It is pretty unrealistic to play any decent number of games released during a given year to have a good enough understanding of the quality of that year in gaming... at least for me it is. Actually, I'm quite sure that even critics who receive their copies for free from the larger publishers are still struggling with this. Looking at my Steam library, I can say that personally I have only played 3 games that were released this last year, them being: Metro 2033 Redux, Lifeless Planet and Alien: Isolation (played in that order), so I obviously can't say much about how great or terrible games were in 2014, but I can happily say that it was delightful completing all 3 of the games I listed. Metro 2033 Redux was an awesome remake of the original Metro game using Last Light's updated engine - it had enough new features and polished graphics to make a fifth playthrough of the M2033 story seem fresh and still exciting for me. Lifeless Planet was an interesting indie title that I heard about not long before its release and was even more convinced that I had to play it after reading opinions of it here; although it wasn't groundbreaking, it was still a very nice experience that had a special atmosphere. Finally, Alien: Isolation is probably the most striking of the 3 titles I checked out this last year, as it is perhaps the best Alien game ever made and extremely unique for a triple-A release. Its gameplay is different from many other stealth games, whilst the terror it instills in the player's mind is much greater and more complex than just cheap jump scares of most horrors. You can learn more about why it's worth checking out here and here (the second video is devoid of any serious spoilers and doesn't really reveal much more than what any of the gameplay trailers have). Anyway, the point of this thread is to either tell the forum about your game of the year or, if like me you haven't played enough, just list the best titles from this last year that you did get a chance to finish or at least try. Some other fantastic games of 2014 that I didn't play but heard seen enough of to recommend are Wolfenstein: The New Order and Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes. The big titles that I wish I could have tried but couldn't were Dragon Age: Inquisition and Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor. This Last year was also quite positive for indie games, with the aforementioned Lifeless Planet or This War of Mine, another game that I really wanted to play. It's best to remember... well, the best of 2014, as there were plenty of controversies too; there was an army of angry sexist neckbeards and a clueless array of liberals who did't really help the issue much either (though I think it's obvious which side of the Gamergate malarkey was less obnoxious and more in the right).
I want to say Assassin's Creed Unity, but I haven't played it yet; I just bought it on sale. I'll find out eventually if it is the game of the year for me
I don't believe I played one 2014 game in 2014. I usually always wait until the price, of newly released game, drops down to $20, or less, before I consider buying it -and that usually takes up to a year or more. Metro LL was the only game, that I bought during release, in a very long time. Though, since this thread also allows the mentions of games we would have liked to played from the year 2014, then I guess I'll shut up and start listing them: Alien: Isolation Wolfenstein: The New Order Wasteland 2 Not that much. Hmmmm. As for Assassins Creed: Unity: I watched a friend play it on his Xbox One, and it didn't seem appealing because of all of the consolitis -that is, of course, because he was playing it on a console . I hope that doesn't transfer over to the PC version. He also had the contrast on his television all the way up because the image looked very washed out. The movie sequences also went pretty slow and didn't keep well with the sound, which bothered me a lot (I wasn't convinced that it was a next-gen console). The freeroam looked interesting, though, from what I saw. You can climb almost anything with Spider-man strength and mobility. I just hope that all of the console stuff, a lot of which interfered with gameplay, can be removed/added, to your liking, through the options menu
I have never understood the game of the year awards. How do they even do them? Take the "Last of Us" for instance: awesome character development, good writing, reasonably good gameplay and terrible AI issues sometimes. It fails in a few areas, why the hell is it a game of the year? Isn't it supposed to be good at everything to qualify? Or is GOTY just a meaningless title?
Well, when you put it that way, you have a point - the GOTY awards are quite meaningless. I always understood them a bit differently though, as in: game of the year = best game of the year or just favourite game of the year. Then media outlets have all these other categories to highlight titles that didn't win the biggest award, but did a specific other thing well. In the end, it's always nice to look back at the positives of a year, however the way that the mainstream gaming sites hand out the awards is quite meaningless indeed. They exist to provide people with information regarding games and to guide people as to which ones they should play (according to each critic's views of course), but it's impossible for everyone who makes these decisions to play all games that come out in a given year, therefore they are failing to achieve their official goals. So the giants like GameSpot and IGN end up handing out their main awards to the most popular games out there, whilst the majority of the smaller (usually indie) titles just remain in the shadows. From that point of view, it is quite meaningless indeed as obviously most of these sites exist to make money and what we end up with is simply the most popular games (coverage of which will get them more revenue in the long run) as games of the year, rather than the objectively best games out there. Then again, quality is mostly a matter of opinion. I guess it's all about publicity in the end, when almost everything is subjective rather than objective. One thing's for sure: just like pretty much everything else in the world, if things like this were done out of the creative ideas and needs of humanity instead of being done just to generate profit, then we'd be living in a much more interesting world.
It's the same with Fallout 3 and New Vegas. For those, I take the GOTY award, not for ranking, but for the DLCs or exclusive content that is released with the game. Other times, I think the GOTY award is given to publicize the game so more units can be sold -because, you know: everyone wants to play something that is GOTY. In that case, I think it's a bit strange how a game can be ranked GOTY, on release, without having been played by the general public. The same goes with movies and books; how they are rated "movie of the year" in January, or marked "New York Times Bestseller" on the front cover of the book on it's first day of release.
Well, when you put it this way... Then Lifeless planet and Dungeon of the Endless are the GOTY for me.
Any kind of award, especially one revolving around a repeating time frame, generally implies that the winner is the most favorable of the bunch, rather than having met some kind of objective, critical standard. Thus, they're almost entirely arbitrary. i.e. The Last of Us won some due to its strong points being high enough for it to deserve recognition in spite of its issues. I was going to say that I would have a hard time picking my favorite among all of the games I've been playing, but I looked through a list of every major game release this year and I couldn't find a single new release (read: no repacks or "Definitive Editions") this year that I had played and really been blown away by. I was disappointed by most of my launch purchases, and I wasn't interested enough to pick up most of the games that caused much commotion. And thus, Child of Light immediately comes to mind. This is a gorgeous and heartfelt title, with all of the charm of a great indie title somehow flying under Ubisoft's banner. There's a reason that this is one of the first things you see when you Google the thing: What bad reviews the community actually gave mostly revolve around having to use Uplay to play it. Child of Light wins for me without a doubt. Play the Demo, even torrent the damn thing if you have to. 10/10. [youtube]NDPftQZfh58[/youtube]
