GOTY 2013
My top ten games of 2013
List items
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This is the game that has taken up just shy of 100 hours of my life this year. I'm still checking in most days to see what new themed furniture there is to buy and how to best style my house. At one point i got so invested that i had begun working with designs and using QR codes to create pathways and plazas in my town, which is something i had never even considered doing before. I have slowly been kicking residents out of my town so that they could possibly be replaced me better, cooler peeople. At this point i have three residents that i don't ever want to leave.
Animal Crossing is a game of layers; there is always another type of activity you could be doing and that's what makes it last so much longer than you would think.
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It's undeniable that driving through and just exploring the worlds of GTA is fun. Some of the most fun of the game came from customizing my character. In doing so, each character's personality was changed ever so much that they felt like they were growing and changing, obviously this kind of character building was just in my head but it freshened up the experience as i did it.
The activities and missions were generally pretty solid. However, the heist missions that were the big new thing didn't really impress me. Also, that online stuff sucks.
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This game very quickly stole 70 hours of my life. I even ended up also getting the 3DS version so that i could play some local multiplayer with my brother; him on the Wii U and me on my 3DS. Even with putting so many hours into the game i never really felt like i was grinding that much, instead i was always progressing to the next level or item. New weapons and armor always felt within my reach and with online and Miiverse i was able to easily get help if i ever did need it.
With Monster Hunter 3 i was finally able to sink my teeth into a Monster Hunter game and play with other people online when it was just released. I had been waiting a long time to do so, ever since seeing the original monster hunter in the short lived magazine GMR.
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It's amazing how a relatively simple update like new graphics and animation breathed new life into the pokemon universe. Overall the gameplay remains mostly unchanged except for the streamlining of a few systems which is totally fine with me. More than any other game this year, Pokemon X is the game that hit me in the nostalgia the hardest and it reminded me of why i loved Pokemon games.
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The Fire Emblem series has always been one that I've appreciated but never quite gotten the chance to really dig into. With Awakening i was finally able to follow the large cast of characters and spend hours planning and re-planning my moves after someone ended up dead. I'm excited for more Fire Emblem games now because of how much fun it is getting to know the ins and outs of each character and carefully trying to set up love interests.
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When i saw all the press about this game around e3 is convinced me to finally pick up Super Mario 3D Land which i quickly played through the main game and got Luigi. The game took the abstracted level design of that game and made it even more gorgeous as well as explorable because of the cat suit which i admit, i actually really like. EAD has shown what the best version of this type of Mario is, now i want to see them take the games in a new and even more exciting direction.
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It wasn't the gameplay of Attack of the Friday Monsters! that really won me over but the world in which it was set. The game did a fantastic job in creating the small Japanese town that you adventure in. With all the subplots that occur it's enjoyable to get to know each towns-person. The game did an amazing job of walking the line between fantasy and reality and i would love to see another game like this.
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As a big fan of Sly 2 I was super pumped to try out the new game, thankfully much of the way it presents itself is very similar to that fantastic ps2 game. The game continues with large open environments with individual missions to take up at your choosing. The overall gameplay repetition of meeting ancestors and using their abilities then fighting the level's boss does get a little tiring but exploring each large area and getting to know it makes it all worthwhile.
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I never really cared about the first Luigi's Mansion game, it was fun, but do i remember it fondly? Eh, not really. With Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon the biggest thing that i'll remember is how it really nailed it on the little things. While going through each room in the mansions i'd constantly be keeping an eye out for hidden places that could contain secrets. This is the game that shows how much of a baller Luigi is. There are so many little touches with his character, like animations and dialogue, that makes him his own person.
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At first i left this game rather cool but the more i thought about it the more i appreciated it. It took a cool story concept and used a heavy atmosphere to create the creepiest experience of the year. Just stepping through the snow itself left me tense let alone working with the creepy characters that meet along the way. The one thing i didn't like about the game was the companion app and how it used it even though that was a major component of the game.
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