Coint and Plick 2014 - The Seventh Annual ILX Video Game Poll

lamp do you really write gamefaqs faqs? i want to believe

lol zappi

#36: Bubsy 3D: Bubsy Visits the James Turrell Retrospective - Browser - 23 pts - 2 votes

http://i.imgur.com/eRTeWVw.jpg

Game | Polygon | Rock Paper Shotgun | James Turrell | Speed Run

Video games as art, video games about art, video games about bad video games, about taste, art about taste, about mortality, anti-art, anti-taste about anti-art. Consumerism. Hell. - s.clover

Weird Twitter in game form. - reddening

Hahaha.

in retrospect maybe i should've voted for that, because it was one of the games i was happiest to know existed last year.

#35: XCOM: Enemy Within - PS3/X360/PC/Mac - 23 pts - 3 votes

http://i.imgur.com/wWyPMTe.jpg

Website | Metacritic | PC Gamer | Game Informer | Trailer

Ideally would have been part of original game but it sure adds a lot of cool toys. It gives enough content that playing through the game again feels rewarding and still somewhat fresh. - bnw

good expansion to already excellent game, added some good extra features and missions. very happy to have excuse to play again. - Roberto Spiralli

#34: Puzzle & Dragons - iOS/Android - 25 pts - 1 votes - 1 top game votes

http://i.imgur.com/tuvUyHe.jpg

Website | Shonen Jump | Pocket Gamer | Trailer

Match-3 Heaven.. or Hell? It's not surprising how influential Bejeweled was on the casual game space, as also being one of a long line of Match-3 games. But the following generation of these games has really spawned from the original Puzzle Quest, making these match games truly addictive with stat progression and inventory, leaning on the endless looting/crafting/leveling from Diablo. Candy Crush Saga got all the attention this year, but it doesn't even come close to the variety and effectiveness of P&D, the child of Puzzle Quest and Pokemon. With a co-op social element, fresh dungeons, monsters, and events every week, I've been locked into this game's tendrils for about six months and indefinitely into the future. - Nhex

Glad we got past what I'm sure is the only match-3 iOS app on C&P 2014

Did you already forget Dr. Who

i did

More like Dr Who?

Well, if nothing else I pushed Puzzle and Dragons past Bubsy 3D

I have no regrets though, not hard for me to vote this one as GOTY, blew my match-3 mind

Wanted to like P&D but it's one of the ios games that just fails to even boot up if I'm offline, which I am for 70% of my commute each day, which is the only time I play ios games. Seriously, the WORST thing about gaming in 2013 is the number of ios games that now do that (or ones that don't do that but won't let me listen to a podcast in the background while I play them because they think their 45 seconds of shitty looping music is so great).

Otmfm

Looking at you Hexagon.

So otm, both points

More like Dr Who?

man i shoulda voted a straight match 3 ticket this year just because i could

match 3 games are the worst videogaming trend. it's not that they're all uniformly terrible (bejeweled is obv an alltime classic, and marvel match 3 was at least compelling from an IP standpoint) but how many of these games do we need???

http://www.ilxor.com/s.pnghttp://www.ilxor.com/s.pnghttp://www.ilxor.com/s.png

I get what you're saying, Mordy, but can't you say the same thing for most simple mechanics? Like, physics games, tower defence, currently Flappy Bird knock-offs?

i guess one difference here is that a lot of the match 3 games i try (including P&D) don't really add enough to the simple mechanics to differentiate it from every other entry in the field. tower defense in some ways even worse at not updating the gameplay at all from knock-off to knock-off, but it seemed much more prevalent a few years ago. so many match-3 games someone could (as mentioned above) theoretically make a ballot of only match 3.

Need best match 3 game poll.

You have games like Zuma and Monsters Ate My Condo, which are kind of different mechanics. But still the spirit of matching three is there. I like the ones with RPG elements like Dungeon Raid and Puzzle Craft.

and 10000000!

jeff otm

puzzle quest got it "rightest" imo but i can dig if other people don't hold to that line.

And, coming in one slot ahead of Puzzle and Dragons is...

#33: The Last of Us - PS3 - 25 pts - 3 votes

http://i.imgur.com/SM5Jko6.gif

Website | Metacritic | Grantland | NY Times | Fan Fiction | Trailer

The Last of Us - it's the time of the season

it doesn't start off promisingly - for the first few sections of the game it doesn't hold your hand so much as take the controller, sit you down with a hot drink, and say 'listen, let me do this bit ok?'. but it gets beyond that, although it never quite stops giving you helpful nudges. it feels initially like it is aiming for Uncharted: Heavy Rain of Zombies but once it gets going it surpasses that low bar without effort. the basic gameplay is very simple and i did wonder if i really wanted to throw however many hours at doing the same thing over and over, but the game manages to keep contriving situations that refuse to let you just fall back on what worked last time, and that is probably the most impressive achievement. it's never scary but it is frequently intense. however it is as linear as all get out, no more illusion of choice of direction than i dunno operation wolf, so if you have a philosophical problem with that look elsewhere i guess.

supplies are scarce enough that you actually have to think about what your doing, which is essential for a game like this to work and if i'd have had to pick a place they'd have gone wrong that probably would've been it. it does look great, and the recognizable bits of boston at the start are very cool. the story and the characters and the voice acting etc are all at least reasonably intelligent but as usual the assumption is that gamers are impervious to subtlety, so none of it is what it could or should be to deserve the critical jizz.

so yeah, it is very good. it's paced so you can't put the controller down because you always feel like you're in the middle of something, but there is also a genuine feeling of not wanting to stop, of wanting to know what's next, and that's as much of a recommendation as anything imo. ― Roberto Spiralli

Finally got some more time to play this. It is really fun AS A GAME. If that makes sense. Some sections surprisingly difficult, and the game has a pretty good sense of when to dump you back at the beginning of a section and thereby let you play through seamlessly, fuelling your own sense of badassness, or when, on the other hand, to give you a break and let you keep the gains you'd got.

It basically succeeds in all the places that Uncharted failed: it has a core mechanic - sneaking, melee and a bit of shooting - that miraculously doesn't ever get repetitive; it doesn't rely on shooting galleries as set pieces or to slow things down artificially; you constantly feel just barely on the verge of being competent enough, and equipped enough, to deal with what's coming next - Tracer Hand

that's the juno game?

No, that's the fake Juno game

Last of Us at #33 = classic ILX P&C challops, kudos

what does 'the last of us' have to do w/juno?

character is more than somewhat based on that film's lead actress

oh thats lame

http://www.greek-mythology-pantheon.com/wp-content/uploads/Greek_Gods_and_Goddesses/Hera_Juno_Greek_Goddess/Hera_Juno_Greek_Goddess_Art_01.jpg

http://b-i.forbesimg.com/erikkain/files/2013/06/ellen-page-and-ellie-from-The-Last-of-Us.jpg

I've been watching the trailers of some of these games, and it's kinda funny how uninformative some of them are about the actual game being sold. Some are little more than a few story details and atmospherics. I guess these trailers aren't being shown on TV, but rather linked to from gamer sites like, uhh, Blues News and The Shuga Shack, whose readers already have a pretty good idea what the game's about.

The Last of Us is a good example. After watching that trailer, I couldn't say for sure whether it's an adventure game, a first person shooter or something like Alone In The Dark. The trailer for The Room Two is little more than a sludge of hackneyed horror tropes cinematics, if I remember correctly. Perhaps understandable, since my final impression after looking around a bit more was that it's basically The Seventh Guest. Goofy horror scenes + puzzles.

Ennihoo, some of these new games look really impressive. Things have changed a lot in the past decade!

Did not expect to see it place that low. Altho I feel like PS3 exclusives never fly super well here anyway? I know I didn't vote for any until.... hmm, maybe ever, since I only got one in 2012 or 2013. Anyway I don't think this made my lsit because I still haven't gotten past the first few hours of the game because it just isn't inspiring me to pick it back up for whatever reason. For the same reason though I didn't play Uncharted for like a year, and still haven't done 2/3 even though they came with my PS3.

BTW, not to be confused with Beyond: Two Souls another PS3 game which actually DOES feature the actress from Juno, motion captured and all

yeah, when our Joel told me that Ellen Page was in a PS game but it wasn't Last of Us i was pretty confuzed

#30 (tie): Do-Don-Pachi Saidaioujou - X360 - 30 pts - 1 votes - 1 top game votes - TOP 360 EXCLUSIVE

http://i.imgur.com/i2HZogN.jpg

Website | Suicide Bullets | Castronaut | Bullet Heaven | Inbachi

I don't know why it took me so long to notice this, but many of the bosses look so..., calming. I don't know how else to say it. The bullet patterns, the speed of the bullets, the bosses themselves. I guess it's just the drugs speaking, or that I've played too much Mushi God-Mode under emulation, but I'm just saying. - Sapphire Densetsu, 9 months ago

the only game I played last year. it's good tho. - Alan N.

I pronounce this the honorary Jeff LeVine vote

is this an import title?

Last of Us almost got me to buy a ps3 download emulator software.

#30 (tie): Drive on Moscow - iOS - 30 pts - 1 votes - 1 top game votes

http://i.imgur.com/3XQkyPx.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Quarter to Three | Pocket Gamer | Story Summary

As the name implies, Drive On Moscow places players in Russia during World War Two, as the Axis powers pushed in and attempted to finally defeat and crush the Soviets in Moscow. Players choose either the Axis or Allies, a computer or human opponent (start with the computer; trust me on this one.), and then are presented with either a defense or attack scenario. Small square tokens represent units, and each round/day is broken up into a series of back-and-forth ‘Impulse’ moves – one Axis, followed by one Allies, and so on. It only takes a short while to figure out how to move and how to initiate combat. Don’t look for simple, quick combat resolutions, however. Remember: this ain’t Risk! Combat slowly wears units down, so gameplay is equally slow and strategy has to be carefully considered before executing each move. - Chris Kirby, 148 Apps

never heard of that - i guess i am not really in the iOS market - but i am intrigued. whoever gave this #1 has to stand up and reprezent

#30 (tie): Dota 2 - PC/Mac/Linux - 30 pts - 1 votes - 1 top game votes

http://i.imgur.com/IG8M6Xx.jpg

Dota Blog | Metacritic | Forbes | Ars Technica | Fan Fiction | Highlights

No other game has taken over my gaming life like this one. If I could have given a single game 100 points and not voted for anything else, I would have. That's how big of an impact it had on me this year. I've probably played at least 1 game every night since I installed it, watched countless pro matches, spectated a tournament IRL, and read everything I could about it.

Valve shows how F2P doesn't have to mean pay2win by engaging with the community rather than releasing a crippled game. Icefrog, the game's pseudonymous designer, consistently releases masterfully balanced patches which keep the game and the meta-game fresh. Is the game superior to LoL? In my opinion, yes, but you should just play whichever one your friends are playing. It's more fun that way - diamonddave85

dope game

also LOL at the fanfiction link, i'll have to read some of those