Disclaimer: I post on IGN, too. I posted pretty much the same thing there. I'm not affiliated with any of these games in any way.
So... 2014. That was a year. It perhaps wasn't the most exciting one in terms of big AAA games, but I found plenty that I was entertained by. I also bought a lot more games near launch than normal, since I usually only go for big sales, but several things were interesting enough for me to check out right away. Vigilant use of sales also helped, like getting Sunset Overdrive less than 2 months after launch for under $30... though I haven't really had time to play it yet.
To start off with, I'll just go with the big one: Game of the year, 2014:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMEmcVRNZvI
Freedom Planet
Also quite a surprise for me, as I hadn't heard about it until an article on Kotaku at the game's launch, and immediately, I knew that I would like it. Now, this is overall game of the year, not just indie game of the year, and I admit that I'm biased towards good 2D action games. Now, through and through, this game is loaded with good design. Fast stages that reward exploration, elaborate bosses, quite a bit of challenge (but also a difficulty option that goes all the way down to ?the biggest challenge is figuring out how to die? super-easy, if you really can't beat a boss), wonderful pixel art, and even the story is interesting.
The thing that stood out more than everything else has to be the bosses, and they were the kind of fights that (figuratively) had me at the edge of my seat, then (literally) hollering when I managed to defeat some of the more difficult ones. Some of them are screen-filling affairs, and some of the bosses are the same size of the player character. Others have multiple phases, and I was particularly impressed to see one that was
That moment was huge for me, and I was shouting **** YEAH! during the fight... even as it kicked my ass. Perseverance is rewarded, and it did eventually fall.
The multiple characters were also great, especially since they play completely differently. While I did end up preferring Lilac's cyclone and dash attacks to anything the others had, Carol's motorcycle was a lot of fun, and Milla's shield and low health requires a much different strategy. The changes in mobility, speed, range, and even basic function of the abilities was really cool, and the character-specific stages also show that the developers put a lot of thought into it. More characters are promised, too, and I look forward to playing the game through with them.
All-in-all, Freedom Planet had everything that I would want in a 2D action game, and it did it with style. It's kind of like Sonic, but it's far and away better than Sonic Team ever produced, even at their Sega Genesis heights. Among 2-D action games, I think that Freedom Planet is better than anything else that I've played in nearly 20 years, and it's up there, and even above, many of Treasure's greats. I'd rank it above Gunstar Heroes, a game that I absolutely adore.... The only reason I have to say ?nearly? 20 years is that Guardian Heroes still wins out as the greatest of all time for me... but being second to Guardian Heroes is a *very* impressive feat. Yeah, Guardian Heroes is a brawler and Freedom Planet is a platformer, but let's not get too caught up in specifics here. Both fall under the broad term of 2-D action.
As a runner-up, I have to go with:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5_ETNBRlbc
Cloudbuilt
This one is also a platformer! But a 3D one, and more of a focus on platforming than action. This one is punishing, even if it opens in a very Zen-like fashion... Compared to Dark Souls, at least Dark Souls had the sense to teach the player how to die as part of the tutorial. Cloudbuilt on the other hand, opens with a peaceful environment, calm and beautiful music, and then a few levels in, you're facing huge fields of mines, precise jumps, giant and deadly pink blasts of **** YOU raining from the sky, brute enemies just waiting to crush in your skull, and turrets with invincible shields that will hunt you down. And in this one, there is no easy mode. You will die. You will suffer... and you just might love it.
Whereas Dark Souls is all about overcoming the enemies, Cloudbuilt is all about overcoming the environment. Stages span hundreds of feet into the air, vistas overlooking both upcoming and defeated challenges abound, and if you're hardcore enough to be into speedrunning, there's a ton of meat to be had in optimizing your routes. Personally, I'm happy if I can beat a stage once and get a ?D? rating, but that's part of what makes the game so magical. The further you dig into the game, the more you find.
The graphics also need to be mentioned. Cloudbuilt employs an unusual crosshatching style that looks really good in practice, and is quite distinctive. The environments are also great to look at, even if they are mostly empty space with suspended platforms. It's colorful and great to look at, even if sometimes, those pretty hazards are oh-so-effective at killing the player.
Best game that I can't give GOTY to:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_DzMXg3_n4
Strike Vector
Now, if there's another game that I loved this year, it's definitely Strike Vector. This is my 5th-most played game on Steam, ever. When the servers are populated, the players are skilled, and you've got a good ping, a match of Strike Vector is simply magical. It's an air combat game employing 6 degrees of freedom movement, a blisteringly fast jet mode, amazing airborne structures to explore and use to your advantage, a high skill ceiling, and it's all skill-based, so you'll never encounter enemies with better gear than you, just because they've been playing longer (a big pet-peeve of mine in games like Battlefield). The game is fast, the battles are thunderous, it's probably the most fun I've had playing anything all year...
And yet I can't give it a GOTY award.
Why?
No. Freaking. Players.
This is a huge problem for the game, and (according to Steam Charts) in the last 30 days, the number of average players has dropped below seven. There are also no bots. Even when there are people playing, they'll often be either much lower or much higher skill level, and/or playing on the other side of the world. So... many times it's impossible to even play.
It's a huge shame that the game crashed and burned, because I love the game so much, but an exclusively multiplayer game without a player-base is not something that I can in good conscience recommend.
Best AAA game:
So, people will probably be more interested in this than my indie picks, even though I was more impressed by them than anything in the below list. Still, I played (for me) quite a few AAA games this year, even though I'm still waiting for the big RPGs (Dragon Age:Inquisition, Divinity: Original Sin, Grimrock 2) to drop in price.
To start with, these are the AAA games that I played this year. If it isn't listed, it isn't eligible. Why? Because I didn't play it.
Halo Master Chief Collection
Bayonetta 2
South Park: The Stick of Truth (rental, but finished)
Titanfall
Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze (rental)
Mario Kart 8 (rental)
Sunset Overdrive (really early in the game)
Elite: Dangerous (really early in the game)
Of all of those, I have to go with:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7u3AyqgqbHw
South Park: Stick of Truth.
Why? Because it's an absolutely perfect South Park game. It brings the show to life in a way that really wouldn't be possible without a huge amount of dedication and the current level of horsepower in today's systems. South Park really does bring the look and feel of the show into a playable form, and for that, I have to commend it. It's also filled with so many references, places, and characters of South Park that replaying it, just to explore is a huge amount of fun. I also really liked the way that all of the ?vendor trash? that you pick up comprises items from the show itself. It was fun to find things like the book ?The poop that took a pee? and many, many more iconic items from the show... I almost didn't want to sell them. It's also an RPG. And a pretty good one. But, seriously, that isn't why you'd play this. If you play South Park: The Stick of Truth, it's because you love South Park, and it does exactly what it needs to, and that is bring a season's worth of content to life, and put it in the best digital recreation of the show's setting that one could possibly hope for.
Best surprise of 2014:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hWqtTb0zzA
Hatoful Boyfriend
It's a bird dating simulator. Yeah. It's a game, where you play as a human, and your goal is to gain the love of a variety of birds. It's also surprisingly well-written and managed to surprise me on a regular basis. Even when you already know some of the turns that it will take, it still manages to go different angles, and really runs the gamut of emotions. Somehow, I ended up caring more for the birds in this game than any of the human characters in the other games that I played (though Brothers, a game from my backlog, was also good in this regard).
Best backlog surprise:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmmppKmDd6I
Noitu Love 2
If there's one game that understands exactly what made Treasure's old games great, it's Konjak.
Noitu Love 2 is probably his biggest game at this point, though I'm greatly looking forward to The Iconoclasts, should it ever finish.
Playing this game is like a giant shot of adrenaline, and the gameplay is much like I'd expect a melee-focused version of Gunstar Heroes to be. The bosses are also quite entertaining on a visual level, each of which is loaded with personality. It's a huge love-letter to the 16/32-bit Treasure action games, and is a ton of fun. It also went under my radar completely for many years, and I didn't know about it until recently.
Oh, and if Nintendo is more your style, he also did an excellent take on Zelda 2, called Legend of Princess:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGz_nVRqczA
http://www.konjak.org/index.php?folder=4&file=11
I highly recommend checking that out.
Runner-up is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-7IFAiQX_8
Megabyte Punch
I don't have a ton to say on this one, but this brawler/platformer was quite the surprise for me, as I found it from random bundle-scraping on my *shudder* Desura account. Who would have expected it to actually be good? It also has a very Smash Bros-esque arena mode, which is really worth checking out.
Best old game that I played for the first time this year:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eN2-WSyRuO0
Saints Row: The Third
Ok, no indie game you've never heard of here. Just my favorite open-world ?bad person simulator? since GTA: San Andres. What makes Saints Row so good is that it comes at a time where GTA has completely forgotten how to have fun, while Saints Row is concerned with little else. The game is absolutely nuts in the best way possible, and there are always fun new things just around the corner. I found the city fun to explore, and also liked the vehicles.
I also played through Saints Row 4, which pushes the insane-o-meter even further, but the design just wasn't quite as good there, even if the superpowers were a lot of fun to mess with.
Runners up:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lz3EmqraAxc
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
This was a short, but memorable journey, filled with beautiful scenery, good puzzles, and a very ?show, don't tell? approach to storytelling that was very effective.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1S796fXtl4
The Stanley Parable
You cannot be told what The Stanley Parable is. You must see it for yourself.
But seriously, it's a silly game all about choice, even if it's illusory. It's also really good.
And finally:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taRJkbnEgK4
Dust: An Elysian Tale
I like 2D action games, and if Freedom Planet weren't so brilliant, this would easily be my favorite 2D action game that I played this year. While Noitu Love 2 is a ton of fun, there also isn't a whole lot of game there, and it's done in an hour. Dust is a far more meatier game, with a large world to explore, lots of abilities, items, and wonderful art. It also was amazingly mostly done by one guy. Looking at the amazing art in the game, it can be hard to believe that one person did it.
Disappointment of the year: GoD Factory: Wingmen
Finally, the not-so-auspicious award for the game that disappointed me.
GoD Factory could have been great, but it struggled to retain a player-base, launched with far too little content (one map and one game mode???) and had some very questionable grind mechanics to try to keep people playing. Then, when the player-base died down even further, the developers decided that the people playing single-player were ?grinding for credits? and getting too many of them, so they decided to make the grind even slower. It was around this point that I said ?screw this? and left the game. Now, GoD Factory does some interesting stuff with the ship design, but it all *really* should have been accessible to players from the get-go. As it is, I put in 13 hours into the game (which is a lot for me! I am not made of hours!) and I had a grand-total of one mid-level ship, and none from the other three races, which was so out-classed by the ships of those who stuck to online multiplayer, that I didn't even bother any more.
I wanted to love the game, but screw them. Don't make a fricking competitive multiplayer game with (glacial) vertical progression, then insult people who actually play your game.
The Game I spent entirely too much time with:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6UwLGkjBz8
Hawken
So, I still ended up spending a bit more time with Strike Vector, but as the servers are pretty much empty now, there's a game that I keep going back to, and that's Hawken. The devs have gone silent and apparently moved on (to other companies, I would imagine), even though they've never called theif game "finished" ...but I can't help but find it very appealing. There's a decent player base here, so I can play whenever I want, and there's something just oh-so-satisfying about piloting a mech. We need more mech games!
To summarize:
This year had a lot of fun games, and looking over my Gaming Backlog Thread, I can see that I played quite a few. Now, I didn't find this year's AAAs to be that exciting, but I still managed to find some fantastic games.
Oh, and if you're on my friends list and had Freedom Planet on your wish list, it has now been gifted to you. I'll also gift you a copy if you're on my friends list and add it to the wish list in the next 24 hours. Because it's my favorite game of the year, and Merry Christmas.
So... 2014. That was a year. It perhaps wasn't the most exciting one in terms of big AAA games, but I found plenty that I was entertained by. I also bought a lot more games near launch than normal, since I usually only go for big sales, but several things were interesting enough for me to check out right away. Vigilant use of sales also helped, like getting Sunset Overdrive less than 2 months after launch for under $30... though I haven't really had time to play it yet.
To start off with, I'll just go with the big one: Game of the year, 2014:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMEmcVRNZvI
Freedom Planet
Also quite a surprise for me, as I hadn't heard about it until an article on Kotaku at the game's launch, and immediately, I knew that I would like it. Now, this is overall game of the year, not just indie game of the year, and I admit that I'm biased towards good 2D action games. Now, through and through, this game is loaded with good design. Fast stages that reward exploration, elaborate bosses, quite a bit of challenge (but also a difficulty option that goes all the way down to ?the biggest challenge is figuring out how to die? super-easy, if you really can't beat a boss), wonderful pixel art, and even the story is interesting.
The thing that stood out more than everything else has to be the bosses, and they were the kind of fights that (figuratively) had me at the edge of my seat, then (literally) hollering when I managed to defeat some of the more difficult ones. Some of them are screen-filling affairs, and some of the bosses are the same size of the player character. Others have multiple phases, and I was particularly impressed to see one that was
An homage to Seven Force from Gunstar Heroes
The multiple characters were also great, especially since they play completely differently. While I did end up preferring Lilac's cyclone and dash attacks to anything the others had, Carol's motorcycle was a lot of fun, and Milla's shield and low health requires a much different strategy. The changes in mobility, speed, range, and even basic function of the abilities was really cool, and the character-specific stages also show that the developers put a lot of thought into it. More characters are promised, too, and I look forward to playing the game through with them.
All-in-all, Freedom Planet had everything that I would want in a 2D action game, and it did it with style. It's kind of like Sonic, but it's far and away better than Sonic Team ever produced, even at their Sega Genesis heights. Among 2-D action games, I think that Freedom Planet is better than anything else that I've played in nearly 20 years, and it's up there, and even above, many of Treasure's greats. I'd rank it above Gunstar Heroes, a game that I absolutely adore.... The only reason I have to say ?nearly? 20 years is that Guardian Heroes still wins out as the greatest of all time for me... but being second to Guardian Heroes is a *very* impressive feat. Yeah, Guardian Heroes is a brawler and Freedom Planet is a platformer, but let's not get too caught up in specifics here. Both fall under the broad term of 2-D action.
As a runner-up, I have to go with:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5_ETNBRlbc
Cloudbuilt
This one is also a platformer! But a 3D one, and more of a focus on platforming than action. This one is punishing, even if it opens in a very Zen-like fashion... Compared to Dark Souls, at least Dark Souls had the sense to teach the player how to die as part of the tutorial. Cloudbuilt on the other hand, opens with a peaceful environment, calm and beautiful music, and then a few levels in, you're facing huge fields of mines, precise jumps, giant and deadly pink blasts of **** YOU raining from the sky, brute enemies just waiting to crush in your skull, and turrets with invincible shields that will hunt you down. And in this one, there is no easy mode. You will die. You will suffer... and you just might love it.
Whereas Dark Souls is all about overcoming the enemies, Cloudbuilt is all about overcoming the environment. Stages span hundreds of feet into the air, vistas overlooking both upcoming and defeated challenges abound, and if you're hardcore enough to be into speedrunning, there's a ton of meat to be had in optimizing your routes. Personally, I'm happy if I can beat a stage once and get a ?D? rating, but that's part of what makes the game so magical. The further you dig into the game, the more you find.
The graphics also need to be mentioned. Cloudbuilt employs an unusual crosshatching style that looks really good in practice, and is quite distinctive. The environments are also great to look at, even if they are mostly empty space with suspended platforms. It's colorful and great to look at, even if sometimes, those pretty hazards are oh-so-effective at killing the player.
Best game that I can't give GOTY to:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_DzMXg3_n4
Strike Vector
Now, if there's another game that I loved this year, it's definitely Strike Vector. This is my 5th-most played game on Steam, ever. When the servers are populated, the players are skilled, and you've got a good ping, a match of Strike Vector is simply magical. It's an air combat game employing 6 degrees of freedom movement, a blisteringly fast jet mode, amazing airborne structures to explore and use to your advantage, a high skill ceiling, and it's all skill-based, so you'll never encounter enemies with better gear than you, just because they've been playing longer (a big pet-peeve of mine in games like Battlefield). The game is fast, the battles are thunderous, it's probably the most fun I've had playing anything all year...
And yet I can't give it a GOTY award.
Why?
No. Freaking. Players.
This is a huge problem for the game, and (according to Steam Charts) in the last 30 days, the number of average players has dropped below seven. There are also no bots. Even when there are people playing, they'll often be either much lower or much higher skill level, and/or playing on the other side of the world. So... many times it's impossible to even play.
It's a huge shame that the game crashed and burned, because I love the game so much, but an exclusively multiplayer game without a player-base is not something that I can in good conscience recommend.
Best AAA game:
So, people will probably be more interested in this than my indie picks, even though I was more impressed by them than anything in the below list. Still, I played (for me) quite a few AAA games this year, even though I'm still waiting for the big RPGs (Dragon Age:Inquisition, Divinity: Original Sin, Grimrock 2) to drop in price.
To start with, these are the AAA games that I played this year. If it isn't listed, it isn't eligible. Why? Because I didn't play it.
Halo Master Chief Collection
Bayonetta 2
South Park: The Stick of Truth (rental, but finished)
Titanfall
Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze (rental)
Mario Kart 8 (rental)
Sunset Overdrive (really early in the game)
Elite: Dangerous (really early in the game)
Of all of those, I have to go with:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7u3AyqgqbHw
South Park: Stick of Truth.
Why? Because it's an absolutely perfect South Park game. It brings the show to life in a way that really wouldn't be possible without a huge amount of dedication and the current level of horsepower in today's systems. South Park really does bring the look and feel of the show into a playable form, and for that, I have to commend it. It's also filled with so many references, places, and characters of South Park that replaying it, just to explore is a huge amount of fun. I also really liked the way that all of the ?vendor trash? that you pick up comprises items from the show itself. It was fun to find things like the book ?The poop that took a pee? and many, many more iconic items from the show... I almost didn't want to sell them. It's also an RPG. And a pretty good one. But, seriously, that isn't why you'd play this. If you play South Park: The Stick of Truth, it's because you love South Park, and it does exactly what it needs to, and that is bring a season's worth of content to life, and put it in the best digital recreation of the show's setting that one could possibly hope for.
Best surprise of 2014:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hWqtTb0zzA
Hatoful Boyfriend
It's a bird dating simulator. Yeah. It's a game, where you play as a human, and your goal is to gain the love of a variety of birds. It's also surprisingly well-written and managed to surprise me on a regular basis. Even when you already know some of the turns that it will take, it still manages to go different angles, and really runs the gamut of emotions. Somehow, I ended up caring more for the birds in this game than any of the human characters in the other games that I played (though Brothers, a game from my backlog, was also good in this regard).
Best backlog surprise:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmmppKmDd6I
Noitu Love 2
If there's one game that understands exactly what made Treasure's old games great, it's Konjak.
Noitu Love 2 is probably his biggest game at this point, though I'm greatly looking forward to The Iconoclasts, should it ever finish.
Playing this game is like a giant shot of adrenaline, and the gameplay is much like I'd expect a melee-focused version of Gunstar Heroes to be. The bosses are also quite entertaining on a visual level, each of which is loaded with personality. It's a huge love-letter to the 16/32-bit Treasure action games, and is a ton of fun. It also went under my radar completely for many years, and I didn't know about it until recently.
Oh, and if Nintendo is more your style, he also did an excellent take on Zelda 2, called Legend of Princess:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGz_nVRqczA
http://www.konjak.org/index.php?folder=4&file=11
I highly recommend checking that out.
Runner-up is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-7IFAiQX_8
Megabyte Punch
I don't have a ton to say on this one, but this brawler/platformer was quite the surprise for me, as I found it from random bundle-scraping on my *shudder* Desura account. Who would have expected it to actually be good? It also has a very Smash Bros-esque arena mode, which is really worth checking out.
Best old game that I played for the first time this year:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eN2-WSyRuO0
Saints Row: The Third
Ok, no indie game you've never heard of here. Just my favorite open-world ?bad person simulator? since GTA: San Andres. What makes Saints Row so good is that it comes at a time where GTA has completely forgotten how to have fun, while Saints Row is concerned with little else. The game is absolutely nuts in the best way possible, and there are always fun new things just around the corner. I found the city fun to explore, and also liked the vehicles.
I also played through Saints Row 4, which pushes the insane-o-meter even further, but the design just wasn't quite as good there, even if the superpowers were a lot of fun to mess with.
Runners up:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lz3EmqraAxc
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
This was a short, but memorable journey, filled with beautiful scenery, good puzzles, and a very ?show, don't tell? approach to storytelling that was very effective.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1S796fXtl4
The Stanley Parable
You cannot be told what The Stanley Parable is. You must see it for yourself.
But seriously, it's a silly game all about choice, even if it's illusory. It's also really good.
And finally:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taRJkbnEgK4
Dust: An Elysian Tale
I like 2D action games, and if Freedom Planet weren't so brilliant, this would easily be my favorite 2D action game that I played this year. While Noitu Love 2 is a ton of fun, there also isn't a whole lot of game there, and it's done in an hour. Dust is a far more meatier game, with a large world to explore, lots of abilities, items, and wonderful art. It also was amazingly mostly done by one guy. Looking at the amazing art in the game, it can be hard to believe that one person did it.
Disappointment of the year: GoD Factory: Wingmen
Finally, the not-so-auspicious award for the game that disappointed me.
GoD Factory could have been great, but it struggled to retain a player-base, launched with far too little content (one map and one game mode???) and had some very questionable grind mechanics to try to keep people playing. Then, when the player-base died down even further, the developers decided that the people playing single-player were ?grinding for credits? and getting too many of them, so they decided to make the grind even slower. It was around this point that I said ?screw this? and left the game. Now, GoD Factory does some interesting stuff with the ship design, but it all *really* should have been accessible to players from the get-go. As it is, I put in 13 hours into the game (which is a lot for me! I am not made of hours!) and I had a grand-total of one mid-level ship, and none from the other three races, which was so out-classed by the ships of those who stuck to online multiplayer, that I didn't even bother any more.
I wanted to love the game, but screw them. Don't make a fricking competitive multiplayer game with (glacial) vertical progression, then insult people who actually play your game.
The Game I spent entirely too much time with:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6UwLGkjBz8
Hawken
So, I still ended up spending a bit more time with Strike Vector, but as the servers are pretty much empty now, there's a game that I keep going back to, and that's Hawken. The devs have gone silent and apparently moved on (to other companies, I would imagine), even though they've never called theif game "finished" ...but I can't help but find it very appealing. There's a decent player base here, so I can play whenever I want, and there's something just oh-so-satisfying about piloting a mech. We need more mech games!
To summarize:
This year had a lot of fun games, and looking over my Gaming Backlog Thread, I can see that I played quite a few. Now, I didn't find this year's AAAs to be that exciting, but I still managed to find some fantastic games.
Oh, and if you're on my friends list and had Freedom Planet on your wish list, it has now been gifted to you. I'll also gift you a copy if you're on my friends list and add it to the wish list in the next 24 hours. Because it's my favorite game of the year, and Merry Christmas.