Commercial mods

Wouldn't it be great if there was some way for mod teams who make expansive mods to get paid for their significant work, maybe on Steam. Shame they can't and PC gaming is dead according to the backlash to the backlash about Skyrim mods.

The actual implementation chosen for the paid mod marketplace may have been one of those exceptional times when every group loses. It's not easy to build systems that fail all.

Game players now have a search issue that has financial costs rather than just being a "grab and see" process. You now have to possibly buy into some mods to get the game you want; this is a massive barrier that it's easy to understate. Especially due to "value" (games are (for the content) cheap, DLC is generally far less cheap, mods appear to be coming in at DLC or worse value levels) concerns.

Valve, who have spent forever locking down their system to avoid having too much DMCA takedown and other copyright infringement work, are now getting financial gain from an unmoderated store. Their earlier UGC stuff was all carefully crafted to avoid this issue (at the cost of making each piece expensive to put up) and a small curated store meant every item could be popular.

The publisher now has competition for the commercial DLC they put out in the form of commercial mods. This was always what "no you can't sell it" stipulations were about - it means you could sell your expansion pack. Yes, their cut doesn't have the costs associate with Valve's work (although they probably need those lawyers to be primed for the copyright infringement claims they'll be co-defendant on if Valve don't take down content fast enough and hand over any money). Their game can also lose value by perception (game players now see the PC release as worth less due to increased "cost" to find the mods they want to play with).

And modders now have the same commercial "app store" myth to push them to try and make money when 99% of people just make something no one will play. The few success stories push everyone to try and charge and find out that no one is buying their small mod (that can't compete with the value of Skyrim being $5 for the base game, which took 100+ people several years to make - your solo mod would take you literally hundreds of years to get the same work done so you're always going to be offering something like 1% of the "value" of the $5 game - so a fair price is 5 cents, or nothing when rounding). A few individual modders will get to do it for a living but as a group, modders now have a more volatile group of consumers who are expected to provide more search labour to avoid being scammed. Those who will make money this way, if they did work that wasn't incremental, could be making those mods into commercial indie releases. Those who do incremental work may well be better served working as a contractor or inside the studio system making those assets for the next game. The ideas of open collaboration and remix culture are destroyed by commercial concerns while the extrinsic motivators suppress the intrinsic ones.

We Don't Have the Money, But We've Got a Plan

The last month has involved quite a lot of getting lost in some deep PC games. While the PS4 facilitated my gaming highlights last year, the games I've been dropping a lot of time into recently have all been on the PC.

An interesting thing about Pillars of Eternity, which is looking like one of the best CRPGs ever to be released: it was built on a budget that didn't facilitate anything cinematic. Obsidian didn't have the funds to make this a big 3D world, to provide glorious cut-scenes that compete with Blizzard, or to even provide a fully-voiced script. And those limitations have only made this game better. The game was built to hark back to the original Infinity Engine CRPGs which many of the developers had previously shepherded.

We now have the tools to create those worlds and script it together without spending as big as the industry can spend. A lot of that is the AAA tier of games has moved up in price, with the development costs alone going beyond $100 million. While Baldur's Gate and its ilk were almost certainly cheaper than $10m each, wages are much much higher compared to the end of the '90s so even a few million wouldn't bring that sort of team back and Obsidian didn't have $10m. There is a lot more rapid prototyping and efficient development possible with a modern tool-chain and knowing what you're going to build before you build it. Obsidian could map out areas using a fast 3D package, render those to both 3D data for real-time effects & occlusion for vision cones and 2D maps, and let the artists draw over the 2D maps to add in the detail without building it all in the 3D package. The game looks great, showing off the same painted backdrop love that originally wowed us playing those games in the '90s.

The script, because it didn't need to be 100% nailed down months before release so it could be given to the voice talent and because it didn't need to be paid for in VO costs, could reflect what made those old games great. This is an RPG that, if it is the child of any other medium, was descended from books. It is something you read, painting pictures with words that bring the rendered scenery to life and allow the story to dive into the areas too expensive to spend a few person-years of work rendering in a cinematic style for a short aside. The lack of any cinematic intent doesn't just provide an experience that reminds us of what was lost when CRPGs moved to making the dialogue into movies, it also allows for more options. We've already mentioned dialogue but this also extends to character skill checks. As it's nothing more than some text and a painted illustration of the challenge, the game can provide multiple paths to conquer an obstacle with real consequences depending on the skills of your party and what you attempt from the options provided. A cinematic RPG could do this, but not without heavily investing in building custom animations or pre-rendered videos for each option.

Pillars of Eternity is as good as it is because they had a plan, knew how to get to where they wanted to go, and knew that their aims fitted the constrained budget of crowd-funding. Without having to invent the typewriter or create a new style of prose, they had more time to write the book.

Another game released this month on PC is the game that EA failed to make when they mistakenly injected always-on DRM into SimCity in 2013. A small team who had previously tested their abilities building the Cities in Motion series of traffic building city-management games decided that they could take their existing knowledge and build the game that the large team at Maxis couldn't. Colossal Order is 13 people. They built on Unity (as did Obsidian) to give them a basic rendering and rapid development platform which can easily support several platforms and did their best to build the city simulator that was obvious from the pre-release enthusiasm for SimCity 2013.

And they did it. Thirteen people and a plan, with some modest funding from their publisher Paradox (who also did the publishing work for Obsidian, although not the funding of the project - these games are twins in many ways; not least that they, via backer pricing or cheap offers, both cost only £13 to get them in the first week of release), managed to build the game with the depth missing from the Maxis offering. No draconian DRM that mandates permanent server connectivity, a more deeply realised simulation of the virtual people and vehicles, and the trust that the community would enjoy finding the edges. This game has thousands of mods and props and tweaks in the official workshop, which is highlighted on the main menu of the game as a great place to check out. They already managed to scale the simulation up to vastly larger spaces than Maxis did, but mods arrived within hours that remove the limits they has put in, if your computer is up to running the simulation or you'd rather play at 10fps and build big.

It's a triumph and a massive success for Paradox and Colossal Order. Because small teams don't need to sell 10 million to break even. Reaching half a million sales so quickly triggered celebrations; quarter of a million in the first day was a record for the publisher. And we all get a game that is launched at a budget price to prevent it being a play-though for those rich enough to throw $60 at something they're not certain about while the rest of us wait for it to get somewhat closer to the price of other entertainment media.

Also Available on Tumblr

A full blog post is still coming this month (we're back to that schedule after missing three months in the latter part of last year); this is just a quick administrative post.

Due to the wishy washy way in which Google have talked about their interest in retaining Blogger as an open platform for personal expression, I've decided to start crossposting content to Tumblr. If you use that platform and would rather follow this blog there, you can do so here. On a related note, I've been crossposting the articles related to computer and video games to GiantBomb for a while, which has elicited comments both great and hostile.

Edit [July 2015]: Due to a database error on GB, the archive of blog posts and their attached comments now seem to be missing.

The "Death of Classic Reviews"

Man, the "death" of classic reviews. We previously had most launch-window reviews of (PC) games as software reviews because most games had glaring UX issues, problems in their mechanics, or simply a lot of bugs that led to weirdness. It was important to talk about how the game controlled, how it provided feedback, how it developed the new ideas and taught you how to play the game, and, only then, say if you enjoyed it. That's where previews (where I really enjoyed writing around the turn of the millennium era when I was doing that stuff seriously) could be really interesting - a lot of that stuff was exposed in a preview build so you could lay it out. This was the era of Dave Perry explaining game design as building the best thing you could around one totally new idea, the hook, that would sell your game.

There was no single, established way to do everything. FPS controls were all slightly different and how you interacted was being developed. I remember the amazing point in our LAN games of Quake where we all migrated to the mouse, because we'd played Doom and Duke 3D with the keyboard. It wasn't obvious that you had to use the mouse, we still didn't know how sensitivity and so on should be set to best optimise our frictionless input onto our avatars. What systems were involved and how you interacted was often bespoke. It's not an action adventure title with this sort of crafting and thumbstick reaction curves lifted from a previous game (pick if you want full-lock to continue to accelerate or be flat, set 80% lock to be flat, do or don't smooth) that you already know intimately. A game was something that you wanted to know about before you tried it because it could be anything, often objectively worse that other potential choices. Reviewers could tell you about the sharp edges and defects that might make it worth sitting this game out.

But now most games are polished in a way that means they are functional. They may not have been refined iteratively in the developer sense of "polished" but the importing of best practices/lifting from genre-defining titles means they don't actually have to. X came from Y, where they got it right and everyone played Y or a derivative so understands the systems involved and the interactions. Everyone is trained in "how things work", you don't need to teach the user how to shoot. We are now trapped in this place of many local maxima. So what's the point of a review when it's not a 50/50 guess if the basic functionality is even there? When 90%+ of games that get a PR push will also be mechanically solid (and people seriously suggest those that aren't shouldn't even be purchasable) and not crashy (crashes being the kiss of death you'll hear about as soon as a game is released) then the only thing left is if the reviewer liked the game.

But reviewers are still operating under the mentality we are taste-makers. Because 15 years ago you could play through a game and explore the "polish" of it and give a good estimation about the objective quality of the software. So you could predict if most people would tolerate a game. But that's not true today, and reviewers don't realise we need to focus our text on "I enjoyed" rather than "this is good/bad". Justifying your enjoyment with objective markers of quality rather than your enjoyment of the text of the game will lead to ruin.

DriveClub gets panned because it doesn't follow the conventional wisdom on controls (it is neither a Forza clone, nor a NfS clone; it's not even a Kart clone) but people who are experienced in the genre have found that it offers its own path that does have significant depth and interesting consequences. Reviewers are painted as lazy when they use shorthands that turn out to be oversimplifications (eg saying AIs stick to a racing line as if on rails). We fail to express our "I don't like this" and go after stuff that is known to be bad design that we may invent to justify our dislike. It's a minefield of ex post facto justification.

Y'know how lots of critics hate so many mainstream films? (I'd say Transformers but those do actually seem like pretty bad movies, even if lots of people enjoy them - but maybe even that helps make my point - classic example might be Pirates of the Caribbean.) Games are there now. Our reviews are filled with a range from hatred to love of games that are technically solid and so entirely reviewed on how the reviewer felt about the story and interactive elements. We're reviewing the game as a piece of media, not a software package (if it becomes a software review the it automatically fails, as it's a crash-prone buggy PoS and none of those need to be given the time of day unless the reviewer really like the game and so ignores those flaws).

Only right now a lot of reviewers are trying to establish our "discerning taste" cred by berating anything not to our palette as "mainstream rubbish, no one should like this, it's just bad". Rather than just saying it wasn't to our tastes. So we get those reviews saying DriveClub doesn't have an engaging driving model or AI, which many fans of driving games (who jumped into that title and waded through the online fiasco) will contest. A game that's compared favourably to Gears and Resi4 is called derivative tosh that's a decade late rather than another solid entry in that genre because reviewers still remember a time when devs were learning how to make games and so sanding away at rough edges.

The Order 1886 is panned for being nothing more than a mix of cinematic and 3rd person shooter in a steampunk world. The high quality of visuals is used as an excuse to pan the title for not being innovative enough. Again, "I don't like this" is warped into "this is objectively bad and justifies my dislike". But people playing in a really nice looking world they've not been to before are transported to a new place where they play a totally solid 3rd person shooter. That's exactly what a lot of people want. And reviewers said it was bad, not just not to the reviewer's tastes, but bad and not worth anyone's time. And bad has always previously meant that the software was either defective as software, often in the UX realm, or the game design failed. But that's not the case.

And now we're here. This is the crossroads we're at. The "death of classic reviews":

"Initially I was caught off guard by the doubt cast by various critics out to smear the game. They ended up doing me a favor, in that I now have a great list of online publications which I know to avoid spending any future time reading." [source]

Flat out sentiment of disbelief between the experienced product and the expectations of how reviews of games software work. "various critics out to smear the game".

Is The Order 1886 any good? No idea, not played it yet and that £45 price tag means there's no chance I'll find out this month. Ask me when it's £20 or less. These early-console-generation prices being jacked up in the UK should end soon and we'll get £30 game releases (if history repeats). Our healthy software market seems to thrive on being cheaper than the $60 US market. But the reviews are 100% useless to me; some friends who buy release games make it sound pretty good. The things it is compared to in reviews, that may not even endorse it, are also a positive sign.

This does seem to mean reviews are basically useless at this point for actually providing consumer advice. And games are too expensive compared to movies to just blindly consume them all (outside of Steam sales - welcome to the pile of shame phenomenon).

It has never been easier to watch someone play a game, from friends or randoms streaming their play to more organised stuff like professional Let's Players. It's never been easier for us to listen to our friends as social media makes everyone a broadcaster of their daily thoughts. It's never been harder for a written review to actually be useful around launch. And attempts to lean into the taste-maker role will only cause this visceral backlash. Maybe it's time to let launch reviews be the domain of YouTube and leave the written work for a month after release when critics can dig deep into the role of deep critical analysis, for the games that generate interesting analysis of their text or mechanics.

Games of the Year 2014

After a short delay, another year, another list. As with last year, these are in no particular order and are a sampling of games I considered exceptional and had something to talk about in the last 12 months. The aim is to only talk about games first released this year, but rules can be bent when required.

Killzone: Shadow Fall (2013)

And this is why rules are made to be broken. This had only been out for weeks when the end of last year arrived and I was awaiting a good deal on getting a current gen console (and making sure it wasn't going to be another PS2 vs xbox/GC generation where the weakest platform gained traction and a lot of exclusives). But, on getting round to exploring this release shooter, I found far more than I expected.

Here you can find most of my thoughts on how this game seems created for PC shooter fans who have, over a decade after Halo provided playable joypad controls, become comfortable playing without a mouse when required. It's a varied (gameplay and visual) experience that rarely drops from being excellent and which can be taken as puzzle combat encounters (similar to F.E.A.R.) by those wishing to push the difficulty up. And it's currently sitting in bargain bins for anyone with a PS4 to pick up.

inFamous (Second Son & First Light)

This was the year where the most direct sequel to the PS3's inFamous games, mechanically, was an Xbox exclusive from the guys who made Ratchet & Clank. I guess that's not such a strange thing, being that we're talking about a series that grew out of grim-dark'ing the 3D platforming of Sly Raccoon. The interesting point is that inFamous, while jumping to a fictional Seattle, reinvented their super-mobile open world shooter design to no longer be about grinding rails on your electrified shoes.

The new game and standalone expansion steps away from Cole and crafts a thoroughly new space with mobility extended to holding a button and pointing where to go (a power that becomes more super as you upgrade it). With the compact story length (with enough to do to 100% the world without it ever feeling like a major distraction) of about 10 hours, this is an open world for people who may not have enough time to play open world epics. During that time you'll unlock four skill trees and power sets with their respective mobility boosts to develop, ensuring you can almost teleport around the map. You also, via completing secondary objectives in each area, get access to an actual fast-travel teleport but I didn't find it was something I used more than a few times when I wanted to jump between the two islands.

This isn't a completely different genre, in the same way you'd not expect an F.P.S. series to drop the weapons completely, but it has shaken things up. The main peashooter is completely different depending on the good/evil unlocks and which element you've switched to (with recharge points in the world acting as where you also switch your weapon set), as are anything more than the very basics of what most weapons do. You've usually got a grenade but they can be stasis grenades to freeze enemies for precision shots, or smokers to allow you to get up close for melee finishers, or a burst shock cone attack, or even not grenades at all but a cloaking ability. You usually get to pick the element you want to be running with for most encounters and the compact play time means you're constantly unlocking the latest element and the skill tree perks.

For the expansion the developers cut back to half of the city (with some minor tweaks to keep it fresh), fix you to a single powers set, remove the good/evil choices, and created a prequel campaign that lasts about half the length of the full game. The shocking thing is how they manage to redesign the Neon power set to feel completely fresh, while still somewhat similar to the power it turns into in the main game, and update the traversal mechanic with a "boost gate" system that makes getting around feel fresh again. The sparse use of cutscenes and length (along with mainly taking place in the same city) indicate the constrained budget, as does the addition of an (score attack) arena mode that locks some of the skill tree behind completing challenges. But the expansion stands on some new powers and secondary objectives as more than just more of the thing you've already played.

I've always enjoyed the simple, comic-book-used-as-disparaging-shorthand (which would once have probably been called pulp) stories told in the inFamous games and this one is no different. Don't expect anything beyond dirty halos and demons ripping justifications for their horns out their arses. The player choice (when employed) is saving or burning orphanages so it's best to consider it two stories rather than a choice each time you're asked to pick a side (the upgrade system reinforces this point). This isn't a Bioware RPG but rather a single story in which destiny will force both good and evil players to experience the same beats. I've enjoyed playing these games twice because of how they tell two stories with the same beats but this isn't the strongest in the series for that (which makes the loss in the expansion less of a downer). Going into the games with your eyes open about the quality of the story told, even with top notch mo-cap and presentation and some decent work on the actual lines of dialogue, avoids disappointment. Sucker Punch know what they want to say and they say it, even if that mainly involves well-worn characters and tropes. That said, it was a missed opportunity when they cast two Texans as the voices of the Seattle Native American Rowes.

How Do You Do It

While no one ever talks about it (item 3), people are starting to make games about it (and so talk about it). How Do You Do It is a free gamejam game that only takes a few minutes to play. It's a short, a statement, an offer to see the world through someone else's eyes for a few moments as they revisit their past. I played a lot of good, short games that took an introspective view of the author(s) and their past(s). This one stood out as a great example of what democratisation of a medium can provide, when this didn't require a man-year of work to be produced and spur discussions of SRE and childhood.

The Last of Us: Remastered (Left Behind)

The Last of Us didn't need any more content. It was a great game last year, but this year it got a 1080p treatment on PS4 (something us PC players just expect games to do over time for free as we upgrade our hardware - most of my PC games will be running in 4K in the next decade, if they don't already). It also got a new chapter, which worked out beautifully as an episode to introduce Ellie as a playable character long after we'd already been introduced.

Once again, Naughty Dog crafted a cinematic narrative onto which I projected the characters I knew (although Joel doesn't have much to do except lie in pain due to where this fits in the chronology) and was swept away by the stories this universe had to offer. As the chapter ends on two girls waiting to lose their minds together, this added chapter becomes an essential addition to the narrative, giving those words a punch they didn't have when originally used during the ending of the main game. Some of the games on this list are just great or fun, Left Behind is essential.

80 Days

A steampunk visual novel for the phone where some choices are timed so you can't dally thinking about what to do next and can lose time as seconds burn hours. You probably already think this is a terrible game that no one should play. But it turned out to be one of the best written pieces of fiction I read all year and far more of a game than the visual novel framing might suggest. While there are times when it is very much a visual novel and relies on excellent writing, there is also a range of play and direction as you choose how to go that makes this feel far closer to a Fighting Fantasy book, or a Persona game without the dungeons (if that's your reference point).

Hearthstone

Blizzard know how to make games, and they took what they learned from partnering for a collectible card game around World of Warcraft and created an online game that's not quite as exploitative as a CCG but not too far off.

The drafting game, called the Arena, is the main meat of the game for me. So far I've managed to avoid diving too deeply into the constructed decks but I'm constantly getting new cards via Arena play. You probably already know if you've got any interest playing something without the mechanics complexity of Magic: the Gathering but this certainly provides how you can streamline that sort of game to keep the pace fast (at the cost of some of the depth).

Jazzpunk

This game is funny. Properly, laugh out loud, funny. It has enough gags that not every one needs to hit and understands when it's time to wrap the game up and go home. Between the open and close, you'll rush around an almost nonsensical spy adventure in the future-past, unravelling a world that knows how to be absurd without being random. It's not perfect, but you're really missing out if you've not given this a shot.

Hitman Go

They took Hitman and extracted a lovely (clockwork) board game puzzler out of the elements of those more free-flowing, puzzle stealth, assassin simulation games. Then they managed to showcase the power of the mobile SoCs to render that board game to play on your tablet. There's not a lot to this, but it's one of the best things you could play on your mobile this year and I kept going back to crack a few more puzzle boards. More importantly, it wasn't just a short reskin of echochrome with some clean UI choices and it very much avoided being another Squidix attempt to exploit their IP on mobile. The team that made this game cared about Hitman and did a solid job making something perfect for mobile.

Jackbox Party Pack

You Don't Know Jack has always been good (but never as good as the one UK edition voiced by Paul Kaye) and this box of incredible value bundles the latest edition of that with takes on charades-derived stuff similar to games like Balderdash. The genius move is that all games are run via a web service so, rather than controllers, you just need a mobile device with a browser to join the game. Everyone draws their word on their device in Drawful and then everyone names the pictures to create a set of potential right answers from which everyone picks (so kinda Pictionary). Write down the missing word or question answer in Fibbage XL and then try to guess the real one from everyone's choices (so kinda Balderdash). It'll eventually run out of fresh questions and words in each of the games but it's a great bundle for having a bit of fun.

DriveClub

This game launched broken. The online crumbled and reminded us why always-on DRM is something to avoid, as those of us playing got to dive into a career mode and unlock cars while justifiably complaining that the leaderboards, challenges, and online weren't working. They eventually got all that stuff working and added in the changing weather conditions that make this the best looking console game released this year.

It's no Forza 4 but this is a solid racer that splits the difference between the soft-sim of console sim games (your TOCA series etc) and the sort of arcade game where the brake is more optional or engages the drifting mode. Beyond the entry tier cars you'll need to constantly be considering how far you can push the throttle, and braking is a matter of how strongly you can apply them without the scream of tyres indicating you came on too strong. But those brakes decelerate you far faster than they would in a soft-sim when applied correctly and this, combined with higher cornering speeds, gives the game a distinct feel you have to adapt to. Keep your soft-sim mentality, but compress those braking zones down.

Outside of the unusual driving model, the micro-challenges stuff that they layer onto the track sections is where this game finds new ground. As you're driving along, be that a race or a hot lap, the game will add in challenges on sections of track (as small as a single bend) and pick out a target that it thinks you can beat. Effectively every corner you're driving when online, you're putting up dynamic challenges for the game to pull from to challenge someone to beat your score. Average time, top speed, following the lines through the corners, getting a higher drive score, etc. Even if you've lost sight of the goals you're driving for (the campaign sets a series of goals for each event) and are just learning the track before you try again to get that top 3 finish or nail a lap time, the game will look for some suitable challenges to keep your drive fresh. There is also the standard race/lap/event leaderboards and you can send challenges to your friends to compete in, selecting from your recent races and drilling down to an achievement (eg hot lap time) for other to beat within the next X days. The lack of functional online for the opening month or two really harmed the areas where DriveClub stands out.

Beyond the antialiased 1080p rendering of five interesting locations with over ten tracks per location, the day-night cycle (which you can set to compress to an hour per minute raced) leads to races that don't feel like the same lap over and over, beyond the dynamic challenges. Add in snow and rain coming or going as you play and that illuminates where you can see the design intent of this game. Just because you started a race in the Sun, doesn't mean you're not looking through a storm of snowflakes, illuminated by your headlights, at night by the time you're finished. You can lock it down to give you something to learn precisely but the game excels at making sure every lap can feel a bit different to keep you on your toes.

As this is (when in a racing event) more of a racing game than a driving game, the A.I. is important. There is a bit of push and pull there, and you see some A.I. ahead making a mistake and losing traction as they drop two wheels onto the edge of the track here and there. They're 'boisterous', if you're going much slower than them then they will try going through you or push you too fast for the next corner. They might give you a gentle nudge as they complete an overtake, but not often. They're basically 99% less annoying for your day than human opponents but anyone who has seen an A.I. get totally out of their depth doing an overtake attempt and spin their car will recognise this isn't the classic on-rails design (despite what some reviews said). They just don't really care about rear-ending you if you slow down too much, which is reinforced by the driving model that only penalises really blatant "braking by impact" (with a specific penalty that locks you in 1st gear for a few seconds when you get caught).

The game passes the family fun test, with the dynamic challenges always looking to give even the slowest players something they can beat and a handling model slightly more forgiving than Forza, all while showing off what this current generation of consoles can render as you rush round diverse, ever-changing tracks.

Goat Simulator

Probably the silliest game on this list. This is a joke that, unlike Jazzpunk, can go on a bit too long. But, as an open world with very little flagged as actual mission content, this is something to wander around and enjoy the absurdity of, until you've caught a few Easter eggs and then shut it down. After the game exploded, the devs have added new modes, new whole open worlds to explore, and so on that have bulked out the offering so you're not going to get bored in the first hour. That expanded content, for free, is what pushes this from an amusing hour-long joke into a game worth mentioning in the same year as the sublime Jazzpunk.

Honourable Mentions

This was the year I put 60+ hours into Planetary Annihilation, the game that took up the massive battles and rate-based economy RTS mantle of TA. Played on spheres, with great area-selection and UI tools to refine that formula closer to where it really needs to be for a contemporary game, this should have been a shoo-in for the list. But the game balance fell short, the A.I. fell short (crucially in what could have been a very interesting roguelike-like repeatable campaign mode), and the KickStarter talk of DRM-free that turned into a post-release patch to remove the always-on server connection requirements felt like the developer was abusing the label, not embracing the idea. It's still the best rate-based economy RTS to play and something every TA fan should pick up (in the $5 or less sales that it now regularly dives into on Steam) but it's not a GotY contender.

Speaking of gaming dynasties, Forza Horizon 2 feels more devoid of life than the original, certainly a weaker sequel (to a game I didn't put on my list in 2012 but this year was more scarce for good cockpit driving games) based on a few hours of play. Any more and I'd need to buy my own Xbox to play it on and I certainly don't like it enough to pay for another console when the one I got came with 50% more GPU, widely the same game selection, and basically the same sticker price.

This year also produced some great demos, a couple that were seemingly totally unconnected to the games they are advertising. You should look out for good things in 2015 from a host of titles in early access or on partial episodic release right now, and if you've not played P.T. this year then you missed out.

Goitees 2014

The annual Game of the Year post is being delayed into 2015 due to ethics in games journalism. [Update: it is now up, enjoy.]