So, Ive had many months to think about what happened in video games this year and the thing that sticks out in my mind the most was the wonderful atrocity that was twitch plays pokemon. I feel like its easy to forget about it, but this is me reminding you: Twitch plays pokemon was an amazing video game experience; One that spawned from a completely unique and amazing idea, and something that captured the hearts and minds of tens of thousands of people for a few weeks in February.
There were just so many great moments its actually hard for me to remember them all. Spending hours upon hours trying to get past the route 5 ledge. The introduction of democracy and the ensuing start9 revolution. The moment where they juuuust barely made it all the way through route 15 to Fuschia city, only to enter the gym instead of the pokemon center and get killed and have to go all the way back. Two amazing moments happened in the pokemon mansion. It was a pretty crazy moment where their last pokemon became poisoned just before reaching the item needed to open the gym. It was a severely tense occurence, wondering whether or not they were going to make it. Then pokemon fainted LITERALLY ONE STEP away from getting the item. Amazing. And also who can forget the moment when they became trapped between a table and a trainer and had to just continually get into random battles until they died. HOW DOES THAT EVEN HAPPEN?!
Not to mention all the GIFs, pictures and various other forms of media. I mean its not actually part of the game or anything, but its really cool to look at all the cool stuff that people created in response to the various things that happened over the course of the game. You haven't lived until you've heard a choir praise the helix fossil.
And of course, twitch plays pokemon's last great moment is basically the culmination of video games (okay maybe that's a bit of a hyperbole). Still, you can't deny the fact that when you have a level 36 All-terrain Venomoth left and you're up against a level 62 Dragonite the odds seem pretty stacked against you. But due to a crazy flaw in the game's AI, the Dragonite chose to use barrier and agility instead of slam and hyper beam because it defaults to using super effective moves. Instead of just killing it one hit, it just kept using defensive moves while it was poisoned until eventually, after many, many turns the the dragonite fainted and all hell broke loose. I can tell you as a person that was there to witness this moment live, it was positively amazing. Never before had I been cheering something on so loudly or experienced something so incredible.
Sadly, there is the argument you could make that this shouldn't 'qualify' for game of the year deliberation because pokemon red didn't come out this year. That's totally okay to say, but I really think this is so abstracted from pokemon and its so much of a unique twist on that game that i feel like its still okay to nominate it.
So here's the part where I'll be honest with you. I played 56 games in total this year. For me personally, there wasn't a single game that matched the experience of me watching twitch plays pokemon. It takes the things I love: pokemon, cool and unique new ideas, the collective mind of the internet and just bat-shit crazy and combines them into sometimes that has never quite existed before. There were just so much crazy stuff that happened where I literally couldn't believe what I was seeing. There are scripted games out there that are unable to match the amazing moments that twitch plays pokemon birthed out. Think about that for a second. The fact that I just so happened to be there to watch most of those moments play out live was an absolutely thrilling experience. Being able to simultaneously cheer (or laugh, or sometimes cry) with tens of thousands of other people is something that sticks in my mind as a seriously cool idea. That's why I think www.twitch.tv/twitchplayspokemon is the greatest URL of 2014. What a world we live in where a super dumb thing like twitch plays pokemon can bring together the internet in a crazy awesome way.
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