This was tough.

2016 had so, so many stellar games that almost any list would essentially leave out a few favorites. However, we combed through our personal gaming archives, had several heated discussions over email and in person, swapped a lot of skeptical hippo memes and finally managed to narrow it down to a select few candidates.

(NON-)SPOILER NOTE: This post discusses the moral situations of the protagonists of several games without going beyond very general plot outlines (Does the character make seemingly immoral decisions? Do his/her reasons seem good?

Why Hasn’t There Been a Great Movie Based on a Video Game?

When I saw the roller-coaster-like movie Gravity, I was surprised to realize that I occasionally felt like I was watching a video game on a giant screen.

When it comes to games with stories, I’m a completionist. I’m a story completionist rather than a gaming completionist—once in a long while I’ll aim for 100% completion in a particularly great game, but mostly I’m content to do the main content and a selection of the side quest-y stuff. 

Why Keep the Flawed Masterpiece GTA V So Stupid, When It Could At Least Be Irreverent and Clever?

I recently finished a fifty-five-hour playthrough of Grand Theft Auto V. It is a brilliant achievement. It’s a ridiculously fun game. It’s also a very disappointing game.

Spoiler warning: This post contains spoilers for The Last of Us (little ones), the Left Behind DLC for The Last of Us (big ones), and, well, 1987’s Metroid.

A lot of role-playing games (RPGs) new and old let you pick the sex of your character (male or female) before you start. Which is awesome. I’ve played Mass Effect with both Maleshep and Femshep characters and got two games’ worth of quality voice acting for the price of one. 

Has Mainstream Gaming Gotten Less Patient?          

I remember a time in about 1991 when I borrowed Super Mario Brothers 3 from a friend for a weekend. I wanted to beat it before I gave it back, but this being the relatively early days of console gaming,

 In the last couple of years, interconnected games in which player actions in one game affect options or situations in another have started to pop up more frequently than usual.

As I discuss in a related post [here], escort missions are usually terrible, bringing otherwise fun games to a screeching halt with shoddy mechanics, annoying characters, and terrible AI.

Note: spoilers for the two games being discussed are all over this article.

Note: spoilers for the two games being discussed are all over this article.

Can Gameplay Have Spoilers Like Stories Can?

NOTE: This post contains story and/or gameplay spoilers for the following games: Final Fantasy VII, Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem, The Walking Dead (Telltale Games version), Mass Effect (1), Heavy Rain, Spec Ops: The Line, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, Infamous 2, and Mass Effect 3.

Just finished a re-play of BioShock Infinite the other day. There are so many reviews and gamers calling BioShock Infinite one of the best games every made for the PS3.

Balancing the Old and the New in Game Sequels

I started playing Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones for GBA yesterday, and while on the Fire Emblem Wiki I glanced over the summary of the game’s reception, which went something like this:

In another post, I argued that videogames (like all expressive media) influence the world but that, cumulatively, their influence is more likely to be positive than negative because games can show us new. 

Dive into XCOM’s Compelling Video Game Story

            Partway through XCOM: Enemy Within (the expanded version of XCOM: Enemy Unknown), I realized that its video game story would never work in a movie.