Death Bat's Top Five Video Games for 2014

for 2014 we had lots of new video games, including a revival of isometric RPGs, an uptick in the "survival horror" subgenre that includes "little or no way to survive and fight back" as an important component, a flood of incomplete Early Access titles on Steam that are all simply amazing if you are good at using your imagination to pretend like the games are anywhere near completion, and the usual AAA console releases which invariably do something that give the necessary wedge for the press and gaming crowd to call for their heads (looking at you, Ubisoft).

But this is a list of the five games I enjoyed the most in 2014, and which also more or less came out this year. It is my list, and it's what most impressed me:

#5. Marvel Heroes 2015 (PC)
Discovering this literally days before the end of the year, Marvel Heroes moved from a "game I have deliberately avoided due to the premise not sounding like a good idea" to a game I have to play every night, as often as I can. It's Diablo, in the Marvel Universe....and it works. My wife is hooked now too.

#4. The Elder Scrolls Online (PC)
Will it go F2P? Who knows. Is it the best MMORPG out there? YMMV vary but for me it very much is. The game manages to take the MMO framework and drape the interesting story elements and a facade of the Elder Scrolls feel on to what could have otherwise been just another fantasy MMO. We have too many of these, but TESO proved to be the one that let me comfortably delete all the rest. Except Guild Wars 2, I swear I'll figure that one out some day.

#3. The Last of Us Remastered (PS4)
The PS3 remastering on the PS4 of what is easily the best survival horror zombie game out there. Coupled with Naughty Dog's ability to tell a story and gameplay that manages to emphasize the survival and storytelling, this is the sort of game I love.

#2. Shadow Returns and Dragonfall (Android)
Wha....and isometric top-down turn-based RPG on my list??? I have to include these. The versions I've thrown myself into are on Android, and the comfort of these games with a tablet touch screen is an excellent experience (but get a larger screen or you'll never read the text). Of all the recent isometric RPGs to resurface or appear in definitive revised forms, these two new entries deserve the most accolades, I feel, both for the smooth gameplay and comfortable experience. Plus, both of these titles have prompted me to sit up and take notice of Shadowrun 5th edition.

#1. Destiny (PS4)
Gabe from Penny Arcade expresses his love of Destiny as well as I could and hits all the important points. This is a game with an almost eerie mythic poetry of violence, mystery, haunting exploration and then more violence. For those who have been engulfed by this game such as myself Destiny is almost a sort of cathartic event, and much like Marvel Heroes and TESO I find myself needing to get a session in as often as I can (I tend to rotate between these three games right now, but Destiny almost always gets at least one mission in each evening). Who knew a shooter could feel so good and be simultaneously so relaxing and so exciting? I want Destiny to grow into something big.

Honorable Mention: I have three of them, actually:

Dragon Age: Inquisition (PS4) - I have been so busy playing other stuff that DA:I hasn't properly been given a chance to grab me. I can see it, I can tell its what I want, but it hasn't captured my focus yet. Not sure why, I expect it will in 2015. Could possibly tie into my general burnout on fantasy as a genre, maybe? That doesn't explain my TESO obsession, though.

Sunset Overdrive (XB1) - this game is amazingly fun in a Saint's Row meets landscape grinding sort of way. It has immense potential, and is eminently playable. SO 2 will be the one that really pushes it in newer directions, I suspect. It's a good for Xbox One to have this as an exclusive.

Halo Master Chief Collection (XB1) - hardly worthy of a 2014 game of the year notice even for a simple not-for-profit private blog, but worth mentioning because it's keeping more than a decade of amazing gaming alive and reinvigorating Master Chief's tale for the current generation, while adding tons of additional (free) content (Spartan Ops went live recently, and word is ODST will be a free add-on soon too).

Halo: The Master Chief Collection

So the Halo Master Chief collection is out. It was a big part of motivating me to purchase an Xbox One at last. It's hard to review a game like this when all the associated titles are already well-known and played, but there's always some details worth mentioning:

First up the four Halo campaigns included are perfectly rendered, and do not feel in the least bit "off" as ports or anything. Halo 2 and Halo 4 stand out as the former has it's Anniversary Edition here with some cleaned up graphics that look even better than the Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary Edition's redesign (albeit not "next gen" better but still good). The new cut-scenes for Halo 2 are some of the best I've seen yet, not just for Halo but any game this year. Meanwhile Halo 4 just looks incredibly nice; it clearly was designed with plans to port and upgrade to the Xbox One.

Aside from the four campaigns there's apparently a ton of multi-player, none of which I've tried yet because I've been too focused on the single player content, and the stories about persistent matchmaking issues have made it easy to decide to wait for the patch on this. Missing from the release are the Spartan Ops missions from Halo 4, but I have been led to understand they will appear in December (whether as part of the core package or a DLC offering remains to be seen). My expectations are that the Spartan Ops missions, being part of Halo 4, had better be "core" and not something you purchase.

The regular multi-player had some connectivity issues for some, but apparently it was something 343 Industries could fix on the server side. Haven't experienced this myself yet (by simply avoiding multi-player) so couldn't tell you what that was all about. That said, MP fans will find that each iteration of the game comes with its own classic maps and mixes. The underlying MP engine is the same one that powered Halo 4's MP (I think, correct me if I'm wrong), but the thematics are tailored to your favorite iteration of the experience. I've never had a MP favorite, myself, so it's all equally interesting to me. Missing also from the mix are the survival modes which I don't think showed up in the series until Halo; Reach and Halo: ODST --which I sincerely hope get Xbox One upgrades next year.

There's also a "mix mode" where you can string together a cluster of missions from across all four Halo campaigns into a sort of "best of" play mode. Nice extra feature.

The first Halo Nightfall pilot is part of the deal, along with a new utility for delivering Halo-related content to your console., a sort of "Halo TV channel" feature with game videos, tips, music content and other stuff. If they add some Red vs. Green on there it will be well worth checking out.

Nightfall has two episodes out right now, and it's proving to be rather fun, albeit with the caveat that it's got the sort of low-key "feel" of a made-for-TV SF series with no-name actors and a need to stick to the budget (you know what I mean). That said, the FX are pretty good. The live gear is great, the attention to detail on weaponry and armor impeccable. The story focuses on a team of ONI*agents on a remote backwater colony which has apparently survived the Covenant purge that hit most Terran systems by the end of Halo 3. There is an ex-Spartan** who acts as the military commander for the colony (and apparently went AWOL when he was a Spartan) and they did manage to find a suitably burly fellow to play the role. There are a few interesting "new" elements added to the Halo canon...at least two alien races that are not Covenant, Forerunner, Precursor or Flood, and the story involves a "unique element" that is poisonous to humans only which appears to have been synthesized on a chunk of the original Halo ring that's slowly plunging into a distant sun. It has potential....although how long that will last is suspect since I heard the Xbox TV wing was axed recently.***

So is it worth it? If you're a Halo junkie like I am, absolutely. If you've never gotten into Halo before but want to try it out, this is the best bang for your buck. If you didn't like it before obviously this isn't going to change your mind.

*Office of Naval Intelligence. They are the CIA-style spooks of the Halo universe.

*If I had to guess I'd say he was a Mark II Spartan, one of the Spartans that were part of the program that predated Dr. Halsey's Spartan III program which focused on augmenting children.

***Leading to the untimely demise of the planned Deadlands series, unfortunately.

Halo 2 Anniversary Trailer

The Master Chief Collection is going to compile all four Halo titles featuring Spartan John 117, alias Master Chief. To date Halo 2 has been the rogue title, not updated for more contemporary consoles unlike the original Halo. Now...we've got the anniversary edition coming up, and 343 Studios unveiled a trailer for the Halo 2 revamp...and what a trailer! If these are all from the new in-game cut scenes (and it looks to me like they are) they really went out of their way to spice Halo 2 up. Impressive stuff....makes me that much more keen on seeing if the same quality of effects go into the forthcoming Halo: Night Fall TV series.

Microsoft acquires All the Gears of War

Story on Forbes here. Looks like Microsoft has secured Gears of War in its entirety as an exclusive IP now and forever, a smart move since GoW and Halo together are 99% of the reason many people (like myself) ever bothered with an Xbox 360. I can safely say that my Xbox One purchase will be tied to whichever of the next releases come out in these franchises....unless the next gen iterations of GoW are awful, which while theoretically possible (let's not forget the lesson of the Tomb Raider franchise over the last two decades) seems somehow unlikely to me.

I've quite enjoyed (well, sometimes) catching up on the Resistance and Killzone franchises on the PS3 and PS4 (Killzone Shadow Fall is a great game) but I'll be honest....the over-the-top space marine vs. aliens antics of Halo and "lost colony gears vs. monsters from the earth's core" themes of GoW have been a lot of fun for me over the years.