Game of The Year 2014 Users Choice

YEUGH. This was my first full calendar year on Giant BOMB dot com (I signed up sometime in January), and got hooked on the community and content being made under this here banner. Saw some ups and some downs and got a few lessons on the more in depth problems of the culture through Giant Bomb as a lens, and I have to say, it was amazing to watch people come together after controversies started stacking near the end. But y'all don't wanna hear me talk, you just want to dance, so here's my top 5 games of the year.

List items

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  1. Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth

  Okay. Yeah. This is the last game that Atlus announced involving both the Persona 3 & 4 casts. I was looking at this with a spoonful of salt, especially after being disappointed with the climax of the Arena series. But between friends who got it earlier and a few screens/translations coming from blogs, I saw a glimmer of hope; more dumb anime dungeon crawling gushy friendship...shit. And does this game deliver exactly that, by the damn bushel. I bought a new 3DS and the Limited Edition of this game. It cost me 305 dollars and I've gotten my money's worth in the first playthrough. This is unabashed fan service for people like me, the one's who love these characters to no end. Every conversation, from the main story, to side quests and even when you run into dead ends, is carefully constructed, weapons grade Persona character interaction. I can't count the amount of times I've laughed audibly because of something Kanji did. Kanji Tatsumi is a gift to us all. Everyone else in the party performs wonderfully, and it's as if the stories never ended. This is a bunch of anime teens getting together under a dumb premise to fight some weird ass monsters and be all buddy-buddy with each other. This is a Persona game.

  But it's also an Etrian Odyssey game too, mind you. The new mechanics brought in from EO made combat fresh and strategic. As well, concessions were made to make every party member capable of infinite abilities and that spread the burden across 5 whole slots. Deciding which sub Persona to assign and trying new combinations to cover weaknesses or bolster strengths is a blast. Using and abusing the Boost system to get an edge over enemies became necessary very quickly, and making a well balanced team assures you can do this every time. Learning the dungeon mechanics over time helped make navigation easier and introducing new traps and FOEs over time kept things interesting and tense when trying to avoid or approach each situation. This game makes me want to come back to a New Game Plus, a trait mainline Persona and SMT games hold. I do not mind spending 60+ hours again and this reignited my interest and passion for the Persona series, which is all Atlus could hope for in the coming months for Persona 5's inevitable launch.

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  2. Persona 4 Arena Ultimax

  The Persona Arena series got me back into fighters. The chance to drop a God's Hand on Teddie was too tempting, and I came to find that ArcSys did this series justice. I have to imagine it was both exciting and challenging to try to wrap the anime fighter cape around an already well developed RPG franchise, and everything translated pretty damn well. Go and look at the animations of each character; from round wins to move executions everything is from the original characters' motions in their prospective games (you best believe Chie's Galactic Punt is as hype as ever). The story mode in Ultimax fell a little flat in trying to wrap things up with the P-1 Climax, but given the format the best they could muster was still chock full of great character interactions between the two parties.

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  3. Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN-

  ArcSys makes beautiful fighters. Two of them are on my list for simply looking that pretty and holding 60 frames. Xrd is like the unchained monster I wish Ultimax could be; it's got all the marks of an anime fighter, and boasts some of the best effects in fighting games I've seen. A little time with some more knowledgeable players, and you'll be able to start using everything worked into the game and figuring out favorite characters and combinations. This game is fantastic to play, and just as good and sometimes better just to watch. It's poetry in motion seeing an even hype match play out, and I haven't seen anything more exciting than a knockout in the PS4 versions. It blows up, son.

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  4. The Last of Us

  Remastered Edition. Remade from the ground up and repackaged for the people who missed out on the PS3 version (myself included), or the people willing to pick it back up, a la my roommate. This was another wild trip; the focus is on so few characters, it's easy to watch and study the performances. Joel and Ellie, an unlikely duo to go right up there with Clem and Lee as well thought out and executed characters. Joel is so broken by his 20 years of survival after the first outbreak, coupled with the loss of his daughter and missing brother, it's no wonder he's skiddish around protecting a young girl again. The backdrop of a cordyceps infestation was great, and allowed for some fresh, gruesome horrors and monstrosities (some of the worst weren't even infected). Combat was stressful and resources were limited, it took a solid mind and good reflexes to get out of some situations. That's all you could ask for in a survival game, and TLoU shines in that department. Leading the charge for the remasters du jour (arguably until GTA V brought FPS to the table) with some the most well developed console graphics I've seen this generation, and the added bonus of the Left Behind DLC released earlier this year, it was all Ellie everything in my household for a good month.

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  5. To the Moon

  This game came out in 2011? Shit. I'll bump it to 5th position for being three years old, but man am I glad I caught this in a Humble Bundle. Everything about how this game plays off the old 2D JRPG graphics and sets up one of the most heart rending stories resonated with me. I have a penchant for good, sad stories, where winning the game doesn't leave the characters in this happily ever after epilogue, but brings them on a journey, changes them along the way, and leaves them to their devices. Kind of like how an episode of real life works. The premise is fantasy, but it reminds me of old science fiction stories that took plausible future tech and used it to tell human ass stories; in this case, giving a dying old man the chance to live a simple dream. But the story sidetracks to his past, and as the party goes farther back into his memories, I ate up every inch of exposition and exploration this game could allow. You watch a life entwined with heartache, romance and ambition in reverse, and it encapsulates a lot of what growing up and growing old does to us. This reminds me of old folk stories the old men of my town used to tell to the young kids, all about the way life twists us and pulls us.