Since nothing else that I could give half a shit about is due to be released this year I figured I'd make this topic for us all now so we can discuss the games we loved, hated and were just generally unimpressed by in the year of 2014.
THE GOOD:
Two games stood out to me this year for being particularly fun experiences and the first of the two was Destiny. Unlike most players (and this likely helped my opinion of the game in the long run) I expected Destiny to be a disappointment, and I'm very glad to say it greatly exceeded my expectations. As it happens Destiny's the first FPS I've really enjoyed since Unreal 2004, and while I'm somewhat disgusted that it took the industry a decade to make an FPS that wasn't either OK or garbage Destiny's good enough for me to forgive and forget. Between the amazing visuals, sheer number of things to do that most FPS games fail to provide and the potential longevity of the game, Destiny has all but ensured I won't need to buy another current-generation FPS for a very long time.
The second game, or games, are ones I'm sure all of you have played or eventually plan to, those being Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire. If anything the Hoenn remakes showed me quite brutally just how mediocre X and Y's story modes really were in comparison; X and Y tried so hard to replicate the impact of B/W's narrative and story and they flopped horribly, and even though I said X and Y were the best Pokemon games at the time and praised them in the past, that was mainly due to the mechanics they introduced and decisions they made for the competitive side of the game. I can't really say much about OR/AS at this stage as I'd risk spoiling, but as remakes to Gen III and as Pokemon games in their own right these two are fantastic.
THE MEH:
I can't speak for the Wii U version as I don't have it, but the 3DS version of Super Smash Bros. really failed to impress or engage me in any way. I wasn't a particularly big fan of Brawl as many people know, but in hindsight I do miss the silly shit you could pull off in Brawl that's no longer present in SSB4. That being said I can't fault SSB4 itself too much as my dislike towards it stems not from the game itself but more from the console it's on: the 3DS has no equivalent of the C-stick that Melee and Brawl had and to me it's very noticeable, greatly limiting how quickly you can pull off certain moves compared to Brawl and Melee. Either way I stopped playing SSB4 quite a while ago and have had no intention of picking it back up since, and I regret to say it may very well have killed any further interest I have in this series.
Going back to the previous point about FPS games results in Wolfenstein: The New Order being thrown into this category. Now, I can't really fault this game for a whole lot as it wasn't bad per se, it just failed to engage me on any level and while it tried to be interesting and succeeded in some regards, it just made me wish I was playing Wolfenstein 3D instead. Yeah, THAT Wolfenstein 3D, shows how far we've gone since then hasn't it? I can't really say much about this one since as I said, it wasn't a bad game and my disinterest in it wasn't a result of any particular problems, although that may have been a problem in itself as the game was just so "OK" it ended up being very bland and average for me.
THE DREADFUL:
A lot of people have wondered when World of Warcraft will eventually die, and many have boldly (and stupidly) said that certain new MMOs would be the death of the invincible monster that is WoW, and with the release of the newest expansion Warlords of Draenor I find the question being less a case of whether WoW will die and more a case of whether or not it should. I think most of us know about the absolutely abysmal launch this game suffered, I can't sum up all the stuff that was wrong as the game was pretty much unplayable for almost a week after launch due to glitches, server queues, latency and a fuckton of other things, and while the quests were fun when they worked once you fought through the dreadful launch and admittedly fun quests to Lv.100 you were greeted with the worst pile of crap end-game content any WoW expansion has ever been released with, consisting of a bunch of new and mostly awful Lv.100 dungeons and very barebones (and still glitchy I might add) content outside of that. Combine with the fact that Blizzard basically took the Riot Games approach to class balance (make every class shit) and Warlords is the worst game I've played this year, by far. Clearly Blizzard don't care about WoW anymore outside of the money it makes them, they obviously didn't have any passion or enjoyment when making this expansion and it shows in how shoddy and empty it is, and if this is the best Blizzard can offer with WoW then I'd rather see the franchise die while it still has a scrap of dignity left.
So there you have it. What were your highlights (and lowlights) of 2014?
THE GOOD:
Two games stood out to me this year for being particularly fun experiences and the first of the two was Destiny. Unlike most players (and this likely helped my opinion of the game in the long run) I expected Destiny to be a disappointment, and I'm very glad to say it greatly exceeded my expectations. As it happens Destiny's the first FPS I've really enjoyed since Unreal 2004, and while I'm somewhat disgusted that it took the industry a decade to make an FPS that wasn't either OK or garbage Destiny's good enough for me to forgive and forget. Between the amazing visuals, sheer number of things to do that most FPS games fail to provide and the potential longevity of the game, Destiny has all but ensured I won't need to buy another current-generation FPS for a very long time.
The second game, or games, are ones I'm sure all of you have played or eventually plan to, those being Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire. If anything the Hoenn remakes showed me quite brutally just how mediocre X and Y's story modes really were in comparison; X and Y tried so hard to replicate the impact of B/W's narrative and story and they flopped horribly, and even though I said X and Y were the best Pokemon games at the time and praised them in the past, that was mainly due to the mechanics they introduced and decisions they made for the competitive side of the game. I can't really say much about OR/AS at this stage as I'd risk spoiling, but as remakes to Gen III and as Pokemon games in their own right these two are fantastic.
THE MEH:
I can't speak for the Wii U version as I don't have it, but the 3DS version of Super Smash Bros. really failed to impress or engage me in any way. I wasn't a particularly big fan of Brawl as many people know, but in hindsight I do miss the silly shit you could pull off in Brawl that's no longer present in SSB4. That being said I can't fault SSB4 itself too much as my dislike towards it stems not from the game itself but more from the console it's on: the 3DS has no equivalent of the C-stick that Melee and Brawl had and to me it's very noticeable, greatly limiting how quickly you can pull off certain moves compared to Brawl and Melee. Either way I stopped playing SSB4 quite a while ago and have had no intention of picking it back up since, and I regret to say it may very well have killed any further interest I have in this series.
Going back to the previous point about FPS games results in Wolfenstein: The New Order being thrown into this category. Now, I can't really fault this game for a whole lot as it wasn't bad per se, it just failed to engage me on any level and while it tried to be interesting and succeeded in some regards, it just made me wish I was playing Wolfenstein 3D instead. Yeah, THAT Wolfenstein 3D, shows how far we've gone since then hasn't it? I can't really say much about this one since as I said, it wasn't a bad game and my disinterest in it wasn't a result of any particular problems, although that may have been a problem in itself as the game was just so "OK" it ended up being very bland and average for me.
THE DREADFUL:
A lot of people have wondered when World of Warcraft will eventually die, and many have boldly (and stupidly) said that certain new MMOs would be the death of the invincible monster that is WoW, and with the release of the newest expansion Warlords of Draenor I find the question being less a case of whether WoW will die and more a case of whether or not it should. I think most of us know about the absolutely abysmal launch this game suffered, I can't sum up all the stuff that was wrong as the game was pretty much unplayable for almost a week after launch due to glitches, server queues, latency and a fuckton of other things, and while the quests were fun when they worked once you fought through the dreadful launch and admittedly fun quests to Lv.100 you were greeted with the worst pile of crap end-game content any WoW expansion has ever been released with, consisting of a bunch of new and mostly awful Lv.100 dungeons and very barebones (and still glitchy I might add) content outside of that. Combine with the fact that Blizzard basically took the Riot Games approach to class balance (make every class shit) and Warlords is the worst game I've played this year, by far. Clearly Blizzard don't care about WoW anymore outside of the money it makes them, they obviously didn't have any passion or enjoyment when making this expansion and it shows in how shoddy and empty it is, and if this is the best Blizzard can offer with WoW then I'd rather see the franchise die while it still has a scrap of dignity left.
So there you have it. What were your highlights (and lowlights) of 2014?
