This year was the most predictable Top 3 for Leo readers.

...and so it comes down to this:

Story or Freedom? Sex or violence? Returning to a known world or the exploration of an unknown? Gameplay or an expansive open world? Fantasy or Sci-Fi? A love-triangle or a man and his dog? Which one performed better? Which one was simply more fun to play? What about addictiveness or the believability of the world you inhabit? Which game falls more in line with the games I've favored this year? Which one was most improved over the last? Which had more filler? What has more stuff to do after the game is done?

Tune in tomorrow!  

Remember the first time you played a modern Metal Gear? How about the first Metroid-Vania, aka Symphony of the Night? Remember the first time you played that? The first time you play a certain type of game usually becomes your most memorable. Your first experience with a new type of game play typically makes it stand out against other games you play. Fallout 4 is the first Fallout I've gotten to play extensively. I've tried 3 before, never played Vegas, but my experience was pretty bad. It was glitchy, there were known issues with the Playstation version, so bad it made me not want to play it. This, for all intents and purposes, is my first time really playing Fallout. As far as I know, this is also the first Bethesda game that does two things brand new: One, is the ability to pick up and use anything and everything you find. It's no longer Oblivion or Skyrim style were you pick up every piece of silverware only to sell it in a shop. Now, every can you can find becomes the foundation for a steel gate to protect the people of the Commonwealth! Second, you can actually build your towns, your defenses, your weapons, your structures, your furniture, your shops... You can customize this place to be your own! Bethesda games already give you so much freedom; this addition is NUTS!

As for performance: I was worried about Fallout 4 before it was released. Past experiences weighed on my mind and GAF, as usual, wasn't being very kind when it came to this game! I don't know who at Bethesda peed in someone at GAF's cornflakes, but their bias is apparent. Had I listened to their nitpicking about framerate and load times, etc, I would have missed one of the best gaming experiences I've had all year! As it stands, I've had The Witcher 3 crash entirely, error message and all, booting me back to the PS4 dash, 3 times over the course of playing. Never experienced any of the disappearing faces, floating horse or enemies or other oddities people have found, but overall, I've had more issues with Witcher than Fallout! Never a crash, never a loss in save progress, I don't recall there being a drop in performance or frames that affected my gameplay so far in any way!

Fallout 4 is flat-out more fun to play! You can play it as an extremely customizable First Person Shooter. You can play it more in an RPG sense and rely more heavily on VATS. There's much more freedom in the way you could play Fallout than the Witcher. This may sound morbid, but both games have dismemberment, but it's more satisfying in Fallout. Once you get your Adrenaline up in Witcher, it's more likely you'll get to see one of Geralt's canned-animation finishers. It's fun to watch him run someone through, split someone in half or behead them with a swift strike... but Geralt is Geralt, you expect to see this! Battles in Fallout tend to play out pretty evenly for me. I'm usually as close to dying as my foe is. There's just something about scoring that final VATS shot. The one where you see the head explode and the eyeballs go flying that's SUPREMELY satisfying! You exhale, you snap out of your game induced trance. You KNOW the battle is won and done at that point! The Witcher continues to improve it's gameplay though patches and options made available by the developers, even going as far as offering an entirely different feeling control scheme for Geralt. One is the traditional heavier and more physics based scheme, the other is the new lighter and more action-game like scheme, selectable in the Options screen. When it comes down to it though, in my opinion, Fallout is a better FPS-RPG than the Witcher is an Action-RPG. As much as I appreciate the flexibilty of the gameplay system and the improvements made to the Witcher games, Geralt still feels stiff and slightly unruly in battle.

Something Witcher does so much better than F4 is character interaction! The people in Fallout look like puppets. It's hard to get attached to them. The characters in the Witcher look like people! Yes, you have your loyal companions in F4, but they really just amount to an immortal baggage carrier, or temporary distraction! Sex, character interactions and relationships seem real in the Witcher's world. The Witchers seem like friends and brothers. The Sorceresses all have their different personalities and motivations. I got myself into quite the quandry will playing the Witcher. I made up my mind from the beginning that I liked Triss more than Yennefer. Triss was a (literal) fiery red head. I had a "history" with her from Witcher 2. She was feminine enough to be girlish and made me want to protect her, but she also kicked MUCH ass! She acted as if she could be Geralt's friend as much as she could be a lover and I LIKED that! I had an idea in my head that from the books, Geralt was supposed to end up with Yen, but... Yen came across as cold, uncaring and manipulative at first. When it came down to it, after saving the Mages with Triss, I told her I loved her and slept with her, asking her to not go with the other mages to safety. Turns out though, the more I got to know Yen, she changed in my eyes to a regal character. Someone who was cool, but caring, powerful and in charge, but still motherly when it came to Ciri. She was strong and after a certain questline, it was clear Geralt and she DID really love each other, truly. I told her I loved her and slept with her too. From that moment on, I started to literally get anxious about how the love triangle was going to resolve itself! I didn't want to disappoint either! The way they both reacted after I had done this was priceless video game story-telling. Triss remaining the cool and loyal friend, coming to Ciri's and Geralt's aid regardless of heart matters. Yen, in an uncharacteristic moment, got SUPER pissed and tossed the bed Geralt and Triss shared out the window of the Witcher fortress!! AWESOME!! You see NOTHING of the sort, personality-wise in Fallout! Not to spoil anything, but they way they handled this in the game, the final "confrontation" between the three of them, was resolved in a way so unexpectedly, it caught me totally by surprise and cemented my belief that CD Projekt Red is among the upper echelon of game developers! Masterful!!

Depending on my mood, sometimes I want to be told a good story. Sometimes, I want to be told minimal story and let my imagination piece together what I experience into stories of my own devise. Typically, the type of game it is, decides what kind of story it can tell. Open world games are hard to work with. You never know where the player's going to go, you never know quite what they are going to do. Most of the time open world games' stories are fragmented and are simply created around the world they are in just as a device to give motivation for the player to stay in that world and play. A lot of the times, in open worlds, stories are secondary. When it comes down to it, both games have the same story! Both revolve around a parent trying to find his child and doing whatever it takes to meet that end. It's strange though... The Witcher's world is larger and more open, with technically more to "do" in it, but the story is sharper and more directed. In Fallout, the area you play in is smaller, the story is less directed and it's really up to the player how much he or she wants to invest in it or discover. The quests in Witcher are richly detailed and descriptive. The quests in Fallout are typically "Go here. Clear out this area of enemies and/or Get this item."

I'm getting perilously close to being entirely SICK of ogres and dragons, wyverns and wizards. I want more Sci-fi in my games. Give me a Metroid, Phantasy Star or Mass Effect soon, PLEASE!! Fantasy settings have been overdone to death... As fantastic as the beasts are in the Witcher, I'm burning out! Fallout clearly wins in this regard!

When it comes to the worlds of the Witcher and Fallout, they are both as different as they could be! A post-apocalyptic wasteland or sprawling fields and beautiful islands? Aesthetically, the Witcher is more appealing, obviously. Waves of grain blowing in the wind. Trees shaking and creaking in the rain. Snow covered islands and brilliant sunsets... There's no comparison. Seeing a world after it's destroyed itself with burnt-out buildings and radiated fields, flat, muted colors and grotesque monstrosities... it can get a bit depressing! Storyline-wise it's a bit of a different... story! The Witcher's world feels like a place full of discrimination and hate; it's gorgeous, but there's no sense of hope. People seem to be resigned to their fate. Sometimes when people are exposed to the "worst" all they have left to do IS hope and rebuild. Although Geralt saves his world a few times over in the Witcher, in the grand scheme of things, his actions don't seem to make much of a difference to the people living in it, whereas in Fallout, depending on how you play, you, as the main character, can bring a lot of hope and positive change to the people of the Commonwealth! You seem to have much more influence over the world there. You're given much more freedom in that sense, in F4! If I had to live in either, it would probably be in the Witcher's world, but either way it wouldn't be an easy life, just a prettier one!

What kind of gamer was I this year though? I invested a lot more time into certain games than I played a larger variety. I did my best to exhaust every last thing each game offered rather than jump from game to game. I finished far fewer games this year than years past, but got attached to the ones I did enjoy more. I preferred portables more in the first half of the year, due to a lot of happy events and the need to be travelling quite a bit more than usual. The second half of my year a series of personal and unfortunate events left me more home bound and injured, unable to travel as much, with the need to occupy my time more. Nonetheless, rather than play more and more games, I still stuck to my devotion to a select few, rather than haphazardly play many and appreciate none! I got the Witcher near the end of May. Started playing it a bit in June. Although there were a few months between I hardly played it at all, I played it over the course of six months and enjoyed every moment I spent with it. It was my primary, go-to game for much of the months of October and November, playing IT almost exclusively! I bought Fallout in the second week of November and almost immediately got addicted, but still held off playing it in depth until The Witcher's story came to a close.

When The Witcher was done. I was done. All I cared about was seeing Geralt and Ciri re-united and her story resolved. I don't think I'll go back to play the DLC, unless I run out of games to play.

Fallout 4, on the other hand, I look forward to re-assigning skill points, trying different builds and exploring the inevitable offerings of Bethesda's incoming DLC barrage! As I play, I find myself dreaming about different ways I would play it again!

I must add: it's been a pleasure playing Bethesda games since I was able to get a 360 to play and finish Skyrim, despite it's unresolved issues on the PS3. Each release of theirs is an event in and of itself and I finally understand why!

Then again, the same can be said of CD Projekt Red and their Witcher games! I am totally psyched to see what they do with their Cyberpunk game too...!

It all comes down to this:

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Sometimes there are games that play great, but they have a weak story. Sometimes there are games that have a great story, but only average gameplay. There are games you can't wait to see finished just to get them out of the way. There are some games that you realize you want to play and replay and replay. Some games grow old fast, some can linger with you for years. Some are mass-produced, big budget games that lack soul but have lots of flash. Some are labors of love that come around only once every few years. Sometimes games are great for the total package they provide. Sometimes it's only one thing that does it for you...

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02. Fallout 4 (PS4) -- is a great world with a lot of atmosphere to play in. Bethesda deserves much credit for the features they added to an already open-ended, completely-customizable world and beloved series. Despite the playability of the game and despite the fact that playing through it once, I already want to go back and do it all over again, there's one thing the game lacks...

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01. The Witcher 3 (PS4) -- The story of The Witcher 3 is what ultimately did it for me. Yes, I've said it before, it's boiled down to a parent trying to find his child, just the same as Fallout 4. It's NOT the overall PLOT that mattered though. It was the level of detail devoted to every last thing. Every quest had a story all it's own. Every NPC you spoke to, you never knew what their requests would entail or where their jobs would lead you. A back story was given to almost everything you did in the game. Yes, a lot of times it was all about: "My stupid son journeyed into the Cave of Death for some mushrooms and I haven't seen him since! I hope he's not dead!" But, then again, there was the the story of the couple whose unresolved love that was betrayed by the people one of them fell in line with caused a vengeful Wraith to be born. This was simply the life of a Witcher. This was the job you did. How much variety does your job offer on a daily basis? Not much, I would bet! Truth be told, throughout the course of the game, I hardly even read the notes that a lot of the quests used to initiate them. Although they were there to justify what you were doing, they were NOT as important to me as the everyday moments of Witcher Geralt, his friends, his family and his lovers. It's the "in-between" things that made it what it was. That's where the magic of the game's story lies. It's what made the game and the characters human, believable and memorable. It was in how Geralt and Zoltan joked about Dandelion. It was in how Geralt, Lambert and Eskel got drunk, played cards and ribbed each other about women. It was the crowd's fascination with Priscilla's stage show. It was the momentary showing of Dijkstra's romantic side as he told Geralt to not let Triss go. Or the cross-dressing elf. Or the unresolved Daddy issues between Lambert and Vesemir. It was the show of desperation by Keira Metz to return to the lifestyle she once knew. Above all, it was the look on Geralt's face upon discovering Ciri's "body" on the island. The way the game mocked 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.' Their snowball fight to break the tension outside the Witcher fortress. The trashing of Avallac'h's hidden lab. The simple act of Geralt accompanying Ciri as a concerned parent would as she made peace with her life and the consequences her actions wrought on the world before entering the final battlefield. It wasn't the story over all, it was the way in which CD Projekt Red made the mundane moments magical. The way they made the simple actions of Geralt and his crew matter, no matter if he was accepting a contract to kill a vampire or saving the entire world. I'll say it again, the way in which the game was written caused me actual anxiety over my actions with Triss and Yen, the resulting triangle that came about as a result and it's resolution! The way in which it was resolved, blind-sided me and it was something I never expected to see in a videogame in this day and age! Witcher 3 doesn't rely on teen-age angst, nor does it rely on tired, old cliches; it's a game made by adults, for adult gamers! It's a labor of love by it's developers and that shines through, through every moment in the game! I will say this: This game came along when I needed a distraction and something to occupy a lot of time. As such, for the two intensive months that I played it over the course of the six, I didn't mind the repetitive jobs Geralt did in his contracts, I didn't get overwhelmed by the gigantic scope of the world and the hundreds of quests it held. Every day, Geralt's occupation became mine. I took a contract, advanced the story, searched for some gear, played some cards. Geralt's life became mine. Trying to power through the game was NOT something I wanted or needed to do. I am glad this was the case because, had I done this, I would have missed so many of the finer things this game held in it's details. Maybe that changed the way I looked at the game versus other people. Maybe this is what CD Projekt intended? This game's biggest strength may also be it's most ironic fault. It does such a great job setting up the story of Geralt and Ciri that, that's all I cared about! DLC be damned! It's nice to know it's there if I want to return to this world, but at the moment, it feels unnecessary! What else can be said? Not much that I haven't written already. As a gamer it makes my heart glad there are still developers out there that have such reverance for their craft! There were games I played for even more time this year. There were games I found more fun to play. But for what was said here, and for what this game did, there were no other games that deserved my highest praise for the year 2015! Can't wait to see what the Cyberpunk Game will be like! Maybe it will be the perfect combination of my two top games for this year, pairing their incomparable story-telling with the Sci-Fi setting I seek! Could it be my GOTY for 2016 is already in the cards? A year from now, we'll see!

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Fin!

Great job Leo and I called it. So well written.

phantom_leo said:

travo said:

Well done, Leo.  I love that the top choice was between those two ( though neither are my top two).  I need to do my half-assed write this week!

Batman and Super Mario Maker!  

Hell no to both!

travo said:

phantom_leo said:

travo said:

Well done, Leo.  I love that the top choice was between those two ( though neither are my top two).  I need to do my half-assed write this week!

Batman and Super Mario Maker!  

Hell no to both!

Metal Gear annnd...

SPLATOON!  

Really great write up with a nice plot twist at the end there.

Reason I am looking at these a bit more closely: It's amazing how diverse GOTY's are this year. I don't really recall a year in the recent past where I DID NOT know so many entries!

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I'm shocked how many indies and mobiles there are!

I'm shocked how few have Batman Arkham on them!

I'm shocked to see Transfomers Devastation on some!

I'm shocked to see Tales from the Borderlands on so few!

The almost utter lack of Portable Games on this list is somewhat telling!

There's a few games that seem to suffer from being released very early in 2015: Bloodborne and Dying Light, specifically!

There's a few games I never would have thought would make it to a Top-Ten list: Life is Strange, Until Dawn and Rocket League.

There's a few critical darlings I'm going to have to seek out and play now: Undertale **have it, haven't played it**, Box Boy **just got it!**, Downwell, Alphabear and Ori and the Blind Forest.

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As I find more of these lists, I'll post more! I'm just finding it interesting how different the landscape of the hobby looks at the end of 2015!