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NeoGAF Games of the Year 2014 Awards

Bricky

Member
B4Geduv.gif


Iwata punching things has unlimited gif potential :p

2014 was an amazing year for Nintendo, but a bit disappointing overall. Fun games and a few pleasant surprises, but nothing really stood out. It was like a great fastfood meal; satisfying but unmemorable (well, except for the burnt meat that consisted of broken AAA releases).

Didn't end up voting myself, but glad to see Danganronpa and Shovel Knight in the Top 20!
 

Aaron D.

Member
So uh... I don't play much anymore, but it sure looks like 2014 was a shit year for games, wasn't it

Seems to be a common sentiment.

For me it was blissful with the likes of Alien, South Park, Farming Sim, Talos Principle, Jazzpunk and more. Heck, and I don't even own a Wii U, which swept the awards.

2014 kicked ass.
 
damn Atelier E&L got robbed by 1 honorable mention lol

Wait what

Maybe I should have made it my #6

So uh... I don't play much anymore, but it sure looks like 2014 was a shit year for games, wasn't it

The first half was practically dead, or might as well have been. Lotta strong exclusives this year. That seems to bother some people for some reason.

I'm having such a hard time finding time for gaming now that a year with only 5-10 games I really care to play works for me, but I feel bad for the folks who game 20 hours a day. I guess. I find it hard to complain personally as long as those games were worth the time.

TxK only had 20 points? What planet is this
 

Huggers

Member
Wow. The Wii U absolutely cleaned up. Happy that Nintendo still have so many top drawer games on their main system. I'll get one eventually
 

Massa

Member
B4Geduv.gif


Iwata punching things has unlimited gif potential :p

2014 was an amazing year for Nintendo, but a bit disappointing overall. Fun games and a few pleasant surprises, but nothing really stood out. It was like a great fastfood meal; satisfying but unmemorable (well, except for the burnt meat that consisted of broken AAA releases).

Didn't end up voting myself, but glad to see Danganronpa and Shovel Knight in the Top 20!

The gif is wonderful. It has multiple meanings as well, with Iwata punching away all the great third party games.
 

Dr.Acula

Banned
Waaaaaaaaat?

Controversy!

Character action is such a weak genre. I never got Bayo/DMC/et al. I'm surprised that the WiiU was popular enough on GAF, and that character action was popular enough in and of itself for Bayo to run away with the #1.

Ninty having the top-3 and 4 of the top-6 is super surprising to me.
 

Haunted

Member
So, looking back at press GotY's, it seems like there have only been three times where GAF has agreed with the press since 2004 (the first GAF GotY)

(GAF left, press right)
2004: Metal Gear Solid 3 | Half Life 2
2005: Resident Evil 4 | Resident Evil 4
2006: Zelda: Twilight Princess | Oblivion
2007: Mario Galaxy | Bioshock
2008: Metal Gear Solid 4 | Fallout 3
2009: Uncharted 2 | Uncharted 2
2010: Mass Effect 2 | Red Dead Redemption
2011: Portal 2 | Skyrim
2012: Journey | The Walking Dead
2013: The Last of Us | The Last of Us
2014: Bayonetta 2 | Dragon Age: Inquisition
How'd you determine the press goty?
 

Pie and Beans

Look for me on the local news, I'll be the guy arrested for trying to burn down a Nintendo exec's house.
They put out the 2 original titles that had the highest Metacritic this year and almost every site's lists should have looked like this if they were being consistent. Seriously, it was weird that Bayo 2 & Smash didn't clean up this year, like every selection committee internally said "yeah but...Nintendo." and couldn't pull the trigger. All those Mordor awards felt like compromise votes.

Not weird at all. You have to really love Nintendo to get Smash and let all the callbacks wash over you (theres nothing there for me), and Bayonetta has even less widespread appeal being a hyper niche combo action game. Thus for review at the publications, those games would have been thrown to the "Nintendo fan" in the office, and "the combo action nutter", who are occasionally the same person, sometimes not, and consequently 2 out of what... a 7 or 8 person review team? What happens then when the 6 or 7 other people all agree on another game? Thats whats tended to happen. I think people would have narrowed their eyes into blindness if Velocity 2X was GAF's GOTY for instance using the Metacritic argument, even though I enjoyed that game.

I am happy Bayo 2 is up there, its a good game, just didn't satisfy me in a way previous Platinum titles have and I felt I played things that made more impact on me throughout the year. 2014 is the year I was thoroughly disappointed in a Bungie title and a goddam Dark Souls game, so all in all it was a pretty fucking weird one. 2015 is going to be a fucking bare knuckle fist fight for the ages though (mainly because tons of shit slipped from 2014).
 
B4Geduv.gif


Iwata punching things has unlimited gif potential :p

2014 was an amazing year for Nintendo, but a bit disappointing overall. Fun games and a few pleasant surprises, but nothing really stood out. It was like a great fastfood meal; satisfying but unmemorable (well, except for the burnt meat that consisted of broken AAA releases).

Didn't end up voting myself, but glad to see Danganronpa and Shovel Knight in the Top 20!

I love seeing well-made gifs.
 
Not weird at all. You have to really love Nintendo to get Smash and let all the callbacks wash over you (theres nothing there for me), and Bayonetta has even less widespread appeal being a hyper niche combo action game. Thus for review at the publications, those games would have been thrown to the "Nintendo fan" in the office, and "the combo action nutter", who are occasionally the same person, sometimes not, and consequently 2 out of what... a 7 or 8 person review team? What happens then when the 6 or 7 other people all agree on another game? Thats whats tended to happen. I think people would have narrowed their eyes into blindness if Velocity 2X was GAF's GOTY for instance using the Metacritic argument, even though I enjoyed that game.

I am happy Bayo 2 is up there, its a good game, just didn't satisfy me in a way previous Platinum titles have and I felt I played things that made more impact on me throughout the year. 2014 is the year I was thoroughly disappointed in a Bungie title and a goddam Dark Souls game, so all in all it was a pretty fucking weird one. 2015 is going to be a fucking bare knuckle fist fight for the ages though (mainly because tons of shit slipped from 2014).

How is it that those two games got thrown to the 'nintendo fan' or 'combo action nutter' across the entire reviews scene? Both of them are the top critically rated games of the year, why do they get some specialized attention that can handwave away their quality, wouldn't Dragon Age or Mordor have been thrown to a reviewer that more apt to critique them?

The simple truth is both got completely snubbed in game of the year awards when looked at how they compared to other games in their critical reception. Their quality was undeniable when putting a hard score on the games, but when award season came around outlets couldn't find it in them to give such prestige to a game like Smash or Bayo 2, for various reasons like not being a AAA story focused western game.

GAF Goty has corrected this.
 

Cornbread78

Member
Waaaaaaaaat?

Controversy!

Character action is such a weak genre. I never got Bayo/DMC/et al. I'm surprised that the WiiU was popular enough on GAF, and that character action was popular enough in and of itself for Bayo to run away with the #1.

Ninty having the top-3 and 4 of the top-6 is super surprising to me.


Yeah, Nintendo GAF came out in full force to vote this year, kinda crazy, but yeah, just like the Media Create charts, it was complete Nintendomination..
 

pastrami

Member
This list sucks, and all of you have bad tastes in games.

Just kidding. It's a solid list, with a lot of variety. Nice to see some smaller, niche titles getting some recognition as well.

I've only dabbled in four of the top 20 games (SSB, MK8, Destiny Beta, DA:I), so I can't comment too much on them, but I'm glad to see Mario Kart 8 topping SSB.
 

KorrZ

Member
The results really put into perspective how much of a meh year 2014 was for me in games. Not to insult all of these Nintendo games which I'm honestly sure are great, but they're just not my cup of tea.

2015 is looking to be filled with many more games that suit my tastes.
 

Tainted

Member
What big titles do Nintendo have in store for 2015 ? With such big titles coming this year on the other platforms such as MGSV, Batman, Witcher 3, Halo 5, Uncharted, etc They are going to have to do well to beat their 2014 lineup
 

wmlk

Member
What big titles do Nintendo have in store for 2015 ? With such big titles coming this year on the other platforms such as MGSV, Batman, Witcher 3, Halo 5, Uncharted, etc They are going to have to do well to beat their 2014 lineup

Xenoblade X and Zelda are going to be up there.
 
;)

What are you talking about? Did you see Cheesemeister's post, I'm #9 on overall affinity this year so you copied me! lol
Well dang you got me there, I assumed you used mind reading technology to know my list ahead of time.

Since this thread is busy enough and it's generally interlinked every year with what I'm talking about, GAF's soundtrack of the year vote is ending on Sunday night: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=953641

If you want to vote for that, get your vote in by 11:59 PM PST on Sunday.
Boy this thread sounds swell, people should check this out! /additional shilling

There I've done my part.

Xenoblade's three year streak comes to an end. It's too bad there wasn't another region for it to come out in.
If only the 3DS port was quicker to release.
 

Marjar

Banned
The results really put into perspective how much of a meh year 2014 was for me in games. Not to insult all of these Nintendo games which I'm honestly sure are great, but they're just not my cup of tea.

2015 is looking to be filled with many more games that suit my tastes.

Honestly, even though I loved pretty much all the Nintendo stuff that came out, 2014 was pretty dreadful overall. Nintendo was really the only one who regularly delivered, and a good amount of games that had a lot of hype ended up disappointing. At least it wasn't 2012 bad.
 
What big titles do Nintendo have in store for 2015 ? With such big titles coming this year on the other platforms such as MGSV, Batman, Witcher 3, Halo 5, Uncharted, etc They are going to have to do well to beat their 2014 lineup

X, Zelda and Splatoon.

2 "epic" large-scale games and possibly something that can kick some life into a tired shooter genre.
 

?oe?oe

Member
2004: Metal Gear Solid 3 (Sony exclusive)
2005: Resident Evil 4 (multiplatform)
2006: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Nintendo exclusive)
2007: Super Mario Galaxy (Nintendo exclusive)
2008: Metal Gear Solid 4 (Sony exclusive)
2009: Uncharted 2 (Sony exclusive)
2010: Mass Effect 2 (multiplatform)
2011: Portal 2 (multiplatform)
2012: Journey (Sony exclusive)
2013: The Last of Us (Sony exclusive)
2014: Bayonetta 2 (Nintendo exclusive)
Sony fanboys /s
 

spekkeh

Banned
One thing that I have found weird on this forum is the sense I've been getting that a lot of people who go to this forum buy more than 1 console within 2 years of the same generation.

That really doesn't feel normal to me because before I came to GAF most people were talking about console gaming sort of like an investment. Affording more than 1 wasn't feasible and as a result it heightened the tensions over console exclusiveness.

Considering how poorly Nintendo is selling in general I feel this maybe a major difference about what makes the more vocal members of GAF unique.
GAF is core of the core, so more likely to spend more money on games. I also think the average 'our kind' of gamer is ageing faster than usual, what with touch screen, mmo and f2p vileness corrupting our youth. So GAF is also more affluent than the average mainstream games site.
 

Servbot24

Banned
Good top 10 aside from Mordor, which is horrid. South Park isn't very good either, but I realize people are playing it because they like the show, which I don't care for.



Sony fanboys /s

To be fair I can't think of an XBox exclusive that could really have any chance aside from a Halo game. Maybe Bioshock, though Galaxy was clearly superior imho.
 
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