[Question] The Gamingforce Game of the Year 2014: All aboard the hype train - voting edition

30 Points - Mario Kart 8
For the second year in a row, the game I had the most fun with was an online game. Maybe this is a sign I should be social more often.

Saturday Karting with you chucklefucks has easily, easily been the highlight of my week most weeks in the past year. There are absolutely chunks of that game that are not great, like battle mode and all the courses that aren't Music Park, but it looks fantastic, plays like Mario Kart, and has a shockingly competent internet implementation. Also, I'm an asshole.


30 Points - Transistor
Best art direction of 2014, and perhaps the best encouragement of mixing up play styles in a video game ever. Smart storytelling and subtlety abound. A 100% complete package.


10 Points - Super Smash Bros. 4
Yeah, it's all right. I don't get as GOTY pumped about Smash games as I did pre-college, but it's fun. Needs less guest musical arrangements by everyone on the planet and more arrangements just by HAL's sound team though, where's my Hirokazu Ando at.


10 Points - Kirby Triple Deluxe
HERE'S where my Hirokazu Ando is at. Soundtrack of the year. HAL is still capable of turning out games that give me more pound-for-pound joy than any other series.


10 Points - Shovel Knight
It's a Mega Man with melee attacks, modern sensibilities, and virt making soundchips explode.


5 Points - Bravely Default
First half is a serviceable SNES-style adventure romp. Second half is a disaster, with one good story idea but a scenario team unequipped to the task of exploring it. It is, however, the game I had the most fun breaking in 2014, and for that it gets a spot here. It takes the best part of Final Fantasy V, its hilariously unbalanced job system, and cranks that shit up to 11 by giving every class broken abilities and letting you combine things left and right.

This is a game that lets me hulk out three party members with huge attack and zero defense, give them all an ability where they deal mega damage to every enemy when they die, and then have the fourth party member murder and mass revive them twice a turn. For this, it deserves points.


5 Points - Mario Cars 2: 64
Fight or not fight, a like reward we claim,
The wretch and hero find their prize the same.
Alike regretted in the dust he lies,
Who yields ignobly, or who bravely dies.
Of all my dangers, all my glorious pains,
A life of labours, lo! what fruit remains?


These were close to points: Contraption Maker, Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, Pushmo World, Shantae and the Pirate's Curse, Theatrhythm: Curtain Call
I haven't played these yet, or else they might've been here: Bayonetta 2, Captain Toad, Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright, Shadowrun Returns: Dragonfall, The Talos Principle, Wasteland 2

Jam it back in, in the dark.