Tatty's GOTY 2015 Game of the Year List of the year (2015).

Friends, Ronin, lumpy men, lend me your eyes!

2015 has been personally a great gaming year for me, so instead of just dumping a list in the Games tab I'll make an actual honest-to-god thread. So there.

After much deliberation I've narrowed it down to twenty offerings and ranked them according to how much they meant to me. Here's the first chunk:

Bubbling under:

25. Grow Home
24. Undertale
23. Cities: Skylines
22. Volume
21. Westeraldo

Then...

20. Rebel Galaxy (PC)

It's not Elite. It's not Star Citizen. It's not perfect.

It is, however, the closest thing to Freelancer I've seen in years and all the more impressive when you find out it's made by a team of two people. The massive amount of slide guitar on the soundtrack make things even more enjoyable.



19. Massive Chalice (Xbox One, PC, Linux)

Brad Muir's final game for Double Fine, a company I've had a mixed time with over the years, before he left for Valve. Massive Chalice is a mini Grand Strategy title with lashings of lovely turn-based combat. And Eugenics.

Loads of Eugenics.

It's not the deepest of games but what's on offer is lovingly crafted, funny and beautifully produced.



18. GALAK-Z (PS4, PC)

It looks like an 80s Saturday morning kids Sci-Fi cartoon but plays like a rock hard twin stick Roguelite. Perhaps a bit too unforgiving, though, and gets demoted a few places because of this.



17. Downwell (PC, iOS)

You jump down a well and kill monsters, get loot, rank up and kill more monsters until you die. Then you jump down the well again.

The third best 'just one more try' game I played all year and that rarest of beasts - A Japanese Indie game on PC. Downwell is cheap as chips and well worth a purchase.

Great soundtrack, too.



16. Not A Hero (PS4, PC, PS Vita, Mac, Linux)

Not A Hero is from Roll7 and marks a departure from their more well known OlliOlli skateboarding games. It's a 2D pixel-art shooter, but don't let that put you off, you jaded lot!

Not A Hero is tight in its mechanics, utterly charming in its characterisation and features the year's most quotable NPC in BunnyLord.

Vote BunnyLord!



More later...

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"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan

Part 2.

15. Grand Theft Auto V (PC)

I'm putting the PC release of GTAV here not because I enjoyed it a whole pile, but because it is a phenomenal piece of engineering. People were justifiably nervous after GTAIV's awful port (which actually runs worse on my rig than V) but Rockstar excelled themselves with a game, while still needing a decent modern gaming PC to run, which excelled itself in its scalability.

2015 is a year of fantastic PC ports with crap like Arkham Knight being the exception which proves the rule.



14. Rocket League (PS4, PC)

I'm slightly surprised that I ended up ranking Rocket League comparatively low but it's not a slight on the game itself. It has, after all, been a really strong year.

Rocket League is one of the best sports games I've ever played, simple as that. It's tighter than a middle-aged celebrity on their way home from the Botox clinic and the developers seem determined to support the game in the long term. As these things often are, the experience is far better online but, as these things often are, I've been left way behind in terms of skill due to my filthy casual playing habits.



13. Pillars of Eternity (PC)

Was there room for a traditional CRPG in 2015? When it's as well made as PoE, most certainly.

The game's a tough sell if you're unfamiliar with Baldurs Gate and Icewind Dale - The mechanics seem impenetrably obtuse at first and the pausable real-time combat sits uneasily between a turn-based mechanic or the fully real-time clickathon of an Action RPG such as Diablo. Even as a Baldurs Gate veteran I baulked at the job (and learning a game such as this is a job) stretching in front of me.

I didn't get close to finishing it.

However ... What I experienced before heeding the call of shinier games made Pillars of Eternity go straight to the top of games I'll go back to once the seasonal glut of new titles is over. Much like with Rocket league, Obsidian are supporting their game well beyond the point where most companies cry "Enough!"



12. Sunless Sea (PC)

The second game I'm going back to after Christmas is Sunless Sea. It's a hard game to describe: Part RPG, part choose your own adventure, part Roguelite, part exploration, part survival.

You play the captain of a steamer on the waterways of Steampunk London, a London which has been stolen by bats and taken far beneath the sea, no less! There are immediate parallels with FTL in that you've got a small ship, a small crew and a huge world in which to upgrade it.

The writing is, for a video game, exceptional and not surprising in that Sunless Sea is made by the team responsible for the famed browser text adventure, fallen London. The classy, hand-drawn quality to the visuals and beautiful score compliment the setting perfectly and the developers are continually feeding the player new stories in the form of downloadable in-game updates.

If I'd put 30 hours into the game instead of 10 it would probably have made my top 5.



11. Assault Android Cactus (PS4, PC, PS Vita, WiiU)

Assault Android Cactus harks back to an earlier time, a time when bright visuals and wisecracking Hero characters ruled the gaming universe. Basically, it's a PS2/Dreamcast game in tone and pretty refreshing for it.

We have a one or two player (co-op) twin stick arcade shooter with a huge variety of characters, weapons, power-ups, enemies and bosses. What really sets AAC apart from the crowd is enemy pattern - We're approaching Japanese Bullet Hell levels of activity here, but where those games are frequently merely frustrating score-chasers, AAC manages to make the trick work by being slightly (and only slightly) more forgiving.

Thanks for doing this list. The even filthier, casualer , poser gamer appreciates being kept abreast of stuff he would have never heard of otherwise.

What the hell I've never heard of any of them besides GTA lol. Other than that, nice work!

Can't wait to see the rest.

What's striking me so far (about my own list, I know ) is how many games are PS4 and PC releases. Only Massive Chalice (and GTAV, natch, but I was reviewing the PC release here) is available on Xbox One.

Looks like Sony kept their promise when they said they'd woo the Indie developers.

**** I've barely played 5 games this year.

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10. You Must Build A Boat (PC, iOS, Android)

Who doesn't love a good match three game? From my experience, You Must Build A Boat is the greatest match three game ever made. There. It's even better than Bejewelled Twist and Hunie Pop.

The developer, EightyEight Games (one bloke), honed their match three teeth with 10,000,000 and YMBAB continues in that vein. Instead of Bejewelled's spurious levelling you can put your points into a variety of different skills and buffs, all the while striving to build a bigger and bigger craft.

If you're after a casual time-passer than maybe stick to Bejewelled's Zen Mode because YMBAB hares along at breakneck pace resulting in frequent moments of outright panic as you scour the board for a match. My second best 'just one more go' game of 2015...

A side note about the developer - If you purchased 10,000,000 you got YMBAB, a much better game, free. I emailed him with a pretty sketchy screenshot of my Steam library because I'd bought 10,000,000 ages ago and couldn't put my hands on an invoice.

He was such a gent about honouring this that I immediately went out and bought the Android version, and that's the one I've spent most time in.



Amazing little game.

9. OlliOlli2 (PS4, PC, PS Vita)

My #1 'just one more go' game of 2015 and the only developer to appear twice on my list.

OlliOlli was a bolt from the blue when it came to PC. I'd spent years hankering after a new Tony Hawk game but soon realised what I'd actually been after was a new 720. As the Tony Hawk franchise matured (culminating in the apparently awful THSP5 this year) they travelled far from their arcade-game roots. The inherent need to be seen to be innovating with each new release (AKA Assassin's Creed Syndrome, the new strain of Tomb Raider Disease) diluted the core experience to a frightening degree.

OlliOlli stripped skateboarding back to its very essence - A super tight endless runner/platformer where if you messed up, even slightly, you hurt yourself badly and had to start again. I loved it.

OlliOlli2 builds on that formula by adding reverts, manuals and an even cooler, smoother soundtrack. I haven't died so often but felt no frustration since .... well, since OlliOlli.

8. 80 Days (PC, iOS, Android)

80 Days was stealth released on PC earlier in the year and that's why it slightly tenuously makes my list. If I'd played the mobile version last year (I didn't) it'd have made my 2014 list for sure.

Quite simply, Inkle's Steampunky retelling of Verne's classic novel is the best mobile game I've ever played. It's a more light-hearted counterpart to Sunless Sea and while its format suggests pick-up-and-play casual sessions, 80 Days is very much an action adventure game.

It's written with a warmth and a sympathy towards the source material which gives the game free reign to indulge in flights of Industrial Revolution fantasy. You play as Passepartout, guiding your charge around the world, new routes and modes of transport appearing and disappearing as you choose-your-own-adventure your way through encounters, buying and selling artefacts (some of which contain buffs) to fund the journey.

A successful playthrough will only take a few hours but there's ample room for repeat adventures, such is the wealth of options available.



7. Contradiction - Spot The Liar! (PC)

Whoah neddy, is Contradiction a surprising game! It succeeds both as an homage to 90s FMV adventures and is a compelling puzzle adventure in its own right.

My first hour with Contradiction was spent struggling with the abominable UI (something they've since completely re-vamped) and wondering if the actors involved were taking things at all seriously.

My second hour with Contradiction involved me playing with a huge smile on my face as I began to realise that not only were everyone involved playing things straight, but that they were expecting and encouraging the audience to get 'in on it'.

We had a cult classic on our hands and the developer (industry veteran Tim Follin) and cast played the resulting media exposure to a tee - Seemingly always available on Twitter, YouTube and podcast alike to good-naturedly shill their product.

What began looking like a bad film school project ended in a piece of entertainment that Mel Brooks would be proud of.

6. Fallout 4 (PS4, Xbox One, PC)

For well over a decade, Bethesda's brand of open world action RPG has been a staple of mine. I excused and put up with their shortcomings because there was nothing else quite like them.

They're experts at building huge, interesting, living worlds which can accommodate multiple playstyles and playthroughs.

Fallout 4, while perfectly competent, feels like a placeholder to keep fans engaged before TES VI comes along in two or three years years. It all seems a bit flat, a bit uninspired, the writing especially.

Actual storytelling has never been a particularly strong suit of Bethesda's but they've been able to get around it by having such a grand sweep of fantasy tropes in their Elder Scrolls games. Fallout is more gritty, more grounded - Your character is an ordinary person doing extraordinary things rather than the Chosen One.



Aside from the shortcomings in plot (not as rewarding as even Fallout 3's basic structure), the new dialogue system is terrible and I think having a voiced protagonist turns out a pretty bad idea - You can't invest any kind of personality in your character (ie, actually role play them) when they're such a bland Everyman.

But ... it's a Bethesda game so something I was guaranteed to buy on release and spend a significant amount of time in. I ploughed on with Fallout 4, finishing up the main story with 60 hours on the clock.



My time in the Commonwealth was decent and I'm glad I played it. There's an awful lot to admire here - The world's attention to detail is stunning and combat mechanics have been improved to a level I'd only dreamed about a few years ago. Companions are, at last, useful to have around.

Ultimately though, I'm left unmoved. Unmoved and a bit annoyed.

I'm thankful that the game exists at all but so wanted it to be better...

I've been looking for one of those chairs everywhere!

60 hours? that's low. Did you play straight through the main storyline? I think I've racked up at least 120hrs to 140hrs on every Bethesda game to date. (which is why I was deeply annoyed that Crysis was only 9 hours - but I digress).

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something witty goes here......

Since Morrowind I reckon I've put 1000+ hours into each individual Bethesda RPG. Skyrim's the only one I played solely on Steam and my clock there reads 1300.

Fallout 4, while still being a game I enjoy and recommend, is by quite a distance the weakest Bethesda game I've played since Redguard. I played through the main story, completed one of the faction lines and went pretty deep into a couple of others.

On a technical level they've done a lot of things better than ever (although I sincerely hope that TES VI is made with a new engine) but the humour of Fallout, the heart, seems missing.

EDIT - Good to see you back, by the way.

The business end.

05. Crypt of the Necrodancer (PS4, PC, PS Vita)

When Crypt of the Necrodancer got released early in the year I posited that we'd be in for a great year if any game came along which was better. CotN is my #5, so...

Indie games with roguelike elements have been done to death by now and one has to be really special to get my interest - CotN is pretty darned special. It's a rhythm based action game at heart, with the aforementioned roguelike (random dungeons, some permanent stats) qualities. Gameplay is rock solid - difficult but never frustratingly so and never unfair - exploration is rewarding, bosses inspired and there are unlocks aplenty.

Then there's the soundtrack.

Danny Baranowsky is making quite a name for himself scoring games and this is, so far, his masterpiece. CotN is dripping with great big stomping Glam Rock beats, House, Reggae, you name it. The score is almost always on shuffle in my car...

I fear that when the big boys get to talking about their GOTY choices, Crypt of the Necrodancer will get lost. An early (and Early Access, at that) release combined with a quiet 1.0 version and loads of AAA titles living up to expectations, along with critical darlings like Undertale, mean that the game stands a good chance of being forgotten.

It'll be a shame if that's the case.

04. Her Story (PC, iOS)

When Her Story got announced I listened to people telling me that Sam Barlow was one of the better video game writers working. "What should I check out?" I asked.

"Silent Hill: Shattered Memories" came the reply.

That game rang a bell - It was a very late PS2 release which I'd bought then promptly forgotten about some 5 or 6 years ago. It was still in the cellophane in my cupboard...

Shattered Memories is ... interesting and surprising. I don't think it's all that good but it certainly left a mark and the resolve to check out Her Story when it got released.

Her Story is better. Orders of magnitude better.

You play someone trying to piece together the mystery of a missing husband. All you have at your disposal are the video-taped police interviews of his wife - They're not in any particular order and are unlocked through the player typing keywords.We don't hear the police interviewer, just the woman's answers, and all your work is done through a facsimile of a pre-millennium PC.

We're not told who we are or what our connection to the woman is, but things reveal themselves later on.

After half an hour's detective work I was smitten. Yes, the conceit is mightily clever and original and the writing is perfectly-pitched but the real star here is the performance of Viva Seifert. She's the only person we're watching for the entirety of the game and the extremes she's asked to go to could well have resulted in witless melodrama, but she pulls it off with aplomb.

Her Story isn't a game for everyone, in fact it didn't initially sound like a game for me, but I urge everyone to give it a spin - It's £2.99 on Steam for the next few days and full price is only £4.99.

It's astonishingly good and will live long in my memory.

How is the RTS genre doing?

Grey Goo got well received this year but I've never been an RTS fan so didn't bother with it. The Starcraft 2 expansion seems to have been positively reviewed, too.

DOTA and LOL are basically RTSs and they seem to have killed the market for new alternatives.

Sooo, I only know 2 games, GTA5 and Fallout 4. That's pretty bad I know. I'm not a big fan of the Fallout series, played the third one but couldn't get into it at all. Would you recommend 4 to someone who didn't enjoy the 3rd one?

No.