Here’s my end-of-year GOTY feature, my Pickz for 2014. Please note that I will be covering games that I played and reviewed this year, not necessarily games that came out this year. Also the categories are kind of being thought up at the last minute as I review my post archive. Of course, it’s all very subjective; I’m rating my experience as much as the game itself.

To start with I wanted to highlight an experience that I enjoyed a few times throughout the year, that of sharing a game with another; most often my wife. We love playing Lego games and so on, but we also tried out a few others. Kirby’s Dream Land 3 proved too hard to do together, and our attempt at Child of Light unfortunately didn’t last long; there’s not much for the firefly player to do. But it’s not all bad news.

Lord of the Rings: War in the North was something we both enjoyed as Middle Earth fans, and despite being pretty much noobs to this genre. Big points in its favour were its faithfulness to that universe and the cool stuff it let you do around the characters and concepts we love; having a fairly linear structure that kept us going; not to mention the ability to play through as a woman, which is a great thing for any game.

Despite a raft of technical problems, gameplay flaws, and accessibility issues, we had a good time with it and that’s why it was my favourite co-op memory of the year. It was a close call with Lego Batman 2, though, but I liked being pushed out of my comfort zone with this.