GOTY 2017 - Persona 5 is Always Darkest Before the Horizon Zero Dawn

It's that magical time of year again. The time I think "Shit, what came out last year? What year is it anyway? It seems like ten thousand years ago since I played..." Of all the games I've managed to get through last year, two come to mind instantly as the contenders for my Game of the Year pick. One placing me in the shoes of one of gamings best protagonists to date as I fight and tame robot dinosaurs, Horizon Zero Dawn. The other, the latest in a JRPG series that until last year I hadn't even touched despite its 20-year history, Persona 5.

Let's start off with Horizon Zero Dawn. I wrote about it earlier in the year and pretty much became Guerilla Games PR department in the process. I Love this game. (Yes, with a capital "L") Given that whenever I pick up an open-world adventure game nowadays, I have a nagging feeling I'm about to get myself into about 6 hours of story and 40 hours of scouring a needlessly massive map in search of pointless tat. (I'm not naming names, Ubisoft, but I'm totally naming names) HZD has a massive map, it has collectables. What it does differently is it makes those collectables interesting and ties them into the world you are finding them in with flavour text. (And what delicious flavours they are)

My, what big razor grindy thingies you have

The combat is intense and challenging, with a few issues concerning the larger enemies hitboxes. I haven't played a game that has had me at the edge of my seat and tensed in almost every encounter since (and don't hate me for using it for reference) Dark Souls. The combination of using stealth and tactics, stalking and laying traps to ambush your prey. Then when you were rumbled, using brute force and the rope launcher like you were trying to knit a very cosy jumper over a very angry robot created such an enjoyable experience for me. While there were more than your fair share of enemies to fight, I never got bored just going for a runabout, taking down whatever got in my way. (Though you do tend to think twice when two Thunderjaws start taking a run at you) The way you're able to make one of the beasts your own was also an excellent feature of the game. Watching your robo-pet launch itself at an enemy was always an entertaining sight, especially if said robo-pet was five times larger than the target. (Or smaller, if you wanted to re-enact David and Goliath with robots)

Aloy, how I love thee, let me count the ways. She's the One. I may have said in the previous write-up for the game but I was blown away by how well written the game was, especially the character of Aloy. Briefly: having been raised outside of her tribe or any other major settlement she goes to become someone who doesn't take any stock in superstition or religion. She's a realist in a room full of dreamers. My favourite example of this is when she meets one of the people who worship the sun as God, the Carja. While the priest goes on about the Sun and His many blessings, Aloy stops him and asks why he assumes the Sun is a He. "I've never seen anything dangling from it." As this happens pretty early on in the game I knew I was in for some pretty brilliant observations from an outsider looking in. There was no character that didn't have there own unique personality, making interactions a far cry from the likes of Eldar Scrolls. (Even the most recent Mass Effect had problems keeping the player engaged enough in a conversation)

This is Nil, he likes to kill

Horizon Zero Dawn was the best 60-odd hours I spent running about a massive open-world last year. There are so few flaws and the fact that it's an original I.P. gives me hope that this can happen again. The Frozen Wilds, HDZ's expansion, adds another 10 hours to this game. It gives you a massive new area with lots of side quests and other missions to keep you exploring the beautiful environments. Have you ever wondered if you could win a fight with a bear? How about a robot bear? Did I mention it can freeze you with an ice beam? Because it can. So there's that new fun to contend with. From start to finish, The Frozen Wilds has reminded me exactly how much I loved this game. (Now that I've actually gotten round to playing it)

The "Complete" edition is now available and provides you with The Frozen Wilds and everything else you could possibly need for your adventures in dino-bot husbandry.

Next up is Persona 5. Until July of last year, I hadn't touched a Persona game. (I picked up Persona 4 Golden on the PlayStation Vita for pennies) Playing through that blew me away. I never thought I would enjoy life as a Japanese high schooler, nor did I think that a ragtag group of teenagers would make a competent murder-solving agency.

Persona 5 places you in the shoes of a high school student, (insert your name here), and you've just been falsely accused of assaulting a shady yet powerful individual. This earns you a transfer to a new school for a year of "rehabilitation". There, you're introduced to a whole parade of interesting characters. First up is Ryuji Sakamoto, a troubled teen whose reputation around the school is that of a troublemaker. Various teachers and other students comment that you shouldn't socialise with him if you are wanting to do well in school. (To Hell with those guys though) Next, you are introduced to Ann Takamaki. Despite her good looks, she feels isolated. This isolation leads her to an abusive and toxic relationship that eventually you, as the protagonist, find yourself intervening in. Together, with a talking cat called Morgana (Don't question it) you create the Phantom Thieves. A group dedicated to eradicating evil and corruption from society by stealing the hearts of those who would prey on the innocent. (It's less bloody than you would imagine, though not by much) All in all, the rag-tag group you put together to right societies wrongs include some of the best-written character arcs I've seen in an RPG. Describing them here would a) do them an injustice and b) spoil them for you discovering themselves. I'm at a stage where I feet I don't have enough time to interact with everyone and help them, which is no fault but my own and makes me want to dive straight back to the start of what is already at least an 80-hour experience.

Here are the freaks and geeks you'll be buddying up with

The game is a mix of a couple of genres. Part visual novel/part classic RPG. You'll spend a lot of time exploring areas of Tokyo, hanging out and bonding with your friends. Each of the characters you can create a "bond" with presents you with interesting back stories and personal dilemmas that you can delve into on a day-to-day basis. I know what you're thinking, I play video games to avoid people's backstories and personal dilemmas. You're right. So do I for the most part, but on the other hand, you find you won't be rewarded for prying into your friend and families personal problems like you will in Persona 5. This requires you to get involved in a bit of time management. Spending time with people takes time, studying takes time, improving your social stats takes time. You have to spend it all wisely as you never know what might be around the corner. (And you're only given an in-game year to get everything done)

The RPG aspects come in the form of Palaces. These are constructs created within peoples hearts when they have strong desires. As Phantom Thieves, you have to infiltrate these Palaces, secure a route to the Treasure Room and steal whatever lies within. Sounds simple enough, sure. Palaces are set up like your typical RPG dungeon, with enemies, locked doors and treasure chests. All of them are themed to whatever that specific person's desires are. The first Palace you infiltrate, the owner sees it as a castle in which he is the King and everyone else is his obedient subjects. Fighting your way through, with turn-based combat, you eventually meet with various sub-bosses and a final boss. Upon stealing the Treasure, the subject of the infiltration has a "change of heart" in the real world. Much like the "bonds" you create with your friends, these changes of heart can also be some of the best examples of writing I've seen from a JRPG in years. (Though Persona 4 also displayed some excellent scenarios)

Such anime, many waifu

Stylistically, Persona 5 is stunning. From the way the characters are drawn to the transition screen between combat and exploring, it is so sleek and sexy that it genuinely seems a crime that Atlus, the games developers, still have a "No Recording/Screenshots" policy on the game. (Hence no proper screenshots) 

The "Ultimate" edition is available now with a whole manner of different costumes for your characters to where. However, they don't really do much to add to the game unless you're really invested in the series as a whole so I would highly recommend the standard version. It's been on sale a couple of times and is very much worth the money if you're looking for an RPG with a lot of depth and challenge.

This is a tough choice. I've sunk a lot of hours into both of these games and of all the games I played last year they were easily my favourites. (Otherwise, what was the point in everything I just wrote, right?) While I've loved all of the time I've put into living as a Japanese teenager and all the emotion-alternating that that entails, true love wins the day. Horizon Zero Dawn introduced me to a world filled with collectables I didn't find tedious picking up, robot animals I could tame and the digital woman of my dreams. All presented in a post-apocalyptic environment that isn't the usual browns, greys and darker browns of your standard end-of-the-world scenario. If we can get another game of its ilk this early in the year again, that would be lovely. Just saying. (Also, these are both PS4 exclusive. I'm sorry, but more accurately, I'm not)

Winner

Horizon Zero Dawn

GOTY - Final Hitman Fantasy XV

It doesn't take much for me to like a game. It only needs to do one thing: make me grin. I can't explain clearly why that makes certain games stand out over others but when I'm grinning I know I'll be playing that game to the finish at least twice.

Hitman made me grin. Released on the 11th of March 2016. It was released episodically throughout 2016 from March to December.
I've been playing Hitman since Hitman 2 on Xbox (one of my first games for the console) and with every subsequent instalment in the series, my love for it and its bald pro... an... tagonist(?) has grown. It helped that with every new game the A.I. (artificial intelligence) improved to a degree that didn't send my controller into a wall because that bastarding guard saw through my bastarding flower delivery guy disguise because I stood still for too bastarding long. (Ahem)
The initial release of 2016s Hitman didn't offer a great amount of content, but for me, it was enough to make me grin. It felt good to be plopped into a massive (by previous Hitman standards) level and pretty much left to figure out how to take out your selected targets. Being able to play the level any way you chose was the Hitman game I had been waiting for since Blood Money. (Absolution would have been perfect if not for the levels that were clearly NOT Hitman levels. I'm looking at you "escape from the cops and jump on a train" pfft).
Every aspect of the series that should have been expanded on such as being able to creatively take down your targets while also remaining undetected, to the A.I. to the scale of the levels was vastly improved for this instalment. Introducing "Level Mastery", a system that rewards you for replaying a level repeatedly to unlock new weapons, starting locations and gadgets to help reach your targets. It gives you opportunities to explore every inch of a level to find a perfect vantage point or a discarded disguise. On paper, this sounds monotonous, boring. But there's enough content to each level that you'll discover something new with each play through.
Then there are the Escalation missions. These give you new targets to hunt but after each successful mission, it will add a new objective or handicap. These are great in making you think of the layout of a level in a completely different way. Every assassination is a puzzle and Hitman rewards those who think outside the box and, most of all, have fun trying to figure it out.
The one section of this game I feel I have very little time for is the player created levels known as Contracts. These involve players marking their own targets within a level, assassinating them then challenging everyone to do it better. This was a feature introduced in Absolution and while fun, it can be a bit of a mixed bag in terms of finding a quality mission. I'm sure there's fun to be had here but it really isn't my thing.
For an episodic game to hold my attention and keep me occupied until the next was released is impressive. Even more impressive to me is that for all but two of those months (June and November) there was content released that added 2-6+ hours (depending on your determination to discover every corner and opportunity a level has to offer) of gameplay each. Of recent memory, it's one of three games I've sunk masses of my time into, The Binding of Issac being one and my next pick for game of the year being the other.

Final Fantasy XV made me grin. Released on the 29th of November 2016.
Like a lot of my friends, my first foray into Final Fantasy was with VII (7) which was released almost 20 years ago to the day of this post (31st January 1997). Oh, I just made myself feel old. One of the things I love about the series as a whole is it can have you save a near future world from a giant meteor while another can be pitting you against an insane jester determined to gain the powers of a god. You know, normal everyday stuff. But almost every time it's distinctly Final Fantasy. (Barring a few exceptions *cough* Lightning Returns to name one *coughcough*)
My first hour of Final Fantasy had me grinning from ear to ear nonstop. Everything from the "Stand by Me" cover by Florence and the Machine to the car radio playing music from the previous games in the series. Everything was just so nostalgic and charming. Having not read or seen anything about the game before it was released (except for the demos) pretty much everything was another point of joy on my bro trip. After a certain amount of exploration, I remember excitedly shouting "DUNGEONS" to an empty room. Soon followed by "NOPE" after entering said dungeon at level 14. Pro tip: don't do that.
At the opening of the game, a message reads "A Final Fantasy for fans and first-timers". As a fan, this filled me with a certain amount of doubt. What have they dumbed down for first-timers I wondered. Will I have to prove I'm a fan by benching 20 Iron Giants? (I'm sure that's how weights and being a fan of the series works) It turns out that message is referring to the two-button combat system. It's simple and effective. It doesn't bog you down with menus and options but at the same time feels satisfyingly substantial if your fighting one of the more challenging hunts later in the game, quickly being able to switch between weapons and magic at the touch of a button.
The game is split up into chapters, supplying you with the main (make the story go) quests and most of them with oh so many side (hey, go here and do a thing) missions, hunts and other fun distractions. These extracurricular activities will take up the majority of your playtime, my own coming in at 60hrs 5mins for the first completion. That time didn't even factor in all the side stuff I missed. I moved straight on to New Game+ so I would have new stuff to see on my second play through. That made me grin, the fact that I was willing to go into a second playthrough of at least a 60-hour game without even thinking about it.
There is one note of criticism, however. Chapter 13. I get it. The whole game can't be rolling hills and bro-fives all the way to the Chocobo Races. Tonally it's quite appropriate for what's happening in the game at the time. But that doesn't mean that you have to be as miserable as Noctis is while playing as him right? It takes the "Not Alone" section of Final Fantasy 9 and combines it with the never-ending corridor that is Final Fantasy 13 (wait, Chapter 13, long corridors, Hajime Tabata you magnificent bastard) and makes that what feels like 2 hours of your life (might only be about 45 minutes).
After the most recent instalments to Final Fantasy I was sceptical that this would be the one that would recapture the feeling I got from playing 6 through to 9.(Wait, 6+9 IS 15. Hajime Tabata you magnificent bastard) There's still more content to come with the season pass but the game as it is (including a massive patch that added more story content and fixed Chapter 13) is more than I ever expected from a modern Final Fantasy.

When I started writing this post I was fairly sure I knew what game I was going to pick as my game of the year. In writing this, however, I've convinced myself that the negatives of my other choice aren't negatives at all. Why should I punish a whole game for one section that I thought wasn't for me? As a whole, Final Fantasy 15 made me laugh, maybe even shed a tear. One, solitary man tear of respect for a job well done. Not the other kind. Hitman provided a game that I could drop in and out of and have fun with every time for the duration of half the year.
Ultimately my game of 2016 is Final Fantasy XV!

(Now all you needed to do was scroll to the bottom of this post without the hassle of actually reading it, but where's your sense of adventure.)