[Question] The Gamingforce Game of the Year 2015: Too many massive RPGs - voting edition

SOMA - 10 points
[Best Horror Game] [Most First Person] [Best Setting] [Best Underwater Setting] [Most Water] [Best Audio Tapes] [Best Scifi] [The "God Damnit" Award for Bleakest Ending]

I generally don't like horror games. Or rather, I like the concept of them, but I don't like playing them. SOMA walked a fine line between stressful something horrible chasing you oh god have to get away, and super atmospheric, super bleak, super fascinating scifi narrative jesus I have to know what happens next. It looks superb, the setting is awesome, and the scifi, moral, ethical and philosophical concepts it throws at you turned out to be genuinely engaging. Great stuff.

8/10

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Technobabylon - 10 points
[Adventure Game of the Year] [The Ben Chandler Award for 2D Adventure Game Sprite Excellence] [Most "Man was this second ending more satisfying than the first one I got" Award]

A really, really cool cyberpunk(ish) point & click adventure with amazing spriting from the always excellent Ben Chandler, with some great music, atmosphere and engaging narrative to boot. Delightful stuff, and I really enjoyed the multiple solutions to puzzles and endings. Here's hoping they make a sequel. Somehow.

8/10

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Tales from the Borderlands - 10 points
[Best Use of Borderlands] [Best Opening Credits] [Best Choices] [Best QTE] [Most Button Prompts] [Best Sasha] [Strongest "Man I hope they make a sequel" Feeling Around the Ending] [Best Humour] [Best Chase Sequence] [Best Episodic Game] [The Best Patrick Warburton Award]

This was a year of delightful surprises. I enjoyed The Walking Dead Season 1 a lot, but I felt like Telltale can't keep pulling the same trick over and over. Turns out they totally can, you just need some good writers and talent. Easily their best work yet, TftB says "so hey, why not use this template to do something funny instead" and the end result is marvelous. Genuinely funny, inventive, surprising, engaging, with a cast of terrific characters, setpieces and great banter. Superb music selection too, the opening credits for each episode were some of my favourite things in videogames in 2015. Episode 4 also contains an amazing extended fingergun shootout, with Troy Baker doing his best Patrick Warburton impression, so that's a plus.

9/10

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Undertale - 30 points
[Biggest Surprise] [Best Undyne] [Best Toriel] [Best Ending] [Date of the Year] [Best Spider Discounts] [Best Music] [Best Humour] [Best Enemy Design] [Most Mercy] [Largest Chain Reaction of "I will gift this to someone" Incidents] [Best Skeleton] [Best Wrong Number Song]

Everyone's already gushed a ton about this and I feel like it totally deserves it. Sure, the fandom around it is pretty obnoxious at this point, but that has nothing to do with the game itself. Every fandom is pretty obnoxious, really. I was super sceptical of the game till I actually played it, and it is disarmingly charming. Completely amazing soundtrack, well written, genuinely engaging, laugh out loud funny, touching and delightful in multiple ways.

9/10

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The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - 40 points
[Game of the Year] [Best RPG] [Most Graphics] [Best Geralt] [Most Open World] [Best Horse] [Best Ciri] [Best Triss] [Best Godling] [Best Music] [Most Swords] [Best Leshen] [Best minigame that's really just a game of its own and now there's a browser version of it because who doesn't want to play more fucking Gwent no one that's who I should be playing Gwent right now]

I'm 108 hours in and I've still not finished it. What I have experienced so far however has been astonishing. It's an open world game that does things right. It's not a sandbox game, you can't just dick around and be an asshole to everyone for no reason, and that might disappoint some. But as an open world RPG, as a Witcher game, as a conclusion to an excellent series of games, it's peerless. It's massive in scope and scale, it's stunning to look at, it's incredibly well crafted. Every little side quest and activity you can do has a beginning, an arc, and a conclusion, often taking you in surprising directions, places and situations, constantly delighting and presenting you with experiences and journeys and characters and narratives that feel meaningful and completely relevant. It will probably be daunting and even exhausting to some, but take the time to live in this world. It's incredible, and without question the best game of the year.

9/10

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A list of really enjoyable titles that deserve to be played but just didn't get points




Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker
[Cutest Game] [Best Running Animation]

8/10




Life is Strange
[Best Use of Ashley Burch] [Best Music] [Best Brooke] [Best Second Work from a French Developer]

8/10




Yoshi's Woolly World
[Best Platformer] [Best Yoshi] [Most Yarn]

7/10




Splatoon
[Best Shooter] [Best Paint Physics] [Best Toasty Cat] [Most Fresh] [Best Music] [Best Squid Sisters] [Best Boss Fight]

9/10




Bloodborne
[Best Architecture] [Best Doll] [Most Blood] [Biggest Borne] [Most Kos] [Most Furious Boss Battles] [Best Cosmic Horror Tweest] [Most NOPE] [Best Papa Petrol] [Best Daddy Dieseldosh]

8/10




Super Mario Maker
[Best Editor] [Most Spikes] [Most Hocus Pocus]

8/10

Jam it back in, in the dark.