Best iPhone and iPad Games of 2014

There really isn't anything quite like the App Store. New games flood the market at an insane rate, and while there is a ton of crap released every day, there are also tons of amazing games. The crap-to-amazing ratio is heavily lopsided of course, but the sheer size of the App Store means that even if there's only one amazing game for every hundred crap games, there's still more amazing games to play through than any normal person even reasonably has time for. If you're willing to put in a little effort to sort the wheat from the chaff, mobile devices can be incredibly rewarding as gaming platforms.

This year was another strong year of great games, and narrowing it down to a manageable "Best Of" list is no easy task. It took some tough decision making, and it goes without saying that this list easily could have been two or three times the size that it is. But sometimes tough decisions have to be made, so below we have a list of what we think are 25 of the very best games released in 2014. (Note: This doesn't include games in ourGame of the Year post. Also look forward to our staff's individual best games posts as well as more Best Of 2014 stuff tomorrow and throughout next week.) I think it's a nice, varied selection of genres and game types, and you really couldn't go wrong with anything here. That said, there's a lot of great games that we weren't able to include, and as we all know no list can suit every single person. So let us know in the comments below what games you loved in 2014, and we look forward to another great year of gaming in 2015.