2014 - Best Video Game You Played This Year!

[prfsnl_gmr]

2014 VIDEO GAME SUPERLATIVES!

We already have an excellent thread discussing the best games of 2014, but what about all the other games you played this year? Which do you consider the very best? Which do you consider the very worst?

In this thread, you should nominate* a game you played this year for each of the following categories:

Best Video Game

Worst Video Game

Most Challenging Video Game

Most Fun Video Game

Prettiest Video Game

You should also include one or two miscellaneous categories of your choosing (such as "Most Fanservice" or "Game Featuring the Most Doors Needed to be Opened").

You can nominate games regardless of release date, and you can nominate any game you played this year regardless of whether you "beat" it!

The MOST IMPORTANT THING, however, is to include a one- of two-sentence justification for your nomination so that we can all have fun discussing the nominees.



* We won't actually be voting on anything!

[laurenhiya21]

What's the difference between "Best Video Game" and "Most Fun Video Game"? I usually consider a game to be the best if I had the most fun with it, so I'm not seeing the difference I guess ha...

[Exhuminator]

2014 for moi...

Best Video Game
Final Fantasy Tactics - First time I ever played it was this year. Played the PS1 version hacked to have the PSP version's translation. Awesome, awesome game. Only barely beat Front Mission 4 for my pick o' the year.

Worst Video Game
999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors - An overrated pile of drivel. People who think this game has an amazing story need to read good books and watch deeper anime.

Most Challenging Video Game
Etrian Odyssey Untold - On expert this game makes SMT: Nocturne seem casual.

Most Fun Video Game
Sonic Colors - A total blast to play with shiny graphics and happy techno music make ya gotta go fast.

Prettiest Video Game
Monument Valley - It is minimalism done in pure brilliance.

Most Fanservice
Conception 2 - Jiggly bits and exposed derrières and pantsu oh my!

Most Doors Needed to be Opened
999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors - Not that many doors but you have to replay the game over and over so eventually you open a helluva lotta doors man.

[prfsnl_gmr]

What's the difference between "Best Video Game" and "Most Fun Video Game"? I usually consider a game to be the best if I had the most fun with it, so I'm not seeing the difference I guess ha...

For me, there is a distinction between games I recognize as being very good, and games that I enjoy. I usually enjoy very good games, but not always. Likewise, there are some games that I recognize as not being very good that I nonetheless enjoy immensely.

That said, the distinction is whatever you want it to be! Go crazy!

[laurenhiya21]

What's the difference between "Best Video Game" and "Most Fun Video Game"? I usually consider a game to be the best if I had the most fun with it, so I'm not seeing the difference I guess ha...

For me, there is a distinction between games I recognize as being very good, and games that I enjoy. I usually enjoy very good games, but not always. Likewise, there are some games that I recognize as not being very good that I nonetheless enjoy immensely.

That said, the distinction is whatever you want it to be! Go crazy!

Hm... Still not sure I get it, but I'm sure I'll think of something.

[Snatch1414]

Best Video Game
Titanfall: Still have no idea why this game is struggling. I thought I was done with multiplayer shooters until I tried this game.

Worst Video Game
Strike Suit Zero: Got this one free on Xbox One and thank god I did. A soulless game that just begs to be turned off.

Most Challenging Video Game
1001 Spikes: Another XBLA game. Hard for the sake of being hard, ridiculously so in my opinion. Not a big fan.

Most Fun Video Game
Project X Zone: Amazing roster of characters from three big publishers. Great visuals. The gameplay is bland for a strategy game, but you won't care. A must own for a certain section of gamers.

Prettiest Video Game
Sunset Overdrive: Tentative pick here but I think the color palette and art style blend together very well.

Biggest Letdown/Overrated
999: 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors: And no, I'm not nominating it because someone already mentioned it above. Literally the first game I thought of when handing out good/bad awards. This is basically "Escape The Room" on addictinggames.com with a ton of text to read, and no music behind said text. Just silence while you read. Sorry, didn't like it.

[laurenhiya21]

Wow... When making this I realized that I've played hardly any retro games this year (not that I have many to begin with ._.) Oh well, I played a lot of fun games this year, and that's what counts.

Best Video Game
Atelier Ayesha: Alchemist of Dusk - The combination of great characters, fun battles, godly music, and an interesting alchemy system make this my favourite game of all time Only downside is that it makes me want to play every game in the series...

Worst Video Game
Eleusis - Unless you enjoy walking around looking at the terrible textures and rain, this game is just plain awful.

Most Challenging Video Game
The Last of Us - I played on easy and still kept on dying over and over and over… Stupid not-zombies.

Most Fun Video Game
Fairy Bloom Freesia - Bouncing enemies around the screen like a pinball feels so good

Prettiest Video Game
Frogatto & Friends - So much love and care was put into the pixel art, it makes me sad that hardly anyone has heard of it...

Most Interesting Video Game
Analogue: A Hate Story - Finding out what happened to an abandoned space colony by digging through a bunch of logs and talking with the AI doesn’t sound that great, but it turns out be be an interesting, but dark, read. Not something I’ve seen done before so I quite enjoyed it.

Most Overrated Game
ICO - I liked the interaction between Ico and Yorda, but I didn’t really feel that it was amazing like I’ve heard many people say. I don’t regret playing it or anything, just didn’t feel it was anything special.

[prfsnl_gmr]

Here are my picks for 2014!

Best Video Game
The Wolf Among Us - This is a perfect adventure game. The characters and setting are well-realized; the plot is compelling; and as a fan of detective fiction and film noir, I absolutely loved it. (Runner-Up: Wario Land: Shake It! - This game is the best in the "Wario Land" series and arguably the best 2D platformer on the Nintendo Wii.)

Worst Video Game
Ys III: Wanderers from Ys - I am a fan of the Ys series, but the SNES version of this game is archaic and almost completely broken. Both the levelling progression and hit detection are awful.

Most Challenging Video Game
R-Type Delta - This legendary shmup is delightfully punishing. I love it, but I just cannot get through it...yet. I plan on making another run at it in 2015. (Runner-Up: Nectaris: Military Madness - In this excellent turn-based military strategy game, your forces are always hopelessly outnumbered. Moreover - and while it is not the greatest strategist - the computer will not make a tactical error. Accordingly, one miscalculation is often the difference between victory and defeat.)

Most Fun Video Game
Hotline Miami - I loved every minute of this exceptionally violent game, and no other game this year has made me quite as happy as Hotline Miami. (Runner-Up: South Park: The Stick of Truth - I have never laughed so hard at a video game, and it is easily the best South Park "episode" in a decade.)

Prettiest Video Game
Puppeteer - The "incredibly elaborate puppet show" art direction in this delighful platformer is astounding, and it is easily the best-looking game I played this year. (Runner-Up: 3D Dot Game Heroes - There is still nothing out there quite like it, and the upscaled "8-bit" visuals still look spectacular.)

Biggest Surprise
Nervous Brickdown - This intense Nintendo DS "hidden gem" is Breakout's ultimate form, and for me at least, it was a serious contender for "best" game of the year. (Runner-Up: Alien Chaos 3D - My hopes for this budget 3DS game were quite low, and I was shocked to discovery that it was an incredibly fun Metal Slug-inspired arena shooter.)

Game My Children Enjoyed Watching the Most
Puppeteer - This beautiful game was a huge hit with my children, and they begged me to play it every evening after work. (Runner-Up: Thomas Was Alone - For some reason, my children were entranced by this simple game, and they were very emotionally-invested in its moving story.)

[bmoc]

Game My Children Enjoyed Watching the Most
Puppeteer - This beautiful game was a huge hit with my children, and they begged me to play it every evening after work.

Same here. My son absolutely loved watching me play it. He also liked watching Ni No Kuni.
Minor Ni No Kuni plot spoiler:

Sometimes I would let him fly the dragon around which he found to be endless fun.

[Nemoide]

(I'm saying a game can only count for one category: otherwise Dragon Quest VIII would be best, prettiest, and most fun.)

Best Video Game
Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King (PS2) - I love the Dragon Quest series SO MUCH and this was definitely a worthy entry. The jump to 3D was really done well and the game constantly held my interest for the 80-or-so hours it lasted. I loved it!

Worst Video Game
Redux: Dark Matters (DC) - Wow a Kickstarter-backed Dreamcast game released this year! Wow... it's actually the same as Dux but the "enhanced" graphics actually look CONSIDERABLY WORSE. WHAT WHERE THEY THINKING??? At least there's a new level... except that level is terribly designed and I'm pretty sure the final boss is impossible. I played it enough to be able to breeze through all the earlier levels without dying but THAT FINAL BOSS. The earlier levels are kind of bland/so-so shmup fare but the graphics are so much worse than earlier versions of the game! And it was seriously misrepresenting itself on Kickstarter. BOO ON IT.

Most Challenging Video Game
Global Defense (SMS) - I'm going based on how fundamentally difficult the game is because I played multiple games I'll never beat and it's heard to figure what's really the most challenging - this one is really an odd shmup! It's basically if Missile Command was a horizontal-scrolling space-shooter: you can move crosshairs to shoot explosions anywhere on the screen but you also need to move your ship at times. Since there's only one D-pad, you need to hold down a button when you want to move your ship or else you just move the crosshairs. I suspect that I'll be able to beat it with practice but the core mechanic of the game make it PRETTY CHALLENGING. I wish I had a second player to try playing it that way: one person moves the the ship, the other person aims.

Most Fun Video Game
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (GCN) - I'm not much of a huge Zelda fan: Zelda II was long my favorite of the series. But I really thought this game was great. Even though it's longer than the earlier Zelda titles and some folks think it's bloated, I consistently had fun while playing it and loved exploring different aspects of the game. I'm also not the kind of player who goes for 100% so I never felt weighed down by not having enough heart containers or anything. It's definitely the EASIEST Zelda I've played but it kept me engaged.

Prettiest Video Game
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies (3DS) - PHOENIX IN THREE-DEE! This is a totally solid entry in the series and I loved it. Also the extra-ridiculous DLC chapter has some super-amusing designs.

Most Over-the-Top-Ridiculousness
Soreyuke! Burunyan-man Portable (PSP) - OH MAN THIS IS MY KIND OF SILLY GAME. It's a shmup where you play as a cat who puts on some magical bloomers which turn her into BURUNYAN-MAN (Buru = bloomers, nyan = meow, man = superhero/superman) and she goes in search of tuna, with all the villains being mice and CUTE MOUSEGIRLS that are named after different types of cheese. Plus it has an awesome soundtrack with a number of songs with vocals!
And it's a lot of fun! Easily the most substantial/fun shmup I played this year. It's not for everyone since it depends on a tolerance of super-sexualized character designs (including lolicon designs) but it's nothing explicit and I found it amusing!

Most Overwhelming Ick Factor
Corpse Party (PSP) - ugh. UGH. Guys I've played hentai games. I'm used to experiencing gross stuff in games. But this game really didn't sit right with me. The game is trying to be super-edgy but just comes across as GROSS. Like a cut-scene showing off a girl's panties as she is choking to death and going insane. Or the fact that the main guy's little sister has to pee is a recurring plot point. IT'S GROSS. There's nothing fun about the sexualization of the characters in this game.