Home » Features » GOTY » Stevivor’s GOTY 2015: Matt’s picks
Features GOTY News

Stevivor’s GOTY 2015: Matt’s picks

That’s right, boys and girls! It’s the end of the year so it’s time for my annual and totally not brand new review of my ‘Of the Year’s of the year. Everyone’s always talking about the ‘Game of the Year’ for this console or that genre, but I don’t think that’s quite enough. So without further ado, let’s dive in!

Best Voice Cast of the Year: King’s Quest

MattGOTY-kingsquest

When rumblings of this game first began, I’ll admit I had no interest. I’d never played the original adventures in the series, and as much as I do love point and click adventures, it just didn’t leap out at me. That was, until the moment I started hearing about the actors behind the voices of the game. Kevin Michael Richardson! Gideon Emery! Wallace Shawn! Zelda Williams! Fred Tatasciore! Josh Keaton! Loretta Devine! Not to mention, Back to the Future’s very own Christopher Lloyd. While they may not all be NAMES you recognise, they’re certainly VOICES you recognise. While the game and story itself is a lot of fun in the two episodes we’ve seen so far, the side-game of ‘Where do I know that voice from?’ brings it to a whole other level. I look forward to seeing what other memorable voices will lend their talents in the remaining episodes during 2016.

Best Series Comeback of the Year: Assassin’s Creed Syndicate

Speaking of the hot mess that was Assassin’s Creed: Unity, its successor Syndicate worked to revive faith in Ubisoft’s annual stab-‘em-up franchise. With a comparatively minor number of launch day bugs, gameplay mechanics revitalised by the new grappling hook tool, and lead characters with actual interesting personalities, 2015’s entry in the Creed helped to restore at least my personal faith in the series. With the recent addition of the ‘Jack the Ripper’ DLC once again starring Evie Frye, it’s nice to know that since Unity’s release, Ubisoft were able to figure out how to animate female Assassins. Spoilers: it was basically the same as animating the dudes! Now if they could just calm down and move to a biennial release instead of an annual, perhaps we could eliminate not only buggy releases, but also franchise fatigue. There’s only so many times you can stab a Templar before you need to take a break!

Who Cares About the Main Plot of the Year: Fallout 4

MattGOTY-fallout4

Yes, I imagine many people will identify with this one. Fallout 4’s Bostonian wasteland is a rich, densely packed open world ripe for the pickings, shootings and explorings by any brave Sole Survivor ready to dive into it. With so many stories to explore through quests, terminals and notes, and the visually-told stories that you stumble across, there’s a lot going on to keep you entertained. In between looting every god damned aluminium can I could find and consecutively romancing every single person who decided to accompany me on my travels, it would occasionally spark in the back of my mind that there was something I was meant to be looking for… A kid, I think? Shane? Shaun? Mary-Anne? Who knows. The important thing is that I almost have enough scrap metal to add that jetpack to my power armour. Maybe that’ll finally tip Paladin Danse over into loving me (and being an interesting character).

Letdown of the Year: Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer & Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival

Now, listen. I do love me some Animal Crossing, but both of this year’s spinoff titles were honestly a real disappointment for me. Happy Home Designer did exactly what it said on the box, but really not much more. You get a design brief, build a room, the animal loves it regardless of what kind of nightmare or zero-effort domicile you’ve constructed for them. There’s no challenge, no reward, and I put it down for good very soon after I published my review. Meanwhile, Amiibo Festival seems to do even less than what it says on the box. At face value you’d think it was just a reskin of Mario Party, but you’d be wrong! It’s so much less than that. As the friends I played with will attest, this is a slow-paced game with little variation that takes rubber-banding to the extreme. The game estimates a four-player game will last SEVENTY-FIVE MINUTES, and that’s being conservative. At one point I was randomly awarded 90,000 Bells on a good chance tile, putting me leagues ahead of the other players – only to have ALL of my money yanked away out of the blue on the final round. Finding out that it takes multiple plays of this base mode before the rest of the features unlocked was the nail in the coffin, but hey – at least I got a Digby amiibo out of it.

Soundtrack of the Year: Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate

Yes, Assassin’s Creed again! I’m as surprised as you are.

Whilst Jesper Kyd has more often than not handled the musical direction for the Creed games, Syndicate was instead placed in the very capable hands of Austin Wintory, the musician behind Journey’s beautiful soundtrack as well as The Banner Saga, Sunset and The Order: 1886. Much like the revitalisation of its leading players, the soundscape of Syndicate gained a lot more character through its unique approach to the musical direction. Combat music drew its inspiration from waltzes, as Evie and Jacob danced and pirouetted their way to a citywide homicide smorgasbord in 1860s London. And if that weren’t enough, the game also includes ‘murder ballads’ about your most famous assassination targets, heard throughout the city and written by none other than Australia’s own musical comedy trio, Tripod. This excellent soundtrack and Tripod’s jaunty lyrics bounced around my head long after the game was done, and stands out as the best sounds a game has made at me all year. While I don’t think they should necessarily make Wintory their go-to for future titles by default, I do hope it opens them up to experimenting more in future Assassin’s Creed games when it comes to the soundtrack.

Art Style of the Year: Ori and the Blind Forest

MattGOTY-oriblindforest

Ori and the Blind Forest was one of the few indie titles I played on Xbox One this year, and I’m glad that I did. When a game aims to tell its story visually rather than through text or speech it’s key that its art direction is on point, and Moon Studios really nailed it. With areas that shifted from cool caves to lush forests, sun-dappled fields to dark underwater tunnels, Ori presented a rich world that looked painted and beautiful. The stark white of the titular Ori makes him pop from the environment, an ethereal creature moving through this realistic world. It’s an attention to detail that more games could draw from, and will hopefully continue to show up in future titles from this and other studios.

Most Functional Poop of the Year: Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

You can use your poop-on-command horse to make enemy vehicles spin out of control. Enough said.

Guilty Pleasure of the Year: Clicker Heroes

This strange little clicker game appeared under the names of many of my Steam friends earlier in the year, and before long I succumbed to trying it for myself. Deceptively named, you only click for so long until you unlock the ability for the game to auto-click its way through its timed battles against various weird and cute enemies with constantly rising DPS numbers. The game achieves nothing and there is no end goal – there is only the clicking, forever and ever. In fact the game even encourages you to reset it to the base level regularly, increasing your damage multiplier so you can move ever-faster through the same levels and enemies. I’d find myself opening this game and leaving it running in the background, just so it could keep playing itself while I went to work, to the gym, to bed… It’s no surprise to see that I’ve racked up over 500 hours of ‘play’ time on this game as I look at my Steam library.

Guiltless Pleasure of the Year: Persona 4: Dancing All Night

MattGOTY-p4dan

2015 was apparently the year I learnt that I was Stevivor’s Weeaboo-in-Residence. It is not a title I asked for, nor a title I expected – but if it means I get to play Persona 4: Dancing All Night, it’s a title I will come to accept. Representing the latest – and perhaps final? – expansion of the Persona 4 franchise-within-a-franchise, Dancing All Night stretches the franchise in its weirdest direction yet. Instead of fighting monsters to solve a murder, Yu Narukami and co. instead find themselves ‘dancing to expresses their feelings’ in order to help a bunch of teen idols accept themselves outside of their on-stage personas. The reasoning to justify this is long-winded and creaky, but it means I get to see the knife-fingered Izanagi bust out a sick guitar solo at the end of every other song. It’s goofy, it’s wordy, and it contains remixes of all the catchy songs from the main game. I make no apologies for how much fun I had with this game (at least once the long-winded intro wrapped up, my GOD).

Longest Loading Times of the Year: Just Cause 3

While it is a known issue on console versions of the game and has (supposedly) been patched, the wait times in Medici are a bit too much even now. As great as the Gear Mod rewards are for completing the in-game challenges, I don’t think I can wait 90 seconds to fail a wingsuit challenge 2 seconds in, again. Maybe after the next patch I’ll get around to improving Rico’s tools of the trade.

Best Hair of the Year: Rise of the Tomb Raider

While it definitely wasn’t the ONLY great thing about Rise, Lara Croft’s hair stood out from the first shot of the game as some of the best – if not the best EVER – in-game hair I’ve seen. Geralt’s flowing locks in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt may have ruled the earlier half of the year, but Lara’s no-nonsense, functional ponytail has it beat follicles-down. With various moving parts reacting to the air movement and in-game weather, it was hard to focus on the story in cutscenes rather than just staring into Lara’s constantly shifting fringe – not to mention the way she squeezes water out of her ponytail every time you leave a body of water. Well done, Lara Croft – and let me know what shampoo you use, because DAMN.

Unfinished Game of the Year: Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

MattGOTY-mgs5

Taking out his second award for this year’s festivities, Big Boss has earned the honour of being relegated to the dusty gaming shelf more than any other title in the back end of the year. With an impressive open world format in stark contrast to prior titles, The Phantom Pain was a bit of an adjustment for existing Metal Gear Solid fans such as myself – but once adjusted, it was extremely fun to sneak around in this game’s huge maps. Coming as one of the first games in the end-of-year wave, The Phantom Pain looked set to be a big time-suck for me – until it was closely followed by other awaited titles like Mad Max, Persona 4: Dancing All Night, the uniquely captivating Beginner’s Guide, Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection, Dragon Quest Heroes… The list only expands week-to-week as you move past the game’s release date. As a result, I’m not even CLOSE to finishing this amazing title, as much as I want to. Perhaps the Boss will have to wait for 2016’s mid-year lull for me to return and finish our little adventure in excessive Fultoning.

Will Never Finish It of the Year: Chibi Robo: Zip-Lash

Zip-Lash was one of those titles I didn’t know I wanted until close to release. 2D platformers aren’t exactly a huge market these days, outside of indie titles and Mario, so it was exciting to see one pop up from Ninty that WASN’T the Crimson Plumber yet again. Sadly though, the game is a bit of a swing-and-a-miss after picking it up. A strange level transition mechanic that involves spinning the wheel of fortune means you never know if you’ll ACTUALLY advance to the next level in sequence, jump ahead to a future level, or even end up looping back to one you’ve already completed… Which you then have to complete AGAIN in order to re-spin the wheel and try again. This cumbersome (and entirely unnecessary!) mechanic guarantees I will never finish this game. What’s wrong with a proper level select?

Worst Game of the Year: Nintendo Badge Arcade

It’s generous to even call this a ‘game’, but just go with it. Although it was only released at the tail end of the year, Badge Arcade is still The Worst of 2015. Nothing more than a money-hoovering gimmick, it allows you to feed real-world cash into your 3DS to get the CHANCE at winning ‘badges’ for your 3DS Home screen – icons representing various characters and franchises from the Nintendo stable to populate your menu and create little dioramas. It’s ok though, each day you do get some free tries on the ‘practice machine’, which gives you the CHANCE to win real plays in the Arcade, where you have the CHANCE to win usable badges. It’s a pointless gimmick, a money-making scheme and honestly, a little gross. No thank you, Nintendo.

Best Game of the Year: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

MattGOTY-witcher3

As tough as it was to decide, The Witcher won out over hot contenders like Fallout 4 and Rise of the Tomb Raider because Geralt was just SO MUCH FUN to hang out with. The flow of completing Witcher contracts – from investigation, to prepration, to murderation – was a thrill no matter how many times I went through it. The world was beautiful and ever-changing with the flowing weather patterns, the in-game economy would shift based on trouble spots on the map, and let’s not forget those bizarre and memorable sex scenes, which managed to be totally off-the-wall while still being somehow more respectful than previous games in the series. It might not be my personal cup of tea, but if I ever get the opportunity to spend time with a sorceress and a stuffed unicorn I know it’ll be a memorable evening.

With the game’s huge world – which is still expanding thanks to this year’s “Hearts of Stone” and next year’s “Blood and Wine” DLC – there’s still plenty of corners of the Continent for me to explore, even after finishing the game. I‘m excited to finish the Hearts of Stone content and then dive in once more for Blood and Wine next year, as it just means another dozen or so hours with the world’s best Witcher… Who incidentally also wins my “Best Gratuitous Male Nudity of the Year” and “Most ‘Done With Everyone’s Nonsense’ of the Year” awards as well. See you again soon, Geralt.

 


This article may contain affiliate links, meaning we could earn a small commission if you click-through and make a purchase. Stevivor is an independent outlet and our journalism is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative.

About the author

Matt Gosper

aka Ponk – a Melburnian gay gamer who works with snail mail. Enthusiastically keeping a finger in every pie of the games industry. I'll beat you at Mario Kart, and lose to you in any shooter you can name.