My second year-end list; and 2014 turned out to be a year where I played less than half as many videogames as I did in the previous year, several of which were add-on titles under the same umbrella (a bunch of Disney Infinity toys-to-life games, episode from the Grand Theft Auto saga and so on). It’s been a strange gaming season for me, though, caught as I am in the Old Ways having chosen not to jump to the next generation of consoles with Xbox One and PS4, or indeed upgrade my increasingly cranky PC. Xbox Live does a terrible peer pressure thing with this, showing you that your gamer mates are on-line but then mocking you with the revelation that they’re sharing funtimes and laughing as a group on the the Xbone and not your decrepit 360.
Last time, I jumped generations I left a lot of games unfinished (some even untouched) and I’ve resolved not to do that this time around. I’m determined to work through my “pile of shame” and at least make some attempt to complete the XB360 and PS3 games I’ve got lying around. But honestly, I’ve yet to see the killer app that will make me want to make the leap to next gen anyhow, so for now I’m old-gaming, so there. That said, I have been playing some stuff that was actually new in 2014, including a good 60+ hours of my life invested in Destiny on the PS3; but I also played very old stuff in the form of Death Race, a generation one arcade game from 1976 that was one of the first titles to be banned in a panic over “videogame violence”. Comparing Death Race‘s act of running over stick people to Destiny‘s melonpopping headshots seems almost quaint now… And so, GOTYs for me were the fiendish mobile murder puzzler Hitman GO and the fun-but-flawed Destiny, which I enjoyed while it lasted, and equally enjoyed griping about. I also liked a preview of Battlefield Hardline, which I want to play some more of in the year ahead.
Here’s the full list:
Forza Motorsport 5, Catlateral Damage, Deus Ex: The Fall (PC version), Call of Duty: Ghosts, Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost & Damned, Death Race, Grand Theft Auto IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony, Star Wars Rebels: Ghost Raid, Disney Infinity 2.0: Guardians of the Galaxy, AirMech Arena, Destiny (PS4 & PS3 versions), Battlefield Hardline, Cat Petting Simulator 2014, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, Hitman GO, Parable of the Polygons, Disney Infinity 2.0: The Avengers, Disney Infinity 2.0: Escape From The Kyln, Disney Infinity 2.0: Assault on Asgard, Red Bull Air Race: The Game, Far Cry 4
