No duds in these fish.
So you’ve exchanged all of this year’s presents and now you’re sitting on the couch in a new Jeffrey Lebowski-brand bathrobe (“Ties every room together”) and sipping some of that odd third-wave Aussie espresso (only its colour suggests that it isn’t hot lemonade) that your uncle brought from Whole Foods. You’ve got a brand-new iPad in your lap with a cavernously empty SSD just waiting to be filled in with games. But which games? you ask yourself, gesticulating dangerously with the espresso cup.
Well, that’s the finest of questions, friend. If your goal is to get the most lauded and celebrated titles of 2014, you can do much worse than to have a browse of our Best Games of 2014 list, or even our index of reviews from the past year.
But what if you played all of that stuff already? What if you want to christen this new tablet with something a little more obscure? Just as we had last year, here’s a list of games that didn’t grab many headlines this year but that are well worth a shot: the Underdogs of 2014.
Crash Dive
The only game I’ve ever thought would be improved by having an exclamation point in the title, Crash Dive is an absolute jewel of a WWII submarine sim. The game makes a respectful nod towards realism by trotting out an enormous parade of painstakingly-modelled historical ships for your sub to sink (or be sunk by), but the lightning-fast torpedo re-load times and hand-wavy damage modelling suggest that its chief gameplay inspiration is the 1985 Sid Meier classic Silent Service.
That’s no criticism: I might be prepared to invest two hours into a real-time Atlantic patrol in Silent Hunter 3 on the PC, periodically pouring cold water over my head and listening to David Hasselhoff records for added realism. But on a tablet I prefer shorter engagements, and that’s exactly what Crash Dive provides. You jump into war patrols in a German Type VII and when stumble upon a convoy Crash Dive cheerfully starts the scenario up within a couple of thousand meters of your prey, ensuring that either you or they will be dicing with Davy Jones within a couple of minutes.
–Owen Faraday
- Crash Dive for iOS (Universal)
- Crash Dive for Android
Third Eye Crime
It’s not the fastest-paced title in the action category, but Third Eye Crime is no slothful stealther either. Lurking in the shadows for minutes at a time may be the way of things in other–lesser–sneaky fare, but psychic art thief Rothko is given no such luxuries. This is a game of perfectly-timed dodges, of heart-racing sprints to the nearest bit of cover. If Rothko’s a rather slow fellow by video-game protagonist standards, and his deliberate gait makes your narrow escapes all the more heart-pounding.
Back in June I called this game a “stealthy, heart-racing Pac-Man,” and the description remains apt. But Third Eye Crime is so much more. Its controls are intuitive. Its enemies are smart enough to feel threatening and provide the satisfaction that comes with outwitting them. The game regularly introduces clever gadgets to keep things fresh. And that theme–that gorgeous, jazz-soaked, comic book noir-style visual and audio palette–will pull you in and not let go. It’s a near-perfect mix of challenge, smarts and charm.
Third Eye Crime is perhaps the definitive mobile stealth game. It stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the best in its genre, no matter the platform. In a just world its success would have meant developers Moonshot Games live happily ever after, but noir stories teach us the world is cruel and no happy ending is without a final twist of the knife. I looked up Moonshot while writing this piece in the hopes that a sequel might be on the way. Alas, Moonshot is no more. Farewell Rothko. It’s too bad we didn’t get more time with you.
–Jacob Tierney
- Third Eye Crime for iOS (Universal)
Heroes of the Revolution
This single-player-only Cuban Revolution title wasn’t the year’s best wargame, but it sure was the most original. When I reviewed it in August, I called it “fantastic despite its flaws”, and a lot of those flaws have been addressed in subsequent updates that tightened up the UI and added some challenge to the endgame.
Heroes is a clever little dice-rolling wargame with a unique Caribbean setting and an equally unique David vs. Goliath proposition: you have to defeat the enormous American-funded army of dictator Fulgencio Batista with a handful of half-trained guerillas — and the insidiously charismatic Fidel Castro, who can occasionally coerce government forces to flip over to your side. It’s a delightful scenario and a refreshing thematic switch away from wargaming’s eternal re-staging of WWII.
–Owen Faraday
- Heroes of the Revolution for iOS (Universal)
Aerena: Clash of Champions
Ætherpunk. Whatever it is, and wherever it sits on Professor Stickler’s Chart of Punkdom, I’ve decided I like the cut of its riveted hull. And while most free-to-play games in 2014 are still manipulative gouge-machines, constantly reaching for your back pocket, Aerena manages to simply be a good game that happens to be free.
A turn-based romp with a wild cast of characters, squaring off on platforms between moored airships; Cliffhanger Productions’ affair is a quick and tactically-intimate game. I’ve played my fair share of F2P grid-based strategy on tablet, and while RAD Soldiers did have me in its spell for a while, Aerena has the real staying power. A culmination of interesting and relatively balanced characters, a sound mechanical model, impeccable aesthetics and – where it counts – robust multiplayer. Aerena is one of the few online games whose lack of asynchronous multiplayer is not mourned. Combat is expedient and raucous, and thankfully geared so an early game clock cleaning doesn’t equate to a forgone conclusion come later turns.
This is game deserves to be a between-arena-runs palette cleanser for the Hearthstone crowd. A maddeningly unsung effort and a fine sign of tablet F2P market maturation, however glacial.
–Alex Connolly
- Aerena: Clash of Champions for iOS (Universal)
- Aerena: Clash of Champions for Android
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