Top 10 Games of 2016

I’ve never written a Top 10 Video Game List before. Seems way overdue.

Until 2016 I just never had the money or the time to play as many games as I could. I also was pretty stuck in my ways. I knew exactly what kinds of games I wanted to play and didn’t want to break too far out of that box. If it wasn’t some Japanese RPG or "Putt-Putt", I was probably not going to try it. At the beginning of this year Yahtzee wrote in his Extra Punctuation column that gamers should get out of their comfort zones in 2016. I took his advise to heart and spent the winter playing a filthy Polack gaijin RPG in "The Witcher 3". I spent the summer playing dirty western first person shooters. I really wanted in 2016 to try to see the full width and breath of what the gaming industry had to offer, both big and small. Here are my findings.

Now that said, I couldn't play everything. So many of the big budget games this year looked utterly boring, so I ignored them. Life is short, nobody has time to waste on regurgitation like "Far Cry: Primal". "Mirror's Edge" is a classic, "Mirror's Edge: Retaliation" has been turned into the standard open world game that everything else is now. (You'll notice, AAA open world games failed to make this list entirely.) But I also missed things I wanted to play, like "Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE", "Firewatch", "Superhot", "Dragon Quest Builders", "Oxenfree", "The Witness", and who knows, maybe "Titanfall 2" could have surprised me. I'm just one person, there seems to be an infinity of time at the beginning of year. By the end you realize there really isn't.

So without further ado, here the games of 2016 that I'm glad ate my time:

Rogue One - Still a Star Wars Prequel

"Rogue One" has its head in the right place, at least.

Currently Disney is threatening the world of pop culture with a superweapon whose power is beyond imagination: an endless series of Star Wars sequels and spin-offs for the rest of our lives. If you want a picture of the future, imagine Darth Vader’s boot stamping on a human face – forever. So it is good that "Rogue One" looks and feels like a very different kind of SciFi movie. This is not grandpa George Lucas' space opera.

Rather than the operatic joy of a typical Star Wars episode, "Rogue One" goes for a more dour and gritty view of the universe. It is stylistically darker and more serious than even "Empire Strikes Back" or "Revenge of the Sith". The heroes do not get huge action scenes and victories. Giant weird monsters and fun quips are missing. This is a Star Wars film without an idealistic Jedi hero. It shows just how essential those Joseph Campbell protagonists are, because without them, this series ends up in a much uglier and more desperate mode. With a cast of badly broken people and morally gray decisions, "Rogue One" gives us a view of the hard underside of the Star Wars universe.

But what I really love about "Rogue One" is the design of this movie. Most Star Wars cinematography is very plain, if even deliberately retro. No other film series can get away with cheesy side-wipes anymore, but Star Wars can. "Rogue One" uses a digital camera rather than film to create a grimmer tone, but also beautifully complex shots. This is the best looking Star Wars movie by far. The typical bombast of the John Williams score is replaced. We don't even get an opening crawl. Director Gareth Edwards makes it clear he's telling his own story without the old formula.

So far so good. The only problem is that "Rogue One" forgot to have characters.

The Last Guardian - A BlueHighwind and His Dog

There have been three games that I have been waiting patiently for in my little corner of the world. Two of those games came out in the very first week of this month. The last, "Kingdom Hearts III", will probably be released in my lifetime. Hopefully. But it’s definitely a weird feeling. All of a sudden I have very little to complain about at future E3s. I can’t be automatically disappointed at Square Enix for not showing "Final Fantasy XV". I can’t wonder if "The Last Guardian" was secretly cancelled. That part of my life is gone.

The world has become somehow a less magical place now that all my dreams have come true. That’s probably the worst lesson of becoming an adult. It is more enjoyable to want than to actually have. I spent six years on the Final Fantasy Wiki working to become an Admin, and when it happened I felt no joy. If all of a sudden tomorrow somebody hired me away from my day job to work full time as a video game/movie commentator/reviewer… whatever thing I am, I imagine I’ll be disappointed in that too. Because once you’ve achieved your goals you realize how hollow they really were. Life just becomes all the more empty.

And what do you know? It’s also appropriately Christmas, the time of the year when we get all kinds of bullshit and junk that somehow never satisfies us.

It should come as no surprise that both "The Last Guardian" and "Final Fantasy XV" have not lived up to expectations. After you’ve spent six or ten years waiting for a game, they can never match the emotional investment you’ve already put into them*. "Metal Gear Solid V" last year turned out to be badly flawed in story and excellent in gameplay. But after years of watching perfectly directed trailer after perfectly directed trailer, that was not enough. "The Last Guardian" and "Final Fantasy XV" are both not enough in their own ways. I’ll cover both on this blog before the year is done.

But "The Last Guardian" is much much shorter, so I beat that one first. Thus it gets the first review:

Political Correctness, Ghost in the Shell, and Doctor Strange - This is Why We Lost

My last post was a bit too negative, I'll say. It's been a terrifying week here in the United States. But now that week is over, Donald Trump is president. And so far the world hasn't ended. The world still could end. There's a lot that Donald Trump represents that is truly scary. But you know that. It might be time to wonder: are you being made to be afraid? (Just a thought.) This nation needs to calm the fuck down for a moment. We can panic when Trump does something. Protesting his (semi)-legitimate election*, I mean, sorry, legitimate election is doing nothing. It's only making us angrier, more scared, and making things worse.

So instead, why don't we do something that we should have done and look inward. Hillary Clinton got the majority of the vote, the Democrats are the majority opinion in this country, yet they've lost every step of government. Why are we so ineffectual?

Well, I have a theory: the liberal media sucks. I'm barely a media person, so I can only slightly count myself in this camp. But let's be real here: we've done a bad job. I'm not saying reporting has failed. I'm not saying Breitbart and Fox News should be the new standard for reality. Yet I can say the liberal side of the equation has been focused on the wrong things. I can't tell you every answer. The media can be blamed for making Donald Trump the only Republican candidate, they can be blamed for never talking about the real issues in this election.

They thought a sex scandal from eleven years ago was what should decide the election. Not the economy, not trade, not foreign policy, but that Donald Trump isn't very polite. I'm sorry, this is delusional. We are lecturing to people. The liberal media is telling people what to think and focusing on the wrong things.

And one of those things is going to be the subject of this article right now: political correctness in film criticism and why it isn't helping.

The End of the Real America

It is now 1:17 AM at the moment I begin writing this. I have attempted to sleep for the past two hours. I've tossed and turned for a few minutes, tried to stay my beating heart. Then I flip the TV back on. The talking heads can only show the inevitable. Hillary Clinton has lost. The final results are not in, but she has no path in Pennsylvania. It's over. Donald Trump will now be our next president. And god, I wish any of these news people could say anything positive. Because I need a sign of something good. Anything.

My only silver lining is imagining that I'm wrong about this man. That I am as wrong as pollster and every pundit. However Donald Trump offers absolutely nothing for me. I could run down his entire run of campaign promises (even the ones that contradict the other ones, even the ones that are so vague as to be utter bullshit) and not find a single one I agree with. And this man has a mandate. He was the smartest person in the room today. He has a Republican Party that controls the Congress that can only sniff which direction the mood is going. There's a Supreme Court vacancy he can fill. There's an army of state politicians who will follow him. Donald Trump has power to remake America. You were told to be terrified during the election by Hillary Clinton.

I want not to be terrified. I am terrified anyway.

 These are bad years coming forward. I want to write about reconciliation. About how maybe with united government we can have a successful nation. I want to find something good to take away from this election. I can't find one though. I am 2016's Liberal Tea Party.

The America I knew is gone. I had a Real America. A Great America. I don't know if we'll ever see it again.