Look I have opinions! Top ten best games of 2014

           Thought you'd seen the last of me, eh? YOU THOUGHT WRONG.  I'm back, and I'm here to stay, for at least another couple days or so! Hah! Take that, remaining two people who remember this exists!

           So it turns out that it's hard to do a blog when you also have to work and do a thesis and learn about Irish literature, especially when you actually have to start writing the thesis and when you get to the Irish writers that decided being "easy to read" and "comprehensible" were overrated virtues in fiction.  Fortunately, my priorities remain solid: while I didn't find any time to write anymore rambling column-type things here, I did find time to play a bunch of video games! Now on the whole, 2014 was a pretty rotten year.  Some friends of mine have gone through some really shitty things this past year, America was reminded pretty rudely that our system remains racist, authoritarian, and willing to torture and kill innocents for almost no reason, and people responded to these revelations by putting those who caused the problems in the first place more firmly in power.  But in terms of video games, 2014 was actually a pretty solid year, if one focuses only on products and ignores the festering misogyny tearing the gaming community apart, through both craven executives refusing to accept the changing demographic landscape of the medium, and sociopathic trolls eager to drag anyone brave enough to question the status quo down into the muck.
           On second thought, 2014 was a shitty year all around.  Just in every area.  Dang.  But I'm already married to writing something so whatever.  There were video games in 2014.  I played some of them.  Here are the ones I liked.

Caveats

           I did not play every game that came out in 2014, because I have not yet figured out how to convince the genie living in my water bottle to give me a fourth wish.  So some stuff that would probably place pretty well on this list, like Hyrule Warriors or LittleBigPlanet 3, isn't here, because I didn't play it.  Also, I can't even count every game I did play, because some of them are technically games from previous years, but rebooted and polished up.  Pokémon Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire is an excellent example, and Binding of Isaac: Rebirth is one of the best games I played this year, but both start on such excellent foundations that it wouldn't be fair to the new guys.

Honorable Mention: Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker

           This one is pushing my "no remakes/reboots" rule a bit, because it's basically just DLC levels for last year's excellent Super Mario 3D World, but it has enough creativity and joy that I had to mention it somewhere.  This game definitely made me smile the most out of anything I played this year, both because it's really fun and engaging to play and because Captain Toad and (is this her rank? I don't know) First Lieutenant Toadette are among the cutest things Nintendo has ever produced.  Plus, having Toadette as a playable character for half of the game, despite her being a girl, is apparently a sheer triumph of programming technology.  With a fraction of the budget and manpower of the Assassin's Creed: Unity team, Nintendo managed to make all of those extra animations to have a girl character! They make it look so effortless, too, almost like it's something so easy that even a budget $40 game about mushrooms can have a girl character...

10.  Dragon Age: Inquisition

           If, four years ago, you had told me that a Dragon Age sequel where you could play as Qunari and judge goat-chuckers from the throne of your own customizable fortress would just barely beat a game about mushroom people in terms of being a good game, I'd probably nod reluctantly in agreement.  That's because 2011 was when Dragon Age II came out, a game that so clearly misunderstood what made Dragon Age: Origins amazing that I only played through it two times instead of five times.  Fortunately, Dragon Age: Apology does an adequate enough job of bringing back the customization, tactical combat, and exploration of Origins that I'll probably play it at least three times, once I have enough money that I won't need to leave the house to get food or go to work or have friends.  The game still suffers a bit from trying to be too many things whilst never fully mastering one; the combat, while engaging, is still simple and boring compared to Origins, and while the characters and writing are fleshed out enough to please Bioware dating-sim fans, limited romance and gender options unnecessarily hold the game back.  But I still got to fight dragons and spend as much time as I wanted trying to jump from a barrel to another barrel just out of jumping range as my companions watched on blankly, so I'm not complaining.

9.  Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

           Shadow of Mordor is what I like to call a "pointy game."  Not because the game revolves around pointy things (although it does, as about ninety percent of your interactions with the world are through introducing your three different kinds of pointy things to nearby living creatures) but because the quality of the game is "pointy," or specialized.  You know, like the ninja info cards from Naruto? Where it's, like, a hexagon of talent, and if one thing is way higher than the others it's pointy? No? Just read any given manga, you'll see.  Manga loves talent graphs.

           But yeah, Shadow of Orc Murder is a very pointy game.  Its story and characters are either bland (Talion the ranger is easily the most boring character in the game, and he's who you control almost all of the time) or ludicrous (Celebrimbor, the smith who forged the Ring of Power, is your stand,) and most of the gameplay is Arkham Creed II: Mordor Asylum.  But this game remains the best Lord of the Rings game of all time, because of the amazing "nemesis system," wherein every random orc is potentially a memorable rival character.  It's shocking how much more engaging fighting the same kind of orcs over and over again becomes when you give them a name, epithet, and exploitable weaknesses.  Shadow of Fuck Off Púg the Smelly is to date the only PS4 game I think actually required a console upgrade to exist; where others are content to just make the graphics slightly better and say "done, pony up sixty bucks plus four hundred for the new box," this game actually uses the improved horsepower to make something new and interesting.

8.  The Banner Saga: Chapter 1

           Why does nobody else give a shit about this game!? It's Fire Emblem crossed with Oregon Trail in viking times! It's so good! Ugh.  Tasteless clods.

           For those who didn't play this game, which is apparently everyone but four people, you missed out on one of the most brutal, harsh, unforgiving turn-based strategy/resource management games in years, which perfectly reinforces the themes of hopelessness and futility of the post-Ragnarok tale of survival.  In Banner Saga, you have to fight your absolute hardest for even the smallest victories, which makes them all the more satisfying, but your inevitable defeats and losses are severe enough that you don't feel like the gloomy attitudes of the game's characters are melodramatic.  You're right there with them.  Oh, also, the entire game looks like it was animated by Ralph Baskhi.  Good job buying Destiny instead of this, though.  We deserve whatever game happens to us next.

7.  Mario Kart 8

           Wait...could it be? Are the legends true? Is this a game without a colon in its title? At last! At long last, someone with the courage to just have a franchise name and a number! Huzzah! We are free! Send the excess punctuation to the tumbrels! Long live the number bourgeoisie!

           Good job on that, Nintendo, especially as it would have been so easy to call this one Mario Kart: F-Zero.  People who like F-Zero are probably mad that this game has finally completely cannibalized Nintendo's other racing franchise with its new anti-gravity tracks, but the sheer polish of this game, both in its tightly tuned mechanics and its jaw-dropping colorful visuals, prevents me from thinking too hard about stuff while I play it.  It's just fun.  Plus, Mario Kart: Mobius Strip has the single best use of a saxophone in a video game soundtrack in years.  That's got to be worth something.

6.  Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze

           Dang it.  I thought we were done.  Just as the revolution started, the terror began.  Couldn't this be called Donkey Kong Country Returns 2, or Donkey Kong Country Returns Again, or Donkey Kong Country Returns But It's a Bit Chilly Out? Oh well.  Name complaints aside, Tropical Freeze is the best 2D platformer Nintendo has made since Donkey Kong Country Returns, which is the best platformer they've made since Yoshi's Island.  The story is charming (tropical animals versus arctic/polar animals is a new idea for Donkey Kong,) the level design is fantastic, the difficulty is just right, the enemies and environments are diverse and imaginative, and almost nothing from the last game is re-used or rehashed, especially not the Godawful motion controls.  Plus, Nintendo not only shelled out the money to animate a girl monkey, but they animated an old man monkey too! And they add new mechanics to the game to boot! Wow, what a bunch of workhouses Nintendo are, and definitely not just doing the basics of good game design! Different kinds of characters should definitely be something special, and not the bare minimum to remain interesting! I love Ubisoft so much!

5.  Super Smash Bros Kerfuffle

           This game is not called Super Smash Bros Wii U.  That is a dumb name.  If Nintendo will not name this game correctly, than I will, and I'm naming it Super Smash Bros Kerfuffle.  If the next Smash game is named Super Smash Bros Kerfuffle, then I will come back and rename this one Super Smash Bros Tiff.  This is a settled issue.

           So my reasons for loving this game largely come down to the same Nintendo polish present in Mario Kart 8; the graphics are impeccable, the mechanics and controls are tight, the art style is amazing, and the sheer wealth of content on this version of Kerfuffle is astounding.  Event battles, crazy amounts of stages, bonus modes, the Skylanders-esque amiibo content that is rapidly destroying my finances, and the best multiplayer of 2014? Sold.  Also, just look at the image for this game.  The fact that this image exists is an absolute good in a year of a lot of absolute badness.  I sometimes look at that image when I'm feeling sad.  I need more amiibos.

4.  Dark Souls II

           Dark Souls II is the best game I love to scream frustratedly about.  Its level design is worse than the first Dark Souls, its health system is broken, it relies far too much on "guy in armor with a thing" as an enemy design, it relies far too much on its predecessor for its story and mythology, its multiplayer is too involved, and only in mechanical polish does it manage to outdo the first Dark Souls.  And yet, it's still head and shoulders above most of its competition, because despite all of these problems, Dark Souls II retains the incredibly satisfying, slow-paced exploration and combat of its predecessor, combined with enough variety and interesting settings to keep the player going when the game gets brutally difficult (which is often.)  It's just too bad it can't measure up to its phenomenal predecessor.  Or the other brutally difficult, mechanically flawless, secret-heavy fantasy game that came out this year...

3.  Shovel Knight

           The fact that this is a debut game for Yacht Club Games still floors me sometimes.  This is the very first thing this studio made, and it's arguably the best 2D platformer of all time.  That's astounding.  Shovel Knight takes the best parts of Dark Souls, Mega Man, Castlevania, and Mario, and blends them into one perfect, 16-bit package.  The controls are tight and responsive, the story is surprisingly powerful and perfectly integrated with the gameplay, the visuals and sounds are lush and charming, and you can jump infinitely on slime-beetles with your shovel.  Please buy this game.

2.  Bayonetta 2

           Right off of the bat: I'm torn about Bayonetta's portrayal in these games.  On the one hand, an overly sexualized female character being both an undisputed badass and consistently portrayed as fully in charge of her agency, teasing and reveling in her sexuality rather than being defined by it, is refreshing and pretty cool.  But on the other hand, I'm not a woman, and it feels a little hollow to say this game is empowering to women when I'm not one, and when several female voices in the gaming community have come out on either side of the issue with arguments more intelligent than mine.  In fact, most of the discussion about this aspect of the game has been by women, and I think that's for the best.  Too many pieces about the game by guys come off as arguing that Bayonetta 2 isn't sexist because they never popped a boner while playing it, and I don't think that's super helpful to a discourse.

           But nothing is going to stop me from gushing about the technical quality of this game.  This is another "best of genre" game, schooling everything from God of War to Ninja Gaiden to, yes, the first Bayonetta in terms of how to make an amazing modern beat-'em-up.  The movement and animations are perfect, exactly as fast and fluid as they need to be with no hiccups whatsoever, allowing you to focus on the action.  The visuals, from the environments to the weaponry to the enemy designs, are imaginative and varied, throwing new and interesting stuff at you at every turn.  The controls are perfect, not only the best in the genre but probably the best of any game I've ever played.  Launching a centaur-angel into the air with a giant demonic uppercut, then switching my four guns out for chainsaw swords and chainsaw rollerblades to juggle him, before switching back to the guns and triggering my super mode and slamming him back into the ground only to pummel him with JoJo combos before crushing him with a giant demoness headbutt should be difficult, but inputting combos is so fast and easy to learn that I can do that all of the time, and that's not even that good of a combo.  This game is like playing a cutscene from any other game, and not in the stupid David Cage way of playing cutscenes.  You actually play this game, and it plays better than just about any other game on the market.  Also, you get a bow named Kafka that shoots bug arrows.  It's sick.

Game of the Year: Bravely Default

           Bravely Default is a game that's so good, it pisses me off.  It's a game that reminds me of how good video games can be, and subsequently makes me angry when I think about how the rest of the video game industry is just wasting its time.  In a time where old-school, turn-based, find-the-crystal JRPGs are rare, here comes a beautiful, watercolor-styled game that elevates the genre to heights it hasn't seen since Chrono Trigger.  The battle system and jobs system make the normally boring grinding exciting and fun, and the boss fights really fun.  Switching constantly between defaulting on turns only to unload eight consecutive turns in one turn and managing traits, attribute growth, and job points is an absolute delight for fans of Square Enix's glory days.  On top of being beautiful and fun to play, Bravely Default also has an amazing, fleshed-out cast of characters and one of the best stories of any JRPG ever made.  I won't go too in-depth, but this game did with the JRPG genre what Bioshock did with shooters, or at least evoked similar feelings in me when I played it.  Bravely Default came out back in February, but even after almost a year nothing I played surpassed it.  It's amazing, it makes Square Enix's pathetic attempts to live up to the name of Final Fantasy all the more depressing and infuriating, and it's utterly unlike anything else to come out this year.  Buy it, and when Final Fantasy XV comes out, just buy this game a second time instead.  Be the change I want to see in the world.

           So that's our show, I guess.  Maybe I'll do a thing about movies or books in the next few days.  Until then, have a happy New Year, or at least a less crummy year than the last one.