We know that you’ve been super busy playing Fallout 4, Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, Just Cause 3, and the many more amazing games released this year. Well, here are the top 5 games you missed, be sure to check them out!
Pillars of Eternity
Platform: PC
The CRPG rebirth that started last year with Divinity: Original Sin and Wasteland 2 continues in 2015 with Obsidian’s under-celebrated Kickstarter title. It’s easy to get lost in the shuffle when giant RPGs like The Witcher 3 and Fallout 4 are garnering all the attention, but this game deserves a wider audience.
Players who have been waiting for a deep, true role-playing epic are virtually guaranteed to fall in love. Obsidian should have no shortage of fans cheering for another installment, and I’ll be among them.
Soma
Platform: PS4, PC
Frictional Games’ follow-up to Amnesia: The Dark Descent tells a mind-bending tale that sticks with you well after you complete the story. Jump scares take a back seat to philosophical ponderings, but the sense of dread it imparts you with is real.
Video games have challenged us to unsympathetically blast apart deadly robots since their earliest days. Soma’s impressively realized underwater ordeal challenges even the coldest robot-slayers to consider a world where making such snap moral decisions is anything but automatic.
Ori And The Blind Forest
Platforms: PC, Xbox One
You could think that Ubisoft has secured a monopoly for creating gorgeous in both visuals and gameplay 2D platformers (Rayman Legends, Valiant Hearts: The Great War or Child of Light – to name just a few). When suddenly, after four years of development, an indie developer Moon Game Studios come into the fray with their Ori and the Blind Forest – undisputedly the most beautiful game in this selection, and possibly the most beautiful game of this year.
If you’re a fan of Disney or Ghibli works, you’re bound to be enthralled by the adventures of Ori in the dangerous and full of surprises Blind Forest. The game itself is a very challenging experience, which can give a really hard time to those not accustomed to arcade games. Furthermore, the game keeps the player thinking, for example, how to make use of the seemingly hostile environments to his advantage. Beautiful, difficult and stimulating – no wonder most of the reviewers gave the game excellent scores.
You Must Build a Boat
Platform: PC, Mac, iOS, Android
If you enjoyed EightyEight Games’ endless runner meets match-three masterpiece 10000000, You Must Build a Boat is a must-play. The simple design hooked a good majority of Game Informer editors, who would sneak in ship upgrades between tasks at the office.
Despite the slight drop-off toward the end and the low replay value, You Must Build a Boat is a great experience while it lasts. For a good six to nine hours, building a boat will indeed become the most important task in your life.
Axiom Verge
Platform: PS4, PC
Since Nintendo stubbornly refuses to make another 2D Metroid adventure for its legions of desperate fans, one man decided to do it himself. Tom Happ’s Metroidvania masterpiece has everything we love from the classic platforming adventures except the iconic bounty hunter heroine.
No one has tried to capture the aesthetic of Metroid as closely as Axiom Verge. Handling programming, art, animation, and music, developer Tom Happ has created a stunning love letter to Nintendo’s classic without being a slave to its conventions.
Galak-Z
Platforms: PlayStation 4 and PC
GALAK-Z is a brutally difficult, rogue-lite, top-down shooter where you play as a ship/transforming robot. Levels are never the same because you’ll have to dive deep into a crater or alien cave to complete objectives.
The real kicker is that there are so many hazards that you have to avoid, but they can also be used against your enemies. A flame jet you just flew by could be your best friend as you transform into a robot, grapple an enemy and shoot them right into it.
It feels incredibly rewarding to go into a situation with a plan and have it come together.
Well, that’s it for this list. Be sure to check out our list of other games you missed and more upcoming games from 2016. And for more news and reviews, keep checking back at Gaming Central.
