Im going to focus on a Top Six this year.
In descending order:
6. Alien: Isolation ; A nail-biting nightmare simulator, given weight by the all-too-real audio design, exacting faithfulness to the first films look and feel, and deliberative pacing.
I havent finished this game, and I hear it grows a bit long in the tooth by the end
but what I have played is so memorable and plays so well that it deserves to be celebrated. (
UPDATE JAN. 11: Finished game: Perfect length and pacing.)
This is true survival horror
or perhaps stalker horror is the better term. I say that because fighting is strongly discouraged. Firing your revolver to defend against the looters and synthetics is like ringing a dinner bell for the invincible alien prowling the ductwork and stalking the halls. Once that creature is rushing your way, youll be hard-pressed to elude it.
As Amanda Ripley, a strong female lead with equally strong writing and voice acting, your best bet is to stay hidden. You can crouch-walk, smoothly and silently. You can lean left and right to peek around corners, and push up to peek over walls. You can slide under desks and gurneys, and take refuge in lockers, holding your breath and leaning back to avoid detection. There are vents in the floor and wall to bypass enemies and obstacles. You can sprint, but this creates noise. Your motion sensor also creates noise, so youll only want to use it sporadically, to dial in on the location of the alien, or to find your next objective. Likewise, your flashlight provides illumination at the risk of exposing yourself.
You can distract enemies with flares and noisemakers, or by striking the wall with your wrench. You can stun enemies with flash-bangs, or assault them with pipe bombs. There are many tools to craft from the supplies you collect, provided you have the blueprints to build them. Then there are the hacking mini-games, quick and fun; the ability to rewire systems to create diversions or open alternate paths; and the light detective work of searching computer files and listening to audio tapes for pass codes and clues.
All of this provides focus amid the stark horror of a monster that can appear anywhere at any time. The alien is presented with great theatricality, unspooling from ceiling vents and slowly standing on its legs, its silhouette instantly recognizable. The alien is menacing, but if youre moving slowly and blocking its line of sight, it wont notice you, allowing for all kinds of too-close-for-comfort moments where its tail drags past as you cower under a table, or where you crouch-walk around a sofa as it circles the opposite side. With any luck, itll return to the vents. Then the thudding sounds overhead, once so dreadful, become a source of relief as your cue to keep moving.
The sound deserves a special note of praise. Corridors creak, pipes hiss, computers clatter and whirr, and given the players paranoid state, its easy to misconstrue it all as the alien. Of course, sometimes it
is the alien. And in this handsomely crafted landscape of flickering lights, slate-like shadows, sparking wires and cascading mist, youre never sure what youll find when you turn a corner, your heart in your throat with every step you take. In so many ways, ALIEN: ISOLATION is a masterwork of suspense.
5. Shovel Knight ; An irresistible platformer with controls and mechanics that are a seamless extension of the mind, and a pervasive sense that the entire game was made with the warmest, deepest and most sincere love for games.
I usually ignore indie titles with retro-style graphics, because they're a dime a dozen and usually don't match the gameplay of the era they're trying to evoke. I'm glad I made an exception with SHOVEL KNIGHT. Not only did this game make my Game of the Year list, but I loved it so much on WiiU that I bought it again on 3DS, and I haven't ruled out possible Steam and PS4 purchases, as well. It's one of those "pure joy" games you want to always be available.
Of all the games on this list, SHOVEL KNIGHT is the one that most immediately clicked with me. From the moment you take control and start running left to right, trouncing enemies with pixel-perfect pogo bounces on your trusty shovel, everything just feels
right. The controls are always reliable, inspiring confidence to be cavalier with your shovel swings, your quick-pivot turns, your wild leaps of faith over spikes and bottomless pits, whipping out the spade to bounce with pinpoint precision from one floating bubble to another. And as I explained in my analysis of the first level,
SHOVEL KNIGHT organically teaches you everything you need to know, simply by letting you have fun and follow each screen to its intuitive end.
The presentation is endlessly charming, personality bursting from the witty writing and idle animations of each NPC. The chiptune music gets me pumped for adventure. And then there are the lushly illustrated backdrops that give each area an undeniable atmosphere, the self-imposed technical limitations sparking the imagination in ways I had thought were lost to time. It's not nostalgia, either, since I have no attachment to the 8-bit era, only a deep respect for the conventions it established, and that are polished here to a brilliant sheen, while still offering its share of forward-thinking concepts, such as the Dark Souls-like risk-reward element of dropping your loot where you fall in battle, and having one shot to retrieve it, or the way you can destroy checkpoints for extra treasure, at the risk of respawning earlier in the level if you're defeated.
If SHOVEL KNIGHT released in the '80s, it'd be revered the same way MEGA MAN is today. It's always special when you play a game you know is a timeless classic. This is one of those games.
4. Mario Kart 8 ; A smooth-as-silk arcade racer, jubilant in its candy-coated presentation, with immaculate handling, genius track design, and the best balance in series history.
At the core of MARIO KART 8 is drifting, sometimes called the power slide. Hard to describe in words, but as intuitive as riding a bicycle once learned, the maneuver has you hugging tight corners and hairpin turns without losing speed, building boost power that increases in intensity the longer you drift. Within that drift, you can angle in or out, and the boost kicks in once you release the drift, launching you forward. Its like firing an arrow, each drift drawing the bowstring taut, allowing racers to slingshot around corners with power and precision.
When youre not drifting, youre tricking off changes in track elevation, a well-timed hop resulting in a speed boost. Characters ram into one another, trying to knock each other off the track. And of course, it wouldnt be Mario Kart if the items werent there. MARIO KART 8 has the best balance in the series, a healthy mix of offensive and defensive items, including a new item that finally allows the racer in first place to defend against Spiny Shells. Yet with the removal of item hoarding, holding onto any one item carries a new kind of risk. It is a change for the best.
While the roster has some dubious choices, the playable debut of all seven Koopalings secures MARIO KART 8 as the installment with the best characters to date. Pixar-esque animation and art direction brings the entire lineup to life with a wide variety of contextual expressions that make the new replay feature a riot to watch, as seen with the memetic Luigi Death Stare.
But the real characters are the tracks themselves. The emphasis on gorgeous visuals and musical bombast makes each track arresting from an audiovisual standpoint. The game is bursting with color, spectacularly lit, and dense with detail. The glider and underwater sections return, but its the addition of antigravity that ties them together so elegantly, allowing for wildly imaginative tracks like Shy Guy Falls, where you hurtle up the face of the first waterfall in anti-gravity, round the U-shaped boardwalk at the top, and then shoot down the face of the second waterfall, before gliding off a launch ramp and into a mine shaft. These tracks combine inventive layouts with world-building that clearly loves the source material.
Battle Mode is a bit weak, but thats OK, because racing on the 32 tracks (now 40 tracks with the first round of DLC, and soon to be 48) never gets old, not when the gameplay is this addictive. The handling is fine-tuned to perfection, the item distribution is more thoughtful than ever, and the tracks are a blast to play. Coupled with the polished performance and presentation,
MARIO KART 8 is the best arcade racer yet.
3. Bayonetta 2 ; A madcap whirlwind of exhilarating moves and super-satisfying feedback, shuttling the player from one over-the-top set-piece to another, hitting a high plateau early on, but never slipping off it.
When I think of BAYONETTA 2, I think of many satisfying moments. Like shattering armor with swings from a massive hammer, and cratering a centaur before spanking its hindquarters... Or chewing through the torso of an angel with chainsaws strapped to my feet, the orange glow of each strike conveying the searing heat of the toothy bands... Or firing off bus-sized beetles from a bow with wasp-like wings, plowing into my enemies and pushing them backwards in a splash of crackling green energy... Or flipping through the air and reeling in enemies with thorny whips that lash out from my feet, mid-flip, before slamming them to the ground, a streak of hot pink tracing the arc of each swing... The list goes on and on.
What makes each action so much fun is the immediacy of control, the brisk snappiness of each animation, and the way each kick, punch and sword swing is accentuated by the heroine's lanky limbs, by the comet trail of color that follows each move as it cuts the air. Then there's the weighty shudder of each enemy as they absorb the impact, staggering in the right way at the right time. Through some miraculous feat of engineering, the camera manages to capture all of the action, framing it such that you're close enough to feel the hard-hitting action (something lost with the distance of THE WONDERFUL 101), yet far enough away that you have a handle on what's around you (something that was a struggle for METAL GEAR RISING). The degradation of the enemies as you whittle down their armor adds to the sense of progress. And as they attack, the moves of these monsters are telegraphed by tells that are quick but clean, allowing you to read them and dodge accordingly.
And oh, the fights you'll have! Nearly every monster from BAYONETTA 1 returns, supplementing a menagerie of all-new monsters, including angels that continue the "living cathedral" motif, as well as demons that contrast the angels gilded armor and fleshy sinew with sharp, angular bodies made of metal. Each creature brings something to the table, and it's impressive how the game introduces them before mixing and matching them in different ways, testing your skills under a variety of circumstances.
You'll find yourself standing sideways on the rosetta window of a cathedral, or circumnavigating a rapidly ascending globe, SUPER MARIO GALAXY-style, or free-falling down a tower and continuing the brawl underwater. The first level has you fighting atop jets hurtling through the skies. The fourth level has gigantic monsters fighting in the background, mirroring the fight in the foreground between Bayonetta and her rival. Some fans took issue with the final battle, which doesn't manage to eclipse several that came before (to be fair,
what could), but mechanically it is a more engaging fight than the battle that closed out the first game.
Speaking of which, the entire game of BAYONETTA 1 is included in the same package, optimized for WiiU with v-sync, making it the definitive edition. And that's
before you get to extras like the Nintendo-themed costumes. Playing both games makes it clear how the sequel improves the formula in all the right ways, from streamlined pacing to the reduced number of genre shifts, making those asides shorter and more intuitive to play. While I'm not sure whether I prefer BAYONETTA 2 to METAL GEAR RISING as my favorite in this genre, there is no doubt
this is one of the best values in gaming, and one of the best action games, period.
2. Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze ; A richly detailed romp through the most dynamic stages in platformer history, the player propelled along by tight design, visceral mechanics, and a spectacular score by David Wise.
I can't talk about TROPICAL FREEZE without gushing about the soundtrack by David Wise. This man composed the soundtrack of my childhood, from DONKEY KONG COUNTRY 2 to DIDDY KONG RACING. But it's not about nostalgia, since in my experience, many non-gamers will stop and go, "What is that? It sounds amazing!" I mean,
listen to this, and then
listen to this, and then
listen to this. Three tracks from an OST of more than 70 songs that change with the ebb and flow of the events onscreen. TF could have sailed to the top of my list on the strength of its soundtrack alone, but put it in the context of everything else, and you have pure ecstasy.
That "everything else" includes sumptuous artwork, full of vibrant color and oodles and oodles of detail... Buoyant animation, imbuing each character with real heart and soul... Striking sound design, especially the deep-bass *BOP* when you bounce off an enemy, conveying the physicality of an 800-pound gorilla bounding through the jungle... And of course, the gameplay. The rhythm and flow of TF is unmatched in platformers. DK's barrel roll allows him to launch himself forward at a moment's notice, firing into the air like a cannonball. He is weighty and powerful, yet nimble and precise. And he is let loose in stages that are arguably the real star of the show.
These stages are ripe with spectacle, and the spectacle is wed directly to the design of the layouts. They crumble and collapse and collide in real time, exploding and imploding in carefully orchestrated chaos, one chain reaction after another. The shifting landscape produces new footing on the fly. In the level "Fruity Factory," a saucer-shaped slice of fruit is expelled from a whirling blender below, and lingers in the air just long enough for DK to roll-jump across it. There are many moments like this, threaded into the fabric of each stage as though it were the most effortless thing in the world.
Each stage is a self-contained adventure, with a beginning, middle and end. The progression of each stage is amazing to behold, events spilling from the background to the foreground and vice versa, often hitting a crescendo as DK reaches the end. One stage, "Frantic Fields," begins on the Savannah during a storm, DK and his trusty rhino plowing through the wind-whipped grassland as lightning bolts scorch the ground at their feet. Before you know it, you've been swept up into a sky-high tornado, where the level proceeds across airborne rocks and uprooted trees, dodging goats on the breeze as you work your way to the eye of the storm. This extends to the sense of progression from level to level, with the storm in "Frantic Fields" setting up the raging wildfire of the next stage, "Scorch 'N Torch."
Reaching each goal barrel can be a real challenge. Many of these gauntlets require a laser-like focus, quick reflexes, nerves of steel, and intuitive skill to overcome. But the game is always fair, clearly telegraphing everything. Combined with the craftsmanship of the stages, and the audiovisual storytelling, the challenge of TF feels far more meaningful than something like, say, SUPER MEAT BOY. There is a real sense of adventure to the proceedings wild and unabated. One of the most wonderful titles on WiiU, or any platform in 2014.
1. The Evil Within ; Shinji Mikami returns to the horror genre with an intensely memorable, perfectly paced, and amazingly varied tour de force of simmering suspense and punishing encounters. A masterful balance of tension and release, the title has its share of controversial elements, but is far more than the sum of its parts.
Remember the end of the movie RUSH HOUR 2, where the girl from CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON walks in with the bomb? And Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker have to jump out the window, while Chris Tucker screams, "Crazy-ass biiiiiiiiiiiitch!" Well, I was Chris Tucker during every scene with Laura, a shrieking spider-woman in
THE EVIL WITHIN.
Laura is a
ghastly apparition, naked except for ballet flats, covered from head to toe in horrific burns. Her face is obscured by long black hair (a Japanese horror staple), and her four arms end in cruel claws. But what gets me is the way she moves. She is wild and erratic, clambering up and down walls, scurrying along the floor on six limbs. If she grabs you, you're done. And you face her multiple times! I was so on edge that I would shout "oh shit oh shit oh shit" whenever she drew near. While running from her, I'd find myself belting out folk tunes, trying to keep my cool. When I finally escaped, I realized I was out of breath.
Laura is an incredibly unnerving and memorable monster, in a game FULL of unnerving and memorable monsters. Any one of these bosses could have been the focus of its own horror game, but in TEW, they all weave together in the tapestry of one grand adventure. It's everything I wanted from Shinji Mikami's return to survival horror and action horror, and a modern-day masterpiece that many overlooked due to a mixed reception.
To be fair, the mixed reception was partly justified. The console versions had performance issues before the patch. I played on PS4, post-patch, and felt the framerate was solid -- slight wavering, but no significant drops. And I saw only one instance of texture pop-in. Some people accuse the game of "jank," but it's mainly limited to a couple "gamey"-looking animations (opening doors, smashing crates -- holdovers from RE4), and sometimes the matches don't light enemies on fire. But the game is perfectly playable.
As for the controversial black bars and camera zoom while aiming, I didn't mind. In hindsight, I think they actually heightened the tension. The black bars created blind spots that forced me to take my eyes off certain bosses while turning cranks, pulling levers and shooting switches, causing a mental egg-timer to go "tick tick tick," knowing I had to move fast or I'd get killed in one hit by an enemy I knew was coming, but could not see.
Everything else is straight-up amazing. It is extraordinarily rare in any year (let alone 2014) to have a AAA horror game of such length and variety. Like RE4, the game is beautifully paced from start to finish, consistently introducing new elements and layering them together in increasingly complex ways, in levels that allow for many different approaches. The game has just the right mix of tight corridors and open spaces, of multi-tiered rooms and passages with blind corners and deviously placed traps. The game trades off in equal measure between eerily silent breathers where you can sponge up the environmental detail and ambiance, and high-pressure endurance tests where everything is out to get you. It's a thrill ride that understands the dramatic contrast of ups and downs, of panicky peaks and contemplative valleys.
Every now and then, there's a "palate cleanser" that takes a dramatic detour from the usual mode of gameplay. These are fun and refreshing when they occur. Then it's back to simmering suspense as you sneak around, disarming and setting up traps, scrounging up supplies, and trying to pick off your enemies... or hiding in closets or under beds and tables as invincible foes search for you... or trying to keep space between you and a chainsaw-wielding maniac, or a man with a vault for a head, or a slithering tentacled monstrosity ... or barely surviving throngs of enemies, scraping by with crudely improvised tactics, using every last bullet or bomb at your disposal.
Therein lies the difference between TEW and RE4 -- and the greatest strength of TEW: You're capable,
but just barely. Ammo is so scarce in this game that no matter how carefully you play, your guns will often be empty. The most ammo I ever had was 20 bullets in my pistol; usually I had two or three bullets per gun. And the game is punishing to the point of being grueling at times. While RE4 empowers the player with a roundhouse kick that knocks back six people at once, your melee here does pitiful damage and barely budges enemies. Many foes can kill the player in one hit, and the strongest enemies are
relentless in their pursuit. They inspire panic, which makes it hard to keep a clear head while trying to navigate their arenas, avoid traps and manipulate switches. I must have failed some bosses 20+ times.
But you know what? It's exhilarating. The adrenaline rush of confronting these horrors, and the satisfaction of overcoming them, is rivaled only by Demon's Souls and Dark Souls.
You go through battles feeling like this:
And you come out feeling like this:
As I said in
my analysis of the game's balance, TEW asks a lot of the player, but is always fair. The game's difficulty scales perfectly to character upgrades, and the game provides just the right amount of everything. I'm endlessly fascinated by how Shinji Mikami keeps the player in this precarious position of vulnerability the entire game. The laser-focused difficulty curve is served well by tight mechanics and smart level design. And then there's the immersion, thanks to the sublime audio and art direction, the story intrigue, and atmosphere so thick you could cut it with a knife. This game transported me to settings and scenarios I will never forget, and elicited the most exquisite emotions with harrowing gameplay that required both skill and cunning.
Games like this come by only once in a great while.
All things considered, THE EVIL WITHIN is my Game of the Year 2014.