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<!DOCTYPE html>
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<head>
<title>The Ace's Top 10 Video Games of 2016</title>
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<p id="navbar_text"><a href="http://www.pfb.rivercityarchery.club">Back to <em>Pizza for Breakfast</em></a> | <a href="http://www.rivercityarchery.club">River City Archery Club</a></p>
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<article>
<!--Top 10 list, each in it's own section.-->
<header class="title">
<h1>2016 in Video Games</h1>
<h2>A top ten list of last year's best games.</h2>
<h3>The Ace, Jan. 19, 2017</h3>
</header>
<section id="intro">
<!--Intro paragraph describing year in games.-->
<p>2016 was a hell of a year for games.</p>
<p>I mean that in the best way possible; and it's part of a definite upward trend
for the industry. I think it's fairly uncontroversial to say that we were all generally
pretty high on the industry's output in 2015. However, 2015 was dominated by handful of
great AAA products. Every year end list looked exactly alike, and it left a good year
feeling fairly stagnant.</p>
<p>This year is undeniably different. While the AAA output this year was well-received,
it was the outstanding quality and abundance of games produced by talented independent
development studios that made 2016 shine. There were so many great independent games in 2016
that I'd be legitimately surprised to see any two top ten lists that were exactly the same.</p>
<p>In that vein, I wanted to share my ten favorite games of last year with our dedicated
<a href="http://www.pfb.rivercityarchery.club">Pizza for Breakfast</a> listeners, a grand total of
two of which were produced by AAA development studios.
</section>
<section class="entry" id="no 10">
<!--Number 10.-->
<h1 class="game_title">10. <em>Overcooked</em></h1>
<div><img class="logo_screens" src="images/Overcooked_cover.png" width="307px" height="160px"/></div>
<h3 class="dev_studio">by <a href="http://www.ghosttowngames.com">Ghost Town Games</a></h3>
<div class="trailer"><iframe width="356" height="200" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mRjsohqwz9Q" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
<div class="description"><p>
Anyone who has ever worked in food service of any stripe knows the harrowing nature of the dinner rush. In
Ghost Town Games' <em>Overcooked</em> you and up to three of your friends can get a condensed taste of that
unique fear as you dash around a too-cramped kitchen, often filled with environmental obstacles, and yell at
each other because there is just too much to do and not enough manpower to handle it. And then your idiot friend
will accidentally drop a completed dish into the trash can instead of putting it on the service station, and you'll
have to stop for the night. It's fun, I promise. The last few years have either enjoyed or suffered a deluge of local
competetive and local cooperative multiplayer games, depending on who you ask. While I've personally enjoyed most of
the offerings that allowed my friends and I to get together and yell at each other, few really stuck around as mainstays.
I can't say that <em>Overcooked</em> will be included on that small list in the long run, but it's style, focused gameplay,
and dedication to making the game fun and playable at any player number made me care about a local co-op game
in the year 2016, which I honestly would have thought impossible.
</p></div>
</section>
<section class="entry" id="no 9">
<!--Number 9.-->
<h1 class="game_title">9. <em>INSIDE</em></h1>
<div><img class="logo_screens" src="images/INSIDE_cover_art.png" width="300px" height="359px"/></div>
<h3 class="dev_studio">by <a href="http://playdead.com">Playdead</a></h3>
<div class="trailer"><iframe width="356" height="200" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/E0V2rPVQWfM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
<div class="description"><p>
<em>INSIDE</em> is Danish independent studio Playdead's follow-up to their 2010 debut, <em>Limbo</em>.
it is important to note this up front, as anyone who has played Playdead's previous offering will notice
many similarities between the beautifully silhouetted world of <em>Limbo</em> and the starkly but stunningly
constructed world of <em>INSIDE</em>. In <em>INSIDE</em> you play as a small boy, making your way through
a haunting world full of mindless drones, evil scientists, and strange monsters. The game's "story", as it
exists, is portrayed only through environmental storytelling that occurs inbetween and during the platforming
puzzles that make up the majority of the game. Yet, even though there are few explicitly expository moments
in the game, it still portrays a narrative that in turns thrilled and shocked me, culminating in what might
be the most powerful scene in any game I played this year. At only three to five hours long, I'm not sure
you can afford to not have played <em>INSIDE</em>.
</p></div>
</section>
<section class="entry" id="no 8">
<!--Number 8.-->
<h1 class="game_title">8. <em>Firewatch</em></h1>
<div><img class="logo_screens" src="images/Firewatch_cover.jpg" width="300px" height="332px"/></div>
<h3 class="dev_studio">by <a href="http://www.camposanto.com">Campo Santo</a></h3>
<div class="trailer"><iframe width="356" height="200" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HdUYYnfRdl8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
<div class="description"><p>
As a long time fan of the <em>Idle Thumbs</em> podcast, hosted by two of the co-founders of Campo Santo, I
had been anticipating Campo Santo's first project since they announced their founding back in 2013. With the
pedigree that they brought with them from working on Telltale Games' most successful products, it should come
as no surprise that <em>Firewatch</em> is a thrilling narrative of a type that we rarely see in video games.
Playing as Henry, a newly employed fire lookout in a national park, you have to explore the wilderness surrounding
your tower in order to uncover the answers to a mystery that starts with the ransacking of your new watchtower home.
Your only other human interaction comes from the radio conversations you have with fellow lookout, Delilah. That and
the occasional shadowy figure you see in the distance. Although you are never at any real danger in <em>Firewatch</em>,
the game ratchets up the tension to a point that it can be physically uncomfortable to play. Although the story
falters in a final act twist that feels unearned, <em>Firewatch</em> is still an aesthetic masterpiece with dialogue
that is unmatched in the medium.
</p></div>
</section>
<section class="entry" id="no 7">
<!--Number 7.-->
<h1 class="game_title">7. <em>Virginia</em></h1>
<div><img class="logo_screens" src="images/Virginia_cover.jpg" width="265px" height="374px"/></div>
<h3 class="dev_studio">by <a href="http://www.variablestate.com">Variable State</a></h3>
<div class="trailer"><iframe width="356" height="200" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7kAYh4MJFc8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
<div class="description"><p>
It's not entirely uncommon, even in this modern age of generally great voice acting, that game developers choose to have
their games be unvoiced. It's not even extremely rare that a game go without dialogue, written or voiced, entirely. It is,
however, remarkable when a game chooses to do both of these things while also purporting itself to be a narrative adventure
game. That is where we find ourselves with <em>Virginia</em>. The game plays like, and shares many similarities with, 90s
supernatural investigation shows like <em>The X-Files</em> or <em>Twin Peaks</em> -- where something feels wrong, just below
the surface, but the protagonists can never quite reach that which was never meant to be understood. With a visual style so
sharp it could kill, <em>Virginia</em> is nothing if not confident in what it is attempting to do. You walk down a hallway,
away from a crime scene, as music swells behind you. The game doesn't wait for you to hit the exit door, but instead, as the music
swells to a crescendo, smash cut to you and your partner in a car, driving down a dark road. It feels like playing a piece of art.
That being said, <em>Virginia</em> is a game that has slipped on and off of this list multiple times since I played it.
It is, ultimately, a narrative game with a narrative that, like <em>Firewatch</em>, fails in the last act. And it is perhaps
even less interactive than <em>Firewatch</em> or other narrative games of its ilk. Still, in the slow moments of the year, I still
find myself thinking of <em>Virginia</em>, and that has to mean something.
</p></div>
</section>
<section class="entry" id="no 6">
<!--Number 6.-->
<h1 class="game_title">6. <em>Stardew Valley</em></h1>
<div><img class="logo_screens" src="images/Stardew_cover.png" width="228px" height="105px"/></div>
<h3 class="dev_studio">by <a href="http://www.stardewvalley.net">ConcernedApe</a></h3>
<div class="trailer"><iframe width="356" height="200" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ot7uXNQskhs" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
<div class="description"><p>
<em>Stardew Valley</em> is a game that I think will top a lot of Game of the Year lists around the internet, and it absolutely
deserves it. If you have ever in your life played a <em>Harvest Moon</em> or <em>Rune Factory</em> game, you know exactly what you're
getting with <em>Stardew Valley</em>. The game itself does little new to expand on many of the concepts found in those older farming
lifestyle sims, but instead takes all the best parts from all of them, throws in a dash of <em>Animal Crossing</em>, and polishes every
aspect to a mirror sheen. In <em>Stardew Valley</em>, you leave your city life behind to take on the tasks of planting crops, raising
animals, prospecting mines, making friends, and finding love in a tiny rural village. You'll harvest, fish, dig, build, and woo your way
to whatever goal you choose to set for yourself; waking up every new morning intending to just do your daily chores, but instead finding
something new and exciting to pursue in addition. In 2016, I needed something unrelentingly positive to pour my time into, and <em>Stardew
Valley</em> was there for me each and every time. Made largely by one man, <em>Stardew Valley</em> will go down as one of the best independent
games in the history of the medium.
</p></div>
</section>
<section class="entry" id="no 5">
<!--Number 5.-->
<h1 class="game_title">5. <em>Overwatch</em></h1>
<div><img class="logo_screens" src="images/Overwatch_cover.jpg" width="265px" height="375px"/></div>
<h3 class="dev_studio">by <a href="http://www.blizzard.com">Blizzard Entertainment</a></h3>
<div class="trailer"><iframe width="356" height="200" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/FqnKB22pOC0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
<div class="description"><p>
The first of two AAA, big studio games that made it onto my final list this year is <em>Overwatch</em>, which might be most
easily described as Blizzard's perfection of the class-based FPS genre. Not that <em>Overwatch</em> needs any introduction;
if you play video games or even just exist in certain corners of the internet, the game has been impossible to avoid this year.
However, not content to let the game just ride on being "the best this genre has ever seen", let me attempt to specify a few easily
missed aspects that make the game as great as it is. First, Blizzard have created characters with such huge personalities that the
fact that the game lacks any sort of explicit story beats is almost entirely forgettable. The heroes (and villains) of <em>Overwatch</em>
are each wonderful in their own little ways, showing Blizzard's generally good character design skills at the peak of their prowess;
and they've taken the internet by storm. But it's not just the characterization that sells the game. The gameplay is best-in-class,
and has dozens of little tweaks to the traditional class-based FPS design that alleviate many of the genre's past failings -- not least
of which is the fact that Blizzard doesn't focus on the traditional "kill-death ratio" that many FPS games do, but instead highlight
all the good things you did over the course of a match. It's the perfect amount of end-of-game positivity needed to make you want to
queue for "just one more round".
</p></div>
</section>
<section class="entry" id="no 4">
<!--Number 4.-->
<h1 class="game_title">4. <em>SUPERHOT</em></h1>
<div><img class="logo_screens" src="images/SUPERHOT_cover.jpg" width="232px" height="320px"/></div>
<h3 class="dev_studio">by <a href="http://www.superhotgame.com">The SUPERHOT Team</a></h3>
<div class="trailer"><iframe width="356" height="200" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/R4LkToI4xzE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
<div class="description"><p>
<em>SUPERHOT</em> is a first-person shooter, although you might instead call it a first-person puzzle game, where the puzzle is men
with guns, and you solve it by shooting them and not getting shot. The kicker is, though, that in <em>SUPERHOT</em> time only moves
when you move. That means that you will see every single bullet flying in towards you, as a man with a katana approaches from your right,
and all you have within reach is an empty beer bottle. What do you do? The answer, of course, is grab the bottle, spin to the left to avoid
the first bullet, toss the bottle at the man with the katana to stagger him, dash back to the right to avoid the second bullet, knock out the man
with the katana, grab it from his hands, fling it at one of the shooters, run down the hallway while dodging the remaining shooter's bullets,
punch him in the face, take his gun, shoot him in the head, and then toss the empty gun at the wall. All of that took 5 minutes and 10 tries
of painstaking slow-motion planning to get right, but now you get to watch it in full speed, while the game screams at you: "SUPER, HOT, SUPER,
HOT." If you have to know one thing about <em>SUPERHOT</em>, know that it has changed the way developers are going to have to think about
first-person shooters from now on. That sounds hyperbolic, but in five years every big AAA shooter is going to have some trace of the
<em>SUPERHOT</em> DNA.
</p></div>
</section>
<section class="entry" id="no 3">
<!--Number 3.-->
<h1 class="game_title">3. <em>Final Fantasy XV</em></h1>
<div><img class="logo_screens" src="images/FFXV_cover.jpg" width="300px" height="325px"/></div>
<h3 class="dev_studio">by <a href="http://www.squareenix.com">Square Enix</a></h3>
<div class="trailer"><iframe width="356" height="200" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IVrnS26mnCA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
<div class="description"><p>
In many ways, there is no possible universe in which <em>Final Fantasy XV</em> should have been a good game. Announced ten years ago,
under a different title and for a different platform, the game had seemingly no chance of saving this franchise that has been slowly dying
for 10 to 20 years, depending on who you ask. And yet as it came back into the limelight over the last couple of years, I allowed myself to
have my hopes raised. As they announced that Florence and the Machine would be doing the theme song for the game, and there would be a
full-length CGI movie tie-in, and that they were releasing a six-episode anime miniseries leading up to the game's release, I couldn't tell
how to feel. And then November came, and we all sat down to play <em>Final Fantasy XV</em>, and not only was it better than I expected, but
it is in some ways better than I could have hoped. (I defended the much-maligned <em>Final Fantasy XIII</em> series, and adored the hell out
of <em>Final Fantasy XIV</em> at a time in which I didn't think I could care about MMORPGs anymore, so maybe I'm a poor litmus test for this
particular instance.) Sure, it's not a perfect game. There are loads of well-known issues, particularly with the sparsity of exposition for
much of the game's plot. Yet it still feels good, and is fun to play, and I love the cast of boys, just going on a road trip to try to get
married and maybe save the world. With more patches, it's only getting better, and may be a big 2017 hit for people who pick it up cheaply
in the upcoming year. I sure hope so. I'd like to live in a world where <em>Final Fantasy</em> games are good again.
</p></div>
</section>
<section class="entry" id="no 2">
<!--Number 2.-->
<h1 class="game_title">2. <em>Thumper</em></h1>
<div><img class="logo_screens" src="images/Thumper_cover.jpg" width="312px" height="390px"/></div>
<h3 class="dev_studio">by <a href="http://www.thumpergame.com">Drool</a></h3>
<div class="trailer"><iframe width="356" height="200" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gtPGX8i1Eaw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
<div class="description"><p>
It has been a rough couple of years for rhythm games. Once upon a time the <em>Guitar Hero</em>es and <em>Rock Band</em>s of the world
seemed like they had no way of slowing down. They had reinvigorated rhythm games and turned into household names for games that your parents
have heard of, right next to <em>Mario</em> and <em>Wii Sports</em>. And then they died. The market was saturated and semi-annual releases
became too much and we got tired of owning dozens of plastic instruments. When they tried to make a return last year, they landed like a wet fart.
All of this is to say that <em>Thumper</em> could probably not have landed in an environment that was more hostile to rhythm games. In some ways,
then, it makes sense that <em>Thumper</em> responds to the player by being as hostile and opressive as possible. In <em>Thumper</em> you play a
shiny, fragile robotic bug, flying down a track towards an abstract, monstrous entity, slamming into walls and crashing through obstacles in time
to a bass-heavy industrial background song. It looks and feels like you're inside the cover-art of some new wave (or perhaps nu-metal) cover art.
It is mentally tasking, physically demanding, and opressively harmful, and I love each and every minute that I spend smashing myself against it.
Drool is a studio comprised of two ex-Harmonix developers, and their sense of love for rhythm games shines through in <em>Thumper</em> in a way
that makes me want to love the genre all over again.
</p></div>
</section>
<section class="entry" id="no 1">
<!--Number 1.-->
<h1 class="game_title">1. <em>The Witness</em></h1>
<div><img class="logo_screens" src="images/Witness_cover.png" width="256px" height="388px"/></div>
<h3 class="dev_studio">by <a href="http://www.the-witness.net">Thekla Inc.</a></h3>
<div class="trailer"><iframe width="356" height="200" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9ytwNUMdbcE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
<div class="description"><p>
Nothing, at all, consumed my time and my thoughts in 2016 like <em>The Witness</em> did. The game came out right at the beginning of the year
and has commanded my attention, in some form, ever since. <em>The Witness</em> is a puzzle game, and may be the greatest puzzle game that I have
ever played -- and I <em>really</em> like puzzle games. The game has only one mechanic through which to interact with its puzzles and its world,
and that is through tracing lines on mazes. That's it. You start your cursor at a round starting point and end at a straight ending point. That is
all the interaction you can have with the world. It should speak volumes, then, when I tell you that Jonathan Blow and Thekla Inc. have found a way
to create hundreds of puzzles (both obvious and secret) that utilize that mechanic over the course of dozens of hours that made me keep learning
new and exciting ways. As the game goes on, more and more rules are piled onto the simple maze puzzles, often in ways that directly contradict each
other, all culminating in what is probably one of the most exciting "boss battles" in the history of video games. The game lacks an explicit narrative
(and some might say it lacks even an <em>implicit</em> narrative), which definitely detracts from what could have been my favorite game of all time.
Instead, the game expresses itself through intro-level philosophy, ultimately conveying a theme and a thesis that I don't think I can even begin to
agree with -- but I appreciate that it attempted to say something at all.
</p></div>
</section>
</article>
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<p>©2016 Ryan Walker | Contact Us: <a href="mailto:theace@rivercityarchery.club">theace@rivercityarchery.club</a></p>
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