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).

Marvel Heroes 2015

Work has consumed an unhealthy chunk of my time (along with holiday cheer and what-not) so I thought I'd mention one of the few "Steam Sale finds" I actually spent money (and timee) on in the last week or so: Marvel Heroes 2015.

On the surface Marvel Heroes 2015 appears to be a Diablo clone with Marvel Universe setting and characters instead of the usual swordsmen, sorcerers and ornery demons and angels. This impression would not be wrong. In fact, the top reason I have avoided this game up to now was the (misguided) impression that I wouldn't enjoy a game where you play iconic Marvel heroes in a isometric top-down Diablo-style game, including loot drops and everything. It just seemed so...ARPGish, a terrible mesh for the "deeper" storytelling experience I generally think I want out the comic hero genre. It's a tricky angle to take: I am not all that fond of the Arkham line of Batman titles, for example, becase as fun as they can be and as great as the story moments are, they ultimately feel like a glorification of the least interesting elements of the Batman mythology, the stuff usually glossed over in the comics themselves: Batman walking around (or swinging around) Gotham beating up nameless thugs. Lots of this, puncuated by moments of cool, seem to drive the Arkham games.

Marvel Heroes 2015, being an ARPG, is all about the action and there is probably more thug-bashing going on in the first two chapters of the game than in the entire Arkham series, but somehow it "gells" better. Probably because slaughtering Hydra agents or AIM scientists in Marvel Heroes is accomplished with great rapidity and style thanks to quick combat thematics (in the Diablo tradition) and a plethora of levelable character abilities that lend to increasingly devastating levels of mayhem. This means than you get more bang for your punch and also more "plot"  for your time investment.

Make no mistake, though....the plot in Marvel Heroes is wafer thin compared to a spectacle like Dragon Age: Inquisition or even the Machiavellian mayhem of the comics themselves, but anyone who's got even a passing familiarity with the Marvel Universe in its contemporary state will recognize exactly where this game is coming from and appreciate the care with which it manages to transport the lore of Universe 616 into an action RPG experience.

If you already enjoy games like Diablo III or Torchlight II then really Marvel Heroes 2015 is a no-brainer. If you happen to love the Marvel Universe lore as well then its an even more delectable experience. You can forgive it for some minor "glitches" as these are probably all deliberate oversights for which planned additional content will fill in the gaps later. Playing the Eddie Brock Venom for example (I fully expect the Flash Thompson Venom to be an available skin in the future), or the absence of Mr. Green from the current Marvel Now Hulk in favor of the "Hulk armor" era of the character from a year or two earlier. These are minor quibbles.....a lot of the game's revenue comes from selling you alternate character costumes, so I am sure these will pop up eventually.

The monetization process for Marvel Heroes 2015 is to get you to play one hero for free (with a smattering of additional starter heroes you can play to level 10 without cost), then give you enough in-game special currency to pick up a second hero. At that point they have four angles to snag money from you: first is more heroes, for those who can't just play two. Second is team-ups, the in-game term for hirable NPC mercenaries, second rate hero options to provide support to your main (you can have Domino as Wolverine's backup, for example). Third is alternate costumes, in which you can pick the favorite skin for your character; these often come with specific additional flavors (see Superior Spider-Man vs. regular flavor Spidey for an example). The final option is power-ups, which come in the form of various random items from "card purchases" that give you everything from additional characters and costumes to (much more frequently) XP, item and currency boosts. They keep you tempted with daily rewards, too.

None of that is necessary....you can level two heroes at no cost to level 60 cap without much effort. It will, however, probably become something you want. The pricing is a bit extravagant, but the sale prices (at least right now on Steam and in the shop) are 1/2 off so I took full advantage of the discounts. Like most in-game shops the pricing is set to "too much" with the expectation that they will drive sales with special deals, at least that's what it looks like to me. Are these purchases worth it when the sales aren't active? I think if you feel comfortable sticking to 2-3 characters and a few "card" purchases you can spend $5-10 a month on this game without feeling in the least bit guilty. Me....I've got a feeling I'll be enjoying this title for a good long while, so I plan to level more than a few to cap.

Look for docfuturity on Daredevil, Moon Knight, Deapool, Hulk and others if you stop in. Trust me when I say that if you are into Marvel and Diablo-style games, you can't go wrong here. The price of admission is just right, but if you get in and want to actually spend money, I doubt you'll feel bad about it.