Check out all of our Best of 2014 coverage here and Worst of 2014 coverage here.
With growing excitement for virtual reality, two major new consoles doing battle, and Nintendo’s renaissance, 2014’s been a fantastic year for gaming.
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Grand Theft Auto V by night
Grand Theft Auto V looks amazing, even when you’re not playing it. The open-world action game’s makeover for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One made it even prettier. YouTuber The XXI tracked down and filmed its diverse cast of extras as they went about their business during the Los Santos night. The results are spectacular.
3 year old with a Portal gun
This is what happens when you give your kids age-inappropriate toys. As if a 3-year-old kid was ever going to grasp the potential dangers of shooting a Portal gun, from the Valve game of the same name, at his feet.
Aaron Paul’s ‘interactive’ Xbox One ad
Microsoft accidentally created an interactive TV ad this year. Breaking Bad star Aaron Paul sat back, played some games, and inadvertently messed with other people’s consoles. When he said, “Xbox on,” in his familiar drawl, it didn’t just start up his own console — it started up a ton of them. And not everyone was happy with the latent power of Kinect.
I think it's time to unplug Kinect. The Aaron Paul Xbox One TV ad came on, he said 'Xbox on' and my console turned on. Eugh.
— Asim Tanvir | アシム (@AsimTanvir) June 28, 2014
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Luigi Death Stare compilation
Who knew that Luigi was such a badass? Mario’s perennial sidekick stepped out of the shadows in a big way with this year’s Mario Kart 8. His creepy dead-eyed death stare as he drove past his rivals made waves (and gifs) in the gaming community, showing a dark, previously unexplored side to the Italian plumber’s personality. It bodes well for a full-on horror version of Luigi’s Ghost Mansion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03eNODCDdqY
Oculus Rift: Living with lag
Oculus Rift is the virtual reality technology that Facebook decided was worth spending $2 billion on this year. We’re going to see an official release for Oculus in 2015, and the tech will likely start breaking beyond video games soon. But in the meantime we’re still claiming it for gamers. This superclever ad for Swedish energy company and broadband provider Umeå Energi uses Oculus Rift to emulate Internet lag in real life, and the results are pretty hilarious.
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LittleBigPlanet celebrates 20 years of PlayStation
PlayStation’s 20th anniversary is a pretty big deal, and LittleBigPlanet’s Sackboy helped pay tribute. In this special video, which debuted at December’s PlayStation Experience event, the LittleBigPlanet team remake some of PlayStation’s most iconic games, including WipeOut, God of War, Journey, and PaRappa the Rapper.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution short film
Two years in the making, this fan-made Deus Ex: Human Revolution short film is simply stunning. Directed by and starring Moe Sharif, it sets a high bar for the official movie that’s in the works. If you just want to cut straight to the action, things get pretty hectic from the 5:06 mark.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO2Rx8YlSWY
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Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare — Hold X to pay respects
It’s one of the biggest gaming releases of the year, and Conan O’Brien found the whole thing very confusing, not least the “hold X to pay respects” prompt at a military funeral. “What’s does that mean? That’s crazy,” said O’Brien. “Is there a button for ‘I’m here because I thought I might meet somebody, but I didn’t care about the guy.’”
Mega64 messes with Reggie
2014 was the year Nintendo lightened up. The traditionally conservative gaming giant let low-budget comedy show Mega64 loose on its U.S. president, Reggie Fils-Aimé, in the run up to June’s E3 gaming conference. The result was the Fils-A-Mech, an ‘indestructible’ android suit complete with lazer death-ray eyes, let loose in Nintendo of America’s headquarters.
The Fils-A-Mech returned to do battle with Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto on the E3 showfloor.
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Real-life Streets of Rage
Like many fan films, this real-life re-creation of Streets of Rage, the iconic Sega Genesis beat-’em-up from 1991, strikes an uneasy balance between insanity and inspiration. Coming in at just shy of 30 minutes, it’s a gleeful romp through all eight stages of the game, including a cartridge failure at 18:32 and some neat touches like characters not being able to pick up weapons properly. Keep watching and you can see how these fans shot the film in chilly Minnesota, entertaining the locals — some of whom wander straight through filming — in the process.
The Half Life 20-minute speedrun
When I first played Half Life way back in 1998, it blew my mind. Seeing this 20-minute speedrun — which takes advantage of save glitches, mods, and altered scripts — is almost as mind-blowing now. It took over four years of planning, preparation, and execution to pull it off.
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YouTube user Redgrave192 sums up the Half Life speedrun concept perfectly: “I like to believe this is how Half Life played out canonically. Freeman took one step out of the tram, thought to himself, “F*** this,” and immediately started flying all around the facility, blowing stuff up and saved the world from an alien invasion before anyone even knew one was happening.”
Seniors react to Oculus Rift
YouTube duo The Fine Brothers put virtual reality hardware Oculus Rift in the hands of some older folk, and their reactions were pretty priceless. Some of the testers got dizzy just walking just round a Tuscan villa, but they still had to ride a roller coaster. And then things got kind of creepy in the Horror Tribute demo.
“This is the damnedest thing I ever saw,” said cast member Jon. “It was neat.”
Assassin’s Creed: Unity parkour
Plenty of parkour videos are on YouTube and other services, but Devin Graham’s (aka Devin Supertramp) four-man exploration of the streets and skyline of modern-day Paris is pretty special. Made in collaboration with the French Freerun Family parkour team and Ubisoft for the release of Assassin’s Creed: Unity, it must have turned some tourists’ heads during filming.
Free to Play: The Movie
Free to Play: The Movie is also free to watch. It’s a feature-length documentary from Valve, the maker of Half-Life, Dota 2, and the Steam digital store and network. It follows three professional gamers from around the world competing for a $1 million prize pool in the first Dota 2 International Tournament. It shows just how far e-sports has come in the last 10 years. You can watch the full movie below.
