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

(xp obv)

Is Gunpoint similar to Mappy or Elevator Action?

#16 (tie): Kentucky Route Zero - PC/Mac/Linux - 40 pts - 2 votes - 1 top game votes

http://i.imgur.com/6tF2HJH.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Escapist | Hooked Gamers | Trailer

And while Kentucky Route Zero does ostensibly exist within a video game space, it is more interested in the function of spaces within that space. It is based on the expressive forms of experimental theater, installation art and modernist literature, not on the ideal of the holodeck. It creates non-Euclidean spaces that cannot exist, not as an expression of the possibilities of video game space when unshackled by the constraints of the real world, but as an outright rejection of the common standard of video game spaces. - Eric Swain, Pop Matters

KR0 is unfinished, mostly linear, and with fairly light interactivity, but has particularly strong writing and an amazing sense of atmosphere, and as a displaced Kentuckian a magical realist take on the state's backroads is irresistible to me. - one way street

I've really been charmed by Kentucky Route Zero, but it strikes me that it could be quite gimicky, or that they'l never finish all 5 chapters. - CraigG

i very much want to play kr0 and will the moment it appears on a humble bundle

Ok although I didn't play it, I'm fairly shocked about the low placement of injustice, I was fairly sure that would go top ten

i am shocked that inj placed top 50 honestly. or am i? is this year that sketch? i mean if you get beaten by fucking dishwasher DLC...

the first official ILX, you are disappoint. at least it got Top 20!

I haven't played a fighting game since Tekken 3 and I was never any good at that, but I had a great time with Injustice. Love the way it makes it's super crazy overpowered moves easily accessible instead of hiding them away behind 20 step input strings.

This next one leaves me with an even 15 to finish next week, although I could do five more today if people approve.

#16 (tie): Counterfeit Monkey - Interactive Fiction - 40 pts - 2 votes - 1 top game votes - TOP INTERACTIVE FICTION

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

Website/Game | IFDB | Scatmania | Game Trailers | Horrible Review | Podcast

The game world is a real treat to explore and discover. The setting is rich and detailed; it is possible to examine and interact with everything mentioned in every room description, and you will often see unique messages for certain objects when examining them for the first time that prompt you to “remember” moments from your past, which help round out the protagonist’s backstory and provide information that would be too unwieldy to present otherwise. The story itself is an espionage tale told over about one hundred rooms that span the city of Atlantis; there are many NPCs to interact with, most of which can react to your actions (such as the officer during the protest scene) or carry on conversations with you (even non-story-relevant ones). The presentation of the story flows naturally and smoothly, giving a good balance of puzzles and plot. The conversation mechanic, however, is rather weak; the game essentially presents you with options to choose from during dialogue and is forthright in, effectively, telling you how to play, e.g. “[I want to] ask whether [that item] is for sale” or “[I want to] tell him the truth”. Yes, this does give the player hints on what phrases will carry on the conversation, but this feels less like meaningful interaction and more like “Press X to Plot”. I feel these scenes could have been replaced with zero-input (canned) conversations without taking much away from the feel of the game. However, the conversations are unintrusive and relatively short, so this may not bother you at all. On a similar note, I was a bit put off by one sequence where the game gave me the illusion of having control over a particular scene (i.e. accepting my commands), but then surprised me with the announcement that someone else would be controlling my actions during this sequence and that I could not do anything except “wait” several times in a row until I regained control. But this is a minor detail; the story and setting are both extremely well-written, well-researched, and well-developed, and it is easy to get lost in one’s mind’s eye in the world of Atlantis. - ScruffyED, June 10, 2013

I support this somewhat empty enormous technical achievement 100% - Gravel

5 more today
5 more today

#15: Ridiculous Fishing - A Tale of Redemption - iOS/Android - 42 pts - 5 votes

http://i.imgur.com/rDgB4Pg.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Touch Arcade | Action Button | Trailer

It's rare but sooooo pleasing to play an iOS game that just FEELS RIGHT and this one kills it. Love the floaty gravity on those fish gently falling like stinky seawater snowflakes. Plus WTF @ that ending which I fully did not see coming. - Will M.

I enjoyed the art and music in Ridiculous Fishing, but found playing the game to actually be a chore & sort of shit (after the shine of the first couple of minutes). Little things missing made it even more annoying, like no reset when you screw up. I feel like the first part of the game, dodging fish is okay, but then coming up and catching fish is less fun (and seems to take forever) and shooting the fish once you get to the surface is boring and also takes too long. - JCL

i loved the aesthetic and thought it was a pretty fun game, but i kinda hate any ios game that makes me move my phone around as a core game mechanic

#14: BioShock Infinite - PS3/X360/PC - 45 pts - 2 votes - 1 top game votes

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

Website | Metacritic | Game Informer | Console Monster | Lighting | Fan Fiction | Trailer

Bioshock -- the "sequel in spirit" to System Shock 2

Strong story, music, characters, acting, environments. Game-play was fun and challenging if you had the difficulty level cranked up right. There were all sorts of legit criticisms - story line chickened out, mechanics repetitive, a lot of pretty and lifeless decorations, ken levine crawled up his own ass. The first bioshock had a setting that played into some of those weaknesses. Infinite does not and its a less of an experience for it. But it still blew everything else I played out of the water. - bnw

This game was great fun, and easily the most beautiful-looking game I have seen so far. Also I really liked the combat, and am kind of confused by everyone who says it sucked. Aside from just pointing the trigger and shooting, you usually had multiple hiding spots, tearable gun turrets, all the vigors, etc. so many different ways to approach most combat situations.

High point of the game for me was zipping around a looping skyline while trying to take down a single huge dirigible halfway through the game. - Adam Bruneau

Ugh, it does so much right and so much wrong at the same time that my points assignment has been fluctuating the entier time I was writing this. It is, without a doubt, absolutely gorgeous to look at, gameplay itself is better than either of the prior games, and certain mechanics although underused are stunning (what up skyline). but at the same time, the ugly illusion of choice that worked so well in the first one is brutally apparent and unwelcome and misused here. add that to the most insulting metal gear style 30 minute cutscene ending, and theres def some problems to be had - jjjusten

i don't know what is worse about b:i, the narrative or the mechanics. it's gotta be the mechanics just bc that's the fundamental need of a game - to be fun to play - but the story is dumber than inception. - Mordy

too high.

that crap beating Cookie Clicker is a travesty; shame on us

just sitting on my hard drive. I need to try it.

#13: The Cave - PS3/X360/WiiU/PC/Mac/Linux/iOS/Android/Ouya - 45 pts - 4 votes

http://i.imgur.com/4XUJEJz.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Adventure Gamers | Strategy Informer | Trailer

doublefine just keeps not quite hitting the mark, forever cursed with great ideas and mediocre execution like a western suda 51. you can ignore the purported replayablility considering that 70% of the game is identical regardless of who you pick, but theres something here, a neat dark mean-spirited sensibility that is worth the time if you are willing. as always, story and vibe over gameplay, but its a pretty great story and vibe. - jjjusten

My only real complaint about this game is that some of the puzzles were wholly arbitrary. On the plus side, the storyline is viciously funny and the fact that each character gets its own special portion of the cave to explore/screw up grants extra replayability. - DJP

The only game that my girlfriend has played with me (as navigator) all the way through since Limbo. - Jordan

re bioshock: i've been finishing this one up over the past week after giving up on it about a year ago. i think it's enjoyable but i don't really understand the hyperbole around it. definitely preferred bioshock 1

of probable interest to poll followers: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/03/07/icarus-proudbottoms-world-of-weekly-typing-series/

#12: Desktop Dungeons - PC/Mac - 50 pts - 2 votes - 1 top game votes

http://i.imgur.com/zkpo2To.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Quarter to Three | NPR | Soundtrack | Trailer

It’s a stressful game, in the best possible way – stress that drives you to do better, try harder, understand more. The consequence of ill-judged moves early on may not become apparent until the final stages of a quest, when you’re up against fearsome level 9s or even the boss, and you’re just a handful of experience points or a single potion short of victory. In a canny but dastardly design decision, Desktop Dungeons ensures you’ll be well aware that you’re going to die several moves before it happens. Hover the mouse over an enemy and the game will show you the outcome of the next attack – how much damage you’ll do, how much health the monster will take in retaliation, any extra effects such as mana drain, and whether by the end of that exchange of blows you are SAFE or DEATH. Yeah, the grammar doesn’t quite work, does it? Safe or death! Safe or death! But you get the point. - Alec Meer, Rock Paper Shotgun

This is the best desktop dungeons game that there ever will be. If you liked Desktop Dungeons (and man, I like Desktop Dungeons a lot), you got so much Desktop Dungeons in this game. - Gravel

is that game out yet? I played the early version a few years back and loved it, and I knew they were working on a "real" version, but I lost track; guess it really came out!

yeah, i gotta check that out!

#11: Rayman Legends - PS3/PS4/Vita/X360/Xbone/WiiU/PC - 50 pts - 4 votes

http://i.imgur.com/qevGK1s.gif

Website | Metacritic | Slant | Globe and Mail | Fan Fiction | Speed Run | Trailer

The platform game has been around for so long that it's easy to assume that the genre has run out of surprises. A showcase for the game designer's art and one of the greatest platform games of this - or any - year, Rayman Legends disproves that in glorious style. From its gorgeous visuals to its painstaking design to its abundant generosity, it shows once and for all that "hardcore gaming" is about style, flair and good, old-fashioned challenge - not how many pixels of brain matter you can spray across the screen. - Dan Whitehead, Eurogamer

rayman legends is a childs idea of play, all bright colors, mutable, endless running, jumping the freedom of weightlessness. i liked playing it a lot. - Lamp

I'm a huge fan of co-op games that I can play with my girlfriend and this is the best we played this year. Great art direction and super tight 2D platforming. - diamonddave85

Looks great, sounds great. - salsa shark

I got addicted to the daily online bits of this for a bit, especially the race to the bottom ones (I came in the top 100 once). That part was kind of like 1,000 Heroes except much better executed. The musical levels in the main game were fantastic fun also. - if

Argh, I was out when my top game placed. I was actually going to write a review/blurb thing for it but never finished, so does anyone mind if I just dump the notes for "things that are great about Counterfeit Monkey" here?

do it

Ha, okay, it really is just a bunch of crap notes. But if it gets anyone to give it a go, I will be happy. It probably won't, though, as only like three people play IF here.

THINGS THAT ARE GREAT ABOUT COUNTERFEIT MONKEY

> wave r-remover at t-shirts
No doubt this would be a cogent statement about the commercialization of the body, if it weren’t for the fact that T-SHIT doesn’t describe anything anyone with a functional colon has ever heard of.

* Excellent built-in tutorial to allow new players to get a feel for the game.
* A map: not only does this remove my least favourite thing about IF (I have a terrible time trying to picture layouts and can never be arsed to map games out myself), but it is also a beautifully designed thing that I would happily hang as a poster on my wall.
* Very well implemented and thorough -- see above quote, you can try anything you like, really.
* Perfectly integrated wordplay puzzles with compelling plot: I love wordplay games, and there are some that are fairly good at providing a plot structure that gives you a reason to go on doing yr wordy puzzlehood, but *none* have been this good at it.
* The expansion of your word-changing abilities provides a really well designed ramping up of difficulty.
* Pretty huge game but you don't feel like you're getting trapped there for eternity.
* Emily Short is best at writing. (I, clearly, am not.)

Bioshock made my most disappointing pick. Gunpoint made my top three.

Enjoyed the game while I played it, but I read a coupla points later on made that the enemy change halfway thru the game is horseshit several levels deep due to history, actual race relations, context, character motivation, etc.

It was several neat ideas for games clumped together in a conglomeration so overstuffed that maybe they shouldn't have taken 5 years to finally put out.

Would it be any better if the rebels were relegated wholly to serving roles and stereotyped Disney displays? Maybe, but I feel as long as you are going to put in this kind of charged content, you need to let them fight for themselves, if only to avoid it turning into the story of a courageous white man saving downtrodden minorities.

i.. should get around to playing infinite

The kicker being that they wound up proving every vile racist charge laid on them by the assholes in power. The revolutionary lady suddenly turns into a child killer not because it makes sense for her character, but because the game needs her to.

Also Infinite is still free on PS+, I think

That all said, I do want to play all of Burial At Sea, as we don't get genre immersion in full-on noir often enough in games

Infinite is currently free on PS+, yeah

She doesn't kill a child, tho, is my point.

how the hell is that your point based on this:

Would it be any better if the rebels were relegated wholly to serving roles and stereotyped Disney displays? Maybe, but I feel as long as you are going to put in this kind of charged content, you need to let them fight for themselves, if only to avoid it turning into the story of a courageous white man saving downtrodden minorities.

#10: LEGO Marvel Super Heroes - PS3/PS4/Vita/X360/Xbone/WiiU/3DS/DS/PC - 55 pts - 5 votes

http://i.imgur.com/EL5fyyn.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Eurogamer | EGM | Toys | Level | Trailer

LEGO MARVEL SUPERHEROES

Traveller's Tales is through tinkering with the series' core gameplay, and now it's all about refining what works. Levels take you through iconic areas like Stark Tower, Asgard, and the Savage Lands, where your heroes face off against a who's who of villainy. The battle against Sandman in the opening level is of a size and scale that would normally be reserved for end-game boss encounters, and it only grows from there. I won't spoil Doctor Doom's endgame is, but he's in cahoots with one of the universe's biggest threats. - Jeff Cork, Game Informer

for my son, who loves everything these guys do; and he'd played a ton of Marvel Puzzle Quest already so he knew the heroes! maybe in the future there will be no more Marvel comics, but people will learn the milieu through video games. could be worse. - Euler

This game is fun distilled into its purest essence. I spent maybe a little too much time zipping around Lego New York as Iron Man shouting "WHEEEEEE" and ignoring mission prompts. - DJP

jeezus, it came out for 9 platforms!

man, this was kind of a sleeper hit wasn't it? not in the sense that there have been a million of these Lego games that always sell well, but I kept hearing about this one for some reason all over the place

it is a marvel

Massive super-nerdy list of playable characters was great. Not so great, massive difficulty spikes, which are kind of a first for lego games. Some vehicle side-missions were just really let down by unpredictable handling + interference from other traffic + overly harsh target times. And some of the flying races were borderline unplayable, the mechanism for open-world flying is different to (and nowhere near as good as) the one they used in Batman 2, so the drawn out "get through all these small rings in a row" races were just awful.

otm, I play all these lego games with my godson and this was the one we didn't like for pretty much everything JimD just said.

(tho he did enjoy playing as the hulk to be fair)

i always want to be able to get into lego games but every time i try i just lose interest so quickly

also it seems like every one is a big leap forward in the eyes of lots of people, so by the time the price drops to an acceptable level of risk, the new one is out and purportedly makes the last one and all the previous ones pieces of shit. like, lego batman came out, everyone raved, whatever the next one was came out and suddenly everyone was all "fuck can you believe we wasted time on that horseshit garbage."

lol i feel similarly. i've got an unopened copy of Lego Star Wars Trilogy sitting around, feels like "what's the point man"

The first/last one i spent any time on the Indiana Jones one, and i didn't really get what all the fuss was about. then again, they seem like games that would be fun to play multiplayer, and i was alone, terribly alone

#9: The Stanley Parable - PC/Mac - 58 pts - 7 votes

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

Website | Metacritic | Edge | Slant | NPR | Trailer

The Stanley Parable

"When Stanley came to a set of two open doors," the narrator says, "he entered the door on his left."

It's a choice. A real choice, made all the more fascinating by the fact that the game, via the narrator, explicitly communicates its expectations to you. Do you cooperate with the narrator, letting the story he wants to tell play out? Or do you go the "wrong" way, seeing what awaits down the hallway on the right?

No matter what you do, here, as in most games, exerting true independence is impossible. You are operating within a severely limiting system that others have created. You can play into its expectations or attempt to defy them, but either way, you are engaging in behavior that the system allows, moving through environments that others have constructed with you, the player, in mind. No matter which way you go in The Stanley Parable, you are confronted with choices again and again. And again and again, the narrator communicates his expectations to you. When the narrator tells you that Stanley walks straight ahead into the room marked Mind Control Facility, do you follow his narrative lead, or branch off to the left, down the hallway marked "ESCAPE"?

It's an experience that makes you reflect on the nature of choice in games, on how games that purport to offer choice almost always offer only an illusion of choice. You might find the narrator commenting that you made a choice that you shouldn't, by design, have been able to make, or you might make your way to an area that the narrator claims you were never meant to see. But of course, the very fact that there's recorded dialogue commenting on these circumstances makes it clear that these are situations that the designers planned for and wanted you to discover. - Carolyn Petit, Gamespot

The Stanley Parable isn't all that original in calling into question the player's sense of agency in or outside of the game, but it does so with irresistible wit. - one way street

Alien enough that I was never able to guess what would happen next; recognizable enough that I cared. My only regret is that I think I got the most interesting ending first -- and I didn't understand what made it so interesting until I'd gotten a bunch of the other endings (and, in fact, I forget how I did that ending so I wasn't able to repro it when I tried later). Aaaand I just looked it up and I might've only gotten like half of these endings... time to go back! - Will M.

i actually spent very little time playing 'the stanely parable' but i admire it quite a bit, its like the cgi in the hobbit movies or something, digital monuments - Lamp

a friend at work asked me if i played this game and when i said no he said "you need to play it. don't read anything about it and just play it." when i finally got the game in a humble bundle, i was glad i didn't spoil it

err maybe i didn't get it in a humble bundle and just bought it, i cant remember