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The 25 Best Video Games of 2014

This may be a slate we look back on as ground zero for something that transcends everything that came prior.

The 25 Best Video Games of 2014
Photo: Telltale Games

At the end of 2014, we can confidently state that the next gen is finally here. As much as we wanted to will the next gen into being by having two shiny new consoles on the market in 2013, the simple fact of the matter is that this is the first generation of games where we can no longer measure the advancement of gaming in scale and horsepower, but ideas. Not to say that the console power trip hasn’t been very good to our eyes this year, but watching tried-and-true ideas evolve into something better is a greater source of awe than how many pixels were rendered in the process.

In another year, the presence of so many sequels might have been a cause for alarm, a symptom of a bigger problem of recycling and watering down the impact of old properties to the point of rendering them utterly trivial. And yet, one looks over this list and sees every sequel, every reimagination, every established series swinging for the fences. This is even a year where Activision’s annual song and dance with Call of Duty resulted in a much more kinetically ambitious game than the series has shown us since the first Modern Warfare. We were given our first truly brilliant Alien title. Wolfenstein finally managed to reclaim its former glory with a measure of character/narrative polish. And Nintendo as a whole finally has the Wii U positioned as a full-time, reliable fun machine.

And so, the running theme of this year’s cream of the crop appears to be the advancement of ideas, games that evolve and toy around with the status quo of genres, use the new technology to do what was never possible, or use old technology to do something very different, and not necessarily let it be colored by nostalgia alone. The titles we voted for represent the shape of the future, a robust portent of things to come, and if this is the direction of the industry, this may be a slate we look back on as ground zero for something that transcends everything that came prior. Justin Clark


The 25 Best Video Games of 2014

25. Child of Light

Child of Light was developed using the UbiArt framework development platform, the same engine that powers Rayman Origins and Rayman Legends. That series’s pedigree can be felt in multiple places here, but the game has grander, more awe-inspiring ideas. Fairly simple, archetypical fantasy designs are married with a gentle, dream-world fluidity of motion, and a quirkiness that’s pretty much all its own. It’s a world somewhere between Yoshitaka Amano’s old-school Final Fantasy art and a Studio Ghibli film. It invites players to slow down and explore more of the vast, detailed tableau that Ubisoft Montreal has created here, instead of running circles in it to level grind. Child of Light is a living storybook, and if there’s another game with such ambitions, it’s a near-certainty it wasn’t executed with this much beauty, heart, and care. Clark


The 25 Best Video Games of 2014

24. Shovel Knight

You could say that Shovel Knight came out of nowhere to become one of the year’s most memorable independent titles, but that would be doing it a bit of an injustice. Sure, this was relatively unknown company Yacht Club Games’ first project, but they needed a successful Kickstarter campaign in order to get it off the ground. After a brief preview, donors from all walks of life believed in the end goal enough to make ample contributions, reaching almost quintuple the initial $75,000 target. With the funds they required and then some, the creative team was able to put together an immaculate homage to NES groundbreakers like Mario Bros., Castlevania, DuckTales, and Mega Man. The core DNA of Shovel Knight is composed of vintage charisma, but the game still manages to feel stunningly contemporary. A sort of 8-bit Dark Souls, its numerous challenges will have your stress level skyrocketing, but it’s a beguiling tension you can’t help but return to time and time again. Mike LeChevallier

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The 25 Best Video Games of 2014

23. Diablo III: Reaper of Souls

Diablo III’s first expansion, Reaper of Souls, was the video-game equivalent of the song of the summer. The new Adventure Mode allowed players to essentially play the most addictive chorus of each track on a loop, and the redefined lyrics went something like this: “Because you know I’m all about that loot, ‘bout that loot, no trouble.” Earning new skills for preexisting characters or mastering those of the new Crusader class provided a ready-made hook in which to grind bosses and gear, while fresh environments and enemies and post-release balancing patches only reinforced this most diabolic gaming addiction. “Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in,” indeed, and if these colorful, labyrinthine, monster-laden territories represent hell, then 2014 is to blame for a new generation of fallen angels. Aaron Riccio


The 25 Best Video Games of 2014

22. Transistor

Transistor is a bit of a throwback to the purity of early action games, in that you don’t need to understand a lick of the story. (It’s enough to simply admire the sleek, neon-noir presentation.) Instead, you need merely master the language of its weaponry, specifically the sword-shaped Transistor, which can be programmed with thousands of unique combination attacks. As in Hotline Miami, combat becomes a sort of puzzle, whereas its hybrid mechanics of turn-based and real-time action put AAA titles like Dragon Age to shame. Ultimately, even when the recursive, Matrix-like plotting turns out to be more substantial than it appears, it’s the ever-evolving combat (with opponents also learning new skills) that keeps the replays coming. Riccio


The 25 Best Video Games of 2014

21. Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze

Plainly put, Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze does for the Wii U what Donkey Kong Country did for the SNES. If you don’t own a Wii U, and happen to see someone else playing Tropical Freeze in close proximity, you’ll be promptly digging under couch cushions and upending cup holders for spare change in order to procure Nintendo’s latest console and a copy of Retro Studios’ finest production to date. The game looks amazing and plays even better, enhancing everything the Wii’s Donkey Kong Country Returns did by taking advantage of the previously untapped powers of the Wii U. High-definition graphics serve Donkey Kong and his simian brethren extremely well, their furry pelts swaying in the wind, their vine-swinging made that much more fluid with the lag-less framerate at hand. The stage design is unadulterated platforming supremacy; there’s not a subpar selection in the bunch, making Tropical Freeze the go-to DK experience for both greenhorn gamers and those who still keep their Super Nintendo stowed away just in case a certain, otherwise insatiable urge kicks in. LeChevallier


The 25 Best Video Games of 2014

20. A Bird Story

As developer Kan Gao’s follow-up to the universally acclaimed To the Moon, A Bird Story meets all the expectations one might have based on the previous game, but not exactly the way one might expect. The same level of warmth and tenderhearted care of the previous game is here; the verbose poetry and musing To the Moon is not. Instead, the story is all in the visuals, in the experience of using your keyboard or joypad, and on a much smaller scale than its predecessor. The result is something of a digital Red Balloon, a perfect moment in time for a young, introverted latchkey kid who will never forget the best friend he ever had: a bird with a broken wing. It’s not necessarily a game that breaks new ground, but the amount of heart conveyed using the simplest storytelling tools is incredible. Clark

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The 25 Best Video Games of 2014

19. Never Alone

As a simple platformer, Never Alone would still be worthy of mention this year, as a beautiful game set in a unique place that takes full advantage of its environment. It would simply be a gentle, inviting change of pace for the genre. But Never Alone is more, as to play it is to hold a piece of heritage, something that only existed from the lips of elders to the ears of the young before this game gave it brilliant life. There’s a profound reverence to the Inupiat folklore told inNever Alone’s approximate four hours—a sense of their ideals, of the power in the retelling through the game’s omniscient narrator, of the respect for the frozen Earth little Nuna and her fox friend walk on, and what children were meant to take from the tale. The fact that a game is being used to convey all of that is breathtaking in its implications, and it makes what would have been a minor gem into something incredibly special. Clark


The 25 Best Video Games of 2014

18. Persona 4 Arena Ultimax

We’re hopefully fortunate enough to make lifelong friends. But we can’t make mud pies forever; we adapt and find new ways to enjoy one another’s company. That’s Persona 4 Arena Ultimax, which takes the characters from Persona 3 and 4 and has them grow up a little bit, shifting from the conventions of an RPG to those of a fighting game, all while continuing to develop your favorite characters. Even as the game restricts combat to a two-dimensional plane, it expands the gameplay, with the ability to level up and modify character skills throughout battles in the Golden Arena and a customizable online lobby options (packed with likeminded, passionate fans). More importantly, each character now plays with their own unique mechanics (like Teddy’s bag of toy traps; Ken’s canine companion, Koromaru; and Junpei’s reflective baseball bat), and that personalizes them far more than the social-link conversations used to flesh them out in Persona. Riccio


The 25 Best Video Games of 2014

17. Dragon Age: Inquisition

It’s strange that what makes Dragon Age: Inquisition the best entry in BioWare’s fantastical role-playing series isn’t the dragons, the inquisition, or the many other well-done standardized RPG aspects that are laid out in this massive, minimum 80-hour epic of a game. No, what keeps this third Dragon Age installment in any 2014 Game of the Year conversation is the individualized experiences of anyone who’s fully given themselves over to the process of building metaphorical, person-to-person bridges in the fractured land of Thedas. To guarantee yourself worthy of the respect of those you meet along your journey, earning their trust and loyalty for the long run, is to carefully navigate a fickle latticework of personality quirks, idiosyncratic ticks, and prolonged incidental discourse. Yes, you can stick to the major routes, languishing in the distracting to-do list nature of the Hinterlands and beyond, but the true exhilaration available in Inquisition surfaces when meticulously forging enduring alliances, united in soul and purpose, with minimal extended inquiry necessary to break the ice. LeChevallier


The 25 Best Video Games of 2014

16. Bravely Default

The legacy and cult status of Bravely Default was established so quickly that many who played it failed to realize its spiritual successor association to Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light. Stepping away from many of the trademarks of Square Enix’s prized property while also retaining an immense respect for the genre it aims to elevate (the JRPG), Bravely Default assertively and triumphantly ushers in imaginative ways to do battle with its easy-to-learn-tricky-to-master combat system and use of augmented reality. It’s unsubtly embedded in the atypical moniker: Brave, or Default. The former tactic is basically useless without the latter, which bypasses moves to store attack points to be expended later. This simple yet ingenious concept adds an astounding amount of complexity to each and every encounter. Bravely Default’s narrative is less innovative, but the aesthetic style (spearheaded by Squaresoft veteran Akihiko Yoshida) is quite the opposite. There isn’t another 3DS game that looks or sounds like this, and most likely won’t be until the forthcoming, eagerly anticipated sequel, Bravely Second. LeChevallier

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The 25 Best Video Games of 2014

15. The Wolf Among Us: Season One

The Wolf Among Us doesn’t so much riff off of its comic-book source material as it mines its deeper aspects for thematic gold. On paper, the game sounds like a CSI-style cop drama based around fairy tales, but in practice, it’s a heavier tale of immigrants exiled from glory, forced into relative squalor, with you playing the beastly cop who has to make them okay with that fact. Bigby’s job is a hard one, policing a place where loyalty and remembrance of the old times carries a high premium, where the powerful and dangerous have never felt more neglected, and his own past has never been more of a burden. It’s Chinatown as related by Mother Goose, and it’s a fascinating evolution of Telltale’s usual bag of tricks. Here, you don’t so much traffic in hard decisions as you do in hard-won trust, and the consequences have never been harder to deal with as a result. Clark


The 25 Best Video Games of 2014

14. Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare may actually have proven its loudest critics right—after all, do we really want to think of war as something fun? At the same time, however, it’s hard to seriously consider these societal and cultural complaints, because the average, or even sub-average, Advanced Warfare player is going to be having, well, too much fun. They’re going to be double-jumping through the air like bionic ballerinas, and even if that pirouette ends up being pyrrhic, the lightning-quick load times ensure that they’re not dwelling on death so much as enjoying the life of their personalized, unkillable super-soldier. Fancy weapons, thermal-scanning grenades, drone bombardments, and so much more—no wonder an acclaimed actor like Kevin Spacey is willing to ham it up as Advanced Warfare’s villain: It’s going to be hard to go back to the movies after this one. Riccio


The 25 Best Video Games of 2014

13. The Last of Us: Left Behind

The real next-gen treatment to The Last of Us didn’t occur this summer when Naughty Dog remastered the game for the PS4, beautiful as it turned out. It occurred when they gave us Left Behind, mostly putting aside the stealth survival that drove the main game and opting instead for telling an apocalyptic, pre-pubescent love story. It’s not the tale of factions and guns and survival, but of simply growing up, having and keeping friends, and falling in love when you’ve grown up to know, and with certainty, that the other person by your side might not exist tomorrow. It’s a story that directly feeds a crucial moment in The Last of Us’s ending, with Ellie feeding her friend’s words back to Joel and needing answers. Through that moment, Left Behind becomes the best kind of added content by at once standing on its own and making an already thematically rich experience even richer for its telling. Clark


The 25 Best Video Games of 2014

12. Wolfenstein: The New Order

For an over-the-top action-packed alternative-history game in which you face off against Nazis and their robotic schnauzers in their lunar base, the meat and potatoes of Wolfenstein: The New Order’s narrative isn’t only down to earth, it’s downright emotionally affecting. One level’s antics are interrupted by the rigor of abruptly taking an ethnic purity test at gunpoint; another has you infiltrating a concentration camp, with the game slowing things down long enough so as to ensure that the squalid circumstances and abject humiliations you’re made to experience aren’t exploitative. The nail-biting stealth mechanics and satisfying gunplay are just fine, and the diverse settings (within a U-boat, in a museum dedicated to Nazi victories, traveling along the seabed) keep things fresh, but the horrors of this thankfully avoided timeline are what stay with you. Riccio

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The 25 Best Video Games of 2014

11. The Walking Dead: Season Two

Telltale’s first go-round with The Walking Dead was a whiplash experience, ebbing and flowing with a steady pulse of unpredictable people and events, with Lee’s only objective to save the soul of a little girl. The game’s second installment, by comparison, is a steady, sinking dread that hits an excruciatingly horrible bottom later. It’s the story of that same little girl lost, and being forced to lose a whole lot more in tiny, devastating pieces. Clementine learns the new way the world works here, and the player’s complicity in her fate, in her continued survival, has never felt more powerful than it does in its closing chapters, culminating in one of the hardest calls a player has ever had to make in a game. Telltale masters the slow burn this season, and whichever ending you choose, it’s abundantly clear that when the third season happens, the little girl we started Season Two with will be long gone. Clark


The 25 Best Video Games of 2014

10. Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3Ds and Wii U

Whether playing on 3DS or Wii U (or both simultaneously, which is possible), the fourth iteration of Super Smash Bros. will presumably, and rightfully, be deemed one of the greatest fighting games of all time. Masahiro Sakurai and his compatriots at Sora Ltd. have accomplished something truly magical here: They’ve finally created a game that can literally be played forever, avoiding entering an obsolete state if downloadable content and software updates continue to be released. The sheer amount of customization, collectibles, and modes of play are more than just ostentatious fan service; they’re characteristics of a product that was constructed with tremendous care and attention to detail. Where else could you witness or take part in a colossal eight-player donnybrook between the medium’s most famous mascots in glorious, spotless HD? Mario backing Nintendo, Sonic representing Sega, Pac-Man for Atari, and more have been tossed into the grandest of matchups made possible by the most balanced assemblage of stages and combatants to grace a brawler in recent memory. LeChevallier


The 25 Best Video Games of 2014

9. LittleBigPlanet 3

The thing about LittleBigPlanet 3 is that it defies encapsulation. It isn’t just adorable. Or just a platformer. It’s like a Turing machine in that it’s an object that potentially contains all other objects, thanks to its ability to recreate (in sack-puppet and cardboard-cutout form) just about anything that floats your fancy. If you’ve always wondered what Death of a Salesman would be like as a video game, you can build it. If you’ve long thought that any game would be much improved if it had Portal in it, you can put it to the test. It’s hard to imagine anyone growing bored of LittleBigPlanet, since there’s always some entirely new device being cooked up right around the corner, whether that involves constructing a roller-coaster course for Sackboy’s hook helmet to latch onto or building a nightmarish, spike-lined death trap for Swoop to attempt to fly through. Riccio


The 25 Best Video Games of 2014

8. P.T.

Both Guillermo del Toro and Hideo Kojima were quick to mention when P.T.’s big secret was out that it was little more than a warning shot, a living statement of intent for the next Silent Hill, and that the game we’ll get in a few years won’t be directly tied to this in any way. If P.T. is little more than a high-water mark Kojima and del Toro set for themselves, then wish them luck if they want to top what is the most aggressively fierce assertion of pure horror in an interactive medium. Each run around P.T.’s unsettling Moebius strip of a house brings something new, something unknowable, something unpredictable, and something unforgettably malevolent. This isn’t horror you kill with a shotgun. This isn’t a place you negotiate with. This is inescapable horror that entraps, crushes, and oppresses. In less than 60 minutes, P.T. accomplishes what nearly every horror game prior spend hours never achieving. Clark

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The 25 Best Video Games of 2014

7. Far Cry 4

Big, bold, brash, and yes, silly as hell, Far Cry 4 is more of an astonishing technological feat than anything else. Its characters are across-the-board nugatory, its story overwhelmingly grim, but the open universe it creates is nothing short of spectacular. The game’s setting, the Himalayan nation of Kyrat, provides countless opportunities for ridiculous, spur-of-the-moment bursts of scatterbrained violence and high-octane Hollywood blockbuster-caliber action. One-upping Far Cry 3 in nearly every artistic category, the game sets the standard for everything next-gen, adding an excellent co-op mode to its already stacked solo campaign. A knee-jerk reaction to Far Cry 4 is that it’s just Far Cry 3 re-skinned and thoroughly shellacked, and yet as much as Ajay Ghale and Jason Brody or Kyrat and the Rook Islands are ultimately interchangeable, Ubisoft Montreal continues to outdo themselves with each Far Cry chapter, causing the eyes of stern franchise naysayers to pop as they attempt to discredit the innumerable achievements consecutively manifested. LeChevallier


The 25 Best Video Games of 2014

6. Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

Years from now, when we talk about how great Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor was, there will be few who remember generic grizzly protagonist Talion, his ethereal charge, Celebrimbor, or their quest for revenge. But you can believe there will be tales told for years about the enemies players created, how players nurtured their enemy’s hatred, engineered uprisings from the inside, and watched Orcs tell tales of the player’s many failures, thus making legends, heroes, and despots out of lowlifes. The Nemesis system, where the game’s enemies have their own constantly changing social hierarchy based on their misdeeds, is one of those ideas we can expect to see more of—a literal and figurative game changer that makes every action against one’s hated adversaries a personal, thrilling affair. It helps to make a fun, but unassuming licensed Lord of the Rings action title into a fascinating medieval House of Cards, where the only common language of men and Orcs is backstabbing. Clark


The 25 Best Video Games of 2014

5. Infamous: Season Son

Infamous: Second Son is about many things: How one right or wrong choice can change the lives of everyone you care for, the limitations of corruption, the ideals of one overriding the beliefs of the masses, but above all, it’s about family. Not necessarily strictly bloodline relations, either, though main character Delsin Rowe’s volatile bond with his older brother Reggie is a central part of the story. Depending on if you choose to save Seattle from the anti-Conduit Department of Unified Protection (D.U.P.) or blow it to smithereens and take over with an assortment of elemental superpowers (smoke, neon, video, and concrete), the fuel in Delsin’s fire is his connection to fellow Conduits. Meaningful interactions with Hank Daughtry, Abigail “Fetch” Walker, Eugene Sims, and even Big Bad Brooke Augustine shape the way Delsin thinks and the way in which players control him. His moveset ebbs and flows with his karmic decisions, inching closer to siding with the family he was born into (Reggie and his native people, the Akomish) or his newfound kin, the Conduits. Developer Sucker Punch has yet to lay an egg, and the superb Second Son is proof positive that they probably never will. LeChevallier


The 25 Best Video Games of 2014

4. Mario Kart 8

Just as Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U cements itself as an all-time great fighter, Mario Kart 8 does the same in the racer division. As soon as new characters (Link), vehicles (Link’s bike, the Master Cycle) and tracks (Hyrule Circuit, where coins turn into Rupees) were announced as DLC, the idea of there being a foreseeable need for Mario Kart 9 in the next half-decade went right out the window. The game was perfectly fine in its debut form, still standing as perhaps the Wii U’s best-looking IP, adding enough to distinguish itself from past editions while still capturing the eternal allure each Mario Kart entry invariably dishes out. Yet, the idea that fresh content could be periodically distributed (the second part of the first DLC package arrives in Q1 2015) deepens the game immensely. Nintendo no longer has to live with preliminary gripes like “There’s too many babies on the roster!” or “Do we really need all the Koopalings?” Mario Kart 8 is still changing with the times, and that’s more than you can say for the majority of games dispersed in 2014 or any other year. LeChevallier

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The 25 Best Video Games of 2014

3. South Park: The Stick of Truth

An RPG lives or dies on the strength of its world-building; given the similarities in basic gameplay, that’s largely the distinguishing factor. The Stick of Truth, then, thrives in the rich comic history of South Park’s 17 years, inviting players to explore a world every bit as real as anything found in Skyrim—and crasser than anything in Grand Theft Auto. The game itself treats RPG conventions with reverence, but gleefully handles the story with the show’s usual irreverence, tethering standard objectives to the most ludicrous of lore. Fast travel is handled by Timmy and his Handicar, side quests stem from characters as diverse as Al Gore and Jesus, and occur in familiar locales like the local City Wok, now besieged by its Mongolian BBQ neighbors. Paper Mario wishes it had the cojones to battle the Nazi bacteria in Mr. Slave’s asshole with the magical power of farts. Riccio


The 25 Best Video Games of 2014

2. Bayonetta 2

For four years, we’ve had to ask the hard question of how you top a game that ends with a hypersexual, gun-toting witch mistress punching God into the sun. Bayonetta 2 answers that question with a joyous, delirious, dizzying jaunt between heaven and hell. The key word is joy. There’s a hedonism to this game and its central character, where every button press doesn’t just unleash hell on God or Satan’s misshapen soldiers, but makes unleashing hell look damn good. To step into Bayonetta’s gun-heels for a few hours is to revel in her, and the only other title to even come close to that sense of revelry is this game’s predecessor. The bar for action games gets pushed a little further into the stratosphere with every new entry. Clark


The 25 Best Video Games of 2014

1. Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth

Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth understands why we play games in the first place. With so much entertainment spread across the media and on increasingly bigger screens and resolutions, it takes real gumption to harken back to an old-school first-person dungeon crawler on the relatively small Nintendo 3DS, using a stylus to draw the digital equivalent of pen-and-paper maps. But all gamers are looking to get lost in the magic of something other than our own lives, and what accomplishes that better than a maze? Not for nothing does Persona Q take place in a literally timeless world and model its first dungeon after Alice in Wonderland. Every tile captures and compels your attention, whether that’s in the logic puzzles hidden in the creepy scenery, FOE monsters, or the handcrafted map itself, or within the challenging combat, which makes the most of the skills each of the 17 playable characters brings to Teddie—ahem, to bear. Wandering off the beaten path has never been so rewarding, and with so many scenes between the loveable casts of Persona 3 and 4 hidden down terminal routes, it’s a disservice to call them “dead ends.” There’s nothing but life in Persona Q. Riccio

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