Games of the Year ’14

Best of the Worst

Most Disappointing Game of the Year – Destiny

Anthony – After all the hype and all the hoopla that was Destiny from when the first details of the title were leaked in 2012, it has become somewhat of a letdown. Bungie had promised a wide open game and many journalists started to draw similarities to that of an MMO. This made the public believe that we were essentially going to get a giant FPS game with large expansive worlds, and able to fly from planet to planet a la No Man’s Sky. However, this is not what the finished product turned out to be.

There are many reasons why Destiny let down fans, from the limited, linear gameplay of the stories to the fact that some might argue the existence of a story at all. Many gameplay aspects were disjointed and overall disappointing themselves. From the inability to fly your color-customizable aircraft, to the lack of side-missions. Yes, you can roam around the map, until you enter a smaller area of said map which essentially takes you into an instance, so only you and your party appear but the fact you can’t go beyond that feels very limited. Limitation doesn’t stop there, we are limited to only a few planets, and the game shipped with only one Raid which wasn’t available until a few weeks post-launch. Free-update’s have made the game a bit better albeit the currency system is a little bit disjointed with various currencies available that differ from vendor to vendor it still stands out as an overall disappointing effort for a title that has had this much hype behind it.

The one redeeming factor is the games Crucible mode which is the games PVP multiplayer. Bungie knows how to do multiplayer and they get it right. It doesn’t make up for the overall lack of content however and the initial level cap of 20 with a subsequent level cap of 30 if you collect special pieces of armor.

So with a year full of botched launches, and missed opportunities Destiny stands out above the Driveclub’s and Assassin’s Creed: Unity’s of this year. Considering those titles went on to improve the situation and launched with content fans expected, whereas with Destiny, we had no idea what to expect but still felt jibbed.

Runner Up: Watch Dogs

Worst Game Launch – Driveclub

William – 2014 was a weird year when it comes to games being released with major problems.  Driveclub had some pretty stiff competition from the likes of Halo: The Master Chief Collection, Assassin’s Creed: Unity, and others.  Though they didn’t quite shit the bed like Evolution Studios’ racer.

Driveclub was nearly unplayable at launch, Sony’s online infrastructure for the game just wasn’t up to par.  Being that Driveclub’s main selling point was as a connected, social racing game, the inability to connect with others really put a damper on the fun at launch.

These problems weren’t your typical launch window issues either, they persisted for months, leaving many early adopters for the racer with a bad taste in their mouth.  At the time, it was inconceivable that a first party exclusive, and one of the only ones of the year on the PlayStation 4 would have issues like this, then Halo: The Master Chief Collection launched.

Runner Up: Halo: The Master Chief Collection

Hit the next page for our Overall Game of the Year