Frezno's Games Of The 2016 Thing!

2016's dusk is upon us. Oh thank God. Somehow or another, this has been a sheer tire fire of a year. Horrific and far-reaching political bullshit, celebrity deaths en masse, a bunch of really bad Batman movies. Still, it's time as always to be a third-rate Clara Oswald and reflect on all the video games I experienced this year. Oh, right. This is a new thing for my blog space. I used to do these over at Socks Make People Sexy for several years, but the SMPS forums closed their doors this year. Another tragic loss but not quite because I'm still a part of the official SMPS Discord chat and can keep up with these folks even more than I already did on Twitter. So, my Games I Played In 201X series has moved over here. If you're so inclined, here's a bunch of links to the previous lists. Watch my tastes evolve!

2011
2012
2013
2014
2015


So, rules for this, I guess. It's Games I Played In 2016, not Games I Played That Came Out In 2016. A few of those will show up, yeah, but I'm an old fart who cherry picks from history and I couldn't possibly limit myself to just games I played this year. If I took a crack at it in 2016, it's fair game. I've got different weird categories that I've made up and I'll probably make up more. Well, with all that in mind, here's a bunch of bullshit I played and now I am going to talk about said bullshit.

(WORST) GAME OF THE YEAR 2016

Seiken Densetsu 3 (Super Famicom)

I'm amazed I never did a writeup on this, but I am lazy and also I did a video saying the stuff I wanted to say. Now I will say that stuff again and try to be more succinct about it. SD3 is like a beautiful rainbow-colored fruit that a worm snuck into and made rotten. It looks fantastic! By all accounts it should be a wonderful action RPG experience! Its predecessor is beloved by many! So, I decided to try and live blind stream it as a project. I didn't make it. The thing wore me down by being an annoying slog. Maybe if I hadn't picked two magic users as my AI buddies it'd have been simpler. What I got were magic users who opted to waltz right into melee like idiots and lose half their health from a single battle. Boss fights became wars of attrition, there were pacing issues all over the place, and at every step of the way this game absolutely resisted my attempts of having fun while playing it and just made things an unimaginable chore. Even the sequel to the AVGN Adventures game managed to make itself just tolerable enough to be a mediocre four hours, and I thought that'd be the worst thing I played this year. How wrong I was. I can't see how this is held up as some lost classic that we were deprived of via 90's RPG localization. It was just unfun and frustrating for me, and the worst video game experience of this year.

BEST CREATIVITY EXPERIENCE OF 2016

Super Mario Maker (Wii U)

I actually don't want to talk too much about this, because John Thyer did an article about all of his Mario Maker levels and I want to do the same thing in a bit. It's not a game you really "beat" but it's one of the two Wii U games I had before I even had a Wii U. The other was Smash Bros. which I won in a Twitter giveaway last year. Or was it two years ago, I forget. Anyway, on my list of what I played and beat, I put down "Played A Shitload Of" in front of those two games. Smash Bros. is great as always, but Mario Maker actually made me into some kind of half-assed level designer. I don't want to give too much of the plot away regarding my handful of levels, so let's just focus on how engrossing this is as a whole. Not only did it let me spread my creative wings without waffling words, but I got to see the creative streak of other friends and try out really weird and fucked-up levels I happened to see online from complete strangers. Shame about the 3DS version not having that. Yikes. This was great, though! I really should get back to it, I still have a level concept that I need to fiddle with...

BEST "BETTER LATE THAN NEVER" OF 2016

Etrian Odyssey IV (3DS)

If you clicked the links above, you'll recognize this. It was the first 3DS game I owned when I got the system... in April 2013. Even with only exploring a few of the game's massive areas, I was confident in giving it my nod for RPG of that year. After that I put it down for a time, and over the next three years I would poke at it every so often. On this latest attempt, something clicked and I spent a week flying through the rest of it and winning. Oh my god, it was incredible. Through the magic of retiring, I managed to get a new squad full of cool people with cool new skills and incredible synergy together. I was wrecking face and I may have wrecked too much face because the final boss offered me no problems whatsoever. Then I delved into the postgame dungeon a little and shit's hard. Something to peck at later. Or I could play Etrian Odyssey Untold, there's your spoiler warning for the 2017 list. Either way, what a fantastic little dungeon crawler. I made the labyrinths mine and saved the world. Hooray to me!

BEST JUMPY GAME OF 2016

Super Mario 3D World (Wii U)

Back again to the Wii U. I had a new console and this thing was like 20 bucks thanks to Nintendo Selects. It was definitely interesting, especially how I played it. I didn't get an HDTV until the summer this year, so I was stuck with component on a 13" CRT. This made Wii U games look like shit, but thankfully they had that entire gimmick of giving you a little TV with the damn thing. I played the entirety of the main game of 3D World on the tablet and it looked great and crisp and holy fuck was this fun. I never really got that much into the New Super Mario Bros. games, but the weird mix of 3D Mario mechanics with 2D Mario gameplay style (i.e. not runnin around collecting stars or shinies or whatever) worked really well! Great new powerups that eventually were used for the greatest "OH SHIT" moment since Super Mario Land 2, Super Mario Bros. 2's character roster, a big world map, and extra stages that I played the other day co-op and are SUPER FUCKING HARD. This thing has it all, and I adored it. Nice.

BEST OVER THE TOP GAME OF 2016

Saints Row IV (PC)

Late last year I played Saints Row The Third and it was incredible. As someone whose previous open world criminal experience extended to GTA Vice City, it was a shockingly great evolution that also made its mark by being very comedic and silly. Saints Row The Third is playing it straight compared to 4. This goddamn game is utterly ridiculous, mixing in aliens with virtual world simulations and god knows what else. It's essentially an open world criminal experience where you have fucking superpowers, and that shit feels amazing to pull off. Absolutely everything about it is over the top and there's plenty to do in virtual Steelport. Also I made my girl wear a Dirty Pair cosplay for the majority of the game. That's a thing I could do! Oh my god, what a game this was. I'll have Paula Abdul's "Opposites Attract" in my head forever thanks to it. Shit.

CUTEST GAME OF 2016

Kirby: Planet Robobot (3DS)

This is a really hard one for me. I played both Planet Robobot and Kirby's Return To Dream Land this year, and they're both variations on the same style of Kirby game. Kirby Triple Deluxe falls into this subgroup as well; they're all traditional Kirby platformers with special doodads to collect in each level, and all three have their own unique form of SUPER-DUPER POWERUP that lets you just tear through hordes of enemies like they were nothing. Return To Dream Land has Ultra Abilities, Triple Deluxe had the Hypernova... and Planet Robobot has the titular Robobot. I think I had more fun with Return To Dream Land overall, but I'm giving the nod to Robobot because I feel like the Robobot was utilized better than the Ultra Abilities. They both feel great to use, but the Robobot just has that extra feeling of utility. Kirby games are great anyway and you should play all of the Kirby games mentioned in this paragraph, but Robobot takes it this time. Congrats, Kirby. You did good.

HARDEST GAME OF 2016

Lightening Force: Quest For The Darkstar (Sega Genesis)

You know, for a Hard Game Beater, I really didn't delve into anything that sadistic or difficult from the old days this year! I did purchase a complete GBA copy of the Famicom Super Mario Bros. 2, aka the Lost Levels, and I did beat that... but hard as it is, you can do an infinite lives trick right at the start to just make it a janky masocore ROM hack thing. Now this, on the other hand? This I've owned a cart of for some time now but could hardly beat a level in. It's actually part of the Thunder Force series of shmups, but blame naming schemes. Anyway, I went at this one completely old-school. I kept playing and playing it, determined to learn the patterns and make it to the end. It wasn't easy, but the more runs I failed the better I did. A game over on stage 5 turned into a game over on stage 7, and then on stage 9. This is a blistering fast little game, but the fact that it has selectable weapons (not unlike Contra Hard Corps) makes it so you're not totally screwed on losing one life. Motivated by Polly telling me the final boss blows up real good, I kept at it and was doing really well for myself. Eventually I won. She was right. What a good explosion, and what a good game. The only game I beat in the month of October, even! Probably because I was so busy writing about horror movies and stuff. Still, a wonderful experience. Difficult, but I learned each time. Why, it's almost like the game rewarded me for learning its tricks... no, that's ridiculous. On to the next one.

BEST LAWYERGAME OF 2016

Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Spirit Of Justice (3DS)

I actually got around to beating the previous Ace Attorney game, Dual Destinies, this year as well. It was pretty good, and a great grand return for the series after a few years of playing with spinoffs and side stories. As great as that was, 2016 gave us a new game in the series and it may yet be my favorite one of the bunch. See, this is a series about lawyers who fight for innocence against all odds, and it likes to make you feel like the underdog without a hope in hell so that the victory is all the sweeter. Dual Destinies got around this by introducing a new rookie lawyer, Athena Cykes. The way Spirit Of Justice does it is by alternating cases set at "home" with Athena and Apollo Justice with Phoenix Wright's adventures in the far-off country of Khura'in, in which there is actual law that declares that any practicing defense attorney whose client is found guilty shares the verdict with their client. In addition to that everyone in Khura'in fucking hates lawyers and they're slinging insults and prejudices to your face. It feels awful at first, but the genius of it is how the plot unfolds as you play. You learn how the Defense Culpability Act came to be, and just how the law can screw over the common people and lead to the most desperate acts. By endgame, you're in a country beginning to open its eyes and call for revolution against the monarchy, and characters that were once calling you names are starting to broaden their perspectives and open up to you. It's amazing, and my only complaint with it involves the new seance mechanic of seeing the last memories of dead people; I was garbage at pointing out the contradictions in them and was running to the spoiler-free walkthrough in desperation. Nonetheless, this game's utterly fantastic.

BIGGEST SURPRISE OF 2016

Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth 3 V Generation (Vita)

Oh Jesus. Never would I have expected this. Hyperdimension Neptunia, once bane of my existence, now on my Games Of The Year list. I wrote 5000 words about this sucker, so I'll keep this one brief. I went into this on a curiosity and sheer force of will to get my 8 bucks out of it. I succeeded. I found the good in Neptunia, such as it is. It's okay. This one is okay! As it turns out, I probably picked the best one to play. I hear the PS4 one that dropped this year on these shores is also a good one. This was fine, and I might even go back and try RB1 on the Vita next year. I bought the thing and I might as well give it a shot, after all. Also it gave me Iris Heart, who while still fantastic could have been used better and given more than the one joke about "punishing" people. I literally used headcanon to make up a better use for Iris Heart combined with another character, that's how much the mark was missed. I'd better get out of here. RB3 was nice, after 32 hours and 5000 words.

BEST "NEW OLD" GAME OF 2016

Shantae: Half-Genie Hero (PC)

Holy shit. This slid in at the last minute just a few weeks ago, but by god does it make the cut. It's almost Game Of The Year material, but in the end I decided to stick to my guns and just let it have this category, which it absolutely earns. In September 2013 two Kickstarters for new old games launched, and I could only back one at the "get a copy" level. I chose Shantae here, and three years and change later I got a code for a copy about a week before its release. I gave it a shot, having only fiddled with the Game Boy Color Shantae a bit before. I adored it. Not only is it absolutely gorgeous with its HD visuals and very colorful and cartoon-ish art, but it's basically an exploratory platformer a la Demon's Crest or Odallus The Dark Call. Look, I wrote about it just a little while ago, so go read that. I even got told how idiotic I was about the penultimate boss, and that I should have watched the screws on his head! Holy FUCK that eliminates the one major flaw I had with it! It's even BETTER now! This shouldn't be passed up, and it made me want to go back to the older Shantaes now. Which I will.

GAME OF THE YEAR 2016

Pokemon Moon (3DS)

Wow. Just wow. Well, a bit more than "wow" which I will now talk about. 7th-generation Pokemon is the best thing I played this year. It engaged me on so many levels and I'll talk about those levels. Gameplay wise, it fulfilled a lifelong dream game I'd always imagined. It's set in not-Hawaii and has you going between islands and completing trials instead of fighting Gym Leaders for progress. It's the Orange Islands game adaptation I've wanted for the past 16 years, but it's actually even better than that. There were plenty of great new Pokemon for me to use, and I actually shuffled through a lot of candidates as I played before settling on my team. You've got cute ones, powerhouses, interesting ones... plenty to play with. To get my GOTY nod, though, you have to be emotionally affecting. This game does that easily with Lillie, the most adorable Pokemon character in a while. Lillie's not a rival trainer, or a skilled professor. She's a girl with her own reasons for travelling around, and those reasons become apparent as you get tangled up in her hardships. Lillie was my friend in this game, and all of the plot twists and soap opera moments involving her engaged me because I wanted to help my friend out. Her climactic speech to the villain once you defeat them is inspiring and moving, and shows someone who grew her own confidence out of watching you. As Lillie helped you along the way, you helped Lillie. Becoming a Pokemon master for the 7th time was my own story, but stuck right along in there is Lillie's story, and the two are interconnected. Lillie, like Chiaki Nanami before her, made this game for me and warmed my heart. That's why this Pokemon game is the best thing I played this year. Now get in the bag, Nebby.

...AND THE REST

Okay, so those are the main category picks but here are some other games I played and liked. I didn't want to make up categories for these, or there were better games in the categories I did make up, but whatever. Here's some other stuff that I played and liked this year with some shorter blurbs about them.

NES Remix Pack

The cut-up method in video game form. Turn a bunch of classic Nintendo games into a bunch of little Warioware-esque challenges. It's addicting and engaging in a lot of ways, and the extra modes really help. The first game suffers a bit from using only black box games because a lot of the black box games are just fucking terrible. 3-starring all of the Clu Clu Land challenges was a nightmare and I hate that game now. NES Remix 2 is better because it has better games and some cooler extra modes, but they're both on the same disc and make a neat little package. It's nice. I also became a Nintendo World Champion because I got in the top 10 on the NWC mode in Remix 2, so that's another accomplishment for my Twitter bio.

Dark Souls: Prepare To Die Edition

Yes, again. Last year I gave it the Redemption award because I finally learned how to love that game. This year I had a really satisfying run with a super Strength build. Heavy armor, huge shield, massive club. I found it interesting to play, and easier than a Dex build's dodge rolling. You just stand there and TANK the hit and then counter by whapping things with your big stick. God, I love it. I'll probably replay this again in 2017 because at this point it's become a comfort food game. I tried Dark Souls 2 and didn't like it much. Shame. Oh well, SORCERY BUILD NEXT?

Finding Teddy

So this came about because someone suggested I play a Steam game called Chronicles of Teddy and they pitched it to me as a Zelda 2-like. I adore Zelda 2 and I think what happened here is that I got both Finding Teddy and Chronicles of Teddy in a 2-pack bundle. I played Finding Teddy first and it's not a Zelda 2-like at all; it's an adventure game sort of thing where you help monsters out and try not to get killed horribly. It's got neat atmosphere and whatnot. I don't have too much more to say, other than it made me run to a FAQ and I never did get around to playing Chronicles of Teddy. Oops.

Shatterhand

The game with the best box art ever. Motherfuckin' SHATTERHAND. As I recall, I beat this on a hacked PSP while listening to an Eruditorum Press podcast about the Titanic. It was a really good podcast and this is a really good little action game where you PUNCH ROBOTS N SHIT YEAH YEAH MMMMMMMM WHAP SMACK BIFF BLAM.

Drill Dozer

A cute little game with big stages and lots of shit to drill with your big drilling mech. It's an adorably fun platformer! I played it on my SNES because I got a SNES to GBA adapter and wanted to play that stuff on my TV. I lost out on the rumble feature, sure, but this is fine. It's a good game that I got complete for 10 bucks. Well worth it.

Castle Of Illusion (2013)

The digital age is rough on game preservation. You can't actually buy this anymore, I think, due to licensing issues. It went on sale for like 2 bucks just before it vanished from the storefronts and I got to play it. It's nice! Fairly short and not all too challenging, but it looks nice and has that great sense of childlike wonder you'd expect from a Disney game starring Mickey Mouse. If you can summon up the right arcane alchemical rituals to be able to play it, it's worth it.

Scramble

I bought this Konami arcade GBA collection, see. It has a lot of good games on it, but most of them are just the arcade mentality of "really hard to suck away your quarters". Scramble is kind of like that, but it also feels like a mobile game now. It's a 4 minute-long shmup that infinitely loops, so there's a definitive ending to it and you can say "I technically beat it" while also playing through to get the high score. Like, if this was on a phone it'd be a perfect time waster sort of thing. I really liked it and it ended up speaking to me more than, say, Frogger or Time Pilot or Yie-Ar King Fu. Yikes.

Spider's Hollow

John Thyer made a game this year! It's a Sokoban-like with fairies and spider webs and spiders! It's very tricky and clever and tense with limited moves in later levels before a spider gets you. John's telling his own version of a fairy tale here, and it ends exactly the way he wants it to end. Oh my god it's a literal fairy tale because of the fairies. Holy shit. You can play this RIGHT NOW AND RIGHT HERE so go give it a shot if you're not terrified of spiders.

Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake

I always wanted to play this one, and I did it in HD on my "new" PS3 with the MGS HD Collection. Typical me, using a $200 piece of technology with HDMI output on an HDTV to play a goddamned computer game from 1990. Even though I peeked at a FAQ a lot, a lot of things I figured out on my own here. There's some real cryptic shit and a lot of backtracking but this game was neat and had good music. 2017 is gonna be my Metal Gear year. I can feel it.

Dragon Quest VII: Fragments Of The Forgotten Past

I put like four or five hours into this, but fuck it. Honorable mention/teaser for the year in which I do beat it. I love it. Dragon Quest is good and this is good and I've waited years to own a copy and I like this.


And with that, we're all done! Just one more teeny tiny post to do at the end of the year, and then we'll be ready to send off this garbage fire of a year hopefully. Fingers are crossed for 2017 being even better and filled with even more amazing computer game experiences! I hope you've all had a good time with games this year, and you're more than welcome to share what you played in the comments below. I wanna hear what you loved, so go right ahead! I'm bowing out to go eat or something, this took the morning to write. See ya.