Dan's End of 2014 Awards - Part One

I don’t normally go in for Game of the Year awards. While I’ve always enjoyed the coverage from Giant Bomb at this time of year, I tend not to get involved in the discussions myself. There are two main reasons for this. First, I tend not to play many games at their time of release. Thanks to the combination of a pretty small gaming budget and a ridiculously large backlog, I usually gravitate towards older games when selecting something to play. As a result, most of the things being discussed by the staff in their end-of-year deliberations end up soaring over my head, because I haven’t played the games they’re talking about. Second, I’m not a fan of the numbered list format that all the major games news outlets tend to roll with. While I might be able to single out three or four games that were definitely head-and-shoulders above the rest I played in any given year, it’s a damn sight more difficult to apply some form of arbitrary ranking to ten of them.

That’s not to say I don’t partake in the Game of the Year festivities at all. I just tend to do my own thing rather than conform to the structures and rules laid out by the powers that be. Typically my End of Year Awards incorporate everything I’ve played in a given year, prescribing a unique award to each game in acknowledgement of what I thought it did well (or perhaps not so well, in some cases). It’s a fun way of looking back over the year as a whole, and saves me from having to go to the trouble of singling out ten specific titles and putting them into some kind of hierarchical order. It worked nicely in 2010, 2011 and 2012 (2013 not so much, but I’ve learned my lesson and am writing all of this in a word processor before I copy it into the Giant Bomb text editor).

This year I’ll be doing something a little bit different, a sort of combination of the two formats. The framing of my awards will remain the same, with games being rewarded for their strengths, but this year I’ll be attempting to limit the awards I’m giving to just ten. I’m not going to lie, the main reason I’ve decided to concede and impose this restriction on myself is because I really haven’t played a lot of games this year (just twenty-seven at the time of writing, compared with last year’s thirty-five). Also, a lot of those have been multiple games from the same franchise (and one franchise in particular), and giving every single game within a franchise its own unique award would probably be pretty dull to follow.

So that’s ten awards for ten games. How will I be distributing them? I’m thinking two awards per day for five days, running from today (Christmas Eve) to Sunday (December 28^th). Now that I’m off work until Monday and don’t have much to do besides this whole Christmas thing, this seems like as good a time as any.

Before I get started, I just want to clarify two things – things that should probably be self-evident from the preamble above, but it’s probably best I lay it out in black and white here. First off, a lot of the games I’m giving these awards to won’t be games that came out in 2014. As I said above, I don’t play very many games the year they come out. In fact, I’m pretty sure my grand total of new releases beaten in 2014 stands at just one, and I don't have high hopes of bumping that up to two before the year ends. Consequently, anything I’ve played to completion in the last twelve months will be eligible, whether it was released this year or not. Second, these awards are not ranked, numerically or otherwise. As I’ve said above, I find it difficult and largely pointless trying to boil these lists down to a ranked order – is there really that much difference between what I'd choose to put in the eighth and ninth slots? Instead, I’ll be handing out the awards based on the order in which I completed the games through the year, with the first beaten at the start and the most recently beaten at the end. With those little disclaimers out of the way, let’s hand out some awards, shall we?

An End Has a Start Award for Best Ending

The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening DX (3DS – Nintendo – 1999)

By way of its Virtual Console, my 3DS has opened up a window into a piece of the Zelda series’ history that I’d missed out on up until this year. While I’m still yet to dig into either of the Oracle games, I spent a big chunk of my January getting acquainted with Link’s Awakening DX. In a lot of ways I actually preferred Link’s 2D top-down adventure to its more recent home console brethren – the rudimentary graphical design and mechanical limitations of the old Game Boy were easily offset by the incredible world and dungeon design, not to mention the game’s rather brave decision to turn its back on the kingdom of Hyrule for the fantastically weird Koholint Island. While the game played like a conventional Zelda title, its vibrant setting, its crazy cast of characters, and the scant lore surrounding the mysterious island and the Wind Fish that lives there helped it to carve out its own identity and make it one of the most memorable of Link’s adventures in the entire series.

That’s probably the main reason why the finale ended up hitting as hard as it did for me – the game’s setting and characters are so distinctly unique and memorable that it hits you like a gut-punch when they’re erased from existence in the closing scenes. It’s not what you’d call a surprising reveal, either – as Link gathers the instruments he needs to wake the Wind Fish, it’s made pretty clear to him that doing so will cause Koholint Island and everyone living on it to disappear forever. As the player you’re put in a very conflicting position, because the game requires you to explore this wonderful island and meet all these interesting characters, all the while reminding you that should you succeed, it will all cease to exist. Even as the game’s closing cut-scene unfolded I found myself willing it not to be true, but knowing deep down in my heart that it was. Link’s Awakening is a rare example of the tired ‘…and it was all a dream’ trope done exceptionally well, and I applaud it heartily for that. I’ll never forget you, Marin…

You Better You Bet Award for Most Improved Sequel

God of War II (PS3 – SCE Santa Monica – 2007)

I struggled long and hard over this award. For quite a while I was on the verge of giving it to Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, but ultimately decided not to because I’m much more in love with that game on paper than I am in practice. My eyes then fell back upon God of War II, a game I knew to be a vast improvement on its predecessor due to the fact I played them back-to-back at the start of this year.

The original God of War is a fantastic action/adventure game with a couple of noticeable shortcomings. For a start, it clocks in pretty short for a game of its kind. Also, while it features its fair share of puzzles and a little bit of platforming, it doesn’t really do enough to break up the combat that makes up its core, which led to it feeling a little repetitive at times, even in spite of its brevity. God of War II addressed those issues, as well as a couple more that I wasn’t even aware of, and then tied it all up into a package that somehow managed to look and play even better than the game that came before it. It clocks in at almost double the length of the original (my playthrough of GoW took me eight hours; my playthrough of GoWII took me fifteen), and throws a ton of new mechanics into play to spice things up and break up the combat. Flying sequences with winged horses? Check. Icarus wings that let you glide across long distances? You bet. Time-rewinding mechanics straight out of Prince of Persia to mix up the puzzles? Gotcha covered. All these little iterations are supported by presentation values that are even more epic than the first game, resulting in a game that feels like a warranted sequel and not just a new adventure rendered with the same old assets.

God of War II isn’t an improvement in every respect though, and the most telling area where it fell short for me was in its story. In the first game Kratos’ anger is both well-justified and more sparingly used, resulting in a character whose motives and actions feel at least somewhat believable. In God of War II though, it feels like someone cranked Kratos’ anger gauge up to eleven before snapping off the dial for good measure. This permanent rage makes Kratos a lot less likeable as a character, and somewhat detracts from all the leaps forward made by the gameplay. It’s a shame, and I’m kind of wary about jumping into God of War III as a result.

…but still, at least it doesn’t have any fucking ridiculous tower defence mechanics, right?

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And with that, the first day of this five-part awards extravaganza comes to an end. Be sure to check back tomorrow, when I’ll be revealing the third and fourth games to earn recognition as part of my End of 2014 Awards. Thanks for reading guys. A very Merry Christmas to all of you. Take care, and I’ll see you around.

Dan

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Currently playing - Pokémon Omega Ruby (3DS)