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

#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

it hasn't been bundled yet, waiting for inevitable inclusion or sale

the stanley parable is my favorite game of the year that i didn't actually play and just watched on youtube instead.

Worth noting that it's properly laugh out loud funny in places too. It sits very close to the "not actually a game" line, although the "find all the endings" metagame is what keeps it on the right side.

In the end though it was a bit disappointing to me because the (entirely separate and almost unrelated to the main game) demo was even better (maybe just because the writing was more consistent over that shorter period). Definitely play both, if you're trying this. And hey, play the demo anyway, it's super short and free.

SORT OF SPOILER

The "other games" ending was one of my favourite gaming moments ever actually.

#8: Grand Theft Auto V - PS3/X360 - 59 pts - 5 votes

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

Website | Metacritic | Quarter to Three | Official XBox

Lawsuit | Skyfall | Bad Influence | Spotify | Fan Fiction | Let's Play | Trailer

Snapmatic Photos: Crew 1 | Crew 2 | Plane | Train | Boat | The Kids | Contortionist | Carnage | City | NSFW!

which city for GTA 5?

I'm in Downtown, and after stealing some precious weaponry for a jewelry store heist from a moving van, I find myself under the attention of local constabulary. Sirens blaring behind me, I gun my car through the latticework roads before finding a freeway. Thundering into oncoming traffic, cars scatter and smash into the partition. It's not long before I'm in countryside. I slide off the freeway into the brushland, sweeping round dusty trails and leaping over grass hills. Losing sight of the cops, I dump my vehicle behind a bar, walk into a discount store, change my clothes and find another car. I'm miles away from where the chase started, in a completely different area, purely due to the natural course of my actions. Now I’m out in the sticks, free of the law and with a scenic trip back to the city ahead.

Such a scenario is enabled by a few things. The map design is one, with wide roads that allow you to weave through its dense traffic and a cogency that means the expanse of land feels connected from top to bottom.

Secondly, Rockstar has tweaked how the police hunt you. Now you can play a game of hide and seek from the very beginning, nipping out of sight down an alleyway or under a bridge and watch police cars prowl by. Or you can go hell for leather and try to lose them in a high-speed, destructive chase. Your choice. - Tom Hoggins, The Telegraph

Probably the most satisfied I've been with a GTA game since GTA:SA. It seemed actually a bit interesting. Of course, like all of the others, as soon as I beat it, it completely fell out of my mind. This is maybe the first time in a few years where I didn't leave the C&P #1 game off my list and/or include it in my "complain about a game" section, so I guess that's cool. - Will M.

i think as good as any in the series but i think with each iteration the franchise becomes less impactful? i don't know, i loved it when i was playing it, even though i kind of don't care about it in hindsight - Roberto Spiralli

(...)the C&P #1 game(...) - Will M.

SHUT UP WILL

wow seriously did not expect it to be EIGHTH...

not that surprised tbh

If I'm being honest I would have made it my number 1, but it feels kinda boring to vote for GTA even though I spent an ungodly amount of time with it.

considering that the (imo inferior) rockstar games GTAIV and RDR placed #2 and #1 in 2008 and 2010, i expected a stronger showing i guess? altho i guess this really really shows the ilx move away from consoles more than anything. if my guesses are correct, we still have 3 mobile games at least, and 2 pc games at least (and a console game, and... something else... possibly a console game). <-- Don't wanna play that "here is what is left" game since I know 5 of them from my ballot.

xp otm, i guess i'm most surprised bc this is the first time i didn't put the rock star game of the year on my most overrated rant thing

slash i voted for it

#7: Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch - PS3 - 62 pts - 6 votes - 1 top game votes - Top PS3 Exclusive

http://i.imgur.com/AYSFuR2.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Game Informer | RPG Fan | Yahtzee | Cosplay | Fan Fiction | DeviantArt | Trailer

Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch - Studio Ghibli meets Level 5

While Level-5 did a wonderful job of concocting a worthy game, Ni No Kuni's most overt draw is in how it looks, and for that, you need to look outside of the game's developer and into the firm actually responsible for the graphics: Studio Ghibli, perhaps the most famous anime producer in the world. Ni No Kuni is unquestionably gorgeous; its stellar aesthetic transcends each and every inch of the game. You'll see a vista and think to yourself "this is the most beautiful scene in the game." Then, you’ll see something an hour later and you'll think the same thing. This happens over and over again, because Ni No Kuni looks that much better than a vast majority of games on the market. - Colin Moriarty, IGN

Ni no Kuni's combat takes place in real time, though it allows you to pause to switch between Oliver and one of the other party members or any of the familiars currently in your employ. You can run around the battlefield at will as whichever character or creature you've selected, but you still choose your actions — even the most basic attack — from a menu. While real-time combat makes for faster battles than if it were turn-based, the lack of direct control is often frustrating. Selecting "attack" brings up a five- to ten-second timer, and until it runs out, your character will continue a series of auto-attacks on the enemy. Sometimes you'll choose attack but the creature you're controlling will inexplicably just stand there for the first few seconds of the timer, letting it tick down. I was never able to work out why this happens from time to time. - Philip Kollar, Polygon

The only big ticket game I’ve played this year, and I’m not even that far in. But so far, despite some irritating battles, this is beautiful and great and pushes all my JRPG buttons. - s.clover

Not the most compelling jRPG ever, or even really of the past few years (I'd put Persona 4 Golden in this top spot easily if it had really come out in 2013), but once the game got its hooks in me (and, if it didn't for you, keep trying -- it takes a while) it was a warm bowl of chicken soup every time I booted it up. It's easy to find faults, but I was smiling my whole way through. And if that's not the point of playing video games as an adult, what the hell is? - Will M.

Visually lived up to everything you'd hope for from a Ghibli RPG, and while the plot was no great thing the battles were really fun - somehow boss battles won through patience and desperate counter-attacking with one character left never felt like a drag at all. - if

loved this, put 80 hours in before it got too hard to catch pokemons. - soda

If I'm being honest I would have made it my number 1, but it feels kinda boring to vote for GTA even though I spent an ungodly amount of time with it.

yeah, pretty much the same with me. normally i just vote honestly but it didn't seem like GTA5 would be hurting for votes

considering that the (imo inferior) rockstar games GTAIV and RDR placed #2 and #1 in 2008 and 2010, i expected a stronger showing i guess?

i only can think up like 2-3 of the final games left to place

also RDR >> GTAV imho

i still have three games left from my ballot this is weird

Interesting that Ni No Kuni showed up highly here, I got the feeling that it eventually fizzled for many people on this board.

yeah, only 2 left from my ballot.