Was a bit of a last minute thing for me this year, so wasn't able to put in as much effort as last year, sorry about that.
First some random awards I feel like giving out.
Peter Molyneux Award for Least Living up to Expectations
Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth – While Beyond Earth is by no means a bad game, it was easily my most disappointing game of the year. I could go in depth to all the mechanical reasons for this, and there are plenty of those, but I have to say that my main disappointment was in its presentation. Don’t get me wrong, its music is fine and the graphics are decent. However, it’s all just so bland. The factions are barely distinguishable so that you don’t come to identify with any of them, they have no real character. The affinity system doesn’t have nearly the impact that it should and still feels like you’re not making an actual choice. The world feels really bland when it has no right to be, sadly an all too common failing of sci-fi strategy games.
The Second Annual Ubisoft award for bar-fillingest Game of the Year
* Screenshot taken from
post by GAF-user
GroinShooter (what's in a name) in the PC screenshots thread
Assassin’s Creed Unity – While last year I really couldn’t justify giving this to anything other than Cookie Clicker, this year Ubisoft has convincingly won it with Assassin’s Creed Unity. ACU is overall a good game (see below), but man does it have some bars to fill. When you first arrive in Paris and open the ingame map you will be blown away by the amount of icons indicating all the potential bars you can start filling. And then you realize that Ubisoft also has a companion app for the game where there are more bars to fill and there is AC Initiates, which tracks your stats and gives you yet more bars to fill.
Best User Made Modification
Courseplay for Farming Simulator 15 – The mod that proves that the best way to play Farming Simulator 15 is to barely play it yourself, Courseplay is a way to automate tasks on your farm, enabling the player to manage a
much larger farm without having to use the multiplayer feature. On top of that, it distinguishes itself by being very easy to use and having excellent documentation available on its website. Developer Giants Software should strongly consider including Courseplay in Farming Simulator 17.
Anyway, onto the actual GOTY list. When I include ratings, I use a scale where 6 is an above average game that I would recommend, a 7 is a good game and so on. A 10/10 is not a perfect game, but it is an instant classic, and represents my belief that the game is amongst the best in its genre.
1. Europa Universalis IV: Art of War ; While I could fill about half this list with the great expansions EU4 has received in 2014, I’ll just go with the best of them. Art of War and the accompanying 1.9 patch have added a great deal to what was already a very well developed and detailed game. It now gives due attention to regions that had previously received relatively little in the series, regions like West Africa, Mesoamerica and the Andes are now actually interesting to play and interact with. Furthermore, the complete overhaul of the map in other regions as well has ensured that playing outside of Europe doesn’t come with reduced tactical flexibility due to larger province sizes.
On top of that, various mechanics were also overhauled or added that either add historical flavour (like the Thirty Years War mechanic), add convenience (such as template building) or give the player some more options in expanding his country (client states, marches, using subject casus bellis). Overall, Art of War is a significant improvement to a game that had already been improved a great deal earlier in the year. It helps keep Europa Universalis IV the best strategy game available today, as well as the best multiplayer game of any type, thanks in part to the
awesome GAF MP community.
(9/10)
2. 80 Days ; 80 Days was a game that for me came almost out of nowhere, I essentially bought it as an impulse purchase in the App store over the holidays when I didn’t have access to my PC, but I ended up absolutely loving it. The game’s world is so wonderfully crafted through its writing and presentation, it’s exactly the type of world that Verne created himself. A world that really conveys the optimism and sense that the world is being transformed by technology for which the French Belle Époque is known. Add in a great deal of replayability due to the amount of content present and the different choices offered to the player, and you have a truly great gaming experience.
(9/10)
3. Tropico 5 ; The more I think back on the games I enjoyed most this year, the more my mind goes to Tropico 5. While it certainly wasn’t a revolutionary change compared to Tropico 4 - though far more of one than Tropico 4 was compared to 3 - it offered just enough of a twist on the solid foundation the previous games in the series had built to make me get back into the series for another forty or so hours. The addition of different eras, going from colonial to modern times, really adds to the sense of progression for your island in the game. The campaign reinforces this by having you play the same islands between missions, rather than offering you frequent fresh starts as was the case in the campaigns in previous entries in the series. Overall, Tropico 5 is still an evolutionary step for the series, and I wouldn’t mind seeing developer Haemimont take some bigger risks with a possible Tropico 6, but it’s a very good game nonetheless. My only minor complaint would be that the addition of more frequent combat should’ve come with more control over how that combat progresses.
(8/10)
*Image by GAF-user
AnyoneInCherno, taken from the
OP of the excellent PC screenshots thread.
4. Assassin’s Creed Unity ; Before the hate starts, I will qualify my choice. Assassin’s Creed Unity was rightly heavily criticized for its state at the time of release, with one of my friends actually still being unable to play the game. That said however, I experienced no significant bugs and actually fewer glitches than I did in a patched Black Flag. Performance was thankfully solid on my PC as well, so I was thankfully one of the few able to enjoy the game without any problems. I have decided to also rate it based on my experience rather than that of other people, as I do that with every game and have done so for years.
Simply put, I consider Unity to be the best entry in the Assassin’s Creed franchise since Assassin’s Creed 2. I love the fact that Ubisoft finally took the game back to the part I always liked best, roaming around in beautifully recreated historical cities. Unity’s Paris is recreated in astonishing detail and more importantly, thanks to the inclusion of many interiors and the addition of far more NPC’s feels incredibly alive. It is one of the few video game cities that actually feels like a living city.
There are however also notable improvements in the gameplay of the game, like the virtual elimination of instant fail tailing missions that so plagued previous entries. The addition of assassination missions that offer the player a great deal of freedom is something I hope they stick with from now on, I missed these open assassination missions in every Assassin’s Creed game since the very first. Other welcome additions include co-op and a functionality to automatically climb down from a building, something that I’m going to miss a lot when I play AC Rogue this year.
Not all is great however, I do dislike the unbalanced nature of smoke bombs and the fact that it has gotten rather annoying to fight opponents with firearms, even though overall the combat is an improvement. I could also have done with less equipment being locked behind club competitions, and wouldn’t have minded some present day gameplay.
(8/10)
5. Goat Simulator ; Goat Simulator is a game that is stupid in all the right ways. There’s really not very much to be said about the game other than to say it’s absolutely hilarious and has a surprising amount of content at this point.
(7.5/10)
6. Never Alone ; Never Alone is not a game that shines because of its gameplay. Don’t get me wrong, it’s perfectly passable, but it’s not going to be winning any awards. Where the game does shine is when it comes to its presentation and its inclusion of videos exploring Inupiat culture. I find it hard to put my finger exactly on why I enjoyed the game as much as I did, but upon finishing it I was very happy to have played it and hoped to see more developers exploring unfamiliar cultures rather than always going back to the same well.
(7.5/10)
7. Monument Valley ; Too short and light on difficulty, this puzzle game and its DLC were nonetheless a wonderful experience. Its puzzles are very creative and the visuals and music help to create an almost serene atmosphere that suits the game’s story and gameplay.
(7.5/10)
8. Farming Simulator 15 ; While FS15 brings very few new things of significance to the table compared to FS2013, it’s still a hopelessly addictive game that kept me entertained for a long time. Few games are as relaxing to play as Farming Simulator is, and it’s fun to progress in terms of equipment and grow to be able to work ever larger fields and do ever more things at the same time, especially with the aid of the Courseplay mod. It’s however not as good as I think it should have been. The addition of logging isn’t a particularly interesting one, but the overhaul of the interface and visual improvements are nice. I do want the next entry in the series to be truly different though, I want to finally
build my farm rather than buy more fields for a farm that is already built up from the start. Let me make my farm my own, let me place all the buildings, let me determine where the fields are and so on. It’s not like it would be beyond the capabilities of the engine, and it would improve the game and its longevity immensely.
(7/10)
9. The Sims 4 ; I was extremely skeptical of EA/Maxis’ decision to pull back on the scale of the Sims, where the Sims 3 moved to a large open world, the Sims 4 moved back to small closed neighbourhoods. I figured this was another SimCity fiasco in the making, however, I was happily proved wrong. The Sims 4 might be light on ambition, which certainly isn’t a good thing, but it is a far more polished experience than its predecessor which has terrible performance on even the fastest of PC’s when you have a few add-ons installed. I like the additions to the interactions between the Sims, with different moods affecting the way Sims interact, but the real selling point of the Sims 4 to me is its improved editors. I’ve always enjoyed building more than anything in these games, and this is far and away the biggest improvement the editors have had since the first game. It’s a lot easier and quicker to build the house you want to build, and I’ve had a lot of fun doing just that in this game.
(7/10)
10. The Room ; Ironically, in the year I played both the Room and its sequel, the original is the only one I’m allowed to vote for because I played that on PC whereas I played its sequel on iOS. While I’m not much of a fan of its horror-esque presentation, the puzzles in this game are very well designed, its difficulty is just about right for my tastes and there’s a surprising amount of variety here.
(7/10)
Honorable Mentions
x. Assassin’s Creed Liberation HD ; A solid port of a pretty good Assassin’s Creed game. For my full thoughts see my review of it on Steam
here.
(6.5/10)
x. Watch_Dogs ; Watch Dogs is not a bad game by any means, but on the whole it feels a bit plain and just lacks character. I do however view it as a series that has potential. The concept behind the franchise is something that offers a lot of opportunities to designers, and they definitely have a chance to build on this game to make this into a great series. Some parts of the game do show a glimmer of what might be, like taking out convoys and eliminating gang hideouts. I can only hope that a possible sequel is as much of an improvement over this as Assassin’s Creed 2 was over the original.
(6.5/10)
A number of games I didn't get around to playing, but overall I can only conclude that this was a relatively poor year for video game releases. Hopefully 2015 will be better.