To make up for the lack of Microsoft and Sony consoles the multiplatform category should help this a little. Most of the next-gen games were multiplatform so there is no need for separate PS4 and Xbox One categories. With that said there were many fantastic games this year on next-gen consoles.
Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor
It was a hard decision this year but Shadow of Mordor is a brand new IP and the best Lord of the Rings game ever made. While it may borrow a lot from Assassin’s Creed, it perfects a lot of issues that the series couldn’t get right and adds many new ones like Sauron’s Army. With some of the best graphics ever seen and a fantastic story, what more could you want?
XCOM: Enemy Unknown was one of the best TBS games to come out in years. It had tightly coordinated tactical gameplay that packed a punch and kept you on your toes. The Bureau kind of keeps this idea while bringing you into the dice-rolled battles firsthand so you can control them. The game takes place after the Cold War, when agent William Carter is tasked with helping save the entire planet from an alien invasion. That is one hefty mission, but you have squadmates to bring alongside you.
XCOM is a third-person cover-based tactical shooter. It pretty much feels like a zoomed-in, more detailed Enemy Unknown. You will encounter some of the same enemies, and the art style is even the same. You can snap into a cove and order your squad to do things like lift an enemy up, heal, revive, throw out traps like mines, sharpshoot an enemy, etc. You can queue these up while time slows down and watch it all unfold. It’s a very powerful tool in this game and can get you out in a pinch. The shooting itself is mediocre. Weapons never feel all that powerful and somehow just feel off. Ammo runs out constantly, and you can end up weaponless a lot of the time in a hot firefight. At least the levels are well laid out enough for you to find adequate cover and plan your attack.
There’s really not much else to the game outside of shooting. You move from fight to fight, pressing switches or finding the intel. The game is a bit on the cinematic side, and the opening sequence is pretty awesome. Once you are back at HQ, you can walk around and talk to people, start side missions, and upgrade your squad and loadout. You get the same death penalty as in Enemy Unknown. A completely leveled-up squad member can be lost in battle if you don’t revive them in time; however, the revive time is way too quick to pass. It’s not enough time for someone to go to a battleground and save someone. This becomes frustrating since leveling up takes so long. When you do choose squad members, you can choose from snipers, close combat, medics, and various other classes. This mainly just determines their skill tree.
I also found it annoying that weapons are slow to unlock. 25% of the way through the game, I only found a few weapons and two alien weapons. There are various other blueprints or technologies you can find to turn into other things, but they’re not as deep as Enemy Unknown. What’s here is solid fun, but it gets repetitive and boring quickly. Every battle turns out the same; you get the occasional boss fight, but it just gets so monotonous that there would be more substance. The game looks pretty good on PC but looks very dated on consoles. It’s nothing special, but the attention to detail in the Cold War-era atmosphere is pretty awesome and engaging.
As it stands, The Bureau is a solid shooter that takes the tactical RTS gameplay and puts you in the driver’s seat. The atmosphere is well captured, and the skill tree system makes battles easier, but the frustration of perma-loss when a squad member dies is excruciating. The overall combat can get dull and repetitive early on, with nothing in between.
XCOM was a popular turn-based strategy game back in the ’90s, and everyone was surprised by how well this game turned out. Enemy Unknown keeps the series vibe and atmosphere updated to today’s standards. Enemy Unknown is one of this year’s best strategy games, but there is one reason why most people will never complete this game: It is too damn hard. Not the fun and challenging type of hard, but the kind that makes it impossible to move on no matter how well equipped your soldiers are.
The game does a very good job of introducing new things to you as you move on. The UI is very simple and uncomplicated, but pretty deep. You get to see a cut-a-way of a military base, and you can click on each department. Research is where everything starts. By gathering all intact materials from missions, you can research new things like weapons, armor, satellites, and various other things. Engineering is where it is all made and upgraded, as well as keeping track of other buildings. Workshops, laboratories, generators, hangars—all these things determine how fast you can upgrade and how you become more powerful. The barracks are where you can equip your squad’s loadout, upgrade soldiers, hire new ones, etc. Finally, there are the situation room and the command center. Here you can advance the days until you run into missions, trade alien parts on the black market, and view how in distress the world is. It is all very simple and almost revolutionary in design because most strategy games are Excel sheet-based and are pretty complicated and hard to navigate.
Once you assign things to engineers and do research, you can advance the days until you run into something, such as a UFO sighting. When this happens, you scramble your jets, and depending on how good the equipment you gave them is, they’ll take it down. Most of the time, you will run into abduction scenarios where you eliminate all hostiles or have to rescue someone. When this happens, you get a choice as to what country to help. Each one gives you a reward, such as money, scientists, engineers, or other items. Usually, you pick the one that’s in distress the most because if you don’t, they will remove themselves from the XCOM operation, and if they all withdraw, it’s game over. Once you go into battle, this is where you see how hard this game gets.
Each soldier gets two moves. The area around them is blue, which means that’s one move, and yellow, which means it takes both moves to get there. Performing an action takes one move, and that is usually shooting alien scum. All soldiers start out as regulars with assault rifles until after their first mission and they rank up. The class is chosen randomly, which I really hate because you can be stuck with five snipers and just one assault guy. When you are ready to shoot, you will see how accurate your shot is. Once all turns are taken, it’s the alien’s turn. This back and forth is normal for strategy games, but the objectives you are given, or the difficulty of aliens, are absurd and completely unfair. You will shoot down some small grays and get through a few thin men. Maybe you will lose 2 or 3 guys in the process, and then four freaking Mutons will show up and wipe the rest of you out in one turn. Or don’t forget the damn spider things that can turn your squadmate into a zombie in one hit. This gets frustrating because every mission is like this. I rarely got through any unless it was on an easy-difficulty mission.
This would be ok if it were during main missions, and you could go back and grind a bit to get better equipment, but you have to do that with every single mission. You fail almost more than you succeed, such as by losing so many soldiers. Once a soldier dies, they are dead forever and won’t come back. Once you lose a fully ranked soldier, you have to start from scratch again with a new guy. It is completely unfair in a game this difficult. In most missions, you will be lucky if you get out with 2 or 3 guys, but you are probably thinking that’s because I stink at the game. I would restart and try all different strategies, and nothing would work. The whole point of the game is to take cover and never be out in the open. Once you advance and are just standing there, you’re dead. The fog of war doesn’t help when you run around the map trying to figure out where all the enemies are. Forget a rescue mission where you have to save a certain amount. Saving 5/25 people is a lot harder than it sounds. All 20 will die before you get to your third guy. This game is just a nightmare, and not in a fun way.
That doesn’t make the game bad, though. There are a lot of great research projects that have a huge impact on everything you do. You have to decide carefully about what you want, or you’re screwed. You get a very limited amount of money every month, and you have to stretch it. I found this a bit unfair as well, because there’s no compromise. Even if just one element was easier, it could make this game more tolerable. As it stands, I had this game for over a month and barely got 25% through the game before I gave up. Spending 45 minutes on a mission and then dying at the end is just ridiculous. Reloading quick saves doesn’t always work, either because you realize you forgot to equip someone with a medkit or because you need to be more accurate on certain missions and forgot to equip scopes. This game is just a pain.
The production values are at least nice, with great-looking aliens and some decent voice acting, but overall, this game requires extreme patience more than skill or brainpower. The game is well done with intense battles, but maps repeat often, the camera is screwy where it zooms out of buildings, and the graphics are a bit underwhelming. The main thing is the extreme difficulty, which practically ruins the game. I have never played such a hard strategy game before, but there’s someone out there who will like this.
thebinarymessiah.com 
Yep! The fact that I forgot about this game until you made a comment proves that.