Fallout 3 has more memorable moments than F4, but only because they were so dumb that your brain would be forever damaged...
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RPG Codex Game of the Year 2015 - VOTING HAS BEGUN [AUTISM ALERT]
- Thread starter Fairfax
- Start date
Excidium II
Self-Ejected
Gary!
;^)
;^)
Ellef
Deplorable
Fucked up poll incoming. At least one of the AOD superfans will have swarmed the results.
toro
Arcane
- Joined
- Apr 14, 2009
- Messages
- 14,109
Shit always rises to the top.
Trash
Pointing and laughing.
Guess this one amounts to AoD, Witcher 3, Shadowrun and Underrail. Which is better and why?
Bubbles
I'm forever blowing
- Joined
- Aug 7, 2013
- Messages
- 7,817
Sampled a lot of bad games this year, couldn't finish most of them. Won't stop me from voting though!
The Quest
(Valiant effort at an old-school dungeon crawler, but the UI is still way too clunky; even Frayed Knights let you assign hotkeys to active abilities instead of forcing you to page through the menus and manually select a spell/portion/wand every single time you want to use them. Feels like the early 1990s again, and not in a good way. The weirdest thing is that you can only interact with containers that are positioned on the left side of your viewscreen; if you click on a barrel that's on the right side of the screen, you always swing your weapon at thin air instead. Probably a legacy of the phone UI, but terribly odd. In-combat options are also pretty limited; I want to do more than just spam the attack button 20 times or cast the same spell 10 times in a row. Most monsters just drop gold coins on death, and every gold drop takes three clicks to pick up. Just wastes my time. Meanwhile, the setting is quite boring, and the writing is pretty terrible as well. One of the game's biggest positive points is that many quests offer multiple solutions, usually along the good/evil binary. Dungeon design is also pretty good compared to the snoozefests we get from mainstream games nowadays.)
WL2: DC
(Now with more bugs, horrible VO, weird undocumented changes, and mod tools that nobody seems to be using. Might become better than the standard edition by 2017.)
Dead State Reanimated (They had one job - fix the way-too-late trigger date for the end game - and they failed.)
Hard West
(Unbalanced as hell and quite easy, but with a great atmosphere and good mission variety. Handcrafted missions are the way to go for tactics games. Surprisingly good flavour text too. Unfortunately, the basic combat gameplay is a bit too shallow; it became repetitive about halfway through, and this is not a long game.)
Legends of Scheissenwald (Actually quite good, with an interesting tactical movement system. The main problem is the combination of a long campaign, a limited sense of progression [including a few hard resets over the course of the campaign] and low unit variety, which makes combat feel repetitive far too quickly. The legends are cool though, and the writing is "unique" but entertaining.)
Renowned Explorers (off-putting aesthetics and repetitive gameplay, but offers 2-3 hours of fun)
BG2 (No.)
InvInc (repetitive and boring, sorry Codex fanclub)
Mordheim(A tactical squad game with no ability hotkeys, a silly "cycle through abilities and targets with the Q and E keys" UI, and no option for click-to-move. Poster child for consolitis. I don't see the point of the 3rd person camera here either -- did they think it would sell better? Staring at the laborious attack animations got tiresome after five minutes. Isometric would have fit the gameplay much better.)
AoD
(Innovative and fun. Impressive post-release support.)
Voidspire Tactics (Slightly less innovative, slightly more fun. Good exploration, good character system, good combat, fun environmental interactions [games with lightning+water puddle combos are always worth playing], and a strong sense of atmosphere. Biggest weakness is the rather too old school "put items in bags, put the bags in bigger bags, and put the bigger bags in giant bags" inventory system. Dialogue is sparse, but the game doesn't hinge on its writing anyway.)
WiWiH
(High water mark for mainstream writing in a video game. Full of entertaining quests with multiple choices, although the consequences are a bit too light for my taste. Lousy combat. Terrible itemization. Still getting new features and UI improvements through patches.)
Underrail (Good exploration and above-average combat, but a host of annoying and time-wasting design elements drags the game down; too many loading screens when travelling, eye cancer-inducing UI, terminally slow walking speed, respawning trash mobs, a stealth mode that offers massive benefits in exchange for walking reaaaaaally sloooowly, RNG-based quest rewards and loot, broken economy, wildly overpowered crafting systems, and a cooldown-based combat system that encourages repetitive gameplay. I would've greatly preferred Voidspire's approach here, where actions have execution times and need to be chosen according to the current situation - e.g. if an enemy unit gets its turn in 6 time units, then you don't use a grenade that takes 7 time units to explode. Or maybe you do use a grenade, but against an otherwise lower-priority enemy that will only be able to act in 8 turns. But maybe the unit that acts in 6 turns has an ability to push live grenades away... But maybe making him use that ability is better than giving him a chance to attack you... That kind of system is a much better fit for turn based combat imho.)
PilloE: (I actually liked the combat, but everything else was deeply meh. Grade only applicable to the pre-2.0 version. So many elements of the gameplay are being changed in patches that the game still feels like a work in progress, and I can't be arsed to replay it anytime soon. I'll assign the final grade to White March next year.)
SHoKo (If you want to cram this much dialogue into your game, you better make sure it's worth reading.)
Undertale (Three problems. One: I think metafiction should open up new avenues of insight into the relationship between people and art. Unfortunately, yakking about ludonarrative dissonance is not a new avenue anymore; I get bored just thinking about it. Thus, the game's "WOW I'M PULLING THE RUG OUT FROM UNDER YOU, GAME CHANGED MOTHERFUCKER" gimmick just annoys me. Two: the writing is clever enough, but it plays with infantile affectations in a way that I found violently annoying; "aw momma givez a hug" "lol the flowa is evil!" "uhhm mr sadghost seems real socially awkward-like", and so on. The game's "deeper" meta-elements hinge on the idea that you find this type of writing charming and emotionally resonant - otherwise, it all falls apart. Three: Bloody hell, that gameplay. Walk around, find encounter, navigate nested menus with Z, X, and arrow keys, select "Hug", get cute response, do bullet hell, navigate menus again, select "Hug" again, get slightly different cute response, do bullet hell again, and again, and again, and again. No thank you.)
SitS (Good aspects: the setting is pretty unique, and the puzzles are better than the rest of the gameplay. Bad aspects: the rest of the gameplay. Worst combat system I've played since... no, I cannot remember a worse combat system. Game is too large in scope for what the designers could deliver, leading to oversized areas clogged with respawning trash mobs. Simple, yet badly unbalanced rule system that looks more complex than it is, featuring descriptions like "1d1 + 1 damage" and mechanics like "lower Speed is faster". Inexplicably long loading screens. Still has bugs out the wazoo 9 months after launch. Quests feel weirdly unpolished. One example: a street urchin steals your ID papers at an inn. Later, you find the guy who looks after these urchins. You cannot talk to him about the theft, and you cannot pickpocket your papers back even with maxed out skill. The only way to get them is to kill the guy, based on the hunch that he might have the papers, and then loot them off his corpse. Who designs a quest like that? Why not even offer the option to ask the guy? Mind boggling.)
Victor Vran (Mediocre hack 'n slash. If I have to grade it in the same category as AoD and Voidspire, this is the grade it gets. Hearing Witcher Geralt's voice actor on other characters feels weird.)
Bloodlust: Shadowhunter (Super-low-budget hack 'n slash with vampires.)
THEA: The Awakening (Zzzzzzzz)
Despite the flood of trash this year, AoD, Voidspire, and Witcher 3 are really quite good compared to the usual mediocrity. I can comfortably pronounce 2015 a better RPG year than 2014.
The Quest
(Valiant effort at an old-school dungeon crawler, but the UI is still way too clunky; even Frayed Knights let you assign hotkeys to active abilities instead of forcing you to page through the menus and manually select a spell/portion/wand every single time you want to use them. Feels like the early 1990s again, and not in a good way. The weirdest thing is that you can only interact with containers that are positioned on the left side of your viewscreen; if you click on a barrel that's on the right side of the screen, you always swing your weapon at thin air instead. Probably a legacy of the phone UI, but terribly odd. In-combat options are also pretty limited; I want to do more than just spam the attack button 20 times or cast the same spell 10 times in a row. Most monsters just drop gold coins on death, and every gold drop takes three clicks to pick up. Just wastes my time. Meanwhile, the setting is quite boring, and the writing is pretty terrible as well. One of the game's biggest positive points is that many quests offer multiple solutions, usually along the good/evil binary. Dungeon design is also pretty good compared to the snoozefests we get from mainstream games nowadays.)WL2: DC
(Now with more bugs, horrible VO, weird undocumented changes, and mod tools that nobody seems to be using. Might become better than the standard edition by 2017.)Dead State Reanimated
(They had one job - fix the way-too-late trigger date for the end game - and they failed.)Hard West
(Unbalanced as hell and quite easy, but with a great atmosphere and good mission variety. Handcrafted missions are the way to go for tactics games. Surprisingly good flavour text too. Unfortunately, the basic combat gameplay is a bit too shallow; it became repetitive about halfway through, and this is not a long game.)Legends of Scheissenwald
(Actually quite good, with an interesting tactical movement system. The main problem is the combination of a long campaign, a limited sense of progression [including a few hard resets over the course of the campaign] and low unit variety, which makes combat feel repetitive far too quickly. The legends are cool though, and the writing is "unique" but entertaining.)Renowned Explorers
(off-putting aesthetics and repetitive gameplay, but offers 2-3 hours of fun)BG2
(No.)InvInc
(repetitive and boring, sorry Codex fanclub)Mordheim
(A tactical squad game with no ability hotkeys, a silly "cycle through abilities and targets with the Q and E keys" UI, and no option for click-to-move. Poster child for consolitis. I don't see the point of the 3rd person camera here either -- did they think it would sell better? Staring at the laborious attack animations got tiresome after five minutes. Isometric would have fit the gameplay much better.)AoD
(Innovative and fun. Impressive post-release support.)Voidspire Tactics
(Slightly less innovative, slightly more fun. Good exploration, good character system, good combat, fun environmental interactions [games with lightning+water puddle combos are always worth playing], and a strong sense of atmosphere. Biggest weakness is the rather too old school "put items in bags, put the bags in bigger bags, and put the bigger bags in giant bags" inventory system. Dialogue is sparse, but the game doesn't hinge on its writing anyway.)WiWiH
(High water mark for mainstream writing in a video game. Full of entertaining quests with multiple choices, although the consequences are a bit too light for my taste. Lousy combat. Terrible itemization. Still getting new features and UI improvements through patches.)Underrail
(Good exploration and above-average combat, but a host of annoying and time-wasting design elements drags the game down; too many loading screens when travelling, eye cancer-inducing UI, terminally slow walking speed, respawning trash mobs, a stealth mode that offers massive benefits in exchange for walking reaaaaaally sloooowly, RNG-based quest rewards and loot, broken economy, wildly overpowered crafting systems, and a cooldown-based combat system that encourages repetitive gameplay. I would've greatly preferred Voidspire's approach here, where actions have execution times and need to be chosen according to the current situation - e.g. if an enemy unit gets its turn in 6 time units, then you don't use a grenade that takes 7 time units to explode. Or maybe you do use a grenade, but against an otherwise lower-priority enemy that will only be able to act in 8 turns. But maybe the unit that acts in 6 turns has an ability to push live grenades away... But maybe making him use that ability is better than giving him a chance to attack you... That kind of system is a much better fit for turn based combat imho.)PilloE:
(I actually liked the combat, but everything else was deeply meh. Grade only applicable to the pre-2.0 version. So many elements of the gameplay are being changed in patches that the game still feels like a work in progress, and I can't be arsed to replay it anytime soon. I'll assign the final grade to White March next year.)SHoKo
(If you want to cram this much dialogue into your game, you better make sure it's worth reading.)Undertale
(Three problems. One: I think metafiction should open up new avenues of insight into the relationship between people and art. Unfortunately, yakking about ludonarrative dissonance is not a new avenue anymore; I get bored just thinking about it. Thus, the game's "WOW I'M PULLING THE RUG OUT FROM UNDER YOU, GAME CHANGED MOTHERFUCKER" gimmick just annoys me. Two: the writing is clever enough, but it plays with infantile affectations in a way that I found violently annoying; "aw momma givez a hug" "lol the flowa is evil!" "uhhm mr sadghost seems real socially awkward-like", and so on. The game's "deeper" meta-elements hinge on the idea that you find this type of writing charming and emotionally resonant - otherwise, it all falls apart. Three: Bloody hell, that gameplay. Walk around, find encounter, navigate nested menus with Z, X, and arrow keys, select "Hug", get cute response, do bullet hell, navigate menus again, select "Hug" again, get slightly different cute response, do bullet hell again, and again, and again, and again. No thank you.)SitS
(Good aspects: the setting is pretty unique, and the puzzles are better than the rest of the gameplay. Bad aspects: the rest of the gameplay. Worst combat system I've played since... no, I cannot remember a worse combat system. Game is too large in scope for what the designers could deliver, leading to oversized areas clogged with respawning trash mobs. Simple, yet badly unbalanced rule system that looks more complex than it is, featuring descriptions like "1d1 + 1 damage" and mechanics like "lower Speed is faster". Inexplicably long loading screens. Still has bugs out the wazoo 9 months after launch. Quests feel weirdly unpolished. One example: a street urchin steals your ID papers at an inn. Later, you find the guy who looks after these urchins. You cannot talk to him about the theft, and you cannot pickpocket your papers back even with maxed out skill. The only way to get them is to kill the guy, based on the hunch that he might have the papers, and then loot them off his corpse. Who designs a quest like that? Why not even offer the option to ask the guy? Mind boggling.)Victor Vran
(Mediocre hack 'n slash. If I have to grade it in the same category as AoD and Voidspire, this is the grade it gets. Hearing Witcher Geralt's voice actor on other characters feels weird.)Bloodlust: Shadowhunter
(Super-low-budget hack 'n slash with vampires.)THEA: The Awakening
(Zzzzzzzz)Despite the flood of trash this year, AoD, Voidspire, and Witcher 3 are really quite good compared to the usual mediocrity. I can comfortably pronounce 2015 a better RPG year than 2014.
Last edited:
InvInc
I will find you
and I will murder you in your sleep
Ellef
Deplorable
WiWiH, SHoKo
InvInc
I will find you
and I will murder you in your sleep
Liam Neeson is on codex!
- Joined
- Oct 14, 2012
- Messages
- 1,879,250
Based purely on how much fun I had with each game:
Age of Decadence
Wasteland 2 EE
Pillars of Eternity
Underrail
Age of Decadence
Wasteland 2 EE
Pillars of Eternity
Underrail
Zetor
Arcane
From the games I played (I need to get AOD and Voidspire at one point):
5: Underrail, Invisible Inc, Telepath Tactics
4: DOS:EE, SRHK, Templar Battleforce
POE can be between 3 and 4 depending on how much it was improved by recent ~balance~ patches and whatnot.
Rest are whatever.
5: Underrail, Invisible Inc, Telepath Tactics
4: DOS:EE, SRHK, Templar Battleforce
POE can be between 3 and 4 depending on how much it was improved by recent ~balance~ patches and whatnot.
Rest are whatever.
I sincerely hope they nerfed and buffed all the abilities and items so no matter what class and whatever loadout you carry - non-combat experience and combat tactics are the same.
True Neutral bitches!
Bubbles
I'm forever blowing
- Joined
- Aug 7, 2013
- Messages
- 7,817
InvInc
I will find you
and I will murder you in your sleep
I played it for four hours knowing that lots of people love the game to bits, but it's just completely unappealing to me
Lemming42
Arcane
We're just voting with trollheads?
Age Of Decadence
Fantastic, played it like 20 times or something ridiculous and still finding new routes through.
Underrail
Haven't given it as much attention as I should have, enjoyed what I played.
Undertale
Very gimmicky, the whole focal point of the game (being able to spare people) doesn't affect the gameplay in any real way since you still end up doing the exact same bullet hell segments. Might have liked it more if any of the characters had clicked with me, but I found them universally annoying.
Fallout 4
Not trying to be cool or score KKK or anything, it really was just agonizingly bad. Don't want to get roped into defending Fallout 3 again, because it's shit, but Fo4 really is worse in my book in every area except the shooting (which is still shit) and the writing, which is only marginally less idiotic.
Wasteland 2: Director's Cut
I liked WL2 the first time around, it came off much less favourably on a replay for some reason.
Age Of Decadence
Fantastic, played it like 20 times or something ridiculous and still finding new routes through.
Underrail
Haven't given it as much attention as I should have, enjoyed what I played.
Undertale
Very gimmicky, the whole focal point of the game (being able to spare people) doesn't affect the gameplay in any real way since you still end up doing the exact same bullet hell segments. Might have liked it more if any of the characters had clicked with me, but I found them universally annoying.
Fallout 4
Not trying to be cool or score KKK or anything, it really was just agonizingly bad. Don't want to get roped into defending Fallout 3 again, because it's shit, but Fo4 really is worse in my book in every area except the shooting (which is still shit) and the writing, which is only marginally less idiotic.
Wasteland 2: Director's Cut
I liked WL2 the first time around, it came off much less favourably on a replay for some reason.
Yeah, the first hour is great, takes you to a nice VtM: Bloodlines-like hub, multiple factions, cool vampire abilities, puzzles, etc... then people start to go "yo, I need you to get this stuff... at Lv 20 of the massive random dungeon beneath the Tattoo Shop" and it sorta becomes Demise: Rise of the Ku'Tan in third person. It's still kinda interesting, but the combat is weak, enemies are repetitive and the dungeons all feel the same quickly...Bloodlust: Shadowhunter
Lemming42 No, the voting is in this poll here: http://goo.gl/forms/MxdeoMNLsq
I went throug half the full list yesterday, saw their steam pages. Believe me, you're better off not knowing anything about them.This voting just made me realize how few new games I got around to actually play last year
DramaticPopcorn
Guest
Just did my patriotic duty only to realize how few of those games I actually played 
If it weren't for the newspost I would have never found this thread.
Thanks DarkUnderlord
If it weren't for the newspost I would have never found this thread.
Thanks DarkUnderlord
Kem0sabe
Arcane
Hopefully either Underrail or Witcher 3 wins it. 
I somehow like the new format. I have no idea how to make a top 3 with Age of decadence, Underrail and Witcher on that list. They all would be about 4.5 out of 5 for me so they got 5 as Shadowrun got 4 and Pillars 3.5 made it to 3. As much as the 2.5->3 that Fallout got. Not such a bad year. Except for Fallout but nobody expected too much and Pillars which is simply not fun.
voted 
^A preview of how butthurt people will be if Undertale gets into the Top 3...
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