever tone the story builds up and distract you from what you're doing. As if that weren't bad enough, Rotomdex also stores your map on the bottom screen of the 3DS, but you can't look at your map until Rotomdex stops talking. The talking restarts if you open up a menu in the middle of it. Rotomdex is an all around mess, but it wasn't the worst character of this year. Not by a longshot.



Lamest Character of the Year: Urki (Far Cry: Primal)

It seems like in every Ubisoft sandbox, there is at least one character that breaks the tone of the rest of the game. In Far Cry 3, it was the scientist character from towards the beginning. In Far Cry 4, it was the two drug experiment guys. However, no lame Ubisoft character has anything on Urki from Far Cry: Primal. Tell me this: What would be a good character to have in a prehistoric story about a tribesman's quest for revenge and his desire to restore his tribe to its former glory? If I had to take a guess, I'd say you didn't answer: a guy with a texan accent who is fat and makes jokes about having B.O. Seriously, who thought it was a good idea to put a character like that in a game like this? The missions involving Urki are always..."comedic"...missions. They involve helping him to be like animals, and your efforts always fail. In other words, there is no point to doing any quests with him, but Ubisoft still saw fit to give this walking bathroom joke a place in Far Cry: Primal. Unbelievable.



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Best Love Interest:
You know, I've never once actually been called a sexist for having this category. That may be because I put this disclaimer up every year or it may just be because nobody actually thinks of this category as sexist and I'm just a bitter, pessimistic dude, but having gone to a liberal arts college I know that some forms of architecture are considered misogynistic, so you never know. As I say every year, this is not a "hottest girls" list. Rather, I like to think of it this way: Oftentimes in game stories there is a sidekick and a love interest. There typically isn't enough room in the best supporting character list for both of them, so I put this award together to give these characters (who are female at least 95% of the time) a chance to shine. This award examines love interests from a critical perspective: how well exactly do these characters function as love interests? How exactly do they work as a team with the protagonist? How fleshed out are they in general? These are the questions that this award asks. These are the five characters who best filled the role of love interest.

[Spoilers for Dark Souls III]



#5): Anri of Astora (Dark Souls III)

Anri of Astora is kind of an odd case, as Dark Souls has never been known to have love interests. However, she/he is not so much an actual love interest as he/she is a means of getting another ending that just so happens to involve a dark marriage. At this point, Dark Souls III has been out for many months, but if you want to avoid spoilers, head to the next entry on this list. You've been warned. In order for the Unkindled One to become the leader of the undead, they must partake in a dark ritual. Throughout the game, Anri is a friend to the player, and at a certain point, once certain requirements have been met, a spokeswoman of Londor tells the player that to become the leader of the undead, they most join with Anri in matrimony. This is not what it sounds like, however, as it essentially means that Anri is ritually sacrificed by the player. Obviously this isn't quite what one thinks of when they think of the term "love interest," but her plotline is just so darned interesting that I couldn't help but put her on here.



#4): Miss Agona (Reigns)

Much of the story intrigue in Reigns comes from Miss Agona. A minor noblewoman, she and the king can carry on an absolutely steamy love affair that brings scandal to the entire kingdom. Support from the church dwindles every second while this goes on. Some love interests are on this list because they themselves are compelling characters, others are on here because of what they add to the story. Much like Aelinore from Dragon's Dogma, Miss Agona's presence as a love interest adds a layer of political turmoil to the table that strengthen's the kinds of stories that Reigns can tell.



#3): M4 Sherman (Panzermadels)

This spot could have been held by any of the love interests in Panzermadels, as they are all compelling characters and all serve the exact same purpose in the plot...which is to say, "Jack Diddley save for being a love interest." Obviously what would put any of them on this list isn't their role in the story, but rather how compellingly they're written and fleshed out. I chose M4 Sherman as opposed to the other Panzermadels characters for this spot primarily because she was my favorite. Being a famous American tank, Sherman has a supremely overconfident personality and a mischievous sense of humor that gets the protagonist into trouble more times than one. But beyond that, it felt like the developers put the most time into developing her character. She is the first tank we meet and she has the most unique dialogue of the bunch...Look, this entry has been a chore to write because no matter how many times I write and rewrite these sentences, I know that I'm writing about an anime girl in a visual novel dating simulator. I've said my piece about Panzermadels, though, so I'm not afraid to come out and say that, yes, M4 Sherman was the third best love interest in gaming this year.



#2): Delilah (Firewatch)

There is a level of moral sketch factor involved with Delilah as a love interest, because Henry is married while she is in that role. Sure, his wife is living under supervision because of mental illness, but that doesn't make him any less married. However, as I've made a point of saying, this award is about a character's performance as a love interest and how they work with the protagonist, and Henry is just as involved in this relationship as she is anyway. Moral questions aside, Delilah helps Henry through some of his inner demons through her companionship. Very little is told to us about Henry and Delilah's relationship, but I'd always assumed that they never actually met in person. Not only does that take away some of the moral issues, but it also kind of strengthens Delilah as both a love interest and a character. If we stick with this interpretation of the plot, that they never met in person, then Delilah keeps Henry off the ledge and helps him work through his grief just by engaging him in conversation. Love interest or not, that is an impressive feat for any character.



Love Interest of the Year: Elena Fisher (Uncharted 4: A Thief's End)

Elena Fisher is one of my favorite love interests in any franchise. She is just so well developed as a character and as a personality that I can't help but think that maybe Neil Druckmann based her off of his wife or something. Of the characters on this list, Elena is the most realistic of them all. As the game starts, she and Nathan are a force to be reckoned with: taking turns to do the dishes, being invested in each others' work, sharing legitimately touching moments, etc. She even encourages Nathan to take a slightly illegal but adventuresome job with his boss because she knows that it would make him happy. As the story goes on, Nathan leaves home to find this game's particular treasure and lies and tells Elena that he took the job she suggested. Eventually Elena realizes that she's been lied to, and so she goes out to where Nathan is and chastises him in a manner so convincing that my theory about her being based off of Druckmann's wife seems all the more true. After he explains himself, she, with tears in her eyes, tells him, "you're supposed to come to me with these things so we can handle them as a team." That's as far in the story as I'll go in the interest of avoiding spoiling too much, but hopefully you get the picture by now. Elena is constantly pushing the protagonist towards self-improvement and happiness, but never at the expense of her own happiness. She and Nathan work together better than any other protagonist/love interest duo this year. Couple that with the quality of her character alone, and she is more than deserving of the top spot on this list.



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Best Supporting Character:
I've tried to keep examples within the medium as much as I can, but for this the best example will always be Frodo and Samwise. Protagonists are the eyes through which we see the narrative world, but it is the side characters that give the world its flavor. Oftentimes a protagonist is met with so much adversity that it falls to others to rescue them. Unfortunately, this year was crap for supporting characters. However, these five characters were the characters that best filled this role in 2016.



#5): Trico (The Last Guardian)

Well, he's not much of a help, but I had to have him on this list somewhere because he's so cute that I can hardly stand it...well...that and this year was freaking terrible in terms of its selection of quality supporting characters.



#4): The Sergeant (Panzermadels)

Again, not much of a help. However, he is a side character that is neither the antagonist nor the love interest, so he is eligible for this list. The Sergeant is the comedic relief for Panzermadels, and at that he absolutely excels, so I suppose his placement on this list isn't a total throwaway.



#3): Tripp (The Walking Dead: A New Frontier)

Now here is where we start seeing the truly good side characters. Tripp is either a guard or some kind of leader in the settlement of Prescott. It's his job to keep the peace, so when Javier and Clementine accidentally cause some trouble, he could have done anything. However, he decided to help Javier to get back to his group. As the story continues, Tripp becomes a reliable source of muscle in addition to just being a standup guy. I look forward to seeing how Tripp is developed before his untimely death at some point in a later episode.



#2): Pokemon (Pokemon Sun/Moon)

I was originally going to give this spot to Popplio, as it was my favorite starter of this generation and one of my favorite starters in years, but I think this spot can go to literally any Pokemon. Pokemon are just the best: they're your friends, they help you get to places, they'll defend you against threats, they sometimes resemble my black Labrador, the list of positives goes on and on. What puts them this high up the list is the fact that they really do all the work in the Pokemon games.



Supporting Character of the Year: Father James (Mafia III)

Father James wins this category mainly because his helping of the protagonist feeds directly into the incredible depth of development that he experiences. Father James is a priest who abhors violence and loves the people he helps. He watched the protagonist, Lincoln Clay, grow up. He believes that, at the heart level, Lincoln is a good boy. So, Father James occasionally assists Lincoln in one of his criminal activities in spite of the teachings he dedicated his life to. Sometimes helping a protagonist is a self-destructive process, but Father James loved Lincoln so much that he was willing to help him conquer the city because deep down, he held a sliver of hope that Lincoln could be saved. Father James wins this category because of his depth. I just wish that he had won in a better year for side characters, because he truly deserves to win.



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Best Antagonist:
Antagonists are not necessary for a story to be good. Personally, however, I've always found that the man vs man style of conflict is the most compelling. I find that a conflict has more of an impact when its focal point has the kind of complexity that comes with another human being. This award celebrates the villains who best made their conflicts compelling.

[Spoilers for Final Fantasy XV and Pokemon Sun/Moon]



#5): Dr. Fisher (Valley)

Dr. Fisher is the scientist behind Project Pendulum: a weapons development endeavor masquerading as an alternate energy program in the 1940's. Much like Andrew Ryan in Bioshock, Fisher found himself up against a superior mind and was dedicated to "beating" him. Instead of Frank Fontaine, Fisher's intellectual rival is Robert Oppenheimer, leader of the Manhattan project. Fisher is dedicated to creating a superweapon that dwarfs the atomic bomb, and he is willing to destroy all life in the valley to achieve this goal.



#4): Sal Marcano (Mafia III)

For years, Sal Marcano ran the New Bordeaux mob, flooding the streets with heroin and murder. However, at around the time the plot for Mafia III picks up, Marcano realizes that the life of crime is putting his children at risk. So, unlike most villains, during the story, Marcano is trying to start a legitimate business to get out of the mob and secure a safer future for his children. That alone would make him an interesting character, but the fact that he is the villain of the piece makes this utterly wholesome goal all the more interesting.



#3): Ardyn Izunia (Final Fantasy XV)

If a villain cannot be well-developed, they should at least be melodramatic enough to be entertaining. If you do enough research into Ardyn Izunia, he perhaps becomes slightly better developed, but the ultimate reason that Ardyn is on this list is the role that he plays in the story. Much like Atlas in Bioshock, Ardyn helps the player along throughout the plot. In fact, were it not for Ardyn, Noctis and friends would never have gotten past certain conflicts. I won't say why this is the case, but as the story goes on we start to see that there's more to this character than meets the eye.



#2): Otar Botkaveli (Deus Ex: Mankind Divided)

Otar Botkaveli is a minor character in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, so minor that he only shows up once and speaks to you over a radio twice more in the story. However, in that short time, he stands out as a far greater villain than the actual villain of the story. He is one of the figureheads of the major crime family in Prague, and he is a man with a fixation on honor and honesty. You meet Otar as part of a side quest where you need to get something from him. In return for this item he requests that you do him a favor at some unspecified time. Being a man of honor, Otar gives up this item upon our word that you'll be up the task when he calls upon you. Otar may not get much screen time in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, but he is a fascinating character.



Antagonist of the Year: Lusamine (Pokemon Sun/Moon)

[You would not believe the amount of weird fan art I had to sift through to find this picture. *shiver*]
This may very well be the first time that a Pokemon villain makes any spot on any best antagonists list. However, Lusamine truly earns it. Normally Pokemon villains are misguided idealists that lead groups of people to make some kind of world-changing catastrophe happen by awakening the region's legendary Pokemon. They are usually two-dimensional and have only one character trait in their ideals. In Pokemon Sun/Moon, however, Game Freak decided to change the villain type from misguided idealist to emotionally abusive mother. Pokemon's target demographic is still children, so Lusamine was still a relatively kid-friendly villain, but the emotional abuse tactics that she employs can easily be recognized. She plans to harm a Pokemon that her daughter loves in order to accomplish her goals, and when her daughter begs with her to spare the Pokemon, Lusamine refuses and adds the statement: "Maybe if you'd been a better daughter I would have listened." This is a common emotional abuse tactic where the abusive parent harms their child's beloved pet or "harms" a toy and blames it on their child's bad behavior. Obviously this is a watered down version of that tactic, but its still recognizable. Lusamine wins this spot not just because she stands out amongst villains in her franchise, but because she is a potent villain in her own right.



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Best Protagonist:
As I said a few categories ago, protagonists are the eyes through which we see the narrative world. Who the bad guys are, how hopeful the world is, we come to conclusions about these things because of the protagonist. Unlike movies or novels, games actually do require a protagonist in order to have a good story 99% of the time. Even Heavy Rain, which had four main characters, had a protagonist in Ethan Mars. This year was a better year for protagonists than it was for side characters, and these ten were the best of the best.

[Spoilers for Pokemon Sun/Moon and Oxenfree]



#10): Erwin Lemmor (Panzermadels)

Erwin Lemmor is kind of a...I believe the right word would be lech. However, I would be lying if I said that he didn't take the problems given to him and run with them. Erwin is a military student being sent to learn about tank warfare, but instead he ends up being sent to "tank school," as in school for tanks. As in the students are tanks that look like anime girls. However, despite the misunderstanding and despite his own kind of frat boy interactions with the girls, he steps up to the plate to help the tanks afford their yearly retreat.



#9): Adam Jensen (Deus Ex: Mankind Divided)

Though a little bit too gravely-voiced, Adam Jensen is nonetheless a capable character. After the aug incident, Jensen joined interpol to try and reduce the fallout from the event. In a world that despises augmented people like him, Jensen still steps up to the plate to try and help all people; augmented or otherwise. He isn't the most developed character ever made, but he is still a more than decent protagonist.



#8): Lincoln Clay (Mafia III)

Lincoln Clay falls under the "anti-hero" category, as his actions really do more harm than good. After Sal Marcano's mob kills Lincoln's adopted father and brothers and leaves him for dead, Lincoln dedicates his life to bringing down Marcano. What makes him an interesting character, though, is the anti-hero aspect. The game is about dismantling Marcano's operations, but then Lincoln simply takes them over, flooding the streets with just as much heroin and moonshine as Marcano. Lincoln is literally a worse person than Marcano ever was, but like most anti-heroes, he thinks himself justified because of the concept of "eye for an eye."



#7): Nathan Drake (Uncharted 4: A Thief's End)

Any other year, Nathan Drake wouldn't even remotely make this list. In any other Uncharted game, Nathan Drake is just an action hero. However, in Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, we get to see a different side of Nathan. Instead of just your standard quipping action hero, we see a man who gets his sense of legitimacy from adventure. At the start of Uncharted 4, Nathan is working an honest job with a salvage company and is married to Elena Fisher, the love interest from the previous titles. We get to see him living the kind of life that many people would be lucky to be able to lead, and yet it isn't enough for him. The reason Nathan Drake makes this list this year is because of the added depth he's gotten since previous titles.



#6): Noctis (Final Fantasy XV)

At first, Noctis was an entry on the lamest character list. After all, he has stupid anime boy hair and spends the entire first half of the game emitting pure anime boy angst. However, as the story continues and the tone shifts, Noctis gets much greater development as a character. We see him take charge of his destiny and take on the responsibilities that fall to him as the new king of Lucis. We also get to see the lengths that he would go to to help his friends. He started off as your average anime protagonist, but Square Enix does a fine job of transforming this character as the plot thickens.



#5): The Doomslayer (Doom)

"In the first age, in the first battle, when the shadows first lengthened, one stood. He chose the path of perpetual torment. In his ravenous hatred he found no peace, and with boiling blood he scoured the Umbral plains seeking vengeance against the dark lords who had wronged him. And those that tasted the bite of his sword named him 'The Doomslayer.'"
How many protagonists can you think of that are so feared by the legions of hell that this is written about them? Throughout the game you can see this terror in the demons. There is always a look of fear in their eyes as you perform a glory kill on them. Even without the legendary status of the Doom guy, he gets better development through simple gestures than many AAA characters get with lines upon lines of dialogue. We learn that the Doomslayer disapproves of sacrificing human life from the way he cracks his knuckles in response to a visual cue at one point, etc. It isn't often that a character whose sole purpose is to kill as many demons as possible gets such great, subtle character development, but the Doomslayer is one such character.



#4): The Player (Pokemon Sun/Moon)

The main character of Pokemon Sun and Moon version is around 11 of 12 and yet they accomplish so much. They manage to interact with Alola's legendary Pokemon, both of which are said to be myths. They do this not for glory or to bend the world to their will, but to help one of their friends rescue her mother. They become the Alola region's very first champion, and in so doing, show the world that the Alola region can produce strong trainers as well. They help the local professor test an experimental (and let's be honest, probably controversial) Pokemon-powered pokedex. They also help with the ascension of a new island Kahuna and are deemed worthy by the guardian deities of each of the Alolan islands. The main character in Pokemon Sun and Moon may seem like just a kid, but their list of accomplishments dwarfs that of just about any other Pokemon protagonist.



#3): The Unkindled One (Dark Souls III)

Buried in an unmarked grave, the unkindled one set forth from the firelink shrine into the kingdom of Lothric to help the Lords of Cinder return to their thrones. They venture from the gilded halls of Lothric castle to the freezing Irithyll of the Boreal Valley battling hideous monsters and skilled warriors alike to achieve their goal and to aid in the possible rekindling of the first flame. No amount of gruesome deaths dissuades them from seeing their mission through to the end. That alone would have been an impressive feat, but their mission also involves challenging each Lord of Cinder and overcoming their might. Each Lord of Cinder is a being that at one point rekindled the first flame and kept the world from being plunged into an age of darkness. Each Lord of Cinder proved their mettle in ages long past, and yet they are all felled by the Unkindled One. Sure, the Unkindled One isn't a well-developed character, but they are a force to be reckoned with, nonetheless.



#2): Henry (Firewatch)

Both Henry and the winner of this category have a slight advantage in that they're average Joes. Henry was just a normal guy with a happy marriage, a dog, and a job that paid well enough to pay the bills and live happily. However, as the years went on, his beloved wife started showing signs of mental illness, and it only grew worse. Eventually his wife had to retire from her professorship, and it became his responsibility to care for her. He was only able to do so for a while, and in the end, he passed off the care to someone else (If I remember correctly, it was a different person or institution depending on choices made in the prologue). Following his wife's admittance into another's care, Henry went out to work in Yellowstone National Park for a summer as a way of clearing his head and working through his grief. All of this happens before the game even properly starts. As the game progresses, Henry seems to fall in love with his supervisor, a woman named Delilah, and the two of them form a bond over the course of the summer. From there we get to see exactly how Henry's mind tries to reconcile his wife's condition with his newfound enjoyment of life, and it's fascinating to experience. Henry may not exactly be the most morally upstanding character of all time, but he is definitely one of the best developed characters of this year. He could have easily won this category were it not for one other character.



Protagonist of the Year: Alex (Oxenfree)

Alex, like Henry, is an average Joe (Jane?). A high school senior at the time of the game's plot, Alex finds herself faced with a pretty major life change: a new stepbrother about her age. Suddenly having to share your space with somebody you've never met before would be a jarring experience for anybody, but for Alex it's even more upsetting. A few years or so before the start of the game, Alex's biological brother drowned on a trip they took together to celebrate his acceptance into college. Since then, Alex has never stopped blaming herself for the tragedy, and now she finds herself being asked to accept a new brother she has never met before. That is the setup for Oxenfree, but as the story continues, Alex's development only gets better. As a sinister paranormal force starts putting the lives of both her and her friends in danger, Alex realizes that she's the only person capable of fixing everything. Certain events happen in the plot that would be enough to break any person's will, but Alex's dedication to her friends and her underlying promise to never let her brother's fate befall anyone else wins out at every bump in the road. Alex wins this category this year because, in addition to being one of the best developed protagonists of the year, she is also the most capable of them all, despite being a normal person.



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The Aspect Awards

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Best Boss:
Anybody who has ever played a video game is familiar with the concept of a boss. Maybe you remember a particularly enjoyable boss fight, or maybe you remember a boss that made you throw your controller out of anger. Boss fights are meant to be exams at the end of sections. They are meant to make sure you have been paying attention through the game up until the point in question. If you aren't yet adept enough with the game controls or with certain mechanics, you will not be able to proceed. It is one area in which games differ quite drastically from other mediums. You never see novels testing their readers at the end of every chapter and you definitely don't see Vin Diesel asking audience members to perform stunts halfway through a Fast and Furious movie. Regardless, these were the five bosses that I thought were the most memorable this year.



#5): The Alpha (Valley)

Valley takes the idea of the first person shooter and somewhat turns it on its head. There is only one boss fight in the game, and it's one of the more unique sequences. While it doesn't necessarily test your shooting skills as other first person shooters might, it does test your grasp of the game's mobility. There are times when this fight feels akin to a bullet hell game, and to beat The Alpha you need to be able to fight while maintaining control over jumps and the like. The only reason that this boss isn't further up the list is because I felt that it could have tested the mobility a bit more. There could have, say, been grappling points around the arena to help with dodging or something like that. Either way, The Alpha was quite a good boss fight, especially considering the game's Unity engine upbringing.



#4): Abyss Watchers (Dark Souls III)

Mob bosses are more common in the Souls series than in any other series in history, I'd imagine. That is to say, in Souls games there are quite a few bosses that are essentially a bunch of enemies with individual health bars that feed into a shared gigantic health bar. The Abyss Watchers are one such boss. As you enter the arena, a single member of the legion comes to fight you, but as time passes, more and more arise and join the fray. In other words, as the battle progresses you have to adapt to watching an increasing number of enemies. When you finally drain the collective health bar to zero, there is one final stage with a single member of the legion. This member of the legion has been buffed and is more aggressive. In addition to being one of the most beautiful fights in the game, the Abyss Watchers are legitimately a great test of skill for the player, as they are never as aggressive or damaging as some bosses later on in the game.



#3): Chrystal Gwyn (Hyper Light Drifter)

Being the semi bullet hell game that it is, most bosses in Hyper Light Drifter don't move much and instead let their attacks spread over large areas. The boss that I refer to as "Chrystal Gwyn" is not this kind of boss. Indeed, the reason the fight with Lord Gwyn from Dark Souls comes to mind is this boss's aggression, speed, and adaptability. If you're anything like me, you probably will end up fighting Chrystal Gwyn after the other story bosses, making him the final battle before the main boss. If you end up taking the bosses in that order, Chrystal Gwyn is a perfect test. He tests your ability to dash at a moment's notice and he tests your knowledge of when to attack and when to be on the defensive. While he is certainly the most frustrating of the bosses in Hyper Light Drifter (even more so than the final boss), there's no denying that he is also the best.



#2): Guard of Hell (Doom)

I personally thought that the Guard of Hell wasn't nearly as difficult as the Cyberdemon, but I had more fun fighting the Guard of Hell. Not only that, but there were times when the battle against the Cyberdemon felt cheap, and there were no such moments in the battle against the Guard of Hell. At a point late in the game, the Doomslayer comes up against this boss - a massive suit of armor with a club that might as well be a Final Fantasy weapon - and it forces the player to pull out all the stops. The Guard of Hell has an energy shield that turns off when it attacks, so it forces the player to both attack and take evasive maneuvers simultaneously. As the battle progresses, its arsenal of attacks grows larger and the player must learn to adapt to these new attacks, nearly all of which are faster and cause more damage. Then, as if that weren't enough, upon its death two more Guards of Hell arrive and the player must deal with two of them at the same time. The key here is that this fight is always manageable, even on the hardest difficulty. It simply requires complete focus and mastery of the Doom gameplay style, which is exactly what a boss is supposed to require.



Boss of the Year: Final Boss (Dark Souls III)

I can't say exactly what the final boss is, but I can tell you why it was good enough to give this award to. This final boss is perhaps the most aggressive of the bosses in Dark Souls III, has the most expansive move set, and has a little twist to it that nobody sees coming until it's too late. However, the final boss is never unmanageable (unlike a certain king without a name who rides on something and uses lightning), so it is quite an intensive final examination. This alone would have been enough to place it high on this list, but there are fascinating lore implications behind it that make it all the more interesting.



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Best Collecting:
Collecting is not, by any stretch of the imagination, necessary for a game to be good. However, collectibles, when done right, add immeasurable value to a game. Take Far Cry 3, for example. The collectibles in that game would cause the player to explore the island, reaching places they might otherwise never have considered. These collectibles also added to the player's experience in that they would give the player things like extra bits of lore about the island and even skill points to spend. Collectibles, when done right, cause the player to become more immersed in the game world, and the best kinds of collectibles have some kind of positive impact as well. Regardless of whether or not they were actually used for anything, these five games had the most compelling collectibles of any games this year.



#5): Dishonored 2

While Dishonored 2 didn't have an incredible variety of collectibles, incredible variety is not needed and frankly it typically takes away from the experience. Really, the only things you collect in Dishonored 2 are little pieces of memorabilia for the home base, runes, and bone charms. The runes help you upgrade and purchase new powers while the bone charms each give you a unique advantage in combat and stealth. Seeking out all the runes will help you to grow your arsenal, while seeking out all the bone charms gives you a wide variety of advantages to choose from. The only reason Dishonored 2 isn't higher on this list is because the little pieces of memorabilia don't do anything and you don't really know you're collecting them until you happen to accidentally read about it online.



#4): Pokemon Sun/Moon

In truth, Pokemon games are mainly about collecting. It's your duty to catch 'em all, and it's no different in Sun and Moon. The Pokedex in Sun and Moon has a satisfying little percentage calculator that shows the percentage of available Pokemon you've caught on each of the four islands. This lets you plan out where you're going to go next to seek out new Pokemon. What makes Pokemon Sun and Moon stand out in the collecting department, however, is the fact that the "National Pokedex" is no longer included. In previous titles, you would be given an updated Pokedex after completing the game that allows you to store data on Pokemon not found in that game. This essentially means that after beating the game, all of your visual progress in the Pokedex was thrown out the window. In Sun and Moon, however, this never happens. This means that you can keep on collecting and feeling like you're making progress.



#3): Mafia III

Mafia III is the one game on this list whose collectibles have absolutely no practical value except to further immerse the player in the world. The game takes place in the 1960's, and to help the player feel more like they're in that time period, the collectibles are all little tidbits from that era. There are album covers, pinup paintings, auto magazines, communist propaganda from the local university students, vintage playboy magazines, and religious paraphernalia from the time. Each one of these collectibles helped me to feel more like I was playing around in the 60's and not...say....a lackluster sandbox game...look, the point is that I was compelled enough to seek out each and every one of these collectibles in a less than stellar game. If that isn't a testament to the quality of these collectibles, I don't know what is.



#2): Far Cry: Primal

I know that Ubisoft goes crazy with the collectibles and that it's a staple of the run-of-the-mill Ubisoft sandbox to have a map littered with hundreds upon hundreds of them. I can't help it, though. I just have a soft spot in my heart for Far Cry ever since Far Cry 3. Its a tradition for me to go out and find every collectible in a new Far Cry game, no matter what, and I did just that with Far Cry: Primal. Make no mistake, the collectibles in Far Cry: Primal are not as high quality as in 3, but unlike Far Cry 4, these collectibles encourage exploration of deep caves and places in Oros that I might not otherwise have gone, and that marks a successful collectible system to me.



Most Compelling Collecting of the Year: Doom

With Doom, I use the term "collectibles" a bit liberally. In this case its more like "secrets," but they're treated like collectibles are treated in other games, so I'm counting it. The kinds of secrets you find depends on the level, but they are always compelling. You can find little action figures that make noise, levels from the classic Doom games from the 90's, weapon attachments, secret powerups, little arcade games that are hidden away in corners, suit upgrade tokens, upgrades to your ammo, health, and armor, all kinds of things. As if it couldn't get any better, all of these secrets come with a reward. For every secret you find, you get a weapon upgrade point to spend on improving your weapons. If you find every secret in a level you get two additional points. So, much like in Far Cry 3, there is an incentive to seek out every little thing besides the pleasure of having found them.



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Best Overarching Location:
Historically this has been a single award, but last year I found that there were so many compelling locations that I had to split it into two. This year I am still holding to that. There are times when a game's entire setting is compelling but the parts that make up the whole just aren't. This award is meant to give recognition to settings that are compelling on their own, regardless of the smaller locations within these settings.



#5): Eos (Final Fantasy XV)

Eos is a location that seems to have existed for thousands of years. As you wander the deserts and wetlands, you'll often come across forgotten tombs of ancient kings or abandoned parking lots from days in the not-so-distant past. Despite most locations having an overarching theme that dominates the entire area, every rock and every tree feels like it was put where it is on purpose.



#4): Karnaca (Dishonored 2)

Karnaca is called "the jewel of the south" in the Empire of the Isles. It has an architectural style that I believe is influenced by Portugal. Karnaca's streets are made up of cramped apartment buildings and sketchy alleyways, and the entire town is located by the sea. This makes Karnaca an infinitely more interesting playground than Dunwall could ever hope to be.



#3): Oros (Far Cry: Primal)

Oros is a mythological slice of Europe that existed in a time before written history. It's a land untouched by industry and overflowing with several types of wildlife. It's a land in which nature is king, and the sheer scale of the foliage is nothing short of amazing. There isn't any way to quantify why Oros is a better than Karnaca or Eos, but I personally felt more inclined to scour every nook and cranny to see what kinds of new wildlife or secrets might be around the corner in Far Cry: Primal than in the previous items on this list.



#2): Lothric (Dark Souls III)

If this category were for the most intricately designed location, Lothric would win hands down. Whether in the royal palace or deep in the Undead Village or deeper still in the catacombs, Lothric simply oozes history and lore. Enemy types are tailored to their individual location, and each enemy type tells a story about the people who lived here. Even in a game with as foreboding an atmosphere as Dark Souls III, I still felt inclined to go out and explore the world to see what new secrets I might learn about the location. As I said, if this category celebrated intricacy, Lothric would win hands down, but there was one location that I simply enjoyed being in more.



Overarching Location of the Year): Alola (Pokemon Sun/Moon)

The Alola region is truly a breath of fresh air for the Pokemon franchise. It seemed like every region was exactly the same before Alola. Kanto and Unova seemed like America, Johto seemed to give off a Japanese vibe, Hoenn seemed almost Greek, and Sinnoh and Kalos both felt like some other brand of European. Johto stood out with its unique architecture, but even though the other regions felt inspired by different places, they all kind of seemed the same. This cannot be said of Alola, which is based off the Hawaiian islands. Even if I weren't a tropical island person, I would find Alola to be refreshing with its emphasis on palm trees, sand, and ocean instead of cobblestone paths and neatly trimmed trees. The region holds standard tropical landscapes, snowy mountains, lush jungles, deep caves, plenty of locations, and every day ends with a watery orange sunset. Were I taking a vacation to any overarching location in a game this year, Alola would be my personal choice.



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Best Individual Location:
On the other hand, there are times when an overall location isn't interesting at all, but a single area within it is noteworthy. The award for best individual location is meant to honor locations that are part of a larger whole.



#5): The Utulek Complex (Deus Ex: Mankind Divided)

The Utulek Complex reminded me of Omega from Mass Effect 2 as I played Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. It wasn't a scummy gang town, rather, a ghetto that Augmented citizens were forced to live in, but it gave off the same dirty, crowded feeling that Omega did. I can't say that I would enjoy being there in real life, but being there in the game helped immeasurably with the world building. Police Officers ran unchecked, murdering and beating citizens in the street as they wouldn't be able to do in the outside world. Citizens were herded into cells and shabby little shacks, and people would beg their friends not to resist officer inspections. The entire game is a commentary on the militarized police state, and the section that takes place in the Utulek complex is what drives this point home.



#4): The Clockwork Mansion (Dishonored 2)

The Clockwork Mansion was shown off at E3, but it still felt fresh when I went and played through it myself. Kirin Jindosh - the Grand Inventor - rigged his house to be rearrangeable based on which of several levers a person pulls. Entire rooms in the mansion shift and rearrange in a unique kind of puzzle that can often put stealthy players at risk. In addition, there is an elaborate series of pathways behind the walls that allow the player to move across the house without being picked up by weight sensors. It was simply thrilling to have a level where the entire location is a puzzle of its own.



#3): The Necropolis (Doom)

I've heard Doom's rendering of Hell "safe." I suppose I can see where this criticism comes from. After all, in Doom, Hell is an orange, firey landscape with pockets of gore scattered around and apocalyptic-looking statues of horned beings. Not exactly an original interpretation. However, the Necropolis breaks this mold. Instead of the orange hellscape, the Necropolis takes on a color palette with a surprising amount of blue and gray. The architecture in this area is far more intricate than one would expect architecture in the realm of the damned to be. The Necropolis was my favorite part of Doom not only because it's where "Rip and Tear" plays, but because it's also just the coolest area in the game.



#2): Altissia (Final Fantasy XV)

When I first arrived in Altissia in Final Fantasy XV, my jaw dropped. After the hours upon hours of deserts and wetlands, I simply wasn't prepared for how beautiful and intricate Altissia would be. Based off of Venice, Altissia is a city on the water, and small canals run under the streets. The edges of the canals are dotted with restaurants and gondola stations, and much like I imagine the city of Venice must be, Altissia is dazzling at nighttime. Small, round lamps the likes of which you might see in an old foreign film light up the city in a romantic way, and the surface of the water reflects the moonlight. Unlike just about anywhere else in the game, I wanted to stay in Altissia for much longer than I ended up getting to.



Individual Location of the Year: Irithyll of the Boreal Valley (Dark Souls III)

It was framed perfectly. After a battle with a giant skeleton in the catacombs, the player ascends a staircase, probably expecting to find themselves in another underground level. Instead, they come upon a view of a beautiful city bathed in icy blue lighting under an aurora. Then the words "Irithyll of the Boreal Valley) pop up on the screen, making the whole picture look like a postcard. One you gain passage into the city, you start to see its story. The entire city has this pure, clean look to it. Half the enemies are tall, elegant, robed people while the other half are wretched, dirty urchins. There is an unsettling air to the beauty of Irithyll of the Boreal Valley that makes that entire segment of the game compelling. Dark Souls III is often rightly criticized for its overabundance of cathedrals, and Irithyll of the Boreal Valley contributes about half of them, but it's clear from the enemy types, the boss of the area, and the overly pristine look that this was an almost Vatican-esque kind of location. Irithyll of the Boreal Valley was my favorite smaller location of the year for a number of reasons: 1) It was the most beautiful of them all, 2) It had the most compelling lore, and 3) I personally just had the most fun there.



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Best Moment:
I'm going to be honest: This is one of my absolute favorite categories. The award for best moment is one that has been around since my very first end of the year awards because it is one that is important to me. An otherwise uninspiring game can be made noteworthy by a single moment. Such a moment can, in fact, become the focal point of an entire game. On the other hand, a single moment can submerge a game in infamy. Think back to Heavy Rain. There were, of course, many dramatic events throughout the course of the plot, but the one that stuck in people's heads was the trial of the lizard. In this moment, the protagonist was forced to cut off one of his own fingers. This moment was drenched in detail, from the gradually increasing heart beat and shaking of the button prompts to the fact that the player had to physically slam the controller down to cause the protagonist to use whatever sharp instrument the player chose. The best moments are the ones that stick with you, and these ten moments were the best of the best.

[IMPORTANT!!!! Spoilers for just about everything, so if you see a title you haven't played and don't want it spoiled, skip to the next entry]



#10): The water's fine (Panzermadels)

This moment is unique in that it's the only moment on this list that is comedic. During the tank school's yearly trip, the school checks in at an Onsen (I think that's the right way to say it), and everybody begins gearing up for a hot springs visit. However, Erwin is told that these hot springs are separated by gender. So, he heads to the male one, and there in the very center of the spring, in full uniform, is the sergeant of the tank school (the only other male character in the story). In response to Erwin's entrance, the sergeant utters one line, "Come on in, recruit. The water's fine." It's admittedly a moment of little consequence, but for me it was one of Panzermadels's best comedic moments because of its sheer sense of timing and presentation.



#9): In Loving Memory (That Dragon, Cancer)

This is essentially the ending to That Dragon, Cancer. It's implied that Joel has passed away, and the father talks about moving on with your life in the face of such grief and about how faith helped him and his family to do that. Then the camera pans to a picnic spot where Joel is sitting and eating gigantic pancakes with a pug. What follows makes me tear up just thinking about it, and I definitely did as I was writing these next few sentences. Joel then starts talking to us about how he finally has a dog, and how he even got to name him "Manju". He then informs us that Manju loves maple syrup, and it's both heartbreaking and relieving. On one hand, we know that this isn't happening, that it's just a guess as to what Joel is currently doing in heaven, but on the other hand we know that he's finally getting to get to do the things he never got to do in life. Then, we are asked to interact with Joel by blowing bubbles, which he loves. Then the camera starts to drift away but resets if we click on Joel again. This makes it so that the only way the game ends is letting go, letting the camera drift away from Joel despite just wanting to keep talking to him. Once we decide to let go, the camera drifts away and pans up to the sky. A thank you message appears and fades away. Then the words, "For Joel Evan Green" appear on the screen and fade away. Then a picture comes up of the real Joel smiling like a kid ought to be able to. The moment that picture came up on the screen, I was done for. I had already sobbed my eyes out a number of times during the game, but this moment was the one that really broke me. The game was rendered in such an abstract art style that it was possible to distance oneself from the story. But the moment the picture of the real Joel came up, it made the entire story hit much closer to home.



#8): It was like an ocean (Oxenfree)

As the paranormal force continues its work on the island in Oxenfree, there comes a moment when Alex suddenly blacks out and a voice we haven't heard before starts to talk and says the words "It was like an ocean." Then the visuals return and a character we haven't seen before is on the screen, and he and Alex are at a beach. It's then revealed that this character is Michael, Alex's brother who drowned years ago. This isn't a flashback, however, and because of the paranormal anomalies, Alex gets to spend some more time with the brother whose death she never forgave herself for. While certainly not as tearjerking as the previous entry, it was still a touching moment that stuck with me for a while after I finished the game.



#7): You knew all along! (Valley)

Valley didn't really need a twist to have a good story, but we got one anyway. Throughout the game, we had been using tiny little energy orbs to fill up the L.E.A.F. Suit's energy tanks. Everywhere we went, we had made sure to snag up as many of the orbs as possible. These orbs were always surrounded by cute little forest sprites called "daemons." Well, right at the end of the game, an audio log plays that informs us that the orbs are daemon eggs, that we have been powering the suit with babies. It's one of those plot twists that makes one look back on the game and really think about what they've done.



#6): The Epilogue (Uncharted 4: A Thief's End)

Uncharted 4 gets to join the ranks of The Last of Us and The Walking Dead as a game that had a perfect ending. After the credits roll, we are asked to play Crash Bandicoot again, this time without any banter between Nathan and Elena. After the game ends, the camera turns around and shows a teen girl holding the controller; Nathan and Elena's child. From there, Uncharted wraps up the story of Nathan Drake in the most wholesome, perfect way possible. We get to see Nathan and Elena tell their child the truth about their past and about their adventures. It's presented in a believable way, with their child occasionally throwing out a quip just like her father or doubting that something really happened. It all ends with Nathan and the child walking out to a boat while Elena looks on with satisfaction. It isn't often that a happy ending is perfect for a story, but Uncharted 4: A Thief's End is an exception to that.



#5): When did you start becoming beautiful? (Pokemon Sun/Moon)

After defeating Lusamine in a battle in the world of the Ultra Beasts, she falls ill as a result of her merging with the Ultra Beast Nihilego. Her daughter, Lillie, rushes up to her, and starts shaking her. Lusamine's eyes open for a moment, and she puts her hand on Lillie's cheek. She then speaks one line, "Lillie...when did you start becoming beautiful?" and her eyes close again. At this point I was a little too shocked to be touched. I sat there thinking, "did Pokemon just kill somebody's mother?" Of course, she didn't end up actually dying, but even with that in mind the moment is still incredibly touching. Lusamine, who has been a terrible mother since her husband's disappearance, finally admits to loving her daughter in a moment of illness. It signifies that there is a chance for Lusamine, and I can think of no better way for Nintendo to resolve a plot such as this.



#4): Drowning (Inside)

There comes a point in Inside where the boy grabs onto a chain above a body of water and the chain breaks. The boy plunges into the water, where the freaky water girl is waiting. She darts up and grabs the boy, and there is a solid half minute of struggle from the boy before he ultimately drowns. The girl descends with the boy in her arms as one of the most atmospheric tracks from the soundtrack plays. She plugs him into something (which sparks a lot of fan theories) and for the next half minute or so we just watch as the boy slowly falls through the water, and we see just how small he is in comparison to everything else.



#3): They've been listening (Firewatch)

It was an average day in Yellowstone for Henry. He had gone down to the lake to investigate rumors of a rogue bear and had spent a lot of the trip down to the lake talking to Delilah. However, once he arrived at the lake and started making his way around it, he found a notepad. On this notepad, all of his conversations with Delilah were written down verbatim. In addition to being just a shocking moment in general, this was the moment from which the overarching story of Firewatch began, and it's where the immense sense of intrigue began as well.



#2): Final Boss (Dark Souls III)

In case you didn't read the spoiler warning for this section, this one is a plot point that I desperately don't want to be spoiled for anyone who doesn't want it spoiled. I already accidentally spoiled it for my brother before I even knew it happened, so I wouldn't want that to happen again. So, last warning, if you haven't played Dark Souls III yet and don't want to know this, skip to the next entry. Leading up to this moment, the player defeats the Lords of Cinder and the princes Lothric and Lorian. From there, the player is sent to the kiln of the first flame to rekindle it. One they arrive, they are met by the Soul of Cinder, the final boss. It starts off as an aggressive but nonetheless unremarkable fight. However, once the player defeats the boss, it grows another health bar and gets buffed. At this moment, a specific theme plays in the background of the boss's music. This theme is...the theme of Lord Gwyn from the original Dark Souls. Then the Soul of Cinder's move set changes to look more like Gwyn's. The lore implications of this are enormous, and it was a fascinating enough moment to put it at second place.



Moment of the Year: The tone shift (Final Fantasy XV)

Much like the previous entry, this is one that I would desperately not want to spoil. So, be warned. After hours upon hours of working to get to Altissia, Noctis and friends arrive in the city to recieve the blessing of the Hydrean and possibly get on with the wedding, which Noctis is looking forward to. Some minor story events pass and Noctis and friends go up against the Hydrean to receive its blessing. Meanwhile, Lunafreya, Noctis's bride-to-be, uses her position as the Oracle to grant Noctis an audience with the Hydrean and the Empire shows up to try and use it to their own ends. Just when victory seems to be within Noctis's grasp, Ardyn Izunia stabs Lunafreya through the gut. There is a legitimately touching moment where Noctis and Luna are both in kind of a dreamworld thing and they're both children again. Being childhood friends, this is the most fitting way to render them, but the music starts to swell, and both characters slowly start to reach their current age as Luna tells Noctis not to give up on his destiny. There is a blackout and suddenly Noctis is in a bed with Ignis at the foot. Ignis tells Noct that he's been out for a few days, and Noct notices that Ignis's eyes have been damaged. Noct then asks after Luna and there is a pause before Ignis, in the complete absence of music, says, "she passed away this morning." Now, Lunafreya had zero personality, so it isn't like that death is particularly heartbreaking, but it marks a major shift in tone. Ignis never recovers his sight and spends the rest of the game blind, the friendship between the four starts to break apart, certain characters are captured and presumably tortured in an Imperial keep, things like that. Starting from this moment, Final Fantasy XV becomes an immensely darker game with significantly more intrigue, and it was the most impactful moment of 2016 for me.



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Biggest Nitpick:
Well, that was a fantastic bunch of positive aspects, wasn't it? There are, however, some negatives that we need to go over as well. This is another new category that I came up with this year. For some reason, I had a lot of insubstantial nitpicks with certain games this year, and I wanted to take some time in these lists to call attention to them. These five game aspects were aspects that irked me enough to be noticeable, but not enough to ruin their respective games.



#5): Text grabbing (Orwell)

The single gameplay feature of Orwell is grabbing text and dragging it to the upload area. Unfortunately, the mouse is particular about where you can and cannot grab a piece of text. You need to click and drag while directly on the words, not on the highlighted areas. It didn't take away too much from my enjoyment, but it was still a hassle.



#4): Circle pad walking (Pokemon Sun/Moon)

In previous Pokemon titles, you walked by using the directional buttons. This was true in both X/Y and Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire. However, in Sun/Moon you have to walk using the circle pad, and it's quite disorienting at first.



#3): Too much fire (Far Cry: Primal)

This was a problem in Far Cry 3 and Far Cry 4 as well, but nowhere has it been more of a problem than in Far Cry: Primal. Essentially, in this game you get set on fire too often. When you get set on fire, it takes quite a bit of effort to put it out, and so a lot of play time is spent mashing the triangle button to try and put the fire out shortly before being set on fire yet again.



#2): The car (Final Fantasy XV)

I wasn't expecting Grand Theft Auto style vehicular freedom, but come on, Square Enix! You can have invisible hit boxes around NPCs and friendly cars if you want! Instead, what we got is a car with zero interactive possibilities. You can either have Ignis drive - during which you just sit there and wait to arrive - or you can drive yourself (during which you just sit there and wait to arrive and occasionally miss a turn because there's no easy way to navigate while driving). This was supposed to be a road trip story, but they handled the car so poorly that I almost always opted out of using it.



Nitpick of the Year: Dishonored 2's writing

There has always been something...off...about the writing in Dishonored. Every line feels like one of those terrible exposition lines you hear in bad fantasy movies. You know the type: "Wow. For a Police Officer in the Cedar Hills Municipal Police Department, you sure do get scared easily! What, are you thinking about your wife who left you years ago because you have a drinking problem?" Dishonored 2 is fine even with the terrible writing, but its just so frustrating that we're presented with a world as well developed and well thought out as Dishonored's, but they can't manage to make the writing any better than it is.



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Biggest Disappointment:
This is a category that changes each year. In years that are less good, this category typically changes into a "Worst Games" list, as it did in 2014. Thankfully though, 2016 was a relatively good year, so this list once again calls attention to disappointments; that is, games or aspects that were lackluster and worse than nitpicks but not necessarily bad. Of the categories, this one is the most scatterbrained, but regardless, these were the top five biggest disappointments in gaming this year.



#5): Firewatch jumps in time

Firewatch takes place over a period of a few months, but the game's way of having the story last that long is to randomly jump forward a month in time at certain points. That might not be so bad, but the game always jumps forward right when it breaks the tension the most.



#4): That one flashback death (The Walking Dead: A New Frontier)

Though the first two episodes have been out for a while now, I'm still not going to spoil exactly what happens here. There is a character death in a flashback that deserved so much more attention and detail. What we got was practically a throwaway and a large middle finger to fans.



#3): The Last Guardian

The reason this isn't higher on the list is because, as the release date approached, I started to have doubts about whether The Last Guardian would be good. It turned out that it wasn't good at all, really. Trico was impossible to control, the framerate was nauseating, the puzzles were as unintuitive as you can get, and I just couldn't bring myself to play anymore after a certain point involving water. I suppose Team Ico just spent the last ten years twiddling their thumbs.



#2): Abzu

I don't know a single person who played Journey and didn't love it. It is safe to say that it was a landmark title in 2012, a real game-changer in the presentation department. ThatGameCompany made a name for themselves with Journey, and Austin Wintory made history as the first game music composer to ever be nominated for a grammy. With all of these things in mind, it shouldn't be hard to imagine that I was excited for Abzu. After all, a game that takes place under the sea that is made by some of the people responsible for Journey and has a soundtrack by Austin Wintory is bound to be good, right? Wrong. Abzu wasn't a bad game, it just wasn't very good. Wintory's soundtrack this time around was terrible and didn't fit the environments. While definitely striking to behold, Abzu's beauty paled in comparison to that of Journey four year ago. All in all, Abzu might not have been disappointing were it not for the track record of the people behind it. However, I just know that these people can do better, so it is incredibly disappointing.



Disappointment of the Year: No Man's Sky

You know, I think that everybody reading this, once they saw the name of this award, knew that No Man's Sky was going to win. I didn't have nearly as much investment in it as other people did. In fact, I thought it was going to suck for the longest time. However, despite my lack of investment, I was still incredibly disappointed with the finished product. It simply amazed me how I could go into a game thinking it was going to be an empty void filled with mix-and-match randomly generated parts and somehow have it be even worse than I expected. No Man's Sky was not as disappointing to me as some titles in the past, but it may very well go down in history as the game that provoked disappointment on the largest scale in gaming history. For my part, though, it was simply the most disappointing game of the year. Zero content, terrible user interface, pointless combat, repetitive grinding, placeholder text showing up before content loads on menus, all of these things and more ensured that this game would be infamous. There were certainly worse games this year, but none set such high expectations and failed to meet them. The disappointment doesn't stop with the game itself, however. After it released and the criticism started to come in, Hello Games went silent for months on end instead of trying to address the concerns of players. I sincerely hope that Sean Murray and Hello Games both learn from this experience and treat their next project (if one can even exist after this) with some degree of honesty.



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The Big Picture Awards

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Most Unique:
Formed last year as the "Most Creative" award, the award for most unique game is meant to call attention to games that in some way broke the mold. I created this category last year because there were a number of games that wouldn't make it onto the GOTY list, but that were worth noting simply because they were the most original. That trend continues this year. Not all of these will necessarily make it onto the overall Game of the Year list, but if they are on this list, know that I believe they are worth checking out. These were the most unique games (that I played) to come out this year.



#5): Firewatch

Firewatch could have easily just been a walking simulator structured around Yellowstone, but the developers decided to really put their players in the shoes of a man of nature. Rather than give a minimap, they gave a full sized map, a compass, and zero objective markers on the map. If I had to boil Firewatch down to a genre descriptor, I would call it an "orienteering simulator," and to the best of my knowledge it's the first one of its kind.



#4): Panzermadels

Visual novels are hardly a new thing. Neither are dating simulators, especially in the wake of the largely successful Huniepop. Visual novel dating simulators about a man trying to...*sigh*...fire his armor piercing rounds at anime girls who are actually tanks...however, is definitely new. Panzermadels earns a spot on this list entirely because of the sheer uniqueness of its concept.



#3): Reigns

The developers of Reigns had a pretty darned good gameplay idea. Take an interaction style that nearly everybody in the game-playing demographic knows how to do - swiping left and right on a phone a-la Tinder - and center a decision making game around that. It's an ingenious business strategy, and I applaud them for that. Beyond its interaction style, Reigns breaks new ground in the art of decision-based strategy in that its gameplay is centered on complete balance of four different variables: the church, the people, the treasury, and the military. Run any of these variables too high or too low and it's game over. It requires that you use your head in order to interpret what effect a certain decision might have on the different branches of the kingdom. I'm not a mobile gamer usually, but I spent quite a bit of time playing Reigns because of how unique it was.



#2): Orwell

So many games nowadays are centered around mindless action. I personally don't have a problem with that, as mindless action can be fun if done well, but anybody who speaks to me about gaming for a long period of time knows that I have a particular weakness for intricate puzzle games. I just have a soft spot in my heart for games that require critical thinking and analysis of in-game variables in order to succeed. Orwell isn't entirely a puzzle game, but it does require these things. In Orwell, you're tasked with discovering the source of a terrorist attack, and you do so by combing through documents upon documents upon documents of data and personal information to construct profiles of various suspects and determine who was where at what time. Orwell requires that you read carefully and think critically about the information you're coming across, and I've never played a game that centered so much around reading and critical thought. Partner that with an intricate web of characters and motivations so well-realized that it feels like spying on real people, and you have quite a unique gameplay experience.



Standout Product of the Year: Valley

Absolutely everything about Valley is unique. Its art style, its location, its main gameplay mechanics, its story, everything is handled in a way that it hasn't been handled before. The main gameplay tool is a machine that is capable of giving and taking life. This means that the combat is centered around these things, and if you die, the machine drains away some life from the valley to bring you back. Many games throughout history have worked on a lives system, but none have done so quite in this way. There is a balance that must be maintained: your "lives" are tied to the valley's overall life, so if you want to keep it from being Game Over, you'll need to restore life to the valley after death. Combine this with a story about a scientist destroying nature in the pursuit of intellectual superiority as opposed to monetary gain, and you have a game that I am proud to declare the most unique game of the year.



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Best Bigger Developer:
Yet another case of me breaking up an existing category into two, this award has historically been "best developer." However, this year there were so many standout developers that I decided to break them up into their respective sizes. The developers on this list are the ones that did the best work while working either with a AAA publisher or with so much fame behind them that they might as well have been.



#5): From Software

Unlike other companies that tend to put out games a little too quickly for comfort, From Software typically has kept its quality stable over the years. Having released Bloodborne in 2015, I was skeptical about their ability to deliver any kind of quality in Dark Souls III just a year later. While it's certainly true that certain aspects of Dark Souls III feel a little bit like Bloodborne, the game itself is quite strong. So, From Software should be commended for doing what Ubisoft can't seem to do anymore.



#4): Naughty Dog

When Uncharted 4: A Thief's End was announced, I was skeptical. I felt that Uncharted didn't really need a fourth installment. However, Uncharted 4 feels like Naughty Dog taking a step back and saying, "once more with feeling," after the lackluster Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception. They wrapped up Nathan Drake's story perfectly and delivered a more than competent product in doing so. They were initially higher on this list, but then they announced The Last of Us Part 2, showing that nothing is sacred, so they got bumped down.



#3): Eidos Montreal

It couldn't have been easy being Eidos Montreal this year. They were working on Deus Ex: Mankind Divided when Square Enix came down from on high and forced them to include microtransactions and a phoned-in shooter mode in the interest of mass appeal. Square Enix also came in and carved up the product (not proven, but heavily implied) to be sold as multiple installments. If I were a member of Eidos Montreal, I would be horrifically depressed at just how much my work had been mutilated by the publisher. However, they did the best with what they were allowed and added a layer of polish to the gameplay that was lacking in the previous installment.



#2): Id Software

I never played the original Doom games, so I have no frame of reference. What I do know is that 2016's Doom was incredible and that impressions of the game were less than stellar during the multiplayer beta either earlier in the year or in 2015. All the signs were pointing to Doom failing and Id Software releasing yet another game of Rage quality. Imagine my surprise, then, when the game turned out not only not terrible but also incredibly good from a technical standpoint. Maybe it's the Bethesda money behind it that caused Doom to succeed, or maybe it's just Id Software's raw talent, but either way, they put out a stellar product this year.



Bigger Developer of the Year: Playdead Studios

I don't know for sure, but I think I heard somewhere that Inside went through some production delays? Either way, Inside has a level of polish on it that I haven't seen since old Nintendo. With Inside, Playdead Studios shows us the meaning of learning from mistakes and accenting your strengths. One thing about Limbo that was universally agreed on was that its atmosphere was great, but one thing that some people were uneasy about was its puzzles. The puzzles in Limbo often bordered on frustrating, being based not on critical thought but on absolute timing. With Inside, Playdead Studios overhauled their atmosphere to make it even more effective and evidently spent a great deal of time making puzzles intuitive but challenging without even a single word of tutorial. Inside is absolutely an achievement in the gaming industry, and Playdead Studios more than earns this award.



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Best Smaller Developer:
No game awards would be complete without an acknowledgement of the small-time indie developers. Making a game is not an easy task, and yet the developers on this list stuck it out without big money backing the project up; just passion and a desire to share their product with the world. Not only that, but these developers did all this and came out with noteworthy games, which is not true of most indie developers, truth be told.



#5): Carl Burton

Up until this year with the release of Islands: Non-Places, Carl Burton was not a game developer. Rather, he was an animator and artist of some renown (although the details come from his personal Tumblr, so who knows how accurate they are). Any way you slice it, famous or not famous, Mr. Burton did not have a background in game development. Despite this, he developed Islands on the Unity engine, and rather than use pre-bought assets or the like, he created an entirely original product that ran at a smooth framerate and had an art style all its own. I don't know if Carl Burton will ever release another game, but if he does, I will buy it. The kind of mind that can accomplish on the Unity engine what AAA developers cannot accomplish with 10 years of development time is a mind to keep an eye on.



#4): DEVGRU-P

By this point, the campaign to fund DEVGRU-P's next project has ended, and I seriously hope they got enough. DEVGRU-P is the...shall we say, "unique" mind behind the excellent Panzermadels. They are on this list because they created a concept interesting enough to lure people in and a story and execution of said concept done well enough to keep the people they lured in invested. They obviously did their research, as little bits of history and tank trivia are thrown in throughout and tank personalities are based off of the pros and cons of the actual tanks they are based off of. It would have been one thing if they had simply put the premise out there and dressed up a bunch of tanks in skirts, but instead they went the extra mile to make this game one of the best executed concepts of this year. Once again, I sincerely hope that their next project got the funding it needed, because these people have a real talent even if this talent takes the form of visual novels.



#3): Heart Machine

There are certainly some aspects of Hyper Light Drifter that were not very well designed, such as the autosave system and the story itself. However, in my opinion, an indie developer should do two things: 1) Create a competent product and 2) Create this product with passion. Hyper Light Drifter was built with an idea behind it: the lead developer's heart condition and the struggles he faced with it. With that in mind, we know that there was passion in this project. But beyond that, the game itself was just incredibly fun to play and one of the most fun titles of the year. One thing is for sure: Heart Machine is a developer to keep an eye on in the coming years.



#2): Blue Isle Studios

The folks responsible for Valley accomplished something I haven't seen done since Undertale: They created a truly unique game with remarkable gameplay and a story I haven't heard told before on an engine typically used by beginners. I did some research on the company after I finished Valley and found that their only other project was Slender: The Arrival, which was essentially an HD Slenderman game that came out in the midst of Slender's immense popularity. That makes the achievement that is Valley all the more remarkable. Blue Isle Studios went from being a studio cashing in on a popular internet trend to producing one of the most unique, surprising games of this year. The only reason that Blue Isle Studios doesn't earn the #1 spot this year is the fact that there was one developer that went to greater lengths for their product.



Smaller Developer of the Year: Ryan Green

Ryan Green is a man of immense bravery. There are developers who create games to tell stories they feel need to be told, but it isn't every day that these stories are true. It is even less often that these stories are both true and deal with the life of the developer. For those who don't know, Ryan Green is the main developer behind That Dragon, Cancer. This game tells the story of Joel Green, Ryan's son, in his four-year battle with cancer. Mr. Green started development of this game after Joel went into remission. If I remember correctly, the game had basically been completed and ended with a bittersweet, "despite everything, he is still hanging on" message. However, Joel started having complications again, and he passed away at age 4 in 2014. From there, Ryan had to think about the kind of game this was going to be. He started a dialogue about cancer and gained kickstarter backing from hundreds of people who wanted this dialogue to happen. He changed the story from being just about his family's experience to being about how much they loved Joel and the light that he brought to the world. He changed the ending from being about Joel still hanging on after all this time to an ending about Joel getting to eat giant pancakes in heaven with a dog, which he had always wanted in life. As I said at the start of this paragraph, Ryan Green is a man of immense bravery. I cannot imagine facing the trials he faced and having the bravery afterwards to risk ridicule and criticism from the rest of the world. Yes, Mr. Green is perhaps an easy choice for this award. Yes, That Dragon, Cancer had many flaws that only come from lack of development experience. However, as I said before, an indie developer should both make a competent product and have true passion for this product. Ryan Green does both of these things, and the passion he had for this project is unparalleled by any other developer. It is for these reasons that I am proud to declare Ryan Green the best small developer of 2016.



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Best Story:
Over the years, game developers have gradually been coming around to the idea that games should tell a compelling story. After all, films and books tell stories, but no medium other than games offers the potential for a truly interactive narrative. We have seen games like Borderlands and Assassin's Creed focus more on story in sequels and gain more praise as a direct result, and games centered entirely around story are becoming more and more prevalent in the market as evidenced by the fact that Telltale Games has now officially bitten off more than they can chew. The following ten games were the ones that told the most compelling stories this year.



#10): Uncharted 4: A Thief's End

Nathan Drake was retired from the treasure hunting lifestyle. He had settled down with his wife and taken an honest job with a salvage company. Then, one day, his long lost brother - believed to be dead - shows up and tells him that he owes a drug lord a lot of money. From there, Nathan and Samuel Drake set off on a quest to find the treasure of notorious pirate Henry Avery. The story for Uncharted 4: A Thief's End isn't as good as in Uncharted 2 by any stretch of the imagination, but it has a lot of heart and hits quite a few high notes.



#9): Panzermadels

Erwin Lemmor, a military student, was on his way to his first day at tank school. When he arrived, however, he found that there had been a mixup. He had arrived at tank school...as in school for tanks...as in blah blah you've already read my summary of this plot a million times. To say that Panzermadels is low brow storytelling would be an understatement, but it was entertaining from start to finish.



#8): Pokemon Sun/Moon

Upon arriving in the Alola region, a boy/girl heads out on a journey with their new Pokemon to complete the island challenge, a rite of passage for Alolan children. Their progress is impeded at every turn by a completely inept team of goons known as "Team Skull," and the mysterious Aether Foundation - a foundation dedicated to the conservation of Pokemon - sits back, watching. Look, Pokemon stories are never really good with the exception of Black/White. The story in Sun/Moon, however, is largely character-based, and it feels like Game Freak put effort into that area.



#7): Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

In the aftermath of the Aug incident, Adam Jensen joins interpol and heads to Prague to investigate a team of augmented terrorists. After a bomb goes off in a subway station, Jensen investigates and finds that there may be factions within the Augmented Rights Coalition that are responsible for the attack. What follows is a story focusing on civil rights, the militarized police state, and the legitimacy of a one-world government. Because of Square Enix's (assumed) cuts, the story never quite reaches the highs that it promises, but what we have is still a compelling examination of these issues.



#6): Dark Souls III

The world is once again on the precipice of darkness. The fire is fading, and the Lords of Cinder - who once rekindled the flame - have not heeded the call. An unkindled one rises from the ashes to return the Lords of Cinder to their thrones and either rekindle the first flame or lead the undead to a new age. The story in Dark Souls III is as vague as any Souls game, but at this point in the saga the stakes are pretty clear, and this story presents some interesting alternative choices that add a little spice to the tried and true age of fire/age of darkness dynamic.



#5): Valley

An archaeology enthusiast ends up at an undiscovered valley as they search for a mythological item called "the lifeseed," which supposedly has the power to shatter the world. When they arrive, they find that people arrived in the valley in the 40's under the guise of an alternative energy program. In reality, they were developing a superweapon using the power of the lifeseed. The protagonist then embarks on a journey to secure the lifeseed and save the valley from the aftermath of the lead scientist's ego. We've seen the "scientist/corporation wants to destroy the environment for money" plot before a million times, but Valley handles the subject of science and the environment in a way that I've never seen before. The story is told pretty much exclusively through audio logs, but it was compelling enough that it didn't matter.



#4): The Walking Dead: A New Frontier

Many years after the start of the apocalypse, a man named Javier survives with his brother's wife and his niece and nephew. The game is still relatively fresh (having come out a few days before Christmas), so that's all I'll say detail-wise about the plot. Make no mistake, though, Telltale games is back in full force with this season.



#3): Orwell

In the aftermath of a bombing in freedom plaza, a government investigator is tasked with scouring through people's personal information in order to determine who is responsible. What follows is a tangled web of small stories that make up an incredible whole.



#2): Final Fantasy XV

To secure peace between the kingdom of Lucis and the empire of Niflheim, Prince Noctis of Lucis journeys to Altissia to marry The Oracle, Lunafreya, a resident of the Niflheim occupied nation of Tenebrae. On his way to the wedding, however, Niflheim makes use of a peace treaty signing to capture the capital city of Lucis. From there Noctis and his three friends must travel the world and receive the blessings of the Gods so that he can wield the true power of a king of Lucis. It might seem odd to have this entry on the list, especially this high, because I'm not entirely sure how the story ended, but the little story tidbits leading up to the ending were compelling enough to put Final Fantasy XV this far up the list.



Story of the Year: Firewatch

After his wife is placed under constant supervision for mental illness, Henry takes a summer job as a fire watcher at Yellowstone National Park. As the months go by, he develops a close bond with Delilah, his supervisor. He goes about his days fulfilling his duties, hiking to landmarks, and chasing off the occasional troublemaker. Life is good for him until one day he comes across a notepad in the middle of the park with all of his conversations with Delilah written down verbatim. What follows is an intriguing tale about isolation, paranoia, and trust the likes of which games seldom are able to nail as fervently as Firewatch does. True, the payoff at the end is minimal as the inevitable twist isn't handled very well, but the intrigue that is built up for the entire game is what sets Firewatch's story ahead and earns it the award for best story of the year.



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Best Gameplay:
Though it makes me feel like a Mountain Dew drinking, Dorito eating, Call of Duty playing, tiny dinosaur brained neanderthal to say it, it is true that gameplay is the most important aspect of a game. It is, after all, the one aspect that is unique to the medium. There are games out there with terrible stories that I will still play often because they are simply the most fun to play. The best games are an equal balance of gameplay and story, but if one of these two aspects must fail, it must always be story that does so. These ten games were the games with the most compelling gameplay in gaming this year.



#10): Uncharted 4: A Thief's End

For the most part, Uncharted 4: A Thief's End contains the same tried and true run and gun combat as in previous installments. However, it also includes some new mechanics such as a grappling hook that allows for improved freedom of mobility and a greatly improved stealth system that never made me want to tear my hair out. All-in-all, the gameplay in Uncharted 4 is a step up.



#9): Firewatch

Gameplay can, of course, mean many things. Most of the time it means combat, sometimes it means puzzle solving, but with Firewatch it means realtime orienteering. The entirety of Firewatch's gameplay consists of navigating to certain areas in Yellowstone. It would be incredibly easy to get this kind of gameplay wrong, but the developers of this game spent time crafting an orienteering system that lets players use both a map and physical landmarks to reach objectives. It was the kind of gameplay I've always wanted.



#8): Pokemon Sun/Moon

The term "tried and true" is often used in game sequels, but nowhere is it more applicable than when a new Pokemon game comes out. If you've ever played a Pokemon game before (or if you've ever played "rock, paper, scissors,") then you know what to expect from Sun/Moon. What's noteworthy this time around is the improved User Interface. Each move that a Pokemon knows has a little indicator at the bottom spelling out its effectiveness against the current foe, which allows for intelligent decision making to be accomplished quicker.



#7): Dark Souls III

Here we see yet another instance of a tried and true gameplay formula. If you've ever played a Souls game before, then you have an idea of what to expect. However, this time around there is some degree of inspiration from Bloodborne in that the combat is faster paced and enemies are more aggressive. One way or another, From Software continues the tradition of adding more and more layers of polish to the gameplay formula that they've been using for years.



#6) Valley

With Valley, Blue Isle Studios showed us how much better Bioshock: Infinite would have been if it had only had the good fortune to be developed by a bunch of amateurs on an engine most commonly used by beginners. All joking at Bioshock: Infinite's expense aside, Valley operates much like an old school arena based shooter in that its emphasis is on mobility and quick-wittedness. Valley's gameplay has you hanging upside down from metal panelling while shooting at enemies, grappling across vast chasms and shooting enemies in midair, and plenty of other fantastic scenarios. It manages to do all of these things better than most AAA titles do, despite being built on the Unity engine by a group of people who previously had only made a Slender ripoff. Valley's gameplay is thrilling whether in combat or in exploration.



#5): Final Fantasy XV

The transition from turn-based combat to realtime cannot be an easy transition to make. However, the folks at Square Enix managed to merge team-based strategy with realtime combat in a remarkably fluid manner. The gameplay in Final Fantasy XV has been criticized for essentially consisting of three buttons, but what these critics fail to take into account is the importance of positioning and button dexterity. If all you do is stand there and hold down the attack button, the game is going to go by slowly. But if you flank the enemy, experiment with your position, and train yourself to be able to switch between the buttons on a whim, you'll find that the gameplay is not only thrilling; it's also cinematic.



#4): Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Stealth is, of course, my favorite game genre. There's just nothing that compares to the incredible sense of tension that good stealth gameplay can bring. In Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, the combat is perhaps a little too easy, but it's nonetheless a well polished stealth experience. The game gives you a variety of augments that you can use to handle tense moments opportunistically. You can have an entirely different gameplay experience depending on which augments you have active, and each gameplay experience gives you different ways to avoid conflict or escape from it. The only reason that Deus Ex: Mankind Divided doesn't rank higher on this list is because it's admittedly too easy to hoard tranquilizer darts and stun gun rounds.



#3): Dishonored 2

While Dishonored 2 wasn't as good a game all around as Deus Ex: Mankind Divided was, it did have one up on Deus Ex in the gameplay department. Dishonored 2 is, at its heart, a stealth game; but it does give you the option to play in a more action-y style. Most stealth games that have this option don't handle either very well, but Dishonored 2 manages to pull it off. If you play stealthily, there is a considerable amount of tension as enemies can alter their routes entirely if they get the least bit suspicious. If you choose to go in guns blazing, the action is visceral and just feels satisfying all around. Add in an incredible sense of verticality that helps with both styles of gameplay, new enemy types that mix things up a bit, and an improved sense of mobility, and Dishonored 2 is a shining example of how to do gameplay right.



#2): Hyper Light Drifter

The term "bullet hell" isn't 100% accurate in describing Hyper Light Drifter, but its as close as I can get. This game is a 2D action game based mostly off of avoiding attacks from a frankly unfair amount of enemies and striking at just the right moment. To say that Hyper Light Drifter is fast-paced would be a massive understatement, as the action is so fast-paced at times that it's easy to get overwhelmed by the flashing colors. In this game, you carry a sword and a gun, and you also have the ability to dash a short distance. Different guns can be used a different number of times (i.e. a pistol might have 9 uses before it's out of charge whereas a shotgun might have 3), and to recharge your gun you have to slice things with your sword. The guns are important in combat, so it becomes a compelling balancing act of knowing when to use your guns and taking the time the use your sword enough to get them charged back up. The gameplay in Hyper Light Drifter can be incredibly frustrating, as any bullet hell-inspired game would be, but it's impossible to deny just how great it is.



Gameplay of the Year: Doom

Brutal, aggressive, and unforgiving, Doom boasts a gameplay style that harkens back to games of old where mobility and pure offensive energy were king (as it should, considering that this franchise started that trend back in the 90's). Every single battle in this game is a teeth grinding affair that keeps the player on their toes every second, as one mistake can lead to death. The enemies in this game are among the most intelligent of any game in recent memory. Each weapon (with the exception of the pistol) feels powerful and useful. Combat is incredibly fast, but never so fast that you lose track of what's going on. Powerups are offered as a way to turn the tide of battle when you feel you need it most. In addition, the game gives you tools such as a chainsaw and the BFG, which kills just about every demon in an area but has very little ammo. The chainsaw gives you more ammo when you use it to kill a demon, so both it and the BFG add an extra layer of strategy to this otherwise chaotic arena shooter. In my review, I declared that Doom is the most fun game I've ever played, and I stand by that. I've never in my life had more fun with gameplay than I did with the gameplay present in Doom. It's safe to say that Doom accomplishes the difficult task of striking a balance between challenging and hard. That is to say that no matter how many demons the game throws at you, every situation is manageable provided you hone your skills enough. Doom's gameplay is aggressive and brutal, but it's also fair and unbelievably fun. There could be no other winner of the best gameplay award this year than Doom.



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Honorable Mentions

This is the part of my end of the year awards that is a tad different. Rather than ranking the five games or aspects that best deserve the award, in this section there is only one winner for each award. That is how it has always been. This year, however, I wanted to evolve this part a little more. This year I will be listing each honorable or dishonorable mention, describing what it takes to win it, listing each nominee for the award (almost like this is a real award show), naming the winner, and explaining what put the winner ahead of the rest. There are many more of these awards this year, and this is the final section before the Game of the Year list, so let us begin.
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Samus Aran award for Strongest Female Character:
Longtime readers will know that I have issues with the way that women are handled in games. It isn't that there aren't a lot of them or that there aren't a lot of strong female characters as some would have you believe. Gaming is, after all, made up of strong female characters. That isn't the issue. The issue is that in their rush to throw a bone to the feminist demographic, weak game developers create the same female character over and over again: short hair, cocky attitude, always two steps ahead of the protagonist, and at one point says the phrase, "I can handle myself," while providing no evidence to back up that statement. I have railed against this before in past years. One year I realized that nearly every character on my lamest characters list was a woman. In that year, the first year that I ever did an honorable mention, I decided to take a second to recognize a female character that was well-crafted and had a sense of agency. Since then, I've taken a moment in every end of year session to give this award. Needless to say, the Samus Aran award is named after gaming's original strong female protagonist and celebrates the most well-developed female character of the year. The nominees are:

• Lillie (Pokemon Sun/Moon) 

• Delilah (Firewatch)

• Elena Fisher (Uncharted 4: A Thief's End)

• Lunafreya (Final Fantasy XV)

• Alex (Oxenfree)

It was a tough choice this year. You'll notice that there was only one female character on my lamest characters list this time around, which shows that the industry might be coming around to the realization that representation means depth of development, not numbers. Any of these characters could have won. Lillie stepped up to the plate in spite of her fear. Delilah simply radiated confidence and helped the plot along by taking action. Elena Fisher saved Nathan Drake's life on more than one occasion in this game alone. Lunafreya stepped in to perform her duties as Oracle, even if it meant postponing her marriage. And finally, Alex had the willpower to rescue her friends through conditions that would have broken any other person. In the end, though, I had to pick a winner, and that winner is...

Lillie (Pokemon Sun/Moon)

Spoilers for Pokemon Sun/Moon ahead. I feel that there are some who would contest this winner. It is definitely an understandable complaint. After all, Lillie spends most of her time being rescued by you and doesn't seem to have much confidence for most of the game. With that in mind, let me explain why Lillie wins this most prestigious of awards. At a relatively young age (I assume that she is supposed to be around the 11-12 range), Lillie breaks out from under an abusive mother to rescue a Pokemon that she felt was in danger, risking the wrath of the entire Aether Foundation and of a mother she feared to do so. She seeks out the ruins of each island's guardian deities on her own initiative in order to help this Pokemon, and she devotes herself to learning more about the Legendary Pokemon of the region so that she is better equipped to accomplish this goal. Even though she has a terrible sense of direction and seems to lack confidence, she doesn't let these things get in the way of protecting the Pokemon she rescued. As the plot goes on, we of course rescue her a number of times, but after each time we see her come closer to the realization that in order to protect her charge, she will have to evolve, in a way. By the end, we have defeated her mother in battle and her mother falls ill. At this point, Lillie chooses to leave everything behind and go to Kanto to care for her mother and become a trainer herself. Despite all the emotional abuse she endured at the hands of her mother, she sought to help cure her mother of her sickness. For a character that we rescue so often, Lillie shows incredible initiative and sense of purpose in all things. This may very well have been the most in-depth Pokemon character analysis in recent memory, but it is still true. With flying colors, Lillie from Pokemon Sun/Moon wins the Samus Aran award for Strongest Female Character.

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Scout Harding award for Best Unrequited Love Interest:
This award is a brand new Honorable Mention. I already had the "Best Love Interest" list, but that list mainly deals with characters that the protagonist is actually romantically involved with (or can be romantically involved with if it is a Bioware kind of game). This year I had a thought: What about characters who love the protagonist to no avail? What celebration do they get? I thought about making a whole new list for such characters, but there simply aren't enough in any year to fill up five positions. So instead, I'm starting a new honorable mention in the event that such a character exists. This award is named after a character from Dragon Age: Inquisition that was technically a romance option, but not really. Many people were disappointed that they couldn't pursue Scout Harding, so she is really the perfect exemplar of what this award means. As can be expected, there weren't a lot of characters like that this year, but there were two nominees I could see giving this award to, and they were:

• Iris (Final Fantasy XV)

• Aria (Deus Ex: Mankind Divided)

The nominees for this one require little explanation, I feel. And the winner is...

Iris (Final Fantasy XV)

For the inaugural presentation of this honorable mention, I'm proud to award it to Iris from Final Fantasy XV, as she is the character that brought the question of unrequited love interests to mind for me. Iris really got the short end of the stick in Final Fantasy XV. Not only was she not the main love interest, but Noctis refuses to acknowledge her dialogue with anything other than disinterested grunts and borderline sarcastic commentary. Beyond my feeling sorry for her, though, she also just so happens to be one of the better acted, better developed, and better written characters in the game. We may not see this award again for a few years, but for the time being, Iris from Final Fantasy XV earns the Scout Harding award for Best Unrequited Love Interest.


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Lost Planet award for Best Controls:
There is a chance that you raised one of your eyebrows upon seeing the game this honorable mention is named after. For all of its flaws, Lost Planet had remarkably good controls. They seem odd at first: things like clicking the right stick to reload, but I remember actively thinking about how good the controls felt in the context of gameplay. Needless to say, this award celebrates the game with the best controls. This is a brand new honorable mention because normally there aren't any control schemes different or great enough to be noteworthy. This year was an exception, however. There were enough well-controlling games this year that I had a full list of nominees. The nominees for this award are:

• Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

• Dark Souls III

• Dishonored 2

• Doom

• Inside

If I were to spell out the control schemes for each of these nominees we'd be here all day, so I'll just move on to the winner, which is...

              Doom                            

The name of the game when it comes to Doom's controls is: convenience. The control scheme in Doom allows you to freely switch between your standard weapons and special weapons like the chainsaw or the BFG. Weapon mod effects are mapped to the left trigger or L2, a button that is often used reflexively in a shooter context. Melee attacks and glory kills are mapped to the right stick, giving the action a meaty, bone-breaking feeling. Doom's control scheme ensures a smooth combat flow at all times, and that is difficult to pull off. But beyond that, Doom's control scheme just feels right despite having a slightly different control scheme from your average FPS. So, Doom is the first game to ever win the Lost Planet award for best controls.

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Gears of War award for Most Raw Fun:
Contrary to the way its name probably sounds, this award is not the award for best gameplay. A winner of this award may have extremely unpolished gameplay with terrible level design, but as long as it's the most fun to play regardless, it wins. A few years ago this award went to Goat Simulator of all things, and we all know that it was an unpolished mess. However, for all of its many faults, Goat Simulator was the game I had the most unashamedly raw fun with in that year. The nominees for this award are:

• Dishonored 2

• Uncharted 4: A Thief's End

• Doom

• Mafia III

• Pokemon Sun/Moon

It just so happens that the winner of this award for 2016 is well designed in addition to just being fun. This particular game is...

Doom

I am not exaggerating when I say that Doom has the most fun gameplay I've ever experienced. The gameplay was so much fun, in fact, that it has kind of ruined me. In every shooter I play now, I have certain expectations regarding freedom of mobility that I never had prior to Doom. This honorable mention celebrates the one game in a year that I am willing to put on a snapback hat, crack open a fresh mountain dew, and nearly start a stupid let's play channel for. It celebrates the one game in a year that I can enjoy while still realizing that it is meant for people with tiny dinosaur brains. For 2016, the Gears of War award for Most Raw Fun game of the year goes unashamedly to Doom.

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Undertale award for Biggest Surprise:
This award is pretty self-explanatory. In 2015, Undertale took me completely by surprise. I went into it expecting one thing and I got something else entirely. It's something that happens pretty often, as I try to go into games as blindly as I can. This award celebrates the game that most exceeded my expectations and took me by surprise to the greatest degree. The nominees are:

• Panzermadels

• Doom

• Final Fantasy XV

• Valley

• Hyper Light Drifter

Each one of these games surpassed what I expected for them, but there was one that did so more than the others. That game is...

Valley

I first heard about Valley through Jim Sterling's channel. I watched a little bit of the gameplay he showed off and went and purchased the game myself afterwards. I thought it would be an hour long indie title that was fun to play but ultimately forgettable. What I was not expecting was a Unity engine game with a better sense of mobility than most other games, a story that hasn't really been done before, and some of the most unique gameplay of this year. Jim Sterling referred to Valley as a surprise, but when I actually went and experienced it for myself, "surprise" seems like an understatement. It is one of the few games this year that I would advise just about everyone to spend their money on. So, for these reasons, Valley wins the Undertale award for biggest surprise.

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Grand Theft Auto V award for Biggest Regret:
The title may not sound like an Honorable Mention, but stay with me. I don't get to play every game that comes out each year, not even close. As a result, there are some games that I would have liked to play but didn't get to for one reason or another. While I did eventually play Grand Theft Auto V, I didn't get to in the year that it came out. The nominees for this award are games with which I find myself in a similar position, and they are:

• Stardew Valley

• Owlboy

• Fire Emblem: Fates

• The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine

• Superhot

Any of these titles could conceivably win this award. The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine goes without saying, as it't a story DLC for one of my favorite games of last year. Stardew Valley is a kind of game that I've never played before, but it looks like I could sink plenty of hours into it. Owlboy isn't really my style, but it looks as charming as all get-out. I played Fire Emblem: The Sacred Scrolls on the Game Boy Advance back in my childhood, so I'm inclined to want to try out this latest installment. And lastly, Superhot seems like a fantastic proof-of-concept kind of game. Any of these games could be the one that I most regretted not playing this year, but I have to pick a winner. The game that I didn't play this year but wanted to the most was...

The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine

Fine, so it's an easy pick that doesn't require much thought. So be it. I just never got around to purchasing Blood and Wine, and it's one of the first items on my list for 2017, so you should be seeing a review at some point in the near future.



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Spec Ops: The Line award for Most Important:
I started this award a few years ago in response to a text game called Depression Quest. This game was by no means up for any awards, but I thought that it deserved recognition for the steps it took to educate the gaming community about the realities of depression. I named the award after a game that had you playing as an American killing American soldiers in Dubai and posed serious questions about the validity of nationalism in the face of war crimes. Of all the honorable mentions I give out each year, this one is my favorite because it allows me to give recognition to games that might otherwise not make any lists. In case you haven't already picked up on this, the Spec Ops: The Line award for Most Important game is a celebration of games that are made with a purpose in mind. The game that ultimately wins this award each year is the one with both the most admirable purpose or message in mind and the best execution of said purpose or message. The nominees are:

• That Dragon, Cancer

• Orwell

• Inside

Let's all be honest. I haven't even named the winner and you already know which game is going to win. That should speak volumes for how deserving it is. You already know, but the winner is...

That Dragon, Cancer

For those who don't know, That Dragon, Cancer is a game built by Ryan Green and Amy Green, and it shows us their son Joel's four year battle against cancer. Joel was diagnosed as a baby, went into remission after a while, and fell ill again. Cancer unfortunately claimed his life at age 4, in 2014. This game has a few flawed design choices and the like, but it succeeds so thoroughly in getting us invested in the story, in making us care about this little boy we've never met before, in making us feel the developers' pain as their child suffers. Most of the dialogue is taken straight from home movies, which makes the entire situation feel that much more real. What makes all of this even more heartbreaking is the fact that they started development while Joel was in remission. The ending was supposed to be a bittersweet thing with a "despite it all, he is still here" message. Then Joel passed away. Ryan Green won an award similar to this at The Game Awards this year (but don't get me started on that fiasco of a show), and he delivered the most heartbreaking, wonderful speech I've heard from a developer. One thing he said, with tears in his eyes, was (to paraphrase), "You let me tell the story of my son, Joel. And in the end, it wasn't the story we wanted to tell. But you decided to listen and learn how we loved him." I knew when I played this game that it would win this award, but I could never have imagined just how close to home it would eventually hit. It's a different experience from losing a child, to be sure, but at the end of 2016 I lost my grandmother to cancer. The purpose of That Dragon, Cancer, apart from telling players this story, was to start a conversation about cancer, to get people to hate it as much as the developers do. It's a message that one can accept and be a part of even without losing somebody, but having now come into contact with the dragon itself, the message rings all the more true. I could talk for hours about That Dragon, Cancer, but suffice it to say that there has never been a more deserving recipient of the Spec Ops: The Line award for most important game. I applaud Ryan and Amy Green for the time they took with this project, I applaud them for the love they have for their children, and most of all I applaud them for their strength and their bravery.

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Kingdoms of Amalur award for Worst Writing:
Taking a complete 180 in tone from that last honorable mention, we have the first of our DIShonorable mentions. This first one is pretty self-explanatory. The Kingdoms of Amalur award for worst writing was one of the original honorable mentions that I came up with, and it was named after a game that was actually quite good. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning was a game with the most flexible rpg combat and leveling up systems of any game to date, but the writing was just terrible. Likewise, Life is Strange, the game that won this award last year, had a gripping story that had me invested from the beginning, but the writing was still terrible. All of this is to say that just because a game wins this particular dishonorable mention doesn't mean that it itself is bad. It just means that the writing is so bad as to be noteworthy. The nominees are:

• Dishonored 2

• Oxenfree

• Final Fantasy XV

This time around the writing wasn't terrible, but it was definitely not good. Ironically enough, the winner of this first dishonorable mention is...

Dishonored 2

The writing in Dishonored 2 retains the flaws that the original game's writing had: it all just feels fake. It always sounds like the characters are aware that they are living in a game world and thus feel the need to justify their existence by giving exposition every chance they can. That and there are several lines that are just...odd. For example, in the beginning of the game, Corvo says to himself, "Delilah turned my daughter Emily into stone...I will find a way to make her flesh again." Ignoring the obvious oddity of Corvo referring to Emily as "my daughter Emily" to himself, this entire line just feels off somehow. Maybe you agree with me, maybe not, but either way, Dishonored 2 wins the Kingdoms of Amalur award for Worst Writing.

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Borderlands award for Most Yawn Inducing:
Much like the previous dishonorable mention, this one does not necessarily mean that the recipient is a bad game. It can still have things like good level design, good writing, maybe even a good story. Granted, it isn't likely, but it is still within the realm of possibility. The point of this dishonorable mention is that the game is boring, and a game can still be boring with a good story, writing, and level design. Even with well crafted gameplay a game can still be boring if the well crafted product just isn't compelling. Thankfully there weren't that many nominees this year. What nominees we have are:

• Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor

• The Last Guardian

• No Man's Sky

Let's be honest with ourselves once again. If you're reading this, regardless of your own thoughts on this title, you already know what my choice is. The winner is..

No Man's Sky

No Man's Sky is a game that I imagine everybody on Earth heard about. The disappointment after its release was one of the most infamous bits of disappointment in years. For a few hours, it is unlike anything you've ever experienced, but the second it stops being that, it becomes immediately stale and repetitive. Contrary to what many people say, No Man's Sky is not a bad game. It isn't a good one either. Rather, it is mediocre but leaning a little bit more toward the negative side. One thing is for sure, though: The second the realization sets in that this infinite universe has the depth of a puddle, the game becomes more boring than any game in recent memory. It is for this reason that No Man's Sky wins the Borderlands award for Most Yawn Inducing game.

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Lord Lucien award for Worst Boss Fight:
There is a chance that you don't know or remember who this award is referring to. At the end of Fable II, the hero goes up against Lord Lucien, the man who killed his/her sister and left him/her for dead. The subsequent boss fight involves even less work than a quicktime event. You just press the A button three times and it is over. Because of this, I decided to name this brand new dishonorable mention after Lord Lucien. Recipients of this brand new dishonorable mention can win for a number of reasons: they are poorly designed, they are quicktime events, they're just boring, etc. What marks a deserving winner of this award, though, is a lack of fun in fighting them. The nominees for this are:

• Spider Mastermind (Doom)

• Yhorm the Giant (Dark Souls III)

• Delilah (Dishonored 2)

• Rafe Adler (Uncharted 4: A Thief's End)

Any of these bosses could conceivably win this award. The Spider Mastermind was just the easiest of the bosses in Doom, Yhorm the Giant could be killed in four hits, Delilah (not to be confused with the Firewatch character by the same name) was a stealth game boss, which are never good, and Rafe Adler was a glorified quicktime event. However, the one that really took the cake this year was...

Yhorm the Giant (Dark Souls III)

Spoilers for Dark Souls III ahead. Built up to be a force to be reckoned with, Yhorm the Giant turned out to be a fight winnable with only a few hits. The key to winning the fight is using the weapon that is found in the room. If you use that weapon, the fight takes under a minute. I wouldn't be as disappointed with this boss if it weren't one of the four lords of cinder fights, but it is, so I am proud to grant Yhorm the Giant the Lord Lucien award for Worst Boss Fight.

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Scalebound award for Most Laughable Reveal:
I came up with this award after seeing a reveal for a game called Scalebound at E3 last year. It was one of the most awful reveals I had ever seen, and to this day I'm still laughing at how completely stupid the game looks. This year there were quite a few noteworthily bad reveals. Some were bad because the game itself looked bad and others because the presentation for the reveal was terrible. The nominees are:

• Metal Gear Survive

• Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition

• Days Gone

• Trials of the Blood Dragon

This award was initially going to go to Metal Gear Survive, as I'm sure you can imagine. However, at the end of the day, I can still imagine a lot of people buying it. It is a depressing fact, to be sure, but a true one nonetheless. The Metal Gear name carries weight, so even though most critics I follow were laughing their heads off at Konami's continued idiocy, it will probably still earn Konami a pretty penny. In addition, it's kind of par for the course for Konami, isn't it? We didn't know that it was going to be a co-op zombie game, but we knew that Konami was going to screw up the Metal Gear license somehow. Despite this, I was gearing up to give this award to Metal Gear Survive...but then I saw an advertisement for a different product and both laughed and scratched my head to a much greater degree. That product was...

Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition

I don't think anybody saw Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition coming. I mean, Bulletstorm wasn't a bad game, but it was a forgettable one. So forgettable, in fact, that this remastered edition is the first we've heard from it since its release in early 2011. Nobody on earth was sitting in their chairs and thinking, "boy golly I sure hope they remaster Bulletstorm." I mean, chances are if you hadn't already heard of this remastered version, seeing this award caused you to remember the game for the first time since its release. The best summary of this phenomenon is something I saw when I first saw the announcement. The Bulletstorm Facebook page broke the news initially for me, and I was shocked because I didn't remember having liked the page. Then I saw a single comment below the announcement saying "Wow. I don't even remember liking this page. Has it really been that long?" That was the only comment on a page dealing with a AAA release. Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition wins the Scalebound award for most laughable reveal because it is: 1) Unnecessary, 2) An obvious cash grab, 3) Not a very smart cash grab, at that, and 4) Doomed to fail. It comes out April 7, 2017, so mark your calendars and don't forget to preorder to get a Duke Nukem bonus!

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Any Ubisoft Press Conference Award for Biggest Failure:
As terrible as the decisions Ubisoft makes are, I find it hard to really garner hate for them. I just picture the company as a little kid sniffing glue and bragging about it to their friends. Nowhere is this more true than in their press conferences. Nobody lies about their products quite as much as Ubisoft does, and the desire to appear "edgy" is so blatant and transparent that it's hard not to feel just a little bit sorry for this company of idiots. This brand new dishonorable mention is meant to embrace cringe. This is one of the more vague categories, as I know a nominee when I see one and not a moment sooner. Nominees for this category can be games, but more often than not they will be real life events in the gaming community. The most cringeworthy failures of this year, and the nominees for recognition as such are:

• Ubisoft's E3 Press Conference 2016

• The Game Awards

• No Man's Sky

It was tempting to give Ubisoft's E3 Press Conference this award, which would be great because this award was made because of how terrible literally every Ubisoft E3 Press Conference is, but there was one failure this year that was even worse than Aisha Tyler and those morons in the bear suits who were presenting Trials of the Blood Dragon. I mean, at least this year's Ubisoft press conference had the guy who presents For Honor, one of the coolest dudes of all time. The failure that surpassed the Ubisoft press conference is...

The Game Awards

The Game Awards has always been a completely laughable affair. It's a shame, since it really does aim to be a big deal in the gaming community, but it has always been so terribly handled that I find it impossible to ever take it seriously. I remember watching it a few years back and The Last of Us had just won the award for best voice acting and Troy Baker happened to walk in the door at that moment. They called him up to the stage and he asked "what is this for?" Likewise, several award winners were absent from the show entirely. As bad as it was that year, though, it couldn't hold a candle to the complete travesty that was this year. Where do I even start? The soulless, empty-eyed, fake-on-all-levels, "I would literally put a baby in a microwave if it meant people would give me attention", cattle-like Youtubers who presented the "Games for Impact" award? The fact that the Shick Hydrobot got more screen time than the actual games? The fact that the man in charge broke his promise about only showing representative trailers? The fact that nearly all of their choices seemed to depend on trends and what seemed most popular than actual quality? I suppose it doesn't matter where I start because it all ends in the same place: failure. The Game Awards 2016 was a despicable, fake, desperate farce of a gaming celebration. I just hope that if there is a Game Awards 2017 that they stay true to their original vision...and not get announcers who grin from ear to ear like a bunch of brain dead idiots when giving an award to That Dragon, Cancer. Seriously, people, the award you were giving was meant to celebrate games that seek to change the world. How about a little respect?

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Brink award for Worst Game:
In years where this dishonorable mention exists, you can feel free to rejoice, because it means that the year was good enough that I didn't need to make a full list of worst games outside of the honorable mentions. I'm still very small time and purchase all of my games out of pocket, so I don't get to spend my money on games that are notoriously bad for the sake of reviewing them. Maybe some day I'll have the pleasure of being able to do that, but every contender for worst game is a game that I bought thinking it would be good. I 2016 may not have been as good as 2015, but at least it was still good enough to make the list of nominees here relatively short. The nominees are:

• Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor

• No Man's Sky

• The Last Guardian 

Many of the lists in this awards ceremony are divorced from the scores I gave the games in my reviews of them. Most of the time, this award is one such award. While giving a game a low score is definitely a reflection of bad quality, there are times when the shock of a particular game being bad outweighs objectively bad games. This year, the winner of this award not only has the lowest score in Right Trigger history, but it was also the most objectively bad while being the most pretentious and self-important. Thats right, folks. If you've been keeping up with the reviews this year, then it should come as no surprise that the worst game of the year was...

Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor

I mean, seriously, what a load of complete and utter garbage. I had to restrain myself from giving it a zero because it is borderline unplayable but it at least loads. Where do I start with this garbage? The visual style gave me a headache every time I played it, there are about five different framerates happening at once which made me nauseous every time, there were a variety of terrible design choices that made the game a chore to play, there were artificial roadblocks put up every two seconds with the intention of padding out the already terrible gameplay, and to top it all off, the game randomly erases every last bit of your progress. Since writing my review I've heard speculation that the developers are a bunch of hipsters who put in a lot of those terrible design choices and roadblocks to make political statements about gender being a money making scam or some crap like that. My policy is to never remove or add points because of political reasons, no matter what they may be, unless they actively make the gameplay bad or cause plot holes in the story. This doesn't happen very often at all, so I seldom have to take points off because of it. I would love an excuse to take off a full point and drop this game to a 0.8/10, but unfortunately I haven't researched this myself. It is purely speculation that the terrible game design had political purpose, so I can't in good conscience punish the game further. Regardless, Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor may be the first game since Bioshock: Infinite that I have actively used the Right Trigger to try and convince buyers not to spend their money on. Congratulations, Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor, you get the Brink award for Worst Game of the Year. I hope you have to play yourself in hell.



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Top 10 Games

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Well folks, we've done it. We've made it through 2016 and you, dear reader, have made it through all 30-odd categories and the many honorable mentions I concocted (and if you just scrolled all the way to the end without reading anything else...don't tell me...Literally the only thing I live for is for people to read pages upon pages upon pages of my gaming opinions in my small-time blog on the internet). As I said in the beginning of this whole deal, this was a year of variety and surprises both positive and negative. This year I wanted to take a more scientific approach to this list, as last year it kind of got a bit out of hand. Let me give you an idea of how the order was calculated this year. Firstly, only games that I scored at least an 8/10 are eligible for this list. That means items such as Dishonored 2 and Mafia III are ineligible. I took every eligible game and put them into a big list. I then calculated what I called a "raw" score based on a combination of the base score, my compulsion to play other games in the franchise/investigate the developer, the amount of times I replayed it, the overall value in the package, whether or not I 100%-ed it, how much it surprised me, and where my gut instinct wanted it on the list. I took the games with the ten highest "raw" scores and compiled another score based off of their positions on the 30-odd other lists as well as my gut instinct once again, and then I added this score to the "raw" score. This allowed me to sort the games into the order you see now. As you can probably tell, this was neither a 100% subjective nor 100% empirical approach, and in the end I still had the final say, but this new approach allowed me to process my thoughts in a more methodical fashion. I was going to do the top 15 like I did last year. I had over fifteen possible contenders for the list, so it would have been entirely possible to do so. However, last year this list was so chaotic that none of the positions really meant anything. In my desire to acknowledge every one of the really good games that came out last year, I sacrificed the kind of meaning that comes from having only ten items. Were I to do the top 15 again, it would undoubtedly let me give recognition to everything I want to give recognition to without having to cut anything out, but in the interest of continuing to refine my criticism, I've elected to bite the bullet, remove certain titles from this list, and trust that you will have a look at the full reviews if you don't see a game that you would have liked to see. This was a painful list to make. Truly deserving titles ended up being cut and some truly flawed titles ended up taking their places because I simply enjoyed them more. With that in mind, the games that ended up on this top ten list were the ones that I enjoyed above all the others and thought were the most deserving. So, ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, these are the top ten games of 2016.





#10):

Uncharted 4: A Thief's End

Because of my choice to make a more concise list this year, #10 was the most highly contested list spot in Right Trigger history. This spot was a choice between Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, Hyper Light Drifter, and Islands: Non-Places. It was a difficult choice to make, and in the end the choice that I made was inconsistent with my scoring, but I went with Uncharted 4: A Thief's End. Of the three choices that I had for this position, Uncharted 4 was the only one that I played multiple times. As flawed as it is, Uncharted 4 was challenging without being drowned in chaos (putting it above Hyper Light Drifter) and it was just a better value proposition than Islands: Non-Places. In addition, Uncharted 4 had the kind of character focus that I've been wanting since the first game and one of the few endings I've seen that I would actually classify as perfect. Hey, I guess I got to give recognition to some other games without making a top 15 after all! Now you know that Hyper Light Drifter and Islands: Non-Places were very close to making this list!





#9):

Panzermadels: Tank Dating Simulator

Hey! I see you there! I see you sitting in that chair and judging me! Fine, admittedly, on first glance, you would have every right to judge me. After all, Panzermadels is a visual novel dating simulator featuring anime girls. What on Earth could be more cringeworthy? Believe me, I'm with you, and the fact that my "recommended" queue on Steam now has quite a few visual novels/dating sims after playing this brings me no small amount of discomfort. However, at the end of the day, I purchased Panzermadels for one reason: its concept. You see, the title is no lie. This is a game in which you play as a military student being sent to learn about tank warfare. However, there is a mixup in the paperwork and you end up going to "Tank School," as in school for tanks. As in tanks are the students. And tanks are anime girls. I laughed out loud for a couple of minutes after seeing that concept and knew that I was doomed to have to play and review it afterwards. I was expecting a single-joke experience that would more or less be insubstantial, but I was in for a surprise. Not only is this premise as entertaining as it promises to be, but it's also one of the most cleverly executed premises I've seen in a long time. Every tank's personality is built based off of the pros and cons of the historical tank that they're named after. The Tiger I, for instance, was known for breaking down a lot, so the anime girl Tiger I suffered from low self-esteem and felt like a burden. The game is filled to the brim with historical information and hidden little jokes like that. It would have been one thing for the game to simply stand on its premise and call anime girls "tanks." It was another thing entirely for the developers to execute the premise so well.





#8):

Valley

Valley truly surprised me with its quality. Valley is made on the Unity engine, an engine best known for being a crap engine for beginners. Despite this, Valley creates one of the most unique first-person games I've ever played. Everything down to the concept of combat is done in a way that has never been done before. Whereas other first-person shooters use guns and grenades strictly to take life, Valley hands you a machine that has the potential to both give and take life. The valley itself becomes a gameplay mechanic in that your "lives" are tied directly to the environment. Every time you die, you are brought back from death by sucking up a significant amount of life from the valley, killing nearby animals and trees in the process. On the other hand, if you so choose, you can sacrifice some of the energy in your suit to help in restoring the valley. If it had just been unique in this way, it would have been enough, but Valley also boasts a sense of mobility paralleled only by very few AAA releases. Likewise, the presentation and sound direction in Valley brings Journey to mind, and indeed, Valley does a better job of being Journey-esque than the game by Journey's developers that came out this year. As if being a fun and unique game weren't enough, Valley also runs consistently better than some AAA releases. I said this in the "Best Smaller Developer" section, but the studio behind this game is one to keep an eye on in the coming years.





#7):

Firewatch

It has long been a small thought in the back of my head, the idea that there should be a game that eschews the concept of the minimap and instead has you orienteer your way around the game world. Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor did that, but it was complete and utter garbage, so it doesn't count. Firewatch was the answer to this small thought in the back of my head. More than that, though, it took the concept of the "walking simulator" and took it where no game (that I've played) has gone before. For the first time in my gaming life, I had a full sandbox in front of me and only a handheld map to get me around it. There were objectives that I had to accomplish, but rather than drudge through a same-y open world fighting your standard assortments of monsters to get to the objectives, the challenge was in orienteering. It would have been all to easy for the developers to put in a hunger or thirst meter and turn Firewatch into another run-of-the-mill survival game, but instead, they chose to take their concept of being a worker in Yellowstone National Park and craft the gameplay around that. It would have been all to easy for the developers not to write a story and instead just have this game be Orienteering Simulator 2016, but instead, they chose to center the story around a troubled average Joe in his mid-40's facing a roadblock in his life as a result of his wife's growing mental illness. Given the state of the gaming industry these days, it is such a surprise that Firewatch was able to turn out as good as it did. It isn't perfect, but I never stopped loving the experience of orienteering my way around Yellowstone.





#6):

Dark Souls III

The third chapter in From Software's most famous series had big shoes to fill. It needed to craft a story and atmosphere better than in Dark Souls II while also improving on the polish that II applied to the existing formula. That is a pretty tall order for anyone, but it was especially tall for From Software after the success of Bloodborne in 2015. Let's just get this out of the way: no, Dark Souls III is not better than the original. That was never in doubt. However, Dark Souls III is nonetheless competent on its own merit. It took some of the more aggressive AI from Bloodborne and combined it with the tried and true Souls formula to create a gameplay style that is instantly recognizable but nonetheless unique in its own right. It drew from the existing lore of the series tastefully to create a moderately compelling story. Though this was not my personal favorite of From Software's products, this was the first of their products that I played more than once. I tried to play through Dark Souls, Dark Souls II, and Bloodborne a second time, but I never succeeded in doing so. With Dark Souls III, however, I played through approximately five times. Sure, there are a few too many cathedrals in the level design. Sure, the changes to combat make playing certain ways infinitely more challenging. Sure, some features have been removed that were there in previous titles. However, I can't deny the fact that Dark Souls III was one of the games that I got the most milage out of in 2016.










Now we are getting down to the top 5. The top 5 have rearranged too many times for me to count, but one thing is for certain no matter which order these take: These were the best of the best, the games that I would recommend to the most people, the games that I played the most and enjoyed the most.





#5):

Pokemon Sun/Moon

It's safe to say that Pokemon has been in dire need of some fresh direction in recent installments. X and Y Version were both bland, and the series was beginning to feel like it had officially run out of ideas. Game Freak's answer to this was Sun and Moon Version. It took the usual structure of gym leaders and apocalyptic Pokemon and turned it into a coming of age story with an emphasis more on smaller acts of evil. It took the tried and true gameplay formula and added some extra features to the UI to improve it. It had its own kind of charm, a whole new kind of world, and many new Pokemon to catch. I put more hours into Pokemon Sun and Moon than I have put into any Pokemon game since Sapphire. Pokemon has been a fixture in my life since I was very little, and it makes me so happy that I can honestly place a Pokemon game on a prestigious list such as this one. I like to think myself above the taint of nostalgia, but even if this weren't a completely subjective list of my own opinions, I would want you to know that Pokemon Sun and Moon Version is a worthwhile experience even when divorced from the license. It has a story that is more about characters and less about Pokemon, tried and true turn-based combat, especially good graphics for a handheld title, etc. So, whether you are a new Pokemon player or a veteran trainer, I believe that Pokemon Sun and Moon is worth your time and your money.





#4):

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

When I played Deus Ex: Human Revolution back in the day, I didn't fully appreciate it. I had played stealth games before, but none that were quite as much of an intellectual challenge as Deus Ex. Having now aged a number of years, I went into Deus Ex: Mankind Divided hoping that I would enjoy it more than its predecessor. Since playing it, I've gone back and played Human Revolution again. While it is certainly true that Human Revolution is the superior game, Mankind Divided just so happens to be a more polished gameplay experience. It isn't often that I play a stealth game multiple times, but I ended up playing Mankind Divided three times, once on permadeath difficulty. That is how much fun Mankind Divided is if you share my immense love of stealth games. While playing, I came to rediscover the reason why stealth is my favorite genre: the unbridled tension that comes with holding your breath and hoping not to be found. I remember a particular night when I was playing this game: I ended up in a hoity-toity bank as a result of a side quest. I completed my objective and then decided I wanted to go through the bank with a fine-toothed comb. I also decided that I wanted to accomplish this without once being seen. In the end, I couldn't properly rob the bank, but I did pick up a substantial amount of treasure for my efforts. I remember just how tense it was keeping an eye on two guards simultaneously, making a move, entering the line of sight of a previously unseen worker, and silencing him mere milliseconds before my cover was blown. Few unscripted moments had that kind of intensity, but it was always rewarding to play Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. Since Square Enix is evidently obsessed with making this a multi-volume series, possibly a yearly one, all we can do is hope that all of these upcoming titles are as good as Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.





#3):

Final Fantasy XV

If anybody had told me as early as a year ago that I would have a Final Fantasy title on my top games list, I would have told them they were stupid. If they had told me that it would be this far up the list, I would have told them something worse. Yet, here we are. It is a lesson, dear readers. Never say never. Some of my best experiences this year have come from me expanding my gaming horizons. Final Fantasy XV may very well be the most fundamentally flawed game to ever make it this far up my end of the year lists. The driving is terrible, the story becomes gibberish towards the end, and there are a few hours near the end that are just not very good. That doesn't really sound like something one would put as the third best game of the year, does it? If this were a list of the most objectively good games of the year, Final Fantasy XV would be eating so much dust that people would try to sell its mouth as an antique. If you didn't read my full review of this title, then you may be rolling your eyes and thinking, "nostalgia." Were I anybody else, this would be an understandable assumption to make. I, however, have no nostalgia value invested in this franchise. In fact, Final Fantasy XV is my first foray into it. It should speak volumes about how great the game is that it can reel in a first timer such as myself and really impress me in spite of all of its many flaws. There is just a charm to Final Fantasy XV that I haven't found in very many other games. For instance, in spite of Noctis's stupid hair and stupid anime boy angst, I came to care about his plight as the story continued. Likewise, in spite of the terrible car mechanics, I still enjoyed the road trip aspects of the game to some degree. My love of Final Fantasy XV is one that I find harder to explain the more I try. One thing is for sure: I will be keeping an eye on the Final Fantasy franchise in the years to come, and the franchise has Final Fantasy XV to thank for that.





#2):

Inside

I would be very surprised if you knew this, dear reader, because I doubt that you've taken as close a tally of the categories as I have, but Inside won the top spot on more of my lists this year than any of the others. I would even more surprised if you knew that Inside took more top spots in this year than any other game in Right Trigger history. I went through and calculated to see if my hunch was correct, and sure enough, Inside won the top spot on six lists. The next runner up was Dragon Age: Inquisition back in 2014. Sure, there are more categories this year than in any other, but it is still a testament to the game's quality. It had the most gripping atmosphere of any game in recent memory and ran better than your average AAA release does. If I were to give a game Game of the Year strictly on objective quality alone, Inside would leave literally every other game on this list in the dust. I didn't like Inside's ending as much as everybody else did, but I can't deny the fact that after I beat Inside the first time, I could think of nothing else. Inside is the most disturbing game I've played in a long time. For the uninitiated, Inside takes place in what can be assumed to be some kind of ultra-collectivist dystopia. There are themes of slavery, mutilation, unethical science, and brainwashing. While not for people who are especially sensitive, Inside is a game I would recommend to absolutely anyone who can handle it. As I've already said, it has the most gripping atmosphere of any game in recent memory, but beyond that it also has some of the best puzzle design I've seen in ages. Every puzzle you come across is difficult enough to make you think, but intuitive enough to prevent you from needing a walkthrough provided you put your mind to it. Inside could easily have been Game of the Year, but there was one game this year that I simply enjoyed more, played more often, and had a bit more content.





Game of the Year:

Doom

That's right. The same person who awarded Mass Effect 3, The Last of Us, Dragon Age: Inquisition, and Undertale Game of the Year now awards Doom this exact same title. The same person for whom story and charm have dictated this prestigious award for the past four years now awards a game with neither of these things this honor. All throughout this year, I've known in the back of my head that Doom would be my Game of the Year, but I never wanted to admit it to myself. With every new release, I thought, "maybe this will be the one that beats Doom." None of them ended up doing that. I enjoyed so many games this year, but Doom was the one that I kept coming back to. Utterly merciless in its aggressive combat, Doom was the most fun game I've played in my entire life. I'll be the first to admit that I tend to over exaggerate, but I'm telling the truth when I say that, in all of my years as a gamer, no gaming experience has ever been as simply fun as Doom was. Though the environments are a little same-y and the final boss felt a little underwhelming, Doom had some of the best level design in recent memory, the best metal soundtrack ever created, a deep pool of lore for those who are interested, an incredible number of secrets (each of which gives you some kind of upgrade), and a sense of nostalgia as points in the game feel like early science fiction games such as Metroid Prime. I played every game on this list more than once, but there always came a time when I stopped. With Inside, it was because I had found every secret. With Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, it was because I beat the game on the hardest difficulty and had nothing to do after that. However, with Doom, I got 100% completion not once, not twice, but three times. I also completed it on Nightmare difficulty for one of these 100% runs. Even after having completed the game enough times to have every secret memorized, I still sometimes feel compelled to go back and play it again. I even tried out the snapmap feature, so hungry was I for more of Doom. I even considered trying out the multiplayer even though I had heard it wasn't very good. Let me give you another way of looking at this: Doom's "raw" score was around 81. The next closest raw score was Inside with about 54. That is how much I enjoyed my time with Doom. Whichever way you view it, Doom is the game that I enjoyed the most this year, and though it has taken me this long to come to terms with it, I realize now that there is nothing to be ashamed of. Doom is completely, moronically violent and action oriented, that much is true without a shadow of a doubt. However, it isn't often that such a game comes with so many objectively good pieces. Normally these stupid action games don't have stellar level design, enemy variety, good soundtracks, meaningful secret hunting, etc. Doom's entire purpose is to let you kill demons, but in doing so it provides incredible value for your money. With the exception of very few people, if someone were to ask me which game I think is the most important one to spend your money on from 2016, I would without any degree of hesitation say "Doom." Let it be known across the nation, let it be known far and wide, let the news be heard in every hall: Doom is the Right Trigger Game of the Year 2016.

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