# The Arcade 2015 Game of the Year Awards [2015 GAME OF THE YEAR]



## Charlotte D. Kurisu (Jan 5, 2016)

credits to  for the banner​
Hi guys. Welcome to the 2015 edition of the NF Arcade section's Game of the Year Award. It is time to look behind at what this year has offered in terms of gaming and to recognize which game was the best of the best.​

This is the big one guys. What game stood out to you the most in 2015?

Here are the nominees for the *2015 Game of the Year*:



*Spoiler*: __ 



*Rocket League
*
(Psyonix)
(PC, PS4)​




*Spoiler*: __ 



*Bloodborne
*
(FromSoftware-Sony Computer Entertainment)
(PS4)​




*Spoiler*: __ 



*The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
*
(CD Projekt RED-CD Projekt)
(PC, PS4, Xbox One)​




*Spoiler*: __ 



*Xenoblade Chronicles X
*
(Monolith Soft-Nintendo)
(WiiU)​




*Spoiler*: __ 



*Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain*
(Kojima Productions-Konami)
(PC, PS4, PS3, Xbox One, Xbox 360)​




*Spoiler*: __ 



*Yoshi's Woolly World
*
(Good Feel-Nintendo)
(WiiU)​




*Spoiler*: __ 



*Super Mario Maker
*
(Nintendo)
(WiiU)​




*Spoiler*: __ 



*Fallout 4
*
(Bethesda Game Studios-Bethesda Softworks)
(PC, PS4, Xbox One)​




*Spoiler*: __ 



*Splatoon
*
(Nintendo)
(WiiU)​




*Spoiler*: __ 



*Pillars of Eternity*

(Obsidian Entertainment-Paradox Interactive)
(PC)​



In case of a tie, I'll ask three/four anonymous judges to give me their final votes in order to break the tie and declare the winner. 


Well then. Vote away peoples :metroid


----------



## Atlas (Jan 5, 2016)

Witcher 3. Get it.


----------



## St. YatōKiri_Kilgharrah (Jan 5, 2016)

Xenoblade X better take it. 

Gonna be a close match.


----------



## Buskuv (Jan 5, 2016)

lol no it's not 

It's going to be the Witcher 3.


----------



## Kaitou (Jan 5, 2016)

Xenoblade Chronicles X


----------



## Monna (Jan 5, 2016)

Gotta be Xenoblade


----------



## St. YatōKiri_Kilgharrah (Jan 6, 2016)

Definitely gonna be Xenoblade 

Especially if the people can stop playing the game long enough to vote lol.


----------



## The World (Jan 6, 2016)

witcher 3

fuck weeb games


----------



## Naruto (Jan 6, 2016)

St. YatōKiri_Kilgharrah said:


> Xenoblade X better take it.
> 
> Gonna be a close match.



I have 120 hours in Xenoblade X, and I love it.

But Witcher 3 is the game of the decade. No fucking contest. That said, this is a weeb forum...


----------



## Yagami1211 (Jan 6, 2016)

Yakuza 5 ?


----------



## Kaitou (Jan 6, 2016)

The World said:


> witcher 3
> 
> fuck weeb games





Naruto said:


> I have 120 hours in Xenoblade X, and I love it.
> 
> But Witcher 3 is the game of the decade. No fucking contest. That said, this is a weeb forum...



YEH! Fuck your westaboo shit. ]=<


----------



## Charlotte D. Kurisu (Jan 6, 2016)

don't mind warudo. he's into kpop shit.


----------



## Naruto (Jan 6, 2016)

Don't be mad, Kaitou. I like Xenoblade, flaws and all. It has consumed all my free time as of late.

Witcher 3, though


----------



## Furious George (Jan 6, 2016)

You flee my dream come the morning
Your scent-- berries tart, lilac sweet
To dream of raven locks, entwisted, stormy.
Of violet eyes, glistening as you weep.



This was never a contest.


----------



## Kaitou (Jan 6, 2016)

Naruto said:


> Don't be mad, Kaitou. I like Xenoblade, flaws and all. It has consumed all my free time as of late.
> 
> Witcher 3, though



I love Witcher 3 too, maing, so it's totally understandable but I like my weeb shit more than my westaboo shit.


----------



## luminaeus (Jan 6, 2016)

I think we all know what game is winning this


----------



## kluang (Jan 6, 2016)

As much as I enjoted the other titles, Witcher takes it. You can play Mgs for one mission or two and then change to other game or do other stuff then come back later but with Witcher you will dedicate at least 5 hours and do a few question mark stuff without doing the main quest. Its that addicting.


----------



## luminaeus (Jan 6, 2016)

I think you meant to say Fallout 4


----------



## Furious George (Jan 6, 2016)

Jane said:


> Salt.



lol keep it coming.


----------



## Kaitou (Jan 6, 2016)

Phanalax said:


> I think you meant to say Fallout 4



Fallout 4 wasn't as bad as people make it seem. It was just inferior to Fallout New Vegas. Anyway, lolJane.


----------



## St. YatōKiri_Kilgharrah (Jan 7, 2016)

Fallout 4 is only good if you're not looking for an rpg.

Also lol at all them Witcher 3 votes.You guys sure do love your rabbit hole games 

The monster hunting and tracking in it still sucks, but yeah they really nailed the formula they had with this one. 

Im gonna go back to Mira now lol

Link removed

Link removed

X is still the better RPG. Especially when it comes to combat


----------



## Deathbringerpt (Jan 7, 2016)

"Rabbit hole games"

That is some hilarious shit right there. It doesn't fucking mean anything but it has some obvious negative connotations.

X got toned down by the multiplayer shit, especially by the recent revelations of the original ambitions of the game.


----------



## Simon (Jan 7, 2016)

Game's great but fuck that vote for LynLee VA for best performance bud. 

You trying too hard.


----------



## Naruto (Jan 7, 2016)

St. YatōKiri_Kilgharrah said:


> X is still the better RPG.



It's not. It really isn't.

Xenoblade fills a very specific niche: big fucking mechs you can fly around and a big world to do so in. It's a simple formula and it worked.

...but the dialogue is atrocious, and the vast majority of quests are fucking mmorpg bullshit. "Get X amount of monster eyes" and some such. Even if the underlying plot is actually kind of interesting, the narrative itself is so ridiculously boring it fails to build any significant amount of tension.

Meanwhile Witcher has no filler whatsoever. Every side quest is a self contained story, and the game paints a beautifully grim picture of its universe. The richness in its detail is staggering, but the real genius of the game is in the fact that the developers clearly leveraged the nature of the main character to structure their narrative as you would an old detective novel. They understood that the meat and potatoes of it would (or should) be about Geralt's job as a monster hunter, and quickly ensured that while you weren't actively involved in tracking down Ciri, the brunt of the game shouldn't amount to _"things you do whilst not moving the story forward"_. Lifting a curse is an act approached with a weird mixture of triviality and mystique. It's a contract, and something you do more than a few times throughout the game. By all rights it should be trite after a point, but it never is. The situation is always different, the people are always different, and you leave a piece of yourself behind every time. Despite the severity of his persona, Geralt is shown to be a compassionate man. It's strangely comforting and humanizing to watch him give a murdered bride a proper burial ceremony. You'll discover the dark secret of a small isolated village and the terrible mistakes of a young doting couple when not involved in a political dispute or fleeing from the wild hunt.

This game conveyed the same sort of craving, the same sort of impetus you get from a good book that you just can't put down, because no matter what you chose to do, odds are it would be interesting and enlightening to some degree.

And also card games and horse races


----------



## Gaawa-chan (Jan 7, 2016)

Heh, okay.  Uh... well, I'm the only one that's voted for Super Mario Maker.


----------



## Charlotte D. Kurisu (Jan 7, 2016)

Gaawa-chan said:


> Heh, okay.  Uh... well, I'm the only one that's voted for Super Mario Maker.



It's a goty contender for sure. Really loving it. Just goes to show you that 2015 was a good year.


----------



## The World (Jan 7, 2016)

I got bored of the original Xenoblade and the big open world mmorpg fetch quest bullshit

not to mention the shit resolution and textures caused actual physical pain to my eyes


----------



## Shiba D. Inu (Jan 8, 2016)

fuck weeb games


----------



## Monna (Jan 8, 2016)

Gaawa-chan said:


> Heh, okay.  Uh... well, I'm the only one that's voted for Super Mario Maker.


It close for me. There were a lot of good games in 2015.


----------



## St. YatōKiri_Kilgharrah (Jan 8, 2016)

Deathbringerpt said:


> "Rabbit hole games"
> 
> That is some hilarious shit right there. It doesn't fucking mean anything but it has some obvious negative connotations.
> 
> X got toned down by the multiplayer shit, especially by the recent revelations of the original ambitions of the game.



No thats you readin' into shit lmao.

not gonna fault people for liking alice in wonderland my man lol.\

And you didnt play xenoblade x anyway lol. There's nothing they toned down, they just rewrote the story and made it so the sidequests shit all over the last games in terms of quality.

Its like a tv show where you have your main plot arc but all the character related interesting shit happens in the other episodes. If you've watched The wire or true detective you should be familiar with that kind of setup

Besides the multiplayer is boss and totally fits the concept. Lots of mileage outta it.


----------



## St. YatōKiri_Kilgharrah (Jan 8, 2016)

Naruto said:


> It's not. It really isn't.
> 
> Xenoblade fills a very specific niche: big fucking mechs you can fly around and a big world to do so in. It's a simple formula and it worked.
> 
> ...



Lmao. Just LOL. MMORPG bullshit my ass. The only quests that are like MMO quests are the simple board quests which only exist for grinding purposes.People disliked the fact that in xenoblade chronicles you had to complete a lot of those "grinding" quests to get to the interesting quests that flesh out the world/have cutscenes ect. So Monolith Soft put all those quests on the mission boards.

The NPC Question Mark/Affinity/Story/ Random encounter quests are not at all Like an MMORPG quests. Im not gonna fault you if you like how Witchers quests develop more, because there are generally very interesting( hence why they're called rabbit hole quests), but they have just as many "bullshit" quests that you people dont like. The good just outways the bad in most gamers eyes. The whole concept of calling out quests meant for grinding during exploration as "bullshit fetch quests" never made any sense to me, but then again gamers are fucking stupid.


The design goals of Xenoblade X and Witcher 3 are very different in the sense that Xenoblade X is a story about the Planet itself and its people. So you have a lot of sidequests devoted to either showing you the weird shit that happens on this inhospitable planet, or focused on developing the characters who live on the planet.

If you like the tension the story of the witcher has thats all fine and dandy but the feeling a JRPG and a WRPG give off when it comes to narrative elements are VERY different. If you like the other one better than sure. Its not a fucking suspense novel. This is not Scooby Doo the RPG.

Xenoblade X has a different kind of tension. I mean that shit is practically a stealth game when it comes to exploration lol. That is the game's primary strength and its what makes the game a blast to play, beyond any other narrative element or nugget pushing you along. That is what makes it the superior RPG in my eyes. The battle system is a lot more fun too.


----------



## Kaitou (Jan 8, 2016)

Despite _Xenoblade Chronicles X _ being my GOTY for 2015, _The Witcher 3 _really deserves it. If you say otherwise you might as well say you hate westaboo shit.


----------



## St. YatōKiri_Kilgharrah (Jan 9, 2016)

Kaitou said:


> Despite _Xenoblade Chronicles X _ being my GOTY for 2015, _The Witcher 3 _really deserves it. If you say otherwise you might as well say you hate westaboo shit.



They both deserve it imo lol.

But if you say bloodborne then you're getting fucking cut.


----------



## Deathbringerpt (Jan 9, 2016)

St. YatōKiri_Kilgharrah said:


> They both deserve it imo lol.
> 
> But if you say bloodborne then you're getting fucking cut.



Bloodborne is just as deserving, drop the bullshit.


----------



## Monna (Jan 9, 2016)

This was a tough poll anyway.

The game of the year is Kirby and the Rainbow Curse, but that wasn't a choice so I had to settle voting for the runner up.


----------



## Naruto (Jan 10, 2016)

St. YatōKiri_Kilgharrah said:


> Lmao. Just LOL. MMORPG bullshit my ass. The only quests that are like MMO quests are the simple board quests which only exist for grinding purposes.People disliked the fact that in xenoblade chronicles you had to complete a lot of those "grinding" quests to get to the interesting quests that flesh out the world/have cutscenes ect. So Monolith Soft put all those quests on the mission boards.



Literally none of the quests are good, be they basic/normal/affinity/story or otherwise 

But let's, for the sake of argument, presuppose that the story is totes brilliant. Is that what you spent 99% of the time doing in Xenoblade? Because, and once again I'm even going to assume that you also consider the various requirements to each new chapter riveting and exciting, the chapter missions themselves are super fucking short and there's only twelve of them.

Is that Xenoblade's strong point then? Nah, bro. It ain't. Even if you think the chapter missions are amazeballs, there isn't enough of it for you to turn around and tell me the massive amounts of fucking filler don't exist.

And, to reiterate an earlier point, they all stink anyway. Which I guess is subjective and all, but come on. The characters are anywhere from detestable (Lin), acceptable (Elma) or forgettable. Cross is nearly irrelevant to everything, serving merely as a boring point of view character with no personality whatsoever. What few dialogue choices exist feel pointless and shoehorned into the various cutscenes and quite frankly completely break the flow of conversation in its implementation.



			
				St. YatōKiri_Kilgharrah said:
			
		

> The NPC Question Mark/Affinity/Story/ Random encounter quests are not at all Like an MMORPG quests.



They are exactly like MMORPG quests. Even the story quests are arguably less presentable in a single player environment than, say, SWTOR. In fact, this game feels like it was originally imagined as an MMORPG. A good one, if that makes any difference to you. Because as much as I disagree with your preposterous view on the quality of the quests, I do enjoy Xenoblade Chronicles X 



			
				St. YatōKiri_Kilgharrah said:
			
		

> but they have just as many "bullshit" quests that you people dont like. The good just outways the bad in most gamers eyes.



No, actually there really aren't. At all. Even the treasure hunts get interesting with small puzzles to solve inside caves and little bits of pieces of lore you learn about the previous owner of a particular set of armor. Everything is overall more involved and less detached. I don't really recall a quest where I just go somewhere and kill X amount of dudes. Even when it's just a simple contract to kill a beast somewhere, it's never without interesting expository dialogue, investigation sequence or a small twist at the end.

I will grant you that trying to 100% the game has an extremely boring part involving sailing around Skellige for crap loot just to remove all the question marks in the middle of the ocean. I did not enjoy that, and in fact hated it so much I almost didn't finish everything.



			
				St. YatōKiri_Kilgharrah said:
			
		

> The whole concept of calling out quests meant for grinding during exploration as "bullshit fetch quests" never made any sense to me



Your standards are low ?\_(ツ)_/?



			
				St. YatōKiri_Kilgharrah said:
			
		

> but then again gamers are fucking stupid.



Ad hominem? Come on, bro. Here I am being all civil and shit, taking the time to explain my opinion to you without attacking you and you do me like that.





St. YatōKiri_Kilgharrah said:


> I mean that shit is practically a stealth game when it comes to exploration lol.



It's literally just like playing an mmorpg, trying to stay out of aggro range of mobs you and your group can't or would rather not take on for whatever reason. I love stealth games and would not compare this to a single decent one I've played.

*AND DESPITE ALL OF THAT SHIT I STILL LOVE XENOBLADE CHRONICLES X* 

Because Mira is awesome, piloting a mech is awesome and for combat that's completely menu-based, they made it pretty enjoyable. Oh, and the soundtrack is cool, too.

You must understand I am exceedingly critical of video games. The more I love them, the more I play them, the more I notice their shortcomings.

Witcher 3 wasn't flawless, but most of its flaws were technical, and to be honest this was almost entirely offset by the dev team religiously patching things up and adding requested features. I ran into a mountain of bugs and it really pissed me off at the time. There was a bug where your stamina wouldn't regenerate, that was a pain in the butt. And it crashed to desktop a lot. There was a quest that you could not finish at all. More than one, actually. But most of it is fixed by now, and while that doesn't excuse the bug-ridden experience I had when I first played it, you really couldn't ask for more after the fact. Things are fixed, DLC was always free and they added New Game+.



Kaitou said:


> Despite _Xenoblade Chronicles X _ being my GOTY for 2015, _The Witcher 3 _really deserves it.


----------



## Buskuv (Jan 10, 2016)

St. YatōKiri_Kilgharrah said:


> They both deserve it imo lol.
> 
> But if you say bloodborne then you're getting fucking cut.



Don't be mad your Nintendo  checks haven't cleared yet.

Bloodborne deserves plenty of praise and is a contender for Game of the Year; it's entirely possible to have more than one obvious, clear winner in a single year in this silly, arbitrary and pointless contest.


----------



## Kaitou (Jan 10, 2016)

I appreciate the applause Nerdo-kun. 

I really enjoyed all three games a lot, tbh. I was happy to be a gamer in 2015.


----------



## Simon (Jan 10, 2016)

Great post man, wish I could have enjoyed Xenoblade X as much as you guys. Played for 30 hours and the MMO combat really turned me off.


----------



## St. YatōKiri_Kilgharrah (Jan 10, 2016)

Naruto said:


> snip



Thats all fine and dandy.Your opinion is quite valid, as is mine :3. Dont take it personally when I say gamers are fucking stupid though, we all do stupid shit at times, some more than others. Been on enough forums to see that reality lol.


And on the subject of Bloodborne:

To this day I have zero idea why people are obsessed with the Souls games.

The level design in them is too basic to be a metroidvania/exploration focused game and the games are way too short and the story is basically inconsequential to the overall game (the lore is deep but its just window dressing for nerds to hem and haw over online.)  

Why people compare them to a puzzle game of all things is weird to me. Especially when people go on and on about how demon souls has the best level design. And the loading times, good looooorrrrd. 

Sometimes I think people just care about the themes more than having actual interesting progression or central idea that works as the motivation and impetus to actually PLAY the game. That's what souls does best imo, having a unique theme to dress up the eugenics.


----------



## Buskuv (Jan 10, 2016)

St. YatōKiri_Kilgharrah said:


> And on the subject of Bloodborne:
> 
> To this day I have zero idea why people are obsessed with the Souls games.
> 
> ...



I have literally never seen anyone compare them to puzzle games. 

They're not for you; that's evident.  And that's fine.

They're great games, though, and it's not really that hard to see why people like them. The combat and pacing of the game is fantastic, and allows for a variety of ways to play, and keep playing; how you approach a given situation, how you react, how you want to tackle obstacles is up to you. That's only gotten more and more varied as the game has gone on.

And I don't know who says the levels are complex, but they are well designed (well, maybe barring 2) and are great and effective at what they do.  The game rewards exploration; and they use shortcuts in a great way.  This is mostly evident in Dark Souls 1 and Bloodborne, however, since Demon's Souls has the Nexus and Dark Souls 2 has... warping bonfines.

Sometimes I think you're putting words into people's mouths to bolster your argument rofl.  The exposition of the series is applauded because it's organic--it unravels itself as you play and explore, and if you're not interested you can just kill monsters and dudes, but if you are you can delve into the side stories, world building and past lore of the game.  The fact that it's atypical, especially for modern games, is appreciated.  In fact, there are probably more people simply interested in the PvE and PvP than people who like to delve into the lore, given how much the games are praised for being difficult rather than how 'deep' they are in terms of storytelling.  The choice to ignore it or dive into it is what people like.

I have no idea what you mean by dressing up eugenics.


----------



## The World (Jan 11, 2016)

St. YatōKiri_Kilgharrah said:


> Thats all fine and dandy.Your opinion is quite valid, as is mine :3. Dont take it personally when I say gamers are fucking stupid though, we all do stupid shit at times, some more than others. Been on enough forums to see that reality lol.
> 
> 
> And on the subject of Bloodborne:
> ...


----------



## St. YatōKiri_Kilgharrah (Jan 12, 2016)

Dr. Boskov Krevorkian said:


> I have literally never seen anyone compare them to puzzle games.
> 
> They're not for you; that's evident.  And that's fine.
> 
> ...


Dressing up eugenics = stat building.


Okay that makes sense ( Zelda is the puzzle game Im talking about)


So Witcher 3 won. Cool. Honestly though I cant get over how clunky the game's combat is. I prefer the books I guess.


----------

