The Videogames I Played in 2014!

Okay here's the deal, at time of writing this self-referential opening there is one hour left of 2014. I decided on NOT doing a Game of the Year piece on 2014 because for a magnitude of reasons but I've changed my mind and I'M ALLOWED TO DO THAT. But I've got an hour to get this written and posted; so it's going to be fast and barely structured and not proofread so strap in.

A brief commentary on every game I played in 2014 (that actually was released in 2014) starts NOW:

Shovel Knight

It's really nice to see something wallowing in nostalgia that actually introduces some common sense to the formula, none of that Mega Man 9 "turn on the sprite filter because god knows we all loved that" garbage. It's a solidly designed platformer with a stellar soundtrack from Jake Kaufman, but what really cemented my approval of it was the fantastic almost competitive-feeling boss battles. With some tweaks Shovel Knight could probably work in a multiplayer deathmatch arena mode, which really is the biggest compliment you can give any action game.

Probably the game I enjoyed the most this year out of the given options, hesitate to call it my Game of the Year because it represents and indeed panders to a lot of what I hate about the industry right now, but it's pretty damn good.

Mario Kart 8

IT'S ALRIGHT, I just wish Nintendo had gone more in the same direction they went with Smash Bros this year and tailored the game for a slightly more competitive environment. The rubberbanding and pretense that grandma is going to want to play the game with you for some reason holds it back from being a terrific racer. I got Sonic & All Stars Racing Transformed for my Wii U this year as well, and honestly I think I might like that game a little more.

Professor Layton Vs Ace Attorney

The Phoenix Wright trial segments are FANTASTIC, seriously some of the best ever created within the Ace Attorney series. I love Level-5s far more traditional puzzle take on the evidence, giving you a very small pool of it with multiple uses and actually requiring firm understanding and sound logic to pass testimonies. The Professor Layton sections however feel a little phoned in, maybe the trial segments just steal the show from them too much, but I was disappointed by puzzles included. The ending is going to be a dealbreaker for a lot of people and pretty much murders any replay value the game could possibly have, which would be fine only there's no COCKING CHAPTER SELECT FEATURE TO REPLAY THE TRIALS DANGNABBIT.

Loved the music though, some of my favourite of the year.

South Park: Stick of Truth

It wasn't awful, but definitely my biggest disappointment of the year. The amount of good comedy in videogames is genuinely pathetic and I thought this game could actually be notable and potentially groundbreaking in some ways. Turns out its just an incredibly short, overcomplicated (yet bizarrely easy) RPG with far too much faffing around with items and menus, featuring South Park humour at its absolute worst. There's a couple of good jokes in it but for the most part it's largely references and shock humour. A shame to be honest.

Hearthstone

YES I PLAYED A LITTLE OF HEARTHSTONE. NOT MUCH. BUT A LITTLE

IT'S A BIT LIKE YU-GI-OH! BUT A 1000 TIMES LESS COMPLICATED, PROBABLY FOR THE BEST

Yu-Gi-Oh! Millenium Duels

I ALSO ACTUALLY PLAYED SOME YU-GI-OH! THIS...okay I'm done with that.

It's literally nothing but the Yu-Gi-Oh! card game but on the PS3...somehow it has really severe framerate issues. You figure that one out.

Bayonetta 2

I like it! Just not as much as you! There's a full review on the site go read that I'm on the clock here.

Ace Attorney Trilogy

At time of writing I've beaten the first game again, I still think it's pretty great! The added fifth case that was initially exclusive to the DS remake is especially great, there's a lot of great subtext to it (even more so now due to recent events) and it feels legitimately big, like all sorts of scandals and corruption and political intrigue is just all collapsing in on itself. Trials and Tribulations is one of my favourite games of all time too; and let's not talk about Justice For All. Takumi had about three months to write the entire game, cut him some slack.

I'm not a fan of painting over fantastic pixel art for the sake of a glossy "HD" release, but it still looks fine. It'll do. I'll accept it. Still wish the 3DS had better sound so I could blast out Cornered ~2001 harder though.

Ultra Street Fighter IV

I'm six years late to the Street Fighter IV party...and unfortunately I think that might be far too late to get started now. I do like the game a lot though, I can see the little touches Capcom made to basically build tournament hype into the engine that's made the game such a huge success. I'll be there Day 1 for Street Fighter V though, don't you worry.

Guilty Gear Xrd 

IT'S SO BEAUTIFUL, anyone who complained about it having 3D models and running on Unreal has been proven to be dumb and wrong forever. Haven't played a lot of it yet, but I'll be putting in a bunch of hours in 2015!

Abe's Oddysee New N' Tasty

This remake's weird and I'm not sure I like it at all! Definitely doesn't have the same atmosphere of the PlayStation original, and the fact the controls have been "improved" to feel like a more traditional platformer doesn't seem like a great move when you're keeping essentially the same control and design. Also hate the autorun and dynamic camera angles, OddWorld's real cool though so I'll give this another shot at some point.

Captain Toad's Treasure Tracker

I only got it today! I'll review it properly soon! Let's move on!

Grand Theft Auto V

Grand Theft Auto in first person RULES, Grand Theft Auto V however still kind of does not. I don't think it says great things about the game that playing the same missions again but with completely different shooting and a new perspective made it way more enjoyable. The main thing I resent about GTA V on PS4 is it's actually kind of a good shooter now but it's still designed around a cover system that I wish wasn't there at all when playing this version. 

Other than that, it's still GTA V, warts and all. I probably enjoyed the story even less second time round. Let's put it this way, when I played Grand Theft Auto V on PS3 in 2013 I had not seen Reservoir Dogs, when I played Grand Theft Auto V on PS4 in 2014 I HAD seen Reservoir Dogs. You do the math.

Super Smash Bros on Wii U

First of all, Nintendo's strategy to put the inarguably inferior 3DS version out 2 months early then market the Wii U one on how much better and necessary to have it was is a work of god-damned genius. I still don't know why YOU bought the 3DS version though, seriously what is wrong with you.

I'm not a fan of how Nintendo's analogue sticks feel with 2D games on basically any of their controllers, maybe I just suck but I regularly have issues with changing directions quickly in these games and mess up inputs a lot. This is the first time I've been in danger of genuinely getting into Smash though, it feels like a lot of work has been put into every character in ways that aren't stupid. Definitely another game I'll be playing a lot more of in 2015.

LittleBigPlanet 3 

Another game I've done a full review of on this very site so GET LOOKING. It frustrates me to have to keep talking smack about these games, they're so close to being my favourite thing in the world but they fall down on the most important hurdle every time and I end up not liking them at all.

To paraphrase my favourite line from my review; "The most important thing with games based about level creators is making the game fun, there's a reason there's a thriving Super Mario World mod community and there isn't a Cool Spot one."

GAMES I HAVEN'T PLAYED BUT AM GOING TO TALK ABOUT ANYWAY

WWE 2K15

These are seriously some of the worst AAA games on the market right now, it's unbelievable and people should talk about them more. What amazes me is how they somehow still keep finding ways to take steps backward. I saw some footage of the PS4 version once and had to look up about 5 other videos of it to clarify because I couldn't believe how bad it looked, I seriously could not tell the difference between that and the PS3 version of 2K14 in gameplay.

But yea, these games are awful, and even the masochistic weirdos who buy them every year seem to agree WWE 2K15 was a terrible entry to the series. AVOID FOREVER.

Watch_Dogs

I'd just like to take this time to congratulate Watch_Dogs on its groundbreaking innovation and gamechanging mechanics. Specifically the amazing "press square on a traffic light to make a car teleport into reality and drive into another  car" function, which was used so prominently on every stream and video I saw of this game it may as well have been the core mechanic. 

Yoshi's New Island 

People love to love on Nintendo, but don't forget that they semi-regularly produce garbage like this too. An utterly pointless spin-off of a SNES classic which only serves to make the original more forgettable and stomp on its timeless art style. Haven't played it and never will, hate it just for existing.

The Evil Within

When you get over the ridiculous amounts of technical issues it has (no small feat) it doesn't seem THAT bad, not as bad as some people were making it seem anyway. Shinji Mikami knows how to do jumpscares and there's still some real solid looking action in this, but the story and environments are just strings of magical nonsense with the subtly of a sledgehammer to the groin and embarrassing amounts of the game look like they were copied and pasted from Resident Evil 4. Still, will probably pick up the PS4 version cheap at some point and give it a whirl. 

GAME OF THE YEAR 2014 TIME

Well, I didn't exactly fall in love with anything I played this year. But I did play The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds on the 3DS in January, which came out in late late 2013 and was better than anything I played this year. So I'm going to be an utter nob and just pick that and y'all are just going to have to deal with it.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Sonic The Hedgehog RULES (in Super Smash Bros)

Super Smash Bros on Wii U is pretty great. That's about as much of a review as you're going to get here, Smash Bros in general seems to be one of those series that will forever be immune from criticism. At the end of the day; either you love yourself some Smash or you don't, I mean even Brawl wasn't bad enough to chase people away, this is just the way the world is. 

I will say the thing that really stands out about the new Smash is the attention to detail on...well basically everything, but especially the roster. Every character feels thought out, and it's the kind of game where you can play each character once and instantly know whether they're your kind of thing or not. Whereas in Brawl it felt like stuff was just being shoved in for the sake of having stuff, everything in the Wii U version feels like it's there for a reason.

However, as great as the majority of the roster is, the undisputed crown of "Best Character" HAS to go to Sonic The Hedgehog. Not necessarily because he's a top tier character (I don't know or care if he is or not) or that he's objectively the most fun or anything, but that no matter how good any of the other characters may be they aren't overcoming 20 years of poor design.

Seriously, Sonic The Hedgehog has never been better than he is in the new Smash Bros.

I am kind of a jerk when it comes to Sonic, I've written rambly 7,000 word pieces questioning whether even the classic games were ever any good, and I roll my eyes every time a new Sonic game comes out and we all have to play the "oh my god this one sucks TOO" game. Let the record also show that I also don't really like Sonic 4 or Sonic Generations either, and now that I've played the new Smash Bros I feel perfectly comfortable with throwing them on the "suck" pile as well.

I don't even want to talk about Sonic Generations. But I will say the fact people say the 2D parts of that are just as good as the original games makes me wonder how long its been since Sonic fans actually last played the "classics". Some of the 3D parts were okay, not enough to save the game though. 

Sonic 4 was in all honesty a genuine effort from Sonic Team. It looked alright, the music did have an aura of 16-bit nostalgia (although they did forget that a big part of why people love the old Sonic music is that it wasn't terrible) and they did try and tweak some frustrations the old games had. For example, wasn't it annoying when you would lose all your momentum in Sonic 3 and would have to stop and rev up a spindash to get out of pit or something? Well in Sonic 4 don't worry about that, because now you can just walk up the side of a hill from a standstill and everything will be fine!

Wait what.

Granted this does *kind of* solve the problem, but wasn't it kind of fun to rev up a spindash? Everyone who played Sonic 2 or 3 has sat there for a minute pointlessly mashing the button to charge up a spindash before letting it go. Why? Because it feels good man, Sonic feels like god-damned lightning in a bottle and you're sitting there mashing that button waiting for the stormclouds to gather before you let him go. I know you can still do that in Sonic 4 but it's not the same when you make momentum less important, Sonic is no longer this supercharged woodland animal that you want to make bounce across to the end of a racetrack, he's a stupid blue sloth you're just dragging to the end of mediocre platforming levels.

The point is, Sonic The Hedgehog *is* his movement, compromising that for the sake of the level design is freaking stupid and Sonic 4 blows because of it.

This is the fundamental thing Smash Bros gets so right. The character on the roster is undoubtedly and instantly recognisable as Sonic The Hedgehog, he's fast, he's got the classic sound effects, he freaks out if you stand too close to a ledge and of course you can rev up a spindash like normal! Once again he feels like lightning in a bottle, but yet always controlled. You control Sonic's speed by either moving the stick to walk or double tapping it to run. You can jump and even change direction multiple times while rolling around after a spindash. You can rev up a spindash, shoot yourself to the other side of the stage, use a special move to launch Sonic into the air and perform a divekick to fire yourself back onto the ground with ease in a matter of seconds. 

In short, Sonic The Hedgehog RULES in this game. He has the speed, he has the momentum, he's got that all important tiny bit of slide to him, and he never ever feels out of control despite how genuinely fast he is. He's not just a racetrack character any more, he's got some proper action chops to him now without requiring some weird airdash lock on move to bounce across rows of enemies. And the genius of all of this is it's done without any of the BS compromise of Sonic 4 or any other recent entry, this is the Sonic we all remember just a heck of a lot better. Sonic can be fun and fast and smart and maybe even not irritating! Honestly, this is all a little humbling, I've been saying for years that there's probably not going to be another great Sonic game. Now I basically have to accept there almost certainly will be.

It's just the catch is Sega and Sonic Team will have nothing to do with it. 

It's time for Nintendo and/or Sega (probably Sega) to get on the phone and get that dream Mario/Sonic crossover platformer cooking. Imagine the level design and polish of Super Mario 3D Land but basically a lot faster and maybe with some chilli dogs as powerups in it. It'd be BEAUTIFUL.

So yea, maybe buy the new Smash over Sonic Boom okay?