Top 5 of 2014 from a person.

It's that time of year when people put games in random order because of reasons! My turn! Ready set...GO!

You got it! Stand by for....Titanfall!

So disappointing that this game tried to put in some sort of story in a competitive shooter and failed. I like games that try and do something different in regards to design and the idea of a story driven competitive shooter seemed awesome, but hard to pull off. I figured that a new studio would have the guts to pull it off, but whatever. What's important is that Titanfall is a hell of a lot of fun to play. I played on PC, where sadly the playerbase is pretty non-existent these days, but in its hayday the fast paced movement combined with fluid controls matched well with the gutsy shooting fun. And those robots were fun too (or power armor, whatever)! While I sank more than a dozen hours into it, I wish the game had more content. Part of me likes the simple design as it leans more towards balance, and Titanfall is very balanced, but lacking. If you can pick it up cheap on Xbox One, it's well worth it. I just don't think it's quite worth the $60 for most people.

Game over man! Game over! Alien Isolation.

I started to play Alien Isolation on hard mode. It wasn't very fun for me. Turning it down to medium helped a lot and I recommend doing so for most people. While it may be frustrating for some, Alien Isolation proved to be a breath of fresh air for me. Rarely are you forced to run away from encounters in big budget games horror games. Alien Isolation makes you run away from those Joes (fighting them is usually a last resort), but you won't succeed running against the Alien. The alien is faster and stronger than you and will kill you in one hit. There are ways of surviving, but nothing is guaranteed, which is why this game is so divisive, but is why I fell in love with it. It drags, objectives are boring, and it can be random as to whether you live or die, but Alien Isolation is my horror game of the year simply because it's fun to be scared of the Zenomorph again.

Banished = Sim City but with cold, starvation, sickness, and death. Joy!

Ugh....I hated this game when I first played it. It seemed more like an endurance run than an actual game. There is no goal and everything will turn to shit anyway, so why bother? Then I remember Missile Command, that old arcade game from the 80s where it was basically an endurance run to see how long you could survive against a nuclear war, and I found the charm in the game. It's hard as hell, it's not for everyone, but for people wanting a city builder (or a village builder, rather) with a survival element, look no further than Banished. You have to plan ahead and be spontaneous. And there's no birth control, so babies happen and resources are dedicated to them, which is a problem. Mods help this game a lot and it has Steam Workshop support, which is great. If it's on sale during the Steam Holiday mess, check it out and look up some good mods. This game deserved more attention than it got.

Shovel Knight...It's a good 2D NES Platformer!

What a great game. Play it. It's a 2D platformer with a fair challenge, charming visuals, great 8-bit music, great boss fights, and cool RPG elements that capitalize on Zelda 2 in a good way. It looks like a hodgepodge of NES games from it's map over world to its boss fights to its RPG elements, but ends up being unique and well crafted. If you are a fan of the genre and more specifically an 8 bit enthusiast, you have no excuse. Pick it up.

And the winner is.....Wolfenstein: The New Order!

The most fun I had this year was Wolfenstein The New Order. On the surface, it looks like a decent shooter with some cool story elements. For me, it's how that story meshed well with some great feeling shooting and satisfying stealth that made it all worthwhile. It had every right to be generic, but didn't. Everything was made with care. FPS is my favorite genre, and as it becomes more scripted and less fun year after year, it becomes less fun. Wolfenstein hearkened back to what makes the genre great. No weapon limit, no regenerating health, no press F for feelings, just give me dual wield shotguns, a bunch of Nazis, a cool environment and story, and you got me. The RPG elements (that are earned and well implemented) and replayabilty are just icing on the cake. It's my game of the year for 2014. Yay!

___________

I didn't finish Divinity Original Sin, so consider that as a number 6, but that also deserves some love from the old school RPG lover. Oh and Dark Souls 2 was cool too. As was The Vanishing of Ethan Carter. As were a lot of other games!

Shovel Knight and Wolfenstein are my two favorite games from this year as well.

I'm finalizing my list, and Wolfenstein is dangerously close to edging out Mordor and Bayonetta.

The Creative Assembly would be offended! Kidding, but it's pretty misplaced, considering the game tries to avoid the style of the cheesy second movie.

I would highly recommend against playing it on Normal. The game isn't very hard. There are far too many crafting materials lying around, which was fixed by the new Nightmare difficulty, which unfortunately doesn't have a health bar. I've also heard that the alien is dumber on Normal.

Had not even heard of banished, will definitely look into it.

I hate to be that guy but I don't get all the love Wolfenstein is getting, game did not gel with me one bit.

@carryboy: People liked Wolfenstein the new order a lot because it had a lot of drama and characterization which first person shooters don't tend to do well very often. It was backed up by solid game play and being able to akimbo weapons which hasn't happened since... Blood, I think.

I didn't think it was the best this year (it's #5 on my list), but it's definitely worth a mention if only because it's a great game in a strange year.

@cornbredx: Fair enough, I thought it was ok just had to many issues with it, the story was better and more deep then I thought anyone expected out of it but I thought some of the level design was off the gunplay seemed stuck between shooters of today while also trying to channel some of that old dual wield shoot like a maniac play that used to be more prevalent and just didn't work aswell for me. Finally having to manually pick everything up really took alot away from that game.

Going back to the OP list, I have shovel Knight to play this week and from what I hear most likely will make my list and whilst Alien Isolation wont (because I dont like those type of games) it seems incredibly well realised.

I played it when it first came out, so no nightmare mode for me, but I could check it out. I could see why some people would argue that it's better on hard and for awhile I thought that was the case, but I felt the game was ultimately too random in some of its encounters and having the Alien slightly dumber helped me enjoy it a bit more.

Wolfenstein is amazing . Alien is awful

Happy to see Alien: Isolation make someone's list :D

Totally agree with Wolfenstein and Alien, those are the best games I've played this year.

Banished is not for everyone. Look for some mods if you feel the game is lacking, but I found it a charming kind of city builder.

Happy to be seeing some Alien: Isolation love! The only one on your list that I've played.

A person eh? Prove it

Haven't heard of Banished or Shovel Knight but they both seem like checking out.

@giantlizardking said:

A person eh? Prove it

Ever play Binary Domain?.....We're people too ya know. :3

Shovel Knight I have no qualm recommending at all. I feel it's a game everyone should check out. Banished, as mentioned, is a harder sell. It's just a game I liked for being the most engaging town builder I played in a long time. It's simple to learn, but really hard to master. It was also made by one person (as far as I could tell) and I'm all for supporting dem independents.

Yup, that game is pretty awesome and wasn't afraid to be niche, which I respect the hell out of.

There are many games with a certain theme and stories which I guess attract more people to play; This is a great progress in games. No wonder more and more people are game addicts.

Banished is a great podcast game. I loved the hell out of what I played of it.

I really hope Wolfenstein gets the recognition I think it deserves this year. It is also the most fun I've had in an FPS game in a long time. The last FPS game I bought was Insurgency. Despite having a nice PC and consoles, I still just rent them from Redbox. I barely get any enjoyment out of them. I always thought that it was a problem with the homogenization of the genre. Most are linear like Call of Duty and others still share many similarities, but they also draw inspiration from older shooters like Half-Life or Bioshock. They still fall flat regardless.

Then Wolfenstein comes along and is more or less no different in the type of shooter it is from those. Yet... it was fantastic. It goes to show that it is indeed the talent of the developer that makes the difference. I also happened to really like Singularity for many of the same reasons, actually. Such a shame one of my favorite developers (Raven) had all marketing pulled out from under them at release and got put on permanent Call of Duty map development with most of the team laid off.

The only thing of interest on that list for me is Banished.

Alien Isolation is one of my favorite horror games in years, but it seems many people really have a problem with it.

I always liked hide and run type gameplay in horror games, it's very exciting to me.

There's been a lot of Wolfenstein love around the site from users. It's totally warranted. Besides the graphical issues I had playing it on my beefy pc, I loved it.

I wonder how the GB staff feel about it.

I feel bad for not playing Wolfenstein, it's sounding like it may have a shot to be GOTY.