Comments on: 2014 End Of Year Retrospective

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 05:49:26 +0000

By: Ninja Foodstuff

Ninja Foodstuff — Thu, 25 Dec 2014 23:19:52 +0000

Don’t do it, it’s awful. They actually had a decent chance to make up for Space Hulk, and still bodged it.

By: Hentzau

Hentzau — Wed, 24 Dec 2014 15:07:34 +0000

I considered it! It was pretty great, but somehow didn’t stick in my mind enough to really warrant a place here.

By: Ninja Foodstuff

Ninja Foodstuff — Tue, 23 Dec 2014 13:44:45 +0000

No love for One Finger Death Punch? The best game I’ve played this year on your recommendation

By: Hentzau

Hentzau — Mon, 22 Dec 2014 00:04:38 +0000

An expansion could do a lot for it, I don’t think it’s so fundamentally broken that it couldn’t be saved with two years of expansions and patching. It’s not going to get one, though, not when those resources could go on the next Civ or another XCOM — and besides, if they cared enough to do an expansion they’d have cared enough to not screw it up quite so badly the first time around.

As a random thought, it has taken me this long to realise that Endless Legend’s art style has been “inspired” by the Game of Thrones intro. I knew it looked familiar somehow.

By: Zenicetus

Zenicetus — Wed, 17 Dec 2014 19:22:14 +0000

Good writeup; it seems we have mostly similar taste in the games that overlap.

Wolfenstein surprised me too. I’m not a huge fan of FPS games or first person games in general, unless it’s something unusually good like Dishonored. This was an impulse buy during a dry period between new games, and I went from “I can’t believe I bought this, to “I can’t believe I’m having fun,” to “I can’t believe I finished it!” It would never be on my personal GOTY list, but it was the most fun shooter I played this year.

I know you bounced off Endless Legend, but that and Elite Dangerous are the two games I’ve enjoyed the most this year. I’ll probably still be playing them both through next year too, which gets them both my personal “longest legs” award. Not sure I’ll ever get back to my half-finished Divinity game, or take another stab at Beyond Earth.

Speaking of which, I’m also curious whether an expansion will ever improve Beyond Earth enough to make up for the lackluster content. It would have to be something fairly massive, like adding completely new sets of aliens with different behaviors. Or intelligent aliens as opponents to contest the planet, instead of the drab, lifeless human AI. There is a skeleton of an interesting game there in the mechanics, but it would require a ton of new content and much better writing to get me back into it. I don’t know if Firaxis is up to it. They didn’t seem to have their heart in this project; just phoning it in with a bare minimum of creativity.

By: Darren

Darren — Wed, 17 Dec 2014 14:26:48 +0000

I might have to play Revengeance at some point; my boyfriend is a big Metal Gear fan and has sung its praises.

I look forward to reading your review about Alien: Isolation, whenever it comes out. It’s the rare game where I have a list of complaints a mile long but still can’t stop thinking about it.

By: Hentzau

Hentzau — Tue, 16 Dec 2014 23:09:41 +0000

That’s sad to hear. I felt bad abandoning the game after thirty hours, but I assumed that with the companion quests and balance changes it would be much improved. It didn’t seem like it’d be a difficult thing to fix.

By: Hentzau

Hentzau — Tue, 16 Dec 2014 23:05:19 +0000

I’m loving the mechs. Hearthstone’s all about managing risk – if you have to ask yourself “Does he have a Flamestrike in his hand?” the answer is a resounding “YES” and you probably shouldn’t overextend — and while the mechs seem RNG as all hell I think it enhances that aspect of the game, in that you only play the mechs if you can either manipulate the outcome so that it benefits you, or else live with the consequences of a bad RNG.

I haven’t gone back to Age of Wonders 3 since April, sadly. I hear the recent DLC/expansions are pretty good, so that might provide an excuse for a revisit.

And no, I haven’t softened on Might and Magic Legacy one bit. It had its good side, but it ground me down too quickly for me to see any benefit in trying it again. I still think Grimrock is the far superior game, but the combat is also still the weakest part of it and I can understand if it doesn’t sound like your kind of thing.

By: Hentzau

Hentzau — Tue, 16 Dec 2014 22:57:11 +0000

Are you talking about Ascension? That looked suspiciously like the Cyanide trick of releasing the same game every year with two new teams and some cosmetic changes and selling it for full price.