What is your Current Game of the Year?
Hello everybody! With August coming to a close and the new big releases in the headlights, I think it's time to ask the Polygon audience what their current Game of the Year is for the year of 2014.
My submission:
Did anyone see this coming? I remember when they first unveiled it at E3, my first thought was "Oh boy, here we go". I had already judged the game as a mediocre rehash, doomed to irrelevancy within a week of release.
To quote a film that had the opposite effect on me (when it came to expectations and trailers), "I was wrong. We were so wrong."
When taking a look a this game and why it just works you have to look at why most shooters today don't work. Looking back at the last ten years, I struggle with naming a handful of shooters I had legitimate fun with and had an emotional connection to. This game, makes an honest to god effort to make relatable characters and an emotional core.
Sure, some of the game is manipulative with emotions, but it just works for me. They even took the stereotypical dudebro in B.J. Blazkowicz and turned that trope on its head. He's almost constantly vulnerable. He's also put in impossible situations with his friends, and perhaps miraculously (what are...these feelings doing in an FPS?), I want them to win and just make it out okay. That's a huge win.
They created one of the best female villains in gaming history with Frau Engel. She really stole the show.
The combat is a perfect mesh of the old school and new school when it comes to gun-play, with mostly branched levels with a set amount of enemies, rather than unleashing horde after horde. This really contributes to feeling like a part of a world, rather than being the center of it. The gameplay and level design also work hand in hand with the narrative, making sure that you feel like a guerrilla fighter, rather than a one-man army. Which makes a lot more sense in a world completely controlled by the Nazis.
Machine Games expressed their inner Quentin Tarantino and I loved every second. It's no surprise that the dev team was originally from Starbreeze Studios. They're definitely on my radar from here on out. This game just oozes passion, and gives me hope in a genre that I thought was long lost.
Honorable Mention: South Park: The Stick of Truth
Dishonorable Mention: Thief (Seriously Eidos Montreal? You can do better than this. Rhianna Pratchett, you can do better)
Thanks for reading (and hopefully, contributing!)!