Re-Ranking 2014: How Things Have Changed in a Year

Every now and then when navigating the site, I glance over at my 2014 Game of the Year list and think about how much my opinion on some of the games listed there have changed. For some time, I've wanted to experiment by revisiting this list and seeing what has changed. So I've used the first few months of 2016 during the lull in new releases to finally catch up on things and now feel pretty good about writing this.

Before I get into this breakdown, let me cover the big games of 2014 I still have yet to play. As far as I can recall, I only have two significant titles remaining: Divinity: Original Sin and Wasteland 2. While I could wait to write this after playing these two titles, I honestly have no idea when that will happen given the length of each. It's also kind of not the point of this experiment to permanently nail down what my favorite games of 2014 as that's always going to remain rather fluid. I also haven't played several episodic games like Kentucky Route Zero, but I don't really count those as 2014 games.

I'm going to skip covering entries that remained largely the same. The one exception I'd like to mention is Shadow of Mordor, which is a game that I have always been conflicted about. And yet I feel like on some days I like it more than I remember, and some days it's the opposite. I still hate its lack of difficulty levels. I still hate the fact it squandered the Lord of the Rings license with a dreadfully dull narrative. I still hate that the last hour is one of the worst final acts in recent video game memory. On the other hand, it still has some of the best combat in a game since its release. And eighteen months later, the Nemesis System remains unique and one of the best new gameplay systems devised in recent memory.

So let's start with the bottom of the list. My relationship with Dark Souls II is a rocky one. In some ways, its weird for me to add it back onto a 2014 top 10 list because it was the 2015 release of Scholar of the First Sin that made me come around on it. However, it isn't necessarily the remixed elements of Scholar that caused this, but the fact I finally played the DLC areas. Some people seem to hate these sections. For me, they finally made the game work. These sections were far more creative than the main game's content. While the main game's bosses were all over the place in quality, the three DLC packs featured some excellent boss design (not counting the awful yet optional Gank Squad of course).

The game that my opinion of has changed the most with is Persona Q. My opinion on Far Cry 4 and Smash Bros remains largely the same. These two games simply got bumped to make room for other entries. Persona Q on the other hand was a game that I was immensely enjoying back in December of 2014. Little did I realize that I was only through about forty percent of the game at that point. Nor did I realize that the other three-fifths of the game was going to just be a lot more of the same. Persona Q is a game that overstayed its welcome by a good thirty hours at minimum. It is the ultimate definition of a three out of five star game.

There are two other new games to the list that I hadn't played by the end of 2014. The first is Shadowrun: Dragonfall - Director's Cut. After playing so many recent RPGs that seem to be trying to out-Skyrim one another by sacrificing everything else in the game to the altar of sprawling open-worlds, I really appreciated playing an RPG that had some concept of structure and pacing again. This is not me trying to say open-world RPGs are inherently inferior or worse, but that tight, forty hour RPGs have become a bit of a lost art, and this is a particularly good one.

Boy do I love The Talos Principle. That game had the unfortunate timing of coming out in the middle of December, thus missing out on awards season. It's a shame too, as honestly I love it so much I almost gave it the top spot. To put this in perspective, Bayonetta 2 was the only game I really "loved" from 2014, so Talos is quite a bit above Shovel Knight for me.

The last thing I'll mention is how far Inquisition has fallen since I originally played it. While I still like the game, I have since realized a lot of that was both related to timing and the lack of a quality Bioware RPG in almost five years. Inquisition unfortunately suffers from pacing issues and open-world bloat, as well as a tepid final act that seems to be just about wrapping things up as quickly as possible.

If nothing else, this was a good reminder of what top ten lists actually are and why they're not worth getting worked up over. Opinions on a work are always going to change over time, and trying to nail down exactly where something falls on typically an exercise in futility. I'm sure I'll finish Divinity or Wasteland 2 at some point and want to change my top ten list again. So feel free to comment on this with either your own list of what has changed since calendar year 2014.