[Aptorian]

It's that time of year again where everybody is making lists and nominating books, films, games, etc. as their favorite entries within their medium, genre, era, etc. Such lists are always a great source of entertainment and discussion. Lists of favorites are by their nature always subjective and are often controversial, as fanboys and diehards call each other out and threaten to kill their respective families. A warm and wholesome Christmas tradition all in all.

So why not hear what the Malazan denizens think? Tell us what you played this year. What did you play and what did you play it on? Did you get into VR? Did you buy one of the 1,5 consoles? What ever happened to that Malazan Minecraft Server? What stood out this year? What did you especially like? What did you hate?

If you want try and make a top ten of your favorite games or a top 100 or just pick one game you really liked and want to tell us about. There are no rules or limits.

This post has been edited by Apt: 15 December 2016 - 04:17 PM

[Dadding]

Witcher 3: Blood and Wine is definitely at the top of my list. At this point anything Witcher will always top the charts for me. Couple points that really did it for me:
- Loved seeing Regis, one of my favourite characters in the novels.
- Loved the quests that result in that big statue being dynamically finished in-game. It felt like my actions actually did something.
- Felt that the endings were more diverse than the game itself, and felt the urge to play through all of them.

Then there's always Minecraft that probably ate up way too much of 2016...

[amphibian]

I played only one truly 2016 game this year and that was Dark Souls 3.

Easily the best of the series and stunning to explore the worlds and game mechanics. The usual Dark Souls disclaimers apply, but it's so fun to do this - especially if you have a friend willing to guide you through the rough spots.

[Mentalist]

1) Blood and Wine made me go away from itself, because I knew no matter which choice I made I'd regret it. So that's notable, as I never finished the game still.

2) Shadowrun: Hong Kong was a game I came back to after starting it last year, and enjoyed quite a lot.

3) I've sank another hundred hours at least into AoK HD, (not to mention the hours spent trawling the Workshop), and I've barely scratched the surface of the user-made content I've lined up for myself to play

4) Arkham Knight, which I just finished, was a lot of good fun.

5) oh, and I finally finished Episode 2 of Half-Life 2!

6) And right after that, I played Portal 2!

7) and I've almost excised Thief 3 from my memory, until this thread made me remember.

I haven't gamed pretty much at all from May to early September. Given that, I still think I experienced a decent chunk this year.

[Aptorian]

I can't even remember all the games I've played from 2016 so, here's a wikipedia link:

https://en.wikipedia...in_video_gaming

If I had to make a list of the games I enjoyed the most, it would look like this:

1 Rise of the Tomb Raider: Came out on PC this year. Definitely one of the best games I have ever played. Just a really, really good action adventure.

2 Dishonored 2: It took me a while to get into the game but when I got a hang of things, I really liked Dishonored. It feels like they built on all the great things that made the first game good. I think I am going to do a new game + playthrough with double the powers.

3 The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine DLC: DLC so good that it makes many other full games look inadequate. Really well crafted new world and it does a great job of enhancing the story of world of the main game. Blood and Wine gave my Geralt the happy ending he needed after I got the sad story ending for the main story.

4 Quantum Break: In terms of story telling this is probably a GOTY. QB isn't the best playing action game, but what it does with mo-cap'ed actors, writing and setting is unparalleled.

5 Doom 2016: Probably the biggest surprise of the year. Not just a good DOOM game, but one of the best FPS games I have ever play. Rock solid, fast, brutal, in your face aggressiveness.

6 Deus Ex: Mankind Divided: Not the sequel to the story of Human Revolution I was hoping for, but man was this fun to play. DE:MD's levels are like a treasure trove of collectibles and secrets.

7 Titanfall 2: Really good campaign. Really good multiplayer. Titanfall games are unique in that I feel like I am really good at the multiplayer. For some reason these games just click with me.

8 The Division: I loved The Divisions version of New York. I loved the atmosphere of this game and the level of detail was crazy! This game also made me actually appreciate co-op play.

9 Mafia 3: I am actually in the process of playing this with a friend at his house. I've only played 8 hours or so, but this is an amazing open world shooter. The world itself isn't exactly a sandbox of activity but in terms of storytelling and creating a period piece, this game is phenomenal.

10 That Dragon, Cancer: This game is art. It's also brutally soul crushingly depressing in it's depiction of what it's like for parents to go through the death of their child. Harrowing.

11 Dying Light: The Following DLC: Dying Light was one of my favorite games of 2015. The Following is

12 Firewatch: This game is almost entirely driven by the voice acting and conversations between the two main character. Superbly written. Superbly voice acted. Great adult story.

13 Farcry: Primal: Farcry with bows and spears and saber tigers you can ride. Enjoyed this even more than I expected. Not a terribly deep game but nothing is quite as satisfying as throwing a spear through a caveman's face.

13 Superhot: SUPER HOT SUPER HOT SUPER HOT SUPER HOT SUPER HOT SUPER HOT SUPER HOT SUPER HOT

15 Inside: Not a terribly challenging or innovative game. It basically just looks and plays like somebody threw all their money at Limbo. But what an experience and probably the best ending of a game in 2016.

16 No Man's Sky: Lot of people were disappointed by this game this year. I never finished it because game fucked up the ending but even then, I actually really liked this game for what it is. It was a surreal experience going into space the first time. Best space experience I have had in games.

17 The Witness; A game that makes you feel dumb. Then brilliant for figuring the puzzle out. Then dumb again. I really enjoyed puzzling my way through this game, but in the end I had to resort to a guide. Some of the puzzles were illogical and seemed contradictory but I am impressed with how deep this game went.

18 Grow Up: Not quite as fun as Grow Home but great none the less. I am not sure the open world helped the game, but the game is super charming.

19 Hitman; Only played the first 2 levels so far with a friend. We sort of moved away from this game. I need to play this more because I think I will actually love it if I sit down by myself.

20 Pony Island: What a weird and funny game. Much like other meta games, like Undertale, Pony Island messes with the player and makes you wonder what the hell you're actually doing.

[Cause]

I did a fair bit of gaming this year but a lot of it was not from 2016. That said:

• Arkham Knight - This was approx 30 hours of pure joy that had me glued to my TV screen. Day after day I came back for more until I was done. My only complaint was that the game gives you multiple weapons and fighting combos and barring a few fight sequences in the game, you can get by with using nothing but the basics. Challenege needed tweaking. That said the gadgets and gaemplay and of course focus on stealth made the game an awesome experience. The focus on scarecrow as the big bad was great as well. Not an enemey you fear to go toe to toe with but one whose fear toxin can literally mess with batman and the whole cities mind. Hope we see more from batman (somehow) and that we see other superhero games as good. (8/10)
  
  
• Titanfall 2 -Great campaign and great multiplayer. I dont normally go for the latter but I am enjoying it and as Apt said somehoe it clicks and I am regularly in the top 3 whih for me is unusual. The faster pace and sheer letahlity of the weapons makes the gameplay intense and wondderfull. Thoroughly recommend! (8.5/10)

[Tattersail_]

Fallout 4
Rocket league
Witcher 3
Gears of war 4

Having a baby gives you little time to game, these were my only games this year gone and that is the order of awesomeness.

[Morgoth]

I'm going to stay with those games that came out in 2016. Dark Souls is my favourite. I enjoyed every aspect of it and have played through the game just shy of three times. Bloodborne is still my favourite of the lot, but DS3 was an excellent game all the same. I loved the storytelling of Firewatch. Loved it, not to mention the music and the colours. Stellaris and CIV because I just love those kinds of games, and Stellaris have gotten progressively better since its somewhat flawed launch.

Dishonored 2 is another excellent game, one from which I have gotten a lot of joy. The story is not particularly deep, but the world is so very wonderfull. Inside was atmospheric and dark and creepy and surprising all in a few hour sized package. Titanfall managed, somehow, to make me enjoy a shooter enough to actually play online. Not to mention the excellent single player campaign. I have never been one for puzzle games, but the Witness made me care and it was fantastic.

Dark Souls 3
Firewatch
Stellaris
Dishonored 2
Inside
Civilization 6
Titanfall 2
The Witness

[Grief]

It's not from this year, but rocket powered car football is very good. I've always sunk far more time into competitive multiplayer games than any other sort of game, and this one is stellar. It has a great combination of satisfying mechanics, an intuitive concept, and a high skill ceiling. Plus the short game times mean it's easy to just hop on for a game or two in a free moment. Nice one!

[Maark Abbott]

My top picks:

1) Overwatch - I was surprised that I enjoyed this, given the comparisons to TF2 which is atrociously bad. But especially with friends, the game is a LOT of fun. Better still is that owning the base game means you get constant streams of free content from Blizzard, which is always good.

2) BlazBlue Centralfiction - It's BlazBlue so I was always going to love it. Fast, technical, reaction-based fighting with a cast that are unique enough to force you to learn exactly what they can do and what you can do against them. The character changes in this one are one and all positive - Tager has never been so much fun to play. It loses some points due to the lack of a dub (meaningless flavour text, anyone?) but the gameplay more than makes up for it.

3) Rocket League - I've not played for a while as I got rather turned off by the toxic community for this game, but again, one I had a lot of fun with. The developers putting in extra content helps.

On the flip side, the biggest disappointments this year for me were Doom 4 and Guilty Gear Xrd: Revelator. Doom because it tried to do something old-school and fell flat on its face in the attempt,and XrdR because it simply didn't have the mechanics to hold up to the fighter I usually play. Considering it's an ArcSys, there's NO balance in the roster, either.

[Grief]

Maark Abbott, on 18 December 2016 - 06:48 AM, said:

3) Rocket League - I've not played for a while as I got rather turned off by the toxic community for this game, but again, one I had a lot of fun with. The developers putting in extra content helps.

If the community bothers you (which is fair enough, some people get amazingly worked up over car football) there are in game chat options somewhere in the options menu. You probably already know about it, just figured I'd post in case you didn't.

[Blend]

The newest World of Warcraft expansion, Legion, has been the best expansion since Wrath! I had taken a WoW hiatus about halfway through Mists of Pandaria. I played Warlords for 2 months leading up the release of Legion just to get a couple characters leveled up and ready for the release of Legion. Legion has been awesome sauce!

[Maark Abbott]

Grief, on 18 December 2016 - 05:01 PM, said:

Maark Abbott, on 18 December 2016 - 06:48 AM, said:

3) Rocket League - I've not played for a while as I got rather turned off by the toxic community for this game, but again, one I had a lot of fun with. The developers putting in extra content helps.

If the community bothers you (which is fair enough, some people get amazingly worked up over car football) there are in game chat options somewhere in the options menu. You probably already know about it, just figured I'd post in case you didn't.

It's more that they decided to enable chat in competitive when s2 went live. It wasn't enabled before. I rarely play it now anyway.

[Tiste Simeon]

Was Assassin's Creed Syndicate this year? That was probably my favourite game I played.

Well, for a gaming experience, I think Last of Us was my favourite game I played this year but I know it wasn't a 2016 game...

I think the only games I bought that were out this year are No Man's Sky and Star Wars Battlefront and both those games were fairly disappointing...

[Aptorian]

AC: Syndicate was last year. There won't be another AC game before next year earliest.

Battlefront was also last year.

[MTS]

Due to work commitments I didn't get time to buy many new games this year, so I'll go with the ones that I played that I really enjoyed:

Crusader Kings II - new DLC and mods make this game one that I can easily come back to (although the amount of money I've shelled out for this game is getting a bit ridiculous)

Europa Universalis IV - Ditto.

Firewatch - reminded me of Gone Home. A simple game, but with a really well-told story and a great atmosphere.

Witcher 3 - hands down my favourite game of the past two years. Again, DLC and mods kept me coming back, although I wish CD Projekt Red would release more expansive mod tools so the modding community can change the game the way they did with Skyrim.

Rise of the Tomb Raider - great from start to finish, and I loved the focus on a Byzantine-remnant culture, as that kinda history is my jam. I thought the whole 'Illuminati' vibe throughout to be a bit trite though.

Kerbal Space Program - never picked this up in Early Access, even though I'd meant to. Glad I got it now, but it had a huge difficulty curve (at least for me!) and ended up very frustrating. I liked how you ended up extending your frontiers as you went though - first get to orbit, then out into space, then to the Mun, then other planets etc. Creating installations and doing science experiments was also fun.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided - still working my way through this one, but liking it so far. It's a bit different to Human Revolution, which is welcome.

[Obdigore]

Titanfall 2 is my GOTY, but only because Rocket League came out in 2015, even if I only started playing it this year.

I enjoy Stardew Valley a lot but it doesn't compete with Titanfall 2.