In a Chaotic Year, the Best Games Took Away the Illusion That I Was in Control

2016 was a year that felt entirely out of control. At times, it was a blur; at others it was dreadfully long, challenging moments personal and collective stretching into little eternities.

This year’s videogames weren't explicit responses to anything that happened this year---games rarely work like that, especially where multi-million dollar development cycles are concerned---but entertainment and reality often intersect in disconcerting ways. In a year outside of my control, with unexpected personal realizations, collective tragedies, and a fraught (and, personally, frightening) election, my favorite games did exactly what this year did: they took away control. They moved at a pace all their own.

Most of the biggest commercial games are designed to let you play at a tempo of your choosing. You set your own level of engagement. Take, say, an Assassin’s Creed game, which sets you in a broad open world with tasks from end to end. You can do some of them, or all; you can explore slowly or plow from objective to objective, never looking up long enough to notice the scenery. Find all the collectibles or pretend they don’t exist. It’s up to you. You’re in charge.

My favorite games of the past year, though, did the opposite. In 2016, Doom asked me to dance—only the dance floor was covered in plastic wrap and baby oil. And there were demons. Oh, and a shotgun. It was videogame violence distilled down to its most basic elements of running, shooting, and trying to find time to catch your breath. Likewise with the brilliant Titanfall 2, which forced me to move like a superhuman acrobat to get anywhere, navigating over bottomless gaps and through cavernous factories as gunfire spat at my feet.

Hyper Light Drifter, Dark Souls 3, and the devious adrenaline injection that was rhythm game Thumper: all games that push the player to work and think fast, in the process delivering a simple message that co-opts any agency with an insistence on struggling toward perfection. Move, or die.