Awards by Matt S.
It is safe to say that 2014 has been a good year for games. It’s not just that we’ve seen spectacular blockbusters released almost from the start of the year, across all game consoles; 2014 has been a spectacular year for game creativity as we’ve seen indies and arthouse titles find real success courtesy of download platforms.
Our awards this year have been the most popular that we’ve ever seen on the site, with well over 1,000 people voting for their favourite games across 16 categories. Over the next couple of weeks we’ll be listing the two highly commendeds (second and third place) and winner of each category, one per day.
Last but not least we have the PC which, thanks to the likes of Steam, continues to see an endless stream of quality games. Finding the good ones within the mass is becoming more and more difficult, but there were many, many great games released for PC over the last year.
Highly Commended
Alien Isolation is one of the best horror games that we’ve ever played thanks to its intense atmosphere. Here is a game that remains very true to the Alien film franchise and, rather than have the weapons to be able to take on hordes of the monsters, in this game you need to run, hide, and otherwise avoid conflict. As a result it’s a true horror game, where you’re up against impossible odds, and scratching to simply get a little further.
Might & Magic X: Legacy was one of the first major games released in 2014, and it absolutely blew us away for its commitment to a classic RPG experience. We’re talking turn based exploration through the world, strategic combat and even a graphics option to DOS things up if you wanted to get really retro. It would have been so easy to try and “modernise” Might & Magic, but the fact the developers didn’t made X such an impressive and brave release this year.
Winner
Dark Souls II may or may not have been better than the original Dark Souls, but that debate is a largely academic one, since either way Dark Souls II was still leagues ahead of almost anything else released this year. From the dark, intense atmosphere to the challenging, rewarding combat, Dark Souls II was able to offer more of the same, but do so in a way that was fresh and engaging, and that is a rare achievement indeed.
– Matt S.
Editor-in-Chief
Find me on Twitter: @digitallydownld
