Its beginning to look a lot like GOTY

[Griddlelol]

Yeah I wasn't into the role playing part. The theme didn't do anything for me. I just wanted to haul ass across the world, which isn't really the game's main focus, despite the name.

The design was good, I can't fault that, but because I wasn't into the narrative, I needed more game. I guess I understand why some people dislike Gone Home.

Edit: it also occurred to me that something requiring lots of reading and role playing is normally right up my alley, but not what I want in a mobile game. I just want something dumb I can pass the time with.

[syntheticgerbil]

Man I don't know what to do with threads like this because every year I fail to play any game that has actually come out in that year.

 

In terms of the most fun I've had I think I really enjoyed Tomb Raider Underworld and definitely tons of love for Ratchet and Clank A Crack in Time. Also finished Wario Land 2, that was a joy.

 

So yep, there's my shitty list.

[thefncrow]

I ended up taking some time to think about a top 10 list from what I played this year, and came up with:

1. Bayonetta 2
2. Sunset Overdrive
3. Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
4. Forza Horizon 2
5. The Fall
6. Nidhogg
7. Mario Kart 8
8. Far Cry 4
9. Jazzpunk
10. Super Smash Bros for WiiU

I basically bought an Xbox One for Forza and Sunset Overdrive, and the same with the Wii U and Bayonetta 2 (although Mario Kart, Smash, and Super Mario 3D World didn't exactly hurt it's case). 

 

I enjoyed the hell out of the first Forza Horizon, and Forza Horizon 2 did not disappoint, even if there was some occasional weirdness (and the microtransactions model doesn't help much either).  However, the controls in that game just feel right to me in a way that many driving games don't and it's really hard to top driving around a model of the south of France and Italy in really supercharged cars, flying 200 mph down a coastal highway with the Mediterranean on your left.  It's one of the few games where I actually prefer to drive in cockpit view, because I actually feel like it gives me a better sense of how the car handles. 

 

Sunset Overdrive is entirely about the traversal mechanics.  It's one of the few open-world games where I really just have fun traversing the world.  It's amazing how much more tolerable "go get items at 5 locations" fetch quests are when getting to all of those locations is an incredible amount of fun by itself.  The boss fights in that game are amazing and actually play into what makes the game so fun, instead of doing the really lazy boss design of "OK, now you're going to fight a bullet sponge".

 

Jazzpunk is a short experience, but it's a lot of fun while it lasts.  It's just goofy all the way through, and it's actually funny.  If I had to break Jazzpunk down to a description, it'd be something like "the Police Squad!/Airplane! version of a first person adventure game".  I feel like there's a lot of 30 Flights of Loving in this game, even though it's not really doing the jump cut style that was so key to 30 Flights and Jazzpunk has way more adventure game puzzle solving that wasn't really present in 30 Flights.  If that doesn't sound like something you think you'd like, then you're probably right, but for me, it kinda hits a sweet spot, and has the courtesy to get in, get its jokes in, and then get out before you have the chance to think "Ugh, this is going on too long."  Especially great is (spoiler, seriously, don't spoil yourself on this if you even might play it) one of the mini-games:

Wedding Qake, which is basically a rip-off of Quake 1, except the map is a church set up for a wedding, all the weapons and power-ups are wedding related, and they've got an imitation of the Quake announcer who is now shouting out "sudden marriage", "prenuptial agreement", and "wedding spree".

 

Of course, if I was quantifying this list by most played this year, my #1 and #2 would be some combination of Diablo 3 and Marvel Heroes.  It really only struck me later this year how I was playing those so much just because it felt like there was so little out for serious periods of time.

[Roderick]

Reply to that Bioshock Spoiler

 

Except, Comstock never had a kid, having become sterile from (I think) being to close to Lutece's experiments. So the only thing he really cares about (at least at first) is ensuring an heir for Columbia.

 

Dewar,

 

You're quite right, and that's the one thing I think is a missed opportunity. I'd have preferred the weirder situation where Comstock was constantly stealing away his own child from his past self. That would've been thematically incredibly satisfying, even if it wouldn't make a ton of sense logic-wise.

[SuperBiasedMan]

Dewar,

You're quite right, and that's the one thing I think is a missed opportunity. I'd have preferred the weirder situation where Comstock was constantly stealing away his own child from his past self. That would've been thematically incredibly satisfying, even if it wouldn't make a ton of sense logic-wise.

Well if it was a time loop he could steal his own child, rendering past him childless and driving his past self to go steal his child back. The self perpetuated loop would be pretty thematically satisfying for his character though I think the actual themes of the game are more about people being the same regardless of which branch of their life they took, needing this version of events.

[mikemariano]

In terms of the most fun I've had I think I really enjoyed Tomb Raider Underworld...

 

I just read a Rock Paper Shotgun article about even older Tomb Raider fan missions that are still being created!  So you could play Tomb Raider Chronicles and still say you're playing a 2014 game, I guess?

[Twig]

Dewar,

 

You're quite right, and that's the one thing I think is a missed opportunity. I'd have preferred the weirder situation where Comstock was constantly stealing away his own child from his past self. That would've been thematically incredibly satisfying, even if it wouldn't make a ton of sense logic-wise.

FWIW (continuing bioshock nonsense)

 

I think your interpretation still entirely works, even if not literally, then at least metaphorically.

[Dewar]

The Bioshock point I was trying to make is that

 

I don't think Comstock cares for Elizabeth as a daughter, or even really as a person. I think he cares about his own legacy and later her powers, and that's pretty much it.

[Roderick]

I hear you. That would an incredibly disappointing development of that character, though, so I prefer my take on it! =)

[Bjorn]

I hear you. That would an incredibly disappointing development of that character, though, so I prefer my take on it! =)

 

Ummm, but he's a racist dictator who is willing to murder his own wife to maintain his seat of power. He never shows the slightest amount of remorse or growth in the game. The character you play isn't much better, having been willing to sell your daughter to pay off a gambling debt. The Booker you play is willing to murder literally anyone who gets in his way (barring Elizabeth) to achieve his goal, even though he's not even really sure what his goal is. But murdering is the only thing he's ever really been good at, so he might as well keep doing it.

Booker is not a man capable of changing his nature easily. Every time you die in the game, Lutece just goes and recruits a new Booker. There are a near infinite number of shitty Bookers for them to go get. Booker has two destinies, and both of them result in him becoming a pretty terrible person, and an awful father.

 

Dammit, I had sworn I wasn't going to get into any more Infinite discussions. 

[SuperBiasedMan]

Dammit, I had sworn I wasn't going to get into any more Infinite discussions. 

 

But there so many discussions it's hard not to get involved. It's almost like the number of discussions is

bioshocking.

[Dewar]

The more I'm listening to game of the year discussions, the more I'm thinking that Titanfall might be my game of the year. As much as I loved Shadow of Mordor, it was a bit of a fleeting experience where I played the crap out of Titanfall for 2 or 3 months.

[Bjorn]

But there so many discussions it's hard not to get involved. It's almost like the number of discussions is

bioshocking.

 

 

[Roderick]

SuperBiasedMan:

 

[Patrick R]

Ok I'm about halfway through with Shovel Knight and it is both my default GOTY (being the only 2014 game I've played) and a genuinely spectacular game I love.

[Sno]

I feel like i need make an addendum to my earlier list.

 

Shovel Knight - I've been going back and forth on it, but it totally deserves to be on an end of year list. Shovel Knight is just such a superbly designed platformer, it has an overabundance of ideas and executes on them all almost without fault, it may actually be as good as the games it's so clearly inspired by.

 

Ziggurat - Hey, do you like Heretic and Hexen? Does a roguelite inspired by those games sound like something you want to play? Of course it does. It absolutely does.

 

Fract OSC - I'm, admittedly, still going through this one, but i can't envision a sequence of events in that would undo the good will the game has already built up with me. The way the audioscape of its world just builds into this crescendo of an increasingly complex composition that emerges not out of explicitly scripted events, but the actions and choices you make in solving its puzzles, is incredible and absolutely one of the best things i've experienced in a game this year. Not even just the parts where you are explicitly trying to compose a piece of music that fits within a set of rules, but also in the puzzles that precede those sequences. Every action you take has some small effect on the audio, and discordant noise grows seamlessly into an electronic piece of music, with each added note indicating to you that you are closer and closer to the solution you're looking for. That its puzzles are well designed and that its landscape is incredibly beautiful and haunting all seem almost just like icing on the cake. (Edit: Just finished it, it's definitely earned a spot among my goty picks.)

 

(Also, i got Evil Within working, it's pretty damn great. That PC version is still kind of inexcusable.)

[tegan]

How many awards categories can I make up and then give to Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire?

 

I will absolutely give it a bullshit best story moment award for the crazy-ass meta shit that happens at the end of that game, in which

a mysterious girl -heavily implied to be from an alternate dimension that may or may not be the original Gameboy Advance games that ORAS are based on- appears to help you make friends with a dragon and ride it into space to blow up a meteor and fight the mutant monster space virus hiding inside it

[chummer]

So I've put a bit more thought into this and I think I've got 6 games I really enjoyed:

 

80 Days

Bernband

Fract OSC

A Story About My Uncle

Jazzpunk

Desert Golfing

 

Memory of a Broken Dimension isn't out, but it's a thing I played this year that I was enthralled with.

 

The Wolf Among Us was something that I got to when it had all come out, so I feel like my experience with that was pretty good. Loved the visuals and style of the game, though some story doesn't quite deliver.

 

 

A pretty good year for video games, even if video game culture continues to be fucked up.

[Synnah]

I've got a couple of last-minute additions:

 

Hohokum, which I played over the Christmas period, and quickly fell in love with. A game about the joy of exploration, with the only thing it tells you about how to play it being the buttons you need to speed up and slow down. Everything else is left up to you to discover, and there so many details, small and large, that will delight you from start to finish.

 

80 Days, which I just finished this morning. I completed the journey in 65 days, having survived a sinking airship somewhere between Singapore and Colombo, being abducted by pirates in New Orleans, and having my shoes stolen by train robbers on the journey across America. Definitely going to play more of this, as I feel like there's such a huge amount of things to discover in it, and each playthrough writes its own unique story.

 

Memory of a Broken Dimension isn't out, but it's a thing I played this year that I was enthralled with.

 

I also played this, and while it's currently a little buggy, it was utterly fascinating, and stands as one of the most memorable games I played this year.

 

I feel like I didn't give Fract OSC a fair shake; as a synth nerd, it's definitely my kind of thing, but I wasn't able to stick with it. I think largely because my PC kept crashing while I was playing, which interrupted a game that seems to work best when played in as few separate sessions as possible. I'm going to give this another shot in the new year.

[Deadpan]

This feels like an appropriate place to point out that the site I run is compiling a massive list of GOTY picks that is open for anybody to join in. Doesn't have to be the best game of the year, just something you liked enough to want to share with the world. The entire point of the list is to make nonsense of the traditiona DEFINITIVE TOP 5 GAMES lists through a tidal wave of wonderful stuff. Last year we ended up having 53 games.

 

More to the point, I'd probably pick Crawl, mostly because I want more people to be aware of the local multiplayer dungeon crawling. It's a bit hard to get into, matches take something like 40 minutes and you'll be very confused for the first few of them, so it probably requires a committed group of friends meeting up for the explicit purpose of playing Crawl to make the most of it (unlike stuff like Nidhogg, which you can bust out at unrelated gatherings and have fun instantly). I've not actually gotten to play as much of it as I hoped since scheduling matches can be complicated, but I definitely like the concept a lot and the entire production has charm coming out of every hole, so there.

[thefncrow]

I don't think I'm actually going to go back and mess with it, but I now feel like I should modify my Top 10 list to include "The Jackbox Party Pack", because I just had a big group over for UFC and we played Fibbage XL and Drawful between fights, and goddamn that is one of the best experiences of the year.  Everyone playing on their own smartphones is a stroke of genius that no one else has yet to match.

[Dewar]

Yup, it's been a Christmas party staple around here.

[sclpls]

So of course my actual GOTY ended up being a game I played after I made up my evaluations of games I had played this year. The Talos Principle ended up being my favorite thing I played this year.

[chummer]

Eidolon is really good, ya'll.

 

And Intimate, Infinite by Robert Yang left a really strong impression.

 

Damn. A good year for games.

[Ozzie]

So I managed to trick BMT Micro into letting me pay them (mwahaha, I'm so devious...). Therefore I finally had the chance to play Coming out on Top in its entire uncut glory...yes!

First things first: Did it manage to secure my GOTY spot? Well...the only competition was Blackwell Epiphany really, and I think it trumps it just for being the first dating sim of any kind I enjoyed. I laughed at the witty dialogues, felt tense and nervous about certain choices, aww'ed a lot at certain cute moments, felt turned on at some of the explicit scenes...this Visual Novel did a lot right. The routes are unusually short, but maybe that isn't such a bad thing. Certainly it doesn't drag.

Ian is my favorite of the characters. He's your best friend who you can chase after and who also has a thing for you. How much? Well, that's what you have to find out. His route feels to me like the definitive one, only because it feels sad to imagine that he always had a thing for you, which you would never find out if you don't follow his route. It's the only character that can be dated that knows the player character before the game begins. Also, if you date Brad, Ian behaves in this skeptical and overprotective manner, somewhat badmouthing Brad and always checking up on the player character. So it's clear that even if you don't go after Ian, Ian's feelings don't change for you.

The best thing about this VN is that the guys you're chasing after are fully fleshed out characters. Yes, on the surface they all seem familiar, but they reveal depth, an inner life, and aren't just mindless sex objects. It's quite a feat, really! Just compare that to YU-NO, ugh...

 

There are some annoyances, of course. Why certain choices preclude the best possible ending doesn't make much sense, considering that life continues for the characters after you can't influence the actions of the main character anymore and that certain actions that were missed could still be caught up later on. In another instance, what one character has somewhat a problem with at one time though still gets enjoyment out of, shouldn't bother him too much when he gets the player character to know more in the course of the following weeks and in the time after the player has lost their influence. That shouldn't preclude a long-term relationship either.

So yeah, it's still a VN where occasionally the choices you can take affect the ending in a too finicky fashion, but still, this is the best game of its kind I ever played, so it gets high praise from me.

Also Cara Ellison featured it in her Top 10 end of the year list (and before that in her S.EXE colum), with these carefully chosen words: "This game is the Citizen Kane of ripped, naked big-dicked dudes in love. It’s the fucking Citizen Kane of fucking."

 

Says it all, really.