My Top 10 BEST Games of 2016!

My Top 10 BEST Games of 2016!

          As the year comes to a close, the time has come to look back on the best of the best we’ve seen from the games industry in 2016. I’ve picked out 10 of my personal favourite games I played this year, all of which I highly recommend if you haven’t played yet. As a reminder, this is my personal opinion, and if there’s a game you liked that isn’t on this list, it’s either because I didn’t get around to playing it or I didn’t like it as much as you did. With that said, let’s begin!

10. Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens

          After sitting through the dreck that was 2015’s Lego Jurassic World, I felt that the blocky building franchise’s time was up, at least for me. Maybe it was the developers over at Traveller’s Tales had gotten lazier or maybe I had simply outgrown them. Whatever it was, it had been a few years since I had truly enjoyed a Lego game.

          Imagine my surprise when along comes Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens, a true return to form for the franchise that was even able to top the original Lego Star Wars releases from the mid-2000’s.

          The best part of this game was, without a doubt, the flying segments. Somehow this game was able to surpass most other recent games in terms of flying starships, making it both easy to control and a lot of fun. It’s even better when playing with a friend, as one of you controls the flying and the other controls the blasters as all chaos breaks loose.

          In fact, this is probably the best local multiplayer game all year that doesn’t pit players against each other, considering that they seem to be a dying breed outside of Nintendo games. Lego Star Wars takes the charm of the games before it and refines the gameplay to a point where it sets the bar for all Lego games in the future.

9. Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor

          My personal favourite indie title of the year, Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor proves that not all games need high adventure or complicated battles to truly be a success. Sometimes all you need to do is just walk around and make your hometown a cleaner place.

          And that’s all you really do in this game: you walk around a massive spaceport and pick up garbage until the game tells you to stop. It’s extremely repetitive, but that’s what makes it great. The game is one of the most relaxing experiences I’ve had all year. It’s nice to just focus on this simple task for an hour or so, while admiring the colourful visuals and fantastic soundtrack.

          The game does have some shortcomings, including the lack of a map and an overuse of meter management, but these are just minor complaints that just barely slow down your trash quest. If you’re feeling stressed and want a simple yet delightful game to play, this is one I highly recommend.

8. The Last Guardian

          This game has a lot of shortcomings. A lot of them. But honestly, at no point in playing The Last Guardian did I not see it making this list in some form or another. Despite its many faults, The Last Guardian is wholly worth the lengthy time we spent waiting for it.

          A puzzle game at heart, The Last Guardian sees you playing as a nameless boy exploring some beautifully lit ruins as he searches for a way to return home. Along for the ride is Trico, an enormous gryphon-like creature who helps you maneuver large gaps and climb up to new areas. That is, he helps you do those things when he feels like it. Oftentimes Trico is so overwhelmed by the beautiful architecture surrounding him that he needs to stop and smell the roses before continuing on your quest.

          When you finally do get your companion up and walking, The Last Guardian truly shines as a wholly engrossing adventure that is both memorable and heart-wrenching. While most of the game progresses light on overarching plot, the ending of the game is one truly worth experiencing for yourself, not through watching on YouTube but as a reward for finishing the game. It’s one of the most satisfying endings to a game I’ve seen all year and secured The Last Guardian for me as a game that truly lived up to the hype.

7. Pokken Tournament

          It’s kind of mindboggling that the Pokémon series went 19 years without giving us a fighting game spinoff. Pokken Tournament was exactly the game I was hoping it would be, easily being the best local multiplayer experience I’ve had all year, let alone best fighting game.

          Pokken is an incredibly unique fighting game in that it combines classic Street Fighter style combat with a more open arena mode. The two modes shift back and forth depending on the positions of the combatants, and you need to memorize what button does which attack in order to dish out as much damage to your opponent as possible. It’s strategic enough that professional players have a lot to go on, but simple enough that it doesn’t lock out the casual crowd.

          The character roster is incredibly diverse too, featuring several Pokémon favourites like Charizard, Lucario, Gengar and two variations of Pikachu. My personal favourite to play is Weavile, with its speedy Fury Swipes and ice attacks being difficult for low level players to handle. If you’re looking for a new fighting game to play, I’d wholly recommend Pokken Tournament. It’s fast, it’s insane, and it’s a whole lot of fun.

6. Mirror’s Edge Catalyst

          Good luck finding someone else that has this one on their game of the year list, because I seem to be the only person that really liked it! Mirror’s Edge Catalyst is not a sequel to the cult classic original game from 2008, but rather a reimagining of the first game...I think. It’s kind of hard to figure out when exactly this game is set in terms of the timeline, but it doesn’t really matter because this game’s story is a smouldering dumpster fire of terrible that I’d rather not focus on.

          What’s much better is the extremely kinetic and well balanced parkour gameplay. For a game entirely focused on getting from point A to point B using the most insane acrobatics you can think of, Mirror’s Edge Catalyst has perfected the controls, creating some of the best parkour in gaming to date. The game also drops you into an open world (although it’s open in the same way The Wind Waker is an open world, with you only being able to visit certain areas) that leaves you free to do whatever you want, may that be follow the story, complete challenges, or just go nuts experimenting with the gameplay.

          I’m really disappointed that this might just be the last we see of Mirror’s Edge thanks to the tepid critical reception this game got, because this seems like a fantastic stepping stone towards even better parkour and platforming. If they could just remove the clichéd and stupid rebellion story and focus more on building narrative through gameplay, this series could make leaps and bounds.

5. ReCore

          Another one that seems to have been mostly left behind for this awards season, ReCore is a game I really wish more people had played. One of the most unique third-person shooters on the market right now, while the game is mired with performance issues and a laughably cheap ending, the gameplay is enough to forgive its shortcomings and have a really great time.

          Set on a distant desert planet after a failed attempt to recolonize humanity, ReCore tells the story of Joule, one of the final surviving humans trying to make her way in a world ruled by corrupted robots. Alongside her is Mack, a friendly dog-like bot, as well as two other companions earned later on in the game. Together, they roam dungeons, collecting the cores that power the evil machines as they attempt to discover just what happened to the rest of their race.

          It’s the dungeon crawling elements that allow ReCore to stand out among the crowd. You can tell that this game was made by people who worked on the Metroid Prime trilogy, because it truly feels like a spiritual successor to that long lost franchise. Add in some Kingdom Hearts-style action as well as a clever colour based battle system and you’re left with an enjoyable adventure that I think I’ll come back to several times in the future.

          As I said before, it really is too bad that so many people took one look at the performance issues and dismissed the game, because had they not been there I think this one would’ve been a hit. With more content being promised for next year, if you haven’t given ReCore a try yet, I highly recommend it.

4. Pokémon Sun and Moon

          The Pokémon series has been dangerously close to becoming stale for a while now. The games were yearly releases for a while, and while they were all good quality games, having so much Pokémon in direct succession to each other just drove home the point of how similar the games truly are to one another.

          Enter Pokémon Sun and Moon, released in celebration of the series’ 20th anniversary. While looks can be deceiving at first (the first few hours of the game are slower than a Slugma) the game only gets better and better as it goes on, creating a fun and memorable narrative as well as the most unique Pokémon game on the market gameplay-wise.

          Old staples such as gym badge collecting and hidden machines have been given the boot, replaced by a new set of features exclusive to the Hawaiian-inspired Alola region. Instead of gyms you are sent on the island challenge, a cross-country mission to defeat several trial captains as well as the bosses of the 4 islands. Each trial is different and unique, and they will put all your Pokémon skills to the test. Add in an increased difficulty and some entertaining post-game content and you’ve got the best Pokémon games since HeartGold and SoulSilver.

3. Titanfall 2

          Easily the biggest surprise of the year for me, Titanfall 2 proved that the ability to have a campaign and multiplayer that are both of equal quality is not a thing of the past. The devs over at Respawn could’ve taken the easy route and repackaged the multiplayer from the first game, added a bare bones campaign and slapped a 2 on the cover for a quick cash in, but in going the extra mile they created one of the best shooters in years that I will likely remember for a long time.

          What makes the game so special is the campaign itself. The different levels are all high speed and full of action when you’re outside of your titan, and when inside you become an unstoppable stomping machine capable of wreaking havoc across the map. This is alongside a great story with 2 memorable leads, several awesome boss battles and an awesome (albeit short lived) time travel component that makes the campaign alone worth the price of admission.

          But that’s not all! While it can feel pretty standard at times, the multiplayer is a lot of fun to dive into, especially the unique Bounty Hunter mode, which is a mode I sincerely hope makes it into future games and even different franchises. The way it works is that every player has a price on their head. Your objective is to kill the player with the highest price, but the more kills you get, the higher your price will go. It’s a brilliant concept that I’m amazed no one has thought of before.

          Even if you feel like you’ve grown tired of the modern warfare-style shooter, Titanfall 2 is the breath of fresh air the genre needs. I’ve set this game as the standard for that type of game, and while it’s tragically poor sales are very disappointing, I do hope the industry takes notice.

2. Overwatch

          If this award was for the game I played the most this year, Overwatch would run away with it. I’ve sunk so many hours into Blizzard’s hero based shooter that it has easily become my favourite multiplayer experience of 2016, with an art design and cast of characters that have become more iconic in less than a year than Ubisoft’s entire library in the last decade.

          If Titanfall 2 is the game that may revolutionize modern warfare shooters, Overwatch might just change the entire face of the genre going forth. With its 23 heroes that each play differently to the 4 gamemodes that cycle randomly so you never know what you’ll be playing next, there really is no game like it on the market right now. There’s a character for everyone’s playstyle, whether you prefer to get right up in an enemy’s face or hang back and heal your front liners, meaning that everyone can play Overwatch the way they want without conforming to a single playstyle.

          As is to be expected from Blizzard, the most memorable part of the game is, alongside the gameplay itself, the characters and their design. Each is so unique that you can distinctively tell each of them from their silhouette, and their many voice lines and interactions with each other create diverse personalities that you remember long after you play. Given the outpouring of love the game has seen online, it’s clear that people all over the world have already fallen in love with the heroes of Overwatch, and with the many updates and special events coming to the game soon, that fire’s not going out anytime soon.

1. Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End

          As you may have noticed by reading some past entries on my blog, I’m a bit of an Uncharted fan. Despite this, I actually only got into playing the series early in 2016 to prepare for the release of the final installment in the series. While I loved 2 and it remains one of my favourite games of all time, I do feel that 1 hasn’t aged that well and 3, while a good game overall, suffered from a clunky first third and an overall boring story.

          Knowing this, I wanted Uncharted 4 to more than anything to bring back the feeling I got when playing the second game: an action adventure game that really made you feel like you were in the middle of an Indiana Jones-type story, complete with memorable characters and a gorgeous setting. Well, I can safely say that Nathan Drake’s final adventure succeeded my expectations and then some.

          Taking place several years later, Nate has finally given up his life of danger and excitement in favour of living a domestic life with his long-time girlfriend Elena. But when his long thought to be dead brother Sam returns from the shadows with an offer to find the treasure of pirate captain Henry Avery, Nate decides to pull out his gear one last time. What follows is a story that’s both hilarious and heartfelt as Nate and Sam travel the globe in search of clues as to where Avery hid the treasure, solving puzzles and escaping mercenaries who want the loot for themselves along the way.

          What really makes Uncharted 4 great is the gameplay. I loved the increased focus on stealth, with an added mechanic that can show you just how aware enemies are of your presence, as well as your ability to avoid entire firefights just by figuring out how to sneak around the area. It makes me wonder if you can beat the game without killing a single enemy, save for the final boss. The new grapple hook ability is awesome as well, giving you more freedom to explore your surroundings and leap to new areas.

          There are so many great things in this game that it’s hard to talk about all of them in this small blurb. The car chase scene and the chapter where you explore the savannahs of Madagascar are both some of the most memorable of the series, and the story outclasses the 3 before it, being a fantastic finale for these characters. Uncharted 4 is the perfect culmination of an amazing series, and for me it is more than worthy of the title of the best game of 2016.

          So there’s my favourite games of the year! But, of course, I had to play my fair share of garbage as well, and if you’d like to see me reign judgement upon the most disappointing, dishonest, and just plain dismal games of the year, check out my Top 8 Worst Games of 2016!