USgamer Community Question: What's Your Game of the Year?

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This is without doubt the biggest community question of the year. And that's because it's all about your single-most favorite game of 2014. There's certainly a vast amount of choice, from the biggest blockbusters like Destiny to unique indie games like Never Alone - but out of all of them, which game do you nominate as game of the year?

As always, while you ponder the best that this year has to offer, here are Team USG's personal picks. Perhaps you'll agree with one of them, or perhaps you'll make your own choice. Whatever it is, we're looking forward to reading your nominations - and whichever game gets the most votes will be considered USgamer's Official Game of the Year.

Jeremy Parish, Editor-in-Chief

Ugh, this one was tough. I didn't play a single game that I truly, deeply, intensely loved this year… but quite a few that I really, really liked. I guess I'm going to go with Alien: Isolation, because despite a few rough patches it definitely managed to live up to my expectations amidst tons of precedent for it to be really, really lousy. Alien games, as a rule, tend not to be great — good, sometimes, but not great. Isolation showed what happens when good game designers get to make a game about a topic they truly love... and get a healthy budget, too.

Isolation's a tough one to pin down, because its nature changes throughout the adventure. It goes from exploration, to stealth, to horror, to more of a melee game tinged with stealth, to pure action toward the end. However, what remains consistent throughout the story is Creative Assembly's commitment to realizing and fleshing out the world of the Alien movie. While some of the visual design can feel a little too slavish in places, and a few of the plot twists are a bit too business-as-usual, on the whole this is by far the most satisfying rendition of that universe since, well, Aliens. 28 years is a really long time to muck around in the minor leagues. Isolation has been entirely too long in coming.

And while I thoroughly enjoyed the game, I haven't even touched any of the DLC yet — either the material featuring the Nostromo's cast or the more recent expansion. You don't suck down a game this good all in one go; you gotta savor it, you know? I can afford to take my time with Isolation, based on how few and far between Alien adaptations of this caliber tend to be. Swear to god, though, I'd better not have to wait until 2042 until the next one.

Jaz Rignall, Editor-at-Large

If my vote was governed by the most amount of time I've spent in a game, then World of Warcraft would be getting my nod as game of the year. However, while I've spent an inordinate amount of hours and days playing Blizzard's seminal MMO throughout 2014, the game I've had by far the most fun with is Forza Horizon 2.

That's quite a surprise to me, because after seeing it thrice before it was released, I'd been mildly impressed, but wasn't exactly blown away. I'd played basic demos each time, and while they did a decent job of showing off just how good looking the game was, and that the handling engine was set up to deliver slightly larger-than-life fun, no individual demo conveyed the game as a whole particularly well. And that's really the secret of Forza Horizon 2's greatness: it's a really open game in more sense than just being a large area to explore. It's open in a way that lets you tackle racing series in the kinds of cars that you like, when you like, however you like.

Combine that with some of the most lovely, picturesque landscaping ever seen in racing game, a vast roster of interesting and varied cars, and simply brilliant open-world competition, and you have a racing game that ticks all the right boxes. It mightn't be as comprehensive as Gran Turismo 6, and it isn't quite as detailed as Forza 5, but as a package, it all comes together to do what a driving game should, and that's deliver terrifically exciting, highly competitive racing action - which in my book is the best we've yet seen.

Forza Horizon 2's new expansion, Storm Island, recently arrived and brought with it even more extreme off-road racing, and some of the most brutal weather you're likely to see in any game anywhere. It's a truly great addition to the original game, and makes it even more compelling and entertaining. Makes me wonder what Playground Games has up its sleeve for the next one!

Mike Williams, Associate Editor

Damn. I've been sitting here looking at the list of games that I've played over the course of 2014, trying to whittle it down and choose just a single one as my Game of the Year. A number of titles have offered me different kinds of fun this year: Mario Kart 8, Forza Horizon 2, Divinity: Original Sin, Danganronpa, Shadow of Mordor, Sunset Overdrive, Bravely Default, Shovel Knight, Bayonetta 2, Grand Theft Auto V, Super Time Force, Guilty Gear Xrd. Telling me I have to cut through it all and choose just one is hard.

Since I have to pick one game that I'd take ahead of the rest, it'd probably be Dragon Age: Inquisition. This is a game I had been waiting for all year. I love Bioware games, I loved Dragon Age: Origins, and I didn't even feel like the uneven Dragon Age II was as bad as the critical consensus made it out to be (meh story, lots of repetition, but great characters!). Inquisition is a game I kept missing at every large event. It wasn't playable for me at E3. I missed the video demo at that show due to other commitments. I wasn't at Gamescom. I don't live in San Francisco, so I couldn't go to the preview event. Prior commitments meant I couldn't review it. Even once I had picked up a retail copy, I couldn't play it because the holiday review season was marching on.

When I finally got the chance to tear into it, my faith was rewarded. It's an absolutely beautiful game with a wide world to explore. The cast is amazing, from the stalwart Cassandra, to the flippant Vivienne, and the enigmatic Solas. Taking on a dragon feels epic. And as I wrote before, the world of Thedas is wonderfully diverse in its main cast, supporting cast, and those that surround them. From top to bottom, Dragon Age Inquisition is a polished experience. It's it perfect? No, but it is one of the best games I've played recently.

Dragon Age Inquisition also gives the world of Thedas more meat than its had in the past. Between story quests, side missions, and companion conversations, you get a look at areas, groups, and concepts like Orlais, the Chantry, the Circle of Mages, the Templar Order, and the entire Qunari society. It's the biggest deep dive into everything Thedas that we've ever had; Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age II barely scratched the surface. It explores the politics, ethical dilemmas, and various moralities that are at play in the Dragon Age universe.

Inquisition is so good that it just makes me pine for the next Mass Effect. For me, Mass Effect's sci-fi universe edges out Thedas. This game is so good that I'm imagining Inquisition's designs, concepts, and general level of polish being applied to Mass Effect. Bioware's latest is a class act. Can't wait for what's next.

Kat Bailey, Senior Editor

I had no expectations for Dragon Age: Inquisition going into my review. I had heard positive buzz, but after the bruising experience of Dragon Age II and the disappointment of Mass Effect 3, its fair to say that I had set my skepticism to maximum. Suffice it to say, it had a big mountain to climb to become my Game of the Year. But that's exactly what Dragon Age: Inquisition did.

Of all the games I've played this year, Dragon Age: Inquisition stands out to me the most for its balance of depth and excitement, its strong story, and its polish; the last of which has been so rare this year. BioWare is at their best here, deftly juggling various story elements and seamlessly weaving them into the overaching narrative, even as different players tackle them in different orders. And compared to previous games in the series, the world of Inquisition is huge, with many areas simply begging to be explored at length.

Once I finished off the Hinterlands and unlocked Skyhold, I was impressed by how much the world opened up. Once again, the Orlesian masque—in which the Inquisitor has to manage the expectations of high society while also slipping off to investigate a potential assassination attempt—is one of my favorite sequences of the year in the way that it drives home the politics and intrigue of the world of Dragon Age. And as the game progresses, the combat advances as well, matching the strategic sensibilities of the original game with the sort of fast-paced action that works well on console. The cherry on top is an underrated multiplayer mode that mixes elements of Dungeons and Dragons and Gauntlet, making it a perfect fit for the series.

Other games have been more ambitious (Destiny, Shadow of Mordor, and Elite: Dangerous come to mind), but Dragon Age: Inquisition stands out to me because it actually makes good on its ambitions. From Skyhold onward, it's a packed and incredibly enjoyable experience that imparts the palpable sense that the Inquisition is growing, and that you are a big reason why. I spent more than 50 hours with Dragon Age: Inquisition; but I wasn't burned out when I was finished—on the contrary, I wanted more. It's a beautiful, scrumptious RPG that is suited for gamers of all persuasions.

I think the best thing I can say about Dragon Age: Inquisition is that it has renewed my faith in BioWare, which had been badly shaken by the disappointments of the past few years. I didn't think they still had it in them to make an RPG of this scope and quality. I'm glad I was wrong.

Bob Mackey, Senior Writer

It's actually a bit of a relief to be writing my Game of the Year piece on Dark Souls, entirely because I'm running out of ways to praise the damned thing—curse the limitations of our inferior human language. If you haven't noticed, I've spent a significant amount of time writing about Dark Souls 2 this year for USgamer, and you've likely heard me hammer home the same points multiple times. So please excuse the following effusiveness if it seems familiar.

That said, I've played Dark Souls 2 more than any other game this year—and, discounting childhood obsessions like EarthBound and Final Fantasy VI, probably more than any game ever. If you count up the hours I spent with the PS3 review build, the PC version, all of the DLC, and my most recent sessions Skyping my way through the game with friends, Dark Souls 2 probably consumed more than 300 hours of my life this year. And yet, I feel that I've only scratched the surface in terms of content. While I've finished the game more than once, and all three chapters of the DLC—with the difficulty of those bosses, I consider that a true achievement—I still feel like I've only just begun exploring all of my options. Dark Souls 2 still contains plenty of mysteries to crack, spells to try out, weapons to wield, and armor to don, and, as with the last game, I don't see myself getting bored with it anytime soon.

Getting a sequel right can be especially tricky—especially when the original director isn't available—but FromSoftware really delivered with a sequel that's different enough from the original, but still contains everything that made the Souls series famous. And, at the risk of causing controversy, I'll go ahead and say that Dark Souls 2 could very well be a better game than its predecessor: the sticking points are less aggravating, and it's a generally more user-friendly game in ways that don't compromise the difficulty one bit. With their one-two-three combo of amazing RPGs this generation, I honestly feel like From improved the reputation of Japanese game development single-handedly. Whenever anyone scoffs at the idea this country's seemingly irrelevant output, you only need to point to the Souls series as evidence that the West still has some learning to do. When the well-crafted, impossibly huge RPG Dragon Age: Inquisition leaves me cold after 20 hours, the fact that I still have Dark Souls 2 cravings after my 300-hour investment means FromSoftware must be doing something right.