Time to unveil our PC Game of the year.
And the winner is…
Reader’s Choice
Dragon Age: Inquisition
This took out a massive chunk of the vote. Massive. Guess it’s just fresh in the minds of many. That or people are just really loving it. Yeah, that’s probably it!
Runner-up
Wolfenstein: The New Order
Coming in second amongst a horde of contenders like Shadow of Mordor, I’m quite chuffed to see a game that was released earlier in the year make it to the dance.
Editor’s Choice
Nidhogg
I suspect that many of you are going to read that and silently mouth ‘WAT’? You might even flip tables. But before you do consider a few things. First, this is just my personal favourite PC game of the year. Secondly, most of my gaming was done on console. Thirdly, a lot of my gaming is done with friends and family these days, so multiplayer games are a big deal.
With those caveats out of the way, allow me to talk about why I love Nidhogg. A game about killing your friends with swords.
I love Nidhogg because it is drama incarnate. Nidhogg constantly throws players into situations that escalate, it provides a space where the stakes slowly get higher and higher to the point where IF YOU DON’T KILL YOUR OPPONENT RIGHT NOW YOU ARE SCREWED AND IT IS GAME OVER.
More importantly, at its core, Nidhogg is a game that feels right, which is strange for a game played at such a frantic pace. The details of the game don’t get lost. Additionally, when you lose in Nidhogg, you never feel frustration. The next game is seconds away. That’s part of the appeal.
I don’t think I’ve had felt more raw, unadulterated pure joy with a video game this year.
Comments
19 responses to “Kotaku Awards 2014: PC Game Of The Year”
For me, Dragon Age was the only game on the voting list that I’d actually played. 2014 was (for me) a bit of a shit year, games-wise.
Don’t get me wrong though, I absolutely loved Inquisition. Deserves to be the winner.
I didn’t play it on PC but I read PC users complaining it was a console port and the mouse and keyboard had issues. Was that true? If so I wonder if some people who played it on console voted for it on pc.
People just love to complain.
I never had any issues with the controls, except in the tactical mode (which was just an odd key-binding choice), and I’m told that today’s patch mostly fixes that.
No the controls are janked rubbish… If that’s “optimised” standards are very very very low… It’s above Drak Souls I guess.
Personally my only real gripe with the mouse & keyboard controls was that ‘right click to interact’ didn’t automatically include ‘move to’. I mean come on, something is highlighted and I indicate that I want to interact with it, don’t just ignore my mouse click until I move my character half a centimetre forward.
This is the bane of my existence. Anyone know if the patch fixed it?
I play on PC and voted for DA. But then I use a controller (and do whenever a game supports it).
Played through the game (111 hours) using just mouse and keyboard and it was fine.
I imagine is this war of mine were released at a different time it could have gotten some votes in this category.
WHAT!??!?!?!? ArcheAge didn’t win???
Glad to see DA:I won. Great fun and my wife is already on her second play through. She loves it more than I do 🙂
man Nidhogg is incredibly fun, soo many hours playing that, had an hour and a half single duel with a mate one night…. had to agree to a break midway for drinks 😀
Man, that sounds incredible. I’ve had some insane duels, but nothing like that!
Something in the same sorta realm and just as much fun, is Starwhal: just the tip, hectic random 4 player madness.
I predict DA:I will win best overall game of the year. Don’t get me wrong, love the game to death and it has my vote, but also coz it only was just released recently and is still pretty fresh in everyone’s minds.
WoD should have won, fantastic expansion, spent countless hours on it
2014 was a pretty bad year for games. Dragon Age was simply the least worst game on offer (and I say that as a diehard Dragon Age fan who was pretty underwhelmed with Inquisition).
PC game of the year… Community votes for a console port. awesome.
I voted for Banished… but Dragon Age is an excellent game.
I kind of feel that these categories should only include the games that were specific to that platform… with the game of the year being between all of them.
@markserrels excellent choice on Nidhog.
Dragon age inquisition is the only game I pre ordered this year.
It is easily the best pc game this year.
it’s been a crap year for pc gaming. From what I’ve heard, all those hyped games from tes online to Destiny and many others never met their expectations.