#ANGRY JOE TOP GAMES OF 2014 PC#

With a colorful character roster, creative abilities, and some excellent holiday-themed events (I’m hooked on Mei’s creepy snowball purgatory), Overwatch is a game I keep coming back to and probably will for some time. When Blizzard announced it was making a shooter people scoffed, but it brought the same polish and sheen to Overwatch as you’d expect from a new StarCraft or Warcraft. In my line of work that’s a rare thing, but Overwatch is just a damn solid multiplayer shooter, on your own or (especially) with friends. Hayden: This sums it up: Overwatch released seven months ago and I’m still playing it. It sucks that the developers wasted time and money bolting it on rather than crafting more single-player shenanigans, and it doubly sucks that all of Doom’s DLC thus far has focused on multiplayer rather than beefing up the campaign even further. Shut up, rock out, and reload that shotgun. If it isn’t killing demons, Doomguy doesn’t care. Doomguy fist-bumps collectible action figures he stumbles across and smashes exposition-spouting computer terminals. Hayden’s down on the story but I love how ferociously Doom embraces the dumb. The sheer frenetic ballet of it all is pure adrenaline and instinct its primal allure helped make even those weaker later levels thrilling, at least to me. As Hayden says, the game gloriously mixes firepower and fisticuffs, and the way Doom forces you in close to refill your health and ammo (via melee and chainsaw attacks), forces you to keep pushing, dodging, and punching while Mick Gordon’s outstanding techno-industrial-metal soundtrack blares guitar riffs in the background. It’s just damn fun.īrad: Doom ’s second-to-second gameplay is pure dumb shooter, honed to perfection. But ultimately Doom’s one of the games that stuck with me most this year. Its story is dead stupid (as if anyone played Doom for the story) and its arenas grow stale a bit too early-I feel like the game runs out of surprises about two-thirds of the way through. It’s not perfect, as Hayden says (what’s up with those slowdowns during alien turns?) but this gem is a beauty despite its minor flaws. You constantly feel harassed, oppressed, and on the brink of disaster in XCOM 2-but XCOM’s legendary RNG-centric gameplay and customization options help the game shine rather than suck. You thought XCOM: Enemy Unknown was tough? Ha.

Your base is a mobile command center that flies around the globe, hunted by UFOs as you bolster resistance efforts those timed missions instill a fast “strike-and-move” feeling a new concealment system helps you get the drop on patrolling forces and now-destructible environments help you literally drop turrets and Sectoids off of roofs and out of cover.Īll the while, monthly “Dark Events” give the alien overlords bonuses that can’t be avoided and must be planned around. While you commanded a multi-national force in XCOM: Enemy Unknown, in XCOM 2 you’re in charge of a rag-tag force that leans heavily on guerilla tactics. And unlike Hayden, I adore the abundance of timer-based missions, as they’re just one of many new gameplay additions that reinforce the fact that in XCOM 2, you’re fighting back after the aliens already won. I’d guess diehard park sim fans may dislike the easy-peasy management aspects, but not me that easy money lets you focus on crafting creative parks rather than spending hours optimizing traffic logistics.Ī big reason I can keep going back to the well is XCOM 2’s procedural level generation, a first for the series.

#ANGRY JOE TOP GAMES OF 2014 PC#

Oh, and the coaster construction tools are decent too-you know, once you’ve finished building that perfect bathroom.īrad : I’d tell you what I love about Planet Coaster, but within five minutes of booting the game, my family hijacked my PC and have played it for dozens of hours since then-and my wife never plays games. If you’re looking to build the theme park of your dreams, strap in. Hayden: I lost something like 20 hours of my life to Planet Coaster in a single weekend-placing rides and building coasters, sure, but also doing weird stuff like “Constructing the perfect Spanish Colonial-themed bathroom.” With extensive scenery and building construction tools, Planet Coaster is the Sims-crossed-with- RollerCoaster– Tycoon I never knew I needed until I had it the range of custom items on the Steam Workshop says everything you need to know about its appeal.

Angry joe top games of 2014