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

ha wow did not expect gta to be that low, DEFINITELY did not expect ni no kuni to beat it

i hadnt played either by the time voting came around, still havent played NNK, would have thrown some points to gta for sure

please dont take this the wrong way but before i take the plunge on ni no kuni, is it actually far less "cute" than the promos would lend me to believe? i got the dreaded chocobo fears from it

It's very cute, sorry.

what are the dreaded chocobo fears?

yeah isn't it a story about an eight year old trying to save his mom or something

An eight year old trying to save his mum after she apparently dies of a heart attack. Which actually was a massively difficult cut scene to sit through with an 8 year old whose grandad had a heart attack the week before, really wished I'd had some pre-warning about the content tbh. But hey, everything turned out fine in the end (in game and irl).

dreaded chocobo fears is just my own private shorthand for all the times FF games would cram some cutesy stupidity in my way and make adorable animals talk in babytalk for my "amusement"

like i have no problem with heartfelt or even vaguely saccharine storylines, just dont make me spend half my time wandering the game with some fucking half bunny that talks like henrietta pussycat from mr. rogers and wont ever stfu

in this game the half bunny talks in a deep welsh brogue

so this game is a broguelike

...

haha

slots five through one all to be taken by marvel puzzle quest then is it

ugh, i forgot about marvel puzzle quest

you guuuuuuys

plz don't let a match 3 game be #1 overall

i shouldn't judge, i guess. i've probably sunk a dozen hours into Ted Ginn Kick Return over the past month, and that is objectively one of the worst games of all time

i spent 95-145 minutes this week playing final fantasy: all the bravest and i still comfortably look down on anyone playing marvel puzzle quest

punks

haters

well keep looking down because WE'RE ALL HAVING A VERY MILDLY FUN TIME DOWN HERE

no we aren't

FF: ATB is pretty fun at times

it might not be fun but it's god's work

Love the presentation of it.

I was playing FF:ATB doing the magic finger dance over 30-or-so mages, knights, scouts, warriors, etc. and then decided what if I just lay my entire hand flat against the screen will that still work? And YES it does work!

Can't go wrong w 16-bit FF music though. I would love it if it was just a screen saver.

Ok you dicks, I bought ni no kuni after work today so if it sucks it's on you

i gave it my top vote so blame me

but on that note

fuiud

ok at least now i know who im gunning for

ha to be clear that isnt a comment on the game, i didnt even have a chance to pop it in yet

#5: Papers, Please - PC/Mac - 68 pts - 8 votes

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Papers, Please is a game that roughs you up, grinds you to a pulp, and crushes the spirit. It makes you rationalize awful behavior. It is an incredibly stressful, dissonant, upsetting game. It's the kind of game that makes you stare ahead with dead eyes, rather than smile. It's a game that you avoid talking about with your friends, except maybe to discuss how sick it makes you, because you realize just how shameful your actions were. More games need to be this way. - The Mittani

Papers, Please is actively unpleasant to play, but I'm a sucker for games with such expressive mechanics. - one way street

Fits in well in the recent trend of depressing drudgery as Serious Message Game (see the tonally and visually similar Cart Life, but very creative as a permutation of '80s edutainment games, as well sometimes genuinely chilling and effective in its depiction of a fictional communist state from the same era. - Nhex

Why did I like PP so much? It's tough to explain. It bummed me out for all of the right reasons. I haven't even gotten that far yet, either, so I bet it'll blow me even further away soon. - Will M.

this game really got in my head. sort of powerful for something that is essentially so simple. a good game but also an "experience" - Roberto Spiralli

unless i am failing at ctrl+f and/or failing at having a memory, i have 4 left and one of them is really O_o

this the was o_O i was talknig about, very shocked it made the top 5!

played this for the first time for an hour and a half a couple days ago and I can totally understand why it made top 5, the mechanics feel really tightly designed to induce that feeling of paranoia/desperation

fascinating game. Causes me high levels of anxiety. I guess that's it's aim.

I loved my first couple of hours with it but haven't been able to bring myself to go back to it yet.

Might be wrong but I feel like it's unusual for a game to place this highly in a P+C while still averaging less than 10 points per vote?

Loved how the story is slowly revealed through the game and how seamlessly the gameplay decisions affected the story. With a lot of games where player actions decide the story, either the gameplay or story is really lacking at the expense of the other, or they don't find a good way to integrate the two, but PP did everything right.

is papers please, like, a whole game? of game-y length? i thought it was a 20 minute flash experience, but i think that's because i confused it with a game of similar vibe where you edited a newspaper

i mean mpq was (shamefully) my top game but if it's our number one on this that's gonna really say a lot about the state of both contemporary gaming and ILG in general

at least next year it'll likely be surpassed by Dark Souls II. Maybe.

i have questions about that game as well but that can wait i guess, what number of playstation are we on now again

#4: Batman: Arkham Origins - PS3/X360/WiiU/PC - 76 pts - 6 votes - 1 top game votes

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Batman: Arkham Origins takes us out on our third adventure with the Dark Knight, this time in the form of a prequel. Batman finds himself hunted by eight deadly assassins on Christmas Eve, each vying for the 50 Million dollar bounty placed on his head by Black Mask, Gotham’s Kingpin of organized crime. - Royce Dean, Canadian Online Gamers

(Spoilers.) The true climax of Origins comes about 80% of the way through the main story, where the (wholly unsurprising) central villain, The Joker, has been revealed and caught. This begins a bravura playable sequence in his mind with a monologue that in no uncertain terms details his falling in love with Batman, punctuated by the language of Arkham's third person movement and combat engine. This sequence alone made the game a worthwhile proposition for me.

Much of this game is a reuse of assets from Arkham City, down to even revisiting miniaturized versions of the neighborhoods from that title. The elements, enemies, and settings are competent as they have been, but it's the brand new set-pieces - particularly the Firefly section near the end of the game - that hint at a potential if WB is willing to take a risk and get away from the now well-established Arkham aesthetic and tone. (I hope that the rumors of a next-gen Silver Age Batman title from Rocksteady are true.)The detective mode/flashback crime reconstructions are very well put-together, and the fan in me does like seeing Batman fight an endless army of crooked cops in old Gotham. This game certainly didn't NEED to be made, but it could have very easily been a complete throwaway title from a sub-studio without the various glimmers of newlight it does have.

And I can't understate this: Flawless Freeflow combat is possibly the greatest single gameplay invention of the last half decade. The theatrical synchronicity between game action and your physical controller movements was magnificent in its original incarnation and has slightly deepened and improved over the last two games; it was nearly perfect from the very beginning as it was. It's still thrilling ballet. I'll play a dozen more games with this engine easily, but I'm still glad they gave a stronger effort to the story and characterizations in Origins. - Nhex

This game was a ton of fun for about 90 minutes and then I never played it again. It's super comfortable and fits directly into the gameplay style of the rest of the series. - DJP

I'm sure a lot of people won't rate this because it's really more of the same... whereas I guess I rate it precisely because it's more of the same. Also, I thought the Deathstroke boss fight was really fantastic (so much that it ranks among my all-time favourite boss fights).

I feel like the Deathstroke (it always takes me awhile to figure out that he's not Deadpool or Deadshot) fight was a pre-cursor to my current obsession with Dark Souls, at least until I turned hints back on. - Jordan

5 points for the boss battles being decent. The rest of it you played before. Except here Batman grimaces and grunts a lot to prove he is young and angry. - bnw

I swear to god that Papers Please gif was looping last night. :(

haha, no, just own it! single loop GIFs are rare and commendable

is papers please, like, a whole game? of game-y length?

Took me 4-5 hours to get one ending, so sufficiently gamey IMO

#4! on behalf of my test cases i thank u all

Here comes the first game in our poll with more than one first place vote...

#3: The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds - 3DS - 81 pts - 5 votes - 2 top game votes - Top 3DS Exlusive

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A Link Between Worlds takes the fundamentals of the series' 16-bit era and flips its design conceits on their head. Nintendo has taken its most sacred cow and pushed it out into a more open world with all the terrifying freedom the series has never had. The result? The best Zelda game of the last twenty years. - Arthur Gies, Polygon

Another dimension added to the game is the use of stereoscopic 3D. Unlike many 3DS games, Between Worlds still fully runs at 60 frames per second when in 3D mode, and the game simply looks better with the depth of the 3D effect. This game really shows that all games are not created equally in terms of 3D on the 3DS, the quality difference between the two uses of the effect in Link Between Worlds and, for example, Pokemon X & Y, is striking.

More so than just a superficial addition to the game, however, many of the game’s dungeons are significantly vertical, and the stereoscopic effect is an effective way of both giving a sense of height, and maneuvering Link through the various obstacles in front of him.

It isn’t unplayable without the 3D effect (I certainly turned it off more than a few times when my eyes got tired), but this is absolutely something you should play on the 3DS and not the 2DS if you have a choice. Also, the game looks much better on the actual screen of the 3DS than it does in any trailers. - Daniel Kaszor, Financial Post

Bringing the joy of exploration and discovery back as a central element of Zelda, plus some of its most intricate and tightly packed dungeons ever - classic. - if

Certainly the most fun I've had with any Zelda game in a really long time. - salsa shark

A very enjoyable Zelda game with a nostalgic trip. A lot has been said about the "revolutionary" ability to visit dungeons in any order but I found the game to be pretty linear even with that mechanic. - diamonddave85

new Zelda best one since Wind Waker imo, no tutorials or annoying helper, can explore & tackle dungeons in pretty much any order. - Zappi

i missed one... i thought i still had 3 on my ballot. time to look back...

ah there it is. #3 would've been too high for ridiculous fishing! missed it because of bioschlock unfunite

Will, thank YOU for contributing to Origins!

Whose quote was #3? Also, DJP, totally recommend you go back to it for those choice bits

I like Roberto's Papers Please comment about how the game gets in your head, very otm