Games you feel are flying under the radar for GOTY so far

Adding to CRPG mention, although it is a long long shot, Wasteland 2. Shadowrun, Divnity, and Wasteland 2 are pretty much all I remember from the RPG genre that are more or less going to be left out of the running.

@thunderstorm101: Hearthstone on iPad (I play on an Air and Mini 2), is one of the few large apps that *doesn't* seem to crash when you might expect it. I think I have had possibly only a single match, out of 1000+, get messed up due to a crash. The game is solid and can recover from random networking shit so well I am amazed. I believe you can even resume an in-progress game on another device, even between iPad and PC/Mac, as long as it hasn't been too long (a few turns/minutes). Everything happens server-side which is the right design for a game like this. Maybe the stuff you ran into has long been patched, so you should give it another try. The one issue I run into is it's pretty memory hungry and can get killed by iOS pretty quick if you multitask to say, change the podcast you're listening to.

@drzing: Maybe ill give it another go then, i was playing on an iPad mini so assumed it could handle the game.

I've spent the longest playtime with DS2 this year and i've enjoyed every minute of it .

And i still can see myself going back to it to give it another spin .

Right now, i'm playing Wasteland 2 and i can see a lot of potential for it to be my GoTY .

@thunderstorm101: Oh ok, a first-gen iPad Mini? Those are pretty slow, since the guts are an iPad 2, I can't say how well it would run there. I'm sure devs just hate having to support that old thing, it's a dinosaur by now. Good time to upgrade, you can probably find a great deal on a Mini 2 this week. Much faster, and I would say the retina screen is just as important for a game with many detailed cards on screen at once. (Don't buy a Mini 3 though).

There's that neat little poll they put out about which games they missed, and the whole gang will be covering games over the week. I put Persona Q five times. This game is fantastic.

You know, I really hope P.T. gets talked about and I feel like it wont get attention come GOTY.

Octodad, Crossy Road and Desert Golfing will all fly under the radar.

Aside from Transistor, this year has been relatively quiet for indies.

Wasn't Stick of Truth released this year?

Huh. The more I think about my favorite games this year the more I think Titanfall is my GOTY. Like, it's the only game I had tons of fun with from when I started to when I finished and it's the only game from this year that when I think back on I'm still hype about. And I can't have DOTA be GOTY all years so I guess it's Titanfall. And that game has no chance outside of a multiplayer award.

Boy, 2014's blockbusters, huh? Woof.

Demon's Souls won Gamespot's GOTY

I've been super hooked on Love Live! School Idol Festival.

An ouendan style music game / collectible card game with stats, skills, and leveling / unholy Japanese free to play UR-game (ha ha my fellow love livers will get that funny and super clever joke). It's fun and somehow I've convinced too many people I know to start playing it.

Haven't spent a dime on it yet, but some Christmas cash is going to be converted into love gems by the end of the year.

South Park, that Diablo III expansion, and Transistor. I have a sneaking suspicion that Elite Dangerous will also be swept aside since its releasing so late in the year, which is unfortunate; there's so much in that game that makes me giddy. And I do not know if they've gotten onto Persona Q yet to consider it.

I would like to see them mention The Fall. Maybe not the best game of the year, but it was really well written hard science fiction that you don't get very often in games. The production design and voice work were also great.

@whitegreyblack: I just started playing through it recently (im about 6 hours in) and Shadowrun Dragonfall is defiantly up there for me an absolutely fantastic game

Kentucky Route Zero: Act III deserves a mention and probably more, it might be my GOTY.

Threes!

Wasteland 2, it is Fallout 1 & 2 all over again, the combat is fine but the rest of the game is awesome. I feel it will be overlooked due to Divinity and Dragon Age.

The Banner Saga, it needs to win "Best Looking Game", the game is gorgeous, hell the map alone could win that category.

Dark Souls 2, to me it is just as good if not better than Dark Souls 1 great game.

I don't know if the main episodes were released this year (though the complete Season 1 "Collectors Edition" was released May 2014 on Steam), but I really enjoyed The Last Door - great horror adventure..

Until Shadow Of Mordor came out, Valiant Hearts was my obvious front runner.

@jackburtonme said:

The Fall is great, but I think it's technically episodic and doesn't count yet? I know that I personally wait until a game is fully "out" before I would put it on one of my lists.

I'll continue to extol Lightning Returns and Drakengard 3 as being truly fantastic, but these aren't games for most people, I feel. LR carries too much baggage from opinions on the rest of the series, games which actually should be played to even get the full impact out of the most recent release. And Drakengard 3 is QUITE rough in the gameplay department, especially at the beginning (the bad framerate is much worse in the first area), which makes it hard to expect most people to slog through 15-20 hours to see the great characters and story. I can't really blame people for missing them, but I'm still a bit disappointed.

Dungeon of the Endless. Fantastic game with a lot of conjoined elements without being too obvious. I think its a real treat to both watch and play.

Velocity 2X deserved more love. I heard great things about Stealth Inc. 2 as well.

Whoa, wait - you mean in Forza Horizon 2, I cannot pretty much replace the soundtrack with a playlist of my choosing like I did with Forza Horizon 1?

That fucking sucks.

I'm pretty sure my two favorite games of this year - Shovel Knight and Wolfenstein - will be brought in GOTY discussions. Nothing else I've played really strikes me as deserving of the conversation.

Shovel Knight

Its a game that was able to do the Indie Pixel Art look without looking totally uninspired and actually feels likes it own entity and not a knockoff of game from 20 years ago.

Millennium Girl was a remake of the first EO game with more story and no character creation so it's much closer to Persona Q than the other EO games.

Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze definitely. Dan basically said it's his number 2 favorite pllatformer of all time and encouraged everyone to play it for GOTY. Everyone ignored him. Sad, I hope Dan can get it on the list none the less.

For me, my favorite games this year are Alien Isolation, Valiant Hearts, and The Walking Dead Season Two, so it'd be nice to see those on lists. Actually, I loved them, but I don't really care if they're on lists, but as part of the discussions, that'd be nice.

This guy gets it.

FH2 is a vast, solid mechanically, pretty looking racing game that is by far one of my favorite racing games ever. I had more fun with that than Infamous for sure.

I think Mordor was shockingly good, but not great. There were things I disliked that led to me not finishing it because I had no real compelling urge to. I really enjoyed South Park: Stick of Truth a lot, but I'm a South Park fan so I'm probably biased. If you don't appreciate South Park, it's hard to like. And I think Wolfenstein may be the best shooter this year. I don't even think Destiny or COD: AW comes close to Wolfenstein's "fun factor". Which you duel wield those auto-shotguns...umph. It's good.

I agree on Infamous: Second Son. It is a great game, I beat twice in a weekend and had a blast going for the platinum.

Infamous First Light was also pretty good. Sucks to see those being largely ignored during best of the year talks.

FRACT OSC

It's a video game musical instrument that is also a great puzzle game.

You know, Disney Infinity 2.0, with all the Marvel stuff, may be the most I've enjoyed a game this year. Definitely in my top 3.

Hearthstone

If it gets finished when it's supposed to, Sunless Sea all the way. Even now it's one of my favorite games in a long while.

I don't know if Hearthstone counts because it was in a pretty complete beta since August, but it's my GOTY right now.

Wolfenstein: The New Order is an underrated gem this year. Machine Games could have easily just churned out a standard FPS, but they actually told a well-written story and had well made cinematics (apparently an hour and a half's worth,) to help tell that story.

Plus, it was really fun to dual-wield shotguns and sniper rifles and shoot Nazis and robot Nazis in the face.

I feel like Wolfenstein: The New Order, South Park: The Stick of Truth and Velocity 2X might be criminally overlooked. They are all top five material if not top three.

I really like Sherlock Holmes Crimes and Punishments, though I haven't played all of it. Been saving the three last cases for the holiday break, but man that is just an awesome detective game. The deduction-mechanic really makes that game, super fun!

I want Wolfenstein to get its props. LUFTRAUSERS also deserves a discussion. Everyone claiming inFamous Second Son is worth talking about is crazy. That game was pretty and functional, but doesn't deserve recognition beyond "hey that was a great looking game to justify spending $400 on a new box."

@kishinfoulux: You're entitled to your opinion man but saying Dark Souls 2 was a bummer because it didn't execute is straight up ridiculous.

I liked Dark Souls 1 better but Dark Souls 2 is still a hell of a game.

Forza Horzion 2 is probably the best game that came out this year, did Hearthstone come out this year? If not Naxx and G&G did so it should count.

Luftrausers, Wolfenstein: The New Order, Transistor, Strider, Diablo III: Reaper of Souls, Kentucky Route Zero. These are the games I enjoyed a great deal this year and would like to see them get their spot in the GOTY discussion.

If you ask me what game I had the most fun playing... It was actually Velvet Sundown... but I am not sure that thing is even a game really...

And the music! The music is just so damn good.

Risen 3. Played Divinity, South park etc in the first half of the year, but none of them managed to entertain very much.

Thankfully Risen 3 came along and I was able to survive the months leading upto the holiday releases (ACu, FC4, DAI)

Great, beautiful and engrossing game. Only competition for Goty it has from my side is DA:I. (Have just started DA so can't say yet)

I wouldn't put it on a top ten but I wonder how many people remember without being reminded first, that Titanfall came out this year.

That game seems to unfortunately have basically disappeared.