The Top 5 Games I Played that Came Out This Year

Overall, I would call 2014 a disappointing year. Most of what I was looking forward to ended up being pushed back to 2015 and what did release mostly left me feeling underwhelmed or ambivalent. However, there were still quite a few surprises to be had and while my back catalog from 2014 isn’t quite complete, here is a rough look at my Top 5 in no particular order.

1. NaissanceE

Released early this year to little fanfare, as are most things relegated to Greenlight that aren’t building/survival sims, NaissanceE was both a visual and sensory treat, giving me bright, distinct visuals and absolutely breathtaking atmosphere. I spent all of my time with the game either in awe of it or terrified of it, it’s great big cityscapes coupled with an excellent use of licensed music led it to be at the forefront of my memory, even through the rush of holiday releases late this year. A beautiful game that makes me look forward to whatever the devs bring next.

2. Divinity: Original Sin

I haven’t reviewed Divinity yet for the sole reason that I haven’t finished it yet. That being said, I don’t imagine there is much I could do that could cause it to drop in my mind. With hassle-free and tactical — if not exploitable — combat that gels seamlessly with the exploratory elements and a full co-op campaign that feels designed for such, Divinity was just a treat to play at almost every turn. Minor quibbles about delay inputs in the UI aside and sometimes juvenile writing aren’t enough to turn me away from my most pleasant surprise of 2014. Here is a Kickstarter I wish I had backed.

3. Drakengard 3

No other game on this list will be as technically incompetent or frustrating to play. Framerate and screen-tearing issues abound in the title which only hampered by the fact that the game looks like an early-era PS3 game with the budget to match. Gameplay is straight forward and repetitive to a fault and is only playable in the sense that it plays better than previous titles in the series. It’s a crude, ugly game all the way through.

And I think I’m in love with it.

While NaissanceE continues to be in the forefront of my mind, Drakengard 3 never quite left all this year either. While it fails to live up to the batshit zaniness of it’s predecessors, a great performance by Tara Platt as Zero and one of the most dysfunctional RPG casts in recent memory lend itself well to just being unforgettable. Add in the best damn score of the year and some truly wonderful directorial touches by Taro Yoko and you have a game that’s all the right levels of crazy to sometimes pull it off just right to make something so ugly become beautiful.

4. Bayonetta 2

No, I don’t think I can add anymore that needs to be said Bayonetta 2. It isn’t the masterpiece others make it out to be, but no other game will play better or gives a better bang for your buck action wise. Add to that often humorous characters and truly dazzling set pieces and you have a game that never forgets to have fun.

5. Super Smash Bros. for Wii U

Awful title aside, I have to love Nintendo for being one of the last few bastions of playing with friends on a couch. And no game better serves that point than Super Smash Bros. I may gripe and whine while playing — I am one of the saltiest people you’ll ever meet while playing fighting games — but I still always come back.

I find it funny that we praise Smash Bros. for having loads of content when almost all of it is terrible. Smash Tour sucks, the single player content still hasn’t evolved past what it was in Melee, this time without a goofy mode like Subspace Emissary to give me wonderful cutscenes (Shut up, I liked Subspace Emissary for the cutscenes and felt the mode would have been fine if it cut back on the repetitive gameplay elements). But the core gameplay is just so simple to grasp and fun to play around with that we kind of forgive how throwaway the rest of the game is. And I will admit that while 8-player smash is awful, I appreciate the mode because it allows for 5 people to play with little to no repercussions. No more having to rotate loser.

Honorable mentions this year include: Endless Legend (an easy choice for number 6, one of the best 4x I’ve played in a long time), Grand Theft Auto V (belongs on a 2013 list), Mario Kart 8, InFamous: Second Son, Persona 4 Arena: Ultimax.

That’s not quite it for 2014 for me (Like I said, I got backlog I’m working on right now) but this is the list in time for year end. Tomorrow I’ll highlight the games I’m looking forward to most next year.

Happy New Years, I guess.

 

Bayonetta

I hesitate to put Bayonetta into an official review capacity for the same reason I would never really “review” a fighting game: I don’t know if I am talented enough to review it. Obviously and realistically, I can review it, there is certainly no ordnance placed against me that prevents me to do so, but it would almost feel disingenuous after a certain point. There are elements I feel fully capable of talking about, like technical issues, writing, pacing, controls, themes, style, etc. But, do to my own shortcomings in ability to play video games, I can’t bring myself to fully appreciate the game on functional level since I am incapable of of functioning with the game on that level.

What I’m left with is merely to talk about my experience with Bayonetta and Bayonetta 2, two games I finally had the distinct pleasure of playing courtesy of the Wii U. I had avoided the PS3 version like the plague and actually do own the 360 version, but have no 360 to play it on. Nintendo was wise — or stupid — enough to include the game with the recent release of Bayonetta 2. Let me just start off by saying I have absolutely no idea what I am supposed why NIntendo decided to fund this game, outside of the fact that they didn’t expect the Wii U to bomb as hard as it did.

Are the Bayonetta games hard? They are definitely more difficult than the average hand-holding affair the AAA industry usually brings us in this day and age, but both games, Bayonetta 2 especially, feel as though both came be completed on the hardest initially available difficulty through sheer brute force. I myself can admit to essentially failing certain boss fights that I only ended up completing due to generous checkpoints. But overall I would say a button-masher a bit like myself would be able to make it through the game in a few days no trouble whatsoever.

The real difficulty arises from how the game judges you. Throughout my first playthrough of Bayonetta, I managed to get higher than the lowest rank at the end of a chapter twice. While individual scenarios I could excel in, my overall ranking for the game ended up being the lowest due to my sheer number of deaths at a few particular points. According to the game, I wasn’t good enough in most regards. I imagine getting out of this would require a lot more effort than I am willing to put in with so many more games to play. Bayonetta 2 felt far more lenient in this regard, as my lowest scoring medal was silver rather than bronze, though this felt like a condescending complement in the eyes of the game, as the “Stone” award had merely been renamed “Silver.”

In the case of the game’s mechanics, all feedback both games have given me is that I am woefully undeserving of passing judgment upon them. That’s not true, but who am I to judge a game when I can barely grasp its many intricacies to adequately proceed through it with acceptable prowess?

All I can say in response is this: Bayonetta and Bayonetta 2 are fun games, inexorably so. Bayonetta places itself in between Devil May Cry and God of War — though far closer to Devil May Cry — between high-level action combat and visually stunning set pieces. One does not need a Masters in frame-perfect execution to know the game plays fast and fluidly, at least when no slowdown is present, something far more prevalent in Bayonetta 2 (I feel this is testament enough to Nintendo’s abilities as a developer that it is not the Wii U that is capable of 1080p/60fps with so few technical issues but the teams making the games for them). While I feel the combat is a bit too reliant on the dodge button and “Witch Time”, a slow-motion period achieved by dodging at the appropriate moment, but long, extended combos feel good to pull off.

Hell, even the cast is fun. I was somewhat dreading Bayonetta as a character in all her blatant, unfiltered brashness. Let’s just say I like sexy but not lazy. But Bayonetta herself is fantastic. She straddles (sometimes literally) the line between confidence, class, and crudeness usually in the most comedic fashion possible, dragging behind her a plethora of caricatures to talk down to in between kicking angels in the face. Every other aspect is just too stupid to take seriously. Much noise has been made of Bayonetta’s inhuman proportions but seeing her in Nintendo costumes really puts that into perspective. I had to turn them all off as soon as possible when they just looked wrong. The story is ignorable at best, a collection of meaningless scenes where Bayonetta irreverently talks back to beings a hundred times her size before beating them up. And why not? I can count the number of times Bayonetta actually felt threatened or in danger outside of gameplay on a single hand.

The only downsides to the game I can come up with are twofold. First, extended rail shooter sequences, usually leading up to a major boss, that take way to long and are not fun to play in the slightest. The second game rightly cut down on these scenes, but the second game feels like a step back from he first game in some ways. While a tighter experience overall, Bayonetta 2 just feels like a smaller game in every sense, similar to the change from Mass Effect to Mass Effect 2. It’s a shorter game and the ending lacks the over-the-top silliness of its predecessor. The only noticeable addition is Umbra Climax, which let’s you spend a full magic meter to superpower your attacks that manifest as giant hair attacks. And while this may spice up the core gameplay in ways I didn’t discover, for me it was just a time to get some free damage in.

But these are all minor complaints in what is truly a revitalizing experience in modern game space: a big-budget bout of style and insanity that does not care about what other people think about it.