Rocket League

GWJ Community 2015 Game Of The Year

Section: 

Thank you so much to everyone who voted. Here are your results!

10.) Super Mario Maker (Wii U)

"This is the game I have wanted ever since I was a schoolkid first venturing into the Mushroom Kingdom back in the days of the original Super Mario Bros. I vividly remember the many hours I spent drawing my own levels, making up my own Mario power-ups and enemies, and dreaming of a day I might be able to make my own Mario game.

"That day is now, and I am hard-pressed to imagine Nintendo doing a better job with this first offering of a creation toolkit of this pedigree." — Farscry

"Just the act of creating is so satisfying, so intuitive, so egregiously Nintendo that I had to give this game a spot in the top five." — doubtingthomas396

"A childhood dream come true. Nintendo's focus on ease of use really pays off here and they've created the best game making toy thingy ever conceived." — garion333


9.) Dragon Age: Inquisition (Multiplatform) — Special Award: Classic Game of the Year

"I love the characters, the incredible dialogue writing, and the voice acting. I love the graphic design. I love the unorthodox open world exploration-based story telling. I love the crafting system and the variety of items. I love the variety of spells and abilities, the way they work, and the way you can use them to create teams with great synergy." — BadKen


8.) Pillars of Eternity (PC)

"A mature story told with good characters, an initially confusing combat system, and at least one metacontroversy that was handled with the grace of a sedated cow in a trebuchet." — Tanglebones

"Pillars is a strong and engaging start to Obsidian's foray into making games on their own. Competently written throughout, with moments of actual brilliance (Grieving Mother was... something else)." — Hyetal

"It evoked the Infinity Engine games of old, while still feeling fresh and unique. And the lofty thematic goals were built on top of a solid foundation of design decisions." — BNice


7.) Life Is Strange (Multiplatform)

"Truly loved the overall experience. The characters, the soundtrack, the presentation really delivered." — Shadout

"There's just something here, love the entire aesthetic." — Infyrnos

"Life is Strange managed to keep me engaged throughout in a way that few games before have, and certainly none of its particular style. I fully bought into every twist they presented me with and by the end I realized I was going to miss those characters the way I sometimes miss characters after I finish a good book." — nako

"If you buy this, be prepared to go on an emotional roller coaster that may ruin your mood for days afterwards...but it is worth it. It is rare that a game can actually teach someone something about themselves." — Granath


6.) Cities: Skylines (PC) — Special Award: PC Game of the Year

"What a terrific answer to recent city builder games. I got lost in a few cities, and have returned to it many times over the year to tinker. For me, it triggers a very zen state as I work to build a city that is both beautiful and functional, and it does it while looking amazing at the same time. What puts the game over the top, though, is the support after the fact in the form of changes from the dev and the community. It's going to be a staple that I pull out for years when I want my fix." — mateofalcone

"Fun and beautiful successor to the SimCity series." — WolverineJon

"Hey, EA. EA! Yeah, yeah you. Paradox took you to lunch in a category you should have owned. With the way this game is continuing to evolve and be supported, we may just have ourselves the new Kings and Queens of the city management genre." — UMOarsman

"The most relaxing, pleasant game I encountered this year - it was a delight to watch the sun rise over my city, or follow a doughnut van on its rounds. And it was an interesting experience to take what I've picked up about real-life urban design - the importance of infrastructure, amenity, etc - and apply it to the game." — PeterS


5.) Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (Multiplatform)

"What the hell is this?
Really - what the hell is this?
I fultoned a goat." — Aristophan

"This game surprised me. I've never enjoyed the MGSV series - can't get into wacky story-lines like this. But the gameplay, enemy AI, and spectacular combat opportunities and freedom to engage missions any way you want is wonderful." — WyattERP

"The controls, structure, everything was just fantastic, and I loved the hell out of it." — Chaz

"I FULTONED A BEAR." — cube


4.) Bloodborne (PS4) — Special Award: Console Game of the Year

"It got its hooks into me deep and in strange way was a huge creative inspiration for my own personal work. I can't think of any part of it I didn't thoroughly enjoy. This is a gem of a game that was completely off my radar when the year began." — TheHarpoMarxist

"The mix of Castlevania themes with the intense combat and sense of real, skill-based progress mean that I never get too far from this game. One playthrough isn't enough for this one." — Gains

"The mechanics are superb, and the feeling of accomplishment it can give you is something I don't think I've experienced in any other game." — Clusks

"Bloodborne continues the high standard set by the Souls Series, and it returns to the interconnected world design established in Dark Souls. Yharnam is a terrifying world that makes you want to tread cautiously into each new area, especially as the world slowly transitions from gothic horrors to Lovecraftian horrors. The removal of shields, introduction of gun parrying, and modification of the lock-on dodge system makes Bloodborne feel familiar yet entirely new at the same time. Whether I was smashing heads with my Kirkhammer or plucking away with my Saw Cleaver, fighting and exploring my way through Bloodborne was my favorite gaming experience of the year." — Dyni


3.) Fallout 4 (Multiplatform)

"The finest duct-tape hoarding simulator ever created. The other parts are good too I guess." — muttonchop

"Bethesda makes amazing games set in huge, fascinating worlds, and offer unparallaed freedom to their players in just about every respect imaginable. Generally speaking that’s enough to make me go head over heels about a game. And, Fallout 4 did all of that!" — zeroKFE

"Bethesda nail open world exploration, you don't know what's gonna be around the next corner or what secrets the various vaults littered around the wasteland hold within." — Spikeout


2.) The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (Multiplatform) — Special Award: Most #1 Votes

"Easily my Game of All Time. I can’t think of a game that pulled me in more, from the responsive and fun combat to the expansive story(which I adored). This game was an absolute treat and I enjoyed all the hours it took to complete all the sidequests(and achievements, natch)." — SallyNasty

"This is my favourite game. Ever. Geralt is like a family member, I love that guy. He was wooden and one-dimensional in Witcher 1, now he’s compassionate, humorous, sensitive, but still a total badass witcher. The quests are so varied, but great care has been taken with each of them, and the voice acting throughout is mostly outstanding." — kergguz

"It took 15 years, but TW3 finally dethroned Planescape: Torment as my all-time favorite game. I loved everything about it." — conejote

"Witcher 3 was something special, it came out and became my absolute favourite of all time, with no other coming close. The writing, the caharacters and the world building are unlike anything I've ever experienced." — MrDeVil909


1.) Rocket League (Multiplatform) — Special Awards: Most Overall Votes; Indie Game of the Year

"One of the best games ever made. The definition of 'easy to learn, difficult to master'." — _Free_

"I almost feel dirty putting this at number one as it's so simple and the scope is so much narrower than some of the others, it almost feels unfair. But what can I say? Sometimes somebody writes a song that only has 3 chords, and I can recognize the simplicity, but they do it so well, I can't help but love it. That's Rocket League. Three beautiful chords, arranged just so." — Localgod54

"It's a game that can be a blast playing with friends over some drinks, and at the same time it can be an amazing competitive experience when you really know what you're doing. Either way you want to play, this game will fit your need." — CptDomano

"Best Sports game of the decade, I reckon." — rattlehead57

"This game is a joy to play, in large part because of the GWJ community, but also the game itself is a distillation of fun. The developers stripped out all the nonessential elements of a sports game and kept all the things that make sports fun to watch and participate in. You have drama, heroics, mistakes, great saves, awesome plays, the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat - all in five minute chunks. Then you play again. And again. And again." — tboon


In addition, we have two honorable mentions:

[b]Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate[b] (3DS) — Special Award: Mobile/Portable Game of the Year

"There is no better co-op experience in all of gaming than monster hunting with three friends." — Dyni

"Great depth along with great co-op. This game really knows how to keep battle system interesting while also having great loot system. Always something new you want to try." — escher77


Yo-Kai Watch (3DS) — Special Award: Highest Average Vote

This award is a new one this year, and it's awarded to the game with at least three votes that received the highest average score. Yo-Kai Watch only barely qualified: it needed three votes to be counted, and it got only three votes total. However, every vote for Yo-Kai Watch was a #1 vote. If it was listed at all, it was that person's game of the year.

"A good substitute for a new Pokécrack release, with the added bonuses of being from Level-5, and actual references to Japanese culture." — sometimesdee

"Yo-Kai Watch came out of nowhere and sucked me in." — garion333

"This is probably the most realized world I've ever seen in a JRPG." — cube

Comments

_Free_ wrote:
jdzappa wrote:

Great job Clock! Thank you for putting this together!

When Rocket League came out I was giving my weekends up for kids soccer so the last thing I wanted was to play a soccer game after hours. I'm interested in trying it out now but am afraid that boat has sailed. Don't want to be the noob who everyone yells at.

It's never too late and it plays/feels very little like soccer. It's more like hockey mixed with San Francisco Rush.

Yeah, there are new people playing who picked it up over the holidays. It is very fun. And I guarantee that, if you play on PC, you will be better than me inside of 10 hours.

Nice work, Clocky, all your hard work is appreciated! for you and Panda Eskimo:

IMAGE(https://media.giphy.com/media/srg19CG0cKMuI/giphy.gif)

Thanks for doing this Clock and Panda.

The AAA executives take away from this list:

- 4 games had colons. Colons = quality.
- 5 games had RPG elements. We should have RPG elements taken out and added to season passes.
- 6/10 games on the list were technically sequels. I knew these mouth breathers only liked familiarity.
- The top game got around the cross platform play rule, which is completely unfair. We need to petition the platform holders to tighten up those rules so these indie scrubs stop delivering cool, I mean horrible features like that.
- The developers of the top two games don't treat their players like trash. Battlefront and Evolve were robbed.
- A lot of these games give players freedom but only two of them really let players be creative; that's only 20%. Players hate being creative confirmed.

Thanks for this Clock.

Whoo! Number 8. I've just started playing Dragon Age: Inquisition. I'm so far behind the curve I think I might be ahead of the curve.

Nice, my #1 game got in at 8. Not so bad for a somewhat niche single platform game. Need more of these games.

Surprised, happily so, to see Rocket League at the top. Was my most played (in hours) game of the year. Since August the first thing to truly get me out of the addiction has been Fallout 4. I've been clean for a week :O

A bit of a shame about Bloodborne not winning, seemed like these games finally had a slight chance for a well deserved top spot (after DS1 being so brutally robbed back in the days!). Maybe DS3 being multi-platform again, will have a chance. Especially if they add rocket cars.

I played one of them, DA:I.

#xboxpeon

Four played for me - PoE (quoted!), TW3, Rocket League and Dragon Age (my #1 last year). I've got the first episode of Life is Strange sitting on my PS4's to-do list, and I'll get to Fallout and Bloodborne eventually.

Many thanks to Clocky for the hours put in to get us our beloved top 10 of the year list! (+ special mentions). The final post with the rankings is fantastic to read, pulling quotes from the members of our community is always a nice touch.

Extra thanks to Panda Eskimo for the GOTY tallying tool which got us the results in an extremely quick timeframe! Like Sonic the hedgehog fast!

Out of interest how close was this photo finish between Rocket League & Witcher 3? If that information isn't top secret

Finally it's absolutely great to see Rocket League come out as the GWJ 2015 GOTY, flawless gameplay, fun factor through the roof & the feeling of improving at the game is hugely satisfying.

I haven't touched a single game mentioned in the OP.

As for Splatoon, I have an inkling (see what I did there?) of a feeling that if more people had even given it a chance, it would have shot well into the top 10. It is just that much of a different, in the right way, sort of thing for online shooters with an inventive single player mode to boot. Plus, many of the launch complaints like lack of maps have been addressed (5 at launch, 15 now, 16 total by the end of the month) and they've released a new weapon (or 2) every week since launch, too.

Spikeout wrote:

Out of interest how close was this photo finish between Rocket League & Witcher 3? If that information isn't top secret

Clocky posted the link of the scores earlier in the thread. It was really close between #1 and #2:

Rank Title Score
1 Rocket League 440
2 The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 426
3 Fallout 4 367

Spikeout wrote:

Out of interest how close was this photo finish between Rocket League & Witcher 3? If that information isn't top secret

It's not a secret, clocky posted a link to the spreadsheet. It was very close- Rocket League got 440 points, Witcher 3 got 424. So, 16 points the difference, or if you like, 2 average Witcher 3 votes.

Delighted that two of my own personal top 5 made up the top 2, and happy to see my Witcher 3 quote

Mantid wrote:

Woo! I voted for none of those! :D

Don't worry Mantid. You and I can go make our own Game of the Year list. With Blackjack. And waifus.

That said, after I spent three hours with Xenoblade Chronicles X, I decided it'd be better to wait until this year to really play it and see if I can help give it the "late to the party" chance for 2016. Sad that Splatoon didn't make the top 10, but at least there's a Nintendo game up there at all.

mrtomaytohead wrote:

I haven't touched a single game mentioned in the OP.

As for Splatoon, I have an inkling (see what I did there?) of a feeling that if more people had even given it a chance, it would have shot well into the top 10. It is just that much of a different, in the right way, sort of thing for online shooters with an inventive single player mode to boot. Plus, many of the launch complaints like lack of maps have been addressed (5 at launch, 15 now, 16 total by the end of the month) and they've released a new weapon (or 2) every week since launch, too.

I completely agree with you. It's a shame that the same people that claim to have COD fatigue didn't give much thought to this game. However, it was probably why the matches seemed much more fair and allowed younger kids (my daughter's first shooter....and we played it a ton) to have fun and not get beaten down.

Thanks for all the hard work Clocky!

Thanks for putting in the time and effort to make all of this happen, Clocky (including compiling all those quotes)!

Great to see my GOTY, Mario Maker, leading off the list! Yeah, yeah, at the #10 spot, but still. As Farscry mentioned in the voting thread, it seemed a bit of a long shot to make the top 10 at all, so I'm glad it did!

Thanks, Panda. Thanks, Clock; and I appreciate you taking the time to put together such a nice presentation, it made it more pleasant to read.

I didn't really play any of these (and I'm not interested in most) but it's interesting to read why people picked them. It got me to give some serious thought to some of the games I'm passing on.

I'm looking forward to seeing if one of my own late-in-the-year picks (Xenoblade Chronicles X) makes the list next year, especially seeing several of you mention it here.

ccesarano wrote:
Mantid wrote:

Woo! I voted for none of those! :D

Don't worry Mantid. You and I can go make our own Game of the Year list. With Blackjack. And waifus.

Some Catgirl game comes out tomorrow.

I too played none of those!

It's as much a testament to my lack of current-gen gaming technology as it is to my smelly hippitude (Her Story woz robbed!).

With that said, I've still had a bumper year of gaming.

Thanks for all your work! I enjoyed many of these games, and I can see how the rest are so loved.

Thanks for all your hard work, Clock and Panda! And nice to see the images back this year.

Well I played Her Story this year, and almost got around to Remember Me, which is as close as I'd get to Life is Strange. Not a surprising list, but a remarkable order. I've never heard anything less than shining praise for Rocket League.

This also pleases me:

126 DiRT Rally 10 1 1 10
127 Farming Simulator 2015 10 1 1 10

That's also the seventh GOTY for Team USA and the continuation of the North American lockout. Better luck next year, Europe and Japan!

2006: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (USA, Bethesda Game Studios/Bethesda Softworks)
2007: Portal (USA, Valve Corporation)
2008: Fallout 3 (USA, Bethesda Game Studios/Bethesda Softworks)
2009: Dragon Age: Origins (CAN, BioWare/EA)
2010: Mass Effect 2 (CAN, BioWare/EA)
2011: Portal 2 (USA, Valve Corporation)
2012: The Walking Dead (USA, Telltale Games)
2013: BioShock Infinite (USA, Irrational Games/2K Games)
2014: Dragon Age: Inquisition (CAN, BioWare/EA)
2015: Rocket League (USA, Psyonix)

Gravey wrote:

That's also the seventh GOTY for Team USA and the continuation of the North American lockout. Better luck next year, Europe and Japan!

Aw now Witcher 3 in 2nd feels even worse. So close.

Thank you, Clocky. You too, Panda. This is always one of my favourite moments within the community. We all appreciate the time taken to make it happen.

The Witcher 3 had the most #1 votes which is mightily impressive. It's almost criminal to achieve that and still miss out. I shall be making a start on my playthrough in the coming days. There's a real chance it could take my top spot for 2016.

Bloodborne done very well for an exclusive. That's cool!

I'm happy with this list. I don't know what YoKai Watch is, though.

Rocket League!

Yay Yo-Kai Watch!

I only played one of these games (Rocket League) and I put that right at the top of my list. So I'm happy with this outcome!

All of the others are pretty much what I expected

Top 3 played out pretty much as I expected, I know most people who played Witcher 3 loved it, but Rocket League was in many, many lists.

Kind of funny to see Dragon Age and here with how opinion on the game has turned over the year. But it's still a good game, so I'm pleased.

Also funny to see my handle in the op, it's an honor despite the typo being copied across.

Thanks again for all this work Clockly, we are lucky to have you do this.

Huge thanks to everyone who made this happen. It's always fun to read peoples' thoughts of the year in gaming and to see the grand totals put together with such panache.

BTW, Clock, I see from the spreadsheet that there are over 400 games, but I'm curious how many people posted lists. So many lonely games with only a single vote!

I only listed Rocket League and it got 1st place! That means something but I'm not sure what!

I love this, every year. Thanks Clocky.

Played 6 of the top 10, only 'finishing' 2 of those (3 if you count 50 hours in Rocket League as enough). Didn't play a tonne this year, but glad what I did seems like quality stuff.

DA Inquisition in the top 10 is interesting. I also don't think I will do my usual 'sourcing games for the new year' from this list, I'm going clean slate. Ready to pounce on whatever the surprise new hotness might be.

Thank you, Clock!

Looks like I should move The Witcher 3 closer to the top of my pile. Interesting to see how highly Fallout 4 scored (average 7.2) - that was a bit better than I'd expected. Also interesting to see Pillars of Eternity's lukewarm average score (5.9) - I thought it was generally well-regarded.

As one of the three people who voted for Total War: Attila, and one of the two people who voted for Nobunaga's Ambition: Sphere of Influence, I feel special.

Aaaaand once again, not a single game of my top ten makes it into the community GOTY list. I must come to terms with the fact that I may be weird.
Also, we have a tiny BBC code fail in the original article:

[b]Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate[b]

Nevertheless, I would like to second:

tboon wrote:

Nice work, Clocky, all your hard work is appreciated! for you and Panda Eskimo:
IMAGE(https://media.giphy.com/media/srg19CG0cKMuI/giphy.gif)

I always love, love, LOVE reading everyone's list, and hearing about different opinions. I was very much on the fence about Witcher 3 and the Community GOTY thread pushed me over the edge. I'm also curious about Rocket League, but I know we're never meant to be, time zones and all.