It's That Time of Year

2015 is pretty much over. I hope it was good for everyone; if not, you must not have played the game of the year (GOTY, Goatee, or GoTey). Fallout 4 was released and is probably considered for a bunch of best games lists, Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate is likely still being played to death by its audience, while Pillars of Eternity and Axiom Verge are being picked apart by their rabid fans. There was much fighting to be had here at Why Should We Fight and it was narrowed down to two different games.

First things first, I play a lot of retro games and don't really pay attention to the year a title is released. Good games came out in 1995 and good games came out in 2015. I had to check the dates of a few of the games I liked and was surprised to find out that they were from 2014 or 2013; it didn't seem like they were that old. On with the show...

March gave us Bloodborne. Victorian style horror where you subdue werewolves and other beasts while unraveling the mysteries of a blood drunk city that holds a nightly hunt in the name of the Healing Church. You must seek the Pale Blood and escape the nightmare you have been trapped in. Don't worry it starts Victorian with your character looking like the guys in Brotherhood of the Wolf when they fought in the rain and becomes something much more cosmic. I've been a Souls series fan since Demon's Souls taught me it wasn't safe to bring everyone back to the Nexus but it was the Lovecraftian horror themes are what really kept me around. Read all of the item descriptions, look for the eyes, and get ready to use some of the most creative weapons you've seen in quite some time.

September brought us Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain. Metal Gear is another series I have been following for quite some time; it blew my mind in 1998. After an entire console generation where the "open-world" game has reigned supreme (and become kind of stale, c'mon Ubisoft, switch it up) it seems like we actually have something that feels different. The flaws of the open world genre are still there (EVERY soldier in Afghanistan would have been Fulton'd out), but adding it to the Metal Gear formula gives us a game where you can approach a situation the way you want to. I still love coming up on a guard post and shooting a tranq dart into each one of their chests as fast as I can and watching them fall like dominos. I'm kind of happy to see you aren't punished as bad as you used to be for using deadly force because so many of your tools will kill your enemies instead of just stunning them. This game is a real open world toy box.

I was on the fence for a while. Either one of these titles deserves recognition. In November something awesome happened. The Old Hunters. They took Bloodborne and ramped everything up to 11. Ridiculous new weapons that aren't reskins but completely new, more punishing bosses that may make you break your controller, and insight into what made the city of Yharnam full of bloodthirsty hunters who have become worse than what they hunt. This is DLC the way it should be, completely original content that adds to and takes nothing away from the base product. Bravo From Software, bravo.

Game of the Year: Bloodborne.