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.

 

NaissanceE

For all the inspiration people attribute to Lovecraft, very few, if any, games truly capture the spirit of his work. Eternal Darkness  was a lovely homage to his work but wasn’t all that scary of a game. Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth is a game that’s great until it turns into a shooter. Alone in the Dark has obvious connections and there are plenty of other games that use Lovecraft’s works in clever and inventive ways.

But in spite of his influence his work has rarely translated into video games with any thematic or tonal accuracy. I struggle to think of games that invoke the existential dread that permeates Lovecraft’s work so fully. I understand fully, it is a difficult undertaking to attach a physical form to many of the unnameable horrors that define his work so from a visual perspective its nigh impossible. There’s also no guaranteed way to make it so that it’s an exciting game to play so most do not attempt it.

NaissanceE, however, comes close. Hell, NaissanceE may have even nailed it perfectly.

Technically another “walking sim”, NaissanceE is a minimalistic first-person exploration game that takes place in a monolithic and alien city from newbie developers Limasse Five. The setting is what immediately sets it apart. Whereas in other games of this type the setting is mostly set dressing, NaissanceE is its setting.  You wake up in cubists’ dream room (maybe a little too literally) and from then on out the only words the game offers to you are instructions on the movement and the titles at the beginning of each chapter. And like most walking sims, it’s not a complex game either. Walking, running, and jumping are all you will do all game, but it’s all that’s necessary. That’s because this is a game that is entirely about setting.

As far as settings are concerned, NaissanceE may be one of the most unique. Other games have tried the black/white/grey color spectrum to excellent effect, but none are as distinct as NaissanceE. Cubes dominate the nameless cities’ construction but not in the sense that Minecraft uses cubes. Sometimes designed with the most intricate of care, other times stacked haphazardly as though it was a Jenga tower ready to fall over, the city contains both intricately designed architecture and areas of complete chaos. When I meant Lovecraftian, I mean exactly the landscape of the city, the sheer mass of it — the game spares no expense in the epic scope of the city — mixed with the impossibility of it all — try falling off the edge of the city and you will discover it floats — creates an alien landscape I don’t think has been attempted since Kairo. But where Kairo feels like a demo that lands on a lame punchline,  NaissanceE feels like a horror game.

The game is divided up into 5 chapters, all of them distinct in their way. In fact, it’s a great look at ebb and flow of dramatic structures. The actual gameplay is broken up between puzzle segments, walking segments, and platforming segments. The puzzles are fairly straight forward and I had little trouble with them, though it should be known I played the game in a post-patch state and originally these were supposedly much more difficult. The walking segments are some of the most entertaining of the game, which is good, as they make up a considerable chunk of the game. I can’t remember the last time it felt this good to get absolutely lost in a game’s environment. Not literally lost, mind you, as the game is as linear as they come, but getting lost in the abstract architecture and beautiful panoramas is simply breathtaking.

Where I can see many people having trouble with the game will be its platforming. It’s not incredibly prevalent outside of two chapters of the game but I could see many people getting frustrated. I for one have never had the major issues with first-person platforming that many others seem to have and I enjoyed this bits of the game immensely, but I won’t kid myself quite a few will find them more irksome than intense, which is what they certainly are. Chapter 3, titled “Breath Compression”, may be the most heart-pounding piece of gaming I’ve done all year and it was certainly something I wasn’t expecting from this game. The rushed pace of the entire chapter builds to a wonderful crescendo as the game overloads the audiovisual senses in the best way possible. By the way, epileptics should not play this game.

But while being a visual masterpiece, NaissanceE is also a marvel of sound design. Every little creak of the city is perfect, from the movement of massive structures to the smaller sounds of alien machinery working behind muted walls. The ambient noise gives of a real sense of being the object of a voyeur, watched by all sides by some permeating invisible force. At times it will sound like the soundtrack is breathing at you. And to forget the game’s fantastic use of licensed would be a crime, as it is so perfectly integrated into the game I thought it must have been music made specifically for it until I did a bit more research for this review. Pauline Oliveros, Patricia Dallio, and Thierry Zaboitzeff need to be mentioned along with the developers because of how effective the music is for this project.

My only real regret with this game is waiting as long as I did to buy it on a sale. The developers certainly deserved more than that I can’t wait for whatever it is they do next.