2014 In Review

Clearly I can't get enough of these.  This is partially because it means I beat the odds for another year but mostly because I get to re-live the year of gaming.  But First!

New Wheels

Isn't she lovely?

This year I bought a new car. As seems to be the trend, each new vehicle is more refined and more powerful than the last. At this rate, the next one should be able to fly and do my hypothetical math homework.

This would be the new-this-year BMW M235i.  Yes, I know it isn't a real M despite the many (many) badges.  No, I don't care.  This is far and away the nicest thing I interact with and by a huge margin.  (For those wondering:  I still have the Sky.)

Another Show, Another Trophy
I didn't blog about it, probably because I was too busy playing Wildstar, but the new Jag took Best Space at BrickFiesta 2014.  That puts me at 4/4 for those keeping track.  Next year (scheduling gods pending) I hope to do something completely different and at more reasonable scale which might end my streak.

Now That Formalities are Complete...
...on to gaming!  The list below might look short but don't be fooled. Some of those represent a lot of time involved.

Divinity II:  Ego Draconis (2010):  ****
While I ultimately don't think D2 is quite as good as Dragon Age I think it stands out in a number of key ways.  For one, you get to be a dragon an rain hellfire and brimstone upon things which is pretty neat.  Second, they have a pretty good lore going on with a lot of callbacks from DD and BD which is always appreciated.  I think the combat in general and pacing at the beginning of the game could use some work, the completely open skill trees as in all Larian games is very welcome.  The controls on the other hand are a little floaty, jumping especially, which sucks in the many jumping puzzles.  I still can't decide whether I like the ending with its Bioshock-esque fourth wall breakage but it's nowhere near DA:O or ME3 in the enjoyment ruining department.

Divinity II:  Flames of Vengeance (2010):  ***
D2:FoV is an expansion to D2 which continues where the original left off and is likely a lot of the stuff that was cut from the original game during its somewhat (typical) difficult birthing.  In my case this was extra good because I didn't dwell on D2's ending.  FoV isn't as good as the main game.  The bulk of it is a bunch of fetch quests across Aleroth with the requisite (and sometimes imposing) appearances of characters from the first.  But when the plot hots up, it opens up into a single well-paced dragon-shooty arcade sequence which is by far the best part of it.  Lots of stuff is resolved but in true Larian fashion, not everything so there's hope that there's more D2 on the way.

Rage (2011):  ***
Rage is dated in all the ways that people have already been critical of though because I had such low expectations I was pleasantly surprised. At its core, it's doom with prettier graphics so basically a linear corridor shooter filled with monster closets.  The driving was surprisingly good especially since I typically hate driving in PC games. I've heard second hand information that its development was a disaster and it shows in its unpolished and short playtime (about 15 hours all told).  I suspect that having corporate overlords for the first time has something to do with that.  Ultimately not a terrible game but I don't think it does justice to the legacy of id.

Wildstar (2014):  *****
With a little bit of effort you can probably find some crap I wrote about Wildstar.  It's a game that I liked a lot but ultimately couldn't budget the time for given that it isn't the kind of game that can be easily budgeted.  There are some great ideas in it, ones that I hope will see the light of day in other games because I don't think it's long for this world.  That's a shame because Wildstar is everything this industry needs:  style, substance, and character.  If you forced me, I'd probably say that Wildstar was more fun than GW2 but that GW2 was a better game.  Make whatever sense you like out of that.

Dwarf Fortress (updated for 2014):  ****
I don't know if I'm completely comfortable calling DF a game as such. It's kind of an ant farm with questionable graphics where you have slightly more control over what the ants, err...dwarves, do.  I actually started playing this on and off years ago but somehow it never made it onto my year end reviews.  With this year's version I decided that I'd really get in and try to understand everything which, if you don't know the game simulation ant farm, is hugely improbable given the depth of the simulation.  The primary difficulty of DF is that most of it is really mundane and can be quite boring.  These vast swaths of blandness is punctuated with moments of pure hilarity like losing the corpse of a recently slain dragon only to find that your dwarves have butchered and cooked it.  That's its strength:  the stories you get to tell to astonished and terrified onlookers beggar belief.  I got involved after reading the chronicles of one, now quite infamous, Boatmurdered. Bronzemurder is nowhere near as infamous but still displays the essence of DF:  unthinkable tragedies followed by improbable victories and retold in increasingly amusing ways.

So that's it.
Seems shorter than it actually was but that's kind of how I sum up 2014.  Tune in next year when we recap all the crap I did in 2015!