Nominees for Destructoid’s Best Xbox One Game of 2015

The Gold Standard

What are you looking for from a game on Xbox One? Do you want narrative excellence? Action perfection? Platforming prowess? Xbox One had all of that in spades in 2015.

That is to say, a lot of good games came to Microsoft’s console this year. Some are true exclusives, some can be found elsewhere. Some require cutting-edge technology, some are very old. And, in the case of Shovel Knight, some just look very old.

It’s that variation that really sums up Xbox One’s year. When parsing through all the games to whittle down to a manageable list, our favorites were all significantly different from one another. These were the eight experiences on Xbox One that we found to be the very best of the best this year — all unique in their own, special way.

Here are the nominees for Destructoid’s Best Xbox Game of 2015:

• Life is Strange
• Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
• Ori and the Blind Forest
• Resident Evil HD Remaster
• Rise of the Tomb Raider
• Shovel Knight: Xbox One Edition
• Tales from the Borderlands
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

_{[Incomplete products like Steam Early Access titles, and episodic titles that are not fair to assess as stand alone experiences, without a full episode count, were not eligible for this year’s awards. The cutoff for entry into Destructoid’s 2015’s Game of the Year awards is December 4, 2015.]}