1. Dragon Age: Inquisition ; I wasn't a big fan of the series coming into DA:I and this game changed that pretty quickly and managed to completely take over my life for a couple weeks. It had it's fair share of filler content with no shortage of fetch sidequests that don't add much to the story, but almost everything else about the entire package was outstanding. The story itself had a lot of truly memorable moments and was a great journey overall, but it suffered a bit from some pacing issues and ended on a pretty disappointing note, I really enjoyed exploring all of the amazingly huge and detailed environments with a great group of characters who were brought to life with excellent writing and even better voice acting. In a year where so many of the big releases under-delivered on value or were broken messes, BioWare's massive RPG is easily my favorite game of the year.
2. South Park: The Stick of Truth ; I always believed this would be great despite what was happening with the publisher/developer drama and it exceeded even my lofty expectations. Matt and Trey delivered a story and voice acting performances that stand among their best work on TV and movies. The simplicity of the turn-based battle system fit the franchise perfectly and despite it's lack of complexity it provided a lot of challenge. From beginning to end it was awesome experience that had me either laughing until it hurt or at minimum grinning ear to ear.
3. Child of Light ; I bought this game not knowing much about it except the visuals looked astonishing and the setting seemed unique. The story was intriguing throughout and had some pretty memorable moments, but the highlight of the game for me was the brilliant strategic turn-based battle system designed by Ubisoft Montreal. Every battle was an intense chess match that required strategic thinking while managing the turn time, quick swapping party members, buffs and debuffs, all while controlling your fairy sidekick in real-time to slow down enemies or heal party members. Enemy encounters were cleverly designed with a wide variety of creatures that all required different approaches, with battles that were challenging and drawn out. Worth noting that the game has an excellent soundtrack that is one of my favorites in recent memory. Playing Child of Light brought out the nostalgia of playing classic JRPGs from generations past and that's probably a higher praise then anything else I can say about it
4. Transistor ; Supergiant games followup to Bastion delivered a fantastic adventure that improved in almost all areas. The mysterious narrative didn't quite captivate me as much as Bastion's, but like Child of Light this game that didn't matter much as Transistor shined because of it's innovative battle system. The freedom to mix, match and combine your acquired abilities allowed a ton of creativity in each fight. I thought it was pretty clever how you were penalized for "dying" in battle by losing one of your abilities for a decent amount of time forcing you to fight at a disadvantage while also trying different abilities that you might not have bothered with otherwise. Transistor sports some sharp visuals and also a killer soundtrack that sets a distinctive atmosphere for this terrific game.
5. Valiant Hearts: The Great War ; Pretty amazing that in a year which Ubisoft struggled mightily with it's high profile AAA games it managed to publish two amazing indie titles with this and Child of Light. Like Child of Light, Valiant Hearts has an incredible art style that caught my eye when it was first announced. The gameplay was mostly simplistic fetch quests and problem solving, but it never felt tedious or boring. Unlike the past couple entries on my list, this game's greatness was mostly due to it's excellent story which tells the tragic story of a few people whose lives were turned upside down by the events of World War I. Ubisoft Montpellier also did an admirable job of providing optional info about the historical context for each event in the game which was icing on the cake of an unforgettable tale.
6. Rogue Legacy ; What's not to like about Castlevania spliced with Spelunky that's infused with witty humor. The "heir" respawn system made things interesting each time I played forcing me to deal with the hilarious gameplay effects of genetic traits such as dementia that made your character see enemies that aren't really there, alzheimers causing you to forget the map, and glaucoma causing every room to appear dark. The randomly generated dungeons keot things fresh each time and the well-designed progression system rewarded my efforts with unlockable skills that gave me the incentive to keep playing that some other roguelikes struggle with. Cellar Door Games created a wonderful game that was really hard to put down due to it's tight gameplay and incredible replay value.
7. FIFA 15 ; I've always been really into sports games and FIFA was the best of the bunch this year. The visuals and presentation received nice upgrades and gameplay was tweaked mostly for the better with the previous installment's big problem of overly effective aerial through-balls finally being fixed. More strategic options were added like quick set plays for corners and customizable player behaviors which improve the overall experience. The one feature most hyped by EA Canada, improvement to goalies caused more harm than good. PS4 Share Play finally allows me to play couch co-op with my friends against the CPU which is an option I've wished for forever. I still play this online almost daily with a bunch of gaffers in Pro Clubs mode, shout out to the Gentle Lovers PS4 club!
8. Madden 15 ; Tiburon has clearly turned a corner with Madden which is headed in the right direction after last year's surprisingly strong effort. Madden's developers have been crushed for years for not improving the game enough in each new version, and they responded in Madden 15 by making a staggering amount of significant changes to the game. Firstly, the graphics and presentation are greatly improved, player models look very realistic now and a lot of work was done with animations to make the game look and play more fluidly. Line play in the trenches saw great improvement with more control options available to shed or steer blocks and A.I. is better than ever. Tackling animations still need work, but the engine now at least generates realistic outcomes, most notably with regards to dropped passes when receivers are hit hard. Lastly, the developers reintroduced the Skills Trainer mode which now impressively includes sections that teach players nuances of the sport of football like never before and how to apply them to the game of Madden. It's great to finally be able to enjoy videogame football again after years of massively disappointing releases.
9. Destiny ; I put 100's of hours into this game and while I did get a good amount of enjoyment, in the end I only feel disappointed with Destiny. As most people on GAF seem to agree, the core shooting and mobility mechanics are terrific and the game is no slouch with the visuals. Most of the environments are stunning the first few times you see them, and the armor and weapon design are incredible. I didn't enjoy the Raid (Vault of Glass) as much as some others, but it was a unique multiplayer experience that I'm glad I got to play with my friends. All of the above was enough to warrant an inclusion in my list, but the rest of the game is a disaster. The pillars of Bungie's Halo games have been engaging stories and outstanding competitive multiplayer gameplay, which Destiny fails miserably in both areas. I was really looking forward to the story after the introduction of interesting lore, but all of that was seemingly left on the cutting room floor so Activision could further monetize the barebones content with a multiyear DLC plan. What is left is just plain embarrassing, with uninspired encounter designs, heavily recycled map designs, cringeworthy dialogue throughout and the most mailed-in voice acting performance I can ever remember from Peter Dinklage. After seeing all of the content in Destiny once, which takes about 4 hours, there really is no reason to continue playing as the "endgame" is a joke of replaying the same missions, strikes, raids over and over and over until the stingy RNG rewards you with high level weapons or gear which post release updates will eventually render useless anyway. This game only made my list because I wasted so many hours playing it that I could have instead spent playing games that were worthwhile which limited my selections in what honestly was a pretty weak year of quality releases on my platforms of choice.
10. Driveclub ; I picked this up at launch and despite the network issues I've been fully satisfied with it. The visuals are breathtaking, with fully modeled environments captured in the most realistic lighting and weather systems I've seen on consoles to date. The level of detail in car models is spectacular with the smallest details being rendered like how the head and taillights scratch to the weld points being visible on some of the lightweight car frames. The track designs are inspired from both a visual and drive-ability perspective. The minor social elements like the in-race section challenges and club challenges are implemented well and add some depth to the game, but the online structure in general is pretty flawed. Limiting the club size to 6 was seemingly a big misstep and your choices when playing online are severely limited to only several events at a time. Driveclub is a really good racing game that I anticipate I'll be coming back to periodically for years as it walks the line between sim and arcade to my liking and provides a good challenge without being overly frustrating.
Honorable Mentions
x. The Wolf Among Us: Episodes 2-5 ; Another really good game from Telltale that had all signature pros and cons of their latest adventure games. This was my first taste of the Fables universe and it was a unique and enjoyable experience, but the story just didnt quite have the emotional impact on me that The Walking Dead S1 did to sneak this into my top 10.
x. inFamous: Second Son ; I'm generally not a big fan of open world sandbox games like this, but nothing else was out early in the year so I gave it an honest chance. From a technical perspective, Sucker Punch's game was quite the powerhouse sporting impressive visuals, and a highly detailed seamless open world Seattle that was fully realized without much pop in or loading. The particle effects and animations that accompanied the various super powers looked great. Delsin and his brother were likable guys and the story started off strongly, but I felt that it fell apart badly by the end. The reason this didn't make my top 10 was the safe and boring sidequest structure that this and most open world sandbox games seem content to follow these days. Filling a lengthy game with the same 4 or 5 quest types that need to be repeated over and over is piss poor game design that developers should strive to do better than with the tools at their disposal these days.
x. Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes ; If this is the level of quality we can expect from the Phantom Pain then we are all in for a treat. Visuals look top notch, controls felt tight and this small slice of greatness was packed to the gills with hidden content and easter eggs by Kojima and his team. This was supposed to help make the wait for TPP easier, but I think it ended up doing the opposite,..
x. MLB 14: The Show ; The Show is the same consistently great sports game as the past several years. The jump to PS4 resulted in player models and stadiums looking significantly better. They finally got grass to look good! I really like the new dynamic fielding camera and other than some wonkiness with getting pulled away from fielding some flyballs and how baseball caps don't quite appear to look right on player's heads I don't have any other real complaints. Nice job San Diego Studios!
