Top Ten Games of 2014

Since I've started this blog I've posted my top ten games of the year in text format. I'm going to continue doing that, but this year I also recorded a podcast where I discuss each choice a little more in-depth.

Keep in mind that these are my personal opinions, which may differ greatly from your own top ten picks for 2014. As usual I will start with the number ten game on my list and work my way to what I thought. If you want to read some more in depth thoughts on each game just click its name.

Let's this list going!

10. Transistor

The second game coming out of SuperGiant games, which shows they know how to make a good game. You play as Red, a singer who has lost her voice in a cyberpunk world. Armed only with a talking sword she must travel through the deserted city in order to find out what's going on.

The soundtrack, atmosphere, and combat blend together to create an unforgettable experience. I can't wait to see where SuperGiant goes from here.




9. Mario Kart 8


Mario Kart games don't really change much from year to year, but it's easy to tell when one is a quality product. Mario Kart 8 is certainly a quality product. It's the first HD iteration of the series and it looks beautiful. Nintendo has proven time and time again that they have the best art direction around.

On top of it looking beautiful it plays well. The karts have weight to them, and you actually have to slide in order to succeed. The game wasn't super surprising to me, since Nintendo knows how to make a solid kart racer. If you like Mario Kart, it's more of that!


8. Dark Souls 2

I got into the Souls franchise this year, and while the original Dark Souls is my favorite the sequel is pretty good too. It's more Dark Souls, but not necessarily as well thought out as the first. Still, you travel through numerous environment types and meet with infuriatingly difficult challenges.

With new mechanics it differentiates itself from the original, while keeping the experience fresh.




7. Rayman Legends

Rock solid platformers are getting increasingly hard to come by. Lucky for me Rayman Legends came out on current generation consoles, so I could take a crack at it. The Ubiart engine renders a beautiful world, that is backed up by some incredible platforming.

Rayman feels weighty, but glides through the air just right. More platformers should feel as tight as this does. It helps that there are a ton of unlockable stages and characters to boot!



6. Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor

This game made the list predicated entirely on the nemesis system. The Lord of the Rings elements
are completely ancillary to the experience. The nemesis system allows for you to make your own enemies and rivals. You get into fights with unique enemies who will remember you and react with tons of unique dialogue depending on the situation.

Rarely do I hope that developers directly steal from other games, but in this case I do. The nemesis system is super cool and I'd really like to see it in more games.

5. Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN-

Guilty Gear has finally made its return. It looks incredible and is super fun to play. The story mode is like watching an anime, and more fighting games should follow its lead.

Very rarely do I go into training mode and practice combos in a fighting game, but with this I have. The combat system has been brought back down to a level that the average person has a chance of breaking in to. I'm not saying I'm going to get good at Guilty Gear, but I'm sure as hell going to try.


4. Super Smash Bros. for Wii-U

Smash is back. I love Melee, and what Project M is trying to do is admirable. I think that I enjoy
playing the new smash more than a mod though. The speed is the right distance between the slow motion of Brawl and the hyper speed of melee. It's a perfect blend of what makes smash very accessible and competitive.

The game is so jam packed with content it's hard to see it all. Out of all the games I played this year this one had the most fun multiplayer by a mile. Smash continues to be one of my favorite franchises of all time.


3. Theatrhythm Final Fantasy Curtain Call

Curtain Call brings back everything I loved about the original Theatrhythm, but adds the ability to
play multiplayer, and use the buttons as inputs. I still love to use the stylus, but it's cool that there is another option now.

The amount of music in this game is staggering. It has all the songs from the original, plus all of the DLC from that game. They then decided to add around one hundred more songs, and continue to throw out DLC. If you like rhythm games, and Final Fantasy you need to play this game.


2. Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc

Initially I wrote this game off as being another dumb visual novel. I saw some footage of the game and decided to try it out. It's a visual novel, where you go into Phoenix Wright style trials, play insane
mini-games, and forge relationships. It mixes so many elements I love.

The main character is a talking bear, who wants high school kids to murder each other! It's over the top in a way that I can really get behind, but is appropriately grounded when it needs to be. The sequel somehow came out this year as well, and I'm chomping at the bit to play it.


1. Inazuma Eleven

I don't have the appropriate words to describe how much I love Inazuma Eleven. It's anime soccer on the DS. This year it finally got released in the U.S. on the 3DS Eshop. I bought it on a whim and couldn't put it down. Shortly afterwards my obsession with the game spiraled out of control and now I've beaten every game released in English and imported a European 3DS.

It's an appropriate mix of action, strategy, fun characters, and cool moves. There's a lot of content in Inazuma Eleven, and it's fun to find all of it. You put eleven players on the field and draw lines with the stylus to lead them, or tap the screen to have them pass/shoot. If they intersect with someone, or shoot on the goal they have the opportunity to use a special move, most of which are amazing. Axel Blaze catches the ball ON FIRE!

Inazuma Eleven grabbed me in a way that a game hasn't in a very long time. You could say I became obsessed with it. It was consuming every ounce of my free time for around three months until I had completed all four of the games released in English currently. It's a blast to play, and I'm glad I found it.

     -Manny

GOTY 2014 Podcast

2014 has come to a close, which means that Game of the Year is upon us. As usual I have selected my top ten games. For a change of pace I got together with Noukeo and we recorded our talk about what we believe to be the top ten games of 2014. Our lists are both quite different but share many similarities.

The audio is a little weird for some inexplicable reason. At random intervals my mic will echo for a few seconds. It seems to be some kind of feedback from when Nouk and I talk at the same time. *Shrugs* It's not too bad, but it was enough for me to notice it.

I hope that you enjoy our discussion! If you're not a fan of Podcasts I will be posting a text version of my list within the next few days.

Welcome to Arcade Assault

Since I finished the Bayonetta Let's Play I've been trying to come up with a new video series. I finally came up with Arcade Assault. For some reason I always force myself to play through arcade mode in fighting games with every single character.

I used to do it in order to unlock characters, and see all of the endings. Sadly arcade endings suck in most games now, and characters rarely need to be unlocked. For some reason I still force myself to do it! For the first game and episode I chose to do classic mode in Super Smash Bros. for Wii-U. There are so many characters to do it with and I need to unlock those sweet sweet trophies!

I recorded the first episode last night, and streamed it as well. I decided that I'll stream smash and put the archives on YouTube, because there are so many characters. When Guilty Gear comes out on  the 16th I'll just be recording myself playing through arcade mode in that. It seems like shorter episodes will be better for most things, but at least for Smash I have so much to get through.

Okay, enough of the introduction. I leave you with the first episode of Arcade Assault!

Game Time - November 2014

I feel like it's been a lifetime since I did the October edition of Game Time. Since that time I have "completed" a let's play and done a whole bunch of streaming. In case you missed me flooding this page with Bayonetta 2 episodes, you can now watch the entire playthrough with the exception of a chapter that got destoryed... Since I posted so much about it on here I won't be taking about it here.

Instead, I will be talking about Assassin's Creed Unity and how it straddles the fine line between being average and terrible. I did however, end up playing two excellent games this month, which were oddly enough both Nintendo games. As you might imagine I played a whole lot of the Wii-U version of smash brothers, but I also miraculously made time to complete Alpha Sapphire!

This month actually made me realize that I'm pretty much an adult now, which is both cool and depressing. I've been thinking a lot about how my gaming habits and time have changed over the last few months, which is why I'm going to be recording a podcast about it tomorrow. So you can look forward to that, but until then it's game time!

Assassin's Creed Unity

The first Assassin's Creed I played was Brotherhood. I watched my brother play through all of the first game, and a college roommate play through most of the second. I ended up really liking it and got hooked on the series. Assassin's Creed 3 let me down a great deal, but I was willing to give the series another go. When Black Flag came out I absolutely loved it, because who doesn't love pirates?

That brings us to Assassin's Creed Unity. Let's just say that just like Assassin's Creed 3 this entry in the series has shaken my faith. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed Unity to a certain extent, but it could have been a whole lot better. In fact, it should have been a lot better. A disconcerting trend in modern gaming is that games come out busted and that's not something that should be happening. A lot of games this fall have been totally bunk. Unity wasn't totally busted, but it's certainly not the best.

ohh noo my spine!

The game takes place in revolutionary Paris, so there are tons of people rioting in the streets. With the current generation of consoles Ubisoft wanted to show off how awesome their crowd tech is, so they have the street lines with tons of people. The problem is that every time you run through a crowd the frame rate tanks. For some reason it's not just when there are crowds either it happens frequently. If you can't get the frame rate up with tons of useless npcs on the screen maybe you shouldn't have so god damn many? To make it even worse they claim that the game runs at 900p instead of 1080p to keep the frame rate up. What the hell was it like at 1080p!?

That's only the tip of the iceberg. I had some npcs half into the world, and a corpse fly away and freak out on me. That's the normal kind of jank I expect from an open world game though. My friend Noukeo actually fell through the game world multiple times, and that's a bug that's being reported very frequently. For some reason the faces of characters seem to be melting off for a lot of people too. Ubisoft has issued numerous patches to address these issues, but I've already completed the game, so it's too late for me.

THIS IS IN A SHIPPING VIDEO GAME. OH MY GOD.

It's a real bummer that even if this game ran perfectly it would still be kind of lame. You play as Arno Dorian, who is obviously an Assassin. The overall plot and big bad guy are both pretty lame. There is a lot of good character interaction from Arno and his childhood love, but that's really the best part of the game. You're generally running around assassinating people who are loosely explained by the plot. Since Brotherhood I feel like the plots in these games have been super disjointed with a lot of time skips for no reason. Now that they seem to care so little about the real world plot it's becoming much more apparent.

For some reason I felt like the general gameplay mechanics were worse as well. Personally I didn't like the combat at all. Unity moves away from the free-flow combat and unlimited counter kills of its predecessors in favor of a more challenging system. You can still parry your opponents, but you need to continue hitting them repeatedly. This isn't too bad once you get used to it, it just makes every encounter a chore. It doesn't help that if you have more than two guards on you you're basically toasted. For some reason when you're being ganged up on other guards will run up and just shoot you in the face real quick, which is infuriating. The climbing didn't seem to be as fluid either. I got stuck on geometry way more in this game and had a much harder time jumping where I needed to.

At least the glitches are funny?

To be fair to Unity it tried really hard to be good. The assassination missions in the past few games basically involved running up to a guy, fighting 500 guards, and then just walking away. In Unity they're at least a bit more elaborate. You need to get into locations, which have set entrances and exits. There are events to help you out if you complete them. Sadly the assassination missions alone weren't good enough to make me like Unity.

Pokemon Alpha Sapphire

Since Alpha Sapphire and Omega Ruby came out the same night as Super Smash I wasn't planning on playing right away. However, I couldn't resist the allure of reliving my Sapphire nostalgia. I still have very vivid memories of playing the original on Gameboy Advance. I was so into the game that I hid my progress report from my parents, because I knew they wouldn't let me play for a while. I had a 40 in math at the time, so I got the brilliant idea of hiding it behind the couch. It worked out for around a month, but I forgot I had hidden it and my mom found it while cleaning. So I was able to beat Sapphire, but I ended up not being able to play any video games for over a month. It was totally worth it.

I've always liked the Pokemon series, but I think Ruby and Sapphire were where my love of the series solidified. Before they were fun distractions, but my obsession truly started with Ruby and Sapphire. One night a few weeks ago before I went to bed I decided to start Alpha Sapphire, and I couldn't stop. I have now completed the main story and am on the cool new post game story.

Mega Blaziken is pretty awesome.

In case you were wondering it's basically the same old Ruby and Sapphire from back in the day, but now it has hot 3d graphics like Pokemon X and Y. That doesn't mean it's exactly the same though, there are quite a few new interesting features. The first being that Pokemon actually appear in the grass. So if you're in the grass a shadow of a Pokemon will appear. If you sneak up on it by walking slowly you'll fight it. These hidden Pokemon are generally stronger than the ones you'll randomly find in the grass. You can actually search for pokemon you've run into in the grass as well, and the more you come into contact with them the better they will be.

I try to force myself to go through every game with Pokemon caught entirely during my playthrough. This time I was lucky enough to get two shinies. The first is the shiny Beldum, which everyone can get through wifi from Nintendo. The second is a shiny Magikarp, which came up on my first attempt to fish in the game. I really wanted a Gyrados to go through the game with, so now I have two shiny Gyrados'.

Secret bases are probably my favorite part of the new games.

I wish I had more to say about the game. It's an excellent recreation of the original games. Secret bases are awesome and make their triumphant return. I don't know it's Pokemon. I thought this would be the one that finally made me get sick of Pokemon, but it wasn't. As long as Nintendo keeps putting them out I'll keep buying them.

Super Smash Bros. for Wii-U

My level of hype for this game was unbelievable. The night it came out I was planning on staying up all night and streaming it, but that didn't end up working out. For some reason my local Gamestop didn't receive the Gamecube controller adapters, so I couldn't play locally with Noukeo. So instead we were sitting in my house playing online, so that we could both use our Wii-U game pads. Using a wii-mote is awful for smash. I don't recommend it to anyone. Around 4:30 AM I started to feel like my stomach was going to explode, so I ended up going to bed. The following days I played a ton of Smash, but didn't stream very much of it.

So as it turns out I really like Smash on Wii-U. It looks incredible. It still blows my mind that Nintendo puts out games that run in 1080p at 60fps and games on PS4 can't even handle running most games at 30fps! It helps that Nintendo has killer art direction in all of their games.

Princess Peach is my boo! Seriously she's the greatest.

I stopped playing the 3DS version weeks ago, which I now think was a good decision. While the 3DS game is good the Wii-U version is so much better. As I mentioned previously the graphics are amazing. On top of that there's a ton more content. Instead of every stage having two songs they all have a minimum of five, and there are at least extra unlockable songs! Almost any Nintendo song you can think of is in the Wii-U version to enjoy.

The main thing I like about this version is that I can use a Gamecube controller. I know I sound like some kind of weird hardcore Smash player when I say that, but it's really not the case. I find the Gamecube controller to be very comfortable and it's what I'm used to playing Smash with. Unlike the 3DS I'm not worried that I'm going to rip the analog stick off and I feel much more comfortable hitting the buttons with force. I tend to dodge a lot more and shield better when I'm using a Gamecube controller. It shows that Nintendo is trying to understand their fan base, because most companies wouldn't put out a USB adapter for a two generation old controller.

I kill myself with this move all the time.

The new characters in this generation of Smash are all pretty cool. While I think it's lame that the Ice Climbers are gone, new additions like Little Mac, Rosalina, and Mega Man are awesome. I think Little Mac is my favorite newcomer. I've always thought he would be a cool character and I was right! He's super fast, does a ton of damage, and wears a hoodie. He's like the perfect character for me, except that he has the worst recovery ever. Seriously, if he's like three feet away from the stage he can't get back. It's no good for me, especially since I main Peach who has the best recovery ever. Rosalina is cool as well with her little star friend luma. She's super strong as well, but I just don't want to learn how to use both of them in unison in order to maximize damage.

I really like this version of Smash, and I hope to stream more of it soon. One of the reasons I've hesitated streaming Smash is because I don't think I'm very good at it. Sure I can be competitive with my friends, but I don't think I'm amazing or anything. So when I think about the amount of pro players who stream Smash I get a little apprehensive about putting my play out there. Over the past few days I decided that I don't really care about the skill level of the play I put out there. I just want to stream and have fun, which is what Smash is all about. Hopefully you can look forward to more Smash streams in the future.

Ohhh the fighting games!

I was going to apologize for being light on content this past month, but then I realized that I finished an entire Let's Play of Bayonetta 2, streamed a bunch of Spelunky, and made a whole bunch more videos. I think the fact that I work a shitty retail job has made the past three weeks seem much longer than they actually were.

However, now that it's December I'll have quite a bit of content. I'm going to be streaming as much Smash as I can in my free time. Then once Guilty Gear Xrd Sign comes out on the 16th I will be playing that as much as humanly possible. If you have ever wanted to see terrible Guilty Gear play, then this will be your premiere source for just that!

I've definitely been slacking in the podcast department, but this month I'll have at least two. I will definitely be recording one tomorrow and then later in the month Noukeo and I will be doing a game of the year podcast. I'm trying my best to get content out there and I'm having a lot of fun doing it.

It's been fun, see you guys next time!