2014: Our Year in Review
We've spent the past month reviewing the past year. Here's everything we wrote.
This article first appeared on USgamer, a partner publication of VG247. Some content, such as this article, has been migrated to VG247 for posterity after USgamer's closure - but it has not been edited or further vetted by the VG247 team.
If you've been paying attention, you've probably noticed our "2014 Recap" articles. Over the course of the year, we sometimes find it hard to say everything we want to about a specific game. We'll have the traditional Game of the Year discussions, but these are extra thoughts that came to mind. These articles were our chance to dig deeper into specific games, genres, or idea that we couldn't explore during the year.
We hope you enjoyed them and thank you for another wonderful year of readin USgamer. Compiled below is all of the 2014 Recap articles.
Jeremy Parish, Editor-in-Chief
Why Won't You Let Me Love You, Assassin's Creed?
Jeremy details why Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed has never quite click for him, despite his love of the game's concept.
"The series suffers from long-running flaws that Ubisoft seems unwilling or uninterested in correcting. Like a lot of big franchises, Assassin's Creed has become something of a victim of its own success. In designing the original sequel, Ubisoft went to great lengths to address complaints about the first game; but once ACII became a massive success, the design of Assassin's Creed became trapped in amber. It's locked in place by the fact that it's a proven formula and the prospect that changing something might upset the balance of elements that draws players to the series by the millions."
Captain Toad and the Triumph of the Finite
For Jeremy, part of the magic of Captain Toad is that its design is laser-focused on a single concept. A game of smaller scale outshines the massive AAA juggernauts.
"When you stop and look at this year's most troubled launches, you'll notice a certain pattern emerge. They may be good games made by talented people, but in just about every single case they look to be the victims of their own overly ambitious designs. Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker suffers from none of these issues. The entire game revolves, literally, around small, self-contained puzzle worlds. It has no online component beyond the system-level hooks for Nintendo's Miiverse. It has no microtransactions, and while Nintendo has stated their intention to add some DLC and Amiibo support in the future, you'd never know it from playing the game — it stands on its own."
Fantasy Life and the Pleasure of Doing It "Wrong"
Jeremy believes that Fantasy Life requires a leisurely pace, which is why the game simply doesn't review well.
"Fantasy Life does not lend itself to being explored on the critical path. You can play it that way, rolling a warrior-type class and doggedly advancing from plot point to plot point. Under that tactic, it would be a pretty short game. Frankly, though, I can't imagine a more insipid way to play Fantasy Life; the main plot is no great shakes, and it's actually fairly low on action while being heavy on lengthy, wandering conversations crammed with Japanese-style verbal reiterations and dad-style lame jokes. To rush through Fantasy Life is to subject yourself to a tremendously boring and toothless RPG jam-packed with dumb conversations."
"Fantasy Life really wants you to play it like you would an MMO — I've seen a lot of comparisons to the class system in Final Fantasy XIV — and the interlocking skill mechanics that stretch across its various "lives" possess the same general addictiveness as Dragon Quest IX or Skyrim."
Jaz Rignall, Editor-at-Large
A Vintage Year for First-Person Shooters
Jaz thinks 2014 had great variety in its first-person shooter library. He makes his case.
"Packing tactical items that make you feel like a superhero, Titanfall brought a huge degree of dynamism to the FPS genre. Indeed, it's hard to go back to the older boots-on-the-ground shooters after this and Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, because the freedom of movement both these games offer make the older ones feel limited and clunky. Titanfall stands out in particular because it also includes its eponymous Titans to add more variety to the gameplay. Initially there were concerns that they would be overpowered, but actually, they fit into the game very well, and have their own strengths and weaknesses."
2014 Recap: Driving Game Highs - and Technical Lows
Our racing game guru takes on this year crop of games that put you behind the wheel.
"This year has been a good one for driving games. Then again, it's been a bad one too. Not so much in terms of quality – but more the kind of technical issues that can turn even a great game into something almost unplayable."
"That was certainly the case with Sony's unfortunate DriveClub. In our fall preview, I nominated it as potential Game of the Year, and had every confidence that it was going to deliver. It'd been one of my biggest surprises of E3 2013, and I'd also walked away impressed after playing demos of it at this year's show."
"Sadly, t'was not to be."
Falling out of Love with a Game You're in Love With
Jaz explores why he's leaving World of Warcraft behind, despite having played the game since launch.
"Following the latest expansion to World of Warcraft, Warlords of Draenor brought with it significant changes to its structure and design that fundamentally alters the way the game plays. I won't go on at length about them, since I already did that in one of the longest reviews I've ever written, but what my partner and I have found since launch is that neither of us are having anywhere near the fun we were having with the game just a few months before the expansion."
Mike Williams, Associate Editor
The Incidental Diversity of Dragon Age Inquistion
Fictional fantasy worlds are usually focused on a specific demographic. Mike explores why this is and why Bioware's latest is different.
"That's not to say I have a problem with character stories focusing on their specific race, gender, or religion - I love the slavery-themed Assassin's Creed Freedom Cry - but that doesn't always have to be the point of a character. Sometimes a stronger statement is to just allow those characters to be in the world. That random woman standing guard in full armor, that black spy reporting in, that random male bystander holding onto his boyfriend; these are small incidental additions. Afterthoughts. These characters simply say "I exist, and by extension, you exist." They matter to people who sympathize with that experience. They matter to me."
The Year of Assassin's Creed
Ubisoft released four Assassin's Creed games in 2014. Mike ponders the franchises strengths and weaknesses.
"The "smaller budget, more interesting story" is a known trend in the Assassin's Creed franchise, with Liberation, Freedom Cry, and Rogue all having stronger plotlines than their big-budget counterparts. Liberation and Freedom Cry both tackle the institution of slavery, while Rogue explores the sympathetic side of the Templar Order. Perhaps, the upcoming Assassin's Creed Victory is will do something interesting with its protagonist, but there's a definite feeling that Ubisoft's AAA releases don't want to step on too many toes."
Experimenting with the Open-World
In 2014, developers have begun to play around with the open-world concept. Mike looks at some of their experiments and how well they've worked out.
"The open-world is a concept that can be brought to almost any genre. It's mostly applied to action-adventure games, but there's nothing really keeping it within those confines. The open-world can come to RPGs, Tactics games, first-person shooters, puzzle games and more. It's about expanding gameplay beyond the idea of discrete spaces. An open world isn't right for every game, but it's an idea that can be explored a bit more, stretched and twisted to fit in new places."
Kat Bailey, Senior Editor
Shovel Knight's Surprisingly Affecting Storytelling
Kat philosophizes about the strong storytelling found in Yacht Club Games' retro hit.
"Shovel Knight, of course, is full of such moments, both comedic and heartbreaking. I could write a whole piece on the Order of No Quarter alone, and how they are so wonderfully characterized by their animation, their text boxes, and their individual sound effects, culminating in a boss rush battle royale over a great banquet. And then there are the people populating the world of Shovel Knight: Humans and animals, wizards and commoners, all jumbled together in a funhouse mirror reflection of a village in Zelda II."
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor's Nemesis System and the Illusion of Intelligence
Kat writes about how Shadow of Mordor's Nemesis System elevates it above its peers.
"It's the Nemesis System that makes that game sing, moreso than the combat, the storytelling, or the exploration. For the first half of the game, it is genuinely thrilling to interrogate grunts for information, hunt Warchiefs, and develop rivalries with Captains who simply won't stay dead. That thrill wanes a bit in the back half of the game as Talion becomes overpowered and the process starts to become rote, but it's undeniably unique while it lasts."
What Does the Future Hold for the PlayStation Vita?
After a long time away from her PlatStation Vita, Kat muses on the platform's future.
"For the past couple years, the Vita has been my constant companion on the road, entertaining me with games like Spelunky, Dragon's Crown, and Final Fantasy Tactics. Over the past year though, that has changed. The Nintendo 3DS library has gotten stronger while the Vita library has remained stagnant, pushing me more and more toward Nintendo's handheld. It's been bad enough that I've actually given serious thought to leaving the Vita at home for my month long trip to Europe."
The Year's Best Games Have Been RPGs
It is what it says on the tin. Kat believes this year's best games have all been RPGs.
"In many ways, Bravely Default succeeds where Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light failed, delivering a credible and attractive old-school RPG without irritations like the party constantly splitting up. It answers the cry by frustrated fans for Square Enix to get back to basics and make what they really want: A classic JRPG. Even if you're not in it for the nostalgia though, it's still worth playing. In contract to its relatively simple story, Bravely Default's deep class customization can take up hours by itself. It's the ideal portable RPG, and one of the Nintendo 3DS' best games of the years."
Bob Mackey, Senior Writer
Bayonetta 2 Perfects the Platinum Games Formula
Bob professes his love of Platinum Games' latest, which learns from the errors of the past.
"Though it makes some departures from its predecessor, Bayonetta 2 knows what made the first game so memorable, and builds on that. What Bayonetta 2 shows you in its first level offers the amount of spectacle most games would save for their finales—and the scale only grows from there. Really, where the game thrives is its sense of surprise, because what you'll be doing at any given time can change immediately. Bayonetta's fight with a skyscraper-sized boss, for example, can take to the skies in the second phase, but because the fundamental controls never change, it's rarely jarring. And with every screen so full of busy visual splendor, you'd think the action would be hard to follow, but somehow, Platinum manages to communicate everything to the player perfectly."
Danganronpa Taught Us the Finer Points of Despair
NIS brings two Danganronpa titles to the United States and sets the bar of visual novels in the process.
"It took long enough, but, by 2014, my tolerance for video game stories reached an all-time low. Of course, our industry employs some talented writers, but grafting a compelling narrative onto a play-focused experience poses some uniquely difficult problems."
"Danganronpa wears its anime-ness on its sleeve, though, and for good reason; by dropping players into a cozy world of seemingly one-dimensional caricatures (the characters' representation via cardboard standees doesn't seem to be a coincidence), it can then pull out the rug from under these walking cliches to reveal just how artificial their put-on personalities really are. And with Danganronpa, it doesn't take more than an hour for things to start unraveling."
FromSoftware's Yui Tanimura on Dark Souls' Finest Year
Bob interviews Dark Souls II's director Yui Tanimura about how the sequel avoided being just a rehash.
"When FromSoftware released Dark Souls in 2011, it seemed unlikely the developer would be ever be able to top themselves. Turn back the clock, and put yourself in their position: How can you possibly put together a fulfilling sequel to one of the most important, respected, and well-crafted games of the last console generation?"
"Fans had good reason to worry, too. With Demon's and Dark Souls director Hidetaka Miyazaki departing to work on a mystery project—the yet-to-be-revealed Bloodborne—we had good reason to believe this latest game couldn't possibly stack up to its predecessor. Boy were we wrong."
USgamer Team, Kat & Jeremy
Kat and Jeremy Share Their Appreciation for Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII
Kat and Jeremy also did a tag-team article defending Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, the last game in the XIII trilogy.
Kat: "I appreciate risk-taking in game design; and with seemingly nothing to lose, Lightning Returns takes quite a lot of them. For that reason, I think it deserves more credit than its given."
Jeremy: "Ignoring the story, which is a complete mess by any standard, Lightning Returns really feels like the sort of game hardcore RPG fanatics should have been really in to. Instead, its legacy and characters soured most people on it sight-unseen, and the game really didn't get the fair shot it deserved. In fact, Lightning Returns should have appealed most to people who look down their noses at mainstream RPGs like Final Fantasy and go on endlessly about weird, niche role-playing games like Valkyrie Profile or Resonance of Fate. You know, tri-Ace games. Which is what Lightning Returns really is."
The Trends That Need to End in Gaming
The USgamer team talks about the worst industry trends of 2014.