The Top 10 Videogames I Didn’t Get to Play in 2015

Well, lookie here. The year is done, and every single videogame that came out passed through my hands and by my eyes and got a firm, fair opinion. Er, no. That’s not true. Not the “firm, fair opinion” part, because I write what I feel and feel what I write, but rather the can’t argue with that fact that I simply cannot play every big or small game that drops over the course of twelve months. Perhaps one day, when I retire–you know, in something like fifty years, when people are playing videogames embedded in their eyes.

Right. Here’s a short bullet list of the previous entries in this annual Grinding Down fan-favorite feature (I think I’m its only fan, but that still counts):

• The Top 10 Videogames I Didn’t Get to Play in 2014
• The Top 10 Videogames I Didn’t Get to Play in 2013
• The Top 10 Videogames I Didn’t Get to Play in 2012
• The Top 10 Videogames I Didn’t Get to Play in 2011
• The Top 10 Videogames I Didn’t Get to Play in 2010

With all that perfunctory introduction text said, onwards, towards the titles never to be touched, at least not until maybe next year or some time deep into 2017 when they are handed out as freebies on consoles or dumped together in a money-saving bundle…

10. Just Cause 3

Considering I only began digging into Rico Rodriguez’s wild, chaos-causing antics in Just Cause 2 this past summer and haven’t even hit the 25% completion mark yet, I’ve got a ways to go before I try out that new, fun-looking squirrel suit in Just Cause 3. This new adventure continues to look like a fun time, but I’m in no rush to explore another mass of open, sprawling landscape with things colored red prime for exploding. I mean I could, but I shouldn’t. Not until all of Panau is fire and ash.

9. Rocket League

I’m only mildly interested in soccer, having been forced to play it a whole bunch as a young boy, and I’m even less interested in cars. Which is funny when you consider that I’m currently shopping around for a new ride. So long as it has plenty of cup holders and working AC, I’m good. But enough about that. Rocket League evidently fuses these two elements to create a futuristic sport that is fun as all gets. I figured that I’d just never play this, seeing as I sided with getting an Xbox One over a PS4, but rumor has it that it’s coming to Microsoft’s bulky console soon enough.

8. Dragon Quest Heroes: The World Tree’s Woe and the Blight Below

I love the Dragon Quest roleplaying series, but am even more fascinated with its spin-offs, like Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime and Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker. I’ve never played a Dynasty Warriors game, as these seem too button-mashy for my thumbs, but this one comes with all the iconic and goofy trappings that the RPG series is known for, as well as many smiling slimes to slice. Color me, at the very least, intrigued; plus, it has a wickedly weird title, something I cannot resist and which can only be shortened to…DQH: TWTWATBB.

7. Life is Strange

I have the first episode on Steam thanks a recent bundle from Humble Bundle, but I still don’t see myself playing this over the next day or so. Regardless, of all the episodic adventure game series that were happening this year, Life is Strange seemed to be the one garnering the most interest. Probably for good reasons. I really enjoyed the studio’s Remember Me and its time-rewinding mechanics, which I know play a part of this game’s plot. I’m eager to see what terrible choices I can make and who will remember what.

6. Volume

While I might not have enjoyed the repetitive nature of Metal Gear Solid: VR Missions, I applauded the effort it took to stretch that content out into something bigger and better than just the ten or so training levels you easily handle in Metal Gear Solid. Volume seems to be a big fan of those levels too, at least from a style and gameplay mechanics perspective. Knowing full well how great of a narrative Mike Bithell was able to create for something like Thomas Was Alone, a simplistic-looking platformer starring colored shapes, I have to imagine there’s a good, cool-as-heck spy story to go along with Volume.

5. Puzzle & Dragons: Super Mario Bros. Edition

Over the course of 2015, I’ve played a few different match-three style puzzle games, some new and some old–and some of which I never even got to write about, though y’all already know my high and low thoughts on Frozen Free Fall: Snowball Fight and Pokemon Shuffle. That said, haven’t gotten around to Puzzle & Dragons: Super Mario Bros. Edition, which seems like your typical addicting match puzzle game, but smeared in all things Nintendo. I see nothing wrong with that. Evidently, this comes bundled with another Puzzle & Dragons game, one more slanted towards acting like a JRPG, and I see nothing wrong with that also.

4. Grow Home

I’m not going to lie–I miss the days of character-driven platforming games, where the goal was often navigating an open space, while also collecting trinkets and thingamajigs to meet some required demand before hitting the exit. Every day I have to resist popping in my PS2 copies of Jak and Daxter or Ratchet and Clank, to remember what it feels like to jump from one colorful platform via a cartoony character to another. I assure you, it is satisfying. Anyways, out of seemingly nowhere, Ubisoft released Grow Home earlier this year, which stars a goofy robot growing vines and climbing higher into the sky. The graphics are stylish and colorful, and I am super curious to explore this world. Perhaps next year.

3. Her Story

I don’t know much about Her Story, and I don’t want to know much about Her Story. That’s deliberate. From what I can gather, it is an FMV-driven adventure game where you play a detective, watching clips from taped interviews with a woman involved in some kind of crime. From there, it is up to you to don your deerstalker, take out a pad of paper and pen, and investigate further clips in a database by searching for key words and phrases. Sounds really awesome, especially since I’ve been listening to a lot Serial and watching Making a Murderer this week. The non-professional detective in me is eager to get to work and solve a crime with only my noggin.

2. Undertale

Alas, I have not lived up to many of my promises in 2015. I was hoping to finally see Final Fantasy IX through to its conclusion, as well as get farther along on the lonely path that is clearing out all the Metal Gear Solid games (more on that in a bit). After those promises, there was another one, unspoken, but beginning to blossom…one that has sat inside my chest since May 2015, eating away at my heart. See, that’s when I, at last, got hold of a copy of EarthBound (as a digital download on the Wii U), a game which Undertale, as far as I know, takes a lot of inspiration from. I’d like to play the former before I touch the latter.

1. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

I thought I was making good progress on getting through all these Metal Gear Solid games. In 2015, I finished replaying Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater and experienced, for the very first time, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. In a way, I was on a roll, but then I hit Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. It’s not that Peace Walker is a bad game; in fact, it has some style to its cutscenes, but is perhaps bloated with far too many teeny tiny missions that take too long to complete, and everything is doled out at the pace of a snail on speed and too much caffeine. All of that is to say that I’m far from the end of it, and even then I still need to get through Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes before I dive into The Phantom Pain, which, from the little I’ve seen, is kind of similar to Peace Walker. Hmm.

—

So, there’s my list. Ba-dah-dum. It certainly contains some heavy-hitters from the last twelve months, though I’m just happy to not see Fallout 4 on here to tell y’all the truth. I’ll drop a few others that didn’t quite make the above cut, but are games I would have liked to try out this year, but did not: Ty the Tasmanian Tiger 4, Downwell, Happy Home Academy, Emily is Away, and Cibele. I’ll cut it off there for now because, really, truthfully, depressingly, the list is ever endless.

Now what about you reading this here blog of mine? Tell me a game or two that came out in 2015 that, for some reason, you didn’t get to touch whether because it is on a different console or your backlog is simply too massive or your mother declared it too violent for your pubescent eyes or whatever. Go on. Leave a comment. Curious minds want to know, and I’ll see everyone back here in December 2016 for another fantastically depressing list.

The Top 10 Videogames I Didn’t Get to Play in 2014

Actually, I played and beat a lot of games this year, somewhere around 73 according to my well-kept list. That’s my highest count yet since I started keeping tabs. Many of those games were from last year, years past, or tiny indie darlings. I did get to a few titles that came out this year, such as Transistor, Diablo III: Reaper of Souls, and Fantasy Life, to name a few, but as things often go, I missed out on a big chunk of the heavy-hitters.

Truth be told, this is one of my favorite lists to put together at the end of the year. Sure, it can seem like a bummer to miss out on some of these, but I’m a patient man and will get to some of them in due time. Or maybe not ever, given that Red Dead Redemption showed up on these lists a few times in a row, and I’ve still not ridden a horse to Mexico. My bad.

And for those curious to see how this feature ran in the past, here’s a bullet list:

• The Top 10 Videogames I Didn’t Get to Play in 2013
• The Top 10 Videogames I Didn’t Get to Play in 2012
• The Top 10 Videogames I Didn’t Get to Play in 2011
• The Top 10 Videogames I Didn’t Get to Play in 2010

Remember, this is a list of games I didn’t play that, if I had the time, money, and chance to, would totally play. Just putting that out there if you’re wondering why Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare or Titanfall isn’t showing up below. I don’t want to touch those, not even with a ten-foot pole. Your thoughts and mileage may vary.

10. Destiny

Hmm. I really like Borderlands II and the idea of a loot-driven first-person shooter. Shoot things with guns, get cooler guns, do it all again. That’s perfectly fine. While the Borderlands series might not have the most illuminating or powerful story, it at least has a story, with characters and twists and resolutions. Sounds like Destiny doesn’t, which is scary, given Bungie’s plan for ten years worth of content. I don’t know. It looks pretty, but I’m a solo player, and a lot of the later game content is slanted towards group play.

9. Assassin’s Creed: Unity/Assassin’s Creed: Rogue

Another year, another new Assassin’s Creed game to slip past me in the crowds while perfectly pilfering my purse. Based on reviews and fan feedback, neither of these two titles sounded all that great, riddled with bugs and repetition. Still sounds like Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag has been the series high point. That said, this year, I did finally start playing Assassin’s Creed II and am enjoying it very much, though I wish the feathers showed up on the map. Collecting is hard.

8. Child of Light

Visually pretty RPGs make my knees buckle, but I never got around to trying Ubisoft’s take on the genre. Heard some complaints about the rhyming mechanics and the lackluster combat, but I can see past that for its watercolor painting graphics. It came out on a bunch of platforms, too, though I feel like this might be a good one to grab on sale sometime next year. Until then, Child of Light…

7. Divinity: Original Sin

Instead of playing Divinity: Original Sin this summer, I dabbled in The Temple of Elemental Evil. It was decent fun, but not the same. Hoping to see the newer, better CRPG pop up in some bundles next year.

6. Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft

Generally, if I can’t play a specific game or have trouble gaining access to it, I’ll search out a similar experience elsewhere. See above with Divinity: Original Sin. For Hearthstone, a card game everyone was gaga over this year in the same vein as Minecraft a few years back, I just never got to play it. I don’t have an iPhone or iPad, but I did discover Might & Magic: Duel of Champions, which is a lot of fun. Maybe next year I can try this and say “Job’s done!” myself.

5. Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel

Remember in the blurb under Destiny where I said I really liked Borderlands II? Well, that’s true. I really liked it. I still like it. I’m still playing it. And so I’m not ready to move over yet to another game that is very similar save for a different setting and an oxygen mechanic. Sounds like there is some collection coming for the series, and it would be awesome to see Borderlands, Borderlands II, and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel all together, bundled with every bit of DLC that’s ever been made for the series. One can dream, I know.

4. Bravely Default: Flying Fairy

Here’s the thing. While I did not play the full retail release for Bravely Default: Flying Fairy, I did get to try out the special demo put out a few weeks before the game dropped. It’s fun and gorgeous and a modern take on the older style of Final Fantasy games. I meant to pick up a retail copy, but never did. And then a few weeks ago, I had to remove the demo from my 3DS to save space and make room for important things, like new puzzle pieces and themes.

3. Shovel Knight

An old-school action platform where you hop around on your shovel like Scrooge did his cane in DuckTales. I really shouldn’t have to write any more to sell you on the title, and I’m very sad I never got around to this. Think it would be perfect to play on my 3DS, so maybe some Christmas money can help with that plan.

2. Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes

One of my goals for this year was to play through every Metal Gear game in order of release. I got all the way through Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. Still, a pretty good effort. I won’t be able to try out Ground Zeroes, purported to be the Metal Gear game with the best controls yet, until I finish a few others ahead of it. Hopefully by the time I get to it I can play it like a prologue to The Phantom Pain. Fans believe we’ll hear the release date for that one in just a few days, on Christmas, a gift worth unwrapping violently.

1. Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

All right, here’s the big one. A Lord of the Rings game, and I didn’t play it. I try out just about every title I can. Yup, even Aragorn’s Quest. Yes, even The Fellowship of the Ring on the PlayStation 2 despite its terrible grammatical errors. That said, the reason one plays Shadow of Mordor is to experience the Nemesis system, which is deep and complicated and cool; however, the last-gen versions of the game have the Nemesis system removed due to limitations, leaving behind a more hollow product. My laptop certainly can’t run a game like this, so I will have to wait until the day I get a new-gen console, which won’t happen until I also know when Fallout 4 is definitely coming out. Sigh. This one hurts the most.

—

Right. That’s my list. Those are ten games I wanted to play, but ten games I didn’t get to play. Boo-hoo. What titles did you miss out on this year? Speak up in the comments below, and may you get to everything you want to in the next, new year! Until we meet again, dear Grinding Down readers.