Hey everyone. Matt Thompson back again with another community post with some contributions from other writers. I didn’t have as much luck getting as many fellow WordPressers for this one as I did with the TV post, so I reached out on Twitter and found some others who were willing to join in. Whereas last week’s had a TV focus, this one shifts things to the other main branch of this site: Video Games.
Once again I wanted a topic that looked back at 2015. I thought of doing a very similar subject to the TV one to highlight some of last year’s underrated games, but ultimately decided to try something a bit different. The question I asked the other writers to answer was:
“What was your favorite gaming moment in 2015?”
I told them there was a lot of leeway in what to choose here. A cutscene. A mission. A boss fight. When you finished a certain game. A multiplayer moment with a friend. Nailing a certain mechanic. It could also be a bit more creative like the announcement of a game you had always wanted or attending a gaming convention. Here is what four other writers and I chose.
First up Ashley Hagood talks about an early morning visit to the planet Sera:
My partner and I started playing Gears of War Ultimate Edition together when it came out on Xbox One this fall. We started the game on a Thursday night. When I went to sleep, I literally had dreams about the game. And then I woke up at 5:45 in the morning and couldn’t sleep anymore. I noticed my partner was also awake, so we just looked at each other and I said, “Do you want to play Gears of War?”
And that’s what we did. It wasn’t even dawn yet, we had work in a few hours… But we were so immersed in that game, neither of us could wait another minute to shoot up more Locust. I love it when I’m so addicted to a game, I can’t stop thinking about it and play it every waking moment. It makes me feel like a kid on Christmas every day. That’s how it was with Gears of War this year, and sharing that kind of excitement with someone else made it even more fun this time.
-Ashley Hagood
You can read more from Ashley on her site Robo♥beat where she talks about a number of different topics from games to books with a focus on science-fiction and fantasy.
Now Matt Dorsey tells us about a night spent playing everyone’s favorite new sport of 2015:
I went over to my fiance’s friends house to have a double date dinner night. After dinner, her friend’s fiance Paul turns to me and says, “You ever played this game called Rocket League?” I smiled and watched my fiance’s eyes roll, who had watched me play countless hours of it in the weeks prior. Paul and I proceeded to play 2v2 online. We even took a break to let the girls try it out. Their 1v1 game was a 1-0 battle for the ages! The night turned into the girls cheering for us playing against random strangers. It was an absolute blast and the most fun I had gaming all year.
-Matt Dorsey
Matt is a friend I made back when I blogged on 1up. He isn’t writing anywhere now, but you can find him on Twitter here.
Next up, Adam Sexton tells us about a memorable confrontation in Bloodborne:
My favorite gaming moment of 2015 was the moment I successfully beat Father Gascoigne in Bloodborne. Bloodborne is a game I’m still needing to finish but I spent a good deal of the summer chipping away at this captivating game. Gascoigne sets the bar for bosses. His movements were tricky to anticipate and I made so many mistakes. After 17 attempts, a lot of evasions, a few well-timed Visceral attacks and some molotov cocktails, I took the bastard down. When he morphs into a beast after two-thirds of his life are gone, it feels like I’m standing off against a nightmare.
-Adam Sexton
(You can also see a video of Adam’s final attempt that he uploaded to Youtube here.)
Adam is the creator and host of the Past and Pending Podcast where he discusses movies, games, television and more. You can give it a listen at the podcast’s site here.
Now we have another Rocket League story where Ash Wilton talks about a friendship forged on the online field of play:
I’m not very good at Rocket League. I’ve missed my fair share of gilt-edged chances, and I generally tend to embarrass myself whenever I attempt something as taxing as an aerial. I’m not a point-getter, a flair player or the kind of person to crop up with a winner in overtime. At best, I could describe myself as merely a “driver”.
I suppose my own lack of skill gives rare victories a little more merit. Myself and my team, when we get a bit of momentum behind us, can definitely offer at least a half-decent performance against similarly skilled opposition. And on one such night in early November, we managed to do just that.
Our first opposing trio disbanded rather quickly. A two-goal advantage scored within the opening 20 seconds is sometimes enough to break the will of a Rocket League veteran, let alone a rookie with only a handful of matches under their belt. Successive games would come and go more quickly every time. Leading by increasingly bigger margins only sought to encourage our opponents to throw up their hands and forfeit, even if the final result was far less damning than it had initially seemed. As opposition drivers continued to explode into puffs of smoke at regular intervals, the only constant in this period was the hardened resolve of one player who just wouldn’t quit. He went by “Venom”, and as we crossed the divide from the late hours of one day into the early hours of the next, my team slowly began to express a respect for our perpetual victim.
When the going was rough, Venom took to the chat feed to discuss other things to pass the time; the nonexistent strength of his fifty-or-so different allies, his excitement for the impending release of Fallout 4. Even in games where it looked like Venom might finally get one over on us, we always came back to win. But he just wouldn’t quit, and his perseverance would ultimately pay dividends.
Subconsciously, maybe I wanted Venom to win, but that didn’t stop me trying to best him one final time. We took an early lead, he pegged us back on level terms, and then he emphatically won it with a scrambled close-range finish in overtime. Exclamations of “Wow” and “GG” flooded the chat, this lone victory being the very least that he had deserved. I added him as a friend soon after, and in a string of PSN messages, we joked about the events that had transpired over the course of an incalculable amount of matches. “The Tale of Venom” may not have been a particularly romanticized story, but it’s one that I don’t struggle to recall, even in a year that noted The Witcher and Fallout among its releases.
-Ash Wilton
You can see more of Ash’s work on his website Gamebleed where he writes in-depth gaming reviews and features.
For my own favorite moment I am going to talk about finishing The Witcher 3 (though don’t worry I won’t spoil a single thing, this is more about how I felt upon it ending):
Satisfied and accomplished are the words that best describe how I felt as I watched the credits roll on The Witcher 3. Part of that is the actual content of my ending to the game. I don’t have a lot of experience with choice-based narratives. And maybe because of this inexperience, I worried about getting a “bad” ending. Would that hurt the experience especially after logging in so many hours? Luckily I would never have to find out. Whether my ending was the best one available is certainly debatable. And not every decision I made seemed to lead to the best outcome. But my choices felt impactful and I walked away extremely happy with the how things ended for the characters I cared about most. And good or bad, it all felt appropriate for the path I took Geralt on and the world of The Witcher.
The other big thing is that I have never beaten a game quite like The Witcher 3. It is certainly the longest game I have ever finished if we are talking about the length of the story mode, but most notable for me is that The Witcher 3 is first RPG I have ever beaten. Perhaps it will also be the last, but my hope is that it is the first of many. That finally getting acclimated to the genre here will help me in the future. That my enjoyment of a new type of game will enrich my experience with this hobby I love so much. That I will be able to share in the joy so many of my friends find in these types of games.
It is primarily for these reasons – how satisfied I was with the ending of the game and the accomplishment of beating an RPG for the first time – that finishing The Witcher 3 stands out as my favorite gaming moment of 2015.
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That will do it for the first community gaming post here on The Triple Option. I would like to thank Ashley, Matt, Adam and Ash for contributing to this feature. If you are reading this and would like to be involved in a future post like this one, be sure to let me know. And feel free to hit up the comments to share your own favorite gaming moment of 2015. As always, thanks for reading!
The Triple Option 
Ooh, two Rocket League mentions! I have to say, I had not looked that game up before but checking it out now, it looks really fun. Not what I was expecting either!
Glad you liked The Witcher 3 so much. It is a huge game. I used to love games that big, because I would just spend weeks or months on them and nothing else. Now, maybe partly because of my blog and job, I try to play everything (well, not EVERYTHING but you know…) so it’s harder to make it through any game longer than like 10 or 15 hours, tops! But it’s sooooo worth it for storytelling as amazing as The Witcher’s.
Excellent write-up! Great to see some mutual appreciation for Rocket League. For a game that I hadn’t even thought about before it landed on PS+, it has taken more hours away from me than the average RPG or multiplayer shooter usually does.
And it’s good to see that you enjoyed The Witcher! The level of satisfaction you got from its conclusion is a testament to the strength of its writing I feel. Few games have made me stick around to watch the end credits, but in The Witcher III I did just that, using the time to try and process what had just transpired. My ending was bittersweet, almost perfect given the circumstances. And after the dust had settled a few weeks later, I could look back on the game as one of the greatest I had ever played.
Once again, top article mate, brilliant responses all round.