Thanks to the Xbox One coming out, and a lot of the indies I have backed on Kickstarter finally getting finished, I got to play a lot of games this year. That means my list is a little more complete than last year, and that is a good thing. Here they are my top five video games in reverse order!
There were a lot of titles bucking for the number five slot, but I went with Child of Light. It was beautiful to look at, and charming to play. I loved just kicking back and letting the whimsy wash over me. For all the bad press Ubisoft got this year, and deservedly so, it was nice to see that they are still making smaller thoughtful games too.
Generally if the people at Double Fine release a game, I will play it. Broken Age: Part 1 makes me glad that I do. I was very happy that Kickstarter brought back point and click adventure games, and the master of point and click Tim Schaefer at that. The only reason this game is at number four and not higher is that it is only half a game.
3: Shadow of Mordor
I have barely started to play this game and it lands on my list at number three. Why? Because it mixes the wonderful Batman games with Assassin’s Creed, and then moves the action to Middle Earth. That is like crack-cocaine for me. Warner Brothers has shown licensed games don’t have to be terrible! I will do a full review of this game later, so it may come off this list, but I doubt it.
Titianfall made me fall in love with first person shooters again. It reminded the gaming world we didn’t need to make realistic military bore-fests. Thanks to Titianfall every game now has double jump and more freedom of movement. Oh yeah it had giant robots too! Even if some people complained that there wasn’t enough content, this game has changed the FPS genre for the better, and it may just be the most influential game of 2014.
This game is number one because it had one goal: be fun! And it succeeds in spades. I am sure that some games that came out this year were technically better, or they had better story lines, but Sunset Overdrive was crazy fun, and anything called a “game” should strive to be. It also said, “Hey why not use color?!”. Which is nice since most games these days like to shade themselves in brown and gray or other serious colors. Meanwhile Sunset Overdrive takes nothing seriously, well except for the aforementioned fun.
There were a lot of good games that didn’t make my list this year, which means that despite what the critics say it was a great year for gaming. I would love to hear your take on the games of the year!