With 2016 nearly at an end, it’s time to take stock of some of the best games of the year that went under the radar. Here’s Game Rant’s pick of the games that deserve more recognition.
In a year full of such incredible games as Uncharted 4: A Thief’s Endand Overwatch, it seems as though video game fans have had a huge pick of incredible gaming experiences to choose from. However, with so many choices available, it’s understandable that many games have managed to fall through the cracks. After all, when Dark Souls 3 has a gamer captivated, it’s unlikely that another game will be able to shift attention away.
Much like 2015, however, there have been a large number of phenomenal games that have seen release this year without much fanfare, and without the massive commercial success that they perhaps deserve. Here’s Game Rant’s choices for the best games of 2016 that slipped through the net of many gamers.
The Flame in the Flood
Dystopian and post-apocalyptic worlds are pretty well-traveled by video game players, as seen by the success of such series as Fallout. However, there have still been some great examples of developers doing something unique with the premise of a world on the brink, as seen with The Flame in the Flood.
The debut game by a group of former BioShock developers under the name of The Molasses Flood, The Flame in the Flood thrusts players into a flooded world, scavenging supplies from tiny islands of land and running the gauntlet of dangerous rapids. It’s a challenging, and sometimes harrowing, survival game, but one that is propelled by both a stunning art style and haunting score.
Zero Time Dilemma
The PS Vita is an often-forgotten device among the other examples of gaming platforms, yet it was home to one of the most interesting games of the year. Zero Time Dilemma, which was also released on PC and 3DS, forms a part of the Zero Escape series, and is just as polarizing as some of the games that have come before it.
However, Zero Time Dilemma is also a great title in its own right, offering up a fantastic hybrid of simple gameplay styles that come together to help form an incredibly compelling narrative. This one may have gone unnoticed, but it’s certainly worth checking out.
Darkest Dungeon
For some gamers, it might be hard to think of Darkest Dungeon as a game that was released this year, given that the title spent so long in the public eye in its early access form. It’s perhaps that reason, then, that the title did not become as much of a powerhouse as it truly deserved – in spite of some truly impressive sales figures for an indie title.
Those that forgot about the game after its crowdfunding promotion, though, should certainly feel compelled to give it another look, with hard-as-nails gameplay and a grim aesthetic. Just remember to check out a Darkest Dungeon Survival Guide to ensure that any adventures aren’t short-lived.
Severed
Once again, the PS Vita proved to be a place to find some real gems this year. In the case of Severed, the game was originally only available for Sony’s handheld platform, although thankfully the title saw wider release across the Wii U, 3DS, and iOS devices. Even so, the game still didn’t quite get the attention it deserved from gamers.
Combining a wonderful art direction with a great story and fairly unique gameplay, this action RPG won the hearts of many who took the plunge and checked it out. Although it perhaps outstayed its welcome a little, Severed still packed one heck of a punch, and more than earns a place on this list.
League of Legends’ latest update demonstrates Heroes of the Storm’s influence When World of Warcraft was at the height of its popularity, a familiar cycle fell into place. A game would rise up, selling itself as a potential replacement to the king of MMOs. There would be one or two features everyone adored, but when a new WoW expansion hit, everyone would immediately jump back on their old paladin or rogue and get back to the grind. The new, shiny MMO would stumble along for a while, eventually falter, and eventually its best ideas would be cannibalized into the next WoW expansion. It was the circle of life.
League of Legends has found itself in a similar cycle, with more MOBAs trying to replicate its success than I can count springing up over the last few years. Precious few of them have survived. Dota 2 has always been its own thing, separate from the League ecosystem. Smite has carved out its own fanbase. And then there’s Heroes of the Storm, the weird game. The Mid-Season Updatefor League brought some surprising changes that makes League look a little more like Blizzard’s MOBA.
Heralding the new changes
Heroes of the Storm, the Blizzard All Stars game that puts characters from Overwatch, Starcraft, Warcraft, and Diablo into an arena to clobber it out, has always been an odd duck. It’s taken a decidedly different path than League. Even so, League has recently—similar to the WoW cycle—borrowed a few of Heroes’ successful elements.
For instance, one of the big pulls of Heroes is the way their jungle works. Instead of having one jungler running around and farming mobs for experience and gold like the League model, Heroes encourages the entire team to pitch in and contest jungle objectives. If you take down a camp of neutral baddies, they’ll join your team and happily push down a lane.
The Rift Herald, the mini-baron objective for top laners, is undergoing a change that feels very HotS-inspired. Now, the Herald will drop an Eye, which goes into your inventory. Activating it summons a big, angry Rift Herald to shove down the lane. It’s something that immediately brings Heroes of the Storm to mind, and is one of their most iconic mechanics.
Support items also borrow a little something from Heroes of the Storm: the quest mechanic. In HotS, upon successfully completing a small challenge, like hitting a skillshot or auto attacking while an ability is active, heroes gain quest credit. Once they’ve fulfilled the quest by hitting 10 skillshots or auto attacking 80 times, their ability gets a bonus.
Support items in League will be gaining a similar effect, rewarding successful supports with a little extra late game power and making those early game investments more useful. Quests aren’t as recognizable as a Heroes of the Storm mechanic as the Rift Herald, but it's likely that designers saw the merit in the idea.
A tale of two MOBAs
While League has taken inspiration from a couple of Heroes mechanics, the two games hold distinct identities. League has leaned into being a competitive game of skill, and stands as the MOBA. In a recent post on his Tumblr, Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street spoke about some of the things League chooses to focus on: “We hold the laning phase as a sacred part of the game where you get to demonstrate your individual skill with only limited influence from the players in other lanes. We value counterplay as an important design value, and we think it’s harder to provide meaningful counterplay if the enemy champion is doing really, really unusual things (like not leaving base)."
Heroes, on the other hand, has carved out an identity as the MOBA that breaks the rules. There are multiple maps, each with its own objective and layout. Champions have a much greater variation than League, and the extreme cases push the envelope. Ragnaros can become a raid boss in the ruins of a Fort, raining terror down upon the enemy team. Abathur stays in a safe place and controls the battlefield by putting biological hats on his teammates. Murky is a one man army who can quickly regenerate from key points on the map and offers minimal rewards to his killer.
These two paths offer two gameplay experiences, and they’re both valid. Ghostcrawler stresses that the design philosophies between Heroes and League are both important and deserving of respect. But what’s interesting is that Heroes has given up trying to contest League’s dominance; they’re leaning into their niche as the odd MMO with wild heroes and wild map objectives like tactical nukes or shrines that summon giant, fort-punching punishers.
What’s worth keeping?
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Ghostcrawler has confirmed that champions like Ivern or Bard are as wild as League is as willing to get: there’ll be no Ragnaroses or Murkies in the future of League. While Heroes often makes headlines for these weird, rule breaking champions, there’s way more to the game than that. In fact, some of the features that HotS has are absolutely worth stealing. While League is adapting for the midseason (and eventually, the preseason), maybe they should consider taking inspiration from the following:
One: A painstaking, multi-step new player on boarding process. Heroes’ new player tutorials makes it nearly impossible to miss out on the game’s core concepts. Right now, entering League of Legends is significantly more difficult.
Two: At the start of each game, champions exchange some banter on the platform. Right now in League, you have to taunt or joke while standing near an appropriate champion to hear those sweet lines of dialogue, and you usually get a skillshot to the face for your trouble.
Three: A little more variety. Sure, League is never going to leave the Summoner’s Rift... but why not take some notes from Heroes and throw in some different announcers? It’s always a refreshing change of pace to go from a pirate shouting at you, to an angel commanding you in the fight against Hell, to a terrified scientist hoping for his survival. While the Rift will always remain the same, why not get some new announcers in the booth?
Ultimately, I’m glad League has chosen to stay the course. We’ll see whether the new Rift Herald and quest mechanics stay in the game, or eventually filter out over the course of months and patches. Competition from other MOBAs makes League of Legends healthier. The developers have a clear vision of the game they want, and can adopt mechanics or ideas that aid them in that quest. We may never get an Abathur-style hero, but we will get tweaks to the old systems we love that hopefully make the game better.
Here are nine things we're hoping to see from The Creative Asse
mbly.
Everything you need to know about our new subscriptions beta
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Participate in new $9.99 and $24.99 subscriber roles based within theTwitch App, if offered by a Partner.
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And a tiny, five-pixel wide red cross is to blame
When Mark Morris and Chris Delay of Introversion Software began working on Prison Architect, they knew it was a game that would stir controversy. They never expected, however, that a simulator about the incarceration of cute, blobby humans had the potential to make them criminals themselves. Their crime? Displaying a tiny, five-pixel wide red cross on the hood of the ambulances and backpacks of paramedics. It might sound laughable, but it just so happens that those five pixels arranged just so are an internationally protected symbol.
Days before Christmas, Delay and Morris received a concerning email from the British Red Cross.
"My immediate reason for writing is that it has been brought to our attention that in your game ‘Prison Architect’ a red cross emblem is displayed on vehicles," it reads. "Those responsible may be unaware that use of the red cross emblem is restricted under the Geneva Conventions for the Protection of War Victims of 12 August 1949, and that unauthorised use of this sign in the United Kingdom is an offence under the Geneva Conventions Act 1957."
Delay and Morris didn't know it, but for years they had been breaking the law—a very serious sounding one at that. "We actually thought we were being spoofed by somebody and that this couldn't possibly be real," Delay tells me. But, to their amusement (and anger), it was.
Delay and Morris, like many of us, had made a common mistake. "In my mind that the red cross is the universal symbol for health packs and health add-ons—anything to do with healing in videogames," Delay says. "I'm sure there are red crosses on Doom health packs from 20 years ago." And while he's right about Doom, he was wrong about the red cross.
That tiny little red cross on the hood of the ambulance is where Delay and Morris went wrong.
More than just a health pack
See, the red cross doesn't belong to the public domain. It's the protected emblem of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), an organization that dates back to the 1863. The ICRC was critical in establishing human rights during wartime as laid out in the Geneva Conventions that 196 countries have since agreed to abide by. For the average person, these conventions are usually understood as "don't harm prisoners, the wounded, and the people who are just trying to help them." For the ICRC and its various child-organizations around the world, that mission is a lot more complicated—especially when it comes to their emblem.
"The reason for this strict control is that the red cross emblem is an internationally agreed symbol of protection during armed conflicts," the email continues. "It is used to safeguard the wounded and sick and those who seek to help them in a totally neutral and impartial way, and can save lives."
Originally, laws prohibiting the misuse of the red cross emblem were used to prevent armed forces from exploiting it to gain a tactical advantage. In 2008, one such instance occurred when Colombian intelligence forces posed as members of the Red Cross to save political prisoners who had been held for years by FARC rebels. Doing so is a war crime. But is there really no difference between a tiny red cross on a videogame ambulance and one used to misrepresent military personnel in combat?
"If the red cross emblem or similar signs are used for other purposes, no matter how beneficial or inconsequential they may seem, the special significance of the emblem will be diminished," the email reads. "The red cross emblem or similar designs are not general signs of ambulances, health care, first aid, the nursing or medical profession, or similar matters. Moreover, they are not signs to be used for commercial purposes, such as for advertising campaigns or on products."
Health packs in Halo: Combat Evolved used the red cross but were changed to a red 'H' for Halo 2.
Yet the use of the red cross for just those reasons is common. A Google search for 'health pack' returns dozens of results for everything from Doom to Halo. Outside of videogames, it appears in comic books, movies, and even theater. With misuse of the symbol so apparently widespread, Delay tells me he was a bit upset to find that Prison Architect had been one instance where the hammer would fall.
"Red crosses are such a minor five-pixel wide symbol in Prison Architect," he argues. "There's one on the ambulance and one on the back of a health pack. They are so tiny. I think it's ridiculous. It's not like we had these enormous red crosses everywhere on the sides of vans in war zones. It's this miniscule pixelated red cross you can barely make out."
But Introversion Software isn't the first developer to draw the attention of a Red Cross organization, either. In 2006, the David Pratt of the Canadian Red Cross sent a letter to a law firm representing several game developers urging them to stop using the symbol in their games. "Our philosophy is that there's no emblem abuse that's too small to report, because you have to try to get them all, which is a practically impossible task—but one thing we saw with the videogames industry is that it has a huge reach, especially with young people," Pratt said in an interview with Shacknews. "It may create an impression that the red cross emblem is part of the public domain."
On the surface, this sounds like a typical case of enforcing the misuse of a trademark—the kind that videogames have been dealing with for decades. Except that the Red Cross isn't a business where misuse of their logo might result in financial harm. According to an article published by the Canadian Red Cross, it's that misuse of the emblem could lead to physical harm.
The red cross appeared in Doom but was later changed with the re-release to a red pill..
The real issue, at least where Delay and Morris live, seems to have more serious consequences than just being sued. In the United Kingdom, the provisions of the Geneva Conventions were incorporated into British law in 1957. Prison Architect's misuse of the emblem wasn't just breaking the Geneva Conventions (which feels kind of like some distant bogeyman), but the laws of their own country. That's why, upon getting the email, they were quick to comply. Boot up Prison Architect and call in some paramedics, and you'll no longer see that red cross. Now it's green. Delay tells me the change took seconds to make in Photoshop. "It's not worth taking the stand," Morris says. "You have to pick your battles."
Drawing the line
While both developers recognize that the red cross can be an important symbol in the right context, they can't help but raise their eyebrows at the fact that a charitable organization is spending its donated resources to cracking down on indie game developers.
"Lots of people donate money and the assumption is that that money is going to treating [people in need] and it turns out that a portion of that money is going to lawyers writing letters to videogame companies who are apparently abusing use of the red cross symbol," Morris says. "How much money do they spend every year enforcing their abuse of the red cross emblem? We are one videogame out of thousands, so many of which use that emblem to indicate health. Do they just cherry pick the odd person to approach? In which case, it would feel like a complete waste of time to spend any money at all, if you're not going to enforce it consistently. If they were spending large amounts of money to persistently and consistently enforce ownership of their red cross around the world in industries that are completely unrelated, is that a legitimate use of money for a charitable organization?"
Is the supposed dilution of the red cross' important meaning really of such importance? Internet activist, journalist, and author Cory Doctorow doesn't think so. "Is there any question that the use of red crosses to denote health packs in games will bring even the most minute quantum of harm to the Red Cross?" he wrote in a blog post criticizing Pratt's letter. Doctorow reached out to the Canadian Red Cross for comment and they appear to not have responded.
Medics in Half-Life 2 also bear the red cross.
On a broader spectrum, various Red Cross organizations have come under scrutiny for how they choose to spend their money and the lack of disclosurethat can sometimes go along with it. While there's no denying that the mission of the Red Cross is noble, how efficiently it goes about it is contentious. "When you're a charity, you need to talk about these things I think," Morris says. "People donate, and I really believe that you have an obligation to tell people where the money is spent."
For Morris, who tells me he's donated to the British Red Cross, the situation has an interesting wrinkle: Some tiny sliver of his own charitable givings has fueled the action taken against him. "I'm not saying I'm going to stop, but until I get some kind of understanding of how much of my money they're using to pursue infringement claims, I'm starting to think, maybe they've got a little bit more money than they need?"
For a game that has a history of spawning thought-provoking discussions, this latest development was never intended, but Morris and Delay see it as just another day at the office. "This is just the latest fascinating twist and turn. That's what's really interesting about it, Prison Architect gets people talking," Delay says. Now that the issue is settled, both developers are relatively good-humored about the experience.
"I think of myself giving an after dinner speech on my 70th birthday and talking about everything I've achieved in my life, and one of them will be my war criminal status," Morris jokes.
"That's not exactly a list you want to be on," Delay fires back.
But, among their jokes, one question still needs an answer: Is a little red cross really worth the trouble?
We've reached out to the British Red Cross for comment and will update this story should they reply.
