Looking back at this year’s game releases, This year has been a pretty good time for gaming. We’ve had the usual blockbusters, Call of Duty, Battlefield, some games that haven’t been seen in their franchise for years, Final Fantasy XV. These are my top games of the year.
Looking back at some of the best games I’ve played this year
Call of Duty
Infinite Warfare + Modern Warfare 1 – Remastered
Off the top of my head, games that I really enjoyed were, Call of Duty – Infinite Warfare. Black Ops’s three’s campaign was disappointing, with CoD Infinite the story returns to bombastic and exhilarating set pieces/shoot outs. They introduced ship combat in space, where you control a customized ship called the Jackal, and battle it out via dog fights. Top Gun in space, pretty much. This game play element isn’t just a cheap add on either, they really took the time to make it feel right. Just writing about it makes me want to play. A first in the series is side missions, these are quite fun. The detail they added to the game is pretty nice as well, as I was walking to the control room I overheard a conversation. Two people were working on fixing a pipe and I just stood there listening to about 3 minutes of them talking, I love little things like this. Multiplayer sadly, does not completely deliver, the maps are lacking but it’s not a total loss either, there are some good ones. I can’t pin point it down, but some feel odd, they just don’t have a nice flow to them. The enviornments are drab, dull colors for the most part, and I love my colors. Rounding out the game is the Zombie Mode, I usually skip this part but they did it pretty well this time. The theme is the 80’s, complete with music and hairstyles/clothes from the era. A version of the game includes the classic Modern Warfare 1 remastered, I won’t go into that because it’s a whole other review but we all know how good it was.
Final Fantasy XV
I’m about thirty hours into the game, and I’m loving every moment of it, even though I’m finding the story lacking. Looking back, you can say all Final Fantasy’s were open world games, but this is a more modern take. The Witcher 3, Dragon Age, even Grand Theft Auto come to mind when describing it. There are tons of side quests to do, interesting and well designed characters. I would have liked to have seen a combat system more akin to Devil May Cry here, but I guess that would make it a totally different game. Unless I’m playing it wrong, you hold down a button, hit the direction pad to switch weapons, or switch to magic, and dodge. It sounds like DMC but it’s more sluggish. It’s still pretty fun though and I hope there’s a lot more game play to come.
Bloodborne and Dark Souls III
I’ll group these together because they are pretty much the same, game play wise. The original Demon’s Souls is what made me buy a PlayStation 3, I love the difficulty, if you die it’s your fault, and if you make a mistake you pay for it, sometimes dearly. Every enemy has their pattern, and bosses are daunting and sometimes screen filling. The levels are played in segments, bonfire to bonfire (save points). In DS3 the very first stage had me dying, probably 30 times. Fifteen hours later I made a new character and I beat it on my first try. That just gives you a great feeling of accomplishment.
That’s just some of the games that grabbed me, honorable mentions include, Mad Max, Battlefield 1, and many others.