For the AAA space, yeah, it was a pretty awful year lmao. There are no doubt some decent ones in there but that was the year of the big initial rush of slop for the new generation of consoles, and the start of the big online only rush of games that was, at the time, heavily lambasted.
Evil Within has problems. But its goat for me. I play it through every October. The atmosphere is perfect the enemies are horrifying with actually meaning behind their design, and the combat has its own little intricacies that make it feel really smooth.
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor – Monolith Productions
I think it's going to be common from now on that the year following the release of a new console gen is going to come with some meh games in the following year as good games take longer to produce.
Those are the 2014 games, the year after the release of the PS4/Xbox One, and in 2021, the year after the release of the PS5/Xbox Series, it was:
It Takes Two – Hazelight Studios / Electronic Arts
Deathloop – Arkane Studios / Bethesda Softworks
Metroid Dread – MercurySteam / Nintendo
Psychonauts 2 – Double Fine / Xbox Game Studios
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart – Insomniac Games / Sony Interactive Entertainment
Dark Souls 2 had an absolutely horrible launch, and overall it just wasn't as good as the first. I actually love DS2, but it's still considered the weakest Souls by most fans.
Ehh I disagree, but to each their own. I mean I've put a few hundred hours into both for multiplayer and such, but for a single story playthrough like most people would score something on I'd say Inquisition is better. DS2 had some cool new mechanics and ideas, but they were unpolished and the world felt disjointed. Plus DS2 didn't get "great" until the dlcs that came later. DS2's dlcs are peak Souls.
It really was, my GOTY for 2014 was Shadow of Mordor, and I think that’s only a 8/10, whereas every year after and before my GOTY was usually one I gave a 9 or 10/10. 2014 was definitely the worst year for games in a long time.
Yeah, i spent hundreds of hours into OW, but i would had never given it a GOTY. Not in the old glory days, and not even if somehow came with all the right patches years after on release.
Its very fun when they dont make your life miserable, but thats it.
Edit: making a deep search, looks like 2016 was a garbage year. Best thing that came out was U4 and Dark Souls 3.
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u/UsedHoney9104 May 31 '25
2014 must've been a terrible year for dragon age inquisition to win it