POLL RESULTS: Best Video Game of 2014

 

The votes are in and the KT community has chosen Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor as the video game of 2014.  This was my pick as well.  I’ve sunk nearly 90 hours into the game and I’m only 33% through the plot.  It just makes hacking your way through Sauron’s army in a pre-Hobbit Middle-earth that much fun.  Coming in second was the polarizing but addicting Destiny, and Watch Dogs and Titanfall came in at a tie for third.

Thanks to all who voted and get ready for our next poll, our most solemn duty as time killers of the year, as the Oscars announce their nominations, we will begin the heated and always-close process of choosing The Killing Time Community Film of the Year.  In 2013 it was The Dark Knight Rises.  Last year, it was Gravity.  Which film will be our pick this year?  Get ready to vote!  It is your duty as minute stabbers!

Best Video Games of 2013 Montage

Here’s a very cool montage of some of gaming’s best moments from 2013.  Though a landmark year in terms of heralding in the next generation, the actual quality of games this year was a sharp dip from the previous few.  That’s in large part due to the generation switch and from the odd lack of blockbuster launch titles on either the Xbox One or Playstation 4.  To me, Bioshock Infinite is Game of the Year, hands down.  It’s not only one of the best games of 2013; it’s one of the best games I’ve ever played.  Here’s some thoughts from the video’s creator: Malcolm Klock.  What was your favorite game this year?

Bioshock Infinite DLC: First Pack Today; Rest Detailed

Bioshock Infinite is the best entertainment experience I’ve had in 2013.  With movies slumping and TV on hiatus, Irrational Games has impeccable timing, today releasing Clash in the Clouds, the first pack of downloadable content for BI.

BioShock Infinite: Clash in the Clouds, developed by Irrational Games, is an action-focused downloadable content pack that presents players with a series of unique, intense challenges and a whole new gambit of combat opportunities. Players will combine a diverse toolset of weapons, Vigors, gear, Tears and Sky-Lines in four new areas inspired by the classic BioShock Infinite environments. In addition, by completing all 60 Blue Ribbon challenges, players will unlock exclusives in the Columbian Archeological Society, gaining access to new Voxophones, Kinetoscopes, concept art and more.

Irrational also teased a two-part adventure for Booker and Elizabeth in the city of Rapture before its fall called Burial at Sea.

BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea is a two-part add-on campaign featuring an all-new story for Booker and Elizabeth, set in the underwater city of Rapture before its fall. These two campaigns will be available individually for $15.00 (1200 Microsoft Points), and are also included as part of the “BioShock Infinite Season Pass.” Check out the BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea trailer below.

“We are really excited to offer our fans the content that they have been asking for,” said Ken Levine, creative director of Irrational Games. “With Clash in the Clouds, people get a pure action experience that takes BioShock Infinite combat to its highest challenge and intensity level. With the Burial at Sea episodes, we are building a Rapture-based narrative experience that is almost entirely built from scratch.”

Video Game Review: Bioshock Infinite

 

It’s difficult to explain how good Bioshock Infinite is….ok, how’s this: when I finished it, I tracked down Ken Levine (writer and head developer) on Twitter and thanked him for making that.  I beat a lot of games and I’ve never done that. Bioshock Infinite had a massive amount of hype and expectation to live up to, plus the standard its predecessor (and this really is a companion piece to Bioshock not Bioshock 2) set.  It meets them.  It surpasses them.

It’s 1912 and you play as Booker DeWitt, a former soldier who has fallen on hard times and owes money to the wrong people.  They’ve offered to wipe his debts if he’ll travel to Columbia and bring back a girl named Elizabeth.  What they didn’t mention to Booker, is that Columbia is a city in the clouds.  

Bioshock Infinite is gorgeous.  It’s so beautiful I would just wander around and goggle at things (which made me mad when I got attacked because I was busy examining vistas) for hours.  The campaign can probably be easily beaten in 15 hours.  I took 25 and I’ll probably play through it again (which I never do).  

Initially the gameplay is the same as previous Bioshock games.  It’s a first person shooter where one hand holds a weapon and the other has some sort of power bestowed upon you by potions (or “vigors” as Infinite calls them).  This combat style has always been hugely satisfying and a whole new dimension is added when you are given a skyhook that allows you to traverse the rails surrounding the city.  Your enemies can also travel the rails and you’ll battle them while hurtling from island to island or swoop down on them unsuspecting from above. Combat changes when you do locate Elizabeth and you discover she has a rather unique gift.  She can open “tears” in the fabric of space and time and bring through objects to aid you in combat (a wall for cover, a turret, a chain gun toting robot who looks like George Washington….y’know standard things).

 

Elizabeth is astounding.  Not just as a character, though she is that both in her story and her vocal performance, but she’s quite simply the best AI character in video game history.  You’re not escorting Elizabeth.  She does just fine, thank you.  If anything, she’s escorting you.  What she does is help you by locating extra items, pointing out features and things you might have missed and explaining as best she can the extremely odd world of Columbia.  Infinite was delayed a year just to get her right and it was worth it.  She’s so expressive and so natural in her reactions, it’s uncanny.  There’s one point in the game where you’re talking to two characters who all of a sudden disappear and you’re thinking, “Ok, well that was kind of odd.”  Then you turn around and Elizabeth is behind you with the best WTF! face I’ve ever seen.

As enjoyable as combat and exploration of Columbia is, Bioshock games are expected to deliver a monster of a story and Infinite’s does not disappoint.  Columbia is a sort of religious commune where America’s founders have been deified under the iron rule of “The Prophet”, Father Comstock.  There is a deep and involved past story that naturally unveils itself through film reels or recordings of citizens you pick up along the way.  To delve too deeply into it would be to rob you of the experience so I won’t tell you of the False Prophet, Songbird, the Handymen, or Vox Populi.  All you need to know is, Elizabeth is the key.  Find out who she is and what she can do and you’ll come to the game’s ending, which will be discussed and debated as long as video games are played.  Yes, it’s that good.
10/10 (First ever Killing Time perfect score!)