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bionicspark

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Game of The Year 2014 Users Choice

I can't believe I wrote this many words about video games. Especially in a year lacking in those games that make you forget time and miss dinner playing them because of just how good they are. But anyway, here's a list of good games that came out this year mostly in order of me remembering to put them on this list, which seems like as good a reason as any for their order.

(P.S. Mario Kart 8 and the new Super Smash Bros. are the absolute worst entries in either of their franchises and I just cannot understand how anyone could ever put them on a list of good games released this year (help?))

List items

  • It may seem weird saying this about the game occupying the top spot of my list, but I don't quite know how I feel about this game. When compared to the original, it just seems to lack that certain spark, that, having finally gotten around to playing The Wonderful 101, I have to attribute to Kamiya. It just lacks that impact, the ridiculousness of the originals final chapters or the smaller scale silliness of some of the cutscenes (like the scene with that fountain, more for the dog than the statue though). When Bayonetta 2 takes to space, it's very brief, not explained and feels mostly like the game is fulfilling an obligation rather than reaching a somehow logical conclusion of the escalating absurdity.

    And yet, if you asked me which of the two I would rather play, I just couldn't honestly name the first one. Bayonetta 2 is ultimately the better game, because what it lacks in presentation, it more than makes up for in gameplay. It adds some mechanics (most notably the Umbran Climax as an alternate, crowd-controlling use of your magic), improves others and removes some of the most notorious (like the fatal QTEs). It also adds a significant number of actually new weapons, each with their own specific uses, rather than giving you yet another slightly different gun every so often.

    While all of this might be incoherent rambling to those unfamiliar with the franchise/genre, suffice it to say that Bayonetta 2 is an amazing character action (or whatever you call them these days) game that, to me, stands out as the single, biggest highlight in a somewhat disappointing year.

  • Honestly, this game might not have made it quite as far up my list if it weren't for my nostalgia for the series. Apart from my occasional (mostly unenjoyable) brushes with the Street Fighter series, the Guilty Gear franchises black Sheep Guilty Gear Isuka was my first fighting game. And while I was just mashing buttons to make cool shit happen at that point, I did kind of stick with the incredibly weird and unique cast of characters for some iterations of the main series. However, Xrd is the first Guilty Gear I have played since actually trying to play fighting games and, despite getting my ass severely beaten by veterans of the franchise, I've been enjoying my time with this game thoroughly. Between what have to be the most amazing visuals in any fighting game, the (scaled down yet) incredibly varied cast of characters and the offense-oriented gameplay, I simply have not had as much fun with any other fighting game.

    (It also helps that my main is a top tier for once...)

  • I did not expect to like Ground Zeroes. At least not this much. While I have been a fan of the series for quite a while now (having started with the oft-criticized Twin Snakes for the Gamecube) and have been looking forward to the fifth numbered entry, everything I heard about Ground Zeroes left me less interested in what seemed like an overpriced demo. A (non-indie) "game", not to mention one that is part of a franchise notorious for long cutscenes that can be beaten in 2 hours or less, builds on replaying a single "stage" with slightly different objectives and still costs more than most other downloadable titles? How could anyone like this?

    Well, it's just that good. It is most of the things you know and love about the Metal Gear Solid series (I have yet to find a cardboard box), but with more modern gameplay and a darker tone. You still mess with guards while trying to avoid them, find weird secrets and sneak around trying not to cause an alert (and maybe just going nuts when you do). The latter has been streamlined by the (optional) Reflex Mode, which will give you slow-motion when you do get spotted for one or two shots to try and silence whoever noticed you before they can sound the alarm. While some hardcore fans of the franchise seem a bit sour over the inclusion of a mechanic that kind of trivializes a lot of the actual stealth, to me it seems like the kind of revolutionary mechanic this genre needs for some broader mainstream appeal.

    So yes, I ultimately enjoyed my time with Ground Zeroes quite a bit and while the content still seems a little slim for the price tag, it definitely has me wanting more.

  • Shovel Knight is basically the 8-bit indie retro game every 8-bit indie retro game wishes it could have been.

  • The most surprising thing to me about putting this game on my list is the fact that I thought it came out last year. It just feels like so long ago that I heard everybody raving about this game long before I had a chance to pick it up. What that actually means is up to interpretation though.

    I consider this to be the best Final Fantasy Square has ever made, and if you've ever played a Final Fantasy game (of the first five in particular) you might end up agreeing. Bravely Default is a game about four unlikely yet fated heroes setting out to restore the four elemental crystals. Until it isn't.

    Bravely Default is actually a game about subverting and practically parodying expectations for a Final Fantasy game, especially one of its prerendered cutscene-less scale, and while it does get very repetitive in the middle, the finale is just so worth it.

  • You probably shouldn't play Drakengard 3. It is a pretty madiocre, not quite (as bad as) Dynasty Warriors character action game with lots of technical issues (LOTS of dropped frames and related inputs) and grinding if you want to see everything the game has to offer. It is made by the already dissolved studio Cavia which you may or may not know for being the people responsible for the two terrible predecessors to this game and the actually really, really good Nier (which I still think has the best soundtrack of any video game ever), which was also plagued by incredibly tedious and needlessly complicated side-quests if you wanted to see all the endings it had to offer.

    But I love it.

    I love Drakengard 3 for its weird characters, what has to be the funniest dialogue and cutscenes in any game this year, its oddly satisfying despite frustrating combat, its general ruthlessness on display in just about everything it does and, finally, those few absolutely amazing tracks on the soundtrack (you should probably look them up).

    So while my inability to beat the final boss is probably gonna drive me insane for years to come, I just couldn't not put this game on the list.

  • Persona Q is a Persona flavored Etrian Odyssey game made of fanservice for fans of Persona 3 and 4 in particular. While it is obviously irrelevant to either games story and has a pretty bland one itself, it is carried entirely by good dialogue (despite the odd character being reduced to a caricature of itself), good music and good dungeon design and, as a fan of the series, that's apparently enough.

  • All I remember about The Stick of Truth is fighting exploding Nazi zombie cows, aliens and Al Gore, crawling through a school, an abortion clinic and Mr. Slaves rectum to abort a SNUKE, going to 8-bit Canada, killing Kenny and smiling through most of it.

  • Half-Minute Hero: The Second Coming is more Half Minute Hero in the form of a PC port of the until then untranslated Japanese PSP exclusive sequel to Half-Minute Hero wherein you try to beat Evil Lords within 30 seconds, though there you can pay a greedy goddess to turn the clock back to 30 seconds without losing your progress in the level and repeating that procedure with a new twist for the next mission except this one takers itself too seriously sometimes and also makes you grind between missions, letting you traverse a world map instead of picking your mission from a menu but it's still a great game and I hope you didn't run out of time reading this.

  • While Transistor didn't grab me nearly as much as Bastion did back in its day (hell, I even bot that soundtrack+T-shirt pack for the game because of just how much I loved it), it is still a really good game. It owes this, for the most part, to the unique combat mechanics that mix turn-based and real-time gameplay in a way interesting enough to make it on this list.
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