The Best Action-Adventure Game of 2016

Honorable Mention: Ratchet & Clank

It’s award season here at Twinfinite! Starting with a few runner ups, let’s look back at the best action-adventure games from this year and our 2016 winner!

Ratchet & Clank was a return to form for the titular Lombax and robot, recreating the original 2002 game into a genuinely enjoyable modern adventure. Playful quips in the script are just as buoyant as the game’s bright worlds and comically absurd weaponry. Battles are a colorful swirl of loot and gun blasts, which can either turn your enemies into exploding 8-bit figures or unwavering dance machines. The story follows the same route as its original, yet fills it with more character development and a hefty spoonful of humor.

It’s not often an essential remake takes the reigns so confidently from its source material and steers straight into success. All in all, Ratchet & Clank is the perfect combination of polish and fun, from its vivid visuals to its frenetic gameplay to its cast charming characters. Travelling from planet to planet, imploding foes in style, and bouncing from joke to joke is all we could have asked from the animated duo. 

Second Runner Up: Dishonored 2

Dishonored 2 is a masterclass in replayability, a quality rarely made the star of modern games. While narrative depth and multiplayer excitement are rightful goals elsewhere, Dishonored 2 prides itself on being an impressive sandbox of dichotomies.

The branch begins at character select, where players choose between Emily Kaldwin, young empress, and Corvo Attano, royal protector and star of the original title. Both feature their own sets of mystical abilities, branching unlockables that, by the end of the game, will reflect the playstyle you most often don. Aggressive players can summon equally bloodthirsty rat swarms or power kick enemies off tall cliffs. Subtle wanderers can invest in mesmerizing techniques and fast-acting sleep darts.

The beauty of Dishonored 2 is the extreme lengths to which you can follow these choices. Few games could with a straight face ask you to reach the ending without being spotted by an enemy once, or without killing a single foe, but these achievements are always within reach of a determined and calculated Dishonored 2 player. The primary target of each level lies at the end of a dozen or more pathways. You could crawl around the mountain side to reach an open ventilation shaft, possess a fish and swim through a small sewer grate, blink upwards to the roof and drop in through a skylight, or murder your way right through the front door and down the entry hall. You can be a ghost, a duelist, a silent assassin — but more important than being offered choices is finding them so inviting that you return to make more.

Replay value in most games lies in unlocking one of multiple endings, but not so here. Dishonored 2 builds Karnaca through discoverable NPC conversations and writings scattered across desks and floors — both gratifying means of piecing together the political turmoil of the world — but brief and overt expositions at the end of each chapter, and even at the game’s close, aren’t anything to look forward to. You’ll return to equip new powers, hop through new windows, kill new targets and show others mercy. Find three new ways past a locked gate, or maybe seven. Master complex, time-bending kill tricks, or complete the journey without any powers at all.

Dishonored 2 may not be a narrative marvel, but it’s the pure satisfaction of genius level design, a precise construction that makes ingenuity accessible at each corner, no matter how many times you visit it. 

First Runner Up: The Last Guardian

A story about a nameless young boy and a massive beast called Trico, The Last Guardian explores the bond that grows between the two as they escape from mysterious ruins. It’s as simple a journey as it sounds, yet a beautifully unforgettable experience.

I have no qualms in calling Trico the most lifelike video game companion ever created. The massive beast moves with curious hesitancy and clumsy loyalty. Its eyes follow you with fear as you climb platforming puzzles mounted in an endless sky. Trico whinnies with sadness should you travel out of its view, and teeters on the edge of daunting jumps with incredibly convincing stubbornness. Unlike most video game interactions, there’s something special between your button prompts and Trico’s actions — a tilt of the head, a slow approach, or sometimes an outright refusal — that feels like an existing personality making its own decisions.

Trico’s realism is endlessly compelling, empowering each scene with an empathy few games achieve. They pierce you more thoroughly with each brave leap, playful shake, and grateful pat on the head. The Last Guardian requires no small amount of patience, but this only makes its subtle connections all the more spellbinding.

Winner: Uncharted 4

Uncharted 4 is an epilogue in its entirety, finally holding a mature mirror to the longtime poster child of action adventure. We meet Nathan Drake and his uncomfortably pedestrian life, but soon enough we’re tossed back into action by the appearance of long-lost brother, Samuel Drake.

Sam is the brasher version of his younger sibling, entranced by the same siren song of adventure that Nathan is struggling to forget. The resulting tension casts a new light on what has always been an unquestioned hero. Can Nathan Drake walk away from his past and live a life free of danger, or is he perpetually doomed to turn away from a future with the ones he loves? These questions are answered in stirring performances from an exceptional cast, but most strikingly in subtle glances and double entedres laid so carefully across the script. The message rings doubly in the very source of their treasure: pirates whose thirst for gold left them lost in the new world.

Uncharted 4’s steps aren’t as fiery as those of its predecessors, though its not short on the classic self-destructing set pieces. This game sets its sharp focus on the connections between these characters and the gunfire-less moments they share, hoping both the player and the cast will learn that those are what matter in the end.

With its fourth entry, Uncharted comes full circle on its series-wide accomplishments. Brilliant writing, phenomenal direction, and unmitigated reflection make Uncharted 4 an unforgettable closing ode to an icon of adventure.