The result is a more varied slate of FPS games than any other year that comes to mind. Almost all the best first-person shooters of the year share the same relentless focus on deconstructing how you move through a space, usually with a unique hook like sliding or double jumping, running on walls or slogging about in your mech. This year we saw a lot of games that probably wouldn’t have existed without the original Mirror’s Edge. It’s a game that, design-wise, zigged where I would have prefered it zagged - I don’t think it gains anything by going open-world - but I was so happy to revisit this franchise. But it was by far the biggest surprise of the year for me.Īnd while I don’t think it’d make a top five for me, I also want to mention Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst.
Best video games 2016 series#
Given that this is the sequel to a multiplayer-only game made by the creators of Call of Duty, I honestly expected the campaign to be phoned in, an obligatory series of missions to appease potential buyers. Titanfall 2 is the other game I’d single out, because its campaign mode came out of nowhere and is Nintendo-like in its devotion to wild invention around every corner.
Best video games 2016 update#
Doom is so confident in the fundamentals of its update to FPS action that it’s happy to have you do nothing else for the entire game.
Both were flashes of life in genres that had practically flatlined. Both were nearly lost in years of development hell. I compared it to Mad Max: Fury Road in my review, and I think that holds up - both are ferociously stylish and created with a view to trimming off as much fat as possible. Every developer, it felt like, was making a serious effort to differentiate themselves.ĭoom is probably my overall standout, a game that almost no one was expecting to turn out as well as it did. But this year, the release calendar was inked with fun surprises.
Destiny and Titanfall aside, I’d kind of written the genre off in recent years, as linear Call of Duty-wannabes dominated the market. Sam: Yeah, it really did, and no one was more surprised by that than me. The calendar was inked with fun surprises Gory shooters like Killing Floor 2 and Shadow Warrior 2 didn’t win us over, but were notable - and may have connected with me in a less crowded 12 months. The list doesn’t include Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, easily the best entry in the franchise in years, or small and enjoyable one-offs, like the retro-gritty Devil Daggers. If we expand our scope to include role-playing or stealth first-person games, then I’ll tack on Dishonored 2 and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. So our favorite shooters were an add-on and RPG: not a good year for the genre.įor comparison’s sake, we jotted down a list of shooters we considered for our Best of 2016 list, and we have five choices: Doom, Overwatch, Battlefield 1, Superhot, and Titanfall 2. Fallout 4 is on here, too, which is a role-playing game, albeit one with plenty of guns and opportunities to shoot people in the head. Let’s revisit The Verge’s list of best games of last year, and the only traditional first-person shooter that made the cut was The Taken King, an expansion to 2014’s Destiny. Before we dig into 2016, let’s review 2015.
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