Best DLC
As my gaming time gets smaller and smaller, I find myself playing less and less DLC. Once I finish a game, I have so many more waiting for me that it’s hard to justify staying in that same world for some small side story. In some cases, DLC even requires playing through most or all of the entire game again to experience it, and there’s almost no way I’d be willing to do that. Here are some exceptions. They’re all for games I loved and actually wanted to experience more of.
Fetch was easily the best character in Infamous: Second Son, so it made sense to focus a side story around her. Neon was the coolest of the four powers Delsin had access to as well, but it did feel weird to be limited to only one power after having all of them in the main game. I did enjoy the changes they made to the move set, though. Being that Fetch had her neon powers for quite some time, I liked that she definitely had more mastery of them than Delsin. The story in First Light was the main draw, though, shining more light (pun definitely intended) on Fetch’s past, as well as on Augustine, the villain from the full game. The arena mode wasn’t as successful, mostly because fighting the same enemies in the same area over and over got stale quickly.
Burial at Sea (Bioshock Infinite)
I’m including both episodes in this even though part one technically came out in 2013, because they’re both really part of one complete story. The first episode was the stronger of the two, acting mostly as an extension of Bioshock Infinite proper, just taking place in Rapture and adding some new weapons and powers. But it was the final fight against a Big Daddy that stuck out the most, taking me back to the first Big Daddy from the original Bioshock (one of my favorite games of all time). And then the twist ending was the cherry on top.
I found episode two to be less fun as an actual game, but I have to give kudos for adding some new gameplay wrinkles, and for taking the story to some satisfyingly weird places. It was frustrating at times not being able to fight as much as I wanted, but I appreciated the design risk of making it more of a stealth game. Hopefully, we’ll have the opportunity to go back to Rapture again some day.
WINNER:
I might like Left Behind more than The Last of Us proper, that’s how amazing it was. It added depth to Ellie’s character that was only hinted at in the full game, and used the original gameplay mechanics like shooting and throwing bricks in clever and unexpected ways. I won’t spoil the story here because you really need to go through the arc yourself to feel the weight of it all. Honestly, the weakest parts were the actual combat sequences that took place outside of the flashbacks, and even those were still on par with the original game. Basically, you need to play this, but only after you’ve played The Last of Us.
4 thoughts on “Game of the Year 2014”