1.
Bloodborne ; Having recently gone back to Bloodborne for The Old Hunters release it really cemented my position of this being the best game this year. There is two important things I feel it does better than every other game I played this year, level design and boss fights. On the level design side, it has that Souls quality of being a rare 3d environment that can actually make you spatially confused as to it's layout despite having a full 3rd person fov and normal movement. The environments are complex but not obtuse, and you get the familiar revelatory feel when you understand how one path links to another and start connecting the pathways in your mind to map out the area. Central Yharnam and the Cathedral Ward are the epitome of this to me, playing them blind with no map and no direction and just exploring and trying to make sense of this sprawling city and all it's dangers is what makes the game shine.
Some areas later on aren't as intricate and more straightforward and open, but there is still plenty that based on pure level design alone stand out among games this year. The DLC expansion added some great stuff too, with the Research Hall and Fishing Village quickly becoming some of my favorite Souls areas ever. Level design is a big reason of why I've always thought that FromSoft and the Souls series created a new tier of RPG where the vast open plains and copypaste dungeons of other series would forever be outclassed, and Bloodborne retains that advantage over other open world RPGs.
Now on to Boss fights. We are sadly in an era where games come out all the time with absolute shameful excuses for boss fights. It seems there is only a few developers left who really understand what makes a good boss fight and FromSoft is one of them. It blows my mind that I can play a dozen big AAA releases and come up with maybe a few half decent boss fights and then a game like BloodBorne comes along that is absolutely stacked with some of the best fights in both the character action and RPG genre.
A lot of games have a regular combat system that is custom made for their regular trash mobs that completely falls apart when put up against a specialized boss, and this leads to crappy QTE boss fights or scripted sequences that don't make use of any of the skills the game has been teaching you up until then. A lot of developers just don't put in the effort or just don't care to make their boss fights work. Bloodborne's combat works both on the regular enemies you fight throughout the game and the epic and challenging bosses it puts in front of you. It is also great at diversifying it's fights. The game presented itself as this 'Van Helsing-type Hunter' deal, and it puts you up against the 'Beast' type bosses which are the huge hulking monstrosities that have wild flailing attacks and keep you always on the defensive. Then there is the enemy Hunter fights, which I did not expect from the game and have you up against smaller, faster and equally deadly humanoid fights where they can use the same tactics as the player like parries and trick weapon combinations. Some of these like the one in The Old Hunters DLC stands up with the best Rival fights of character action games like Jeanne, Vergil, Armstrong, etc.
Bloodborne also contains what I would say is one of my favorite 'moments' of the year, which is about halfway through when the true nature of the game and it's world is revealed to you and you realize the 'Van Helsing' type concept is not what the game is about at all. For someone like me who goes in blind and didn't read a lot about the game this was one of the coolest revelations to experience.
2.
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain ; Probably the best playing stealth / action game hybrid ever. I can totally understand the step down in other areas that I can't quite put into words (narrative doesn't really cover it) from the other MGS games, but the pure gameplay of this so outclasses them that for me it doesn't really matter. This is the true successor to games like Far Cry 2 and Crysis (1 and Warhead) that would drop the player in a kind of specialized sandbox and have them create their own strategies. It's not an open world full of useless side activities that aren't related to the main game, it's an open world made for it's style of gameplay and infiltrating bases and outposts and nothing more than that. I was also really into the mission structure and base/army building parts, as a huge fan of Peace Walker this felt like a true big budget sequel to that game.
3.
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege ; Easily my surprise game of the year. I bought a cheap key for this game with some friends and we expected to get a fun few nights of it, instead we have played it almost nightly since it's release. The developers nailed so much about this game that so many multiplayer shooters lack in.
The main thing I take away from Siege is commitment to an idea. The developers had a pure vision of what they wanted and just breached in with full force. There isn't a bunch of superfluous modes to split the playerbase and dilute the core gameplay. They made a game that is 5v5 with no respawns of offense and defense, and that's it. They crafted their classes to be balanced and don't have a thousand hour grind treadmill with the strongest ones at the end, everyone can get any one straight off the bat because of the confidence in that balance. Everyone's weapons and gadgets are all available to them from the jump. If you think some guy is OP, just get him first and try for yourself.
They made the maps based around the core concept of close quarters indoor combat and slowly making your way through a building checking every corner and coordinating with teammates to take down enemies. There isn't huge battlefield size maps or outdoor gunfights despite the maps themselves having those for aesthetic purposes. They could have done that, and ticked another box for their mp shooter, but they focused on what this game is about and I hugely respect them for that. The weapon distribution of having defenders mainly with short range SMGs and shotguns and attackers with more lethal long range guns like assault rifles reminds me of the careful balance of CS's guns such as the cheap and super deadly AK vs the CT's M4.
It's also insanely rare that a multiplayer game comes out where every map it ships with is good and this is one of them. Can't think of a bad map out of the rotation.
The way Siege handled the concept of intel is also noteworthy. It's something that has been basically a requirement for a good team in a competitive shooter like CounterStrike or anything similar. They took the concept of callouts and team coordination and put it directly in the game through the drone mechanic. The Drone phase is like a primer on how to scout out the enemy and relate that information to your teammates, and it teaches you how to effectively use them in a safe phase of the match so that during an actual fight you know better how to use them. Send your drone ahead and callout spots to your teammates, and eventually you'll be calling them out just through regular play.
That leads me to another facet I think they nailed which is pacing. A casual match of Siege is basically the perfect amount of time for a shooter. The drone phase is quick enough to not be too long if you died early and just long enough to get a good view of the enemy's defenses. The matches themselves have a standard timer that works for all maps in keeping the offense moving and not allowing matches to just drag on, and the best of 5 rounds for a full match is really the perfect match time.
It's just a good pure shooter that has reminded me of the glory days of some of my favorite shooters like Quake 3, RtCW and CS. It's a blend of SWAT 4 and CS that still manages to put it's own twists on the concept with it's character gadgets and resource limited reinforcements and deployables. It's about the gameplay, not the external factors around the gameplay. Siege is a game I can see myself playing for a very long time.
It also helps that the developers have been active with updating and things like that. They didn't do the typical 'wait for console certification before we push the PC patch' thing that many multiplatform games do that can be a killing blow to a nascent PC scene.
4.
TRANSFORMERS: Devastation ; Fast and fun character action game that has some of the smoothest combat outside of Bayonetta. Lots of Platinum staples design wise come into play here with some new twists like vehicle attacks, vehicle mode and being able to aim and shoot. Some great boss fights but unfortunately light on content compared to the bigger Platinum projects. Still, any fan of character action games needs to pick this up.
5.
Starcraft II: Legacy of the Void ; The culmination of what is to me the best series of strategy games ever made. Blizzard continues the staple of the first two SC2 games by making it's campaign varied and full of great mission design where every mission has it's unique hook and doesn't just let you sit and turtle up an army for an hour. Highlight for me was the mission where your base is on a moving platform that you can control and send to different spots of a giant space platform to mine resources while having to attack objectives at the same time.
Multiplayer is much faster than previous iterations of the game and the new Archon mode is a nice addition for those too intimidated for the competitive multiplayer. However, I wish they had kept the drastic changes they made to the game from the beta, and this game would surely be higher on my list had they stuck to their guns.
6.
Resident Evil Revelations 2 ; I enjoyed the first Revelations game enough but it was definitely on the lower tier of RE titles and I think a lot of that had to do with it's 3DS origins. Revs 2 is free of those and after a somewhat low key first episode it quickly ramps up to being one of the best third person shooters of the past couple years, which I never would have expected from the Revelations side series. The gameplay tries to bridge the gap between the slower and tankier RE4 and 5 style of action and the dodgefest that is RE6's movement and is successful at doing so. You do feel slow and vulnerable running from the various horror show creatures of the Island, but a quick player will be able to use the dodge system to evade most attacks which does feel great. Good campaign design that ends up with a great boss fight followed by amazing fan service. More people should give this game a chance, even if you aren't a RE fan and just want a solid third person shooter.
7.
Invisible, Inc. ; I love stealth games but their great failing has always been the player's own OCD tendencies making them more of a chore to play. Always going for the perfect op, never alerting any guard and ghosting the way through leading to lots of restarts and frustration. Invisible Inc takes a significant leap forward for stealth games in general by embracing the fact that things will go wrong, no matter how well you do. The Alarm system is the most important of all. Regardless of how well you are doing, the alarm will go up a level every turn no matter what. Guards will patrol more, reinforcements will arrive, more cameras will come online, and the mission you started out as calm and tranquil will slowly but surely turn into an intense fight for survival where every movement can make the difference. The build up of intensity that happens in every Invisible Inc mission is a master work of design and balance, and I believe it belongs in the halls of the greatest stealth games.
8.
Sublevel Zero ; A rogue-lite that takes what you remember Descent to be and modernizes it with great controls, combat, randomization and graphical style. The fact that Sublevel Zero has more variety with it's roguelite systems and level sets despite being a fully 3d game does not get nearly enough credit. It's the Spelunky of 6DOF games.
Also has a crazy amount of enemy variety, not just in form but in function, which I always appreciate.
9.
Crypt of the NecroDancer ; It's such a simple idea that you would have thought someone had done it already. Necrodancer's rhythm based dungeon crawling is a game about getting you into the zone and keeping you there. It can get brutally hard and there is much more depth to it's enemies and the strategies to beat them than it first appears. Just great design all around, and my only complaint is the initial load screen taking too long.
10.
King's Quest ; Only two Acts are out so far but I had a good time with both. What I like about the game is being able to be a good storytelling device while still having some clever puzzle solving that isn't too obtuse and allows for some wiggle room due to multiple ways to do things. It's a good example of not having to get rid of all gameplay if you want a heavily story based experience with some choices.
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