14 DAY TRIAL // Being a professional games reviewer means playing titles for extended periods of time even if the fun has died out. This may sound counterintuitive, but it usually exposes quite a few faults, including a design that doesn't keep things fresh and exciting whether you've been playing for 5 minutes or 5 hours.
As such, I can say that my game of the year is Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag, as it managed to keep the gameplay fresh, constantly offering new things to experience, and, most importantly, made exploring the huge world fun, as opposed to other titles, like Grand Theft Auto 5 for example.
I have already nominated Black Flag for its great gameplay and its excellence in the action adventure genre.
Now, it's time to talk about the many ways in which it keeps things fresh even after many hours spent with it.
The trouble with open world games is that you can get bored with their actual content or with the ways in which you travel around it.
Ubisoft has already proved with last year's Far Cry 3 that it knows how to keep things fresh and, with Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag, it succeeded once more, even if players are mostly stuck with using their ship, the Jackdaw, to explore the huge Caribbean Sea.
Thanks to many improvements made to the naval warfare mechanic, it's quite enjoyable to captain your own ship and the complex upgrade system means that you'll constantly have incentives to loot other ships in order to upgrade your own.
Even on land things are kept fresh, as instead of squeezing in various activities in a few major cities, Ubisoft scattered them around the world, on bigger or smaller islands, adding further incentive to explore the huge world.
Throw in the great gameplay, the fun multiplayer, and the new story with a much more likeable protagonist, and you have one of the best and most fun games of the year.