Games of the Year ’14

Awards

Best Multiplayer – Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare

William – Despite the continuing popularity of Activision’s annual release of Call of Duty, fans have been asking for innovation for years.  This year, Sledgehammer Games delivered that innovation with Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.  Introducing a new Exo-Suit into the popular multiplayer component of the shooter has changed the game drastically, giving players far more mobility than the series has been known for.

Alongside these Exo-Suit movement abilities, Sledgehammer also introduced a number of goals to accomplish and loot to earn why playing the shooter, keeping players coming back for more on a daily basis.  Advanced Warfare was exactly what the series needed to shake things up.  It’s still entirely familiar for long time fans, with enough new hotness to keep the game feeling fresh.

The question is: Where does Call of Duty go next after introducing this game-changer?

Runner Up: Titanfall

Best Remake –  Grand Theft Auto V

William – In a year full of remakes, Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto hit PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in late-2014 with some of the best visuals of the year.  You’d be hard pressed to find the smallest area in the sprawling Los Santos locale that wasn’t bettered by the enhanced textures and lighting that more powerful hardware made possible.

Throw in a first-person mode for the open-world game, and GTA V can be an entirely new experience if that’s how one chooses to play it.  While there was no extra content or dlc to be had with the remaster of Grand Theft Auto V, the graphical improvements in their own right made this return trip to Los Santos one worth taking.

Runner Up: The Last Of Us Remastered

Best Indie – Shovel Knight

Kyle – Retro 2D Platformers are nothing new to the indie scene, in fact they are becoming somewhat tired at this point thanks to over-saturation. However, Shovel Knight shows why we first fell in love with the genre by feeling fresh and new while wrapped in a warm blanket of nostalgia for the days of NES classics. The gameplay of Shovel Knight is ripped straight from some of the best games of the late 80’s and early 90’s, offering up just enough innovation without impacting the core experience.

As you play through the game you’ll find yourself reminiscing about time spent powering through Mega Man 2, or finding secrets hidden away in Super Mario Bros. 3. Once you complete the game though, new memories will have worked their way in, such as your battle with Specter Knight or the dance routine of The Troupple King.

Retro-styling and fantastic gameplay come together in a perfect way in Shovel Knight, making it the best indie game of 2014.

Runner Up: Transistor

Best DLC – Battlefield Premium

William – You won’t find many Battlefield fans to argue with the fact that in 2013 Battlefield 4 launched poorly.  DICE just didn’t put their best foot forward on PC, or freshly launched new-gen hardware.  But with each downloadable content that arrived for the shooter, things got better and better.

More maps, weapons, unlockable equipment, and improvements to the game, were only one part of why Battlefield Premium was the DLC to buy in 2014.  DICE also sent players on a community driven Easter Egg hunt to unlock additional content only offered by the DLC.

Apparently, Battlefield 4 has more DLC in the works for 2015, though it hasn’t been revealed what that is at this point.

Runner Up: Mario Kart 8

Best Story – Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead Season 2

Dean – Back in the earlier days of gaming, stories were nothing more than an afterthought, as video games were focused more on gameplay and other elements. This was greatly due to the limitations of the gaming systems, which are at new heights in 2014. In recent years, stories have become even more important to games, with The Walking Dead: Season 1 being a standout. That was certainly no different with the release of Telltale Game’s The Walking Dead: Season 2, where we had our heart broken all over again.

Perhaps the strongest element of Telltale’s story telling is how involved the player is through a number of decisions made throughout the game. Some characters even live or die depending on your decision, which makes them all the most impactful and personal.

Season 2 seemingly started off a little slow, but that was to allow for the buildup of the excellent middle chapters that completely reshaped what we knew of The Walking Dead, by introducing a human villain that was worse than any walker had been thus far.

This all led to the final chapter that one must ready the tissues for, as your tough decisions finally pay off here. With a number of distinct endings possible, The Walking Dead: Season 2 is one that should be played many times just to experience this amazing story in different ways. Being on such a personal level with Clementine through our own choices, other stories in 2014 just cannot compare.

Runner Up: Wolfenstein: The New Order

Most Innovative – Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor

Anthony – There were a lot of games that held innovation and progression of their respective genres this year. From Bayonetta 2 upping the ante with larger more insane boss battles to Assassin’s Creed Unity’s co-op that made players feel like a part of a brotherhood, and the wide expansive crowds. Even the sheer re-invigoration that Call Of Duty: Advanced Warfare had by simply adding some cool elements to the multiplayer, like jet-packs and random drops via packages showed innovation. This year was a good year but we felt that the one game that took us by surprise, and really showed us something that could be utilized in a variety of other ways that was unique to the title was Middle-Earth: Shadows Of Mordor.

Many fans saw Shadows Of Mordor as a Warner Brothers cash in on the ongoing Hobbit trilogy but what fans were left with was something that told us a side-story that compares in ways to that of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed in how we felt about games based on huge franchises such as the Middle-Earth franchise. What set it apart though was the implementation of not the combat of Rocksteady’s Arkham series and the free-roaming mechanic of what many consider a comparison to Assassin’s Creed, but a new system dubbed the ‘Nemesis’ system. It is a system that evolves as the character interacts with various enemies, for instance if the player controlling Talion, the main character, is killed by a grunt they can get promoted for that deed and maybe have something snarky to say when the player faces them again. It is a something that players haven’t really encountered before and really shows the game evolving with the player and it’s quite unique and fun at the same time.

Despite the array of innovation this year has brought us we felt that Shadows Of Mordor brought the goods with the Nemesis System. If you have a chance with the game, I am sure you will agree too, that is why it is our ‘most innovative game of the year’.

Runner Up: Titanfall

Hit the next page for our Worst of the Year

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