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The story of Ubisoft in 2014 is one of great ambition and spectacular failures. That's why it was so refreshing that Far Cry 4 was not that, and instead gave me exactly what I wanted - a better-looking, better-running, better-playing Far Cry 3 in a new setting. The spirit of the best game of 2012 shifted forward and has become the best game of 2014.
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I only wish it ran better. It's really my only fault with it. Of all the games out there that are getting pushed onto the new consoles, necessarily or not, this is one that would really benefit, just to make a much smoother experience. That said, I'm still a sucker for Paper Mario-style combat, and throwing it in a story with some genuinely hilarious moments and a setting that was really dense with things to explore, and there's no way this wouldn't end up near the top.
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By this I mean the Wii U version. The 3DS version is a waste of time and effort. This could have been a bit higher, the core gameplay is still really fun, but all the modes are pretty lacking aside from the basic Classic and All-Star from Melee. Smash Tour is a confusing shitshow - if I'm spending more time playing your useless board game than I am playing the actual fighting game, you've failed. Event mode is nice, but the lack of something like a Subspace Emissary mode is glaring.
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They added button control to this sequel, which makes it infinitely better. Also the fact that it includes ALL of the songs from the original plus a bunch more, for a combined total of 221 songs. In a year sorely lacking rhythm games, this was the best one.
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Man, I don't even like baseball. I mean, as sports go, it's near the top - the rules are easy to understand, the action is easy to follow, the suspense can be high if you're at all invested in what's happening at the plate - but sports games are typically not my bag at all as I just could not give a shit less about sports in general. That said, I bought this because it was on sale for $40 and I wanted to see just how good the game looked. Somehow it ended up hooking me and taking me along for the ride. I've sunk a good thirty hours or so into this game, and still need to go back to finish my season. An insane amount of customization lets you tweak the hitting, pitching and fielding to be as automatic or as complex as you'd like it to be, and once you've hit your sweet spot on customization, it is a great way to kill a few hours.
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This game is as shooter as it gets, and was nothing but a single-player campaign, yet it still managed to engage me like quite no other FPS before it. I mean, yeah, I loved the first BioShock, but the action in that game was secondary to the story and setting, which were the real stars of the show. I can get down on some Halo and Call of Duty multiplayer, occasionally, though I'm just not that good and it doesn't stay entertaining for very long. As far as single-player campaigns go, I have finished exactly one Halo game and one Call of Duty. They just never really stick for me. I just figured those types of games weren't for me, really. But here is a shooter-ass shooter that proved me wrong. The story is interesting but just secondary to the tight feel of the controls and how good the shooting feels in this game. I'm suddenly looking forward to a new Doom game, of all things, based solely on how good this was. Am I crazy?
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The Nemesis system is really good. In fact, it's too good - it's clear that most of the effort for this game went into building and refining that system, because nearly all of the main story missions are a drag. But just working your way through the Nemesis rankings, trying to an achieve a cleared screen of dead orcs became a game in itself (a much better one). It also had some pretty great sidequests centered around melee combat, archery and stealth, and since all three of those systems work wonderfully (albeit incredibly simply, for the stealth), they were a joy to work through. Points off for being set in the terminally-boring Tolkien universe, but I greatly look forward to seeing what other developers ape this system in other settings, and how successful they are with it.
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It's endless Frogger and it's free. And it looks great, runs well, doesn't kill my iPhone battery, works in ads and free-to-play systems in a smart and unimposing way. I've mostly fallen off mobile games in recent years, but this is one I keep finding myself loading up often.
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Single-player is no way to play this game, but once you get a few friends together, this game is frenetic and magical. It started to wear thin after just a night, but what a great night that was.
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This game was nice as an early graphical showpiece for the PS4, and though it was fun enough, it's still the weakest entry in the series. It has a great villain, and two of your four available powers are cool, but the side content was lacking, and the world felt oddly dead and empty. I don't know where they go from here, or where to take this series again, because all-new powers in an all-new setting with an all-new cast didn't quite take the game to the heights of the first two games.
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