MoD's favorite games of 2014

PC, Game console and Online gaming discussion forum
User avatar
MinisterofDOOM
Moderator
Posts: 34350
Joined: Wed May 19, 2004 5:51 pm
Car: 1962 Corvair Monza
1961 Corvair Lakewood
1997 Pathfinder XE
2005 Lincoln LS8
Former:
1995 Q45t
1993 Maxima GXE
1995 Ranger XL 2.3
1984 Coupe DeVille
Location: The middle of nowhere.

Post

I've played a lot of really great games this year. It's time to round up my favorites.

I'll start with the top, my very favorite, ultimate, the best game I played in 2014:
Spin Tires

Where did this game come from? Nobody saw it coming. Unheard of developer working on a semi-realistic sim with über-niché appeal. And it was the TOP SELLING GAME ON STEAM FOR DAYS. Out of nowhere.
Sales success isn't why I picked it, though. I picked it because only one game managed to eat up more of my time than Spin Tires, and it wasn't from 2014. Spintires has a very basic "goal" and I've only bothered to achieve it a couple times. However, I've spent so much time in every map that I know all the best routes, which truck suits which paths best, and exactly where to park my fuel trucks for mid-run top-ups.
The game is a wonderful idea, brilliantly realized.
You get offroad trucks.
You have real-time deformable terrain that behaves impressively believably and realistically.
You have lumber.
And you have garages.
You can equip your trucks in different ways (fifth-wheel attachments, cargo trailers, repair utilities, fuel tanks, more).
You can control diff lock and AWD manually (and independently)
Your job is to get the lumber from the pick-up point to the drop-off point across the map.
But the lumber is not really the point. The point is muddin' in massive trucks (or a tiny Nissan Patrol-alike). The point is exploring a forest on 8+ wheels. The problem is getting hopelessly stuck and laughing your a** off while you do it. Then getting your tow truck stuck trying to remove the first truck.

The visuals are great, especially the dynamic range variations when switching your headlights on and off at night...very convincing.
The camera controls feel wonky at first, but become incredibly intuitive once you get used to the articulated-boom style adjustments.
The lack of an in-cabin view is lamentable, but certainly not a deal-breaker.
The manual-shift mode is disappointingly limited (basically just high, low, and reverse--not actually useful) which makes the tougher hardcore mode much less appealing.

I can already tell that Spin Tires is one game I'll still be playing the Hell out of in 5 years or more, simply because there's nothing else like it and I don't expect that to change. As a driver and a gearhead, it also hits a very special sweet spot for me--one that pretty much no other game has managed. I've said many times: I love DRIVING games but I can't stand RACING games. This is the former and not remotely the latter, and it's wonderful for it.

Coming in in 2nd place:
Legend of Grimrock 2
Everything that was great about the original, plus more, all even better-honed than before.
The feel of the game is razor-tight.
I love the art style and overall aesthetic.
The combat system is so straightforward and yet so deep strategically.
The worlds are beautiful and so are the monsters.
It's HARD.
The puzzles make me feel simultaneously like a genius and a dumbass.
I can play it in short sessions or pour hours into it and walk away with the same smile on my face.
Absolutely the best RPG I've played in ages and ages and ages.

Thirst place:
Wolfenstein: The New Order
Wait, what's this?! A Wolfenstein game that's ACTUALLY GOOD!? What kind of twisted alternate reality is this?!
But the fact is W:TNO is not just good, it's spectacular. It does so much right (a few things wrong, too).
It's a BRILLIANT shooter. Such a spectacular blend of the key defining shooter mechanics developed over the past several years. It blends a feel of visceral (an overused word in gaming reviews that nonetheless fits here) precision with over-the-top nonsense. You can go from stealthily sniping enemies from the shadows to dual-wielding sci-fi machine guns in fights with enormous robots in minutes, and it all works. It feels cohesive.
It plays with meaningful themes in the story, but approaches them in a self-aware way that means they're neither too heavy-hanging nor too lighthearted to be meaningful. I don't think it's quite as enlightened as it thinks it is, but it's every bit as clever.
The characters are great, if stereotypical (hey, what do you expect from a Nazi game?!)
There's a Nazi moonbase. Because of course.
Combat has a punchy feel to it.
The best FPS since Metro 2033 without question.

Next Place:
Sunless Sea
This is so brilliant. Mechanically, it's such a simple, been-there-done-that premise. But the presentation is unlike ANYTHING else out there. Experience points are Pages in your story. Quests are Stories. Exploration is made tense by fuel and food concerns and the feebleness of your ship's headlight against the inky blackness of the Underzee. Everything in the world has a little story to share, and at the beginning there's so much to see it's almost overwhelming, but never quite so. Instead, it's a big, fascinating, living world waiting to be explored. And one of the most magnificent design aspects is the way that quests work in support of that exploration, rather than defining it or detracting from it as in so many other RPGs.
It's also really nice to look at.

One, two, FIVE!th place:
Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker
What could have been a throwaway oddball turned out to be Nintendo's best game of the year. Yes, I'm saying it's better than Super Smash Bros.
Super Mario 3D world had a handful of fun puzzle-oriented levels starring Captain Toad, a backpack-laden adventurer who has no defenses.
They were really good, and apparently popular enough that Nintendo decided to give Captain Toad his own game, full of dozens upon dozens more puzzley little cubical levels.
This game is unabashedly adorable, and it's also extremely clever and consummately approachable.
It's basically "fun" distilled. There's nothing overcomplicated, no design frustrations, nothing but a simple and fun idea polished to nigh-ridiculous levels of perfection.
I've probably had more fun with Captain Toad than any other game on this list.
One of the game's big strengths is the absolutely perfectly-sized portioning of the gameplay. The levels are fairly brief, but no so brief that they feel monotonous. You can finish early levels in minutes or less. But as with most modern Nintendo games, you can spend more time really exploring to find all there is to see (hidden gems and coins and other collectibles).
One thing that keeps me from really being able to enjoy a lot of games these days as a responsible adult with a billion things to do is the feeling of almost obligation to getting sufficient return from a play session. If I'm going to sit down with a game, I'm going to have to devote enough time to make it worthwhile, and I don't always have that time. With Captain Toad, though, that worry is never there. I can play one level, or I can play a dozen. All are outstanding and my time is always rewarded, but I get to choose how much to invest.

Another'th place:
The Legend of Zelda: A Link between Worlds
This game could earn a place on this list from the music alone.
But it's also the best Zelda game since Windwaker, and probably my all-time favorite after Link's Awakening. It's really, really good.
Most critically: it marks Nintendo's acceptance that trying to reinvent the wheel is a bad thing, and more of the same is never bad if the same is this smegging good. It's Link to the Past reshod, but with a few tweaks, but it never feels like retreading the same ground. It's familiar and learns from its predecessors experience but builds a new game upon it all.
I had a hard time putting it down when I first bought it, and started a Hero Mode game promptly upon completing my first playthrough. Not many games earn that much attention from me.

And, rounding out the list:
Alien: Isolation
I am a very big Alien fan. It's my favorite movie for a lot of reasons. Alien: Isolation understands most of those reasons, and rebuilds them in game form so I can enjoy at my own pace. Walking around the Torrens at the beginning of the game felt nostalgic in all the best ways. The game's atmosphere is such a faithful recreation of the movie that it's immediately engrossing. Even the menus and intro videos have a patina of 1980s Ridley Scott scifi to them. The menu sound effects are all straight out of MuThUr in the movie. There's a film-grain option that should never be turned off.
It has some failings--save points (which are arguably part of the mechanics but can get frustrating as save points are wont to do), goofy inventory management, a not-really-needed crafting system, and you can't jump (a cardinal gaming sin). But it implements them in ways that feel authentic to the Alien experience, so they're never detractions--merely low points in a very excellent experience.
I actually found that early sections reminded me of Alien 3 more than Alien, but still in a very good way (and I'm among the rare people who like's the third Alien movie).
Horror games are hard to do, and very rarely hold my interest. Alien: Isolation is an exception, and is absolutely worth a play.
Oh, it's also really beautiful to look at despite not being much of a system hog at all.

There's my list. What's yours?


Return to “Gaming”