Games
The results are in: tear your thumbs away from your phone for our rundown of the year’s top titles.
Yesterday we crowned The Witcher 3 king of the consoles for 2015, just as we dubbed Far Cry 4 game of 2014 in our poll last year. This time round though we decided to do things a little differently, recognising that mobile games have flourished in 2015, and are so distinct in concept, scale, genre and input, that they deserved their own category in our Red Bull Games reader awards.
With that in mind, we asked you to vote for your five favourite games from our longlist of new mobile titles released this year, and now we’ve got the numbers back. Read on for the top 10 smartphone and tablet games of the year, as picked by you.
10. Lara Croft GO (2.18 percent of the vote)
Square Enix surprised mobile gamers last year with its boardgame-esque rendition of Hitman, in the form of Hitman GO, giving it a gorgeous, isometric top-down view that played as well as it looked, and changed up the typical gameplay you’d expect from Agent 47. That same formula has been applied to the long standing Tomb Raider franchise with this year’s Lara Croft GO, an addictive finger-swiping action-puzzle game that’s just as challenging as the original franchise. With simple-to-start gameplay that gets even more complex as you muster your way through the levels, it’s just as difficult to put it away as it’s simply that good – and you guys agreed, voting it as your tenth favourite mobile game of the year.
9. FIFA 16 Ultimate Team (2.84 percent of the vote)
EA’s massive footy franchise saw some stiff competition this year, but the mobile version of Ultimate Team still stands heads and shoulders above the competition. Granted, the mobile version of the game hasn’t really changed in the recent year, and the on-pitch action still feels a little imprecise, even allowing for the nature of touch-screen controls. But if nothing else, it’s a testament to the career-threateningly addictive nature of Ultimate Team’s card-collecting that it remains one of your most-played, most-loved mobile games this year.
8. Final Fantasy VII (2.96 percent of the vote)
If you think Square Enix plans to release the Final Fantasy VII Remake anytime soon, you obviously don’t know how the company makes new Final Fantasy games. The good news is it’s at least very good at porting its back catalogue to new devices, and its latest port – The Best Game Ever Because We Said So No Comebacks – is still worth revisiting, even if you’ve bought the game on PSP, PS3, PC and PS4 already. It’s that good. And unlike many classic console ports, Final Fantasy VII is perfectly suited to touchscreen controls, so strap on your buster sword, shove some materia into those empty slots and get adventuring. There’s a reason FFVII is still on GOTY lists almost 20 years after it first arrived.
7. Need For Speed: No Limits (3.30 percent of the vote)
Another year, another Need For Speed game with a completely meaningless subtitle that does not reflect how enjoyable the game is to play in anyway. If you’ve ever played a street racer before, you know the drill here – it involves racing people on the streets, basically, and spending your illegally-earned cash winnings on body kits, sweet decals (bro) and enough nitrous oxide to make Jack Dee giggle like a schoolgirl. No Limits is laughably easy in parts, but it still makes for a solid arcade racer – your top mobile racer of the year, in fact. Well, unless you count the next one.
6. Smashy Road (3.41 percent of the vote)
Take a slice of Crossy Road-style visuals, a dose of GTA vehicular mayhem and the freedom to smash up anything in sight, and you get what Smashy Road is all about. Forget trying to hop over the road, or sniping pedestrians from point-blank range: Smashy Road is all about trying to carve up ridiculous amounts of mayhem, not too dissimilar from the old school drive-’em-down title, Carmageddon, but with much cuter visuals. You guys agreed that causing a little bit of mischief on the roads is right up your street (excuse the pun), as it’s your sixth mobile game of the year: anyone for more five-star wanted levels?
5. Tales From The Borderlands (4.19 percent of the vote)
Telltale spins some fantastic yarns out of well known franchises like The Walking Dead and Minecraft, but now it’s proved it can do the same in just about any setting. We love the Borderlands series, but Gearbox Software’s shooters have always been about co-op combat, rather than narrative progression and immersion, Handsome Jack excepted. Yet, you were clearly hooked: vault hunting can work as a point and click adventure too. Based on its track record, we won’t be too surprised if Telltale’s interactive Game Of Thrones saga appears on next year’s list either.
4. I Am Bread (5.46 percent of the vote)
No, a few years ago, we wouldn’t have imagined a game about a slice of toast making any Game Of The Year shortlists either. But Goat Simulator changed us, as it clearly did you too. We’re more open minded, and the indie devs at Bossa Studios, the charmers behind Surgeon Simulator, know this. Hence this daft and endearing action puzzler about trying to singe yourself to a carbonised and crispy crunch, ready for buttering, placing so high in the poll. Well played.
3. Hearthstone: Heroes Of Warcraft (5.60 percent of the vote)
We spent the first half of the year wondering why Blizzard hadn’t brought its wildly popular card battle to mobiles, and the second half not being able to put down our iPad. As usual, the game arrived with Blizzard levels of polish, making it an immediate and well deserved contender for mobile game of the year. Side note: this is the only game on this list that has the potential to make you rich, so if you haven’t checked it out already, you really should.
2. Fallout Shelter (12.02 percent of the vote)
Fallout’s hilarious Pip Boy animations come to life in this brilliant strategy game that’s part Sims, part nuclear apocalypse. What’s remarkable about the game is that it’s little more than a marketing tactic, a brilliant, free, radioactive aperitif to tide fans over while Bethesda put the finishing touches to Fallout 4 (which is also excellent, by the way). Other publishers would do well to take note: your votes have shown that Fallout Shelter is the Right Way to make companion apps for games.
1. PewDiePie: Legend Of Brofist (48.49 percent of the vote)
Felix Kjellberg could have put his name to any old dross at this point and it would have made bank, but the legendary YouTuber chose wisely by partnering with the developers at Outerminds. Instead, the gamer’s first game is a tight, touchscreen platformer steeped in gaming history, possessing plenty of replay value thanks to its arena mode and difficulty levels. Best of all, and much to the relief of parents worldwide, Brofist comes with no in-app purchases whatsoever, so anything you unlock is done by your own merit. It’s for this reason that PewDiePie won our Red Bull reader mobile game of the year poll by a landslide. Congratulations PewDiePie; never stop streaming.
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