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TeknoDwarf

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GOTY 2014

To be honest, I barely played 10 games this year. Part of it is due to me not having any of the new consoles, part of it was me being busy with new changes in my life, and part of it was due to me playing/replaying games from previous years. A large portion of the online consensus seems to agree that this wasn’t a particularly great year for games either. So if it seems my list is not overwhelmingly positive or I’m grasping for something to slap on the list, you can understand my circumstances. And with that, here are my 10 favorite games of 2014.

List items

  • (Wii U version)

    The Wii U version of Super Smash Bros. is a better looking, better playing, and overall better version of the 3DS iteration. The 8-player Smash, and board game mode are great innovations on the multiplayer. I also liked being able to use an actual controller to play, as I feel more confident pulling of certain moves than with the 3DS circle pad. Playing it all in Japanese gives me an excuse to play through all the modes to help improve my Japanese. Super Smash Bros. is probably my favorite multiplayer franchise and so I’m glad to place it at the top of my list.

  • I’ve come around as a bigger fan of South Park in recent years. While South Park’s history with video games hasn’t been great, it’s refreshing to see not only a good South Park game, but a fantastic one. The game draws from my favorite games of all time (Earthbound and Super Mario RPG/Paper Mario), and is chock full of gaming jokes and references from the show that this was definitely one of my favorite experiences from this year. In addition to an awesome season, this was a great year for South Park.

  • (3DS version, yeah I put both on this list. This year sucked, sue me)

    I’ve been anticipating the new Super Smash Bros. for a long time. I was disappointed by the mechanical changes of Brawl and overall felt underwhelmed. The new versions of the game fixed the problems I had with Brawl and presented a better package. I bought the Japanese 3DS version because not only do I spend a lot more time on handhelds these days, but also it helped satiate the Smash-sized void in my heart. I’ll agree with the sentiment that this is the “demo version” of the console experience, I won’t say I was disappointed by this game. I really liked the City Trial mode from Kirby's Air Ride for the GameCube, and the similarly-inspired Smash Run mode for the 3DS of this game is pretty fun too. When I'm not doing local matches on the train, after school with my students, I usually play that mode in my free time and I dig it.

  • I’ve been burned on the last couple of Mario Karts. The Wii version was bullshit with its terrible motion controls, laggy online, and awful frequency of blue shells and AI shenanigans. While I liked Mario Kart 7 a lot more, I unfortunately didn’t play it that much as I wasn’t really into handhelds as much back then. Mario Kart 8 fixes many of the problems of the Wii version and adds tons of new tracks and revamped modes to get me re-interested in Mario Kart. My one gripe is the use of regular tracks for the battle mode instead of arenas. If they included new and classic arenas, this would be the definitive Mario Kart experience. That said, it's still pretty close to being the best Mario Kart in the series.

  • The sequel to one of the best reimaginings in recent years added my favorite Kong Kompanion (Dixie) as well as a variety of entertaining and sometimes frustrating new levels to play through. The jumping still seems a little floaty/less precise than a Mario game, they compensate with the sidekicks' abilities. While it’s no Mario 3D World, I’ll gladly take a new Donkey Kong over a new New Super Mario Bros. any day.

  • The one mobile game that I played the most this year was easily the annoyingly addictive puzzler featuring adorable Disney plushies. I think the main factor in this game’s appeal is how crazy popular it is in Japan. Being connected to the chat application, LINE, and having a bunch of friends who actively play it is what kept me coming back to the game every hour when my hearts refilled.

  • One of the freshest mobile games took the gaming community by storm. CrossyRoad is simply an endless Frogger. The gameplay is simple and fair and its way of integrating friends’ scores into the game world is clever. Moreover, it’s a legitimate free game and not a “free” game, so I never had to worry about waiting an hour to play again or harassing my friends to help me out. And also the number of characters and the aesthetic changes they add to the game are amusing. The setup for everything is so simple that I could be playing a game for 30 seconds or for 30 minutes.

  • I spent a great deal of the year playing Spelunky on the Vita. Even including the remake, it still wouldn’t be eligible as a game of 2014. It did release on PS4 this year, but I’ll concede. Nonetheless, it deserves its praise regardless of the year it released. A similar game, Binding of Isaac, also received a remake this year and I was pleasantly surprised by this game. It has the same risk-reward system as other rogue-likes, while playing like a 2D Zelda crossed with Smash TV. Like Spelunky, I died many times before actually getting the hang of it, but I was more encouraged by my defeats than discouraged.

  • AKB48 finally got a music game is the English translation of this title. It’s a rhythm game that features the ultra-popular Japanese pop group, AKB48, and allows players to form their own unique teams consisting of their favorite members. While it suffers from the common shortcomings of other freemium games, it does give me another excuse to showcase AKB out in public.

  • The first season of Telltale’s Walking Dead series was fantastic. It had tons of great moments in each and every episode. The second season starts out great and has a wonderful villain in the middle, but then takes a nosedive in quality in the latter half, due to the arbitrary nature of the narrative. That said, I was glad to see where Clementine’s story was going after the first season and it still had satisfying moments.
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