amazing games

hi, i’m hamish black and welcome to writingon 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 releaseof 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 embracedhumanity that indie games have been exploring for years, whilst the same indies went furtherwith 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 crumbledin a dystopic cacophony of indecipherable noise, the surprising introspection of manygames this year acted as a much needed emotional salve. whilst this year's industry happenings feltcomparatively muted (outside of a few notable examples), this year still felt... important,ya know? i mean even personally, this year has beenan 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 subscriberslater and this is becoming a bigger part of my life every day – something i never couldhave expected previously. i've written articles for some well-knownpublications, had my videos covered by the likes of polygon, overcome my anxiety andheaded down to london on my own for an interview with a pretty big games media site, starteda patreon that has kept the channel going, got sent a ps4 by one of my patrons meaningi 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 ofhealth here and there, upon reflection 2016

has been a pretty amazing year for me. i have every single one of you to thank forall of this and i couldn't be more sincere about it – you are all changing my lifefor the better every single day. i cannot thank you enough. enough of all that dumb introspection nonsensethough, this is a time for lists and needless, ultimately meaningless competition! i dunno, i thought that in this spirit ofreflection, it would be fun to do another list of the best games i played this yearand talk a bit about why i enjoyed them so much.

so without further ado, i'd like to welcomeyou all to the writing on games top 5 games of 2016 list (with some honourable mentionsfor good measure)! and i'd like to kick things off at number5 with... 5. the witnessi'd like to kick off proceedings with jonathan blow's the witness. this game, as i talked about in my video onit at the start of the year, is a mess of contradictions. it's at once a game that treats its audiencewith utter contempt, and yet simultaneously

encourages you to get better. it's a game that hints at a wider meaningin its philosophical musings, then mocks the player for seeing it as anything other thanline puzzles (at one point literally stating that "the products of human emotion are interpretationsof 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 narrativeelements, for example! it's crazy). when i played this game initially, i hatedhow it got under my skin so wholly with such a simple premise – how could a game aboutline puzzles be so infuriatingly complex,

and why can't i seem to solve this one stupidmaze? it made me feel downright stupid at timesand i get why many people hated that about the game. that said, when you finally crack that solutionthe game has been nudging you towards after staring at a maze for an hour, going awayand 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 questionyour own feelings towards the piece as well as yourself, and art in general.

to me then, in that sense, it's about as purea work of art as you can get, and therefore easily finds its way onto my list. 4. dark souls 3you know a year has been replete with stand out games when a dark souls title can onlymake it to number 4. that is to say nothing of the game's qualitythough, because at the end of the day, it's more dark souls. in some ways i'd consider it on par with thefirst dark souls in terms of quality. its combat feels better than the mainlinesouls games ever have, with an increased speed

and an emphasis on getting up close and personalfeeling heavily informed by bloodborne, whilst still retaining the weight and precision ofcombat typically associated with a traditional souls game. it's a delicate balance that i only reallyappreciate having now played its predecessor and come back to this. i also love the world and enemy design, witha 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 gameslike this.

the world also feels wonderfully interconnected,harkening back to the original dark souls. it's far from perfect though, and that's probablywhy it didn't make its way further up the list – as time has gone on i've found myselfwondering "why do they keep messing with systems that were perfected as early as the firstdark souls?" the bonfires exemplify this wholly for me– why does the interconnected nature of the world matter when there's likely a bonfireright around the corner? as a result, it just doesn't feel as tightlydesigned as the first dark souls. also, i guess i'm just beginning to get alittle burnt out on souls games at this point. i recently completed bloodborne and it wasgreat (and i'll be doing a video on it soon),

but one of the main reasons i enjoyed it somuch was because it felt like a horror game first and a souls game second. i guess even when the combat has been refinedto a mirror sheen as it has been here, there's only so many times you can go back to it beforepeople begin to tire of it. even with all of that said, however... it'sstill a dark souls game which kind of automatically places it in the upper echelon of games i'veplayed this year. it's still an amazingly good time if you'reinto 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 seewhat the team is working on next.

3. quadrilateral cowboyoh god, i've wanted to talk about this game for so long, mainly because it does the seeminglyimpossible. it takes two things that you would think wouldbe perfectly suited to the medium of video games but have yet to really be effectivelyimplemented, and realises them both with absolute ease – those two things being hacking, andheists. indeed, quadrilateral cowboy feels like itglides through these seemingly hard to navigate activities utterly effortlessly. if you haven't heard of it (and i'm willingto bet a good deal of you haven't), it's a

game in which you hack your way into variouscompounds espionage-style in order to retrieve documents and nick safes and airships. as the game goes on, you receive new toolsthat also present new, compelling challenges. part of the game's brilliance lies in thefact that its facsimile of coding is simple enough that you don't need to know any languagesyourself, yet deep enough to reward those who are able to intuit the game's consistentlogic. the time trial mechanic encourages replayability,trying to 'hack' (pardon the pun) seconds off of your time—at first you might be flounderingaround, 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 yourselfin just the right way then executing on an intricately planned heist that ends up playingout in a matter of seconds. it really evokes the feeling of being a masterspy when you can pull this stuff off and it's a feeling that has kept me gripped despitethe game's relatively short length. what's perhaps most intriguing about quadrilateralcowboy, however, is the unique design of its world. in terms of aesthetic, think minecraft meetsblade runner (down to the 80s look of the os you use) through the lens of retro-futuristicgoogie architecture.

it's part of the blendo games universe, whichalso encompasses games like gravity bone and thirty flights of loving (you know, that onegame that jazzpunk *ahem* borrowed heavily from). it feels distinctly singular in its look aswell as the unique sense of humour permeating everything within the world. it also gets you asking questions about thingsthe characters seem to be taking as normal—why is their base a flying boat? how, in the 1980s, are they committing heiststhrough what is essentially a vr headset? how are they essentially using time travelfor later heists?

why is a cat running a bike shop acting asa 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 depthof its mechanics, but the unity of its world design, and whilst i could gush about itscharm for ages, i'll leave it at this—play this goddamn game. 2. thumperif 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 theshow and hell, the second episode i ever made was about how music games fail to capturethe joy of creativity involved in being a musician through their focus on ruthless precision. essentially, i have a particular interestin how the artform i'm a part of is represented in games and until recently i've been lessthan impressed . that's where drool's recent release thumper comes in. there is a way to represent music withoutneeding to allow for creativity. thumper, for me, manages to capture somethingmuch deeper than this – the panic, the dread,

and ultimately the elation of playing live. how does it do this? by abstracting the event entirely – goneis the stage, the polygonal audience and endless butt rock found in more traditional musicgames, replaced by something that evokes alien or suspiria more than ac/dc. it's all wonderfully symbolic, and there isno attempt to glorify process here – you're just a scarab beetle careening down a highwayat ludicrous speeds, and if you fuck up there's a severe penalty. the reason i love it so much is because there'ssuch a brutal physicality to it all that it

reminded me of the key element of playinglive – things can and do go wrong, and you've got to both expect that and be ready to getback into the swing of things as fast as possible. it reminded me of why musicians practice – ultimatelythe notes are coming at you too fast for you to acutely perceive each one. you need to train yourself to intuit the processto a certain extent, so like you practice on your instrument to get better, you repeatlevels until you just feel it, man. getting to that zen-like state feels trulyamazing. even if you don't quite know how you navigatedthe unbelievable speeds and odd time signatures thumper presents (i mean really, when's thelast time a rhythm game forced you to play

in 5/4 or 7/4?), there's a feeling of elationwhen you get to the end. it reminded me of all the times i've shedsweat and blood playing aggressive music in a live scenario, and entering that uneasytrance where everything happens automatically, but you always worry that shit is going tohit the fan at any moment. no other music game has done that, and that'swhy thumper is such an important game to me. plus, it was designed and soundtracked bybrian gibson (one half of lightning bolt) who are one of those real formative bandsthat got me into weird, fucked up music as a teenager, so i was pretty much bound tolove this game from the get go. if you're interested in more in-depth thoughtson the game, i actually wrote an article about

it for inverse that i'll link in the description. essentially, if you're interested in musicor rhythm games at all, you owe it to yourself to check this game out. honourable mentionsso, just like last year, i’m going to talk about some unranked honourable mentions beforei 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 gamethat helped me realise just how effective silence can be in telling a story and surprisedme in that, well, it was a final fantasy game that utilised it so well.

it just missed a spot on the list due to areal loss of steam towards the end of the game – a sharpened focus on the game’sunbearably dull main narrative and utterly woeful penultimate mission made sure of that. however, when the game focuses on its clearstrengths – riding along the open road with your buddies taking down monsters and watchingthis relationship grow, often without words – it’s a real treat and a much more intimatefinal fantasy than most. trackmania turbo might not feature the sheeranarchy i loved about the multiplayer of its previous instalments. ultimately, however, it proves that trackmaniais still one of the purest, fastest time trial

racing experiences out there. let me know when it gets its equivalent ofthe 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 meprior 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 unbelievablyliberating level design, stupendous variation through level-specific mechanics, and a senseof brevity that leaves you wanting more than wanting less, was so close to making it ontomy main list.

plus, bt giving the thumbs up is the bestshit in any video game ever and i will not hear otherwise. the last guardian is another game that finallycame out after almost ten years. it certainly feels like a game that starteddevelopment on the ps3, with some downright awful performance in some areas and controlsthat are finicky at best. that said, if you're into fumito ueda gameslike i am, you're going to be able to look past these quirks and admire a singularlyartistic experience with a satisfying narrative escalation and payoff towards the game's conclusion. as truffaut theorised, the failings of theauteur are inherently more interesting than

an anonymously produced, polished product. the last guardian acts as a pointed exampleof this. firewatch featured what was perhaps the mostinteresting 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 performancescontributing 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 whateverthey choose to do because of how fucking amazing killer7 is, despite their subsequent gamesfeeling decidedly mediocre in comparison. let it die, however, is... an endlessly complicated mess of systems enclosedin 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, getsa lot of depth out of a few core mechanics.

its central focus on time manipulation providesa unique twist on your typical action game—taking a scenario in which you need to take out aroom full of people, and turning it into a puzzle experience. each move you make changes the scenario everso slightly, but requires a constant refreshing of the mechanics at play within the puzzle. it's this fact that the action takes placeon 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 alreadyreviewed 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 gametechnically, but the witcher 3: blood and wine has enough content that it could be consideredone and, well, it's more witcher 3. play it. phew! and, with all of those honourable mentionsout of the way, i'd like to announce that my number one game of 2016 is...1. hitmanlet me say this right out of the gate—no game released in 2016 has given me so muchjoy, so consistently as this year's reboot of hitman has.

i was as sceptical of the prospect of an episodicversion of hitman as anyone else upon its announcement, but a few episodes in and itbegan to feel more and more like the perfect way to release that game. it kept the game fresh in my mind, and keptme anticipating each month's release of new content as the game's design encouraged meto replay missions and explore every facet of these wildly expansive levels. it got to a point where anyone complainingabout the episodic model after about three episodes in was not someone i could realisticallytake seriously, due the inordinate amount of content available and the frankly worryingamount of hours i'd put into the game, even

at that point. that said, volume of content alone does nota 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, butultimately it's how these fragile systems coalesce, and how the player is encouragedto break them, that contribute to the game's defining characteristic—its utterly absurdsense of humour.

this is something that is incredibly hardto pin down, precisely because it runs so deep in the game's veins. yes, there exists an opportunity system whichguides the player along dumb, funny scripted events, but the absurdity runs deeper thanthat. it surfaces itself in the way people don'trecognise it as strange that a man pretending to be someone else has a different voice anda goddamn barcode on the back of his head. it's made clear through the fact that thescripting is so delicate that you can throw coins at someone making their big entrancedown a staircase and the entire scene will stop before one person tells you to "pickup your trash" and the scene continues.

it's evident in the fact that through an utterlyinsane chain of logic, turning off a stove in a kitchen can lead to guards shooting youto death where you stand. it's beautiful and the reason for its beautyis the fact that, like i say, it all follows a logic pattern. it's a warped logic that bears little resemblanceto how normal human beings would behave, but its a consistent set of rules nonetheless. the toybox element then comes not simply fromthe amount of weapons you get or whatever, but from the sheer amount of possibilitiesthere are to mess with the absurd systems in front of you.

from this, some of the dumbest, funniest andalso most tactical ways to dispatch your targets can arise. for example, there's nothing quite like sociallyengineering your target to appear at a location and then taking them out from the completeother end of the map. it makes you feel like you've manipulateda deep system, like you've become a master assassin, until you realise you haven't killedthe target and need to go back for a second shot. that's the part that makes you feel like iflarry david was an assassin, and it’s the way these seemingly opposite feelings areso effectively juxtaposed that makes this

game feel so uniquely joyous. everyone has their own stories from playingthis game—about how they gathered a bunch of unconscious bodies in a room and droppeda toilet on them, or how they dinged a coin off a wall at just the right time to distractthe cavalcade of dumbass guards previously so focused on shooting them to death, or howevermany others. the important thing is that these scenariosare created by the player, and ultimately resolved by them. and bear in mind, this is 2016 we're talkingabout here—a year which has provided us with so many depressing events that we haveso little control over.

it's perhaps poetic, then, that it also producesa game that both exudes completely absurd joy, but also puts you in absolute controlof it all. fact is, whichever way i choose to look atit, it's impossible for me to envision any other game topping this list. i am so excited to see what these guys haveup their sleeves for season two. and that concludes my games of the year 2016list! i hope you had as much fun as i did recountingthe unbelievable amount of incredible games that came out this year. also, as i mentioned at the start, this hasbeen a hell of a year for me and i couldn't

have gotten to this point without each andevery one of you. i'd specifically like to thank my patronsas well, who have made this show logistically possible through their financial support. i honestly cannot thank you all enough forencouraging me to continue with this weird, dumb endeavour i've been on. and hey, if you feel like pledging, it'd bethe best christmas present ever! i really hope you've enjoyed all the videosi'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 writingon games. thank you very much for watching and i'llsee you next time.