by berjiwhir
What a strange year for gaming. I played a ton of good stuff, but many of the games I played were not released in 2014. Whether it be catching up on last year, revisiting old favorites, or digging deeper into my backlog, my attention was not usually on current releases. But, for the sake of this list, I have limited my selections to games actually released in 2014. And because for the bulk of the year I did not have a PC or a modern console, I spent the last few weeks before New Year's frantically playing catch-up.
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Shadow of Mordor is, I hope, a sign of things to come. On paper, it seems almost rote--the traversal and stealth of the Assassin's Creed games, the melee combat of the Batman series, all mixed together and set in the Lord of the Rings universe. But Mordor manages to assimilate and summarize the last five years of action games and add to it something that would not have been possible on the last generation of consoles--the Nemesis System. This addition, in which the tougher enemies you face in the world are part of an organic and shifting power structure, results in a world that feels genuinely alive in a way that no other game of this nature has managed. I grew frustrated early in the game when an Uruk captain managed to stumble into what seemed to be every combat scenario I got mixed up in. And because I was still learning the mechanics of the game, I died. I died a lot. Because of this, he ascended the ranks very quickly, becoming the most powerful enemy on on the board by far. The fact that all of that happened as a result of events specific to the way I played that game makes me feel a larger sense of agency and responsibility than I ever have in a game of this kind. He's not just a enemy the game put in my path; instead, he's a product of my actions, my own failures. I hope that Mordor will start a trend in modern video games: take was a old and good, perfect it, and then add new systems and experiences over it. Mordor feels like the best Assassin's Creed game, the best Batman game, the best Lord of the Rings game, while managing to be something completely new. It's just awesome.
With each passing year, I have had to include Call of Duty of my end-of-year list with more and more caveats. This year, thankfully, that is not the case. Advanced Warfare is the game I wish Titanfall would have been, and it stands as a great example of a game that bridges the past console generation and the new. Everything that was good about Call of Duty in the past is still there--the gunplay is still incredibly tight, and the action set pieces still make my jaw drop--and many of the clunky iterative additions have been thankfully jettisoned. The addition of the Exo abilities adds a completely new dimension to the traversal, making Advanced Warfare feel at once totally new and comfortably familiar. Even without that significant addition, this would be a completely competent Call of Duty release, certainly better than the often confused, muddy mess that Call of Duty: Ghosts was. The multiplayer system imports the simplicity of load-outs from Black Ops while maintaining the advanced weaponry of the Modern Warfare games. Add all of this together--the gorgeous visual upgrade, the pitch-perfect multiplayer, and the obvious level of care and polish that went into development--and you end up with something that the Call of Duty franchise was sorely in need off: a breath of fresh air.
I feel like this is a common refrain this year, but I should have hated Hearthstone. Despite getting really into collecting several, I've never actually played a CCG. More, I've never played a Warcraft game. Starting off, there was absolutely nothing about Hearthstone that should have drawn me in. And yet. Heartstone's unique blend of variety and polish made sure that I spent many late nights tapping away on my iPad, trying in vain to make any headway in the arena. By turns frustrating and empowering, Hearthstone was one of the coolest and most unexpected game I played all year. And I also did not spend a dime on it. Also, pressing the 'I'm Sorry' emote just before delivering the killing blow never, ever gets old.
For pure fun this year, it was hard to beat Mario Kart 8. Sitting around the TV with my wife and two friends, pizza, and Wii remotes was the most fun I've had playing video games in a good long while. The Mario Kart franchise is well-worn at this point, but there is a novelty to seeing the characters pop in colorful HD, and the fact that Nintendo remains on top of their game with track design helps ensure that what could otherwise be a stale retread emerges as one of the best reasons to own a Wii U. (Maybe I should buy a Wii U.)
This game is on my list for 2014 because of the stellar "Left Behind" DLC. In a short, powerful package, Naughty Dog managed to expand on the events of my 2013 Game of the Year without cheapening any of the game's narrative power and also gave us an intimate, heartbreaking look into the life of Ellie in the time before we met her in the main release. Ellie's relationship with Riley feels real--believable character interaction, especially involving women, is so rare in games. Naughty Dog was smart to give their relationship time to breathe with a series of non-combat sequences that showed off the game's killer graphics engine and to allow players to really invest in these two young women, without having to worry, mostly, about the sometimes cumbersome combat. In a landscape of expansive, grandiose games, it was refreshing to see a story focus on a focused, meaningful friendship. We don't see that enough. When the short DLC reached its inevitable and tragic conclusion, I found myself in a position I don't often find myself in when finishing a video game; I felt moved.
Coming in to 2014, there was no game I was looking forward to more than Titanfall. I've loved the former Infinity Ward's Call of Duty games with a strength that bordered on fanaticism, so when I heard about their grand plans for Titanfall, I was immediately on board. Not owning an Xbox One, I was only able to play in on my aging Xbox 360, but I was pleased to find that, obvious graphical shortcomings notwithstanding, the core action of Titanfall remained intact on my older console. I reached the level cap and kind of never wanted to play it again (there's just not a lot to it at the end of the day), but those fifteen or so hours I spent shooting dudes and stompin' around as a robot were amazingly fun.
Rarely has a game to enthusiastically reveled in its own weirdness. Jazzpunk presents itself as a quirky video game nonsequitor, and for the most part it lives up to that first impression, but buried within I found a wellspring of gleeful references and genuinely funny absurdity. This is a calculated weirdness, a genuine aesthetic achievement--not just some random mishmash of ideas. The game doesn't have any lofty delusions of meaning, but it is, nonetheless, exactly what is wants to be. It's difficult to express my fondness for Jazzpunk without devolving into abstraction. It's a brief game, but one that does not overstay its welcome, and by the time I got to the end I wanted very much to meet the strange and beautiful people who put this project together.
Far Cry 3 just barely missed being on my 2012 list, not because I didn't love it, but because I didn't start playing it until the next year. When I got my PS4 late in the year, Far Cry 4 was the first game I started. While it does bear many mechanical and stylistic similarities to Far Cry 3, Far Cry 4 manages to carve out its own identify, thanks mostly to the interesting and gorgeous setting in which the world takes place. I said, "Whoa," more than a few times while looking out at the mountainous vistas of Kyrat. It would be easy to be disappointed that Far Cry 4 treads so closely in the shadow of its sterling predecessor, but in a year when all of Ubisoft's games seemed to arrive utterly broken, I was more than happy to spend time liberating Kyrat while riding on an god damn beautiful elephant.
Not having access to a next-gen console, I was very happy in 2014 to own an iOS device. There were so many interesting experiences on that platform, and out of the many I played this year Monument Valley was the best. I played it pretty much in one sitting on my iPad, constantly in awe of the artistic mastery it displayed. Reviewers liked to draw comparisons to Fez and Echochrome, but it all ways but the visual aesthetic, Monument Valley is a thing apart from those titles. It's not difficult, per se, but it is constantly engaging and awe-inspiring. The tight perspective shows what seems to be a simple level to the player, but then one geometric variable will throw everything into disarray, which forces one to rethink the spatial reality Princess Ida must negotiate. It's a game built on mood and suggestion, and it's a beautiful piece of work.
On the total opposite end of the iOS spectrum from Monument Valley, we have Threes!, which is pure mechanical genius. The slide-addition gameplay is very simple to grasp conceptually but much more difficult to deploy effectively in practice. And there was a period of about a week where it seemed like everyone was playing this thing. Eventually the scoring revealed itself to be problematic, and the overall appeal has worn off for more a bit, but Threes! still retains a permanent spot on my iPhone. It's a perfect mobile game, and one that everyone with an iOS device should try.
