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ArbitraryWater

Internet man with questionable sense of priorities

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Games that I played a notable amount of in 2014

This is really as much for my benefit as it is yours. The title says it all: Games I played a decent chunk of this year so I can actually remember come GOTY stuff or maybe for personal recollection without having to search through all of my blogs.

List items

  • I probably could've done without spending 8 hours of my life playing this game. While not unabashedly awful, it's not good in any sense of the word.

  • Continued from me playing it last year. Screwed myself over with party respeccing, I didn't have the patience to grind them back up. Given that I got pretty damn close anyways, I'm just going to pretend I beat this one.

  • This one I actually did finish, partially because it gets easier as the game goes on rather than being continually brutal the same way the third game does. Still easily the slickest and most interesting game in the series from a mechanical and presentation perspective.

  • The first "big" kickstarter game I backed that actually came out. A decent tactics game with moral decisions that secretly don't matter and a battle system that could've used more variety. But the rotoscoped art design and grim tone made it worth playing.

  • A revival of a classic series that I think did the best job it realistically could have. Not perfect by any means, but its heart is in the right place and that counts for a lot should they make another one.

  • Game I backed on Kickstarter back in the day. A very well made jack-of-all-trades RPG that doesn't excel in any single area but manages to be the party-based Fallout-esque game the developers were aiming for (but still not entirely Fallout).

  • A high-quality RPG that is somehow leaps and bounds above what Larian has done before. While it's honestly not much in the story and character department (it prefers goofy dialogue and situations over deep meditations on the nature of humankind) it's still charming enough to compliment the generally amazing, Temple of Elemental Evil-esque combat. Then my computer broke and I lost my save, so... we'll see about me finishing this anytime soon.

  • What could've been the sequel to Final Fantasy V I've always secretly wanted squandered a lot of my goodwill by running out of content 2/3rds through the game and just repeating boss fights ad-verbatim.

  • This game seems legitimately dope. Will play more... when I regain access to the Wii U.

  • Played a chunk of it when the Loot 2.0 stuff came out, but it still wasn't enough to draw me back in (or buy the expansion). I just guess I'm not much for the loot lust gameplay loop that this thing runs on anymore.

  • Weird Dark Eye-themed tactics game seems pretty great after a few hours, but I could also seeing it go bad or janky by the end. Got distracted by school and intend to come back.

  • I think I would like this game more if it: A. didn't seem sort of impossible playing alone and B. made characters easier to unlock.

  • Got into this pretty hard again once the Advanced Edition stuff came out. Still a great game, still frustrating as hell to unlock everything or consistently beat the final boss, even on Easy.

  • Decent Metroidvania that didn't leave a strong impression, to tell you the truth. Well made, yes, but I guess I want more than comfort food when dealing with this genre.

  • Turn-Based Strategy game that I still play on an occasional basis. While not without problems (a lot of them being the same problems I had with older AOW games), I've put quite a few hours into it and probably won't stop anytime soon.

  • Reboot of the classic stealth franchise that I think I liked more than a lot of people. Not without issues, but I'll venture as far as to call this a "good" game that I enjoyed.

  • Sequel to Dark Souls is more consistent but not nearly as cohesive as the first game, if that makes any sense. All of the mechanical changes are super smart, but in some ways this is a pretty safe sequel coming from that first game.

  • I think I still have a problem with how much enjoyment is derived from any given game of Civ versus how much time is spent dragging everything out. We'll see if I think the same about Beyond Earth.(hint: This game is better than Beyond Earth)

  • Oh, yep. This one. It's okay. Just okay. Not great, not the worst piece of garbage to ever crawl out of the pits of hell. Gameplay is solid enough, though parts of the story are a little undercooked (which is hilarious because this game is 40 hours long) and I could do with a little less tutorializing.

  • A game about hell demons and future samurai or something. Absurdly difficult at times.

  • This game is sort of a bummer. In trying to explain everything about Metal Gear, it sort of just goes up its own ass in spectacular, ridiculous fashion and not in the way I like MGS to go up its own ass.

  • It's probably telling that I did not complete this game despite having an entire summer's worth of time to waste. Don't get me wrong, it's really good, but I feel like coming to this after Dark Souls and Dark Souls II ruins some of the magic I might have experienced had I played it back in 2009.

  • Hey, remember X-COM: UFO Defense? It's like that. To some extent, that's a good thing. To another extent, it's a depressingly safe title that I don't think escapes the shadow of the game it so slavishly imitates.

  • Still King's Bounty with Vikings, still strategy RPG comfort food.

  • A quality platformer that still holds up, mostly because it doesn't try to be anything other than a quality platformer.

  • See above, but throw in a handful of vehicle-type levels that maybe don't hold up as well as the rest of the game.

  • One of the better Kart Racers of the era. Certainly better than Mario Kart 64, that's for sure.

  • Anime World War II action in its premiere form, though not without nitpicks. At the very least, its story doesn't make me want to gouge my eyes out the same way the second game's does.

  • The game that made me take the plunge on PS+. Vanillaware's beat-em up type game clearly inspired by those Capcom D&D brawlers. Also contains incredibly detailed and beautiful sprites of women with exceptionally large heaving bosoms (and outrageously large muscle men as well). Seems totally alright.

  • HD Re-Release on 360. Still secretly my least favorite old Resident Evil game! Still totally okay despite that qualifier!

  • Oh right, finally started this one a couple of weeks ago and have been playing here and there. Already better than its predecessor in the "condescendingly long tutorial segment" department.

  • I've been pretty vocal about saying that Might and Magic VIII is easily one of the weaker games in the series, and I fully stand by that statement playing through it for a second time. I could go into excruciating detail, but I'll suffice by saying that it feels a bit rushed and has some really obvious balance issues.

    That being said, this series might as well be raw comfort food for me and in that sense it does alright.

  • Just the right combination of Kojima and Platinum crazy without the excesses of either side. Also a pretty great character action game with a very brisk pace.

  • Sooo, apparently the saves for King's Bounty don't sync up with the steam cloud unless you manually choose that, which is why I lost like 5 hours worth of progress in Warriors of the North and just figured "Screw it, all of these games are the same, ima play the next one instead". Maybe.

  • I thought the first Warlock was a totally okay, sort of light (to the point of being shallow) 4X experience. Its sequel builds on that in some interesting ways, like its planar structure and focus on fighting against the environment and its denizens over other players. It's also still sort of shallow.

  • The slower, more somber Halo game that is also clearly the product of a much smaller team. Also the plot is sort of nonsense.

  • Finally a modern-ish game that all the kids are into! One of the more compelling examples of a game whose sandbox-y mechanics are actually far more interesting than the missions themselves.

  • Both versions. I've come to appreciate this game quite a bit, and I think it's been long enough that it's still a fun game to play with friends 'n junk.

  • The sequel to that first-person dungeon crawler that people seemed to like. I think this one is pretty good too!

  • The Japan-only sequel to that Miles Edgeworth game that I thought was pretty good. Aside from a few minor errors (and some unfortunate "OBJECTION" soundbites from amateurs), I'd say the fan translation could be easily mistaken for a professional localization done by Capcom. On top of that, I think it might just be one of the better Ace Attorney games.

  • Not actually that much like Alpha Centauri. Instead, it's sort of a re-skinned Civ V with several mechanical differences, some of them impactful but a lot of them maybe not so much. It seems like the sort of game that will get a lot better with an expansion or two, but the core of Civ is still very, very good at annihilating one's free time.

  • So I might have bought this immediately following my completion of Gyakuten Kenji 2. It's essentially both a Professor Layton game and a Phoenix Wright game at the same time, and while I don't think it's as good as any individual game in those series, it does alright on its own.

  • The sequel to Endless Space, for all intents and purposes, despite being fantasy themed. It seems a lot less dry than its predecessor, so I'm on board thus far.

  • A legitimate roguelike and not a roguelikelikelike that captured my attention for the space of a few days, with a decent possibility of me coming back to it every now and again. It's surprisingly streamlined and refined for something that belies a lot of depth.

  • Oh hey, I guess I own a Wii U? One of the finer action games I've played in quite a while. A step above the first in a lot of ways, even if it's also a lot easier as a side-effect.

  • While it should be implied that I am ALWAYS playing a Heroes of Might and Magic game of some sort or another, I've been dabbling in V again recently and still maintain that it's up there with the New World Computing developed games in the series, an unpopular opinion I'm sure. (I'm also not going to extend that mercy to Heroes VI)

  • Yo it's Borderlands 2 with low gravity and somewhat less grating humor. I'm fine with that. Probably helps that I'm not playing as Claptrap.

  • Riiiiiiight. Finished this in the summer and totally forgot to put it on this list. Drags itself out like a mo-fo and is less than illusory about how much your choices matter, but I ended up enjoying it as a whole.

  • Liking it thus far. Hopefully it turns out alright, but then again I liked Dragon Age II so.... maybe it doesn't have to do that much.

  • Played some of this to get my 4X fix after Beyond Earth underwhelmed. Yep, I still really like this game even if I'm sort of bad at it! The remake is probably not as good as the original, but it has an interface that is actually modern soooooo....

  • The last traditional Resident Evil game is an interesting twist on the formula that isn't quite as good as I remember it being. Still better than Code Veronica.

  • Makes sense that right after finishing a sorta middling Resident Evil game I'd go onto another one that is also sorta middling. Nemesis is still scary!