Game of the Year: Kell's Personal PlayStation Picks

Every year the Push Square Team gets together to vote for the site's PlayStation Game of the Year. While we usually keep these polls secret, we're putting the spotlight on some of our authors this holiday so that they can highlight some of their personal favourites from 2015. Today it's the turn of Kell Andersen, as he learns that life is strange.

Fifth Choice: Rocket League

I have never taken recreational drugs, but I suspect the effect is similar to that of playing Rocket League – a game that I continue to subject myself to despite my almost superhuman lack of talent. It's a simple concept executed perfectly and brought to life with explosively colourful visuals, as well as a fantastic soundtrack. It's 2015's answer to Resogun.

Fourth Choice: Tearaway Unfolded

As far as I'm concerned, everything Media Molecule touches turns to gold. Its one of the very few major developers that continues to create games which inspire a true sense of childlike wonder. Or, if you'd prefer, its a studio which continues to make games that make me scream with joy and excitement like a small child. Tearaway Unfolded was no exception. Its gorgeously colourful world, infectious soundtrack, and clever mechanics serve as a welcome reminder of how amazing it is that we can press buttons to make things happen on a screen.

Third Choice: Fallout 4

Fallout 4 was my first game in the franchise and, more than anything else, it made me furious for having not indulged prior. As with all Bethesda games, it provides a stupendously large world to explore, replete with an equally stupendous number of things to do. However, unlike some Bethesda games, there aren't massive empty fields with very little to see or do in them. Indeed, this is an incredibly dense open world, and one in which it's impossible to walk in any given direction without running into something new to see or do. It also plays host to some surprisingly competent shooting, and a remarkably solid soundtrack.

Second Choice: Everybody's Gone to the Rapture

As a massive fan of The Chinese Room, I went into Everybody's Gone to the Rapture with unreasonably high expectations. Expectations that, in reality, were very unlikely to be met. However, the Brighton-based studio managed to blow these expectations out of the water by creating a game which so deftly encapsulates everything that I find fascinating about the 'walking simulator' genre. Gorgeous graphics, incredibly intelligent dialogue, breathtaking music – it's all here, and it all combines to create a truly memorable experience.

First Choice: Life Is Strange

Life Is Strange was not the 'best' game this year – at least not in the traditional sense. Its dialogue is often clunky, its story is often unsubtle, and its animations are often rough. But despite these problems, it attempts to do things that no other game has attempts, and it makes me feel like no other game makes me feel. It so powerfully evokes a sense of wistful nostalgia sprinkled with a dash of apocalyptic teenage angst that it often feels like playing a John Hughes movie. Best of all, though, is the way that it lets you simply sit, listen to the music, admire the scenery, and contemplate everything which has happened to Max Caulfield and Chloe Price.

Are you in favour of Kell's selections, or does you list look very different to the one that you've just read? Scribble your opinion in the comments section below.