Hi, I'm Hamish Black and welcome to Writing on Games.
2016 in video games could be characterised, for me anyway, as the year of surprises – games
I thought I'd love ended up not-so-great, and games I didn't expect much from ended
up becoming some of my favourites this year.
It's the year we finally saw the release of games that had been in the works for many,
many years and that many thought cancelled.
It's the year AAA games took risks and embraced humanity that indie games have been exploring
for years, whilst the same indies went further with it.
Dialogue was a key mechanic in some games, but what was equally as powerful was its rarity
in others.
Indeed, whilst the world around us crumbled in a dystopic cacophony of indecipherable
noise, the surprising introspection of many games this year acted as a much needed emotional
salve.
Whilst this year's industry happenings felt comparatively muted (outside of a few notable
examples), this year still felt... important, ya know?
I mean even personally, this year has been an absolute rollercoaster.
I started this year with a few hundred subscribers, feeling like the work was rewarding but like
I was perhaps speaking softly into the void.
Cut to twelve months and thousands of subscribers later and this is becoming a bigger part of
my life every day – something I never could have expected previously.
I've written articles for some well-known publications, had my videos covered by the
likes of Polygon, overcome my anxiety and headed down to London on my own for an interview
with a pretty big games media site, started a Patreon that has kept the channel going,
got sent a PS4 by one of my patrons meaning I could finally play Bloodborne, started a
podcast with one of my best friends Nico, and importantly, been introduced to many amazing
creators, a lot of whom I'd now consider friends.
Despite some significant dips in terms of health here and there, upon reflection 2016
has been a pretty amazing year for me.
I have every single one of you to thank for all of this and I couldn't be more sincere
about it – you are all changing my life for the better every single day.
I cannot thank you enough.
Enough of all that dumb introspection nonsense though, this is a time for lists and needless,
ultimately meaningless competition!
I dunno, I thought that in this spirit of reflection, it would be fun to do another
list of the best games I played this year and talk a bit about why I enjoyed them so
much.
So without further ado, I'd like to welcome you all to the Writing on Games top 5 games
of 2016 list (with some honourable mentions for good measure)!
And I'd like to kick things off at number 5 with...
5.
The Witness I'd like to kick off proceedings with Jonathan
Blow's The Witness.
This game, as I talked about in my video on it at the start of the year, is a mess of
contradictions.
It's at once a game that treats its audience with utter contempt, and yet simultaneously
encourages you to get better.
It's a game that hints at a wider meaning in its philosophical musings, then mocks the
player for seeing it as anything other than line puzzles (at one point literally stating
that "the products of human emotion are interpretations of the world that tell you more about the
guy talking than the world he's talking about" - just think about how dismissive that makes
the game seem about all its own light narrative elements, for example!
It's crazy).
When I played this game initially, I hated how it got under my skin so wholly with such
a simple premise – how could a game about line puzzles be so infuriatingly complex,
and why can't I seem to solve this one stupid maze?
It made me feel downright stupid at times and I get why many people hated that about
the game.
That said, when you finally crack that solution the game has been nudging you towards after
staring at a maze for an hour, going away and then coming back to it, that eureka moment
is almost unmatched by any other game.
There is a craft to its contradictory design, a method to its madness.
It's designed to make you constantly question your own feelings towards the piece as well
as yourself, and art in general.
To me then, in that sense, it's about as pure a work of art as you can get, and therefore
easily finds its way onto my list.
4.
Dark Souls 3 You know a year has been replete with stand
out games when a Dark Souls title can only make it to number 4.
That is to say nothing of the game's quality though, because at the end of the day, it's
more Dark Souls.
In some ways I'd consider it on par with the first Dark Souls in terms of quality.
Its combat feels better than the mainline Souls games ever have, with an increased speed
and an emphasis on getting up close and personal feeling heavily informed by Bloodborne, whilst
still retaining the weight and precision of combat typically associated with a traditional
Souls game.
It's a delicate balance that I only really appreciate having now played its predecessor
and come back to this.
I also love the world and enemy design, with a bright, often saturated colour palette being
countered with some truly horrific foes.
Large scale bosses truly impose upon you, with their size largely avoiding the typical
"big = slow" dynamic usually seen in games like this.
The world also feels wonderfully interconnected, harkening back to the original Dark Souls.
It's far from perfect though, and that's probably why it didn't make its way further up the
list – as time has gone on I've found myself wondering "why do they keep messing with systems
that were perfected as early as the first Dark Souls?"
The bonfires exemplify this wholly for me – why does the interconnected nature of
the world matter when there's likely a bonfire right around the corner?
As a result, it just doesn't feel as tightly designed as the first Dark Souls.
Also, I guess I'm just beginning to get a little burnt out on Souls games at this point.
I recently completed Bloodborne and it was great (and I'll be doing a video on it soon),
but one of the main reasons I enjoyed it so much was because it felt like a horror game
first and a Souls game second.
I guess even when the combat has been refined to a mirror sheen as it has been here, there's
only so many times you can go back to it before people begin to tire of it.
Even with all of that said, however... it's still a Dark Souls game which kind of automatically
places it in the upper echelon of games I've played this year.
It's still an amazingly good time if you're into the Souls formula, and the amount I keep
coming back to it acts as proof of that.
I guess I'm just really excited now to see what the team is working on next.
3.
Quadrilateral Cowboy Oh god, I've wanted to talk about this game
for so long, mainly because it does the seemingly impossible.
It takes two things that you would think would be perfectly suited to the medium of video
games but have yet to really be effectively implemented, and realises them both with absolute
ease – those two things being hacking, and heists.
Indeed, Quadrilateral Cowboy feels like it glides through these seemingly hard to navigate
activities utterly effortlessly.
If you haven't heard of it (and I'm willing to bet a good deal of you haven't), it's a
game in which you hack your way into various compounds espionage-style in order to retrieve
documents and nick safes and airships.
As the game goes on, you receive new tools that also present new, compelling challenges.
Part of the game's brilliance lies in the fact that its facsimile of coding is simple
enough that you don't need to know any languages yourself, yet deep enough to reward those
who are able to intuit the game's consistent logic.
The time trial mechanic encourages replayability, trying to 'hack' (pardon the pun) seconds
off of your time—at first you might be floundering around, experimenting (and often failing)
with different coding and equipment combinations.
By the time you're replaying earlier levels, however, you'll be chaining together long
strings of commands, positioning yourself in just the right way then executing on an
intricately planned heist that ends up playing out in a matter of seconds.
It really evokes the feeling of being a master spy when you can pull this stuff off and it's
a feeling that has kept me gripped despite the game's relatively short length.
What's perhaps most intriguing about Quadrilateral Cowboy, however, is the unique design of its
world.
In terms of aesthetic, think Minecraft meets Blade Runner (down to the 80s look of the
OS you use) through the lens of retro-futuristic Googie architecture.
It's part of the Blendo Games universe, which also encompasses games like Gravity Bone and
Thirty Flights of Loving (you know, that one game that Jazzpunk *ahem* borrowed heavily
from).
It feels distinctly singular in its look as well as the unique sense of humour permeating
everything within the world.
It also gets you asking questions about things the characters seem to be taking as normal—why
is their base a flying boat?
How, in the 1980s, are they committing heists through what is essentially a VR headset?
How are they essentially using time travel for later heists?
Why is a cat running a bike shop acting as a front for weapons and other less than legal
hardware?!
It's all beautifully consistent in its execution, and as such ends up retaining something of
a magical realist quality.
Its artistry doesn't just apply to the depth of its mechanics, but the unity of its world
design, and whilst I could gush about its charm for ages, I'll leave it at this—play
this goddamn game.
2.
Thumper If you've followed me for any length of time,
you'll know that I'm a musician.
I make the music for all the episodes of the show and hell, the second episode I ever made
was about how music games fail to capture the joy of creativity involved in being a
musician through their focus on ruthless precision.
Essentially, I have a particular interest in how the artform I'm a part of is represented
in games and until recently I've been less than impressed . That's where Drool's recent
release Thumper comes in.
There is a way to represent music without needing to allow for creativity.
Thumper, for me, manages to capture something much deeper than this – the panic, the dread,
and ultimately the elation of playing live.
How does it do this?
By abstracting the event entirely – gone is the stage, the polygonal audience and endless
butt rock found in more traditional music games, replaced by something that evokes Alien
or Suspiria more than AC/DC.
It's all wonderfully symbolic, and there is no attempt to glorify process here – you're
just a scarab beetle careening down a highway at ludicrous speeds, and if you fuck up there's
a severe penalty.
The reason I love it so much is because there's such a brutal physicality to it all that it
reminded me of the key element of playing live – things can and do go wrong, and you've
got to both expect that and be ready to get back into the swing of things as fast as possible.
It reminded me of why musicians practice – ultimately the notes are coming at you too fast for you
to acutely perceive each one.
You need to train yourself to intuit the process to a certain extent, so like you practice
on your instrument to get better, you repeat levels until you just feel it, man.
Getting to that zen-like state feels truly amazing.
Even if you don't quite know how you navigated the unbelievable speeds and odd time signatures
Thumper presents (I mean really, when's the last time a rhythm game forced you to play
in 5/4 or 7/4?), there's a feeling of elation when you get to the end.
It reminded me of all the times I've shed sweat and blood playing aggressive music in
a live scenario, and entering that uneasy trance where everything happens automatically,
but you always worry that shit is going to hit the fan at any moment.
No other music game has done that, and that's why Thumper is such an important game to me.
Plus, it was designed and soundtracked by Brian Gibson (one half of Lightning Bolt)
who are one of those real formative bands that got me into weird, fucked up music as
a teenager, so I was pretty much bound to love this game from the get go.
If you're interested in more in-depth thoughts on the game, I actually wrote an article about
it for Inverse that I'll link in the description.
Essentially, if you're interested in music or rhythm games at all, you owe it to yourself
to check this game out.
Honourable Mentions So, just like last year, I'm going to talk
about some unranked honourable mentions before I reveal my top game of 2016.
There's a lot to get through because hey, this year was damn good for video games, alright?
First off we have Final Fantasy XV – a game that helped me realise just how effective
silence can be in telling a story and surprised me in that, well, it was a Final Fantasy game
that utilised it so well.
It just missed a spot on the list due to a real loss of steam towards the end of the
game – a sharpened focus on the game's unbearably dull main narrative and utterly
woeful penultimate mission made sure of that.
However, when the game focuses on its clear strengths – riding along the open road with
your buddies taking down monsters and watching this relationship grow, often without words
– it's a real treat and a much more intimate Final Fantasy than most.
TrackMania Turbo might not feature the sheer anarchy I loved about the multiplayer of its
previous instalments.
Ultimately, however, it proves that TrackMania is still one of the purest, fastest time trial
racing experiences out there.
Let me know when it gets its equivalent of the Star Wars Metallica course and it'll
be my GotY every year.
For now though, definitely check out Stadium – it is WILD.
There is no way you could have convinced me prior to getting my hands on it that a sci-fi
military shooter would make it onto this list, let alone have its main draw be the campaign.
Titanfall 2, however, with its unbelievably liberating level design, stupendous variation
through level-specific mechanics, and a sense of brevity that leaves you wanting more than
wanting less, was so close to making it onto my main list.
Plus, BT giving the thumbs up is the best shit in any video game ever and I will not
hear otherwise.
The Last Guardian is another game that finally came out after almost ten years.
It certainly feels like a game that started development on the PS3, with some downright
awful performance in some areas and controls that are finicky at best.
That said, if you're into Fumito Ueda games like I am, you're going to be able to look
past these quirks and admire a singularly artistic experience with a satisfying narrative
escalation and payoff towards the game's conclusion.
As Truffaut theorised, the failings of the auteur are inherently more interesting than
an anonymously produced, polished product.
The Last Guardian acts as a pointed example of this.
Firewatch featured what was perhaps the most interesting use of dialogue this year, implementing
it as the central mechanic of the game.
It also handled player choice extremely well, realising that choices don't need to be world-altering
to remain deeply personal.
Add on top of that some amazing performances contributing to one of the most nuanced, heartfelt
relationships in a game this year and, well, it's just really good stuff.
Let It Die is...
Let It Die.
Suda 51 and Grasshopper have my time whatever they choose to do because of how fucking amazing
Killer7 is, despite their subsequent games feeling decidedly mediocre in comparison.
Let It Die, however, is...
Let It Die.
An endlessly complicated mess of systems enclosed in a fairly drab set of corridors with mechanics
that don't feel so great at first glance... and yet I can't seem to stop thinking about
it.
I'll be keeping an eye on this one for sure.
Superhot, like Quadrilateral Cowboy, gets a lot of depth out of a few core mechanics.
Its central focus on time manipulation provides a unique twist on your typical action game—taking
a scenario in which you need to take out a room full of people, and turning it into a
puzzle experience.
Each move you make changes the scenario ever so slightly, but requires a constant refreshing
of the mechanics at play within the puzzle.
It's this fact that the action takes place on a mental level rather than what's playing
out on screen that makes the game so intense, and it's immensely rewarding as a result.
There's Watch Dogs 2 as well, but I already reviewed that, so check that video if you
want to see why it's actually really good.
And, to close, it might not be a full game technically, but The Witcher 3: Blood and
Wine has enough content that it could be considered one and, well, it's more Witcher 3.
Play it.
Phew!
And, with all of those honourable mentions out of the way, I'd like to announce that
my number one game of 2016 is... 1.
Hitman Let me say this right out of the gate—no
game released in 2016 has given me so much joy, so consistently as this year's reboot
of Hitman has.
I was as sceptical of the prospect of an episodic version of Hitman as anyone else upon its
announcement, but a few episodes in and it began to feel more and more like the perfect
way to release that game.
It kept the game fresh in my mind, and kept me anticipating each month's release of new
content as the game's design encouraged me to replay missions and explore every facet
of these wildly expansive levels.
It got to a point where anyone complaining about the episodic model after about three
episodes in was not someone I could realistically take seriously, due the inordinate amount
of content available and the frankly worrying amount of hours I'd put into the game, even
at that point.
That said, volume of content alone does not a compelling game make, so what about Hitman
makes it such a compelling, joyous experience?
Is it the tense, high stakes stealth gameplay?
Is it the sprawling, open ended level design?
Is it the sheer amount of tools at your disposal?
Well yes, those things do play a part, but ultimately it's how these fragile systems
coalesce, and how the player is encouraged to break them, that contribute to the game's
defining characteristic—its utterly absurd sense of humour.
This is something that is incredibly hard to pin down, precisely because it runs so
deep in the game's veins.
Yes, there exists an opportunity system which guides the player along dumb, funny scripted
events, but the absurdity runs deeper than that.
It surfaces itself in the way people don't recognise it as strange that a man pretending
to be someone else has a different voice and a goddamn barcode on the back of his head.
It's made clear through the fact that the scripting is so delicate that you can throw
coins at someone making their big entrance down a staircase and the entire scene will
stop before one person tells you to "pick up your trash" and the scene continues.
It's evident in the fact that through an utterly insane chain of logic, turning off a stove
in a kitchen can lead to guards shooting you to death where you stand.
It's beautiful and the reason for its beauty is the fact that, like I say, it all follows
a logic pattern.
It's a warped logic that bears little resemblance to how normal human beings would behave, but
its a consistent set of rules nonetheless.
The toybox element then comes not simply from the amount of weapons you get or whatever,
but from the sheer amount of possibilities there are to mess with the absurd systems
in front of you.
From this, some of the dumbest, funniest and also most tactical ways to dispatch your targets
can arise.
For example, there's nothing quite like socially engineering your target to appear at a location
and then taking them out from the complete other end of the map.
It makes you feel like you've manipulated a deep system, like you've become a master
assassin, until you realise you haven't killed the target and need to go back for a second
shot.
That's the part that makes you feel like if Larry David was an assassin, and it's the
way these seemingly opposite feelings are so effectively juxtaposed that makes this
game feel so uniquely joyous.
Everyone has their own stories from playing this game—about how they gathered a bunch
of unconscious bodies in a room and dropped a toilet on them, or how they dinged a coin
off a wall at just the right time to distract the cavalcade of dumbass guards previously
so focused on shooting them to death, or however many others.
The important thing is that these scenarios are created by the player, and ultimately
resolved by them.
And bear in mind, this is 2016 we're talking about here—a year which has provided us
with so many depressing events that we have so little control over.
It's perhaps poetic, then, that it also produces a game that both exudes completely absurd
joy, but also puts you in absolute control of it all.
Fact is, whichever way I choose to look at it, it's impossible for me to envision any
other game topping this list.
I am so excited to see what these guys have up their sleeves for season two.
And that concludes my Games of the Year 2016 list!
I hope you had as much fun as I did recounting the unbelievable amount of incredible games
that came out this year.
Also, as I mentioned at the start, this has been a hell of a year for me and I couldn't
have gotten to this point without each and every one of you.
I'd specifically like to thank my patrons as well, who have made this show logistically
possible through their financial support.
I honestly cannot thank you all enough for encouraging me to continue with this weird,
dumb endeavour I've been on.
And hey, if you feel like pledging, it'd be the best Christmas present ever!
I really hope you've enjoyed all the videos I've put out—rest assured, there's a lot
more to come.
I'll be back in the new year, but for now, have an absolute blast over the holidays.
I'm Hamish Black and this has been Writing on Games.
Thank you very much for watching and I'll see you next time.
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