The Witcher 3 easily. Best game of 2015. The best since Skyrim and until today.

Witcher 3 EZ

Just Cause 3, it's very slept-on. 2 is the only Just Cause game with a glowing reception from fans and to some extent critics. I thought 3 was even better, with possibly the only weaker aspect being frame drops during explosions.
Keep in mind I played on PS4 Pro, which Digital Foundry demonstrates does make a difference.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlMPtdFrlbA
Shout out to Super Mario Maker, Bloodborne, and Fire Emblem: Fates as well. They don't get my vote, but they're worth mentioning.

Bloodborne gets my vote. Not my favourite Soulslike, but not far off either. It has probably my favourite boss battle in any Souslike:

Close second is N++ - an excellent sequel to a simple but brutally difficult platformer. It added some much-needed visual and audio flair to the series.

If I was voting for innovation, I'd give it to Mario Maker and Bloodborne would win hands down for monster designs, but overall my vote would probably be between Ori and Metal Gear regarding the titles in the poll.

However, my vote for 2015 is for Yoshi's Wooly World, which is my second favorite Yoshi game after Yoshi's Island.

Some good games in 2015, not a very good year overall.

Tbf, despite buying MGS 5 and Bloodborne, I still haven't found the will to play them. Burned out on both series plus the fact that parry and me have no future, Bloodborne turned me off by putting magic on the back burner.

Fallout 4 was fun, however I enjoyed building more than the actual game. It was a great construction game.

Exploring, gathering resources to build kept me going. I did play the multiple endings yet don't remember much of the story. Exploration was still great, story made no impact.

The Witcher 3 had great exploration as well. However after exploring all the land it became a chore. I didn't enjoy the combat very much and the amount of loot was ridiculous. No fun crafting in TW3.

Another game marred by open world busy work. TW2 remains my favorite in the series.

Ori and the Blind forest looked gorgeous, yet unfortunately another one I didn't like the gameplay of. Mostly because I played it on PC and the port had terrible stutter during fast movement. The visuals also gave me a headache since like Trine there is a lot of back lighting.

Games where the foreground is black and the background very bright give me a headache. In that regards it's not like Ghibli visuals (lighting) at all.

Rise of the Tombraider was worse than the first one. Enjoyable action romp, but not a Tombraider game.
Still some of the quiet sections were fun to explore and you could play as old Lara


But just isn't Tombraider, more like playing Rambo


The Order 1886, amazing looking game with fun gunplay which it had too little off. Boss fights were sadly just qte and the game was over far too soon.

I did really enjoy the cinematic format, proper 2.35:1 with the fov extended sideways, instead of simply adding black borders like games usually do for cut scenes. I had hopes more games would do this to expand the horizontal fov, yet I had to wait until VR to get my wish. So much better this way with your character blocking much less screen real estate.

Tearaway Unfolded was good, yet also suffered from 'back' lighting

Another game that grew too tiresome on my eyes to finish. Great ideas though.


The best games of 2015 were Splatoon in third place. I didn't play it much however my kids couldn't stop playing it.


Second place goes to Life is Strange, what a great surprise. I replayed it on PSVR later in cinematic mode. Amazing game.

Lightning in a bottle though as none of the follow ups / prequels could match the story and impact of the first one.


First place goes to Super Mario Maker!

Brilliantly designed, super easy to make levels in 4 different styles, yet also offering tons of depth to make all kinds of different levels. The WiiU gamepad made the game, quickly editing the level on the gamepad with the styles, then seamlessly play test on TV and re-iterate.
Thanks to the great community here there were always new levels to try out, with some healthy competition going on to make the hardest levels :) I enjoyed making puzzle levels, exploiting limitations of the game to make fun puzzles. One you had to push a cannon through an entire level, taking it with you by clearing paths and unlocking doors.
The hardest part of the game was deciding which level to overwrite out of the 20 or so level limit to make another new one :)

Sad day 2 years ago
As of March 31, 2021, it is no longer be possible to upload courses in the Super Mario Maker game for the Wii U system. On the same day, the Super Mario Maker Bookmark website was also closed. As a result, Super Mario Maker for the Wii U system was removed from Nintendo eShop on January 12, 2021.

I never got far into Super Mario Maker 2 as the Switch can't be used as a hybrid system. Sitting on the couch with the WiiU gamepad for editing and playing on TV was perfect. I could not go back to doing it all on the Switch or TV, and way too much hassle putting the thing in and out of the dock all the time. Plus there wasn't as much enthusiasm around the 2nd outing.

However Super Mario Maker on WiiU was a highlight of the system's career. Dearly missed.

Blood for sure.

This was the year open world games really hit their stride. Witcher 3 really showed what story-driven open worlds could do, especially with how well-written the side-quests could be. At the same time, Xenoblade Chronicles X set a standard for world design that I still don't think has been topped to this day. The environments and wildlife are still absolutely stunning 8 years later, and I've never experienced anything like the change to exploration you get halfway through when you unlock the skell mechs. Even Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom can't compare with the sheer wonder of exploring Mira and running or flying past Godzilla-sized sauropods, despite them improving in so many other ways like the physics systems.

Witcher 3 is the overall better game thanks to its story and got my vote, but as an experience Xenoblade Chronicles X is in a league of its own and I think hugely underrated.

Small revolution in Open World game design when Xenoblade Chronicles X made its debut on WiiU. It had a lackluster main story but the rest of it made me in awe to what the medium is capable of producing when the rest of it clicks nicely. It solidified actual vertical Open World design which wasn't present back then and didn't get popular before Breath of the Wild would follow with it's take on it.(Made in part by Monolith Soft too).

That year was PACKED!!! :O

The Witcher 3
Bloodborne
Cities: Skylines
Life is Strange
Splatoon
Xenoblade Chronicles X
Undertale
Batman: Arkham Knight

Are among my favourite that year.

But the crown goes to Ori and the Blind Forest. Such an amazing game I purchased for both my PC and eventually my Switch.