It's impossible to determine just how long ago 2014 was. Wisdom would dictate it sits around the 9 year mark, but no one truly believes that. Endless Legend? That was no more than two years ago, and I'll throw hands if anyone suggests otherwise. But apparently enough time has passed that just about every 4X game that came out that year has now been superceded by a newer title in the series. Civilization: Beyond Earth, Galactic Civilizations 3, Age Of Wonders 3, and Endless Legend made 2014 an incredibly strong year for strategy games, but nowadays, who really still plays these older entries?
I don't mean to sound derisive. It's a sombre truth. At 233 hours, I've put more time into Endless Legend than any other 4X strategy game in my Steam library, and loved every minute of it. To this day it's still the best in the genre when it comes to sparking the imagination of my chronically fantasy-loving brain. The music, the amazing variety in terrain and units, the sheer quantity of words bringing to life every last quest, minor faction, creature, and environmental anomaly. It's a simply splendid game. The question is whether it's still worth playing today.
]]>When RPS awarded Kentucky Route Zero the title of Game Of The Year in 2013, only two episodes out of an eventual five had been released. If this sounds like a bland statement of fact, just think about it for a second. I can't recall any other time an episodic adventure game has received GOTY-level praise before it was even concluded, let alone only 40% done.
]]>Look, I’m not saying Far Cry 3 is responsible for *gestures vaguely towards modern AAA games* but it’s definitely a prime suspect. If I was trying to connect a piece of red string from the middle of my evidence board (which would probably be a picture of the map screen from Assassin’s Creed Valhalla), I’m not sure I’d push a pin directly into Jason Brody’s face, but I’d definitely circle it in black Sharpie a few times. Basically, in the eleven years since its release, I’ve grown a bit suspicious of Far Cry 3’s lasting legacy.
]]>When The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim came out I was a student, and I worked in Gamestation (RIP) to help pay for chicken noodles. I remember the hype around it very clearly because Gamestation had a deal where you could buy it for like £22, and I had a sideline going when the stock was low to keep some back for my friends. Apols if you were caught in the crossfire for that, but dragon fever was running high off the back of a still very cool trailer, and shouting Fus Ro Dah was the only cure.
In the years since, Skyrim has been released and re-released many times, on every conceivable platform. "Arrow to the knee" jokes became de rigueur and hacky almost overnight, and at this point might have horse-shoed back around to being funny again. There are many examples of unrelated games or videos that cut to black fading back up into the opening of Skyrim, in a kind of sub-genre of rickroll. Does it hold up now? Kind of. It's a really fun, ambitious RPG, with faults - but if the faults didn't exist maybe it wouldn't have been as popular as it was.
]]>Revisiting Minecraft to discuss whether it deserved the GOTY award back in 2010 is a hard task, in the same way that discussing the importance of sliced bread is hard. It’s so significant that, when ranking the significance of other similar things, we all forget it until someone goes “wait wot about Minecraft” and then everyone unleashes a collective “oooo yeahhh”, guaranteeing it the top spot. To echo AliceB’s sentiments upon revisiting Portal, it’s fuckin’ Minecraft.
In fact, I think I could take her Portal revisited intro, replace every instance of “Portal” with “Minecraft”, and call it a day. It’s Minecraft! Of course it was game of the year. It was arguably the game of the decade, an absolute all timer. I won’t spend many words explaining why it is good, because those words would be redundant fodder, like the bloke fighting a soaring dragon by poking the ground under his feet with a sword. I’ll give it a fair go so that Alice can’t say I didn’t try, and swiftly move on to reading all of your (hopefully) lovely comments about why you also like Minecraft. If everyone brings one thing, we can have a show-and-tell.
]]>Dragon Age is one of my favourite game series. I replayed Dragon Age: Origins recently not for this column, but for fun. That's the kind of wild gal I am. Origins was one of the reasons I got into PC gaming, because my dinky laptop wasn't good enough to run it and I was desperate to play it after seeing the trailers. I spaffed some of my student loan on a new desktop and spent four months eating nothing but cheese sandwiches. At the time it felt worth it. Watching those trailers now is like opening a time capsule full of fantasy tropes and, for some reason, an incongruous chugging guitar song by someone we don't need to mention ever again.
Replaying it now is a different experience. It's still a really cool RPG, notable for very good world-building and a cast of interesting characters (that you can have sex with in a cold tent), and it continues to hold a dear place in my heart. On the other hand, there's a whole section that's such a mind-numbing slog to get through that everyone hates it and there's a mod specifically to remove it from the entire game. Origins is a game I very much like, yet sometimes struggle to explain why it is good. But I'm not alone in thinking so, 'cos in 2009 this was RPS's Game Of The Year. Can't blame me for that. I didn't even work here then.
]]>Did your science teacher ever let you play around with non-Newtonian fluids? If not, my condolences. You missed out on some of the greatest fun you could have at school. I remember holding a big ball of starchy goo, balling it up and turning it over and over in my hands, marvelling at its strange rigidity. And then I'd stop playing with it, and watch with childish glee as the slop slowly seeped through my fingers, its form reacting immediately and satisfyingly to my touch.
I felt that same glee when I played Tower Of Goo Unlimited back in 2005 - the prototype that would three years later become RPS's game of the year for 2008. It was well and truly a prototype, a single level with the aim of building the highest possible tower out of sticky balls that were connected via long strands of wobbly guck. It was silly, and messy, and confusing, and marvellous, and I realised very quickly that I needed a proper game like this in my life as soon as possible.
]]>When Katharine told me about this idea to take a look at RPS Advent Calendar winners of years past, I thought it was a good idea. But when she said she wanted me to do the first one, and that the first GOTY awarded on RPS was 2007's Portal, I almost laughed. Does Portal hold up? Why even bother asking? Shut this whole article down. Of course it holds up. It's Portal.
Of course, conventional bait-and-switch writing would dictate that this is the point where I tell you that, aha, after playing Portal again in the blinding light of 2022 it's actually a heap of rubbish, such as could only otherwise be found on the streets on day ten of a two week bin-lorry strike. But obviously that is not the case, because we're talking about Portal. If anything it's even better than I remember. Like. It's fuckin' Portal.
]]>
.png?width=1200&height=630&fit=crop&enable=upscale&auto=webp "שחרורו של Assassin's Creed Shadows נדחה למרץ כאשר מועצת המנהלים של Ubisoft שוקל מכירת חברה")
