FAKE RONJAN!!Game of the year: 2016 edition
We're back! After a tumultuous political season that left us drained and ultimately devastated, we've finally picked ourselves off of the mat. Life goes on. We may even talk about it someday.
Anyway, I laid out my game of the year picks from 2006 through 2015 last year, and I figured I should probably update that list with my pick for 2016.
The gaming community loves Uncharted 4, and it will no doubt be another decorated title on Naughty Dog's resume. In my last post, however, I criticized the game for being an uneven and unnecessary follow-up to my 2011 game of the year, Uncharted 3. While I liked it enough, Uncharted 4 left me unsatisfied and it is not my game of the year.
It gets more complicated, because I didn't really play much else that came out this year. Between constant monitoring of political news, raising a toddler, and a day job, I picked my spots and saved my energy for the experiences I thought would delight me.
The other game that I was extremely excited to try was No Man's Sky, more from an analytics standpoint than anything else. What types of worlds could be procedurally generated? Could we decipher the rules and boundaries that Hello Games used to define their universe? How big is big?
As a child, I loved testing boundaries. I'd spent hours playing multiplayer dice or card or video games against myself. I would monitor how games could ebb and flow with different levels of skill involved, and I liked messing with the rules: in the card game War, what happens if one player starts with 3 Aces and the other player has the remaining 49 cards?
I was expecting No Man's Sky to be a playground for the adult version of me to hopelessly wander, get lost, and test the boundaries for hundreds of hours. Then I turned it on.
Out of the box, the game was less about exploring and more about resource collecting and survival. After thirty minutes, I hadn't seen anything interesting on my first planet and hadn't made any meaningful progress towards seeing another. That was enough for me - I deleted the game from my hard drive and my life, and I ultimately sold my PS4 (having recently purchased a Playstation Vita).
With the twin disappointments of Uncharted 4 and No Man's Sky behind me, was 2016 a complete bust for gaming? No, it wasn't, because of the following three reasons:
1. I played and fell in love with two game series from previous years: Shovel Knight and Danganronpa. I'll likely have more to say on each of those in 2017 as their respective sequels come to market, but suffice it to say that these might have won my Game of the Year if I'd played them in the years they initially released. Shovel Knight and its second quest Plague of Shadows are best-in-class love letters to 8-bit gaming, with classic precision platforming paired with throwback visuals and a catchy chiptune soundtrack. Meanwhile, Danganronpa takes a really weird concept - a group of high school students that are trapped and forced to murder each other - that ultimately had me buying weird merchandise and having even weirder dreams.
2. I managed to get my hands on an NES Classic. It's perhaps the best retro gaming machine ever released. And it's so adorable! Even after you see photos of how small it is - roughly the length of a cell phone - it still blows your mind once you see it in person. And something about holding a controller with a D-pad and two buttons just felt right again. I can't wait to show my son the games I grew up with once he's old enough.
3. I discovered my 2016 Game of the Year, Pokemon Go. This may seem like a ridiculous choice to fans of Overwatch or Doom or Civ VI or other "real" games, but nothing made me smile this year like Pokemon did. Some favorite moments include:
Despite lacking any meaningful mechanics, and despite having a leveling system that grinds to a halt after level 20, I kept coming back this year. And with new Pokemon now being added to the mix, I suspect I'll keep up with the game in 2017.
It may not be the most conventional game I played in 2016, but it's my favorite.
-rj
RJ's Game of the Year List
2006 - Elite Beat Agents (DS)
2007 - Super Mario Galaxy (Wii)
2008 - Littlebigplanet (PS3)
2009 - Punch-Out!! (Wii)
2010 - Heavy Rain (PS3)
2011 - Uncharted 3 (PS3)
2012 - The Walking Dead (PS3, Xbox 360, PC)
2013 - The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds (3DS)
2014 - Valiant Hearts (PS3/4, Xbox 360/One, PC)
2015 - Super Mario Maker (Wii U)
2016 - Pokemon Go (Android, iOS)