Something went wrong. Try again later

Cav829

This user has not updated recently.

830 0 21 13
Forum Posts Wiki Points Following Followers

Game of the Year 2014

While 2014 may have been a down year for video games, I personally found no shortage of great stuff to play. While the continued disappointment coming from AAA-land tended to define the year for most, what stood out for me were the unexpected sources most of my favorite games came from.

This also gave me an incredible appreciation of how tough it is to finish enough games to fairly put together a top 10 list by going through this exercise. So for what it's worth, here are my top 10 games for 2014.

List items

  • Everything I played in discussion for my Game of the Year felt like a 5th or 6th best game from any other year tops. That is except Bayonetta 2. Where so many games are buggy this year, this game works near flawlessly. There are a mind-numbing amount of options and ways to play this game. Every weapon plays differently, has a completely different move set, and combos together with other weapons in unique ways. The art-style is gorgeous. The game runs at 60 FPS without a hitch almost the entire way through. The pacing is amazing. You never stop feeling like a total bad-ass. And there is an insane amount of replayability, something almost no game these days has. Yeah, the story is what it is, but it moves the action along and is fun if nothing else.

    I feel like the majority of people will either love this game or simply hate character action games, but this is the only game all year that felt like a Game of the Year to me.

  • I am positively floored that following Dragon Age 2, Mass Effect 3, and The Old Republic that I even could bring myself to play a Bioware RPG, never mind for me to like one this much. The story is great and the cast is the best Bioware cast since Mass Effect 2. I love the lore, the artwork, and the soundtrack.

    Unfortunately, a couple of things hold this game back. There is a lot of great content here, but there is too much of it at times without sufficient effort to tie it all together. This can be best summarized by the dreaded "get out of the Hinterlands" problem where most everyone ends up overleveled in the first 15 hours of the game. Also, the game has a slew of glitches, though few are that impactful. This is the only other game than Bayonetta I even considered for my GotY, and unfortunately a few issues kind of undo it.

  • The best indie game of the year is an impressive debut for Yacht Club games. Side-scrolling retro platformers have been so overdone in recent years by indie developers that I had grown to hate most of them. What makes Shovel Knight so good is that it does its own thing even while taking elements of Mega Man, Ducktales, Castlevania, and other classics. It also had my favorite soundtrack of the year.

  • Man, my experience with Mordor may have clouded me on this one a bit, but this does not at all feel like a game of the year to me. Here's the issue: the game requires you to die to see the Nemesis System at its best, and it's way too easy. I'm not that great at video games, but I never died. The crippling flaw of this game is its reliance on the player dying while not offering difficulty settings, which is really annoying.

    More importantly, strip away the Nemesis System and you are left with a game which has an atrocious story, bad boss encounters, occasionally confusing missions, and an unforgivable final 45 minutes. I still love this game, and I can see it winning GotY for others, but I can't overlook the game's issues.

  • The game that year that succeeds despite a million factors against it. If you're a fan of the show at all, you will love this game. What's surprising is how good of an RPG this is. Sadly, the game gets way too easy in the second half, or else it would have been higher.

  • Alex and Dan nailed this one: this is the best Mario Kart in a long time. I thought I was done with the series until this year.

  • The style of this game is damn incredible. The comedy is fantastic. If the actual game was better, it would be higher.

  • I'm shocked at how much I enjoyed this. I thought Ultimax would be the Persona product I more enjoyed this year, but the game seems to find a good mix between Persona and Etrian Odyssey while offering a ton of fan service to Persona fans. Of the two best handheld RPGs this year, I enjoyed Bravely Default's battle system more, but prefer everything else from Persona Q.

  • It's a better game than its predecessor, but not by enough to earn a higher spot.

  • The first of three Wii U games on my list this year. I was torn between this and Threes! for my final spot, but the polish and amount of content that went into Smash won me over.
Load Comments