Game of the Year 2015: Geoff’s Top Ten

10. Undertale

I don’t have any great nostalgia for Earthbound – I’ve never played the game, and my knowledge is limited to the fact that I know it’s a charming old-school RPG with a lot of eccentricities and a rabid fan following. Despite that, I couldn’t help but be intrigued by Undertale and its seemingly coming out of nowhere to take the gaming world by storm.

What awaited me was a romp through a world inhabited by some of the most memorable characters I’ve ever encountered in a game. The monsters in Undertale have a youthful innocence about them, and I found myself doing everything in my power to spare them. The game’s humor never falls flat – from the ever-lovable Papyrus to Sans’ deadpan snark and the Temmies’…whatever you call it. Even the random monsters you encounter each have their own charming quirks and personalities.

I finished a pacifist neutral run and continued straight through to get the true pacifist ending, and at this point I’m not even sure I could attempt a genocide run. While some of the game’s references to games long past are lost on me, I still gained such an attachment to the monsters of Undertale that I can’t even process the thought of mass-murdering them.

And I’m 100% positive that was Toby Fox’s intent.

9. Cities: Skylines

With EA doing their best to put a bullet in the entire city-building sim genre’s head with the disastrous SimCity 2013, it’s nothing short of a miracle that Paradox Interactive was about to pick up the pieces and make the best city-builder in years – at a budget price, no less.

Cities: Skylines strips everything down to the bare basics – it’s a fairly no-frills package that’s light on flash and heavy on substance. You have control over everything from zoning to utilities to healthcare to green space, and even though the game’s UI isn’t as streamlined or flashy as a big-budget game, it’s easy enough to figure out and full of options. There are few things more satisfying than starting with an empty expanse of land and seeing it slowly grow – from a small town to a commercial and industrial hub and finally to a bustling high-rise metropolis that would make Manhattan jealous.

Add in a steady stream of updates and expansions (both free and paid) from the developers and a thriving mod community, and Cities: Skylines has the legs to carry it farther than any game in its genre has gone in years.

Move over, SimCity, your reign is over.

8. Yoshi’s Woolly World

Every so often, a game comes along that’s so innocent, pure, and lovable that you can’t help but want to giggle with glee. No ultraviolence, no complicated plots, no greedy publisher antics…just pure, relaxing fun.

And then they make it star one of gaming’s most adorable characters ever. And because Yoshi wasn’t sickeningly cute enough, let’s just make him and the entire world out of yarn. And just for fun, let’s make Poochie the most freaking adorable thing ever put into a game – with his gleeful grin, oversized tongue, and cheerful yip-yips.

For crap’s sake, Good-Feel really knows how to melt away every single fiber of my jaded, cynical soul.

And even underneath Woolly World‘s sickeningly sweet exterior lies a fantastic game, with something to offer for both casual players and hardcore veterans alike. Just completing the game’s six worlds of stages is breezy in difficulty, but getting 100% of all the yarn bundles, flowers, and gems in each stage is another story entirely, and requires exploring every nook and cranny of every level. And did I mention that there’s a checkbox for finishing the stage with a full health meter too?

Yoshi’s Woolly World doesn’t thrive on the cheap deaths, brutal difficulty, or trial and error frustration that characterize so many platformers. Every level has its own theme and gimmick, and the developers were clearly high on Nintendo’s creative juice when designing them – even in the rare instances where some of the level design can be a bit questionable. It’s a truly mellow, relaxing experience that knows how to hit every single pleasure center in your brain.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go fire up the game and stare blankly at my TV for a few hours. Ignore the random exclamations of “d’aww” and “hnnngg” every five seconds with the incoherent gurgling noises in-between.

Shut up, it’s good for the soul.

7. Halo 5: Guardians

I never played Halo 4 until the Master Chief Collection came out, and after I played through that game, I felt like I was done with the series. It just didn’t feel like Halo, and I wasn’t a fan of the Prometheans, the changes to the multiplayer, or the lackluster campaign.

But I picked up Halo 5, and while the campaign was still hot garbage and the Prometheans are still there (and still suck), the multiplayer is the most fun I’ve had with Halo since the days of Halo 3.

The majority of my time with the game has been spent in Warzone, the biggest new addition to the series in years. While it’s essentially King of the Hill on steroids, at its best it’s a thrilling tug-of-war as the teams try to balance defense and offense, taking over bases, defeating bosses, and hopefully moving in on the enemy’s core. I’m not a big fan of the Requisition microtransaction nonsense, but it’s unobtrusive enough and it’s easy enough to get cards without paying, so I can’t say it really affected my enjoyment.

Despite being kind of sparse on content at release, the game actually works (which is a miracle considering 343’s track record with the series) and 343 has been hard at work adding new content, balancing modes, and in general making the game better. I’ve put more time into Halo 5 than I have any Halo game in years, and I still see myself going back frequently in the future for a few Warzone or Big Team Battle matches.

It doesn’t reach the heights of Halo 3, but it’s the first time I’ve felt positively about the series since Bungie passed the torch, and hopefully 343 is finally hitting their stride.

6. Rise of the Tomb Raider

I enjoyed the 2013 Tomb Raider reboot a lot, even if it did rely a bit too heavily on funneling you from shootout to shootout and was light on…y’know, raiding tombs.

Thankfully, the sequel fixes all that, with several more tombs and a new focus on exploration and survival. Finding and making use of resources is absolutely mandatory, and there’s a lot more incentive to explore the world this time – from tombs and crypts, to optional missions and challenges, and even exotic animals to discover. While Tomb Raider 2013 featured hunting and scavenging as part of its gameplay, it could largely be ignored in favor of just running and gunning. Not here; Crystal Dynamics has successfully made a game that’s truly about survival in the harsh wilderness.

And while there are plenty of firefights as well, they can, for the most part, be approached with a tactical perspective. Racing in with guns blazing is almost never preferred over scouting your enemies and planning your attack. Stealth kills are integral to the experience, and picking off your enemies one by one and using every resource at your disposal are tactics you must learn, and crafting explosives and other tools mid-combat out of resources you can find lying around will make your life so much easier.

That’s not to say there aren’t a rare few sequences where Rise just pours waves of enemies into a room for you to spray bullets into or take out in close combat – but those sequences are few and far between, and they’re easily the worst parts of the game. But overall, Rise of the Tomb Raider improves upon its predecessor in every conceivable way, and in any other year it likely would be even closer to the top of the list.