I Started These 138 Video Games In 2015, 'Finished' 24

For the 10th year in a row (!), I’ve tallied the games I played in the past 12 months and have counted the ones I’ve “finished.” It’s clear that it’s time for some changes.

I started this practice in late 2006, a year in which I played 102 games including the likes of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Okami, 50 Cent Bulletproof and Steambot Chronicles. That year, I played through Elite Beat Agents, Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, Suikoden V and 15 others.

I made the list an annual tradition, a way to track what I’d played for fun and as part of having this lucky career that I’ve got writing about video games. From the start, I emphasized the number of games I had finished, because I saw too many people pontificating about games they’d barely played. I wanted to encourage getting to the end of a game, of considering games in full.

For many years I avoided the inherent pitfalls of the type of list I was making. I didn’t have to worry about talking about older games that I’d already finished once and was playing again, because I seldom returned to old games that I’d already finished once. There were too many interesting new games available to play. I didn’t have to worry, at first, about the impossibility of finishing many multiplayer games, because I nearly exclusively played single-player games.

Times have changed, my gaming habits have changed, and this year’s list is therefore full of personal revelations.

This was the year I finally got nostalgic and played some old favorites. In January, I dove back into the first Metroid Prime and played a glorious third of it before getting distracted by new things. In the spring, I played the 3DS port of my favorite game ever, The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, though I didn’t finish it again, either. In the summer, I dove back into some of my favorite Nintendo 64 games via the Xbox One’s Rare Replay and spent a joyful couple of days playing through Blast Corps—now the only game in the past 10 years that I’d already finished and played through again.

This was also the year that I finally got into multiplayer gaming. In past years, I made token efforts with various online shooters, but I didn’t enjoy them. This year, I was hooked for a few weeks on the co-op sci-fi game Helldivers. I fell deep into Destiny, confidently co-opping with friends and strangers alike. At year’s end, I neglected single-player games such as Metal Gear Solid V and The Witcher III so I could play more of Black Ops III’s co-op Zombies. I still don’t lose my mind over multiplayer gaming. I’m still the guy who was excited to discover that Splatoon has a very good single-player mode. But I now think a list like the one below exaggerates the virtue of finishing single-player games and undersells the pleasure of regularly playing an unfinishable multiplayer game.

Times are changing in general, making my old logic for these lists less workable. I’ve classified “finishing” a game as reaching the final credits, which I did with Assassin’s Creed Rogue in 2014. I played 20 more hours of the game in 2015, yet I’d already started and “finished” it in 2014, so it doesn’t make the list. And what if a new game actually contains 30 older games, some of them emulated or remade versions of games I had played before? That was the conundrum of counting Rare Replay in 2015. Had I only played the first RC Pro-Am back in the 90s, or had I played the second one? Did an emulated version of the Xbox 360’s Perfect Dark count? And so on.

This year’s list tells me a lot of things, including that, after a 2014 when I finished three Lego games, I might finally be over the series. In 2015, I bailed on Lego Batman 3 pretty early. I also am embarrassed with how much time I spent playing time-wasting Cookie-Clicker clones on my iPhone in the final weeks of the year, when I could have been playing better stuff on my phone, tablet, 3DS or Vita. This year’s list reminds me of the games—some new, some old and just sitting on my consoles or PC—I still badly want to get to, including: Ziggurat, MGSV, Fallout 4, Undertale, Emily is Away, Until Dawn, Life is Strange, Bedlam, Heroes of the Storm, the Metro games, Elite Dangerous, Bloodborne, Darkest Dungeon, Renowned Explorers and more.

Final throat-clearing notes: My PC gaming plummeted in 2015, because I badly need a new gaming PC. My Vita playing also went to near zero. I played some DS games in 2014, none in 2015. Most significantly, I played zero games on my Xbox 360 and “only” played my PS3 for those 20 more hours of AC Rogue. I am clearly done with the old gen.

That’s that. Another year done. A decade-long project carries on. I’ll keep doing these lists, because I like keeping a record, remembering what I played, and maybe inspiring people to try a game they hadn’t heard much about.

On with the list!

My 2015 Games Played/Finished List

(Games I started listed below. Finished games are bolded. Games not from 2015 are noted as such)

3DS

(19 games played; 2 finished)

Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer

Boxboy! – FINISHED (My favorite game of the year!)

Chibi-Robo Photo Finder

Chibi-Robo Zip Lash – FINISHED

Code Name S.T.E.A.M.

Dr. Mario: Miracle Cure

The Legend of Zelda Majora’s Mask 3D

The Legend of Zelda: Tri-Force Heroes

Mario Vs Donkey Kong: Tipping Stars

Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate

Nintendo Badge Arcade

Pokémon Picross

Pokémon Rumble World

Pokémon Shuffle

Puzzles & Dragons + Super Mario Bros. Edition

SteamWorld Dig

SteamWorld Heist

Stretchmo

Yo-Kai Watch

iOS

(23 games played; 2 finished)

10000000

Adventure Capitalist (I’m going to delete this right now.)

Bullet Boy

Clicker Heroes (I’m deleting this one, too.)

David

Digit & Dash

Downwell

Dungeon of the Endless (I had played this on PC the year before but played a lot more of it on iPad in 2015)

The Ensign

Fallout Shelter

Fruit Fusion

Her Story

Land Sliders

Lara Croft GO – FINISHED (I just started the free expansion. It’s good!)

Pac-Man 256

Prune

Puzzle Craft 2

The Room 3 (I finished this on Jan 2, 2016, so I can’t count it for 2015.)

Sage Solitaire

Sonic Runners

Star Wars Uprising

The Walking Dead Road To Survival

You Must Build A Boat – FINISHED

PC

(7 or so games played; 0 finished)

Grapple

Human Resource Machine

Interloper

Mushroom Men: Truffle Trouble

Oblitus

Reassembly

Rebuild 3

PS4

(42 games played; 17 finished)

Apotheon – FINISHED

Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China – FINISHED

Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate – FINISHED

Assasssin’s Creed Syndicate: Jack the Ripper – FINISHED (I’m counting meaty expansions like this that could work as standalone games this year.)

Axiom Verge

Batman Arkham Knight – FINISHED (Exhibit B of why the “finishing” label just isn’t worth it going forward; I have heaps of DLC to still play.)

Battlefield: Hardline (I bailed on this game halfway through. The arrest mechanic is great, but they didn’t design the game for stealth.)

Call of Duty: Black Ops III (I mostly play co-op Zombies, haven’t finished the campaign.)

Child of Light – FINISHED

Dead Star (It’s early access and a lot of fun when you can find a match.)

Destiny – FINISHED

Destiny: The Taken King – FINISHED (Doing King’s Fall on normal counts as finishing, right? I didn’t do all the collection quests in the Dreadnaught. Whatever.)

Dying Light – FINISHED

Entwined

Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture

Far Cry 4 – FINISHED (I had barely played this game in 2014, played it mostly in 2015.)

Far Cry 4: Valley of the Yetis – FINISHED

Fat Princess Adventures

Galak-Z: The Dimensional

Grow Home

Guns Up!

Hand of Fate

Helldivers

Hohokum

Infamous: First Light – FINISHED (Didn’t come out in 2015, but I finally played it in 2015.)

Infinifactory

Jamestown+

Mad Max – FINISHED

OlliOlli2: Welcome to Olliwood

Rainbow Six Siege

Rocket League

Rogue Legacy

Stick It To The Man (played it before?)

Super Stardust Ultra

Tembo The Badass Elephant

Transistor – FINISHED (Another non-2015 game that I finished in 2015.)

Volume

Watch Dogs – FINISHED (I finally got into this game and liked it more than I thought I would. Those little QR code side missions were great!)

White Night – FINISHED

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (About a dozen hours in… I will play this to the end… someday.)

Wolfenstein: The New Order – FINISHED

Wolfenstein: The Old Blood

Vita

(1 games played; 0 finished)

Flame Over

Wii U

(8 games played; 1 finished)

Affordable Space Adventures

Kirby and the Rainbow Curse – FINISHED

Metroid Prime Trilogy (I’d never played the trilogy compilation on Wii and therefore never played Metroid Prime 1, which I finished on GameCube, with Wii controls. So… I’m counting it!)

Splatoon

Swords & Soldiers II

Typoman

Xenoblade Chronicles X (I thought I was bailing, but I got sucked back in, 25 hours and counting.)

Yoshi’s Woolly World

Xbox One

(38 games played; 2 finished)

The Crew

The Escapists

Halo 5: Guardians – FINISHED (Exhibit H for leaving this “finished” concept behind for future lists. I finished the underwhelming campaign. Big deal. I enjoyed the unfinishable Warzone mode more.)

Need for Speed

Nova-111

Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham

Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime

Ori and the Blind Forest

Rare Replay: Atic Atac

Rare Replay: Banjo-Kazooie (I played through this game and the next one a dozen times on my N64, but I think these Xbox 360 ports count as fresh releases. Maybe not. Who’s counting?)

Rare Replay: Banjo-Tooie

Rare Replay: Battletoads

Rare Replay: Battletoads Arcade

Rare Replay: Cobra Triangle

Rare Replay: Digger T. Rock (This is a little lame having all these Rare Replay games in here, like I went and played a huge amount. But such is the nature of these lists. I played most of the pre-N64 Rare Replay games for just a few minutes, enough to remember how much I detest super-difficult old-school games.)

Rare Replay: Grabbed By The Ghoulies

Rare Replay: Gunfright

Rare Replay: Jetpac Refueled

Rare Replay: Kameo Elements of Power (I was surprised how much I liked this and plan to go back to play it through.)

Rare Replay: Killer Instinct

Rare Replay: Knight Lore

Rare Replay: Lunar Jetman

Rare Replay: Perfect Dark

Rare Replay: Perfect Dark Zero

Rare Replay: RC Pro-Am II

Rare Replay: Sabre Wulf

Rare Replay: Slalom