| Title | The top ten games of 2014 |
| Author | Tom Chick |
| Posted in | Features |
| When | January 8, 2015 |
I don't normally keep playing games after I've written about them. That's just the nature of writing about games as a job. You experience them, you process them, you mostly move on..
Read the full articleMy one disappointment with 80 Days is that it overtakes your sound every time you play - which is great for mood, but, as an avid podcast and audiobook listener, really limits the time I can stop and listen to its soundtrack as opposed to other stuff I'm trying to keep up with.
I just couldn't get into Endless Legend. It's a gorgeous looking game and I can't find fault with any of the mechanics, but it bounced off of me despite my repeated attempts to dig into it. I'll probably have to give it another go after the next Age of Wonders DLC drops.
The Crew, though? Damn fine game. It's a shame that Ubisoft seems to have dropped it out with little fanfare and its launch was overshadowed by the issues with Unity, because I've been having a blast with it. The game really does scratch my itch for Test Drive Unlimited 3.
Great list! I've been putting 80 days off too long.
Bayonetta 2 has such a great, simple level menu for making it easy to replay levels an higher difficulties and showing your previous score. It's a small touch, but made replaying everything more addicting then any of the previous Platinum games for me. I can't believe how much more fun Diablo 3 is on consoles. After getting two characters to 70 on PC, I was not expecting to get 3 to 70 on Playstation. Also glad to see you liked Endless Legend. It seems to have had a pretty divisive reception.
Hope you've got something like a board game list on the way. Your perspective on board games feels really distinct for some reason, completely unlike other board game people I watch / read.
So glad to see this feature pop up today. I always end up finding a couple of games I love but probably would have missed but for the fact they were on Tom's year end list. Also, while I enjoy reading and listening to the boardgame coverage, I am glad you decided to give us 10 videogames on this list. For the most part I have to admire boardgames from a distance, at least the kind of games the site usually covers, because the barrier to entry is too much for me to overcome. Keep writing about them though, I love to dream of a time when I have a group of friends with the time and energy to play them all.
2014 was a little off for me as well. Watch Dogs didn't impress me as much as I'd hoped. Unity was a total miss but I did like Far Cry 4 as a nice sandbox.
But the game that made be feel like we were finally advancing a console generation was Shadow of Mordor. I liked that one a lot.
Typo in Bayonetta up there: 'Baynonetta'
Tom, I'd love to see an article from you elaborating on your thinking behind the Bayonetta2 comment:
"This generous and varied helping of empowered cheesecake is a litmus
test for people who don’t understand the difference between sexy and
sexist. It couldn’t have come at a more useful time!"
I assume "useful time" is in reference to Anita Sarkeesian, Gamergate,
and the associated Polygon/Kotaku, ... etc coverage. I'd love to hear
your thoughts on the whole brouhaha.
Huh. Maybe your proximity to board games is making us more alike, Chick. Your list and my list share more titles than usual. My picks that match yours would be DIablo III: Ultiamte Evil, Smash, Mario Kart 8, Bayonetta 2 and (in you honorable mentions) Hyrule Warriors. But I would also add Captain Toad's Treasure Tracker (an absolutely adorable, accessible puzzle game my three and four year old can play too) and Donkey Kong: Tropical Freeze (a masterclass in how to make a punishingly hard- but charming- SNES style platformer). Yep, all Wii U games except for Diablo. This was the year that the Wii U just blew up- at least if you like rock-solid, immaculately developed video games and not business models, po-faced "mature" video games that wallow in chidish excesses, scripts written by would-be screenwriters, phony retro, and endless murder fantasies.
I played exactly three games for more than about 20 minutes on my dusty PS4 throughout 2014. Destiny, Shadows of Mordor and DIablo III. The entire time I was playing the first two, I was wondering why I wasn't playing the third. Dragon Age: Inquisiton lasted about 20 minutes before I realized that I no longer have any desire to play that kind of video game again.
You should definitely write about board games more- to put it bluntly, even though I've worked/written on that side of the curtain since 2002, there are very VERY few writers out there that I would regard as worth reading on the subject. You would be one of them.
That said, get a copy of The Mushroom Eaters, my pick for Game of the Year...I can guarantee you've never played anything else like it. My other top picks were Thunder Alley (which I believe you liked as well), Theseus (a brilliantly weird evolution of Mancala), Hyperborea (super-smart Dudes on a Map game) and Sons of Anarchy (even though I've never watched the show, a great crime game.
You've got an extra N in Bayonetta 2.
Also, Marvel Heroes 2015 is totally a 2014 game. Or maybe a 2015 game, I'm confused. I mean, it's got a separate entry on Metacritic and everything! I normally look askance at games pulling that sort of shenanigans to get a new Metacritic page, but Marvel Heroes, at launch, fully deserved its rather lackluster review scores, and Marvel Heroes today in January of 2015 is about 20 times as good as that launch version and just keeps getting better. So I'm okay with them wiping the slate clean, as it were. Even if they got their dates a bit confused. I'm not 100% certain it's my game of the year, personally, but it's certainly the game I've played most in the last year by orders of magnitude, and I really, really love it. I thought I'd finally laid it down a few months back, but then they came out with Venom and their winter event and, yeah, I'm hooked again.
Also: 80 Days is easily my favorite iOS game to date, and almost the only one to actually get me to play things on my iPad. I really really don't like touchscreen controls. (At all, really, but especially for gaming.) 80 Days avoids everything I hate about them and delivers incredible worldbuilding and a surprising amount of legitimate mechanical weight to what is fundamentally a Choose Your Own Adventure type experience.
I haven't played anything else on your list (though a bunch of stuff on your "wish you'd played" list, several of which I thoroughly enjoyed, such as Wolfenstein: The New Order) except Endless Legend, and I only have about four hours in that, so can't really speak to my opinion of it yet. It's certainly got the one-more-turn effect, though. And it's lovely.
What a great list. In such a weird year for gaming there are so many interesting and unexpected titles on your list Tom. I've been following your forum posts about The Crew, but having it at the top of your list really stokes my interest.
I need something to tear me away from Destiny ; )
EDIT: you're playing on the PS4?
The Crew isn't bad at all. In another year it might've topped my list, though I'm super casual about it and don't take advantage of any of the MP. It's still fun to log in, complete some activities that improve my car, and feel like no matter how little time I've invested it's been well spent. It also helps that the driving model just feels right.
Inquisition is my definite favorite, though. I've spent 200 hours in it and have 2-3 more playthroughs mapped out to see things through the eyes of different protagonists. Also a bit anxious for them to develop DLC but I understand that that's going to take some time.
It was a slow start to the year but I feel like it finished very strong for RPG players. Between Divinity, Grimrock, Wasteland and Dragon Age, there's a neat spread of old and new. Hell, the Crew is an RPG, too.
It was a great year for RPGs, wasn't it? You could probably add Dead State to that last, although the combat gets really tedious. However, none of them really grabbed me. In fact, I had to look up what Inquisition was because when you don't call it "Dragon Age: Inquisition", I get confused! :)
Yep, playing The Crew on the PS4. Join me! There's a friends list feature where you can send your friends on faction missions to earn you money. It's typical Ubisoft social networking fluff, but the more friends you have, and the more leveled up they are, the more money you can make. So get in here and make me some money!
You know I'll make you some money since I'm almost at the level limit.
Adding the 2015 to Marvel Heroes was just a rebranding gesture. It's still the same game, of course. And a lot of it getting better actually happened in 2013! I picked it as my most surprising game of that year for precisely that reason.
Michael Barnes, Wii U apologist. Never thought I'd see the day! :)
So I just looked up The Mushroom Eaters. Dude. You have GOT to be kidding me. They made a boardgame about my college years? Did you ever post a year-end list on NHS? It's been down at least the last couple days, so I can't check. Until then, thanks for the tips on Theseus, Hyperborea, and Sons of Anarchy.
My thoughts on the whole brouhaha is that it's stupid on all sides, a yelling match among inarticulate angry children on social media. As for the basic premise about the representation of women in videogaming, I've been beating my own version of that drum for a long time now, and Zoe Quinn's sex life never had anything to do with it.
Although, to be honest, I kind of slept through a lot of the whole brouhaha because of health issues. I can't think of a better time to tune out of the gaming media entirely. :)
I've been agreeing with:
But as I sampled various iOS games in 2014, time and again I felt that it’s not a gaming platform any more, but a business model. And I’m not interested in the business model it’s pushing.
In the App Store, I explicitly look for games I can pay for. The cost of free to play games bothers me much less than how they want me to spend my time.
Endless Legend has kept me playing for some months. The mechanics feel fresher than anything I've seen in the genre for a while and the pacing is reasonable.
Gorgeous helps. But I've also found it crash-y on a system with a ATI card.
Well, it is your opinion. I can agree with some of the games, but in my opinion, Diablo III doesn't belong in a 2014, let alone a top 10 list, endless legend is a game without heart and soul and totally overrated, like the Age of Wonders III game (although this is not overrated, it just received "good" reviews everywhere), iOS games generally do not belong in general Top 10 lists, and if you do include them, you should be including games from handhelds too, like the 3DS (which has seen quite a few gems the last few years).
In general, 2014 was a bad year except for Nintendo. Actually, 2013 and 2012 were bad years except for Nintendo as well. I really miss those "Nintendo is doomed" articles...
