A - A game I would recommend to people who don't like a genre, something good enough for people generally against it to try. These are the games I think you should definitely look into. This isn't a ranking like "10/10" or "four and a half stars, delivered pizza to my house, performed sexual favors and then changed the oil on my car", this is evaluating games subjectively, from my perspective, who I'd recommend them to. Which is the point of reviewing, to me, anyway.
And these are the games where I'd say "More than the usual". Mind you, I don't mean you should move hard outside you genre just to force yourself to try them. If you hate shooters, it's unlikely an A-rank game is going to redefine how you look at them. Look for them on sale and the like. These are games in X genre that appeal to people who don't usually like X genre.
B - Being games are excellent examples of their genre, but don't stand outside their genre. You have to be interested, at least a little, in playing this sort of game. They have to be your jam. That's not to say a B rank game is necessarily more or less fun than an A rank game, as frankly, I had the most fun with a B rank game this year. This is more that it tends to be a little more bogged down in genre conventions and you need to be keen on how it works.
C - Games that you need to want to play the genre to want to play. Essentially, if B rank games are games where if you like ARPGs you'll like them, C rank games are ones where you need to be in the mood for the genre to like them. If you're not feeling it, well, you probably won't feel it.
D - Games I feel personally won't appeal to most people even within those that like the genre. That's not to say D rank games are all unplayable, or even that they're all garbage. Just that I'm not sure even if you were in the mood you'd be up for these.
E - Games I never finish reviewing, so they don't go on this list. There's about 10-20 games a year that fall into this category.
Also, this is a listing of games I reviewed this year, very few of which are ever actually from a given year. This is a guide to going through Steam sales and picking out stuff you might have missed at a low price, not a guide to the latest and greatest. I'm not even suggesting you buy these games this year.
I generally tend to lean toward lowering the ranking of games that are more difficult. As I said, this is about recommending games, and "difficult" is something of a subgenre. I've never met a "tuned to be difficult game" I would actually say I would recommend to anyone to pick up and try. There's lots of good ones, but the harder you tune a game, the less people who can play it and enjoy it.
The Gap: There's a four month gap in my reviews this year, which often happens around March, but went kinda wild this time. Basically, I played Serious Sam 3 - which I hated - Arkelash Legacy - which was disappointing - and spent like fifty hours dicking around with Skyrim but never actually finished it. Also Phantasy Star 2, which I think I eventually reviewed but who cares.
A-Rank
Sonic 3 & Knuckles (or basically the Megadrive Hub); I'm not going to put a bunch of hub reviews on the year in review. The Mega Drive hub isn't amazing, but it's worth owning the Sonic games and having them on your computer if you think you'll ever try them. The Steam integration is good, and being able to fire up Steam, load a save state and play some Sonic - if you think you'll like Sonic at all - makes it a comfortable way to play.
Sonic Generations; The roadmap for an effective nostalgia bomb, Sonic Generations blends much of the fun of the 2d game with a really good take on 3d Sonic that carries many of the problems but it is still so beautifully satisfying. This is a really pretty, uplifting and just fun game. I played this during a bout of depression and even then I still found joy in it.
Broforce; Broforce does something right on almost every level, and although it's not a perfect game, it's so compelling it's hard to put it lower. I really think people outside the platformer genre fan will enjoy it which is why it gets an A-rank.Stardew Valley; It's actually a little tricky, putting this in A. I've never played another farming game in this genre, I'm not even sure there is much of a genre. It's more or less collection of mini-games that transition around you while you're not paying attention. I don't know. It's super chill and relaxing and just a happy good game that I think most people who enjoy games in general will enjoy.
B-Rank
Grim Dawn; At first, I really liked Grim Dawn. Then that cooled a little, and I considered giving it a C, but I kept playing it. It actually gets a lot better as you learn more and feel more practiced in playing it, which pushed it back up to B. I almost want to give it an A, but truth be told, it doesn't really get out of the genre rut. It still has a lot of the worst elements of the genre and makes some of them even worse. So it's a very solid B, but it just can't be given an A.
Gunpoint; This is one of those games where I feel like ranking them based on genre expectations really breaks down. This game was really good, to me, but I don't know how puzzle gamers would take to the game. Or non-puzzle gamers. It's difficult recommending this game to people who aren't within the narrow niche between the two, but I really adored it. The puzzles are satisfying, the story is interesting and the ambience is fantastic. But the difficulty was kinda off at points. Very close to an A.
Hammerwatch; Good but not great. Probably better multiplayer, but in singleplayer it just starts to get really tiresome after much of a run through. Really fantastic music, though, and sprite art that is easy on the eyes.
Odallus; While I didn't finish the Dark Call, I definitely enjoyed it quite a bit for a good chunk of the game. As with all rampings of difficulty, it turned into a slog, but there's still a good number of hours with this strangely atmospheric pixel art game. It sets out to do something and does it well.Nuclear Throne; This game frustrated me and got kinda boring, but I have to grudgingly admit if I played seven hours of a game with such a simple premise it has to be better than c-rank. It's a high quality presentation, but there's a bit too much roguelite in its DNA for me to fully enjoy.
Lords of the Fallen; I would put this game at a low B, almost a C, but somewhere buried in its janky euro charm is a solid souls homage with a decent mix up of elements. It's certainly not a great game, and I've read Souls players hate it, but on the most part I found it to be quite satisfying. It actually does a couple things better than Dark Souls the first, but many things worse, so it's sort of a bit of both.Sonic CD; It's a great, memorable game but the time travel gimmick doesn't really feel unique enough to make up for losing the Sonic elements it traded for them. It's also just not as chill and fun as Sonic 3.
Ittle Dew; The game is cute enough and pleasant enough, with such nice visuals, I guess I'm bumping it up a notch. There's enough variety and different paths for a puzzle game I find myself thinking higher of it.
DMC; the franchise ender brawler was better and more creative than I expected. It's a low B, very close to a C, since it goes for creepy edgelord more than it should and that kinda turns me off from recommending it to a broader audience. Maybe it should be a C. I wouldn't recommend it ahead of any other B game in this list.
Hade; Small, simple, easy to enjoy little puzzle game. It's a puzzle game, but if you like them, I think it's pretty good at what it does.
C-Rank
Sacred 3; I would put this as a high C, but it is ultimately a well made average game. It's not a sacred game, nor a sacred citadel game, but it's about good enough to enjoy. It's worse than it should be, and I don't know anyone to play MP with it, so I can't evaluate that either.
Mysterious Space; A tiny cute roguelite about flying a tiny space-ship around an alien sector. It hits a lot of pleasant buttons while being small and inoffensive. Honestly, very close to a B, but I'm not sure who the audience is.
Tower of Guns; Completely reasonable but nothing too special or exciting. It's a roguelite FPS, you shoot the things, then your work is done. A low C, to be honest.Shattered Planet; I played a lot of roguelikes and roguelites this year. This is a very true to form roguelike game, with decent visuals and cute polish, but it's still nothing too exciting.
Starward Rogue; I like this game, but I don't love this game, and I think you really need to be into the genre to be into this. It's a wellmade fusion, but it is a fusion that inherits both ends of problems to go with its gameplay choices.
Fotonica; Gotta go fast, I guess
Steredenn; This game is a very high C, but it's not quite a B since I think it's a little disingenuous in its application of the 'roguelite' moniker. Frankly, for a genre that is supposed to add variety, I feel like this game actually has less variety than most shmups.
Counterattack; Slightly above average side-scrolling shmup with bad visuals. The gap between this and Steredenn is as big as the category can be.
Space Run; A solid tower defense game that doesn't manipulate its gimmick as well as it should and just ends up feeling like a very frantic, but still quality, TD game. You're going to need to want to play a TD game for this one to really gel, I think.
SRR Dragonfall; Just wasn't that impressed with this one. I get that a lot of people like it, but all the piles of solutions and alternate paths which may or may not lead to nothing just ended up feeling entirely janky. I was also incredibly unimpressed with them killing a character at the start and then trying to push the idea I should feel something for their death. Also the hacking is shit-tier terrible and adds way too much busy work to the game.
Pirate Pop Plus; This game was good, but nothing great, and pretty limited in terms of replayability. Probably more for people with nostalgia for playing the OG gameboy at recess in grade school than anything.
Phantasy Star 2; I really love the style and atmosphere of this game, but honestly, RPGs past a certain point into the past are just complete slogfests. I was very close to the end and just couldn't put anymore of my life into this game. A bad sign.
California Gold Rush; Ultra-casual weirdly racist poorly translated clicker game. Fun, for about an hour.
Muffin Knight; Kind of a cute time-killer with a nice layer of polish and a decent unlock grind but nothing I'd really go out of my way to play.
Blazerush; A sort of okay isometric racer. Not a lot to say here.
Save Halloween City; Nothing super special, but a fun little diversion I picked up for a song and had my fun with.
Freedom Planet; Indulgent and tedious, Freedom Planet is hyped as a 16-bit resurrection and it is! It's a malformed resurrection of every 16-bit game they could think of, slopping together into an incoherent whole. I think if you're really into platformers you'll like this, but it's not a great example of the genre as it's simply too unfocused.
Sonic Lost World; Much like the game above, SLW is too unfocused for its own good, blending elements randomly to its detriment. I think SLW is playable, and some people will have fun with it, but it just eventually gets irritating. Sonic is constantly flopping to his death in ridiculous ways.Sonic Heroes; So close to good but not quite. Colorful, fun, and then you fall off a cliff. Yeesh. I really hope Sega pulls out an HD remaster of this game one day, with a bit of work on the engine, because the core gimmick was good and it felt slick when it was working well.
Oceanhorn; It's pretty okay. I think people with more of a thing for this style of game would be more into it. It felt like the game took too long to get its story hooks out and just ended up feeling like 'random dude randomly wanders around'.
Porradaria Upgrade; A very low C, but I can't bring myself to give it a D, since somehow it was oddly charming? I have no idea. Don't get me wrong. This game is bad. But it's so bad... It's a little good?
Ultionus; Beautiful pixel art coupled with slightly above average retro gameplay. Defines C.
Blue Estate; Eh, not nearly as funny as it thought it was, but a decent enough level of gameplay coupled with solid visuals and better than average voice acting. I think you have to want to play a rail shooter to want to play this, which is why it got a C.Bound by Flame; I really wanted to like this game, but the combat system and just general sense of "janky difficulty" really took away from it. Trying to time your parries based on visual cues when the camera jams them out of sight is just... Not good.
Sonic Adventure 2; For me Sonic didn't work in 3D until Unleashed. I played enough SA2 to find some enjoyment, but also to hate it. I left it hating it.
D-Rank
Fire; I'm really not an adventure gamer so maybe I'm totally wrong here but this game's complete lack of a story or compelling hook just made it boring. The two adventure titles I played last year were 80% story and that's what made them compelling. Disjointed and jarring, I'm not sure who I would recommend this game to.
An Imp, a fiend; Or whatever. I barely remember this game.
Puzzle Galaxies: Again, I barely remember. What I do remember was boring.
Galak-Z: If this game was built around the player having any difficulty with the rather clunky controls it would be excellent. Unfortunately, it's built around talking and talking and more talking and yeah let's just not play this. I've read people liking it, but I think they have a much higher threshold for annoyance than I do. I got other games to play!
Sonic 4 Episode I & II; I am hoping Sonia Mania washes away the tastes of these games. I can say lots of stuff about all the Sonic games I played this year, but let's be frank - these are games no one would remember whatsoever if they didn't say Sonic on the tin.
?-Rank
Crypt of the Necrodancer; Look, this isn't a rank below D. I seriously liked this game, but I also couldn't play it. It just didn't work in my brain properly. I'm acknowledging that. I feel like it's impossible to evaluate a game. I still really liked it, I just couldn't play it. What a weird feeling.
Random Chart Time
The chart on the right shows the top eight games for me for play time over the course of 2016. I went with eight, since that's the cut off for games I spent ten hours or more on, which is about the point a game's play time is notable.
You may notice I've continued to play Grim Dawn and may even notice two of these games weren't reviewed this year. But they will be. I promise.
What's up next year?
Witcher 3, Dark souls, Final Fantasy VI reviews are all pending. I'm half done Skyrim, which, uh yeah. Probably Demonicon the Dark Eye, Divinity: Original Sin and Divinity Dragon Commander. Further on in the year, I already have Sonic Mania pre-ordered - hell, I bought the dang t-shirt - and I have Children of Zodiarcs kickstarted, so there will at least be something of relevance coming next year.
Yeah an 16-bit revival and an indie kickstarter game. Such relevance. Oh, and Grim Dawn is getting an expansion, so I'm getting that.
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