Played through the first level of Seraph and it is indeed quite neat! Already recommended to two other friends, heh.
Shouldn’t that be “… by the Coward Robot Ford”? Yes, I’m here all week, folks!
I think its from a game called Clash of the Titans
I have no way of disproving anything anyone says here…
Same here. It is a very satisfying, crunchy manshoot with a little “take over the map” subgame that always tickles my fancy.
DOOM is probably the easiest choice to make on this list. id could have screwed up this up so very badly, but they absolutely regained their laser-like focus after the hopeless mishmash that was Rage. I’ll probably never play through it again, but DOOM was a nice monster face-shoot regardless.
Exactly!
Aside from the dissapointing lack of popcorn enemies, Doom was an utter surprise. I automatically assume every AAA game is going to be a lifeless pile of generic ubistuff , unskippable cinematic cutscenes and easy gameplay. So when I heard that a AAA reboot of the best game ever was coming out, I just assumed it was going to be terrible and that I wouldn’t bother playing it.
But it turns out it was pretty good!
Honourable mention goes to Dungeon Warfare. I usually don’t get on with tower defence games, but this one I liked.
Offworld Trading Company
Banner Saga 2:
(I enjoyed the Survival mode much more than I thought I would)
Ortus Regni
Slime Rancher
(not sure if EA games count)?
ESO Online - One Tamriel version:
(Did not think I could enjoy an MMO again)
EA games should not count, are they are not “complete”.
They can still be surprising though.
I almost picked up Homefront during the last Steam sale but chickened out when I saw the metacritic score (54). Any idea why that score is so low? Was it a buggy release? Were gamers expecting a Call of Duty instead of a Far Cry?
In any event, I added it to my Steam wishlist, hopefully it’ll be included in the upcoming holiday sale.
It was definitely buggy at launch.
Yeah, it was apparently messy at launch, but the developers have been patching the heck out of it.
The biggest surprise of 2016 had nothing to do with videogames.
It was certainly surprised how good Shadow Warrior 2 was. But given the trajectory those guys have been on, I wasn’t surprised that it was good. But, yeah, Shadow Warrior 2 is a good pick for a number of year-end lists.
Don’t you think Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst has roads? I had no shortage of tracks to run. And besides, being a parkour game, I think the parkour theme of being free to go anywhere fits much better into an open world game than the discrete challenges of the first game.
However, I have to admit I didn’t have a lot of patience for the first game, so I didn’t see very much of it. If I had stuck with it longer, I might have found Catalyst disappointing, too.
Great pick. For the year 2014! :)
Just to clarify, Steep has plenty of structure by way of its courses (basically point A to point B challenges) and its Ubistuff. It’s not quite like the Tricky level, since Steep has me constantly going to specific places for specific reasons.
Aw, rats, you had me curious about Clash Royale until this part. :(
Banner Saga 2 has survival mode? Ooh.
Sure they count. On the year they come out.
So can movie trailers, but I don’t see them getting any Academy Award nominations!
-Tom
I’d have to read the reviews to know for sure (which I have no interest in doing) but I’m guessing reviewers were using it as a 7-9 whipping boy because it’s not an established franchise, or they were punishing it because they didn’t like the first game, or they didn’t play far enough on to understand what it was doing. Or, maybe they genuinely don’t want “emergent Call of Duty”.
But the PC version, which is the Metacritic score you’re citing, didn’t have the technical issues the console version had. It was in pretty bad shape on the PS4, but I didn’t have any issues once I started playing on the PC.
-Tom
Hey, the Definitive version on the PC game out in 2016. I mean… Definitive. That’s gotta count for something :-)
Regarding Catalyst: sure it had roads but you had to find them, and some things that looked like roads really weren’t. Or you had to unlock skills to utilize them, or get to the point in the story where it’s ungated, or something. I still enjoyed the game, it just felt a little loose, a little unclear. If you wanted a playground to jump and roll, yeah it was pretty good for that. And the missions made pretty good “roads” for pointing you in a direction and saying “go get thing before time runs out” or whatever. I just don’t think the two mixed very well, personally.
Man, you should know by now that “I didn’t have any issues” is not the same as “the game doesn’t have any issues”. John Walker, over on Rock Paper Shotgun, was reviewing the PC version and he certainly encountered plenty. That said, I usually am lucky enough to miss such things myself and they’ve had plenty of time to patch it, so I figure a lukewarm reception just meant that I could snag it for $17 all-inclusive in the Thanksgiving sales. Not going to complain about that.
My biggest surprise was Offworld Trading Company.
I had disregarded it for a very long time - for whatever silly reasons - and reading a certain someone’s tear jerking (in my case, at least) piece about it pushed so many buttons in me I bought it right away.
It has been one of the best gaming experiences of all my life (excepting for the games vs @Chappers). I can’t wait to be able to play it properly again! (and by “properly”, I mean with the robotic voice-overs!)
…I still cannot reason why, all this time, I was convinced Soren Johnson’s jewel would suck. It is just absurd.
For me, nothing really comes close to Atlas Reactor. Though I suppose Battleborn deserves credit for getting me to play pvp.