Isometrics: 2016 in Review: Change, Upheaval and Do The Biggest Strifes Cause the Best Games?

Welcome to Isometrics, where the literary look at computer and video games has kind of languished for several months, much of which will become clear. I questioned whether I could rightly do the usual end of year articles given I'd been absent all year. I will explain that further below, as well as what the Isometrics Awards will look like this year, however we need to talk about this year. Oh what a year it has been.

2016 has been a rough year, for many reasons and in many many respects. The deaths of so many incredible stars, artists and general big names has left a pall over the year, not just for the number (which in practise wasn't much bigger than any other year), but for the talent that has been lost, from the enigmatic creator of Omikron, David Bowie all the way through to the most recent deaths of bright lights such as George Michael and Carrie Fisher. Add to that the political strife throughout the world, most notably in the west, with Brexit and the US Presidential Election seemingly splitting the UK and America respectively down the middle in a way that had not been seen for generations. We are in a world which can feel like it is spiralling out of control, wild and violent. It leads to panic as we aren't sure whether this is anything new, some new media created or at least facilitated typhoon of aggression, fear, uncertainty and doubt, or whether this is simply a Hobbsian state of nature. The world can currently like it is controlled by Salvador Dali or Franz Kafka, and sometimes it can feel easier to seek escape, as dangerous and damaging the consequences can be.

I cannot say things aren't so bad, many things are and the evidence and heartbreaking consequences are a matter for public record. However, there are glimmers of hope, silver linings of positivity, and a sense that things can be better, things can be beaten if we all look after each other. I don't know how much this will matter, but to anyone who feels they are not listened to, that they are actively being attacked and told they do not belong, you are welcome here at Isometrics. Isometrics is about progression, it is about looking at the world through the odd, fascinating, askew yet recognisable viewpoint of video games, and this will not change. Ultimately, people should not be forced to endure and overcome based on their sex, their gender, their race, their colour, their creed, and while I wish I could do more, know that you are welcome, you are loved and you belong.

Anyway! Video games, that's why we're here right? And my has it been a doozy of a year, stacked to the rafters with a sheer weight of releases. A lot have been terrible, but they have been drowned out by some absolutely incredible games, to the point where I have had to extend by best of list (I've just about got it down to 15) and will be shrinking the worst list to the 5 most underwhelming and disappointing games (There are way more bad games, but none managed to really endure and cause too much pain). Gaming has progressed in an incredibly positive direction, possibly due to the strife in real life itself however it means we are seeing beautifully realised games, the pockets of positivity and progression have begun to flourish, with games with increasingly diverse and interesting casts, mainstream games covering issues that simply were outside the scope and seeming ability of AAA publishing. There seemed to be a maturing of the medium and realisation that designing games to convey particular ideas, explore sociological, philosophical and literary ideas and generally act like the works of literature I constantly champion them as would not take away games that are fun. This is something that becomes very clear once you read my list.

It's not all been good, with all matter of bile being slung, every little thing seemingly becoming a major twitter scandal for five minutes and there were still some appalling business practices added to games, particularly from the usual suspects such as Activision and EA. However there were less games that seemed to be truly hateful, and the ones that are seemed to avoid the mainstream for the most part. Censorship is something of a hot potato, although given that the biggest anti-censorship advocates seem to only care when it relates to anime characters flashing, things like Torrential Downpour seemed to have about as much effect as the old moral crusades of old, namely boosting success out of spite.

It's been a weird year, not least for me. I felt like things were going to change in a huge way by the time March rolled along. Things changed, but in a way that kept everything in my current situation the same, except increasingly burned out and less motivated by writing, the form I have the biggest passion for. I really regret how 2016 turned out creatively, and a lot of my plans and visions for the year basically vanished by April, and it took until August for me to even consider continuing any creative projects. It was not all bad, the work I did for Get Your Rock Out I love and I hope I can continue, and Pixel Herstory on Fanny Pack is probably the one column I wish I could write more of, because the more I research the more awesome fascinating things I discover. The biggest change of course has come that I have a new job as a writer, something I'd aimed to do by the end of this year and actually succeeded at.

I apologise that I've hijacked this gaming retrospective, but in practise this was my 2016, and video games were this year, more than any other an escape and a respite. I firmly believe, since change is actually happening that this will not be the case going forward. If it is of any consolation, the Isometric Awards will be as in depth as possible to make up for lost time. I will only commit to the best and worst for now, but I will try and do others if I can fit them into a very hectic January. It stands to reason that Isometrics will be on a planned hiatus other than the end of year stuff and come back in February, everything sorted and ready to go.

If you got this far thank you very much, and here's hoping your 2017 is full of hope, joy and love, because while war, strife and divide make for a lot of good games, as you will see, hope, joy and love make for some of the best games ever.

Isometrics Awards: Honourable and Dishonourable Mentions

Welcome to the final Isometrics Awards article, looking at the various amazing (or amazingly awful) games that did not make either of the shortlists this year. Last year I planned to do a whole set of awards but due to factors beyond my control I simply didn't have the time to, but this time we're just going to look at the games that didn't quite make either list.

First of all, we'll look at the games not quite putrid enough to make my worst of list. There are probably worse games out there but I'm limiting it to games I'm at least aware of for the purpose of the list.

F1 2015 – Mentioned in the list itself, had Batman Arkham Knight actually improved after being recalled from Steam this hot mess of a racing game would have easily been 10th.

Godzilla – This atrocious, ugly, short mess of a PS4 exclusive was a shoe in early on this year but increasingly disastrous games eventually took the lustre away from this horror.

Steel Rivals – A monstrous fighting game that would have been laughed at by Tattoo Assassins and it's Mortal Kombat cash-in ilk. Sloppy, inconsistent control sets, generic poser models and awful optimisation sink the game before it really had a chance. Alas, other games either were much worse or much bigger disasters so it got lost in the shuffle.

Chariot Wars – A game that escaped the list purely by being so moronically expensive I wasn't going to stump up the cash to see if it was truly worse than some of Digital Homicide's fare. Footage I saw looked alarmingly bad though, with negligible frame rates and controls that seemed to have been soaked in concrete, as well as obvious missing textures and terrible gameplay.

Alone In the Dark: Illumination – So, a light-based co-operative third person shooter. So much for Alone in the Dark eh? It didn't help that the game is appalling tosh as well, and yet another example of Atari sinking further into irrelevance.

Raven's Cry – A game so bad it was re-released in the same year (As Vengeance of Raven's Cry, the epitome of truth in advertising) and somehow got worse, Raven's Cry escaped the clutches of the list by being too expensive to be worth bothering with once again.

Rollercoaster Tycoon World – Has this game even released yet? Being delayed weeks before release after a beta release showed a complete lack of content and issues with the building system, throwing the amazing Rollercoaster Tycoon name under a bus two years in a row. Can they make it a hat-trick in 2016?

Cities XXL – Advertising made it look like the phenomenal Cities Skylines. Playing the game showed it to be Cities XL but somehow bizarrely taking backwards leap.

Dead or Alive 5: Last Round – I actually like this game quite a bit (Ironically for the story, but it has a legitimately good fighting engine), but the PC port is appalling, but what put this over the edge was an embarrassing £55 DLC pack containing all manner of embarrassing costume types, which ended up completely undermining what I liked about the series. Not the most embarassing thing Tecmo Koei did this year though...

Coffin Dodgers – Was on the list at one point but ultimately this appallingly ill-conceived Mario Kart knock off, while completely unfun and lacking any form of wit, humour or interesting design, wasn't bad enough to make it on the list

Ultimately there were far more good games on my radar than bad, and so the honourable mentions are much much longer, which means I'll try to be as brief as I can with each game:

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Ultimately an incredible game that deserved a better player, it was on the list for the longest time before being shunted off in favour of Fallout 4. The sheer technical and literary achievement of CD Projekt Red's magnum opus cannot be understated though.

D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die – An amazingly quirky game from Swery65 that would have been on the list again had it not been so stacked. A far better realised effort than Deadly Premonition, but both are a must play for fans of games designed to throw you for a loop.

Chroma Squad – (Disclosure: I was a Kickstarter Backer) A fantastic turn based SRPG in a year filled with brilliant ones, this Power Rangers-em up was very much on the list for all of the year before being a victim of the influx of games so good they could not be ignored.

Oddworld New n Tasty – A marvellous reimagining of one of the most original games ever made, Oddworld New n Tasty has the amazing atmosphere and quirky possession-based puzzles without the clunky Another World style platforming of the original.

Hotline Miami 2 – A shoe in for the list, as were almost half a dozen other Devolver games but ultimately ended up missing out at the last minute.

Massive Chalice – Seemingly not to everyone's taste but I adored this procedurally generated Double Fine generational RPG, and yet another SRPG that was to be on this list.

Armikrog – The spiritual successor to the Neverhood isn't quite everything I wanted, but it is an astonishingly quirky game, irrespective of all the external baggage concerning its creator.

Titan Souls – Devolver's streamlined take on Shadow of the Colossus was a game that like many other Devolver names was ended up being bumped from this list.

Tales of Zestiria – The latest Tales game, and the first for PC is a fantastic action RPG in a year of great RPG

Invisible Inc – The former Incognita was the last SRPG that was a victim of being in a year stocked to the gills with brilliant games.

Final Fantasy Type-O HD – Technically updated enough to count for this list and by far the best and most interesting game to come out of the Final Fantasy XIII experiment. Sadly no FFXV demo for PC owners.

The Escapists – A return to form for Team 17, with a great little sandbox stealth game evoking all the fun I had watching Prison Break.

 

Kerbal Space Program(me) – Amazingly enough despite its long early access period the quirky space-em-up actually released in 2015. Unfortunately had it released last year it may have actually made the top ten.

Broken Age – Despite the controversy surrounding Double Fine and the nature of how some of the games ended up, this is a gorgeous and eternally charming adventure game.

Hand of Fate – Almost made it on the list by virtue of being a fantastically original concept, ultimately the individual elements just weren't as sharp as they needed to be in a year as stacked as this one.

Broforce – Oh hell yes, Broforce actually released this year as well. Sadly there was ultimately only room for one retro Devolver shooter, and Downwell proved more addictive.

Big Pharma – Almost made it on the list purely for evoking Theme Hospital, one of my most favourite games in history, this management puzzler managed to keep that quirky style although it lacked the sophistication and amazing sense of humour of the Bullfrog great.

Prison Architect – Possibly the best use of early access ever, Prison Architect finally released to deserved accolades and it's a shame that like Kerbal Space Programme it didn't release in a year so stacked with brilliant games.

The Talos Principle – Technically applies for both 2014 and 2015, given it's December 2014 release date and was in the top 10 for a long time until Dirt Rally was rude enough to leave Early Access last month.

SOMA – A gorgeous, unique concept for a horror game, and another example of a game of the year candidate that somehow missed the list. Did I mention 2015 was a brilliant year?

Read Only Memories – (Disclaimer: I backed this on kickstarter too) Interesting cyberpunk adventure with a positive attitude to gender and diversity that makes it a landmark for video games.

 

Android Android Cactus – Another game that so easily could have ended up on the list had it not been such a brilliant year. A fantastic, beautiful endlessly quirky twin stick shooter.

Volume – Thomas Was Alone creators making a VR stealth game? Hell yes!

Just Cause 3 – A game that could have been game of the year had the PC port not been quite as disasterous. Unlike F1 2015 and Batman Arkham Knight, they at least fixed the major issues, but the first few days before the major patches were enough in this most brilliant of years to bump it out of the running.

And there we have it. What a 2015! Thanks for reading and hopefully 2016 will be just as exciting.

Isometrics Awards: Best Game of 2015

So 2015 has been a fantastic year for video games on the whole, with fantastic games of all shapes, sizes and ideas being available. This list has changed repeatedly, being unrecognisable from a list of predictions I made last year. The long list had over thirty games on it at one point and whittling it down to ten has meant several games that deserve to be on this list are not, most notably The Witcher 3, which is essentially the unofficial number 11 on this list. I've tried to cover as wide a variety of games as possible.

Are you sitting comfortably? Good, then let us begin.

10: The Beginner's Guide (Everything Unlimited Ltd., PC)

Depicted: The only spoiler-free screenshot I have.

A game by the makers of The Stanley Parable that is pretty much as difficult to describe without completely spoiling it, The Beginner's Guide is a game that will become more and more important as gaming spreads its literary wings and begins to move into mediums of metacommentary and creative criticism. It is at once a short playable experience but enters into much broader dimensions and ideas, asking some questions that are really profound and never asked before either in or about computer games. It will not be for everyone, as many of my recommendations are not, however this is a vitally important video game to understand other games, and absolutely worth the very short run-time. I will be covering the game in spoileriffic length in an Isometrics soon as well so play it before that... please?

9: Dirt Rally (Codemasters Racing, PC)

Depicted: Hot Note Reading Action!

Narrowly escaping the worst list was Codemasters' major release this year, the horribly buggy, limited in scope and incredibly disappointing F1 2015. Dirt Rally is basically the polar opposite. It appeared out of nowhere in staggering form for an Early Access game, blew pretty much every other racer this year away and was completed in December, thus guarenteeing itself a spot on this list. Dirt Rally is the opposite in many ways to Codemasters' increasing attempts to streamline and simplify their major franchises, with Grid Autosport and F1 2015 being the biggest victims of this. Dirt Rally does not; you get no tips, no aids and absolutely no mercy, and you will not place very well for a long time in the game, until you improve, build up your team and learn a lot about care and patience in order to maximise those sector times. Otherwise you will crash and see just how gorgeous and capable that damage engine is. The only fly on the ointment is how locked up most of the content is, with you stuck in a Mini Cooper until you get very good at the game but it makes progression so very rewarding. A massively fun experience if you're willing to sink your teeth deeply into a racing game.

8: Downwell (Mappin/Devolver Digital, PC)

Depicted: The only meaningful screencap I could take before being decimated by the game.

Now this is a shock. Technically a mobile port, Downwell is such an addicting little shooter game, with a twist that turns things literally on their head. A scrolling shooter in reverse, you play a young little blob thing wearing gunboots sending your bullets down the well, hunting for gems and trying not to die repeatedly. One of those things is kind of impossible, but that is the joy of games like Downwell, Spelunky and The Binding Of Isaac. You feel progression and forward progress, and the game rewards you for trying and failing. For the amount of fun you'll receive it's an absolute bargain.

7: Grow Home (Reflections/Ubisoft, PC)

Depicted: Welcome to Sunny Floating isle!

Ubisoft have a lot of issues and have made many many mistakes in the past but one of the things is their forays into art games. Last year provided the wonderful Child Of Light and Valient Hearts, and this year has the wonderful Grow Home. The basic premise is simply to grow a plant two kilometers high to reach your spaceship but the way to get there is equal parts Katamari-esque odd and complete charm, with a world growing upward and yet thanks to some delightful controls very easy to get around. It was a thoroughly relaxing game, and I have spent whole evenings gliding across the map trying to find one of the crystals or star seeds. Ubisoft have done better this year any way, but Grow Home will probably stand out as their best contribution to gaming this year.

6: Toren (Sword Tales/Versus Evil, PC)

Depicted: Drowning In Symbolism

Toren was part of a great influx of Brazillian games, which included the phenomenal Chroma Squad (a game bumped from this list at the last minute), and stands to be one of the most beautiful indie games made at least this year. You play Moonchild, a young girl who grows while climbing the titular Toren, a giant tower reaching to the sun, while exploring vivid worlds and enjoying an absolutely fascinating story without a single line of dialogue uttered. On a personal level, this game brought me back into doing Isometrics, as the first game of the year that truly felt like an incredible literary experience, swallowing you into its world tinged with mythology and metaphor. At times it feels like a 90's video game with an air of new-age surrealism, and the fact that a game can do that in 2015 gives me hope for the future.

5: Fallout 4 (Bethesda, PC/PS4/XB1)

Depicted: Low Hanging Fruit.

A late entry that completely messed up most of my rankings, I was going to leave Fallout 4 until the ultimate edition came out and the game was in a playable non-buggy state. Apparently I didn't need to wait too long because Fallout 4 was an incredible experience, improving pretty much every aspect that needed fixing, and adding a level of customisation I didn't realise I really wanted in gaming until I realised I could add a bayonet to a sniper rifle. Some have complained that it was too “streamlined” or “dumbed down” but most of those arguments appear to have been complaining about genuine improvements. Outside of the more limited dialogue options, almost none of the changes to Fallout 4 have been for the worse. Combat is better and feels more refined, VATS still has an element of threat to it, the settlement system is way more involved and delightful than it has any right to be, and you have a dog. What more is there to love?

4: Undertale (TobyFox, PC)

Depicted: A game after my own heart

Undertale is a game that completely blindsided everyone, and managed to create a huge cult overnight over what seemed from screenshots to be another retro-inspired RPG. Scratch the surface even slightly however and you have a beautiful, incredibly well-realised game about choice, authority, agency and font-named Skeletons. It is a world that is easy to be attached to with all the characters being rather unique in design, personality and witty dialogue, and that is as true for the random encounters as the main NPCs, which is where Undertale truly shines. Combat can be like a standard RPG if you want it to be, but there are options to not fight and still win, and it's as valid if not more so to spare an opponent as kill it. A spellbinding experience filled with wonder, humour and meta-commentary on gaming as a whole, and absolutely worth playing, then again, and again...

3: Rocket League (Psyonix, PC/PS4)

Depicted: True Sporting Joy

Here I am, and you're Rocket League! Possibly the best multiplayer game in recent memory, Rocket League is a concept so simple and so brilliant I'm shocked it hasn't become successful sooner. Effectively jet powered car football, where Rocket League shines is in the sheer controlled madness of everything. Anyone can pick it up and figure out the basics but there is a lot of hidden tricks and aspects to master that high level play looks very impressive and not entirely based on luck. It basically works in the same way other sports do, and tickles that bit of your brain that starts hollering, oohing, ahhing and whooping in delight as that shot curls perfectly past the other team's goalie and soars in, explosions and horns sounding off. Another game that came from seemingly nowhere and completely blew me away as a game that could have very easily been game of the year.

2: Life is Strange (Dontnod/Square Enix, PC/PS4)

Depicted: Meta-Hipster Irony

One more game that seemed to be a complete shock, Remember Me developers Dontnod's follow up, the episodic Life is Strange will stand as one of the best if not the best episodic game of all time, and for me personally the game that made me finally get how and why episodic games can work. The story of a backwater town in Washington state, the game follows Max Caulfield, a photography student who learns she has the power to turn back time after saving her best friend's life. The first episode, while very good and showcasing the beautiful hand-painted textures they used, was impressive but did not make this game the herald of great episodic gaming. However by the second episode myself and pretty much everyone I knew who played the game was absolutely hooked to the twists and turns in the story, with a story that moved people (read: me) to tears on several occasions. The genius of Life is Strange is the time travel mechanic, which adds weight to the choices you make and forces the player to live with decisions they could have changed had they chosen to. Where the story goes is incredible and I don't want to spoil it so this is another game I could not recommend highly enough. Tantalisingly close to game of the year as well.

1: Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (Kojima Productions/Konami, PC/PS4/XB1)

Depicted: Tactical Espionage Action! Also Dog.

Well, it was close, and at times I almost bumped it from the top spot, but ultimately Hideo Kojima's swansong for Konami had the top spot to lose. Much has been discussed, explored and described about the game and it's voyage into the deepest darkest patches of development hell, so I will stick with the fact that bizarrely enough, the narrative is one of the weakest aspects of the game. There is still some great strangeness and Kojima hallmarks but compared to MGS 4 there is definitely steps backwards in the way the story was told. The game feels like content was missing at times, odd for a game as long as The Phantom Pain is, and the DLC for the game literally includes Horse Armour, a gigantic in joke in gaming. All that aside though, MGSV is still a masterpiece, beautifully realised, brilliantly constructed and breathtaking in scope. Outside of the awful fee-to-pay FOB element, everything in the game is no worse than very good even with its flaws, which was ultimately why it ended up on the top spot despite my frustrations with a game that threw away the potential to be the best game of all time. Much of that can be ascribed to the bizarre business decisions made by Konami, and with their current mood swings about the future of the company, MGSV may well be the final swansong for them as well. For a game that has both the very best and very worst of 2015 in video gaming, MGSV encapsulates it all, and for that amongst many other reasons it gets the nod for Game of the Year.

One last thing to do is the Honourable Mentions, thanks for reading the Isometrics awards and feel free to let me know what you agree/disagree with.

Isometrics Awards: Worst Game of 2015

Welcome to the Isometrics Awards for Worst Game of the Year, the Rancid Retrospective of the world of computer and video games. There was a huge influx of games, a lot of which were fantastic, unique or at least competent. With such a morass of games however, the inevitable hand of the greedy, the incompetent and the both ends up leading to quite a lot of crap. That said my longlist for worst games was far shorter than my longlist for game of the year, but my word what we have here plumbs new depths of terrible. So without further ado, we shall begin.

10: Batman Arkham Knight (WB Games/Rocksteady Studios: PS4/XB1/PC)

Pictured: The first mission of Arkham Knight

Let's start controversially shall we, by putting a game on this list I actually quite like. Batman Arkham Knight, the kinda-sorta swansong of the phenomenal Arkham series of bat-em-ups is actually a very good game. It's beautiful, features some interesting mechanics to add to the already excellent core gameplay elements of Arkham City and has enough intruigue and darkness to be worth your while. This would all be true if the game worked reliably. Even as of me writing this six months after launch there are problems with frame rate, the Batmobile (an otherwise fantastic mechanic) falling through the world and other random glitches that really hamper an overall experience, to the point that Rocksteady pulled the game, offering full refunds and only rereleasing it in November with much of the same issues.

If you're playing on a console that didn't suffer these problems quite as badly, feel free to replace this with F1 2015, another game which could have been fantastic but for lazy porting, terrible optimisation, inexcusable glitches and a basically unplayable multiplayer, although with less actual content and innovation over previous iterations to justify this. I gave the slight nod to Arkham Knight on the sheer scale of disaster of the launch, but honestly both could have been Number 10 on this list.

9: Godus (22Cans: PC)

Depicted: Abject Disappointment

So Peter Molyneux abandoned yet another project half finished and missing almost all the content claimed by the developer. Since Black and White he has been doing this and since Fable it has really affected the games, with them getting worse and worse up until this utter nadir of a life-simulation. Godus was a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2012 that had an early access launch in 2013, allegedly owing to problems with funding and complications that occurred during game development.

The rest of the story ends up getting very upsetting, the winner of an alternate reality mobile game ended up getting precisely nothing despite being promised real world revenue from a feature that was never put in the game. Many of the Backer's rewards (Read: The most important thing to give out when doing a Kickstarter campaign) were unfulfilled, leading to demands for refunds from irate gamers. Technically the game is still in early access but given the reduction to a skeleton crew as of February 2015 it's safe to say the game isn't being finished this side of ever.

What's in the game is fairly bad too, including terrible terrain deformation that seems designed to cause repetitive strain injury, a microtransaction model for the Android and iOS versions (The absence of which is touted a little too proudly in the PC beta), lots of annoying features borrowed from mobile gaming and an alarming lack of content. There is a potentially fun game here but the game causes too much pain both figuratively and literally to be worth more than derision.

8:Burgers (storm_sharks, PC)

The game may appear mildly exciting from still screenshots. They lie.

Well isn't this an odd curiosity of a game. Burgers is a Metal Slug clone of sorts with terrible controls, a fairly naff art style, a thoroughly baffling storyline and about an hour of content, and it only got that much due to some of the worst controls in a 2D action game I've seen for a while. It has a button for walking back which only made sense in a 2D shooter when the rest of the appalling controls were taken into account. The shooting is unsatisfying, the animation would have been laughed off of Newgrounds and the difficulty curve wobbles between absurdly easy to inexplicably difficult, while lacking much in the way of variety to justify it. The story, such as it is is so nonsensically absurd and riddled with spelling, logic and sanity errors that it's almost worth the incredibly low price of admission to see though, which is probably the highest praise it will get.

7: Battle Ranch (Playboom, PC)

Depicted: Veg vs Pigbies

Certain games are epoch-setting and blaze a trail that other games can but follow for years to come. Battle Ranch is not one of those games. A clone of Plants Vs Zombies whose derivation is only matched by sheer incompetence, Battle Ranch is the ever-so-original war between pigs and plants. Apparently that's a wacky original concept or something. Somehow despite being released in 2015 it looks like a game made with Visual Basic 6, with a frame rate that aspires for double digits and animations which aspire to actually animate at all. A game that would have been laughed off of Newgrounds.

6:Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 (Activision, PS4/XB1)

Thinking Of Your Own Captions is much more fun than Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5

There was a time, ever so long ago when Tony Hawk and his series of Pro Skater games were some of the most fun party games you could ever play, and the brand was a symbol of a great experience with a mix of brilliant gameplay and the perfect amount of sillyness. Pro Skater 5, released over a decade after Pro Skater 4 and eight years after the last good entry in the series, has regressed in a manner not seen since the execrable Flatout 3 in 2011. The game looks ugly as sin to start, with a graphical style so bad it was very quickly converted to a cel-shaded style in a failed attempt to deflect criticism (known as the “DS Gambit”). There's an alarming variety in pretty much every regard, with repetitive missions, limited tricks and a social element seemingly limited in practise to shoving other people over online. Worse than all of this however is the regression in gameplay, taking a formula that had evolved over a decade and somehow managing to mess up most of the core mechanics, either through streamlining or simple glitches. The game is monstrously unfun outside of watching those hilarious montages of the game glitching out uncontrollably. It's funny to watch but once you realise that is the whole experience, you'll have a bad time.

5:F-1 Chequered Flag (Turn6, PC)

Depicted: Bob Slayer's Dirty Little Secret

Speaking of Flatout 3, their developer Turn6 is back, releasing an F-1 game in 2015 which may go down as one of the flat out worst racing games in existence. Not having controller support may be forgivable in comparison to the more readily apparent sins of the game, such as the complete lack of competence in any technological respect. The graphics would be dated in 1995, something that is not hidden by terrible blurry visual effects. Every track feels the same and appears to be in the same environment and the only distinction between yourself and the other racers is what washed out colour you happen to be. The gameplay really sucks as well. One would assume you could not use the skidding mess that was the Glacier 3 engine in a formula one game, however Turn6 vehemently disagree adding terrible drifting and a destruction based boost mechanic to a discipline of driving intended to be about careful precision. An appalling, bargain basement excuse for a video game.

4:Temper Tantrum (Digital Homicide, PC)

Depicted: Baby Jesus Simulator 2015

So Digital Homicide are back, with their patented blend of bought, borrowed and stolen assets, mixed in with unbelievably pathetic gameplay. The sheer volume of crap they effused onto steam was so excessive I could have filled the top ten list with DH (and affiliated shell companies) games and had done with it. I was torn between this and the completely dysfunctional Galactic Hitman, and Temper Tantrum only won because of the sheer offence of it. It's a painful game to witness, partly because of the gaudiest textures ever sold via Unity, but also because of a bizarre framerate, unresponsive controls and a camera that seems obsessed with spinning. The one moment of respite was on my first attempt playing the game where I phased through a wall and ended up standing atop a swimming pool. When glitching your way out of playing a game is the best thing about it, you know you've reached a particularly rough level of bad.

3:Bloodbath Kavkaz (Dagestan Technology, PC)

Depicted: Race Relations. Also Depicted: A Repulsive Video Game

From mere technological failures to outright offensively awful messes, we have the Russian mockbuster take on Hotline Miami, Bloodbath Kavkaz. The steam page promises “all the horrors of russian [sic] modern culture” and it delivers in spades, providing a nonsensical experience seemingly made in MS Paint by a fourteen year old white supremacist. It is racism, terrible art and memes, and apparently there is no room for good gameplay, graphics that don't seriously harm people with photosensitive epilepsy and oddly enough for a Hotline Miami clone, a lack of difficulty for the most part. Beyond pathetic.

2:Gynophobia (Andrii Vintsevych, PC)

Depicted: An attempt to take a picture of the most repulsive part of the game, where the main character's dad is a massive homophobe.

Gynophobia literally denotes a fear of women, and the game takes this mildly intruiging concept with all the subtlty of a spider-shaped brick with breasts. The first issue is that the main conceit of the game is mostly a con, since two fifths of the game take place within another terribly generic zombie first person shooter, where you are wowed by awful controls, location damage limited to headshots, a grand total of three weapons (and I'm magnanimously including the knife in that as well), ugly store-bought enemies with AI completely limited to chasing the player and a level objective which consists of car maintenance. Once the actual misogynist parts of the game begin and you're shooting women-shaped store-bought zombies in the head, needless to say the game gets a little bit unhinged. The game is only an hour long as well, even taking into account the often unfair level design and lack of checkpoints, but by the end you'll have been so beaten over the head by this half-assed misogynist bollocks that killing a scorpion sorceress and the bizarre Oedipal aspects of the game are no longer even slightly amusing. A soul-destroying mess.

1:Hatred (Destructive Creations, PC/PS4)

Depicted: Deep Sociological Satire.

I didn't want this to be the winner in all honesty. I suspected there was a good chance this jaunt through the life of a spree killer was going to win the worst game award, but I wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt. After all, brilliant games sometimes cover insanely dark themes, and providing there is a level of balance, enjoyment or some form of enlightenment a game can be entertaining. Hatred manages to get everything wrong that games Hatred is so desperate to emulate got right, games like Manhunt and especially Postal 2. Hatred is not the worst game of the year because of its appalling graphics, inexcusable framerate, iffy controls, generic mission objectives, its litany of bugs or its short lifespan. Not at all, the game is the worst game of this year, and indeed the worst of all time because of how much of a complete and utter waste it is. It wasted the Unreal Engine 4, providing a game that looks bad by late PS2 standards and has a framerate that aspires to reach double digits on a good day when nothing's on screen. It wasted a graphical style that sought to emulate dark age comic books but is a generic sludge of black and white nonsense that forces the player to rely on the “Killer's Sense” mapped to the right analogue stick to actually find enemies. Most importantly, it wasted what could have been a fascinating conceit, of a twisted disturbed spree killer far too psychotic and murderous to be an antihero, who kills for some purpose never said and possibly never known. It is a conceit succeeded in the disturbing Manhunt, the shamefully hilarious Postal 2 and even the controversial Super Columbine Massacre RPG, a free game made in 2005 about a real mass shooting. Hatred inspires complete apathy, a complete lack of care, effort or interest in the game they are making and trying to sell, trying to pass this lack of effort and talent as some slight against the politically correct world. It makes me furious that a game like this hoodwinked masses of people on Greenlight, Gabe Newell who stepped in to allow the game to be published after an initial ban, and myself into thinking this was a game with merit being a victim of censorship. Of the top three games, at least Bloodbath Kavkaz attempted and failed at being as satirical as Hotline Miami, and at least Gynophobia had attempted and failed to cover its subject matter. Hatred simply did not bother, and because of this complete antithesis of fun, enjoyment and meaning, Hatred gets the Isometrics Award for Worst Game of 2015.

Thank you very much for reading, and have a lovely 2016. Much better games and the honourable mentions are incoming.

Isometrics Awards 2015: A Panoply of Light, Fantasy and Interactivity

Welcome one and all to the Isometrics Awards, the sidelong sneer at the best and worst of the literary world of computer and video games. The year has shot by so quickly hasn't it? I remember last year when I promised a regular schedule with lots of posts and gave my best games of 2014, and now I aim to promise it again, with a bit of a look back at the year as well as explaining the criteria I personally use to judge the best and worst games of the year of our game Two Thousand and Fifteen.

2015: A Panoply of Light, Fantasy and Interactivity

Two Thousand and Fifteen will probably go down as one of the best years for gaming of all time, in pretty much every regard that matters. From cultural shifts, to fantastic triple A titles, to complete out of nowhere smashes and some of the most wonderful explorations of a fantastically deep medium, it felt like the ethos of Literary Gaming was alive and well, and everything that is valued in an art form going through a veritable renaissance is visible here. My best of list has changed so extremely that my prospective list basically looks nothing like the list I will have settled on by the time the best of list comes out.

It was a year full of a ridiculous amount of games being made available, with Steam in particular swelling and buckling under the weight of releases at times. That is only a problem for a player who needs to play every major release though, and just means you are spoiled for choice for great games this year. It also means quite wonderfully that nearly everyone's GOTY list will be completely and utterly different.

The seemed to show a medium unafraid of itself and its fractured audience, which came to a head last year in tragic and ugly fashion. While elements of that still existed as they unfortunately always will, the general feeling about video games was far more focused on the creative, the positive and when critical, things that can be done to make games more for everyone (This is something we will definitely do an Isometrics on). The power balance between consumer and publisher seemed to shift in a far more positive way, albeit reluctantly, and following some of the most anti-consumer decisions and actions taken thus yet in the history of video games.

Pictured: Konami's Relationship with Hideo Kojima

In terms of major events outside of game launches, there were a few that spring to mind. The introduction of Steam Refunds was a great olive branch, finally holding developers to account for making PC ports that did not do the original game justice, and I have already seen cases of games where an appalling launch was rectified soon afterwards (and indeed some examples of that not happening where that is the direct reason they made my worst of list). There was the rather embarrassing fall of Atari into somewhat poor low-budget takes on some of their best franchises, as well as the half-hilarious, half-harrowing fall of (Fuc)Konami as a serious developer, the fallout of which still seems to be landing after all this time.

We also had the true power of crowd funding being released this year, though not always for the best. Along with the releases of some fantastic games we saw successful pitches from top tier talent for example for a new Banjo-Kazooie (Yooka-Laylee), a new Castlevania Symphony of the Night (Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night), Shenmue 3, Psychonauts 2 and I'm certain many others, along with other games from slightly smaller studios really stepping up, like the heart-stopping IndieGoGo for Indivisible. Along with this we did get some horror stories, like the cancelled Yogsadventures, some of the issues with the otherwise excellent Double Fine game Broken Age and the neverending launch window for Mighty No 9, a game that seems to go from problem to problem.

 

Add to this the huge issues some major releases had, from the onslaught of microtransactional elements in full price releases, the trend of paid betas that triple A games seem to be doing a lot of, and the less said of that utterly bollocks “Augment Your Preorder” stuff for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided that was mercifully scrapped. There did seem to be some pushback though that actually did some good.

Kickstarter's influence led to an influx of amazing games.

For me personally it was a banner year, where I finally felt far more confident about my writing and recording, was in a job I like with the perfect blend of stability and an end date, so I had less anxiety about the madness swirling around me, and actually had enough money to buy major releases at or soon after launch. There's a lot of oddities, and indeed a lot of games I still need to catch up on, but I feel more in the loop than I ever have, and may this continue into 2016.

On the whole 2015 was far more good than bad, which does give me a bit of unease as how long this can roll on for. With the disparity between big budget games and the rest getting to ludicrous heights, it paints an uncertain future for this truly diversely brilliant time in gaming.

2016 looks like it'll be pretty good so far though.

The Isometrics Awards

Once again, it is time for the Isometrics Awards, which will take the form of The Isometrics Worst Game of 2015, and The Isometrics Game of the Year 2015. They'll be top ten lists, with some room for a shortlist of course, and if I have time I'll try and actually have a list of awards to go with it.

I use slightly odd criteria because I feel it's slightly fairer, so I'll try and explain it a little bit more succinctly this year.

For a game to qualify for the Isometrics Awards it must:

• Have been released to stores in (Including online retailers, Steam and Bricks and Mortar shops) in Europe between 1^st December 2014 and 31^st December 2015. I give the extra month because I generally finalise my list in the middle of December so games released in December often get left out, which is a shame. Note: A game can only qualify for one year, so if I mentioned it last year it can't qualify this.
• Be a completed game. Early Access, beta releases and the like do not qualify until they are done. Even if it's near complete or feature complete, it needs to “go gold” or it's out.
• Be a full game. This is a grey area, but basically it means an expansion to a game that relies on the original does not qualify. Standalone expansions do however, if they are good enough to merit it.
• Be a new game. No ports of very old games or remakes without substantial updates. Generally The Binding of Isaac Rebirth is the standard for what qualifies, so a new engine and new content. Exception: a port from a console to Steam can still qualify if it is within 12 months, just for timed exclusives or games which have a release cycle between systems.
• Generally mobile and free to play games do not qualify, although there is no specific rule against them.
  In terms of judging criteria, ultimately it comes down to some subjective aspects, however I will do my best explain my justification. General rules of thumb is that a game that is bad that many people played is worse than a bad game no-one played, and that an actively hostile bad game is worse than a merely incompetently made game. The reverse is also true, a game that actively demonstrates imagination, daring and a literary sensibility will win out over a game that merely demonstrates technical competence, and also a great game for most is better than a game that is as good for less people.

Hope this all makes sense, it will in practise, and expect another update with the Isometrics Worst Games of 2015!

Isometrics: With Armikrog, Can You Separate a Game From its Creator?

Welcome to Isometrics, the clinically conflicted gander at the literary world of computer and video games. We are but a few days away from the release of Armikrog, the sequel in spirit to cult hit The Neverhood, a fascinating odyssey in plasticine from the creator of Earthworm Jim, and yet rather than unbridled joy, I'm completely conflicted with whether I should buy a game I know I will enjoy.

“Why?!” The dearest reader of this may well scream. “If you know you will enjoy it, why not buy it and support a game you love?”

The problem of course is the author is Doug TenNepal, creator of The Neverhood and Earthworm Jim, creating Armikrog after a very successful Kickstarter from pretty much everyone other than myself who played The Neverhood back in the day. See, I love Doug TenNepal the artist. My adoration for The Neverhood basically created my eternal love for FMV games, claymation, indie games, the surreal and weird obscure games few people seem to have heard of (although enough to crowd fund a sequel evidently).

For the uninitiated, The Neverhood was a 1996 point and click adventure in the clay eponymous world, where you play as Klayman and have to find the crown of the king Hoborg. This involved exploring the world of the Neverhood, solving silly yet creative puzzles, endlessly backtracking and collecting history disks, one of which was stored in the longest corridor ever, which told the history of the Neverhood universe in clay etchings and the slowest walk cycles ever. It's hard to tell sometimes whether some of the dafter design decisions were deliberate or simply the case of wanting to keep every frame of animation made over an agonising year-long production. It is a game that is hard not to see the love that went into it, and that adds a charm that forgives some of its more fundamental flaws. The game was packed in on an OEM bundle but even so it did not sell well, possibly being a bit too out there even for the unbridled creativity that was the mid 1990s gaming landscape.

Two years later, its sequel, Skullmonkeys, followed pretty much the same formula. Eschewing the point and click shenanigans for a full on side scrolling platformer, the game was equal parts barmy and beautiful, full of a lot of surreal, hilarious and innately charming moments. These hilarious moments, like the beans scene and the awesome Bonus Room song (basically the best reason to kill yourself on that one level to collect every Swirly Q) were of course tempered by some iffy game mechanics, and an absurdly high difficulty curve artificially exacerbated by the fact there were only passwords and no save system for a PS1 game in 1998. General consensus is that the Neverhood is a better game, and I'm not going to argue, however I suspect that some individual scenes in Skullmonkeys are so funny they do bring the whole game up, and make you want to play more to see the next bit of slapstick. I did love it.

So with that, and the obvious and inexplicably gigantic success of Earthworm Jim (seriously, only in 1995 could that game get a TV show), TenNapel naturally released a terrible fighting game and disappeared from video games to make comic books and flash cartoons based on Ape Escape (this actually happened). But hey, he returned with a massively successful Kickstarter in 2013, and Armikrog is set to be released at the start of August.

So why am I so hesitant, I hear you cry? Well, TenNapel has said some very interesting things in the interim period, things that certainly colour the opinion of a creator. Things of a “I'm not very fond of gay people” fashion. Now, several commentators have brought in his religious beliefs, being a Breibart-esque republican Christian, and while there is a connection between his opinions and those of the religious right, it seems somewhat hypocritical to tar all religious folk with the same brush as the people he is tarring. There is a fascinating article on the website Mostly Retro, which asks the question “But if you’re not a homophobic, sexist bigot and you still want to back Doug TenNapel, I have one question... [w]hat the fuck is wrong with you?”

James Eldred's article, which is a really good read posits that final support of a project made by someone with very questionable beliefs is a tacit approval of said beliefs. How far does that go however? Pencil Test Studios, the publisher and developer of Armikrog is more than just Doug himself, surely you can support the studio and not TenNapel personally? Perhaps technically, but that's not really the point. He's writer, creator and designer of the game, his name is tied directly to it and it is his creative vision. Even if that £20 (£25 for the deluxe edition) you pay for the game does not in fact go straight into his bank account to buy more bigotry, it does serve to define him as a creative asset, and every success justifies the use of his name and his talent.

Which leads to the ultimate question, how connected is an artist's beliefs and their art? The safe answer is that it clearly depends, between different artists, different works even. In some cases even different editions of the same work will receive edits to fit in with an artist's new beliefs, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein being a particular damaging example compared to the original work. We can think of many artists who made a “religious” album of course, but these err towards very general displays of worship, rather than particularly contentious issues of a faith. In gaming it is even more difficult to see, partly because of the long lead times and rather large teams working on gaming ensuring the most controversial aspects of a belief system are removed before release. TenNepal has never released a game which explicitly is transphobic or misogynist or homophobic, and it seems astonishingly unlikely that he would compromise or manipulate a concept to fit something so alienating in.

So far, we may not be able to separate a creator entirely from his game (although of course New Theorists will argue that point with me), is it possible that people can buy a game and support the studio, the publisher and the creative part of an author without endorsing these beliefs. I disagree with Mr Eldred on that aspect. You can enjoy John Lennon's music and not endorse the fact he beat his wife, an act he apologised and showed deep regret for before his death. You can enjoy Muse without buying into Matt Bellamy's conspiracy theories. You can even enjoy the game Shadow Complex, despite it being based loosely on a book written by a homophobe hiding behind his Mormon beliefs to justify his bigotry. In the end it is art, and whatever art you choose to enjoy is your business.

Just be aware that your favourite games may be made by your least favourite artists...