Rerolled "Best Game of 2014"

Most fun Shadows of Mordor.
Likely GoTY is Dragon Age, but lots of shit is broken and not 100% sure I am having fun.
Styx master of shadows is my biggest disappointment, not because the game is bad, infact it is brillant, but the controls ruin everything and it makes me sad.

Divinity and wasteland are top picks as well.

Frenzied Wombat_sl said:

Euro games, including Divinity, always feel slightly "off" to me. No matter how good they are overall, there's always something I can't quite place that prevents them from being "great". The best way I can describe it is an overall lack of user friendliness or an illogical UI.

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I'm with you there. I didn't really care for Divinity, played it for a few hours but I just couldn't get into it, it didn't hook me and make me want to keep playing for whatever reason. I also had to force myself to finish off Witcher 2 as well, I kinda lost interest in it about halfway through. The combat always felt clunky to me and the inventory/magic system was an annoyance.

I don't know if its the fact that a lot of European studios maybe have smaller budgets/staffs so the games aren't as polished as a game from someone like Bioware, or what, but I almost always feel that disconnect with European-developed RPGs

joeboo_sl said:

I'm with you there. I didn't really care for Divinity, played it for a few hours but I just couldn't get into it, it didn't hook me and make me want to keep playing for whatever reason. I also had to force myself to finish off Witcher 2 as well, I kinda lost interest in it about halfway through. The combat always felt clunky to me and the inventory/magic system was an annoyance.

I don't know if its the fact that a lot of European studios maybe have smaller budgets/staffs so the games aren't as polished as a game from someone like Bioware, or what, but I almost always feel that disconnect with European-developed RPGs

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I think it comes down to EU having a lot less focus testing and more developer freedom. Most of the EU market is PC, where there are almost no boxes the games must tick to be sold, compared to consoles, so you have ambitious projects that can be a little rough around the edges, but if the developer can sell you on his vision, you will have a great time. It also means the games are different, because nobody makes a spunkgargleweewee on their own, they need to be told to make it by a suit. I'd add the game systems are usually much more open, which rewards players who spend time to master them.

Divinity is actually great example of this, it promises you this great world, but then you look at the whole first map and it's not really that big The combat system makes every encounter unique and you have to adapt constantly, but if you pick shitty combo/skills/spells, don't do quests in the correct order, you will run head first into a wall

My list is slightly odd in that I haven't played a few of these due to time restraints. However, because of them being some of my favorite franchises and reviews here and elsewhere that they hold up to franchise quality, I feel I can place them correctly.

1) Hearthstone. Easy pick for my number 1.
2) Shadows of Mordor (Only played ~30 minutes but a huge Arkham fan so I'm sure this will go here.)
3) South Park: Stick of Truth
4) Mario Kart 8 (Don't have a WiiU yet but I've owned almost every mario kart and loved all of them. Mario karts are the only racing games I play.)
5) Smash Bros WiiU (See above about Mario Kart. Only fighting games I play.)

HM: Child of Light. Tilted toward younger audience but well executed and delivers. Potentially a GOTY contender for some if you have a younger, gamer daughter/niece to co-op with (I don't).

HM: Divinity: Original Sin. Playing through it now and only ~5 hours in but I can echo that it's a great game with just a tiny bit of something missing to put it over the top. Then again, I'm not generally a fan of text heavy RPGs so it even getting an HM from me is probably high praise. For reference, I can't stand the Dragon Age or Mass Effect series'. I love RPGs, good stories, and reading, I just don't need 8-10 dialogue options for EVERY. FUCKING. PERSON. EVERYWHERE. They all say variations of the same asinine shit but there's always just enough side quests peppered in randomly that the completionist in me has to talk to all of them to make sure. I'd prefer it if the run-of-the-mill citizens weren't even interactable and that the dialogue heavy stuff was left for the actual story progression. The Elder Scrolls and Fallout series are more my style, I guess.

Honorable mention, dishonorable mention, and biggest disappointment: Destiny. Similar to others, started for me as a solid 9. Just fantastic. That dropped quickly over the course of leveling to 20 due to repetition of "holdout" wave clearing. Then at 20 there's this moment when the illusion shatters and you're just staring at this piece of shit triple A title and thinking, "Why the fuck did I think this game was so good, again?" Then you go online and read about the massive clusterfuck that was the game's production and realize what the game could, and should, have been. Then you read about the super-repetitive, cash-cow DLC that they call "expansions," as if you're getting a large content update, just so they can jack up the price. All you actually get is a few "new" 10 minute missions, almost identical to the old missions, to grind ad nauseum for a few months until the next "expansion." One of the biggest disappointments in gaming history I'd say. Most hype trains fall flat immediately when you start playing and realize the game blows but with Destiny the game IS really good for a short while. Out of the box for the first few hours it felt like the hype was well deserved and that just burns the players even harder later. That's why I think the game has so much venom thrown at it now.

Haven't played but need to: Telltale Game of Thrones, Telltale Walking Dead Season 2, Borderlands Pre-sequel, Vanishing of Ethan Carter, others I can't think of...

I need to go back and replay D:OS and Wasteland 2. I lost interest in Divinity halfway through the frozen area and never went back, and WL2 was amazing but then my game bugged out in the second half of the game and I couldn't get any quests to work.

Also sounds like I need to pick up Shadows of Mordor, it just looked like AC to me and I never even finished the first AC game. Saving Inquisition for when I have a block of time.

Elite: Dangerous didn't win, so it was clearly a fix.

Gilgamel_sl said:

I need to go back and replay D:OS and Wasteland 2. I lost interest in Divinity halfway through the frozen area and never went back, and WL2 was amazing but then my game bugged out in the second half of the game and I couldn't get any quests to work.

Also sounds like I need to pick up Shadows of Mordor, it just looked like AC to me and I never even finished the first AC game. Saving Inquisition for when I have a block of time.

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yeah, honestly when it came out, didnt hear all that much buzz, so I ignored it. but it seems to be getting alot NOW for GOTY nods.. I added it to my wishlist.

I'm waiting for the GOTY edition of Mordor, myself.

I have just played the demo on Steam and I am still wondering if I'll grab the PC version now or the PS4 version later, but The Talos Principle sounds like a good GOTY candidate that just happen to have been released too late to enter most discussions.

Dark souls 2
Hearthstone
Divinity OS
Shovel knight
Shadowrun: Dragonfall

That's my top 5 in no real order. I haven't played wasteland 2 yet.

I'd put South Park above all those.

Originally I said Divinity origial sin was my goty, but I'm switching that over to Dragon Age Inquisition. I'm currently ~42 hours in, still having a blast, and even starting a new game with a different character just to randomly play a "bad" guy. (with dialog anyway)

A game that makes me want to do 2 run-throughs at the same time, just because I want to experience both sides of the story is just unbelievable. Dragon Age Inquisition definitely deserves GOTY. tbh, i still have shadows of modor, but have yet to play it because I was going to play that after DA:I, but who knows if I'll ever get to it anytime soon, because I could see myself playing at least another ~40 hours of DA:I.

I'll be honest, the story started off slow with DA:I, I really didn't care for the first zone you go to, but afterwards it really starts to get really epic. Especially after you finally get to and the cutscenes / music / dialog that happens during that scene just gets you so incredibly pumped up.

Shit, part of me wants my brother, when he crashes at my place (1 or 2 nights a week) to just start playing a game of DA:I on my ps4, just so I can watch him play and see what dialog choices he makes. ffs, this game is awesome.

For pure enjoyment, South Park was by far the best game. I put a shitload of hours into others, but for 15ish hours I can't say I was entertained more than South Park entertained me.

Dark Souls 2 comes in a close but distant enough to be noticeable second.

Happy to see that Shadow of Mordor is enjoyed by so many. It was a title that came totally out of the blue for me. Some co-workers recommended it to me because I was a bit reluctant to get it at first, but I'm happy they convinced me. One of the best games I've played this year.

Top 3:

1. Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor
2. Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls
3. Divinity: Original Sin

Biggest disappointment: Watch Dogs

I feel exactly the opposite. SoM came across as little more than a mash-up of Batman and Assassin's Creed and I got bored with it within the first 4-5 hours and never went back. I really don't get what people see in it.

Vorph_sl said:

I feel exactly the opposite. SoM came across as little more than a mash-up of Batman and Assassin's Creed and I got bored with it within the first 4-5 hours and never went back. I really don't get what people see in it.

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Agree 100%

Rezz_sl said:

For pure enjoyment, South Park was by far the best game. I put a shitload of hours into others, but for 15ish hours I can't say I was entertained more than South Park entertained me.

Dark Souls 2 comes in a close but distant enough to be noticeable second.

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Same sentiments, except Dark Souls 2 wasn'tthatdistant. Loved the Stick of Truth, though. They really did a great job with that title.

I played SoM right after it came out, which was also right after I finished Black Flag and Batman: Origins, and it's still probably in my top 3 GOTY. I should have been burned out on that gameplay but it is still stupid fun. Running into an orc fort and just slaughtering everything is smooth as it can be. I even had fun playing that Lord of the Hunt DLC in one sitting and I didn't like the hunt missions in the base game much at all.

This year was really crazy for games though. There's no way I could pick out just 3 I loved, and there's at least 3-4+ big ones that I surely would if I had time to play them.

• Wolfenstein: New World Order
• Shadow of Mordor
• Child of Light

Honorable mentions is probably 15 games or more. South Park: Stick of Truth, Transistor, Age of Wonders III, FRACT OSC, Diablo III: Reaper of Souls, and Hearthstone just off the top of my head.

Wolfenstein takes it for me because it was the only game this year where I finished, started another playthrough, and finished it again. Just for some minor dialogue differences, hardest difficulty, and collectibles. The game was just that good. Shadow of Mordor is another that I played to 100% which I didn't bother to do in Black Flag or Origins or a ton of other games this year. Child of Light narrowly beats out Stick of Truth to me, they were both excellent but I think Child of Light is an awesome example of original storytelling and games as art.