Honorable Mention: Street Fighter V
It’s award season here at Twinfinite! Starting with a few runner ups, let’s look back at the best PS4 games from this year and our 2016 winner!
Street Fighter V was a pretty big deal for Sony, the PS4, and fighting fans. Capcom’s classic series helped popularize the genre, bringing it from crowded arcades to home consoles in the late ’80s. Since then, it’s been one of the leaders when it comes to defining tight, technical mechanics, amazing characters, and visual spectacles. Having a series with such a strong history exclusive to the PS4 turned a lot of heads, and became the deciding factor for some fans who were on the fence about which console to pick up.
The game did have some trouble coming out of the gate, though. While the gameplay was tight, offering some worthwhile new mechanics such as the V-Triggers, and new enjoyable characters like Rashid, it was very light on content when first made available. The arcade mode was ridiculously short, and there was no real story mode. Also, the in-game store was closed for business. Then, of course, there were some issues with the online component as well, which has become a common headache for all modern, online games.
Thankfully, in the months that have followed, the developers have taken the time to rectify all of those shortcomings. The online component works well, there is a story with depth and background information on the characters, and every moving piece is working as it should. We’ve also seen new fighters step into the arena, such as fan-favorite Akuma who was sorely missed. Street Fighter V may have had some issues on day one, but it now stands as one of the best fighters in recent years.
Honorable Mention: MLB The Show 16
Baseball games aren’t as common as they once were. Go back a decade or so and you couldn’t throw a controller without landing on a platform that didn’t have at least one video game dedicated to America’s favorite pastime. But times have changed, and as the genre died out, the quality of the games went down with it. Yet there was one series that grew and refused to just be another baseball game, dedicating itself to realistic simulation, great visuals, and just all around fun systems. This year that series released yet another amazing entry: MLB The Show 16.
Thanks to a system that puts a lot of control in the players’ hands, you can tweak the experience to best suit what you want and your skill level. You can have the tough sim that has you fielding every ball and deciding on each perfect pitch, or you can simplify it all just so you can enjoy watching a good ol’ game of baseball on your PS4. It’s up to you. Behind the matches are franchises that offer tons of management opportunities to build your dream team or lead your favorite, already existing lineup to a World Series Championship. There were plenty of little adjustments this time around that just made everything work so harmoniously, keeping players immersed in the experience, and it was all wrapped in stunning visuals.
It’s easy to overlook MLB The Show 16 as just another sports game on the PS4, but once you give it a chance there’s so much more to enjoy. It’s one of the deepest sports titles out there, and if you’ve ever enjoyed baseball, you may want to check this one out.
Second Runner Up: Ratchet and Clank
Ratchet and Clank was one of those games that everyone was sure would be just “okay.” Remasters can be found a dime a dozen ever since the dawning of the current generation, with developers looking to the past to keep fans in the present, content. We’ve seen so many older games get new textures, remastered music, and maybe a special feature here and there, but they’ve generally been exactly as we remembered them, only slightly prettier. Insomniac had no plans to follow the status quo, and instead gave us not only one of the best do-overs we’ve ever seen, but what is easily among the best games of the year.
Ratchet and Clank brought fans the same adventure of the heroic duo’s first outing, but redid everything to give it a Pixar-esque look that was just magical to look at. Seeing the fur of everyone’s favorite Lombax shift with the wind on the PS4, watching beautifully colored explosions, and witnessing tons of nuts and bolts whiz around the air as you collect them all without the PS4 breaking a sweat was truly breathtaking. Plus, the game was fun as heck and able to be enjoyed by players of any age.
While many of the other large titles on Sony’s home console were focused on huge set-pieces and more mature themes, it was nice to see one of their exclusives stand out so much from the crowd. It’s a colorful, chaotic adventure that hits all the nostalgia feels while still being something very new. If you haven’t checked it out just yet, you owe it to yourself to play Ratchet and Clank.
First Runner Up: The Last Guardian
Nearly a decade is how long fans of Shadow of the Colossus waited for Fumito Ueda’s following project. The Last Guardian, for a while at least, seemed like it was never going to be. After being announced for the PS3, the developers went silent and there was a lot of confusing circling around the PlayStation exclusive title. Team Ico was no more, and Fumito Ueda was no longer an employee of Sony. As far as fans were concerned, the project was doomed to the annals of development hell history. Fast forward to 2015, and The Last Guardian was reintroduced, this time as a PS4 exclusive with an even more beautiful Trico.
Still, even though it was confirmed to be alive, and releasing soon, there was always that worry that it simply wouldn’t stand up to everything else that has released since. Thankfully, the mind that brought us the beautiful worlds and companions that made Ico and Shadow of the Colossus instant classics didn’t let us down. One need only spend a few minutes with the boy who serves as The Last Guardian’s protagonist and Trico, the huge griffin/cat beast, to see that this PS4 title is something truly special.
Throughout the adventure, you’ll build a relationship with your new, beastly friend. It’s not one that is forced or is set before the game ever actually releases. When the boy meets Trico for the first time, you do as well. Your caution and perseverance, your desire to care, and your curiosity will drive the story and build what is easily one of the most well-done relationships to have graced a video game in quite some time. And that bond that grows is surrounded by a beautiful world that pulls you in every direction, as you endeavor to escape its confines while solving the mystery of what brought you here in the first place.
Admittedly, The Last Guardian isn’t for everyone. It’s not full of explosions and loud noises, huge monologues, and not a lot of hand-holding as you slowly make your way through the detailed ruins with your new companion. What it does have is an experience that will tug at your heartstrings as you make a new friend in a frightening world, and that alone is something marvelous.
Winner: Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End
Closing a series is not an easy thing to do. It’s not just because fans will be upset that they won’t be able to go on new adventures as their favorite hero, or because there’s more money in just letting something run on forever. It’s difficult to give someone a fitting finish that doesn’t feel cheap or contrived. Within a story as celebrated as Uncharted, there were so many loose ends, so many grand adventures that fans remember so vividly, and then there was Nathan. Our hero who was both charming yet easy to hate, cool but deadly, witty but so dense when it came to matters of the heart. How do you finish the tale of someone so damn fun to play as and who has become so iconic for the PlayStation brand? We couldn’t figure that out, but Naughty Dog certainly did and it led to not only the best game on the PS4, but one of the best games of the year, period.
Fast forwarding to a future where Nathan and Elena have settled down and are just living life normally gave us a glimpse into the life of someone who is simply tired. After years of cheating death and witnessing legends unfold before his eyes, Nathan was done. He had done all he set out to do, or so he thought until a man he thought he lost years ago showed back up in his life with one last score. What fans got to witness was an adventurer who was torn between two loves, and tough decisions that could set everything crumbling around him. The fact that the developers were able to take a character that seemed to not have a care in the world and ground him in reality, laying all the cards out on the table and stacking the odds not only against his life but his happiness as well, was truly remarkable.
More remarkable is that the more mature focus meshed so well with the gameplay that PS4 owners were expecting. Puzzles still had us scratching our heads, fights always brought us within an inch of our deaths, and world traversal was just as exciting as ever. It was a true spectacle at its finest, yet one that provoked thought and brought out emotions we never knew we had for the characters contained within.
We won’t spoil it for you, but suffice it to say that when all was said and done we were left both saddened and content. It was difficult to let such a great series from such a talented studio go, but it couldn’t have gone better. An icon has ended his journey and the torch will soon be passed to another Sony hero, but we will definitely remember this last journey yet another fantastic legend as the best PS4 game of 2016.
Congratulations to Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, the winner of our Best PS4 Game category for 2016! Be sure to visit back this week more award announcements including the big one, our game of the year for 2016! For the full list of award categories for 2016, visit our nomination page here.
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