Best of the Rest: Anthony's picks of 2014
ATTENTION: The year 2014 has concluded its temporal self-destruct sequence. If you are among the escapees, please join us in salvaging and preserving the best games from the irradiated chrono-debris.
Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII
Unlike a surprising number of vocal individuals on the Internet, I happened to like Final Fantasy XIII. Its world of cruel, mercurial gods and long, fashionable coats worked for me despite some miserable pacing and some truly unlikable characters. (Why would anyone try to save Serah or help Snow? They're insufferable.) I didn't love it, though. I honestly thought that I'd finally grown out of Final Fantasy's style of drama. And then came Lightning Returns, the best game to come out of Square's internal Japanese studios since 2006.
Everything about Lightning Returns clicked for me. The weird costume design was leveraged to make a speedy, delectable battle system that rarely emphasizes level grinding over skill and strategy. Manipulating the passage of time while sticking to the game's ceaselessly diminishing clock before the world literally ends never feels cumbersome or stressful as in other time management games, it only adds to the driven feeling that fuels the story. And what a story.
Lightning Returns trades mewling melodrama for a tale about a post-death world. When everyone lives forever, when nothing changes, what matters? The wooden Lightning of past games instead becomes a powerful point-of-view character for the player, an anchor for our questions about this fantasy world works and what's at stake. Square hasn't made a game this powerful or weird in years, and part of me wishes this was the only Final Fantasy XIII in existence.
South Park: The Stick of Truth
South Park remains a consistently funny show nearly 18 years after it went on the air. Obsidian makes some fun, if often bug-ridden role-playing games. I expected the The Stick of Truth to be an expression of the two's talents. It'd be funny and an okay game. I didn't expect it to be one of the best paced comedy games ever made.
Trey Parker, Matt Stone, and the other writers that helped make the game succeed in part because they seem to have recognized the strengths of the two things they're trying to blend. South Park is always at its best when layering thick smears of scatological absurdity on top of laser-sighted satire, while RPGs are smoothest when they just let you inhabit a fantasy world. Stick of Truth does all that while still nailing the careful timing of good comedy, which is no easy task in video games. When the player is in control, it's hard to make sure jokes go off at just the right time. The interlude between Stick of Truth's second and third acts, when the New Kid meets the Underpants Gnomes, is a masterclass in how to do it tight.
Wolfenstein: The New Order
No disrespect to id or Machine Games, but Wolfenstein just isn't a relevant game anymore. As a benchmark in the evolution of games its credentials are unassailable, but it's hard to argue in favor of it as a fount of potent play. You walk in a line and shoot Nazis in it. You can eat dog food if you like. Not much meat on those bones. That barebones description can be applied to Wolfenstein: The New Order, certainly, but it's surprisingly vital for a game where you just mostly shoot bad guys.
That shooting feels good here. Weighty and simple, The New Order's battles are as blunt and brutish as hero BJ Blazkowicz. Sneak down this hallway, toss a knife to keep quiet, run into this storeroom, shoot a robo-dog. In terms of immediately satisfying, basic shooters, The New Order is hard to top in 2014.
The quiet human drama in the game, meanwhile, elevates above all its competitors and its roots as a series. To give away much detail about the people Blazkowicz meets in the resistance against the titular order would be to spoil the game's sweetest fruits, but know this: nothing with the name Wolfenstein on it had any business feeling as fresh and touching as The New Order did in 2014.
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is made by the same people who made Bulletstorm, which is to say that there was a reasonable expectation that someone, at some point in this detective game, would get kicked in the balls. All ball kicking in The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, however, is purely metaphorical. This game will hit you, hard and all over, with both its tale of a supernatural detective trying to track down a young fan who's gone missing, and its flummoxing exploration. Taking the beating is worth it.
Unlike other detective games released this year, Carter really makes you feel like you're doing the heavy lifting of deduction. The multiple components that make up each clue pointing towards Ethan's whereabouts are craftily hidden in the game's Pacific Northwestern forest, and you really need to pay careful attention to find them at all. Even when you do, though, the process of re-enacting crimes in the right order is tricky work. These are simple puzzles in traditional gaming terms, but they're challenging nonetheless and always serve the tale in a natural, game-centric way. They also reveal the powerful imaginations at work in Carter's creators.
[Images: Square-Enix, Ubisoft, Bethesda, The Astronauts]
Joystiq is highlighting its 10 favorite games of 2014 throughout the week. Keep reading for more top selections and every writer's personal picks in Best of the Rest roundups.
