Ricardo’s 2016 Game of the Year Awards, Day 3

The third day of GOTY Week is here, and with it come the latest three nominees. Only two more days until my GOTY 2016 is announced.


And today’s nominees are…

Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture

Shropshire County is an idyllic part of rural England in the 1980s, except for the fact that everyone has gone missing. Exploring the countryside, you encounter strange manifestations of events immediately before and during whatever caused everyone to disappear, and as you walk around it’s up to you to find them and interpret what it all means. Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture wasn’t the first game of its genre that I played last year, but it was the first one to nail the experience and keep me hooked from beginning to end.

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag

What’s better than being an assassin? Being an assassin who’s also a pirate, that’s what. Black Flag lets you fulfill your high-seas fantasies of being the greatest pirate in the West Indies, while also telling the story of Edward Kenway, a pirate who rises above himself to join the Assassins in their never-ending struggle against the Templars. Keeping the modern-day story arc to a minimum, Black Flag focuses on what the Assassin’s Creed games have done best and brings back a lot of the fun that had been missing in some of its predecessors.

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare

Representing the Call of Duty series on this list, Advanced Warfare is the overall strongest of the three Call of Duty games I played last year. Jumping about 40 years into the future, Advanced Warfare shakes up the Call of Duty formula with the addition of exosuits, advanced drones, and a host of other futuristic technologies, but at the same time keeps to series’ hallmarks of fast and precise gameplay, fun missions, and the wanton disregard for bodycounts and collateral damage. Add to this a strong performance by Kevin Spacey, and you’ve got yet another reason why Call of Duty remains one of the biggest brands in gaming.