Death Bat's Top Five Computer Games of 2015

As always this is the list culled from what I played and enjoyed, and not necessarily suggestive of ALL that was worth playing and enjoying. This year I'll go by category:

#5. Best Shooter: Star Wars: Battlefront

I would not have called this one two months ago, and in fact was expecting to be all Halo 5 all the time in this slot. Instead, I am an enormous number of hours in to playing what is the most rewarding and compelling multiplayer experience in the Star Wars universe I've played in ages, and the only shooter I can actually play with my family, thanks to the fact that it provides the cleanest play environment out there of any shooter, period. Tight game play, a progression system that works well for my needs (even if it has been criticized by the hardcore for not emulating the other shooters out there) and a variety of maps that remain fresh, with a ton of unique, emergent gameplay that encourages even the most solo-minded players to try and coordinate actions in the game make for my favorite shooter experience of 2015.

Runner Up: Destiny: The Taken King which moved the series in a new direction, brought back old fans, kept the new, and provided a dramatic improvement in the boss encounters.

#4. Best MMORPG: The Elder Scrolls Online

There really weren't any new MMORPGs of note this year, but in terms of existing games with new support and expansions there's no contest. This was the year Elder Scrolls moved first to free to play and then appeared on consoles. It subsequently introduced The Imperial City and Orsinium expansions. The real money transaction store remains full of cosmetic stuff, pets and mounts, while generally shying away from game-affecting purchases other than boosts. Having been playing since almost day one I, and many others, feel that the game today is remarkably more fun than it was a year ago, and continues to show effort at polish. It remains one of the few MMORPGs on the market today that appeals to gamers looking for more of the "RPG" side of the equation while appreciating the "MMO" part should they so desire to explore it. I am incredibly slow in this game, and still have yet to reach level cap on my dozen-odd characters, but once they introduced controller support for the game I found my enjoyment increasing a great deal over just sticking with the keyboard.

Runner Up: Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns, which has sucked me back in and has some clean, innovative improvements that have made the game more enjoyable for me.

#3. Best Open-World Sandbox Game: Batman: Arkham Knight

Outside of the tank levels which some have found tedious, Batman: Arkham Knight was a fantastic finale for the series and remains a genuinely fun experience. I did not expect to like it as much as I did, but I guess the Batman fan in me was really craving a chance to drive, glide and swing around Gotham for hours on end. Still playing it, and the only other negative I can say is that yes, some of the DLC isn't worth paying for, but luckily I didn't buy the season pass and have been picking and choosing only the good stuff. Still, the core game is robust and well worth playing even if you ignore the season pass. Get it on console, as they never did seem to get the PC release right.

Runner Up: Mad Max, an impressive sandbox experience built (I am told) from the same engine used for the Arkham games and Shadows of Mordor, but now with 100% more apocalyptic car madness. Only failed to get top billing because the overall story is not quite as long.

#2. Best CRPG: Fallout 4

Fallout 4 annoys me a little bit because it doesn't quite feel like it's predecessors (Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas), and it gave me the "cool stuff" way too early on, all while still delivering on the atmosphere and exploratory fun that made me such a dedicate to the series in Bethesda's hands. It adds a lot of additional content to the mix that I haven't even bothered exploring in depth, especially the crafting and settlement building which is all very cool and tells me I'll have many more months to enjoy the game; it's mechanical process is incredibly tight, and the Fallout 4 universe is as rich and interesting to wander in as ever....and the graphics (while not up to PC Master Race standard) are worlds better than Bethesda fans are used to. Thanks to Star Wars: The Force Awakens the never-ending hype cycle of people playing Fallout 4 and blogging/promoting it was lost in the Star Wars madness, which means it's safe now to get into the game without having too many spoilers randomly popping up online.*

Runner Up: Pillars of Eternity, which is an isometric RPG of the finest form, and also got it's first major DLC expansion, The White March, just recently. Some of the isometric CRPGs out there are hit-or-miss, but Pillars of Eternity is very much the game we wanted to see following in Baldur's Gates' footsteps.

#1. Best Overall Game of 2015: Metal Gear Solid V

So how to talk about this one...it's a bat-shit crazy tale told through a menagerie of very, very damaged soldiers and their victims/support/compatriots and enemies. It fits into a weird corner of the Metal Gear history, which if you try to comprehend will force you to make Sanity checks. The true hardcore fans of Metal Gear Solid have issues with MGSV and it's revisionist canon, but if you've only experienced portions of the story like I have and have never really been able to follow the series in it's entirety, then you'll be very impressed with this game: it's story is dramatic and well-told (even if incomprehensible at times). But the thing that is most amazing is how incredibly fun it is to play, with open-world missions that let you tackle them any way you like, with a ridiculous number of weird tools and allies at your disposal. When I'm not playing Star Wars: Battlefront I am playing MGSV...and then there's all the other games I just mentioned.

Runner Up: Star Wars Battlefront was a close second, although throughout the list I really felt like I needed to put Destiny: The Taken King in somewhere.....but I just couldn't justify it. Destiny's second year is full of improvements, but it's still at core the same game I played last year, but now with more missions and less Peter Dinklage.

Honrable Mentions:

Best CGI Cutscenes: Halo 5 Guardians because seriously this game's cutscenes are amazing. Also, Halo 5 is a great deal of fun, just not innovative enough to claim any special honors.

Best Revamp: Destiny: The Taken King which kept the old fans, mended wounds with others, and brought in new thanks to some very clear efforts to bring story to the fore.

Best Effort at Reviving an Aging Franchise: Look no further than Call of Duty: Black Ops III which really does bring some interesting new elements to the game, but I fear a bit too late. CoD's only hope feels to me like it needs to find a source of players who want this sort of game yet inexlicably haven't already been saturated by the market...even I, a guy who has played every CoD since Modern Warfare came out, feels it is getting old and stale, despite their best efforts.

Best Henchman: Chumbucket from Mad Max. Nuff Said!!!!!


NOTE: I might have included The Witcher III: The Wild Hunt on this list but only recently purchased it on the Xbox One during  a Black Friday sale and STILL haven't had time to even start it. So keep that in mind....this list is based on what I played, not everything actually out there.

*Sometimes it sounds like damning with faint praise, and Bethesda fans can be like that, but it's because these games are so good and we spend so much time with them that they are scrutinized. I mean....imagine if you didn't play, say, Witcher 3 because you saw one of the levitating horse videos on Youtube. It's a smart thing if you need an excuse to keep you from spending precious cash you don't have, or time you don't have....but if you've got both, and you love good (modern) RPGs, then you'd be a pernicious fool not to play Witcher 3 or Fallout 4.

Rebels or Storm Troopers? Endless Havoc continues in Star Wars Battlefront...

I posted this updated information on the original review page, too, but here's the Star Wars: Battlefront ongoing update I never thought I'd post:

1st, a minor bit....there are ewoks and jawas in the game, but only in multiplayer levels. And I can't shoot them (they appear to be too fast, but are just immune to bullets I suppose).

2nd: I'm upgrading this to a A- because since I wrote this I've logged at least 1 or 2 hours a night (every night, plus overtime Thanksgiving; about 20-25 additional play hours I'd say) on the game, sometimes with my son, sometimes with multiplayer, and it not only hasn't gotten old but I'm pretty well addicted to it....neglecting the other multiplayer shooter fare on my plate pretty much entirely in favor of Star Wars: Battlefront. At least part of the reason is because it turns out the formula has more staying power than I thought; I have been mostly playing blast (deathmatch) and dogfight in multiplayer...I haven't even begun to explore the other modes yet.

The other reason really is because--believe it or not--SWB manages to make for a very clean and friendly play environment; you do not see the weirdos* and griefers, at least not right now, and I think it will be hard to see them in the future as the game is very carefully designed to mitigate opportunities for people to be jerks. You can't teabag, spawn points rotate with great efficiency making camping hard to do, if there's chat I haven't been impacted by it, and the game's underlying design is incredibly balanced and efficient. Most importantly: nothing within the game encourages asshattery, either; you do not have characters cursing at you for "not stepping up your effin' game" like they do in Black Ops 3, for example. This is the cleanest and most enjoyable, relaxing yet fun shooter I've played in years.

Anyway, I'm Tyranosaur on the Xbox One if you're interested.....and yes, I'm actually still pretty good at this game; I've even placed top three on occasion, or hit one of the mentionable milstones. This NEVER happens to me. I'm usually my team's handicap.

The game still needs more single-player modes. My son seems delighted with it, but by all the gods please get more single player and local co-op options going so my son and I don't keep playing the same modes over and over!!!!!


*Weird name still there. Buttmuncher253 has pwnd me a few times, as has bluntbutts and so forth. And yet ironically I have been able to turn the tide on these guys in the game, something I'd never have been able to do in a Call of Duty title.....

A review of Star Wars Battlefront: best casual shooter you'll find out there

When I heard the female stormtrooper talking* I knew Star Wars had just been yanked in to the 21st century, and in a good way. It almost immediately seems weird to me now that there were no female stormtroopers in the original Star Wars films. Gender equality with galactic opression FTW!



Star Wars: Battlefront Preliminary Review (Xbox One Edition)

I've logged a few hours on Star Wars: Battlefront now, both with myself and playing co-op with my son (who will be 4 as of next week, so keep that in mind as I continue). It's a very fun, polished game that provides not just a really faithful rendering of Star Wars in a shooter format, but honestly one of the most polished, bug-free and nicest looking experiences this year. It's very pretty, and for Star Wars fans its a ton of eye candy.

However, the game is essentially four arenas (worlds) with a mix of ground pounding and aerial dog fighting. The ship combat is AMAZING and I am shocked to find that not only is it intuitive but I'm damned good at it. I've never been good at something like this before, so I assume I'm not actually that good, just better than everyone else who sucks more. Or something. My son so far is very, very good as slamming his fighter into the Tatooine desertscape, but eventually even he was able to take on a medley of TIE fighters and win a couple times.

The solo and co-op play modes consist of five training missions (that are actually quite fun and don't have that hideous on-rails training approach), eight combat arenas where you fight enemy AI or a buddy (mixed between normal troops and "hero" modes), and four survival arenas where you can solo or co-op against fifteen waves of enemies. Most importantly, it offers co-op split-screen multiplayer, something Halo 5 ditched which was a huge mistake for that franchise.

The solo and co-op modes suffer from one problem: you can pretty much play each one on the three modes of play to get extra unlocks, but after you've beaten each on the three levels of difficulty you probably won't care to keep replaying them. Even my son (he's almost 4, remember) was getting a little tired of replaying the same mode over and over after a couple hours. He's used to things like Star Wars Lego and Batman Lego, which have a lot of "busy work" in the game....he loves Star Wars" Battlefront but after you've used all your abilities and blown away a ton of storm troopers or rebel soldiers the game doesn't offer much more unless you move to multiplayer.

Multiplayer is more layered and I am still exploring it. I was shocked as I mentioned earlier to discover that not only do I find the starfighter controls really intuitive, but I'm apparently pretty good at it, averaging top three ratings in most of my play-throughs. That's just weird, as 3D dogfighting has been a video game element I've never been good at in the past (I think the PS1 Colony Wars was the last series I was able to play with any reasonable success, to give you an idea).

There are more multiplayer modes, but without exploring all of them yet I'll comment on the following: the game uses a card system to load special abilities and equipment. You have to earn these cards, and although I haven't poked around yet I am sure you'll have some game currency you can purchase in a RMT that lets you buy more cards (I think this was true in Battlefield 4 as well). I never spend money on this stuff, but apparently someone does.

Beyond that, so far I think it's safe to say that Star Wars: Battlefront is an excellent but very casual shooter experience. If you're looking for a hardcore multiplayer game to get you through the next year, this one's only going to work if you're like me, and will be lucky to get more than 5 hours a week in playing it. That said, I've found the feel and style of SWB to be possibly the best multiplayer experience yet, against the recent competition, and only CoD: Black Ops 3 wins out in the end because BO3 managed to both get the formula right and make for a very compeling, strategic new sort of gameplay experience. If you want hardcore multiplayer? Go to Black Ops 3. If you want a more casual experience that also won't teach your kid how to swear or make you wince at the gory death animations? Star Wars: Battelfront is your friend.

Here's a Pro and Con list:

PROS:

• It's got a smooth first-person and third-person mode.
• Amazing, crisp graphics
• Easy to figure out, even a 4 year old can play
• Very family friendly; in fact possibly the only family-friendly game I've bought this season that didn't have "Lego" in the title
• Has some single-player and co-op options, unlike say prior Battlefront games
• Split-screen mode!!!!
• Very easy to pick up and play; low complexity in design means long-term bar of entry is not set too high for the filthy casuals like myself
• starship dogfighting is amazingly well done

CONS:

• Hardcore gamers will find the long-term complexity wanting
• It looks like only 6 playable heroes at start (presumably more added with the DLC): Darth Vader, the Emperor, Boba Fett, Leia, Han and Luke
• Why am I not seeing Ewoks on the Endor level, or are we just missing them? Why are there no Jawas on Tatooine I can shoot? (EDIT: They're lurking in certain multiplayer levels. But you can't shoot them...or at least, I can't successfully do so. Sigh)
• Card-based power-ups might annoy people; if RMTs are tied in will annoy even more
• So is there any arena in space for starships? Probably in DLC?
• The solo and co-op modes are too brief; should have had more options and game modes available
• Only four world arenas to start; they should have had double this number IMO but it looks like future modes are all end-loaded into the DLC
• Battlefront's "you are leaving the combat zone" red warnings return.....GAAAAHHHHHH

Being a Filthy Casual Star Wars fan who's going to milk this for a lot of play time with his family, I'd giving it a solid A. But if you're child-free and hardcore, I think you'll rank this game a C at best and I would advise you to look to Black Ops 3 for the serious multiplayer (I'll see you there after my son goes to sleep). But.....

Should you buy it? I think anyone who's got a situation like I do (both young and old Star Wars fans in the house) and doesn't mind spending $60 will be okay.....but honestly, if money is a factor then it would make a lot of sense to wait until sometime next year when you could get the base game plus all DLC for $60 or less; the game as presented, with so much content planned for future release (I assume and hope) just feels too incomplete. That is both the hardcore gamer in me and the Reasonable Consumer in me speaking out....and because of that dearth of content I'd have to rank SWB a B- right now; it really does need more "stuff" to do.

(EDIT: I'm upgrading this to a A- because since I wrote this I've logged at least 1 or 2 hours a night in on the game, sometimes with my son, sometimes with multiplayer, and it not only hasn't gotten old but I'm pretty well addicted to it....neglecting the other multiplayer shooter fare on my plate pretty much entirely in favor of Star Wars: Battlefront. At least part of the reason is because it turns out the formula has more staying power than I thought. The other reason really is because--believe it or not--SWB manages to make for a very clean and friendly play environment; you do not see the weirdos and griefers, at least not right now, and I think it will be hard to see them in the future as the game is very carefully designed to mitigate opportunities for people to be jerks. You can't teabag, spawn points rotate with great efficiency making camping hard to do, if there's chat I haven't been impacted by it, and the game's underlying design is incredibly balanced and efficient. Most importantly: nothing within the game encourages asshattery, either; you do not have characters cursing at you for not stepping up your effin game like they do in Black Ops 3, for example. This is the cleanest and most enjoyable, relaxing yet fun shooter I've played in years.)




*The female stormtroopers in Star Wars don't just "fill a gap" in gender equality in Star Wars canon, they are a fundamental paradigm shift in Star Wars that retroactively changes how the original three movies feel: prior to this game, the original films depicted a monolithic empire that suppressed aliens and women from their ranks (if there was a female imperial anywhere in the original trilogy, I couldn't find her). Now, the Empire is oppressive to aliens alone, and both genders are equally involved in the inherent evil of the Empire....presumably in time for us to appreciate the cool female Chrometrooper Commander in The Force Awakens.

Star Wars: The propaganda and the reality!

Yes, folks...the  movies are actually nothing more than a sinister plot by nefarious rebels to trick you into thinking the empire has been defeated. Here now from Trooper Cam is the shocking truth as to the defeat of one famous rebel, Luke Skywalker...



Truth out!!!