What defines a game? Not to get too philosophical but it’s something we play with an established set of rules to have fun, right? How did we reach the point where some games were better than others? If you’re having fun at the end of the day, that’s all that matters, right? As it turns out, games can do more than just allow us to have fun. They let us get lost in a fantastical world, pursuing a journey that’s driven by our own actions as much as the protagonist. They make us think, whether it’s about the next big step to take or how to effectively mix skills together to lay the hurt on enemies. They make us understand and empathize. The best games of 2015 aren’t just those that made us feel or have fun. These are the games that gave us everything we could have possibly asked for with our time and money.

Nominees:

• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
• Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
• Bloodborne
• Fallout 4
• Xenoblade Chronicles X
• Super Mario Maker

Winner: The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt

For many of the digital denizens awakening in Skellige, Novigrad and Velen, it must have been just another day. For Geralt of Rivia, it was a day to finally reconnect with his daughter and take back what was lost. It was also an opportunity for adventure, romance, action and mystery as the world held so many different tales to tell with so many characters to speak to. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt isn’t a perfect game by any means – it has its share of bugs. Some players still hate the horse-riding and combat. That being said, in terms of story-telling, questing, visual fidelity, exploration, content, post-launch support and yes, fun, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was everything we could have ever wanted. Whether CD Projekt RED intended it or not, the quest for Ciri will live on in our memories for a good long time.

Note: GamingBolt’s Game of the Year categories, nominations and awards are selected via an internal nomination, voting and debate process. You can check the rest of categories and the respective winners here.

It’s been a great year for remasters. Though there are plenty of games which have copped out and simply increased the resolution to 1080p with their current gen ports, there are a number of titles which genuinely deserve the title of “remaster”. As the lines between remaster and port become ever more blurred, we’ve found these nominees to be some of the most stand-out games that are worth your time and money, even if they’re based on products from years past. Here are our nominees for best remaster of 2015.

Nominees:

• Gears of War: Ultimate Edition
• Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection
• Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D
• Borderlands: The Handsome Collection

Winner: Gears of War: Ultimate Edition

We’d like to say it was a close race and honestly, looking at the work done on The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D, it was pretty uncertain who would emerge on top. Nonetheless, The Coalition’s work on Gears of War: Ultimate Edition stood out in so many different ways, proving exactly how a remaster can be done (without changing the core elements of the gameplay of course). Along with a 60 FPS frame rate and 1080p resolution, the developer reworked the textures, character models, and much more, even going so far as to change the camera angles in cut scenes. Sure, we may not have gotten Horde mode but insofar as a remaster goes, Gears of War: Ultimate Edition is how it’s done.

Note: GamingBolt’s Game of the Year categories, nominations and awards are selected via an internal nomination, voting and debate process. You can check the rest of categories and the respective winners here.

While the Xbox One itself is still working hard to catch up to the PS4 in terms of sales, Microsoft is reporting higher first party sales and an ever increasing momentum. It’s amazing to think that roughly two years ago, the Xbox One was lagging behind with the inclusion of Kinect and a higher price tag. As Phil Spencer’s rise to the head of the Xbox division commenced, we saw a return to hardcore gaming and a wealth of great releases worth spending time on. Some titles didn’t exactly live up to their lofty expectations this year. However, others came out of left field to impress us and leave their mark as we enter the New Year.

Nominees:

• Forza Motorsport 6
• Halo 5 Guardians
• Ori and The Blind Forest
• Rare Replay
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
• Gears of War: Ultimate Edition

Winner: Forza Motorsport 6

We weren’t fans of Halo 5: Guardians turning Cortana evil but we enjoyed the new twists in the traditional multiplayer experience. Ori and The Blind Forest was an excellent platformer, Gears of War: Ultimate Edition showed us how a remaster should be done and Rare Replay is perhaps the greatest old-school compilation ever produced.

Then again, Turn 10 Studios seriously stepped up this year with Forza Motorsport 6. Not only did we get 26 tracks and more than 450 cars across a range of different leagues, a lengthy Career mode and an extensive Showcase mode full of unique little missions to complete, Forza Motorsport 6 had enough to keep us busy for a long time. Factor in the excellent presentation with commentary from former Top Gear presenters James May and Richard Hammond, a 1080p resolution and near 60 FPS frame rate and an awesome progression system that rewards you constantly and you have a game that does a great job at presenting challenges while providing enough incentive  to complete them.

Note: GamingBolt’s Game of the Year categories, nominations and awards are selected via an internal nomination, voting and debate process. You can check the rest of categories and the respective winners here.

Companies like Blizzard Entertainment continued to enthral us with their offerings and various developers have showcased why the PC was the platform for the best visuals.

There were a significant number of top-tier third party titles that shined the brightest on PC like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and Fallout 4. These games will live all the longer thanks to their modding capabilities but the best PC titles are those which didn’t quite shout about their brilliance from the rooftops. Some titles had a fair amount of hype behind them while others built acclaim on word of mouth and positive criticism. It did help that some of these games were recognized for their excellence on large stages like The Game Awards but for the most part, you really had to keep your ear to the ground to learn about the best PC games of 2015.

Nominees:

• Undertale
• Crypt of the Necrodancer
• Starcraft II: Legacy of the Void
• Cities: Skylines
• Total War: Attila
• Her Story

Winner: Undertale

It’s hard to really explain why Undertale is one of the best games of the year, let alone the best PC game. The visuals aren’t even a complete afterthought – they perfectly fit the story being told of a young child navigating a world full of monstrous yet incredibly emotional beings. Do you want to be a murderer and lay waste to every enemy you come across? Go ahead. Do you want to make friends with the colourful NPCs you encounter, earning no XP in the process but perhaps retaining what makes you human? You most definitely can.

That’s not what makes Undertale so extraordinary, though the game reacting significantly to each one of your actions is a strong motivating factor. It’s the fact that the gameplay – which includes a bullet hell style game of dodging in its RPG battles – is so fluid and intriguing. There are so many options for fighting and so many different ways to experience Undertale that it significantly adds to the game replay value. For its innovation, story and top-tier gameplay, we have to give the nod to Undertale.

Note: GamingBolt’s Game of the Year categories, nominations and awards are selected via an internal nomination, voting and debate process. You can check the rest of categories and the respective winners here.

Some games just don’t get the appreciation they deserve, especially from a critics’ point of view. There may be a release that doesn’t quite score an A+ but isn’t a D either. It’s not right to call these games C-grade either – it could be that the average gamer found a ton of things to like about the game. It could be that the developer kept adding on to the release, taking it further and further in terms of gameplay quality. Of course, there are also those games which are severely underappreciated by the mainstream crowd despite being pretty good. For one reason or another, they don’t quite click with the gaming world at large. Here are our picks for the most underrated game of the year.

Nominees:

• Dying Light
• Assassin’s Creed Syndicate
• Tales of Zestiria
• Persona 4: Dancing All Night
• Tearaway Unfolded
• Transformers: Devastation

Winner: Dying Light

When Dying Light was first revealed, I was interested – if not exactly jumping with joy – at what it promised. A first person parkour title set in a zombie-infested environment? Sign me up. But upon finally getting my hands on Dying Light, I was suitably whelmed. No under or over here – just whelmed. That being said, Dying Light did see massive success and cultivated a very strong following. It also helped that developer Techland delivered both free and paid DLC that was worthwhile.

Heck, it continued to add weapons and free content, improved the core experience and just continued making the game worthwhile. Did we mention that Dying Light’s first big expansion The Following will be free to Season Pass holders? Oh, and the Enhanced Edition of Dying Light is also coming next year, promising oodles of new content for fans (including Legendary Levels for hardcore players) while being completely free to previous owners of the game. It’s easy to see why Dying Light deserves some love – even if it wasn’t a classic right out of the gate.

Note: GamingBolt’s Game of the Year categories, nominations and awards are selected via an internal nomination, voting and debate process. You can check the rest of categories and the respective winners here.

A great game will highlight a game studio’s work ethic, practices and overall skill more than any hype or marketing campaign possibly could. As is usually the case, the many classics seen this year were a result of developers working overtime, tirelessly, to get us everything we could ever hope for and more. Whether it was a solid release at launch that lived up to expectations, free post-launch DLC that didn’t insult our intelligence, a massive game world that delivered dozens – if not hundreds – of hours of content and support that exists till this day, here are our nominees for the best developer of 2015.

Nominees:

• Techland
• Kojima Productions
• CD Projekt RED
• Nintendo
• Dontnod Entertainment
• Bethesda Game Studios

Winner: CD Projekt RED

Forget for a moment that CD Projekt RED had developed one of the best games of all time with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Forget about the free DLC it had delivered after launch. Also forget about its first expansion Hearts of Stone which delivered excellent value while still being one of the best expansions ever. CD Projekt RED, since its inception, has always put gamers first and foremost. While some of its decisions like downgrading the visuals of The Witcher 3 or refusing to release a full set of modding tools are worth lamenting, the amount of good the company has done far outweighs those negatives. And let’s not forget that CD Projekt RED worked for months on end to properly fix frame performance on the PS4, even when each subsequent patch didn’t quite do the trick, or how it further expanded on romance options for Triss at the behest of fans.

Now you can remember all those amazing hours spent playing The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and its expansion and it’s not hard to see why CD Projekt RED is our developer of the year.

Note: GamingBolt’s Game of the Year categories, nominations and awards are selected via an internal nomination, voting and debate process. You can check the rest of categories and the respective winners here.

Every console generation brings superior hardware to the forefront for many reasons but at the end of the day, it all comes back to graphics. Full HD resolutions, frame rates in the 60s (and locked, thank you very much), bleeding edge anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering, real-time weather and so on have been discussed ad nauseam throughout the year. Some games delivered nothing but visuals, compromising on gameplay in the process. Others lived up to the massive hype preceding them and balanced luscious polygons across all platforms with some amazing story-telling and gameplay. We were simultaneously impressed by the attention to detail of some developers and the sheer scale of the worlds that others had created. What game deserves the nod for best graphics of 2015? Let’s look at the nominees.

Nominees:

• Star Wars Battlefront
• The Order 1886
• The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt
• Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
• Batman Arkham Knight
• Xenoblade Chronicles X
• Assassin’s Creed Syndicate

Winner: Star Wars Battlefront

Is Star Wars Battlefront the resurgence of the classic series that we know and love? No, but with regards to pushing the envelope for visuals, it presents a level of graphics quality that we’ve yet to see from other games. Many of Star Wars Battlefront’s graphical highlights come from its association with the Star Wars franchise. The use of photogrammetry to capture hundreds of images of props, sets and costumes to recreate them in flawless detail is one such example. However, Battlefront also uses an absurd level of alpha effects, post-processing effects, depth of field and a full physically based rendering pipeline to feel like Star Wars as opposed to simply looking like it. Don’t get us wrong – all of the nominees are visual delights in their own ways and any one could present a venerable photo album of beautiful moments. But when it comes to a level of visual quality that isn’t daunted by its lack of a full HD resolution on consoles, Star Wars Battlefront is our pick for the best graphics of 2015.

Note: GamingBolt’s Game of the Year categories, nominations and awards are selected via an internal nomination, voting and debate process. You can check the rest of categories and the respective winners here.

Even the most ardent PlayStation 4 fan will tell you that this year has been rather barren for AAA exclusives. That being said, when you consider some of the cooler games the PS4 did get – be it a remaster, indie title, brand new games or just the superior version of a third party title – it’s not like there’s too much to complain about. What will 2016 bring and will it have any games that could possibly top this year’s catalogue? Maybe and maybe not but for now, here are the nominations for Best PS4 title of 2015.

Nominees:

• Bloodborne
• Rocket League
• Until Dawn
• Uncharted The Nathan Drake Collection
• Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
• Batman Arkham Knight

Winner: Bloodborne

From Software has rarely steered gamers wrong with its titles, even if it did tend to disappoint at times (the visual downgrade for Dark Souls 2, for instance). When it announced that it would be developing a PS4-exclusive Souls style game in collaboration with Sony, we didn’t quite know what to expect. Perhaps a revisit of Demon’s Souls?

Instead, we got Bloodborne, a gothic Victorian-style hack and slash title that built upon the signature gameplay we’ve come to know and love while still maintaining its core aspects. Couple this with some grotesque bosses, a lengthy and satisfying campaign, the mysterious but compelling story and a hardcore difficulty that never lets you take a breather and it’s not hard to see why Bloodborne is the best PS4 title of 2015. It may not be the prettiest or the biggest title but Bloodborne was certainly the most fun.

Honestly, if The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt hadn’t released this year, it’s highly likely that Bloodborne would have been our top pick for Game of the Year. The fact that it’s one of the best reasons to pick up a PlayStation 4, especially with the release of The Old Hunters DLC, is really all you need to know at this point.

Note: GamingBolt’s Game of the Year categories, nominations and awards are selected via an internal nomination, voting and debate process. You can check the rest of categories and the respective winners here.

Not every game released in a given year can be a winner. Some games are built on a mountain of hype, praised to the high heavens before they’re even released only to come crashing down in spectacular fashion. Is a game disappointing because it didn’t live up to our lofty standards or simply because it couldn’t deliver on its own hype? Does one feel a sense of disappointment for what could have been, especially in light of what was promised through all those beautiful trailers? Or is the product you’ve purchased with your hard-earned money simply nothing all that great despite all the greatness it promised to offer? It’s tough to say – you can only real feel disappointed if you had expectations though. And for those who felt disappointed even when expecting nothing, we present our nominees for the most disappointing game of 2015.

Nominees:

• Star Wars Battlefront
• Battlefield Hardline
• The Order: 1886
• Code Name STEAM
• Need for Speed
• Mad Max

Winner: The Order 1886

We know what you’re thinking. “Star Wars Battlefront is way more disappointing since it didn’t live up to the brilliance of Pandemic’s past games!” And we understand much more than we’d care to admit. However, Ready at Dawn’s The Order: 1886 wasn’t meant to just be a reboot to a long-standing franchise. It  was supposed to be a pillar on which Sony could build its PS4 dynasty. First revealed at E3 2013, The Order: 1886 was actually in development since 2010 and was meant to release in 2014. It was subsequently delayed to February 2015 but that didn’t help matters all that much.

For a game that looked like it would be the next big cinematic third person shooter, it was shocking to see The Order: 1886 rely so much on QTEs and cinematic sequences. The story held potential but wasn’t the monster-killing spree we expected and it ended on a cliff-hanger. Did we mention you could finish the game in a few hours with literally no reason to go back? The other nominees at least found acceptance with some players, regardless of their quality. Not even the most ardent PS4 fan could defend the disaster that was The Order: 1886.

Note: GamingBolt’s Game of the Year categories, nominations and awards are selected via an internal nomination, voting and debate process. You can check the rest of categories and the respective winners here.

Like any billion dollar industry spanning the globe and featuring larger than life personalities, the gaming industry is no stranger to controversy. There have been times this year where a developer would have to clean up after its self following a terrible product launch or weather the storm of negative criticism following an announcement or campaign gone wrong. Suffice to say that we’re still not past the “every game could be buggy at launch” mind-set. But when there are controversies that threaten the past, present and future of the industry we thought we loved so deeply, there’s simply nothing to be done but to look on with anger, sadness, rage and/or confusion. Let’s look at our nominees  for the biggest controversy of the year.

Nominees:

• Hideo Kojima Reportedly Fired From Konami
• Batman Arkham Knight’s Buggy PC Launch
• Payday 2 Microtransactions
• Star Wars Battlefront – No Single Player Campaign
• Shenmue 3 Kickstarter Drama

Winner: Hideo Kojima, Konami and Everything in Between

When the news first surfaced of Hideo Kojima, the legendary designer behind the Metal Gear series and at the time co-director for Silent Hills, being fired from Konami, it was met with disbelief. The man who helped put the Japanese publisher on the global map was being let go after decades of service? It was impossible to grasp. However, the entire year has been like a controversial puzzle that still continues to unravel.

From removing Kojima’s name off boxes of Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain to denying rumours of his being firing; from the cancellation of Silent Hills to reports of Konami being an awful place to work at; from content being cut in The Phantom Pain to Konami slowly backing out of AAA games development, there was seemingly nothing about this controversy to indicate that it would wrap up soon. Even now with Hideo Kojima forming (or re-forming) Kojima Productions as an independent studio and tying up with Sony, we’re still curious as to what twists and turns the story could take next. The moral is pretty straightforward though – nothing lasts forever.

Note: GamingBolt’s Game of the Year categories, nominations and awards are selected via an internal nomination, voting and debate process. You can check the rest of categories and the respective winners here.