by Chelsea Stark and Adam Rosenberg
The video games of 2015 gave us a lot to be happy about. Old franchises birthed promising new sequels that turned hours of play into days. Tiny games came out of nowhere to steal our hearts. We're here to recount and reward the genre's most challenging, engrossing and just plain fun titles.
Without further ado, here are the 15 games that stole our hearts and most captivated our imaginations in 2015.
15. Destiny: The Taken King
The Taken King is technically an expansion for a game that was released in Sept. 2014. But it also tweaks the foundation of Destiny to such an extent that it's hard for even the most invested player to approach it as anything other than a ground-up remake.
The changes are superb, too. The story makes sense now, peeking at lore that was previously the domain of fan-curated wikis. The reworked level progression makes much more sense and breathes fresh life into the game's sizable arsenal -- arguably the star of Destiny. Plus, three new subclasses offer new ways to take on armies of aliens with a group of friends at your side.
14. Guitar Hero Live
Music games were iced for good in 2010, or so everyone thought. Five years later, we'd moved plastic instruments out of our living rooms and into storage -- or pawn shops. The challenge for any new entry was to bring back the old magic and make the genre relevant again. Guitar Hero Live does both with style. With a revamped guitar controller that will challenge fans who thought they already knew every technique and a killer modern song selection, Guitar Hero Live already brings a lot to the table. But the game's titular mode puts in you in the shoes of the lead guitarist, with a first-person video trick that makes failure feel dreadful and success that much sweeter. There's also GHTV, with a couple hundred songs streamed along with their music videos, for practically endless practice. It's all wrapped up in gameplay that's just fun to play, regardless of skill level.
13. Tales from the Borderlands
It's been a busy year for Telltale Games, but one of the developer's many episodic projects stood out from the pack. While the Borderlands series may not have the mainstream success of Game of Thrones, its talented writers crafted an amazing story on the alluring world of Pandora. It's a place that's fascinated players with its horrible monsters and twisted characters for many years, but it's never been explored in this depth. Tales… isn't dark and heady like The Walking Dead; it's a wild adventure with a provocative, colorful band of misfit characters on an epic-level quest. Its writing and pacing are constantly engaging, and the amazing voice acting delivers soundly through five episodes. There's also enough action to make Pandora feel dangerous even when you aren't constantly holding a gun. Honestly, we hope to see more of the Borderlands world in this format -- and these memorable new characters in other games.
12. Heroes of the Storm
With two monoliths taking the lion's share of eyeballs, the MOBA world seems totally impossible to disrupt -- especially with 2015 being a banner year for esports. Yet Blizzard has managed to craft a MOBA experience that disrupts the model just enough to feel fresh, while still resting on the pillars of what makes the genre so engaging. The game boils down what makes the genre's heated competition so much fun, simplifying some of the more complicated bits for a more accessible MOBA. But that doesn't mean it's easy. The new bits, like a variety of secondary objectives and Blizzard favorite characters, make it feel like more than "just another MOBA." Instead, we see a breath of fresh air for the genre.
11. Rocket League
The simplest ideas are sometimes the best. Cars plus soccer seems obvious -- but Rocket League combines the two so well that you'll be surprised it hasn't been done before. It's no surprise that this indie hit quickly became the game of the summer, as everyone attempted to score the winning goal with the best possible trunk-led bicycle kick. The game's physics make wild stunts seem within your grasp, even if there is a learning curve (and a bit of blind luck). The matches are the perfect length for bingeing, and not so long that you'll feel frustrated for falling behind. And a stadium seems perfectly fit for the
10. Mortal Kombat X
It's easy to dismiss Mortal Kombat as a complete gorefest, a franchise obsessed with the bloodiest, nastiest fatalities you can imagine. And Mortal Kombat X doesn't deny that legacy; it leans into it, hard. But the second attempt at NetherRealm to breathe more life into this historic fighting game world is even more fantastic than its freshman effort, thanks to a lot of moving pieces.
It was risky to bring the franchise far into the future, abandoning some fan-favorite characters for a lot of new editions. But the newest recruits are creative and just as fun to play as their (sometimes literal) ancestors, with plenty of depth that made it a worthy game to appear at worldwide tournaments. In a genre known for incomprehensible stories that are barely touched upon, the game's single-player mode is a narrative delight that's just as fun as an action movie. Although it's hard to see where the franchise could go from here, we can't wait to see more of NetherRealm's Mortal Kombat.
9. Rise of the Tomb Raider
There was already a high bar set by 2013's total reboot of Tomb Raider. The biggest challenge facing a direct sequel was to continue on that same path -- and even improve upon it. Iconic Lara Croft still has transforming to do, and Rise of the Tomb Raider balances interesting human characters with some of the most heart-pounding action sequences of the year. The game so perfectly captures Lara's harrowing journey to the mountain peaks of Siberia, and its cinematography makes you just as stressed as her fictional character. The detailed, jaw-dropping places she explores feel like a masterclass in level design, and the pacing mixes solitary puzzle solving with combat for an intense ride. Whether she's hanging from an icy ledge or swinging across fabled ruins, Lara Croft's return is really glorious.
8. Splatoon
Nintendo definitely Nintendo'd up the shooter genre. Kids. Squids. Neon paint. Weird characters. While making a shooter cutesy was something everyone expected from the publisher, making it sticky -- and then supporting for months to come -- was a true surprise. Splatoon's unexpected game ideas -- coating your enemies and their base with paint instead of filling them bullets -- make it a treat in 2015. But once you realize you're on match 10 and have played for two hours, you'll see that there's a lot of solid design in the game's weird weapons and bizarre powerups. There's also something so satisfying about hiding in ink one second, then popping up to nab an enemy with a flaming orange paint roller the next.
7. Call of Duty: Black Ops 3
Call of Duty: Black Ops III is a superior Call of Duty game, perhaps the best one to come along since Modern Warfare reshaped the multiplayer gaming landscape in 2008. Black Ops III isn't a reinvention, but it's packed with fresh twists on the familiar. It's also a three-headed beast, with something to please all different types of players. The campaign mode injects cooperative play and an assortment of cybernetic enhancements. Together, these open up an array of new tactical opportunities. A bigger, badder Zombies mode gives fans exactly what they wanted: more reasons to invest. And competitive multiplayer, arguably the heart of any COD game, takes advantage of the story's future warfare setting in smart and play-altering ways.
6. Her Story
Some people deride Her Story as "not a game." Those people are idiots. Sam Barlow's chilling murder mystery is certainly unusual, but playing with its video search in your hunt for the truth is a rewarding experience. That said, this is a hard game to talk about without spoiling anything. It's also tough to hype, since all you really do is run keyword searches and watch interview snippets. But star Viva Seifert delivers a mesmerizing performance, bolstered in no small part by Barlow's superb writing. It's the sort of game that you start playing and then look up from three hours later, wondering where the time went.
5. Bloodborne
Bloodborne is a Dark Souls game for the masses. It's a fast-moving nightmare that spends as much time challenging you as it does creeping you out. Where developer From Software's Souls games plod along by design, Bloodborne punishes inaction.
More importantly, the PlayStation 4 exclusive nails a perfect balance between claw-your-eyes-out difficulty and rewarding power trips. It's never easy, but it's also not hard enough to leave you feeling hopeless. Most of the time. That's the magic of the Souls games, after all. Bloodborne wins for capturing that appeal and presenting it in the friendliest way possible.
4. Batman: Arkham Knight
The Long Halloween. Hush. The Killing Joke. Some of the best Batman stories in the series' long history picked up a new companion in 2015's Batman: Arkham Knight. The concluding chapter in Rocksteady Studios' trilogy trails the Caped Crusader as he defuses a threat to Gotham City while wrestling with a ghost from his past. But is it all in his head? Arkham Knight lays out the whole of Gotham as your playground, giving players an opportunity to tool around in the Batmobile that's always at their beck and call. Batman's signature ride injects a fresh layer into the familiar sneak-and-brawl action, serving as both a puzzle-solving tool and an instrument of non-lethal warfare.
3. Super Mario Maker
Why is Super Mario Maker such a good idea? Better question: Why hadn't Nintendo thought of it before? In an era where players are obsessed with building, something as iconic as Mario can put those concepts in the best package. Super Mario Maker gives players all the obvious tools to make a basic Mario-style level, but also throws in every other concept for those who want to reach for the stars and build something truly monstrous. (Turns out a lot of people do.) Whether your dream is a level full of impossible jumps or an endless nest of warp pipes, Super Mario Maker makes it happen. And every single detail is so on-brand and whimsical that both building and playing others' creations is just pure joy -- even when you fail again and again.
2. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
The Witcher 3 has done for video games what Game of Thrones did for fantasy fiction on television. Forget this year; we haven't seen a role-playing game of this caliber released in more than a decade. Polish developer CD Projekt Red effectively raised the bar for everyone else. How to sum up such an impressive achievement in just a handful of words? Do you focus on the sharp writing, which paints all thinking creatures as complex beings with their own motivations? The beautiful interplay of light and shadow that makes the virtual world feel like an actual place? The deceptively deep, multifaceted combat? It's all of that. The Witcher 3 is the real deal.
1. Until Dawn
Until Dawn is unlike any other game released in 2015. It's a horror movie that lets you drive. We're all familiar with those horror scenarios where some boneheaded lead character hides under a bed when they should clearly be running away. This game puts that choice in your hands, for multiple characters. And how you behave has a real impact on how the story plays out.
The setup is familiar: a group of friends return to the winter getaway where, one year earlier, a prank gone wrong ended in death. But the story twists and turns that premise in unexpected ways, keeping players guessing all the way through. How many would-be victims can you successfully save as they all try to survive until dawn?
Chelsea Stark and Adam Rosenberg
Hillary Busis
Dustin Drankoski