2014 is a year that happened, and is technically still happening! It's official. Stuff, things, and all other kinds of tangible happenings occurred. Videos games fit in there somewhere amidst it all, too. However much like every year I continue to be lacking in my access to the videya, with but only a PS3, 360, PS4 and 3DS to fill my daily diet with all the polygonal/pixilated nutrition I require. So, as always, there are a many number of games released in 2014 that I didn't play... though even from what I did there wasn't one clear winner for ''Oh well this is clearly going to be my most favourististsististist game of the year!'' There was no The Last of Us, no The Walking Dead, no The Dark Souls... well, I guess there actually was all three of those this year technically speaking.

Nonetheless!

2014 is a year that is filled with a great number of 'four star' experiences, least from my perspective. That's not to say I didn't enjoy my plateful of videya, just that there unfortunately wasn't any 'instant-hit' that knocked my socks off. Still, all the games listed I did indeed enjoy, and to thusly try and make this more of a celebration of video games as it should be, onto the arbitrary(water) numberings!

Because people are obviously more interested in just seeing the numberings rather than the actual reasoning behind each entry, I figured it would be beneficial to first list them out as such:

10. Velvet Sundown

...What a weird and wonderful little social experiment we have here. I've simply never played anything quite like it, and the act of roleplaying as a randomly assigned character, complete with their own accented text-to-audio, goes a long way in supplying much of the potential nonsense and hilarity that's bound to ensue. However, because the entire game is played by fellow real life people, that there leads into quite the gamble. I've had a number of mixed 'matches' as it were, with people who consistently break character or will succumb to lazy 'shenanigans' as being homophobic/racist/sexist and acting like the very Internet Jackass that we all tend to hear so much about.

Yet that there can almost prove to be just as entertaining, if only for how I myself will never break character. During one particular match, most of the players had left for whatever reason, leaving only three of us. One such player was getting to be annoyed by that fact, which is understandable, yet I never deterred. I would make such weird observations as to how many people seemingly have ''headaches'' or how their brains have been taken over by devices implanted by the CIA.

My continued insistence on sticking to my character annoyed the other player quite greatly it seems, resulting in all sorts of name-calling. But I held the line! I instead would then ''kill with kindness'', by creating my own little backstory for my character about how he's poor at making friends and that he just wants to look for a 'connection'. The more I wrung my fictional sob story the more this other person continued to get more irate, making my own amusement all the greater. It ultimately lead to me hanging on this boat on my own, cutting the match prematurely... But my was it entertaining all the same.

And that's not even getting into the matches that actually 'went as planned', where everybody kept to their character and we all worked together to improvise a gamut of stupid plot devices and characterisations. It all makes for such a fun diversion to involve yourself in a bit of roleplay, and because of the random nature of who you'll get matched with essentially means the gameplay is endless... Sort of.

Tastes like: Mr Sheen spray mixed with warm beer.

9. Theatrhythm: Curtain Call

I'm not an especially avid fan of the Final Fantasy series. The only ones I've completed would be the Holy Trinity of the PS1 era, with a short foray in FFXII. I enjoyed 7, 8 and 9 well enough (especially 9), though I disliked 12 rather greatly. However for whatever reason even the times I have enjoyed with Final Fantasy have never stuck with me particularly dearly. I only completed each once, amidst an era where I would play games counting up to the umptheenth playthrough, and that was that.

Even still, if there is one aspect that I've found easy to appreciate regardless of your thoughts towards the games as a whole, it's the music. Now, there are of course a lot of Final Fantasy games by this point, most of which cover across a variety of genres. Sure, amidst certain eras they start to fall under very similar styles and can be somewhat indistinctive from one another even. But when you look at the vast array of musical songs at your disposal in Theatrhythm: Curtain Call, it's easy to see there's been quite a variety of truly superb music in this franchise.

Rhythm games is also such a genre that I've always wished I could get into, yet there's simply not very many being released anymore. Those that do are traditionally restricted to the PC as far as I can see, and by the time I even started to notice the genre at all was well past its heyday on the PS1 and PS2. As such, I've found a lot to enjoy myself with in Curtain Call. Much of the music is fantastic, and the rhythmic stylus poking and swishing does a brilliant job in giving you the feeling of functioning as a conductor (well, not really, but you get the idea). Least on Expert anywhoo; Basic is far too slow and Ultimate has seemingly been designed for robots.

I was actually surprised to discover it tries to incorporate many of the trappings of the franchise's turn-based RPG elements. A lot of it admittedly hasn't registered with me much so much; my party consists purely of characters I recognised and/or maybe like, and I rarely bother with equipping items and such. There is this Quest mode, where perhaps such mechanics may begin to factor, but as it is I'm enjoying myself all the same with just playing through my favourite tracks within.

Those Event tracks are pretty annoying, though.

Tastes like: Rainbow dust and nostalgia.

8. The Wolf Among Us

TWAU had such a superb opening episode, so much so that it managed to rank on my 2013 list of last year for that one episode alone! However while I admit it fell off the rails a little as it progressed, I was still so incredibly engrossed in the world. Even when the story kinda hit a slump, the dialogue was forever snappy, as were many of the characters always interesting to engage with. Bigby himself was a fun character to roleplay, as the game's gruff and 'hardboiled' detective who desperately tries to keep order while wrestling with his own barbaric nature.

With the way I played it I made Bigby seem like the sort of character who built a facade of someone who wanted peace, but ultimately deep down still rather enjoyed the violence, and enjoyed his job because of the power of having reasons to inflict said violence. It just felt good to be able to literally push Bigby's buttons to send him going down such directions; and to be able to enact your own bloody justice against all who attempt to wrong you and/or skirt the law. I killed/maimed everyone I could, and despite the minimalist intractability, it still gave me a surprising sense of power. The noirish stylings of it all helped it stand out over its spiritual predecessor in The Walking Dead, and the handful of action scenes peppered throughout done a pretty solid job in making QTE interactions really rather fun to pull off.

It didn't keep me constantly engaged from episode to episode, and the long waits in between certainly didn't help, yet I still really enjoyed my time existing alongside Bigby in this world of Fables. Its mix of real life struggles with fantasy myths reminds me of Joss Whedon's sort of work. A fantastical world filled with weird and peculiar characters, that are self-aware and plagued with enough relatable issues to make things seem surprisingly grounded all the while.

Suffice it to say, I'm looking forward to its inevitable Season 2.

Tastes like: A tuft of dog hair with a piece of Hubba Bubba gum stick in it.

7. Tales of Symphonia HD

This may be cheating a little, as the original game came out roughly a decade ago, to which I also played! A lot in fact. As I mentioned earlier I never got too entrenched in Final Fantasy for whatever reason, whereas Tales of Symphonia functioned as my 'Final Fantasy 7' equivalent.

I was simply in love with this game. I enjoyed the characters, the more action-focussed gameplay, and the story--while bloody huge and as convoluted as you'd expect from a JRPG--I grew to unravel playthrough by playthrough. Many of the themes involving racism and friendship and living for others and seeing people for who they are and not what they look like are all pretty sentimental and shmalsy to be sure. Yet when returning to this game after so many years, I was surprised to find a lot of still kinda works! The voice acting is actually much better than one may expect, with Scott Menville as the simple but idealistic Lloyd giving this game his all. The logical and somewhat reserved character of Raine Sage adds a grounded perspective to act as a decent balance with the usual JRPG tropes Lloyd delves into. There's also the effortlessly badass and complicated Kratos, the surprisingly layered Zelos, the tragic Presea, the lovably doofy Collete, the insecure and brash Genis, and... Regal. Not every character stands out, but Symphona is filled with enough surprisingly memorable personalities that left me engaged in their stories and seeing how they fit into things.

The combat is unfortunately rather rudimentary, however, and the localisation for the skit conversations I would guess were handled by the D-team they're so awfully clunky and awkward. Despite that, I was happy to find that Symphonia's story in particular was able to woo me back into the warm and soothing sensibilities of this joyful Tale. It helped bring me back to my wilful ignorance of the mid-teens, where I was able to easily forget it all and lose myself throughout a 100 or so hours every so often amidst my many playthroughs.

Weirdly enough the more games in the Tales series I've played since then the more I've grown to appreciate Symphonia. The voice acting and the general writing quality is simply unmatched here when put against many of its sequels. While they all carry awfully similar plots and character archetypes, the execution of Symphonia's still helps give it a surprising likeability and charm that's hard to turn away. It's just too bad the gameplay hasn't aged quite as gracefully.

Tastes like: Marshmallows and strawberry flavoured jelly.

6. The Walking Dead: Season 2

Never has the ending to a video game made me (intentionally) feel so down by the end. TWD S2 was bookended by two fantastic episodes, and the ones in the middle weren't too bad, either. Michael Madsen turned in what is probably one of his better performances of the past decade during the second and third episodes. The introduction of Jane also added an interesting element as functioning as a role model for how you might want to play Clementine. Then, then there's Kenny. His continued arc carrying over from the first season alone had me hooked. That poor bastard...

His history with Clementine thusly gives him an edge when he characteristically comes into conflict with the new faces of the season, and the demons that are brought about via the death of his family is put to great effect. Like TWAU, the action sequences are much better directed and more engaging, even if they're again not the reason why you're here. It's the story, the characters, and the almost masochist level of misery that we've come to expect that kept me engaged from beginning to end. Clementine's circumstances as the little girl that everybody keeps underestimating has her make for a more interesting protagonist to play over Lee. Getting the opportunity to steer her into becoming a pretty callous little bitch who's only in it for herself is also devilishly fun at times. Reminds me of role playing a full Renegade Shepard in Mass Effect.

And that ending episode... Just, my God man. I'll admit that no tears were shed, unlike the finale to Season 1, however it still left me with a distinct numbness. A horrible emptiness that frankly doesn't come about very often from a video game story, again least not intentional. And for a game as oppressively bleak as TWD S2, I think that's the best sort of praise you could usher.

Tastes like: Flossing your teeth with bloodied stitches.

5. Dark Souls II

When this game arrived through my mailbox, I was astounded to find that my first sit down with it roughly equalled about 18 hours.... My overall playtime was somewhere around in the 300s at that. Is Dark Souls II inferior to its predecessor? In some ways, yes, much like how it also surpasses certain elements of the original as well. I'll admit that the original certainly feels more cohesive and flows a little better, yet its sequel nonetheless supplied me with all of the same hallmarks that I've grown to enjoy with these games, ever since I was there in the trenches amongst the first wave of people playing through Demon's Souls.

A rather safe sequel by all accounts, but there's still only so few of these sorts of games anyway that a predictable sequel still had me investing the aforementioned 300+ hours. That same allure of exploring and discovering new environments, tinkering with every mechanic and character interaction, and holding my breath as I walk through each ominous fog gate still holds an appeal. I unfortunately never got around to the much more universally beloved DLC, as the idea of returning to its PS3 version (AKA the worst version) kept me at a distance once my initial time dump had passed. However I'll certainly be interested in giving it a go whence its PS4 version is released in 2015!

Tastes like: Chewing on granite.

4. Far Cry 4

• Previously posted blog!

I've already gone to some length as to why I've been enjoying Far Cry 4 so much over yonder. But the basic jist is the open world and you ways can interact with things in it, or not as the case may be sometimes. Hanging back all idle like and watching two AI factions duking it out (with bullets), only to then spontaneously have a rhino come charging out of nowhere is precisely the sort of moments that's made my time in Far Cry 4's Kyrat such a treat. I've actually barely been playing much of the story and have preferred to continue my streak of fucking about and seeing what nonsense I can help instigate. It's the sort of open world that reminds me precisely why I always tend to wildly salivate at the idea of the sheer potential such games hold in their hands.

I won't deny that it's perhaps derivative of Far Cry 3 to a fault, but as I played very little of that one I can't say it affected my enjoyment any.

Tastes like: A mixture of drugs and a few cups of herbal tea.

3. The Evil Within

• Previously posted review!

It comes to little surprise that The Evil Within is somewhat divisive, as I was saying precisely that; that it would prove to be one of those love it/hate it sort of releases. Though while I don't necessarily consider The Evil Within to be as much of a ''pure'' survival horror game as Mikami repetitiously claimed, it does work as a blending of the then and now. A mixture of its horror shooter contemporaries, with certain aspects of their founding fathers such as of course ammo conservation. That one particular aspect goes to great lengths to help The Evil Within stand out, in spite of its many influences both big and small from Mikami's previous work, Resident Evil 4. The Evil Within successfully incorporates a sense of empowerment and vulnerability all in one.

The combat scenarios in The Evil Within can sometimes start to feel like puzzles... of the combat variety. While they reward steady and precise aiming like any other, your potentially limited stash of supplies means that simply managing to hit every enemy square in the head might not be enough to survive. It forces you to respect and cherish every bullet, and to curse every missed shot. It may thusly inspire you to use other means, such as luring them towards a wire trap, or attempting to knock one over, then setting him on fire whence the other is within close proximity. It also helps that the core shooting itself feels ever so gratifying; the headshots are gooey and explosive, and the extreme violence that can be inflicted towards both you and your enemies perfectly captures the rust and griminess of it all and accentuates the grindhouse aesthetic. It all sort of feels like a very 70s-era horror movie; the kind that's out to shock you with sheer gory spectacle than to have any sort of nuance, but without the fluff and tongue-in-cheekiness of the 80s.

The story is unfortunately pretty naff, but the variety of environments and psychological twists the game forces Sebastian to undergo (which typically involves him falling great heights from one environment to another) as such left me with excitement as I pressed on. I was forever interested and intrigued to see what other sorts of weirdness the game would throw my way and I ended up completing this 14 hour experience of blood and guts in just two sittings because of it.

Gun-toting zombie-like enemies continue to suck the sweatiest of balls, however.

Tastes like: A barbed wire sandwich.

2. The Last of Us: Left Behind

• Previously posted review!

That my #2 spot is taken up by a short bit of DLC for a game originally released last year can be seen as two ways. On one hand it can perhaps make the overall year (from what I played) look like it came up a little short, which it... did. But on the other it's a testament to how positively superb Left Behind is. Guess you could say it's a bit of both in that regard.

Left Behind acts as a great semi-origin story for one of the best characters in recent memory, for one of the best games of its generation. It reminds you of everything that made The Last of Us so especially captivating, and then some. The characters of Ellie and Riley are brilliantly realised, which is impressive for Riley especially given how little overall time you're given to spend with her in relation to someone like Ellie. The segments following these budding best friends are mostly passive, but instead include some superb interactions between the two. Some of which functions as some more of that surprisingly natural back-and-forth dialogue Naughty Dog are known for, though sequences involving a photobooth, a fighting game, a water gun fight, and a halloween shop also help to portray a relationship that actually feels quite genuine.

Even the combat segments set during the Winter portion of the base game are given some props, with the added bonus of being able to manipulate the ravenous infected into slaughtering the human 'Hunters'. As I mentioned in my Far Cry 4 blog above, AI on AI fighting continues to be the sort of carnage that I always enjoy watching pan out. Combat is certainly the priority during this scenarios, however a small story told via audio logs involving three medical officers crash landing in the area helps strengthen the one being told between Ellie and Riley. Both segments mesh perfectly in tandem in telling a simple, well executed story of sticking by your loved ones through thick and thin.

Tastes like: A snow-covered brick doused in gravy.

1. Alien: Isolation

It still baffles me over the fact that this game exists. A big budget horror game, released on consoles, with a strong emphasis on survival. Survival against an enemy you can't kill, survival against an enemy that can effortlessly end your character's life as fast as before you can let out an OH SH-. Now sure, you have a revolver, but good luck in trying to even make that fucker flinch; you'd have the same amount of success in shooting it with a BB gun. The tools that you can eventually obtain and build to have an effect (such as a flamethrower) will at best ward it away from your immediate vicinity... but it'll also piss it off, so the frequency with which it plummets out of the vents will increase. Isolation is a game that will result in many an instant-death, yet I never found it to be frustrating. On the contrary, dying by the alien's hand (or... tail, rather) can be relieving. When I die, I would often instead let out a laugh; dying in Isolation was a means to expel all of that built up tension and terror. And because of the alien's dynamic AI patterns, you're never going to be stuck in the same loop of dying over and over again.

Even the more common enemies like the eerie Working Joe androids or fellow humans can prove to be a challenge at that, and witnessing a fire-engulfed Working Joe marching towards you with both the face and the pace of Michael Myers can sometimes rival the chills of the alien.

For the longest time even the idea of a game like this was mere wishful thinking. After the release of Resident Evil 4 games that actually wanted to scare you were all but extinguished. The horror of horror games simply functioned as a backdrop to provide more of the shooty-shooty we're all so accustomed to. Oh sure, actual horror games with the intention to frighten the player were reignited thanks to Amnesia, but it was all restricted to the indie scene, and also PC. Alien: Isolation on the other hand is such a game that has the budget to (probably) match many other such big releases, yet with a design that's intended to match the classic survival horror games of the 90s right alongside the contemporary horror scene.

You've heard it before and whenever a discussion comes up with this game you'll hear it again, but Alien: Isolation is a little long in the tooth. However its successes easily overshadows any gripes I may have. Isolation is legitimately terrifying, and Creative Assembly have done a superb job in replicating the initial fear that original 1979 movie inspired in us all. Those pounding footsteps, its breakneck speed, its disgusting hissing -- skirting around the alien always has me on edge. The times where I'm in the locker and the alien's sniffing me out, leading the game to prompt you to hold your breath with a button, I sometimes discovered once it had moved on that I myself was actually holding my breath... Corny, but still true! The game also looks superb, and it not only replicates the ferocity of the alien but the look of the actual Alien movie, too. Everything has that awesome retro-future look to it; green text on big, phat monitors galore!

Alien: Isolation has many of what I like to call 'hide and set-pieces', which essentially boils down to you trying to turn on and/or collect a thing, all the while the alien is forever on the hunt. Even outside of such situations, however, the alien's presence is pervasive. Even if it's not screeching at you from the end of a hallway, the alien does a good job in reminding you it's about. Now the alien isn't literally by your side throughout the entirety of the game, yet even when it isn't the experiences you have when it is on your tail will resonate beyond those encounters. It imbued a sense of paranoia, that even when the alien is shot off the ship via an escape shuttle, I couldn't help but stick to my usual routine of crouch walking everywhere. It's because that fear sticks with you. It haunts you even when it's not around, and that there sums up exactly what makes Alien: Isolation my favourite game of this year.

Tastes like: Plastic wires wrapped in sandpaper.

Oh! Conclusion!

And there we have it, another boring End of the Year blog in the bag. Well, I say another though I was too damned lazy to actually write one up last year... Regardless, thanks for reading whatever was read, and here's to what'll hopefully make for a more extravagant year of video games in 2015!

OUTRO TUNAGE