GOTY 2014
The Year of the Narrative™
List items
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Every once in a while a game comes along that is a punch in the gut to play. The 45 minutes I spent playing Three Fourths Home, a game where you play a 20-something girl driving home in the rain, was more powerful than any other experience I had this year.
The mechanics are brilliant - the player keeps one hand on the forward button (the game becomes unresponsive when your car stops moving) while picking dialog options in conversation with your mother, father, and brother on the phone. The result is a story that's mostly directed by the developer, but with small details and background dressing crafted by your chosen responses.
While all of this is happening, the world outside your car is slowly changing as you drive. I'd explain more, but I feel like it would really take something away from discovering the game for yourself. Needless to say, it's really quite special.
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My love of the Persona franchise, especially Persona 4, is well known. Persona 4 was the first game I ever played that illustrated that the medium can maturely portray the importance of empathy and self-acceptance within a greater narrative. Persona Q isn't quite as deep on the character relations front as Persona 4, opting for more of a fanfic-style narrative, but it makes up for that in spades with its dungeon crawling gameplay. Some of the most fun I had this year was spent drawing maps and working my way through the surprisingly-deep strategic random encounters and boss battles in the game. Getting to see Kanji and Nanako being cute to one another? That's just icing on the cake.
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(I'm cheating a bit by having this spot count for both Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc and Danganronpa: Goodbye Despair, which both came out this year)
In years past I was introduced to the visual novel genre through games like 999 and its sequel, Virtue's Last Reward. While those games were amazing, I'm not sure if I was prepared for Danganronpa's amazing blend of insanity. With a twisting story, a macabre setting (students are trapped in a location (a school in the first game and an island paradise in the second) and are forced to kill one another if they want to leave), and some truly unique murder cases (with the exception of one that handles some sensitive topics in an awful, ham-fisted manner), Danganronpa melds mini-games, Phoenix Wright, and Persona into a truly engaging experience.
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In Transistor, Supergiant crafted one of the most original and well-imagined worlds I've ever played in. I spent far more time than I should have just looking at every single pixel I could get my eyes on. Add to that Supergiant's exceptional ability to craft innovative, strategic gameplay experiences and a pretty great story that didn't feel the need to spell every little thing out, and you have one amazing little indie title.
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I loved the first Bayonetta, but never finished it. Like many games, I got distracted by other releases and just never made my way back around to finish it off. So when I sat down to play Bayonetta 2 I was determined to not let myself get distracted by other offerings. "No other games until I finish this one," I told myself. And that's exactly what happened, but it wasn't difficult like I thought it might be. When I started playing Bayonetta 2 I didn't *want* to play any other games.
I don't tend to play character action games because, much like fighting games, I don't handle button combo memorization very well. But Bayonetta has players like me covered. The witch time battle system puts an emphasis on dodging, allowing successful dodges to put the player in a slow-mo beat-the-crap-out-of-everything-quickly mode that makes combat challenging, but incredibly fun. Add to the fact that the game starts out insane (fighting angels on fighter jets over New York City) and continuously one-ups itself and you have just a rip-roaring good time.
Some of the boss battles in Bayonetta 2 are the best I've ever played outside of a Souls game. The chaotic, insane speed of things is almost reminiscent of Dragon Ball Z, leaving the player constantly feeling like they're just about to screw up, but never taking it over the edge into that level of frustration. It's intensely enjoyable in a way most other games can't touch.
One last thing - and this is something that's been hotly debated this year - I honestly feel like Bayonetta 2 is a feminist game. I welcome and fully accept other interpretations of the character as something far more sinister, but when I look at Bayonetta I see a powerful female character exerting her will and her wishes on both the player and those around her, not the other way around. It's a refreshing thing to see, and something that's all too rare in current games.
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Despite it coming out in March, I still haven't finished Dark Souls II. I doubt I will *ever* finish Dark Souls II. Attempting to finish the Souls games may be the most frustrating gaming challenge I will ever undertake, but I'll keep trying. Why? Because of the pure exhilaration I experience whenever I succeed in a portion of the game. The Souls games have always been brutally difficult, but the flip side of that difficulty is the joy you feel when you feel yourself improving. I made it further in Dark Souls II than I have in any Souls game previously, and the bosses that I encounter caused me to both yell at the TV in frustration when I died and raise my fists in triumph when they finally went down.
The rush I felt while playing Dark Souls II was unparalleled this year. One day I'll return to Drangleic, and when I do, that Executioner's Chariot is going down.
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Dragon Age's world of Thedas is one of my favorite places to play around in. The politics driving everything around you make for a layered experience where your decisions feel more weighty than in the game's sister series, Mass Effect. Inquisition continues the tradition of Bioware roleplaying games with fun companions and epic quests. It's a huge step up from the disappointingly-limited Dragon Age 2, and is one of the biggest, most exciting worlds I've experienced this year.
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Destiny is... complicated. This really shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who paid attention to games writing this year, which was full of articles analyzing what this new FPS got right or wrong. The game is beautiful and, in a year with many failed multiplayer game launches, Destiny was a sound and solid release. There are a lot of things that Destiny did quite well - the solid shooting mechanics that Bungie is so well known for are there, and the world-building is exquisite.
But that world-building is hidden away from the game's incredibly scattershot and lackluster plot, only accessed through grimoire cards that aren't even readable in the game. On top of that, Destiny handles its endgame leveling mechanics in a manner that is almost hostile, and the most enjoyable parts of the game are reserved only for those who gather 5 friends to take on raids. With all that Destiny does right and everything that it does wrong, it's not a stretch to see why people say it was both one of the best and worst games of the year.
I had enough fun with Destiny to put it on this list, but I also anguish over the ways that it falls just short of brilliance. I see the hints of the game that could have been, and wish that was the game I was playing this year instead. But it isn't, so I guess I'll go back to grinding for ascendant upgrade materials. Because, despite Destiny's flaws, I'm still playing.
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I know what you're saying - "Wait. Stop. Tyler, stop. What are you doing. This game was your GOTY last year? It's not a 2014 game??"
Well I say to you, yes Brian, but the second half of Infinite's Burial at Sea DLC didn't come out last year now did it?
The first half of Burial at Sea was interesting, putting you in the shoes of a Booker DeWitt in Rapture, but the real gameplay gem came in BaS's second half. In Burial at Sea Pt 2, Irrational finished up what they had to say with the Bioshock franchise by turning Infinite into, of all things, a stealth shooter. It was a brilliant transition that worked far better than it had any right to, giving the players a chance to step into Elizabeth's more-than capable shoes and kick some splicer ass. Or avoid it. Whichever suits your play style best. And the resulting narrative payoff (would it be a Bioshock game without a narrative payoff?) was one for the ages.
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In many ways, Drakengard 3 is a broken game. The frame rate and camera leave a lot to be desired, and many of the game's visuals look more like they belong in a PS2 game rather than a game released at the tail end of the PS3's lifecycle. However, regardless of its shortcomings, I enjoyed playing Drakengard 3 a lot more than I had any right to. The combat was just the right level of hacking and slashing. The upgrade system was easy to proceed along, but not so easy that it required no grinding at all. Even the story - you play a girl who rides a dragon and kills her sisters so she can steal their boyfriends - was a jolly romp that felt more feminist-leaning than many of the games (aka just about everything that wasn't Bayonetta 2 or Dragon Age Inquisition) I played this year.
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