GOTY 2014
VIDEO VERSION: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EyRBgPN3xg
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Before you close your browser and say "this guy is an idiot," let me preface my #1 pick with a few hard facts: 2014 was not a remarkable year in video games. There were some decent games that were fun, but it's truly a year of numerous #3-#10 top games, with no game really deserving the top tier slots. In addition to this, Football Manager has been largely the same for quite some time now, but rarely gets any recognition outside of its rabid fanbase.
This year was the year I became apart of that fanbase. I've been playing Football Manager games for several years and their appeal has evaded me the entire time. I've logged, literally, hundreds of hours into this game without seeing any type of success. I would start a career, manage my team horribly, and almost always get fired after the first season, sometimes limping along to season 2 or 3.
But this year I did the homework. I bought a Football tactic book and read it. I posted on the FM forums and asked for advice, potential tactics, and what type of players I should be signing. I researched players and looked at their stats, comparing them to other players, for hours. I spent multiple 13 hour days, trying to figure out who to draft. It seemed psychotic. Why was I doing so much work for this game that had routinely kicked me when I was down and said "You can't do this."
But the result finally came this year. I managed the Houston Dynamo, an unremarkable team of the United State's MLS division. I built them from the ground up, having three unsuccessful seasons and only making mid-table finish. But in my fifth season I took risks, and they paid off, I not only made it to the playoffs, but I won the MLS cup. I was ecstatic, I had bested a game that evaded me for several years. But I wasn't satisfied, I thought "maybe I got lucky," so I played again. To my amazement, I won the MLS a second time after another season with the same team. Still, I thought "there's no way this happened, everyone is in a bad year." So I made some key decisions, I sold important players, I drafted new ones, and to my absolute astonishment I, again, won the MLS cup for a 3rd year in a row.
My manager was poached from the Houston Dynamo to play for a Serie A team, Italy's league. Serie A is considered far more reputable than MLS, and my salary was doubled. There was no question now: I had done something incredible.
Football Manager is the embodiment of what video games can be. They are not slaves to the mainstream. They can provide immensely deep, niche experiences, that most people are probably not interested in. That's how all video games started as. Some weird idea that no one knew they even wanted until it existed. No one knew there was such a huge affinity for big swords and spiky hair until Final Fantasy. No one knew just how popular military shooters were until Battlefield and Call of Duty. No one knew how badly everyone wanted to be an Orc Shaman until World of Warcraft.
I never knew how much I loved Soccer until I played Football Manager. Winning the MLS cup for the first time brought sheer joy to my face. I yelled "YES!" with my arms in the air in celebration. I haven't had such a pure-joy moment in video games for a long time. Every beat has become familiar, every challenge has seemed insignificant. Football Manager gave me something new. Something to really be proud of. Maybe Football Manager 2015 hasn't changed much from FM2014, or FM2013, or the other ten Football Manager games before that, but this was the year I discovered what made it great. And for that reason, I feel compelled to give it the recognition it deserves, by naming it my Game of the Year.
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I feel like I say this every year, but emergent gameplay is why I play video games. Those specific stories that come from playing around with solid mechanics in an open and random world. This year, Shadow Mordor moreso than any other game, gave me unique stories to exchange with friends who had their own unique stories. I remember in the first few hours of my game, an Orc officer killed me before I knew how the game worked. That Orc ended up killing all of his higher ups and became a bodyguard to one of the war chiefs. Technically, his boss was the target to progress the story, but I had more enjoyment finally exacting revenge on this guy who bested me when I was still a newbie. Shadow of Mordor's solid combat, and potential for player stories impressed me more than any other game this year.
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Doorkickers is one of those nifty steam games you pick up, and don't expect much from, but maybe you'll enjoy it for a few hours. For me, it translated to a few dozen hours pretending that I had become a SWAT Tactical Commander. In the game you control various squad members and plan out your attack to take down terrorists, free hostages, defuse bombs, or whatever else. The game's mechanics are solid, but it won me over with it's customization options. You can rename your squad after all your friends and give them dumb callsigns to live out your SWAT fantasies. The campaign mode gives you an excuse to play solider and think you're some hot-shot cop, or a long-time veteran who just wants to take on "one last job." Doorkickers got me to geek out on a genre I usually have no interest in, and I've spent more time playing commando than most other games this year.
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This game was a huge surprise for me because I didn't like Bastion at all. I thought it played poorly and the story was uninteresting. Transistor addressed both of these issues. Transistor's turn based combat allowed me the time to learn the depth of the systems at play, and the sci-fi setting and world drew me in much more than Bastion's bland fantasy. I especially loved how the story and gameplay were directly tied to one another. The more combinations you tried in combat, the more story you unlocked in the codex. Transistor is a game I platniumed within a week of my purchase, and my only regret was not having an excuse to keep playing it.
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Second Son has become the unwanted son of the video game industry. I've never really liked the Infamous franchise. The concept was neat, but the games were never fun. My impression changed with Second Son. This was the first game I played where I felt the game took advantage of next generation hardware. Being able to have large-scale battles across various blocks of Seattle was a subtle detail that continued to impress me throughout the entire game. InFamous finally delivered on its potential. The powers were unique and fun, the enemies were engaging to fight, and there was some Conduit vs. Conduit action that had been absent from the series so far. My hopes for the franchise have never been higher, and for once I'm actually looking forward to the next Infamous game.
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Speaking of survival, Banished is a different kind of survival simulator. Only instead of managing a few civilians in a wartorn city, you're managing an entire village, fighting off forces such as starvation, exposure, and the winter cold. Banished is best described as a hardcore Sim City. You govern over a small town and have to ensure everyone has a job that keeps the village going. The larger the village, the riskier the chances. If you get into a groove of when to pick your crops to feed the masses, but find that winter has come early and your entire yield dies, too bad, you've got a hungry populace that will likely starve to death. Banished was my go-to game for turning on a podcast, or a new album, turning down the game volume and just sinking hours into it. When things go wrong it can get stressful, but otherwise it's a peaceful city management game that I enjoyed coming back to.
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I remember first hearing about This War of Mine and thinking it sounded like a pandering art game with no actual value. To my great surprise, This War of Mine is a mechanic-heavy survival game, with some great narration on the difficulty of wartime for ordinary civilians. It's also a much longer game than I was anticipating. I still haven't beaten it yet, I'm actually not sure if there is an ending, but my best playthrough has taken me much further than my initial week-long failures. It's at the point where I feel like the siege on the city will never end, and I'm surprised I've lasted as long as I have. That feeling is exactly what This War of Mine wants you to feel. It's an effective piece of art, that engages you to keep going as long as you can.
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Listen, I understand that Watch Dogs was disappointing for a lot of people, but I honestly don't understand where the hype came from. Maybe it's the years of false promises that have conditioned me to assume all games are awful, but I wasn't buying the tricks being played at E3 when they pitched Watch Dogs as some revolutionary game. I didn't follow the game much until just before release and it looked like an open world game with some light hacking elements. I'd say Watch Dogs does better than some of Ubisoft's other open-world games, because it has a more open mission structure and more encouragement to play with the world's rules. There may be a day where I grow tired of the Ubisoft Formula, but that hasn't happened yet.
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FIFA 15 is the first FIFA game I've played since 2010, and it's no coincidence I took a four year break. This year was the year of the World Cup. I've always enjoyed soccer but my interest really kicks in gear during the World Cup. This year was especially great since Germany is my favorite national team and they ended up winning this year. This whipped up my fervor to go out and buy the FIFA for this year and enjoy my own soccer tale. As for the game itself, it maintains the quality and content I'd expect from a FIFA game. It's nothing remarkable, but it's a fitting narration on the state of video games in 2014, when an unremarkable decent game makes it on my Top 10.
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It wouldn't be a list of my Top 10 games if it didn't have a game I haven't finished bookending the #10 spot. This year's #10 spot is particularly important because I actually played and finished Dark Souls 1 for the first time this year. In so many words, I finished that game feeling "before I was blind, but now I can see." I can't rewind time and give Dark Souls 1 the credit it deserved back in 2010, but I can give a nod to it's successor this year. I have played Dark Souls 2 a bit, but I only started a few weeks ago and I'm taking my time with it. I recognize the buzz around Dark Souls 2 is that it's a disappointment compared to it's predecessor but I've enjoyed what I've seen so far, enough to add it to my list.
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Special mention: I played DOTA 2 more than any other game this year. It continues to be amazing.
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