Your 2016 Game(s) of the Year!

[The Shoemaker]

Time to reflect on another year of gaming! Figured this could be a place to to share your personal game or games of the year, share any 2016 gaming memories ect.

This year is actually interesting for me, as even though I think this is a record year for me in the shear number of games I've completed, I didn't play that many games that were released in 2016. It's likely due to me getting a PS4 late last year and mostly catching up on releases from 2013-2015, as well as my new years gaming resolution being to beat more games before buying new ones.

It's hard to determine the exact order of the list, so I don't think I have one single "game of the year", but a few games that made the most impact.

The Shoemaker's 2016 Games of the Year

1. Pokemon Sun - I've only played a few Pokemon games and so far they have all been good, but had issues that prevented them from being great. I feel like Pokemon Sun is finally the game that fixes the inconveniences of Pokemon and lets you just enjoy the game. Surprisingly one of the best minor additions that made the biggest impact was allowing you to add wild Pokemon to your full party without running back to the Pokemon center. Because of this I experimented with a lot more Pokemon than I usually would which made exploring new areas even more exciting. This was also the first Pokemon game where I completed the regional Pokedex, which is a testament to how much I enjoyed playing the game.

2. Dark Souls III - This was my first foray into the world of the Souls games (technically I had played Bloodborne for half an hour before this), and it really sucked me in. It felt like a very new experience to me and felt really refreshing, but oddly nostalgic. It felt like a retro inspired title realized in the modern era. I really enjoyed the exploration and the concept of trying an area over and over again until you've perfected it and can move forward. It was also the first PS4 game I really got into since I got it last November.

3. Fire Emblem Fates - I played Birthright first, and I'm actually still working on Conquest (the better version), overall Fates was a great sequel to Awakening. They improved on the game in almost every way from the gameplay (which might be at the series best), the music and the map scenarios. One of the larger complaints of Awakening was the story, and the developers made an effort to improve on the story for Fates, but unfortunately the story is the game's weakest point. If it wasn't for the story it could be the best in the series. I still had a fantastic time with the game and I'm looking forward to finishing Conquest.

Honorable mentions to Twilight Princess HD which made me remember how great this game was, Monster Hunter Generations which added a nice coat of paint to old mechanics, and Paper Mario Color Splash (which I've only played a few hours of) for its charming scenarios and hilarious dialogue.

[Jordan]

I played more games this year than probably the previous three of four years combined. here's a question: does it have to be a game that actually released in 2016? A lot of the games I played this year were older games. Another question: What about games that were launched in previous years but updated in 2016 significantly? Gaming has changed a lot lately. A lot of games are released in a pseudo-unfinished, crappy and unpolished state and then refined with time into masterpieces. I imagine Shantae 1/2 Genie Hero will be one of those games. I breezed through the main game in about 7 hours and thought Pirate's Curse was superior. However, it seems like 1/2 GH will be getting a lot more content in future months/years.

If games which were updated count, I think my game of the year was actually Rabi-Ribi. That game was a total surprise to me and wins out over other potential options just because it was fun from beginning to end. In cases such as Fire Emblem Fates or even Rance VI, by contrast, there were times where I got kind of bored.

[VictorViper]

I put more hours into Overwatch this year than all other games played combined, surely. No sign of that stopping, either. Far and away my #1 choice this year. Lots of really good releases in 2016 though, I'll have to think of runners up.

[SkyPikachu]

GOTY 2016 -Overwatch
Have made friends from this game and i've played it so much since I bought it 4 days ago that it's easily Goty for me. Just I can't explain why I love it so much.

Also Ratchet & Clank was an easy 2nd for me. (Yet to play enough The Last Guardian.)

Including games that came out in other years that I first played this year.
Gone Home - Amazing Story just incredible.
Hearthstone - Even though I'm over it I still find it fun here and there and I love it much more than yu-gi-oh or mtg. F2P is nice too.
Unravel - Such a beautiful game really loved it. Very fun puzzles.
Ori & the blind forest - 3 hours in but my god is it beautiful and fun. I'm streaming it currently as well. https://www.twitch.tv/slurmnator

[Kong Wen]

I have three categories for this.

Best game I should have liked more than I did: Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIII. As a big fan of this game series (it's one of a very tiny number of "life-defining" games), I've been waiting for something like this to come out for so long. It's huge. It's translated. It's on a modern console. But something of the charm of the smaller-scale top-down tactical games of yore is lost in the management simulation. I'll get back to this one, but it doesn't take the cake.

Best game that didn't really come out in 2016: Destiny: Rise of Iron. The base game came out in 2014, but Rise of Iron is this year's major expansion. Bungie already nearly perfected the game's overall design last year, so there wasn't as much room for improvement this time around. What they did is breathe a sense of the sublime back into the game, replacing the doom and gloom of The Taken King with a nostalgia-driven look and feel and several quest/loot/mechanical additions. Having a regular crew who share in that nostalgia—who were there throughout Iron Banners past, who took down massive raid bosses with you, who flaunted an exotic weapon that eluded you—is a big part of the charm.

Actual best game of 2016: Severed. Severed came out back in spring for Vita before expanding to 3DS and iOS later in the year (it was well-reviewed by This Old Neon on the latter occasion). The swipe-screen dungeon-crawler isn't usually my go-to genre, but this game is so exquisitely well-designed and well-implemented, and it was so captivating, that my relatively short time spent in the game world has stuck with me all year. This game has no soft little underbelly for me to nitpick—the art style is great, the music and sound are great, the character progression is great... map design, combat mechanics, even the story, which fittingly for 2016, is about coming to grips with death.

[The Shoemaker]

I played more games this year than probably the previous three of four years combined. here's a question: does it have to be a game that actually released in 2016? A lot of the games I played this year were older games. Another question: What about games that were launched in previous years but updated in 2016 significantly? Gaming has changed a lot lately. A lot of games are released in a pseudo-unfinished, crappy and unpolished state and then refined with time into masterpieces. I imagine Shantae 1/2 Genie Hero will be one of those games. I breezed through the main game in about 7 hours and thought Pirate's Curse was superior. However, it seems like 1/2 GH will be getting a lot more content in future months/years.

If games which were updated count, I think my game of the year was actually Rabi-Ribi. That game was a total surprise to me and wins out over other potential options just because it was fun from beginning to end. In cases such as Fire Emblem Fates or even Rance VI, by contrast, there were times where I got kind of bored.

Traditionally Game of the Year is limited to games released during that specific year. But this thread is certainly open to what you played the most of this year, what was the best experience, ect. I started with games that were released this year, and I plan to write about the other games I played this year that weren't released in 2016, as I mostly played sub-2016 games as well.

So yeah, anything you played in 2016 goes.

[Jordan]

I just learned that Rabi-Ribi actually did come out in 2016. It just came out early (late-January). So there you go. That's my game of the year for 2016 hands down.

Best RPG goes to Fire Emblem Fates. As much as I like Rance VI and Seinarukana (neither of which really came out in 2016), Fates has them beat in terms of gameplay depth.

Best ongoing game (continual updates) for me is League of Legends. To be honest, though, I don't play too many of these types of games due to lack of time.

Best game I played which did not actually come out in 2016 was Disgaea 4: I spent probably over a hundred hours on this game. I had never gotten into Disgaea before, but Disgaea 4 was a real blast. The characters, humor and gameplay appealed to me greatly.

The Runner up non-2016 game which I played in 2016 goes to Thea: The Awakening. Thea is a very clever game which draws on Slavic mythology. Gameplay wise, it sort of resembles a cross between a 4x strategy game and RPG.

Most disappointing blunder of the year goes to ROTK XIII: After NA: SOI, I had high expectations for KOEI's tactical strategy games. ROTK XIII let me down in more ways than I can express.

Most played game overall: Monster Hunter Generations. I had some gripes with it to be honest, which is why it doesn't win for me in other categories. But it was a good game overall.

Most potential for improvement goes to Civilization VI and Shantae: Half Genie Hero. I haven't actually played Civ VI, but I know enough about it and the series. These are the games which have already been released but which I feel have the most potential to improve through patches, updates and DLC.

[Kong Wen]

Unravel - Such a beautiful game really loved it. Very fun puzzles.

Of my two Christmas games, I spent the "last game of the year" on Inside; between the World Juniors and NYE dinner, I won't have time to beat Unravel in 2016. I kind of regret it, but I'll make it my first game beat of 2017. Actually, maybe that works thematically, too. Bleak of 2016 is finished, and we're hoping 2017 is happier and more cheerful.

[Sharecrow]

As typical, I've hardly played any 2016 games. My favorite was probably Far Cry Primal (that's 2016 right???). Last Guardian is prettty and fun but I haven't made my mind up about it yet.

My favorite game I played was Evil Within.

[Claytone]

As typical, I've hardly played any 2016 games.

This is why I usually like to do these in the format of "best gaming experiences of [year]," where the actual release date of the game doesn't matter. Like you, only 5 out of the 25 games I beat last year came out in 2016. I will likely only catch up on 2016's best in the coming years. Anyway, I guess that's a thread I could still make.

To actually answer the question, highlights of 2016 for me were Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Street Fighter V. The former was, in my opinion, the best Lego game yet. The latter is a well-tuned fighting game that I was fortunate to get into after it had been updated to what one could reasonably consider a finished product.