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

just keepin ya seat warm

Honorable Mention: The Wolf Among Us: Episode 1 - Faith – PS3/X360/Vita/PC/Mac/iOS – 5 pts – 1 vote

http://i.imgur.com/shqqGx8.jpg

Website | Metacritic | Eurogamer | Washington Times | Trailer

Classifying this adventure as a game seems almost silly. There are some quick time events and a little bit of investigative action but as a whole you're taken on a choose-your-own-adventure storytelling thrill ride. Highly stylized in its presentation the player is put into the role of the Big Bad Wolf himself. After the exile from their Homelands he tries to clean up his image as Bigby Wolf, the sheriff of Fabletown. What follows is a well-acted and absolutely gorgeous to watch film-noir style mystery into the seedy underbelly of Fabletown, its denizens and its daily struggle to keep everything together.

Aside from a very select few the exile has not been kind to most of the characters we know and love. Their 'happily ever afters' have long since been forgotten and what's left is dark and gritty characters pushed to the brink of survival. Who would have thought that the hero of Red Riding Hood would be a foul mouthed woman beater who strolls Fabletown for hookers? I know I never would have and The Woodsman is just one example of a great hero's fall from grace that you'll encounter here. This treatment sinks its hooks into you and doesn't let go and is easily one of the best things about the story as a whole.

To be quite frank, as much as I'd like to give some commentary on the opening episode’s plot it really would take away from the enjoyment of watching it unfold for yourself. It's crafted so well that taking even a single piece of the pie and handing it to you on a plate would take away from the impact you'll feel discovering it on your own. - Shawn Petraschuk, Canadian Online Gamers

This game is absolutely amazing! - AnalDoomsday, Nov 6, 2013

iirc walking dead finished much higher in its year. was this not as good?

The first episode is strong, but there's just not that much on the basis of which to judge yet--I say this not having played the second chapter. Thanks again, polyphonic, for your work on this poll!

walking dead was top 10 last year, i believe. i'm interested in this but i'm not familiar enough with the source material to pre-pay for the whole season up front.

Fables isn't done yet, we'll have a better idea once the season is complete. Same w/Walking Dead Season 2.

what a cool thread. I can't wait to try some of these out.

Lol who the hell is AnalDoomsday

Sad I missed the first day of this on account of being dead w/ a cold, but psyched to follow it today!

general complaint: is GOTY edition supposed to mean something? Game of the year according to who? seems like every mediocre major release has one of these now where they charge an extra $30 to make the case black plastic!

def. prefer the more generic "Ultimate"/"Gold"/"Complete" subtitles for monetizing DLC on disc

A Game of the Year Edition is any video game that has been repackaged and advertised as having earned either one or many Game of the Year awards from any number of recognized publications or websites, often times with a discounted price and additional content.

So anything from here I guess. But anything that fails to get a GOTY seems to just use "legendary edition" or something anyway.

Honorable Mention: League of Legends – PC/Mac beta – 5 pts – 1 vote

http://i.imgur.com/Wm2Jjx7.jpg

Website | Metacritic | World's Final 2013 | Trailer

League of Legends - do we do this? We should do this.

The most-played PC game in the world isn't the Sims or SimCity or even World of Warcraft. It's League of Legends, and it's a lot of fun.

Part of this game's success is that players can compete in tournaments against other players from around the world. At the 2013 championships, the top two teams gathered in front of thousands at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. A team from Korea, called SK Telecom T1, took home the $1 million prize. - Business Insider

did anybody see the League of Legends piece on HBO real sports? They threw out the stat that "1 in 20 people play LoL" which sounds utterly false. - forks

The free 2 play esport. What's fun about it? Short learning curve, relatively level playing field. Your character evolves in a matter of minutes while playing so it satisfies that rpg itch. This was my WoW pvp substitute for awhile. The community is like any other online game, totally fucking horrible. - bnw

i played through the Fables one with my gf and the visuals and atmosphere are perfect, but your decisions just don't seem to matter (we tried it twice with opposite choices). maybe they will down the road, but it feels more like a semi-interactive story than a game.

bahaha that graphic is awesome

yeah it really captures LoL's deviantart character design style

the LOL community kind of puts to rest any superiority complex pc folk might have over console kiddies imo. i mostly stopped playing when i realized i enjoyed the bot games more then pvp because you avoided most the sewage spew. aside from that I think Riot does a great job presenting and updating their game.

it's ALL garbage

a few times when someone tried to tell me that PC gamers were more civilized than console gamers, I copied a couple of sections of WoW general chat from my play session that evening and gave them to the person as a rebuttal

basically humans are terrible, this is what i have learned from gaming

I learned that humans are terrible from living through childhood and adolescence ;_;

children are terrible, let's just admit it

^ and childhood lasts abt 25-45 yrs

if you're lucky

Honorable Mention: Ultra Business Tycoon III – Browser – 5 pts – 1 vote

http://i.imgur.com/5m3kP2s.jpg

Game | Indiestatik | Indie Games | Rock Paper Shotgun | Hairpin

I'm hesitant to vote for a Porpentine game, given my lack of enthusiasm for most Twine games and given Porpentine's reputation for abusive behavior toward other queer women, but Ultra Business Tycoon III is hilarious and surprisingly moving.

...

It starts off as a whimsical parody of mid-90s "edutainment" games, and winds up somewhere more emotionally urgent. - one way street

In case anyone tries to play this, you'll eventually need the serial number (3497282) in the mock-readme.txt here to finish the game: http://aliendovecote.com/uploads/twine/tycoon/nfo.png

Porpentine's reputation for abusive behavior toward other queer women

I didn't know about this. Sucks if so, because if nothing else she has been an instigator for a lot of people to find a voice through DIY gaming. Mostly appallingly shitty twine games I'd rather shoot myself than play, but that kind of doesn't matter - I don't need to want to play them for them to be useful to a community. Porpentine games themselves are very varied in quality, which I guess goes with the personal-gonzo style. This one I remember as being okay?

Yeah, I think this is one of her stronger works, although the narrative of the player character in the 1990s takes time to unfold. Their Angelical Understanding from 2013 (http://aliendovecote.com/uploads/twine/angels/angel.html#48is also worth playing through. I won't get into the grievances people have had with Porpentine here, but I don't have a good reason to disbelieve anyone who's felt emotionally mistreated. Still, the twine community carries on, whether or not I find many of their games compelling.

sounds interesting, will give it a shot soon

Honorable Mention: Quadropus Rampage – iOS/Android – 5 pts – 1 vote

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

Website | Metacritic | Touch Arcade | Droid Horizon | Trailer

I love a good Roguelike. More than that, I enjoy a good game that makes excellent use of Roguelike design elements. Enter Quadropus Rampage: an "Endless Roguelike Brawler" starring an incredibly angry four-legged octopus and his almost equally miffed starfish companion. It's a weird concept, certainly, however Butterscotch Shenanigans knows exactly what they're doing. - Rob Rich, 148 Apps

Man, folks slept on this. Action RPG meets iphone sized gameplay length. Loot, rampage, descend, die, rinse repeat. - s.clover

ok black crown (the first game listed) is def the best writing ive ever seen in storynexus, holy crap. super creepy

thing i am gonna check out this Quadropus Rampage

looking forward to more recommendations from AnalDoomsday

man if i had a dollar for every time youve said that

Honorable Mention: flower – PS4/Vita – 5 pts – 1 vote

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

Website | Metacritic | Gamespot | Eurogamer | Trailer

FLOWER | Concluding The Third Annual Coint and Plick Poll: ILG’s Best Video Games of 2009 - Part Four: #1 through #20

typical hipster comment "this must be amazing to X while you're high". you can tell something is overrated pseudo intellectual tripe when junkies come on a video and bore you with some anecdote about how they shoot heroin to this or whatever. if anything it shows how unengaging gameplay wise this "game" must be if its possible to "play" it will taking illegal substances. this game has no story, you play as a petal ffs, yet "oh no its too deep for you, its minimalist art you uncultured barbarian" - Gabriel Voidx, 8 months ago

This captivated a room of thirtysomethings on New Year's Eve at a friend's house. - Jordan

(AnalDoomsday is not an ilxor fwiw, just some person in a comments section.)

sure he isnt

AnalDoomsday is every person in a comments section IMO

We are all AnalDoomsday.

*breathes sigh of relief about not going with AaanalDddoomsday as commenter name at the last minute*

AnalDoomsday is a feeling

actually if you could just work AnalDoomsday into every pullquote credit from here on out that would probably be for the best

Hungry4AnalDoomsday

really great use of the touch controls and overall a very solidly designed game - forkscloveanaldoomsday

my mom and sister LOVED this game despite both being non-gamers. they went so far as to get 100% (or whatever equivalent this game has) on every level except the one that I had done and forced me to 100% that level like 6 months later

lol it wasn't until I clicked on the picture that I realized I've been confusing flower with grOw

not the best storynexus i have played, but far from the worst - emil.doomsday

yep. slow day at work.

also I get what dude is going for but man do I want to punch the second paragraph of the Gamespot review in the neck

In Flower, you ride the wind. You enter the first level to see a single hovering flower petal; you press a button to surge forward and carry the petal with you, and tilt the controller to steer, as if you're the pilot of a blissful breeze. As you rush through the grass and natural growth, you pass through clusters of flowers, each bud blooming and adding a petal to the ever-growing bouquet that sails through the air. Each time you glide through a batch of flowers, petals emit notes that complement the bucolic soundtrack. In this way, you aren't just a player but a musical collaborator, composing your own countermelody as you rush ahead. Flowers are arranged in rows, circles, and other patterns, and following those patterns enhances the musical effect by allowing each tone to flow into the next.

SHUT UP

Whoever wrote nauseating paragraph is a total f'king anal doomsday suppository.